My seven year daughter is doing her Latin homework, one advantage of private schooling.
I’d like her to be Prime Minister one day. Like, next week if possible?
The more I read PB the more I realise I just have so little in common with most of those who post. Don’t worry. It’s me, not you.
More variety is welcome! As lower middle class undistinguished blandness, albeit overeducated, I feel marginalised both by PB’s authentic working class voices, and by its fancy pants contingent
@PickardJE former Chief Adviser at the Bank of England, Charles Goodhart, tells Times Radio: "You can say goodbye to growth over the period from now until the general election…”
Quelle surprise.
Seems pretty fatal for the government. How can they explain their pro-growth agenda leading to (or failing to prevent) the exact opposite occurring?
So far they seem to be saying
1) You just don't understand it 2) It's the fault of people not believing in it hard enough
But I cannot see that being compelling for the person in the street suffering in a recession.
A recession is the least of the problems for people in the street.
Depression Decline and fall Junk credit ratings Authoritarianism Nuclear conflict Evaporating public services
The Yookay is entering the end game. A “recession” is a walk in the park compared to what’s about to happen.
We are now quite a poor country...many people just dont realise it yet. We have a current account deficit of 8.3% of gdp and a budget deficit of 4.8% of gdp with total debt to gdp nr 100%. There will now be massive drops in living standards for the majority of the population
Why are Tories always talking down the country? We're a rich country with 7 years of poor government.
We're not as rich as we're currently pretending we are though. If we're to close the twin deficits, and make the necessary increases in business and infrastructure investment, it necessarily implies a considerable decline in consumption.
It's going to take a political leader of rare skill, and even rarer bravery, to bring the country with them through such a difficult adjustment.
It's true that making the country more equal will go some way to squaring this circle, but the size of the adjustment is so large that you still have to get the majority of the country to agree to sacrifice their personal short-term benefit for the long-term good of the country. It's a hard sell.
Yes. It needs a Thatcher. That's where we are. And Thatcher had North Sea Oil, Privatisation (her own idea TBF) and the Falklands War, to see her through the electorally dangerous early years. And the £ bottomed out at $1.05 in 1985
Starmer is no Thatcher, nor does he want to be, he's just not capable
We are going to stagnate for a decade or more, unless events intervene
Thatcher only got in in 1979 of course after 9 years of a failing Heath and then Labour government with strikes, rubbish uncollected, nationalised industry and rampant inflation
We have spent the last 30 years squandering the inheritance from Thatcher (and both parties have done this). We're like a family spunking the money made by some hard-working selfmade patriarch, and we've spaffed it all on mediocre hookers and dodgy blow
To be fair to us, the Germans have done the same from their own reforms. The Italians never reformed at all
Europe as a whole is living on tick
Thatch squandered N Sea oil revenue on unemployment benefit.
What if she hadn't done that? It would have been even worse for coal and steel communities. She couldn't save the money and spend it at the same time.
1980s unemployment went way, way beyond the coal and steel communities.
Tory increased their share of vote in that one by 1%. Should steady the ship. Not a bad poll for them to be going up despite the media narrative as backdrop when is was taken.
Are you being a Tory again? Your posts today have been bizarre
I take polling posts seriously, I wouldn’t say anything deliberately untrue, though I could make a mistake. double check my checking if you like.
Maybe a touch tongue in cheek, as that last poll I think was January. Though, on the other hand, it shows the firm does double digit leads and sub 30 Tories so are not a Kantor or Techne.
My other posts today are not bizarre, they are actually true, cutting through the hyperbole on here today if you listen to what I am saying.
What I am saying is really straightforward. The growth budget, with a couple of little ideological flourishes which have back fired, and the quarter of a trillion borrowing for Bill Freezing are actually two very different fiscal events, the chancellor has unwisely blurred together. The markets are not, IMF mostly not, attacking the growth budget - the growth budget isn’t a huge financial risk problem on its own. It is actually UK putting it out there we intend to borrow nearly a quarter of a trillion to freeze our consumers energy bills for a few years the markets are saying no to - the markets are saying no, we assess you are not in a great position to manage that size of largesse right now.
So the answer is really straightforward as well, and it doesn’t need cuts or tax rises (though interest rates are touch low maybe, and a tax contribution such as a windfall element would sweeten the markets) we just don’t borrow £200B and give half of it to people who don’t even need a hand out. We adjust the Bill Freezing plan.
Simples.
Any questions?
That's completely arse about face. The Chancellor promised growth with a range of measures that won't deliver growth. The energy stuff has been known about for weeks.
To answer your question, because I know you will see the logic of my argument about what triggered the market so what needed to calm it - There’s an element I think where international economists like the IMF and the markets have not been doing their jobs properly by not reacting sooner to UKs unnecessary quarter trillion loan for hand outs madness. Was it the mourning period? The markets waiting on last Friday before acting, in hope of more detail and more reassurance, announce different things last Friday about size of borrowing and how it’s to be financed.
The chancellor actually surprised them with more tax cuts, not the tax take they preferred; never a clever thing to surprise markets already volatile with unexpected bad news. That finally triggered it. But I am right, the elephant in the room is the quarter trillion loan for handouts markets acting on, the growth budget bits on their own the markets and IMF would not act like this.
Time to acknowledge that elephant in the room.
repeating the same point again and again and again doesn't make it any more correct
What do you think triggered the markets then, if not how I just explained 🙂
The Chancellor presented a set of figures that made no sense and sidelined the OBR. Then doubled down on the inanity of it over the weekend.
