Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
I'm trying to buy a house at the moment.
We have a mortgage offer approved, but we subsequently negotiated the price down slightly. I really hope this wasn't a massive error - as we now seem to be in limbo waiting to get a revised offer from the bank.
I've re-read the t's and c's and think they have to honour the old offer they made at least (which in a rare display of successful gambling on my part was a 5 year fixed rate). But it feels pretty nervy waiting while interest rates go up ever other week it seems.
fingers crossed for you.
We bought this year - we had a firm mortgage offer on a fixed rate when we started looking. The offer ran for 6 months - within that time, there were rate increases, but the offer was unaffected by them. T&Cs, I suppose.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
You're under 35 iirc - Would moving to Nationwide for a 40 year term make it affordable ?
Not when interest rates are over 6% - the affordability changes are minimal... Best to go interest only for a bit...
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
There have been massive winners and losers from housing the last decade. Surely fairer to swap them over at some point, than just consecutive governments ensuring the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing?
Its the millennials who will suffer. Again. Incomes squeezed renting to afford a deposit. Those who managed to save enough in their 20s to get their claws on the property ladder in the last 5 years are screwed.
yes wouldnt like to be someone whos taken out a mortgage in the last 5 to 10 years
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
There have been massive winners and losers from housing the last decade. Surely fairer to swap them over at some point, than just consecutive governments ensuring the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing?
Its the millennials who will suffer. Again. Incomes squeezed renting to afford a deposit. Those who managed to save enough in their 20s to get their claws on the property ladder in the last 5 years are screwed.
Most young people don't own property. Most old people own property.
Price of property goes down is a clear transfer of wealth from old to young, and rising prices would be vice versa.
Yes some of the worst hit in a crash are young recent buyers, that is undeniably true and sad and difficult for those impacted, but imo that does not outweigh the positives of rebalancing houses back to sensible wage ratios. On the whole the young benefit from lower prices.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
There have been massive winners and losers from housing the last decade. Surely fairer to swap them over at some point, than just consecutive governments ensuring the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing?
Its the millennials who will suffer. Again. Incomes squeezed renting to afford a deposit. Those who managed to save enough in their 20s to get their claws on the property ladder in the last 5 years are screwed.
I try not to think about it in those terms, but agreed. I think, despite the wailing I heard throughout my teens, Millennials have proven to be a fairly conservative generation. In the end, we wanted the stable jobs and home ownership of previous generations (perhaps it will prove with the Zoomers also). In fact, many Millennials so bought into this vision that, as you say, large numbers went through quite a lot of hardship to achieve it... Right in time to get fucked.
TLDR, the argument boils down to this. Peoples have a right to self determination. We are a people. Hence we have that right. The Scotland Act 1998 should be construed in a way that does not interfere with that right. A referendum allows the views of the Scottish people to be determined. The reserved matters therefore cannot constrain this.
Therefore all local councils have the right to run concurrent referenda for their people to remain or leave, or apply to join the EU, or whatever. County councils in England can run secede referenda at will etc etc
Hmmm.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
New nationwide Mortgage rates - not necessarily the cheapest but probably reflects the new market
The phrase Oh Boy springs to mind.
For reference these were the rates in a press release from January 2022
First-time buyers: Five-year fixed rate at 60% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.52%, with a £999 fee. Two-year fixed rate at 85% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.54%, with a £999 fee. Two-year tracker rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.24%, with a £999 fee. New customers moving home: Five-year fixed rate at 75% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.54%, with a £999 fee. Two-year fixed rate at 85% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.44%, with a £999 fee. Two-year tracker rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.19%, with a £999 fee. Remortgage: Two-year fixed rate at 60% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.44%, with a £999 fee. Five-year fixed rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.94%, with a £999 fee. Three-year fixed rate at 75% LTV increased by 0.20% to 1.64%, with a £999 fee.
Blimey.
I did a look at remortgage rates today and some 2 year fixes still seemed to be around 2.69%. Presumably this changes pretty quickly
Fixed rate mortgages are really structured bonds sold on the market. The change from 2.69 to 5.59% simply reflects the additional risk Friday's budget introduced to the market...
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Although methane release is one of the possible 'reasons' I've heard behind the Bermuda Triangle plane crashes. And ISTR oil / gas rigs have been sunk because of gas leaks - the gas alters the buoyancy of the water. I daresay Richard will know more.