"This is increasingly looking politically unsustainable.
One Tory MP tells me: “It’s extinction level stuff. This is like 2008 but worse. We’re messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family. That’s why it’s different: it’s real stuff”."
Yeah, imagine messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family! Good thing this government hasn't spent the last 12 years deliberately throttling supply while stoking demand, so millions of people under 40 can't afford to provide a home for their families!
@PickardJE former Chief Adviser at the Bank of England, Charles Goodhart, tells Times Radio: "You can say goodbye to growth over the period from now until the general election…”
Quelle surprise.
Seems pretty fatal for the government. How can they explain their pro-growth agenda leading to (or failing to prevent) the exact opposite occurring?
So far they seem to be saying
1) You just don't understand it 2) It's the fault of people not believing in it hard enough
But I cannot see that being compelling for the person in the street suffering in a recession.
A recession is the least of the problems for people in the street.
Depression Decline and fall Junk credit ratings Authoritarianism Nuclear conflict Evaporating public services
The Yookay is entering the end game. A “recession” is a walk in the park compared to what’s about to happen.
We are now quite a poor country...many people just dont realise it yet. We have a current account deficit of 8.3% of gdp and a budget deficit of 4.8% of gdp with total debt to gdp nr 100%. There will now be massive drops in living standards for the majority of the population
Why are Tories always talking down the country? We're a rich country with 7 years of poor government.
We're not as rich as we're currently pretending we are though. If we're to close the twin deficits, and make the necessary increases in business and infrastructure investment, it necessarily implies a considerable decline in consumption.
It's going to take a political leader of rare skill, and even rarer bravery, to bring the country with them through such a difficult adjustment.
It's true that making the country more equal will go some way to squaring this circle, but the size of the adjustment is so large that you still have to get the majority of the country to agree to sacrifice their personal short-term benefit for the long-term good of the country. It's a hard sell.
Yes. It needs a Thatcher. That's where we are. And Thatcher had North Sea Oil, Privatisation (her own idea TBF) and the Falklands War, to see her through the electorally dangerous early years. And the £ bottomed out at $1.05 in 1985
Starmer is no Thatcher, nor does he want to be, he's just not capable
We are going to stagnate for a decade or more, unless events intervene
Thatcher only got in in 1979 of course after 9 years of a failing Heath and then Labour government with strikes, rubbish uncollected, nationalised industry and rampant inflation
We have spent the last 30 years squandering the inheritance from Thatcher (and both parties have done this). We're like a family spunking the money made by some hard-working selfmade patriarch, and we've spaffed it all on mediocre hookers and dodgy blow
To be fair to us, the Germans have done the same from their own reforms. The Italians never reformed at all
Europe as a whole is living on tick
Thatch squandered N Sea oil revenue on unemployment benefit.
What if she hadn't done that? It would have been even worse for coal and steel communities. She couldn't save the money and spend it at the same time.
1980s unemployment went way, way beyond the coal and steel communities.
Sigh. I know. Let's hope it doesn't get up to that level again.
Speaking of those hideous racial divides, recently I have been intrigued by a TV ad for an anti-psoriasis medicine, Taltz. It shows a young couple, obviously in love. The commercial makes the point, subtly, that their lives are better together because the man has taking Taltz to clear up his skin.
Here’s one for London Transport nerds (calling Sunil?): They have an old routemaster here in Asheville, converted into a streetside coffee shop (and ‘famous’ in the US, apparently), which has route 41 on the front with destination Trafalgar Square.
I had a coffee there earlier, and happened to mention that I used to live in Archway and remember the 41, which used (in the late ‘80s) to wend its way across North London toward Tottenham, and it didn’t call at Trafalgar Square. She says the bus dates from 1963 and maybe it did then. I rather doubt it, but maybe someone knows for sure…
Tory increased their share of vote in that one by 1%. Should steady the ship. Not a bad poll for them to be going up despite the media narrative as backdrop when is was taken.
Are you being a Tory again? Your posts today have been bizarre
I take polling posts seriously, I wouldn’t say anything deliberately untrue, though I could make a mistake. double check my checking if you like.
Maybe a touch tongue in cheek, as that last poll I think was January. Though, on the other hand, it shows the firm does double digit leads and sub 30 Tories so are not a Kantor or Techne.
My other posts today are not bizarre, they are actually true, cutting through the hyperbole on here today if you listen to what I am saying.
What I am saying is really straightforward. The growth budget, with a couple of little ideological flourishes which have back fired, and the quarter of a trillion borrowing for Bill Freezing are actually two very different fiscal events, the chancellor has unwisely blurred together. The markets are not, IMF mostly not, attacking the growth budget - the growth budget isn’t a huge financial risk problem on its own. It is actually UK putting it out there we intend to borrow nearly a quarter of a trillion to freeze our consumers energy bills for a few years the markets are saying no to - the markets are saying no, we assess you are not in a great position to manage that size of largesse right now.
So the answer is really straightforward as well, and it doesn’t need cuts or tax rises (though interest rates are touch low maybe, and a tax contribution such as a windfall element would sweeten the markets) we just don’t borrow £200B and give half of it to people who don’t even need a hand out. We adjust the Bill Freezing plan.
Simples.
Any questions?
That's completely arse about face. The Chancellor promised growth with a range of measures that won't deliver growth. The energy stuff has been known about for weeks.