And there is rationing going on right now in Europe (and the UK) - it's called the price mechanism.
Yes and this exacerbates it, we've seen the predictions for what happens without further rationing in a cold european winter. Its not a *shrugs* thing.
Sure:
But you have to remember it's pretty much as bad for us as for them.
- We have much less gas storage than the EU in general, and Germany in particular - A much higher percentage of electricity supply comes from gas in the UK
If Germany isn't recieving any Russian piped gas, it will need to replace it with LNG gas. The main importer of spot (i.e. not contracted) gas in the world is us. And we don't have the advantage of being able to draw down storage during the winter.
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Although methane release is one of the possible 'reasons' I've heard behind the Bermuda Triangle plane crashes. And ISTR oil / gas rigs have been sunk because of gas leaks - the gas alters the buoyancy of the water. I daresay Richard will know more.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that re buoyancy of water. That's interesting.
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Since both NS1 and NS2 are currently both delivering zilch, this is presumably from the (previously) pressurised static content.
I know little about gas pipelines, and I wonder if this is Ivan's latest roll of the die.
Are deliveries through the Ukraine routed pipeline still running at full tilt?
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
You're under 35 iirc - Would moving to Nationwide for a 40 year term make it affordable ?
Not when interest rates are over 6% - the affordability changes are minimal... Best to go interest only for a bit...
The sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines is a last, desperate attempt to try and force Germany into pushing for freezing the conflict. The Russian may also attempt to sabotage the Norwegian pipelines, but that would effectively be a direct act of war. In any event its not going to work, there is sufficient headroom across other supplies and alternatives to create work arounds.
The complete chaos enveloping Russia is also being seen on the battlefield, where there is now growing evidence of a Russian catastrophe around Lyman. The new recruits are just dead men walking, and even the Ukrainians are shaken by the scale of death that the Russians are effectively inflicting on their own side.
Another significant defeat is looming for Russia, and now the call up has brought the economy in several areas to a dead stop. Even if Putin formally annexes the occupied territories and uses a nuclear weapon to "defend Russian territory" there is every chance that a non-nuclear response could be so devastating that Russia itself, never mind its army, will "decohere". Chunks of Russian territory, notably Dagestan, are already slipping into open rebellion.
The crisis for Russia may be only just beginning.
Damaging the Norwegian pipelines would be an act of war.
New nationwide Mortgage rates - not necessarily the cheapest but probably reflects the new market
The phrase Oh Boy springs to mind.
For reference these were the rates in a press release from January 2022
First-time buyers: Five-year fixed rate at 60% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.52%, with a £999 fee. Two-year fixed rate at 85% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.54%, with a £999 fee. Two-year tracker rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.24%, with a £999 fee. New customers moving home: Five-year fixed rate at 75% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.54%, with a £999 fee. Two-year fixed rate at 85% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.44%, with a £999 fee. Two-year tracker rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.19%, with a £999 fee. Remortgage: Two-year fixed rate at 60% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.44%, with a £999 fee. Five-year fixed rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.94%, with a £999 fee. Three-year fixed rate at 75% LTV increased by 0.20% to 1.64%, with a £999 fee.
Surely this is to be expected after the Rich Persons giveaway with no workings budget
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
There have been massive winners and losers from housing the last decade. Surely fairer to swap them over at some point, than just consecutive governments ensuring the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing?
Its the millennials who will suffer. Again. Incomes squeezed renting to afford a deposit. Those who managed to save enough in their 20s to get their claws on the property ladder in the last 5 years are screwed.
Most young people don't own property. Most old people own property.
Price of property goes down is a clear transfer of wealth from old to young, and rising prices would be vice versa.
Yes some of the worst hit in a crash are young recent buyers, that is undeniably true and sad and difficult for those impacted, but imo that does not outweigh the positives of rebalancing houses back to sensible wage ratios. On the whole the young benefit from lower prices.
The ONLY thing that is rebalancing house prices at the moment is the fact that at low interest rates £x a month could borrow £y amount of money and at higher rates you can only afford £0.6*y instead...
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
You're under 35 iirc - Would moving to Nationwide for a 40 year term make it affordable ?