To answer your question, because I know you will see the logic of my argument about what triggered the market so what needed to calm it - There’s an element I think where international economists like the IMF and the markets have not been doing their jobs properly by not reacting sooner to UKs unnecessary quarter trillion loan for hand outs madness. Was it the mourning period? The markets waiting on last Friday before acting, in hope of more detail and more reassurance, announce different things last Friday about size of borrowing and how it’s to be financed.
The chancellor actually surprised them with more tax cuts, not the tax take they preferred; never a clever thing to surprise markets already volatile with unexpected bad news. That finally triggered it. But I am right, the elephant in the room is the quarter trillion loan for handouts markets acting on, the growth budget bits on their own the markets and IMF would not act like this.
Time to acknowledge that elephant in the room.
repeating the same point again and again and again doesn't make it any more correct
What do you think triggered the markets then, if not how I just explained 🙂
The Chancellor presented a set of figures that made no sense and sidelined the OBR. Then doubled down on the inanity of it over the weekend.
They are still doubling down, so far as I can tell. Indeed, Redwood tried to blame everything on the BoE earlier.
Tory increased their share of vote in that one by 1%. Should steady the ship. Not a bad poll for them to be going up despite the media narrative as backdrop when is was taken.
Are you being a Tory again? Your posts today have been bizarre
I take polling posts seriously, I wouldn’t say anything deliberately untrue, though I could make a mistake. double check my checking if you like.
Maybe a touch tongue in cheek, as that last poll I think was January. Though, on the other hand, it shows the firm does double digit leads and sub 30 Tories so are not a Kantor or Techne.
My other posts today are not bizarre, they are actually true, cutting through the hyperbole on here today if you listen to what I am saying.
What I am saying is really straightforward. The growth budget, with a couple of little ideological flourishes which have back fired, and the quarter of a trillion borrowing for Bill Freezing are actually two very different fiscal events, the chancellor has unwisely blurred together. The markets are not, IMF mostly not, attacking the growth budget - the growth budget isn’t a huge financial risk problem on its own. It is actually UK putting it out there we intend to borrow nearly a quarter of a trillion to freeze our consumers energy bills for a few years the markets are saying no to - the markets are saying no, we assess you are not in a great position to manage that size of largesse right now.
So the answer is really straightforward as well, and it doesn’t need cuts or tax rises (though interest rates are touch low maybe, and a tax contribution such as a windfall element would sweeten the markets) we just don’t borrow £200B and give half of it to people who don’t even need a hand out. We adjust the Bill Freezing plan.
Simples.
Any questions?
That's completely arse about face. The Chancellor promised growth with a range of measures that won't deliver growth. The energy stuff has been known about for weeks.
To answer your question, because I know you will see the logic of my argument about what triggered the market so what needed to calm it - There’s an element I think where international economists like the IMF and the markets have not been doing their jobs properly by not reacting sooner to UKs unnecessary quarter trillion loan for hand outs madness. Was it the mourning period? The markets waiting on last Friday before acting, in hope of more detail and more reassurance, announce different things last Friday about size of borrowing and how it’s to be financed.
The chancellor actually surprised them with more tax cuts, not the tax take they preferred; never a clever thing to surprise markets already volatile with unexpected bad news. That finally triggered it. But I am right, the elephant in the room is the quarter trillion loan for handouts markets acting on, the growth budget bits on their own the markets and IMF would not act like this.
Time to acknowledge that elephant in the room.
repeating the same point again and again and again doesn't make it any more correct
What do you think triggered the markets then, if not how I just explained 🙂
The Chancellor presented a set of figures that made no sense and sidelined the OBR. Then doubled down on the inanity of it over the weekend.
They are still doubling down, so far as I can tell. Indeed, Redwood tried to blame everything on the BoE earlier.
Makes a change from blaming free markets I suppose.
Given that these are the purist worshippers at the pristine alter of, erm... free markets.
Here’s one for London Transport nerds (calling Sunil?): They have an old routemaster here in Asheville, converted into a streetside coffee shop (and ‘famous’ in the US, apparently), which has route 41 on the front with destination Trafalgar Square.
I had a coffee there earlier, and happened to mention that I used to live in Archway and remember the 41, which used (in the late ‘80s) to wend its way across North London toward Tottenham, and it didn’t call at Trafalgar Square. She says the bus dates from 1963 and maybe it did then. I rather doubt it, but maybe someone knows for sure…
"This is increasingly looking politically unsustainable.
One Tory MP tells me: “It’s extinction level stuff. This is like 2008 but worse. We’re messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family. That’s why it’s different: it’s real stuff”."
Yeah, imagine messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family! Good thing this government hasn't spent the last 12 years deliberately throttling supply while stoking demand, so millions of people under 40 can't afford to provide a home for their families!
It's certainly extinction level for any Tory without a titanic level of majority.
Almost none of them are safe now. The country has woken up to this bollx and its boiling with anger.
Owen really is a silly, self-indulgent twat. He is comprehensively trounced by Ms Phillips there.
It's a shame really because he is once again wrong. He went off Corbyn initially and had to scramble back on the raft and then he slagged Starmer off endlessly as hopeless pound shop Blair, only to find that Sir K is the almost certainly only the sixth person to be a Labour PM since the War.
Currently you can count me in the 12% Con - Lab switcher.
Max is a big switch, an intelligent chap making the rational choice. Welcome to the fold Max!
Be careful what you wish for. When people like Max leave the Opposition (and the Tories will be in Opposition soon) it become feeble and ineffective, and the last thing any Country needs is feeble opposition to the Government.
I would merely be lending my vote to Labour to precipitate and end to this shambles which is destroying both country and party. The Tories now need a spell of opposition to better understand what the nation wants. Being in government has made them blinkered and drunk on power.
Even I'm thinking about and I've opposed Labour my whole life.
That tells you how serious I find the current situation. And I haven't changed my values.
The incumbent administration is fucking crazy.
Truss is doing/wants to do the kind of things that Cameron should have done in 2010. Obviously we’re in a different situation now which makes it much harder, but it’s not crazy.
No:
Truss is doing the exact opposite of what Cameron and Osborne did in 2010.
They came to power with a policy of austerity: belts need to be tightened to pay for the excesses of the past. And belts were tightened - there were cuts to things like the court system that have had significant longer term negative impacts. But the point is, there were cuts. And this was because the government recognized that after the expenses of bailing out the banks after the GFC, the State needed reduce the deficit.
Truss and Kwarteng are going at this the other way. Instead of trying to close the gap between tax revenues and expenditure, they are going in the other direction. They are going full Keynesian - government deficits are, intrinisically, expansionary, and they are following the principle that expanded the economy will (one day, somehow) pay for itself.
May I quote Callaghan in 1976: We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
Tory increased their share of vote in that one by 1%. Should steady the ship. Not a bad poll for them to be going up despite the media narrative as backdrop when is was taken.
Are you being a Tory again? Your posts today have been bizarre
I take polling posts seriously, I wouldn’t say anything deliberately untrue, though I could make a mistake. double check my checking if you like.
Maybe a touch tongue in cheek, as that last poll I think was January. Though, on the other hand, it shows the firm does double digit leads and sub 30 Tories so are not a Kantor or Techne.
My other posts today are not bizarre, they are actually true, cutting through the hyperbole on here today if you listen to what I am saying.
What I am saying is really straightforward. The growth budget, with a couple of little ideological flourishes which have back fired, and the quarter of a trillion borrowing for Bill Freezing are actually two very different fiscal events, the chancellor has unwisely blurred together. The markets are not, IMF mostly not, attacking the growth budget - the growth budget isn’t a huge financial risk problem on its own. It is actually UK putting it out there we intend to borrow nearly a quarter of a trillion to freeze our consumers energy bills for a few years the markets are saying no to - the markets are saying no, we assess you are not in a great position to manage that size of largesse right now.
So the answer is really straightforward as well, and it doesn’t need cuts or tax rises (though interest rates are touch low maybe, and a tax contribution such as a windfall element would sweeten the markets) we just don’t borrow £200B and give half of it to people who don’t even need a hand out. We adjust the Bill Freezing plan.
Simples.
Any questions?
That's completely arse about face. The Chancellor promised growth with a range of measures that won't deliver growth. The energy stuff has been known about for weeks.
To answer your question, because I know you will see the logic of my argument about what triggered the market so what needed to calm it - There’s an element I think where international economists like the IMF and the markets have not been doing their jobs properly by not reacting sooner to UKs unnecessary quarter trillion loan for hand outs madness. Was it the mourning period? The markets waiting on last Friday before acting, in hope of more detail and more reassurance, announce different things last Friday about size of borrowing and how it’s to be financed.
The chancellor actually surprised them with more tax cuts, not the tax take they preferred; never a clever thing to surprise markets already volatile with unexpected bad news. That finally triggered it. But I am right, the elephant in the room is the quarter trillion loan for handouts markets acting on, the growth budget bits on their own the markets and IMF would not act like this.
Time to acknowledge that elephant in the room.
repeating the same point again and again and again doesn't make it any more correct
What do you think triggered the markets then, if not how I just explained 🙂
The Chancellor presented a set of figures that made no sense and sidelined the OBR. Then doubled down on the inanity of it over the weekend.
I agree all those wrong vibes didn’t help him achieve the task in hand of not spooking the markets, yes you are correct listing those I agree are mistakes he made.
But you appreciate those mistakes alone don’t trigger the market, for they are not the cause of the market concern? Is UK in position to borrow a quarter of a trillion for a regressive hand outs programme is the fundamental issue or question the markets have been wrestling with.
Can you see that difference, between communication errors, and a fundamental issue the markets need us to address?
Currently you can count me in the 12% Con - Lab switcher.
Max is a big switch, an intelligent chap making the rational choice. Welcome to the fold Max!
Be careful what you wish for. When people like Max leave the Opposition (and the Tories will be in Opposition soon) it become feeble and ineffective, and the last thing any Country needs is feeble opposition to the Government.
I would merely be lending my vote to Labour to precipitate and end to this shambles which is destroying both country and party. The Tories now need a spell of opposition to better understand what the nation wants. Being in government has made them blinkered and drunk on power.
Even I'm thinking about and I've opposed Labour my whole life.
That tells you how serious I find the current situation. And I haven't changed my values.
The incumbent administration is fucking crazy.
Truss is doing/wants to do the kind of things that Cameron should have done in 2010. Obviously we’re in a different situation now which makes it much harder, but it’s not crazy.
No:
Truss is doing the exact opposite of what Cameron and Osborne did in 2010.
They came to power with a policy of austerity: belts need to be tightened to pay for the excesses of the past. And belts were tightened - there were cuts to things like the court system that have had significant longer term negative impacts. But the point is, there were cuts. And this was because the government recognized that after the expenses of bailing out the banks after the GFC, the State needed reduce the deficit.