Not when interest rates are over 6% - the affordability changes are minimal... Best to go interest only for a bit...
Is that generally allowed ?
Depends on lender/LTV. I've only ever had a interest only mortgage. I then have control over how much and when to pay off some capital.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
You're under 35 iirc - Would moving to Nationwide for a 40 year term make it affordable ?
Not when interest rates are over 6% - the affordability changes are minimal... Best to go interest only for a bit...
Is that generally allowed ?
It's the default mode for a bank if you have payment issues... best to keep things ticking over rather than forcing the point.
Of course sometimes you do need to force the point but the initial logic is keeping things going however possible first
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Not an expert on these things but I thought that the absence of a combustion chamber meant no explosion.
On an unrelated matter, Robert, is it true that you were at University with man of the moment, Kwasi Kwarteng?
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Although methane release is one of the possible 'reasons' I've heard behind the Bermuda Triangle plane crashes. And ISTR oil / gas rigs have been sunk because of gas leaks - the gas alters the buoyancy of the water. I daresay Richard will know more.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that re buoyancy of water. That's interesting.
Killed many people trying to escape from beached ships in stormy conditions, I believe - too much air entrained in the water, the person goes down.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
There have been massive winners and losers from housing the last decade. Surely fairer to swap them over at some point, than just consecutive governments ensuring the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing?
Its the millennials who will suffer. Again. Incomes squeezed renting to afford a deposit. Those who managed to save enough in their 20s to get their claws on the property ladder in the last 5 years are screwed.
I try not to think about it in those terms, but agreed. I think, despite the wailing I heard throughout my teens, Millennials have proven to be a fairly conservative generation. In the end, we wanted the stable jobs and home ownership of previous generations (perhaps it will prove with the Zoomers also). In fact, many Millennials so bought into this vision that, as you say, large numbers went through quite a lot of hardship to achieve it... Right in time to get fucked.
weird fact of human psychology is that the higher the price you make something the more people want it...i remember when property was dirt cheap in the mid 90s no one was bothered about buying property
New nationwide Mortgage rates - not necessarily the cheapest but probably reflects the new market
The phrase Oh Boy springs to mind.
For reference these were the rates in a press release from January 2022
First-time buyers: Five-year fixed rate at 60% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.52%, with a £999 fee. Two-year fixed rate at 85% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.54%, with a £999 fee. Two-year tracker rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.24%, with a £999 fee. New customers moving home: Five-year fixed rate at 75% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.54%, with a £999 fee. Two-year fixed rate at 85% LTV increased by 0.05% to 1.44%, with a £999 fee. Two-year tracker rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.19%, with a £999 fee. Remortgage: Two-year fixed rate at 60% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.44%, with a £999 fee. Five-year fixed rate at 80% LTV increased by 0.10% to 1.94%, with a £999 fee. Three-year fixed rate at 75% LTV increased by 0.20% to 1.64%, with a £999 fee.
This is where trackers start to become attractive again.
My remortgage is up Dec 2023. I'll probably be obliged to go for one then.
We have 5 by-elections in the House of Lords next month due to retirements of Viscount Ullswater, Lord Colwyn, the Earl of Listowel and Lord Astor of Hever and the death of the Earl of Home.
There is one vacancy in the Crossbenchers, 2 vacancies in the Conservatives and 2 vacancies for the whole House (although these are expect to be filled by Conservatives).
The first election will be by AV, but the last two elections will be by STV.
Candidates statements to be published later this week.
Members of the House of Lords presumably either take a party's whip or else they're crossbenchers, but what's the procedure for the registration of a hereditary peer's party affiliation when he doesn't hold a seat, not even as a life peer? Is the register made public?
TLDR, the argument boils down to this. Peoples have a right to self determination. We are a people. Hence we have that right. The Scotland Act 1998 should be construed in a way that does not interfere with that right. A referendum allows the views of the Scottish people to be determined. The reserved matters therefore cannot constrain this.
Therefore all local councils have the right to run concurrent referenda for their people to remain or leave, or apply to join the EU, or whatever. County councils in England can run secede referenda at will etc etc
Hmmm.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
SNP view is that anyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot.
We have 5 by-elections in the House of Lords next month due to retirements of Viscount Ullswater, Lord Colwyn, the Earl of Listowel and Lord Astor of Hever and the death of the Earl of Home.