Truss and Kwarteng are going at this the other way. Instead of trying to close the gap between tax revenues and expenditure, they are going in the other direction. They are going full Keynesian - government deficits are, intrinisically, expansionary, and they are following the principle that expanded the economy will (one day, somehow) pay for itself.
May I quote Callaghan in 1976: We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
Cameron/Osborne did inject inflation into the economy, but it went into asset bubbles rather than consumer prices. They combined fiscal austerity with loose monetary policy. It should have been, relatively speaking, the other way round.
As the BoE intervention expires in 13 days, what is the PB stock club thinking about personal investment strategy?
Does it all kick off again? What to sell and what to buy? Are we really heading for a crash like March 2020 or the GFC?
Yes. I’m trying to figure it out right now.
At the moment, my assumption is that the BoE’s special monetary operation probably won’t end when they say it will. I’m trying to work out what that means.
Get the hell out of Sterling, to the maximum extent possible? Maybe.
A global crash is imminent, regardless of what happens here short term. Its shit here but its also, concurrently shit out there, everywhere
But just not quite as.
This week, yes. Once they have finished screwing us then focus will move to the Euro which is at 20 year lows against the dollar (up a bit today though). The ECB failure to act at all has left Europe ready to implode and the energy crisis is going to be absolutely brutal. Central banks have almost no ammo left. Its bleaker and weaker than 2008
At what point does the BoJ run out of ammo?
Because every other Central Bank in the world is about 175% of GDP behind the Bank of Japan.
Currently you can count me in the 12% Con - Lab switcher.
Max is a big switch, an intelligent chap making the rational choice. Welcome to the fold Max!
Be careful what you wish for. When people like Max leave the Opposition (and the Tories will be in Opposition soon) it become feeble and ineffective, and the last thing any Country needs is feeble opposition to the Government.
I would merely be lending my vote to Labour to precipitate and end to this shambles which is destroying both country and party. The Tories now need a spell of opposition to better understand what the nation wants. Being in government has made them blinkered and drunk on power.
Even I'm thinking about and I've opposed Labour my whole life.
That tells you how serious I find the current situation. And I haven't changed my values.
The incumbent administration is fucking crazy.
Truss is doing/wants to do the kind of things that Cameron should have done in 2010. Obviously we’re in a different situation now which makes it much harder, but it’s not crazy.
No:
Truss is doing the exact opposite of what Cameron and Osborne did in 2010.
They came to power with a policy of austerity: belts need to be tightened to pay for the excesses of the past. And belts were tightened - there were cuts to things like the court system that have had significant longer term negative impacts. But the point is, there were cuts. And this was because the government recognized that after the expenses of bailing out the banks after the GFC, the State needed reduce the deficit.
Truss and Kwarteng are going at this the other way. Instead of trying to close the gap between tax revenues and expenditure, they are going in the other direction. They are going full Keynesian - government deficits are, intrinisically, expansionary, and they are following the principle that expanded the economy will (one day, somehow) pay for itself.
May I quote Callaghan in 1976: We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
"This is increasingly looking politically unsustainable.
One Tory MP tells me: “It’s extinction level stuff. This is like 2008 but worse. We’re messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family. That’s why it’s different: it’s real stuff”."
Yeah, imagine messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family! Good thing this government hasn't spent the last 12 years deliberately throttling supply while stoking demand, so millions of people under 40 can't afford to provide a home for their families!
It's certainly extinction level for any Tory without a titanic level of majority.
Almost none of them are safe now. The country has woken up to this bollx and its boiling with anger.
I genuinely think they're completely fucked once the generation born pre 1980 starts dying off en masse. I don't think I know anyone under 40 who is openly backing the Tories right now other than people who work for them. There is huge resentment at just how badly they've fucked us.
"This is increasingly looking politically unsustainable.
One Tory MP tells me: “It’s extinction level stuff. This is like 2008 but worse. We’re messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family. That’s why it’s different: it’s real stuff”."
Yeah, imagine messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family! Good thing this government hasn't spent the last 12 years deliberately throttling supply while stoking demand, so millions of people under 40 can't afford to provide a home for their families!
It's certainly extinction level for any Tory without a titanic level of majority.
Almost none of them are safe now. The country has woken up to this bollx and its boiling with anger.
I genuinely think they're completely fucked once the generation born pre 1980 starts dying off en masse. I don't think I know anyone under 40 who is openly backing the Tories right now other than people who work for them. There is huge resentment at just how badly they've fucked us.
It just needs a term or two of shite Labour government and that will remedy itself
Labour are always shite. And they have absolutely no clue how to deal with the particularly venomous shite they are obliged to serve this time around. So they will be shiter than normal. Does Sir Kir Royale Starmer strike you as a deep philosophical thinker? Does his idea for a “Green British State Energy Provider” suggest a man who has thought long and hard about our abiding problems, and come up with a solution?
"This is increasingly looking politically unsustainable.
One Tory MP tells me: “It’s extinction level stuff. This is like 2008 but worse. We’re messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family. That’s why it’s different: it’s real stuff”."
Yeah, imagine messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family! Good thing this government hasn't spent the last 12 years deliberately throttling supply while stoking demand, so millions of people under 40 can't afford to provide a home for their families!
It's certainly extinction level for any Tory without a titanic level of majority.
Almost none of them are safe now. The country has woken up to this bollx and its boiling with anger.
I genuinely think they're completely fucked once the generation born pre 1980 starts dying off en masse. I don't think I know anyone under 40 who is openly backing the Tories right now other than people who work for them. There is huge resentment at just how badly they've fucked us.
It just needs a term or two of shite Labour government and that will remedy itself
Labour are always shite. And they have absolutely no clue how to deal with the particularly venomous shite they are obliged to serve this time around. So they will be shiter than normal. Does Sir Kir Royale Starmer strike you as a deep philosophical thinker? Does his idea for a “Green British State Energy Provider” suggest a man who has thought long and hard about our abiding problems, and come up with a solution?
Lol
Yep, Labour bad, so therefore the Tories can keep plundering the young to bribe the old, and the young will forget who made them poor, barren and rootless in time to elect the next Oxford loon the Tories put up
Currently you can count me in the 12% Con - Lab switcher.
Max is a big switch, an intelligent chap making the rational choice. Welcome to the fold Max!
Be careful what you wish for. When people like Max leave the Opposition (and the Tories will be in Opposition soon) it become feeble and ineffective, and the last thing any Country needs is feeble opposition to the Government.
I would merely be lending my vote to Labour to precipitate and end to this shambles which is destroying both country and party. The Tories now need a spell of opposition to better understand what the nation wants. Being in government has made them blinkered and drunk on power.
Even I'm thinking about and I've opposed Labour my whole life.
That tells you how serious I find the current situation. And I haven't changed my values.
The incumbent administration is fucking crazy.
Truss is doing/wants to do the kind of things that Cameron should have done in 2010. Obviously we’re in a different situation now which makes it much harder, but it’s not crazy.
No:
Truss is doing the exact opposite of what Cameron and Osborne did in 2010.
They came to power with a policy of austerity: belts need to be tightened to pay for the excesses of the past. And belts were tightened - there were cuts to things like the court system that have had significant longer term negative impacts. But the point is, there were cuts. And this was because the government recognized that after the expenses of bailing out the banks after the GFC, the State needed reduce the deficit.
Truss and Kwarteng are going at this the other way. Instead of trying to close the gap between tax revenues and expenditure, they are going in the other direction. They are going full Keynesian - government deficits are, intrinisically, expansionary, and they are following the principle that expanded the economy will (one day, somehow) pay for itself.
May I quote Callaghan in 1976: We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
Cameron/Osborne did inject inflation into the economy, but it went into asset bubbles rather than consumer prices. They combined fiscal austerity with loose monetary policy. It should have been, relatively speaking, the other way round.
That's a fair point, and there's no doubt that ultra loose monetary policy boosted inequality, and kept too many zombie businesses alive.
But you do need to accept that:
(a) The Truss/Sunak tax cuts are unlikely to generate sufficient economic activity to cover their cost (b) The piper will have to be paid: this means either expenditure will need to be reduced to close the gap, or that the Government/BoE will end up - like today - buying bonds to keep prices down. (Which has the same effect as Cameron/Osborne.)
Currently you can count me in the 12% Con - Lab switcher.
Max is a big switch, an intelligent chap making the rational choice. Welcome to the fold Max!
Be careful what you wish for. When people like Max leave the Opposition (and the Tories will be in Opposition soon) it become feeble and ineffective, and the last thing any Country needs is feeble opposition to the Government.
I would merely be lending my vote to Labour to precipitate and end to this shambles which is destroying both country and party. The Tories now need a spell of opposition to better understand what the nation wants. Being in government has made them blinkered and drunk on power.
Even I'm thinking about and I've opposed Labour my whole life.
That tells you how serious I find the current situation. And I haven't changed my values.
The incumbent administration is fucking crazy.
Truss is doing/wants to do the kind of things that Cameron should have done in 2010. Obviously we’re in a different situation now which makes it much harder, but it’s not crazy.
No:
Truss is doing the exact opposite of what Cameron and Osborne did in 2010.
They came to power with a policy of austerity: belts need to be tightened to pay for the excesses of the past. And belts were tightened - there were cuts to things like the court system that have had significant longer term negative impacts. But the point is, there were cuts. And this was because the government recognized that after the expenses of bailing out the banks after the GFC, the State needed reduce the deficit.
Truss and Kwarteng are going at this the other way. Instead of trying to close the gap between tax revenues and expenditure, they are going in the other direction. They are going full Keynesian - government deficits are, intrinisically, expansionary, and they are following the principle that expanded the economy will (one day, somehow) pay for itself.
May I quote Callaghan in 1976: We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
But all this economic orthodoxy is about to be rendered valueless by technology, especially (but not exclusively) AI
It is certainly as important as the “discovery” of electricity or internal combustion, and possibly as epochal as the Industrial Revolution
Won’t arrive in time to save the UK Tories, tho, and maybe not in time to save humanity from Putin
The main impact of new technology is a replacement of low income workers with robots, increasing the productivity (and income) of higher income workers whose skills aren't easily replaced. The Tories are cutting spending on the poor, reducing revenue from the rich and importing more low skilled workers.
Well, according to the Weather Channel, the projected path of the hurricane is coming directly this way.
I’m relocating a couple of hundred miles to the NE tomorrow, but I’m not sure how much help that’s going to be.
At least, it looks likely that this storm will be deadly enough to retire the name from the list, so this will be the last ever hurricane to share my name….when I got an online invite earlier to download an “Ian tracker” it did spook me, momentarily.