There is one vacancy in the Crossbenchers, 2 vacancies in the Conservatives and 2 vacancies for the whole House (although these are expect to be filled by Conservatives).
The first election will be by AV, but the last two elections will be by STV.
Candidates statements to be published later this week.
Members of the House of Lords presumably either take a party's whip or else they're crossbenchers, but what's the procedure for the registration of a hereditary peer's party affiliation when he doesn't hold a seat, not even as a life peer? Is the register made public?
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
That doesn't make much sense to me, if you sell it then you'll still need a home to live in so would have to start renting, which isn't really any cheaper than the interest alone of your mortgage probably, even at 7%.
Coming to an interest-only payment arrangement with the bank would be better than selling the property, and the interest is dead money just as your rent would be if you sold.
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Since both NS1 and NS2 are currently both delivering zilch, this is presumably from the (previously) pressurised static content.
I know little about gas pipelines, and I wonder if this is Ivan's latest roll of the die.
Are deliveries through the Ukraine routed pipeline still running at full tilt?
They were (albeit at volumes 60% of 2019 levels - largely because it was a more expensive transport route than NS). It is worth noting that pretty much all the original Ukraine pipeline gas goes to Italy these days.
Russia's friends (Salvini and Berlusconi) are now part of the government there, although Meloni has been a lot more hawkish on Russia.
TLDR, the argument boils down to this. Peoples have a right to self determination. We are a people. Hence we have that right. The Scotland Act 1998 should be construed in a way that does not interfere with that right. A referendum allows the views of the Scottish people to be determined. The reserved matters therefore cannot constrain this.
Therefore all local councils have the right to run concurrent referenda for their people to remain or leave, or apply to join the EU, or whatever. County councils in England can run secede referenda at will etc etc
Hmmm.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
SNP view is that anyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
You're under 35 iirc - Would moving to Nationwide for a 40 year term make it affordable ?
I guess we’ll see. My fix runs until February 2024.
What is the interest rate and are you on a repayment mortgage?
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
That doesn't make much sense to me, if you sell it then you'll still need a home to live in so would have to start renting, which isn't really any cheaper than the interest alone of your mortgage probably, even at 7%.
Coming to an interest-only payment arrangement with the bank would be better than selling the property, and the interest is dead money just as your rent would be if you sold.
Rental yields - especially once you include maintenance costs - are usually below 7%.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
In recent times 90% of new mortgages have been at fixed rates. Which for most people will give a buffer.
Plus house prices are generally up by something like 20-25% over a couple of years, which gives a different type of buffer.
Great British Energy is a good start but sounds way too limuted in scope and merely a net zero pet project. Sod pairing with other companies, it should be aiming to provide 100% of our energy needs then selling any excess.
The sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines is a last, desperate attempt to try and force Germany into pushing for freezing the conflict. The Russian may also attempt to sabotage the Norwegian pipelines, but that would effectively be a direct act of war. In any event its not going to work, there is sufficient headroom across other supplies and alternatives to create work arounds.
The complete chaos enveloping Russia is also being seen on the battlefield, where there is now growing evidence of a Russian catastrophe around Lyman. The new recruits are just dead men walking, and even the Ukrainians are shaken by the scale of death that the Russians are effectively inflicting on their own side.
Another significant defeat is looming for Russia, and now the call up has brought the economy in several areas to a dead stop. Even if Putin formally annexes the occupied territories and uses a nuclear weapon to "defend Russian territory" there is every chance that a non-nuclear response could be so devastating that Russia itself, never mind its army, will "decohere". Chunks of Russian territory, notably Dagestan, are already slipping into open rebellion.
The crisis for Russia may be only just beginning.
Damaging the Norwegian pipelines would be an act of war.
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Although methane release is one of the possible 'reasons' I've heard behind the Bermuda Triangle plane crashes. And ISTR oil / gas rigs have been sunk because of gas leaks - the gas alters the buoyancy of the water. I daresay Richard will know more.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that re buoyancy of water. That's interesting.
Killed many people trying to escape from beached ships in stormy conditions, I believe - too much air entrained in the water, the person goes down.
I *wish* I could find a source for claim about oil rigs sinking - yonks ago I saw a picture of one ( think in the Gulf of Mexico) that was allegedly listing because of a gas leak.
There is no doubt, Starmer is starting to look the part, in part helped by the clowns running the tory party, but I do think some credit must be given to Starmer as well, he has certainly knocked the labour party into shape.It is well worth remembering the state of disarray, Corbyn left it in, also does anybody think the Labour party would be anywhere near this position, if Rebecca Long Bailey had won
Interesting to reflect that the Tory catastrophe over the past week or so has been almost entirely self-inflicted, through their own incomprehensible witless stupidity.
And now we're going to see what effect some rather sharp interventions from an intelligent opposition will have.
After that, of course, the stage will be left to the Tories for a while longer. Who knows what they can accomplish?
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Not an expert on these things but I thought that the absence of a combustion chamber meant no explosion.
On an unrelated matter, Robert, is it true that you were at University with man of the moment, Kwasi Kwarteng?
You may plead the Fifth Amendment if you wish.
FAE (Fuel Air Explosions) involving natural gas are of much interest to the people who deal with LNG supply chains (and plain ordinary gas). They are perfectly possible - it is a simply a matter of concentration in the air.
The nightmare one (that fortunately isn't quite that easy) is a whole LNG tank breaks open on the surface of the sea. The LNG flows rapidly across the water, until it forms a thin layer, which evaporates. Perfect conditions for a huge FAE. Fortunately the dispersal doesn't work like that.
Great British Energy is a good start but sounds way too limuted in scope and merely a net zero pet project. Sod pairing with other companies, it should be aiming to provide 100% of our energy needs then selling any excess.
That is rather predicated on British energy being extractable at the same price as energy from the rest of the world.
Remember: British coal mining collapsed long before British coal demand. It was simply cheaper (a lot cheaper) to buy coal from open pit mines in Colombia, than from deep mines in the UK.
Now, could we extract more (by, for example, making the taxation regime for the North Sea more sensible)?
Yep, absolutely.
But we can't will British rocks to generate more commercially available hydrocarbons by snapping our fingers.
Interesting to reflect that the Tory catastrophe over the past week or so has been almost entirely self-inflicted, through their own incomprehensible witless stupidity.
And now we're going to see what effect some rather sharp interventions from an intelligent opposition will have.
After that, of course, the stage will be left to the Tories for a while longer. Who knows what they can accomplish?
This a good overview of next week's Tory Conference?
TLDR, the argument boils down to this. Peoples have a right to self determination. We are a people. Hence we have that right. The Scotland Act 1998 should be construed in a way that does not interfere with that right. A referendum allows the views of the Scottish people to be determined. The reserved matters therefore cannot constrain this.
Therefore all local councils have the right to run concurrent referenda for their people to remain or leave, or apply to join the EU, or whatever. County councils in England can run secede referenda at will etc etc
Hmmm.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
SNP view is that anyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot.
Regardless of their citizenship?
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
Superb speech from Starmer . I’m counting the days till this wretched government is shown the door .
Soporific speech. Well meaning to the point of smarmy about it. The has been one bright spot in a dark few days for the Tories.
I support Starmer as very safe pair of hands in much needed and overdue change of government, I have said often enough I have no problem with him for acting quick and decisively, which is how he contrasted well with Boris, and reasonably honestly by political standards, but if anyone changing sides have to bull Starmer up to explain their volte facey, that’s for them, he’s still utterly boring and un-inspirational in my honest opinion.
Liz Truss's other gift is clarity. V clear what govt stands for & that's somehow helped things snap into focus for Labour. Both Johnson & Cameron were hard to pigeonhole so slippery to oppose - Labour's now clear what she is & who they are https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1574761860414439426
Superb speech from Starmer . I’m counting the days till this wretched government is shown the door .
bear in mind labour will have little room for manouvre when they come in...they are bound to disappoint their supporters
They can’t be any more disappointing than the current government . I don’t expect them to do everything they want but even if they achieve half of what Starmer suggested that would be great .
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
Who gives a flying f**k if we pass parity with either the dollar or the Euro? What difference does it make?
If the pound reaches a new equilibrium that encourages economic growth and exports more than consumerism and imports, then that could help not hinder Truss's agenda.
In two words: confidence and capacity.