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Thus: it is yet another step towards civil war
I don't think 0.1% of the US population would have known of the existence of this "sacred object" two nights ago.
And I don't think half of the American population was involved in the decision for her to play it.
And I don't think a black woman playing the flute wearing the exact level of skimpiness of plenty of pop artists is saying "fuck you" to anyone.
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Thus: it is yet another step towards civil war
What a colossal overreaction. The articles on it mention that she’s been trained in classical flute since she was 10, and that the Library of Congress decided to lend it to her to play it.
Historical musical instruments are quite commonly taken out of museums to be played in a concert or similar.
To put it bluntly, if the artist was a thin, conventionally attractive pop star I doubt you or anyone else would have given half a shit about this story. ‘Twerking Obesely’ - is that inherently more disrespectful than, say, one of the ‘gorgeous young uni students’ you identified on the train the other day twerking in their presumably thinner bodies?
Now, I do agree with your initial comment in that if it is a social commentary stunt thing it’s an interesting one, but not just because Madison *owned* slaves - his fathering of a child with one, Sally Hemings, could lend itself to something saying a sexualised playing of the flute is reclaiming that sexuality, etc etc. It’s an interesting art thing through that lens but honestly it seems like a flute player wanted to play an iconic flute of historical significance, much like a guitar player wouldn’t turn down the chance to play a guitar owned by a former President / Prime Minister either.
Just a bit tiring how these things all get chucked into the same culture war lens when they’re 99% of the time a non-story, stoked by a media that is desperate to have something that the rage-induced social-media algorithms give huge momentum to as print media dies out.
People have been saying ‘America is fucked / Britain has gone to the dogs / The Roman Empire ain’t what it once was’ since the first caveman discovered fire, but there’s certainly far bigger things you or anyone else could point to if you want to say any one single thing is evidence of that point.
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Thus: it is yet another step towards civil war
What a colossal overreaction. The articles on it mention that she’s been trained in classical flute since she was 10, and that the Library of Congress decided to lend it to her to play it.
Historical musical instruments are quite commonly taken out of museums to be played in a concert or similar.
To put it bluntly, if the artist was a thin, conventionally attractive pop star I doubt you or anyone else would have given half a shit about this story. ‘Twerking Obesely’ - is that inherently more disrespectful than, say, one of the ‘gorgeous young uni students’ you identified on the train the other day twerking in their presumably thinner bodies?
Now, I do agree with your initial comment in that if it is a social commentary stunt thing it’s an interesting one, but not just because Madison *owned* slaves - his fathering of a child with one, Sally Hemings, could lend itself to something saying a sexualised playing of the flute is reclaiming that sexuality, etc etc. It’s an interesting art thing through that lens but honestly it seems like a flute player wanted to play an iconic flute of historical significance, much like a guitar player wouldn’t turn down the chance to play a guitar owned by a former President / Prime Minister either.
Just a bit tiring how these things all get chucked into the same culture war lens when they’re 99% of the time a non-story, stoked by a media that is desperate to have something that the rage-induced social-media algorithms give huge momentum to as print media dies out.
People have been saying ‘America is fucked / Britain has gone to the dogs / The Roman Empire ain’t what it once was’ since the first caveman discovered fire, but there’s certainly far bigger things you or anyone else could point to if you want to say any one single thing is evidence of that point.
Sally Hemings was Jefferson's slave (and lover, etc), not Madison iirc
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Thus: it is yet another step towards civil war
What a colossal overreaction. The articles on it mention that she’s been trained in classical flute since she was 10, and that the Library of Congress decided to lend it to her to play it.
Historical musical instruments are quite commonly taken out of museums to be played in a concert or similar.
To put it bluntly, if the artist was a thin, conventionally attractive pop star I doubt you or anyone else would have given half a shit about this story. ‘Twerking Obesely’ - is that inherently more disrespectful than, say, one of the ‘gorgeous young uni students’ you identified on the train the other day twerking in their presumably thinner bodies?
Now, I do agree with your initial comment in that if it is a social commentary stunt thing it’s an interesting one, but not just because Madison *owned* slaves - his fathering of a child with one, Sally Hemings, could lend itself to something saying a sexualised playing of the flute is reclaiming that sexuality, etc etc. It’s an interesting art thing through that lens but honestly it seems like a flute player wanted to play an iconic flute of historical significance, much like a guitar player wouldn’t turn down the chance to play a guitar owned by a former President / Prime Minister either.
Just a bit tiring how these things all get chucked into the same culture war lens when they’re 99% of the time a non-story, stoked by a media that is desperate to have something that the rage-induced social-media algorithms give huge momentum to as print media dies out.
People have been saying ‘America is fucked / Britain has gone to the dogs / The Roman Empire ain’t what it once was’ since the first caveman discovered fire, but there’s certainly far bigger things you or anyone else could point to if you want to say any one single thing is evidence of that point.
Sally Hemings was Jefferson's slave (and lover, etc), not Madison iirc
You’re completely correct there, my bad, good catch! Seems to dampen the subversive commentary idea in favour of it being just a flute player wanting to play a significant flute, then!
A side point - whilst I disagree with @Leon as to the intention of the performance / the message it sends - when I saw the tweet my mind was instinctively drawn to think “How would X person in America react to this?” based on the amount of quote tweets I saw it had attracted.