The long term productivity numbers show that there has been insufficient investment in the UK over the past 30-odd years, so lower currency rates do not improve the competitive position of the economy sufficient to trigger growth. The economic capacity, especially the industrial capacity, is too small and too weak for Sterling based assets alone to restore a stable growth rate. The negative view of the country means that it would take a very long time to gain inward investment, especially as we are not in the single market.
The impact of a collapse of confidence in the UK means that we can no longer afford so many imports but do not have the capacity for import substitution and there will be a persistent investment gap. So the most likely impact is a very long and very deep depression.
Hard to grasp why this apparently is hard to grasp. The US Dollar is *the* global reserve currency. The exchange rate of other currencies against it matters, especially when yours is one of the other leading global currencies.
Yesterday we fell to our lowest exchange rate against the dollar since its creation. That is not a position that global traders believe to be tenable - they do not have confidence in what a growing number of very senior global finance figures have described in various kinds of choice language.
BR is one of these England uber Alles lunatics. Remember how people said bin the EEA and lets go WTO? Then tried to lecture the WTO on how the WTO worked when it was made clear to them that there are rules for global trade. Same moronity on display here.
What is the Pound? It is fiat - it only has the value that the confidence of others grant it. We have to pay our taxes in it, creditors receive their gilt interest payments in it. Confidence creates value. Take the confidence away by being bloody stupid and your scrip may not even have the value of the polymer its printed on.
So what you are saying is that there are limits in reality of what we can achieve to grow our economy. Ok. We have a wider problem then: having bankrupted ourselves with 2 World Wars, used North Sea wealth to avoid hard decisions on government expenditure, built a rapacious welfare system and NHS that uses an increasing share of government spending while still not meeting expectations, all while having our tax system take a higher percentage of our income than ever plus borrowing at unsustainable levels - what is the end position going to be? We cannot *CANNOT* continue as we are.
Either we grow the economy or else economic reality will force 1) an increase in pension age by 10yrs - most people will die while working, 2) a smaller NHS with fewer basic treatment options at end of life - but more support to help people stay in their homes or get back out of hospital, 3) a shift to individual state pension pots funded by our own work history, 4) wealth taxes - the last resort of governments who have run out of all other options. Oh, and we will have to build millions of new houses to force property prices down.
A very different Britain
We need to find a way to increase productivity - which last Friday's budget simply doesn't do for 1 very obvious reason.
If you continue doing the same things you've been doing for the past 10 years (low corporation tax) during which time they haven't resulted in companies investing money - continuing to offer low corporation tax rates isn't going to suddenly result in companies investing...
Sunak at least was trying to change that point and trying to identify how a Government could provide incentives for firms to invest in productivity improvements.
Maybe I'm just some utopian lefty but maybe we could just decide that different things are important. We say we have a welfare state, but really we have an emergency pull cord - people in medical emergencies have good outcomes, and some people in very dire economic straights have a safety net. But we don't have a welfare state in the sense of having a good standard of living as a guaranteed foundation of existence. And people ask, "well how would you pay for that?", but in many ways it pays for itself. Investing in cheaper public transport allows workers to move more freely and be more productive. A guarantee of affordable roof over your head makes less anxious workers. The same for healthcare and education. But they would be less economically precarious, and therefore would flex their muscles against capital, and that is unacceptable to business.
We should also be looking at more automation and an acceptance that we don't need to work as much as we do. Taking a purely material marxist view, private automation would lead to workers being laid off and less need for workers, but there is no reason why the profits of automation should be held in private hands rather than for common good. More work done by robots, less work done by people, but more fruits of labour going to everyone is what we should be aiming for. A real transformation of how we consider work in the digital age. Not revived voodoo economics.
I share the aspiration but I'm starting to doubt whether modern British governments are capable of doing stuff like this, ie which require a lot of thought to design, then hard graft to implement, and aren't expected to pay off by next Thursday.
Eg see how tax cuts (easy peasy) are running miles ahead of supply-side reform (quite hard) in this Truss "Project".
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
Starmer’s New Labour reenactment will appeal to commentators as a centrist led Labour Party makes gains against a floundering Tory governments. But the economic circumstances couldn’t be more different. They aren’t good ones for fiscal ‘prudence’ and moderate redistribution.
Blair’s governments, and especially Brown’s chancellorship, was founded on a programme based around the centre-left making peace with globalisation and distributing benefits from the growth of London’s financial economy across the UK. Globalisation is now in retreat.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
"and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative." Have you seen the gilt, stock market and currency reactions ?! You do know what that all means for Gov't finances right ?
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
"and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative." Have you seen the gilt, stock market and currency reactions ?! You do know what that all means for Gov't finances right ?
Edit: How safe is it flying a jet over the top of a large release of flammable gas?!
The gas will disperse pretty quickly, as it's lighter than air and there's plenty of wind. But I wouldn't want to be in a small boat having a cigarette in the area.
Although methane release is one of the possible 'reasons' I've heard behind the Bermuda Triangle plane crashes. And ISTR oil / gas rigs have been sunk because of gas leaks - the gas alters the buoyancy of the water. I daresay Richard will know more.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that re buoyancy of water. That's interesting.
Killed many people trying to escape from beached ships in stormy conditions, I believe - too much air entrained in the water, the person goes down.
I *wish* I could find a source for claim about oil rigs sinking - yonks ago I saw a picture of one ( think in the Gulf of Mexico) that was allegedly listing because of a gas leak.
there was a TV program discussing if sudden release of sub-seabed methane pockets could explain loss of ships in the Bermuda Triangle. I seem to remember them doing a simulation in a water tank with a model boat.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
"and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative." Have you seen the gilt, stock market and currency reactions ?! You do know what that all means for Gov't finances right ?
Yes.
And those movements aren't justified by a £2bn change in government finances. They're mostly long overdue corrections and a response to the Dovishness of the BoE.
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
I understand exactly what the SNP are saying. There is the wider Scottish diaspora - Scottish people who live outside Scotland. Then you have Scottish citizens - people from Scotland and other nations who live in Scotland.
So as an immigrant I am Scottish as a citizen but not Scottish as a nationality. Not that it matters, because nobody will grant Nippie the referendum she would lose, so she gets to fight on...
Reality is fighting against the very obvious decision that Sir Keir is now to be portrayed in the media as the PM in waiting, and 'statesmanlike' etc, during mourning there was some laughable fawning from the likes of Wearmouth and Rigby. Hes in a good position and has some good stuff to sell and the Tories are a mess but the polling doesnt lie in how he is seen and theres a strong element of emporers new clothes to the 'SKS The Titan' being pushed
We have 5 by-elections in the House of Lords next month due to retirements of Viscount Ullswater, Lord Colwyn, the Earl of Listowel and Lord Astor of Hever and the death of the Earl of Home.
There is one vacancy in the Crossbenchers, 2 vacancies in the Conservatives and 2 vacancies for the whole House (although these are expect to be filled by Conservatives).
The first election will be by AV, but the last two elections will be by STV.
Candidates statements to be published later this week.
Members of the House of Lords presumably either take a party's whip or else they're crossbenchers, but what's the procedure for the registration of a hereditary peer's party affiliation when he doesn't hold a seat, not even as a life peer? Is the register made public?
Who do you think has sabotaged the pipeline ?
Waiting for Mohammed al Fayed to blame the Duke of Edinburgh...
Comments
Price of property goes down is a clear transfer of wealth from old to young, and rising prices would be vice versa.
Yes some of the worst hit in a crash are young recent buyers, that is undeniably true and sad and difficult for those impacted, but imo that does not outweigh the positives of rebalancing houses back to sensible wage ratios. On the whole the young benefit from lower prices.
I think they will have the last few weeks.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
https://twitter.com/juliamacfarlane/status/1574749811068506113
https://twitter.com/katiehind/status/1574527996018544651
Is I guess the implicit message here.
But you have to remember it's pretty much as bad for us as for them.
- We have much less gas storage than the EU in general, and Germany in particular
- A much higher percentage of electricity supply comes from gas in the UK
If Germany isn't recieving any Russian piped gas, it will need to replace it with LNG gas. The main importer of spot (i.e. not contracted) gas in the world is us. And we don't have the advantage of being able to draw down storage during the winter.
I know little about gas pipelines, and I wonder if this is Ivan's latest roll of the die.
Are deliveries through the Ukraine routed pipeline still running at full tilt?
There are worse places to run.
Contrast that with Truss who - according to Sky - didn’t even want to say anything to reassure the markets yesterday
Of course sometimes you do need to force the point but the initial logic is keeping things going however possible first
If the Russians have abandoned maintenance this year, then could the two be linked that way?
On an unrelated matter, Robert, is it true that you were at University with man of the moment, Kwasi Kwarteng?
You may plead the Fifth Amendment if you wish.
My remortgage is up Dec 2023. I'll probably be obliged to go for one then.
However he says Leavers did not vote to slash workers' rights etc
Coming to an interest-only payment arrangement with the bank would be better than selling the property, and the interest is dead money just as your rent would be if you sold.
Russia's friends (Salvini and Berlusconi) are now part of the government there, although Meloni has been a lot more hawkish on Russia.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
Precisely.
No deal with SNP under any circumstances
See: https://www.sdlauctions.co.uk/latest-news/what-is-a-good-rental-yield-in-the-uk/
Huw Pill, the Bank of England's chief economist, warns that there will be a 'significant monetary response' to shore up sterling
Big rate rises are coming next month in the wake of Kwasi Kwarteng's £45billion tax-cutting budget
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1574758222505951232
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
Plus house prices are generally up by something like 20-25% over a couple of years, which gives a different type of buffer.
Outstanding.
We're all going to need the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, I feel .....
And now we're going to see what effect some rather sharp interventions from an intelligent opposition will have.
After that, of course, the stage will be left to the Tories for a while longer. Who knows what they can accomplish?
The nightmare one (that fortunately isn't quite that easy) is a whole LNG tank breaks open on the surface of the sea. The LNG flows rapidly across the water, until it forms a thin layer, which evaporates. Perfect conditions for a huge FAE. Fortunately the dispersal doesn't work like that.
Remember: British coal mining collapsed long before British coal demand. It was simply cheaper (a lot cheaper) to buy coal from open pit mines in Colombia, than from deep mines in the UK.
Now, could we extract more (by, for example, making the taxation regime for the North Sea more sensible)?
Yep, absolutely.
But we can't will British rocks to generate more commercially available hydrocarbons by snapping our fingers.
On R4.
It is the single most meaningless gesture iro leaders speeches
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
I support Starmer as very safe pair of hands in much needed and overdue change of government, I have said often enough I have no problem with him for acting quick and decisively, which is how he contrasted well with Boris, and reasonably honestly by political standards, but if anyone changing sides have to bull Starmer up to explain their volte facey, that’s for them, he’s still utterly boring and un-inspirational in my honest opinion.
https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1574761860414439426
He is a terrible orator, very short on bold ideas
Eg see how tax cuts (easy peasy) are running miles ahead of supply-side reform (quite hard) in this Truss "Project".
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
Starmer’s New Labour reenactment will appeal to commentators as a centrist led Labour Party makes gains against a floundering Tory governments. But the economic circumstances couldn’t be more different. They aren’t good ones for fiscal ‘prudence’ and moderate redistribution.
Blair’s governments, and especially Brown’s chancellorship, was founded on a programme based around the centre-left making peace with globalisation and distributing benefits from the growth of London’s financial economy across the UK. Globalisation is now in retreat.
https://twitter.com/ewangibbs/status/1574755445595668480?s=46&t=MFf5XaMisz4TWhjYJ75dhg&fbclid=IwAR3Mlf20Wb2lvn2K4tMgquUKl1cFNeyeTMtVHmz0pZK0DMPz6q4F-Qas3y4
Not bad, but he’s no Neil Kinnock.
https://twitter.com/shadsy/status/1574762837729320964
Have you seen the gilt, stock market and currency reactions ?! You do know what that all means for Gov't finances right ?
Blimey must be very easy to please.
Because in reality he is confirming that the interest rate increases which the market is expecting in November are going to be delivered in November.
And those movements aren't justified by a £2bn change in government finances. They're mostly long overdue corrections and a response to the Dovishness of the BoE.
So as an immigrant I am Scottish as a citizen but not Scottish as a nationality. Not that it matters, because nobody will grant Nippie the referendum she would lose, so she gets to fight on...
We would have locked down longer and harder, with deeper recessions and higher spending. For Starmer, Johnson's upheaval was not upheaval enough.