It made me think of the articles and books on social media affecting our response to things and I wish there was a way to phrase that instinctive response. Ie: I almost felt pulled in to check the quote tweets because “I bet Republicans are going mad in the replies”
There’s no way that’s a healthy instinctive reaction to have because it definitely robs us all of a lot of time and makes the internet a less discursive place. Makes me long for the pre-quote tweet days when it seemed the pile-ons were harder to coordinate or fall into
Tory increased their share of vote in that one by 1%. Should steady the ship. Not a bad poll for them to be going up despite the media narrative as backdrop when is was taken.
Are you being a Tory again? Your posts today have been bizarre
I take polling posts seriously, I wouldn’t say anything deliberately untrue, though I could make a mistake. double check my checking if you like.
Maybe a touch tongue in cheek, as that last poll I think was January. Though, on the other hand, it shows the firm does double digit leads and sub 30 Tories so are not a Kantor or Techne.
My other posts today are not bizarre, they are actually true, cutting through the hyperbole on here today if you listen to what I am saying.
What I am saying is really straightforward. The growth budget, with a couple of little ideological flourishes which have back fired, and the quarter of a trillion borrowing for Bill Freezing are actually two very different fiscal events, the chancellor has unwisely blurred together. The markets are not, IMF mostly not, attacking the growth budget - the growth budget isn’t a huge financial risk problem on its own. It is actually UK putting it out there we intend to borrow nearly a quarter of a trillion to freeze our consumers energy bills for a few years the markets are saying no to - the markets are saying no, we assess you are not in a great position to manage that size of largesse right now.
So the answer is really straightforward as well, and it doesn’t need cuts or tax rises (though interest rates are touch low maybe, and a tax contribution such as a windfall element would sweeten the markets) we just don’t borrow £200B and give half of it to people who don’t even need a hand out. We adjust the Bill Freezing plan.
Simples.
Any questions?
That's completely arse about face. The Chancellor promised growth with a range of measures that won't deliver growth. The energy stuff has been known about for weeks.
To answer your question, because I know you will see the logic of my argument about what triggered the market so what needed to calm it - There’s an element I think where international economists like the IMF and the markets have not been doing their jobs properly by not reacting sooner to UKs unnecessary quarter trillion loan for hand outs madness. Was it the mourning period? The markets waiting on last Friday before acting, in hope of more detail and more reassurance, announce different things last Friday about size of borrowing and how it’s to be financed.
The chancellor actually surprised them with more tax cuts, not the tax take they preferred; never a clever thing to surprise markets already volatile with unexpected bad news. That finally triggered it. But I am right, the elephant in the room is the quarter trillion loan for handouts markets acting on, the growth budget bits on their own the markets and IMF would not act like this.
Time to acknowledge that elephant in the room.
repeating the same point again and again and again doesn't make it any more correct
What do you think triggered the markets then, if not how I just explained 🙂
The Chancellor presented a set of figures that made no sense and sidelined the OBR. Then doubled down on the inanity of it over the weekend.
I agree all those wrong vibes didn’t help him achieve the task in hand of not spooking the markets, yes you are correct listing those I agree are mistakes he made.
But you appreciate those mistakes alone don’t trigger the market, for they are not the cause of the market concern? Is UK in position to borrow a quarter of a trillion for a regressive hand outs programme is the fundamental issue or question the markets have been wrestling with.
Can you see that difference, between communication errors, and a fundamental issue the markets need us to address?
We did this before, though. The ‘handout program’ is an emergency measure; if you’re going to cap energy prices, it’s the only way to do it within a reasonable timeframe (ie right now). Coupling it with a program of tax cuts - promising growth but providing no justification for that other than the bare assertion - is what made it fiscally incredible. Tacking a tax cut only for the wealthiest on top of that made it political suicide.
“Regressive” is a red herring; you could address that through the tax system. The basic problem is that any energy price cap that’s effective would be very expensive. Now you could argue we shouldn’t have capped energy prices, but the economic fallout from that might well be equally severe.
What no politician has really been honest about is how much the spike in energy prices has cost us. As I’ve said before, it’s made the country significantly poorer, and the argument is really about how that pain is shared out. That we don’t know how long it might last makes it harder still. A new government isn’t going to change that.
If successive governments hadn’t put off decisions about nuclear and renewables for a decade or more while we relied on cheap imported gas, we’d be in a considerably better position. And if course those needed investment are going to cost a great deal more to finance, now.
Lizzo twerking half naked and obesely as she plays James Madison’s crystal flute can, of course, be seen as an interesting if contentious commentary on Madison’s history as a slave owner. And I get that. Lizzo is a black woman, why should she respect Madison? He OWNED black people
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Thus: it is yet another step towards civil war
Eh?
It's a woman playing a flute.
Leon has gone down the right wing Twitter-hole again.
And where was his outrage on behalf of the slave owning founding fathers (sorry, ‘Founding Fathers’) when Hamilton came out ? … Madison, you're mad as a hatter, son, take your medicine Damn, you're in worse shape than the national debt is in Sittin' there useless as two shits Hey, turn around, bend over, I'll show you where my shoe fits..
Comments
(I wish you and your daughter well.)
"This is increasingly looking politically unsustainable.
One Tory MP tells me: “It’s extinction level stuff. This is like 2008 but worse. We’re messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family. That’s why it’s different: it’s real stuff”."
Yeah, imagine messing with the very fundamental principle of providing a home for your family! Good thing this government hasn't spent the last 12 years deliberately throttling supply while stoking demand, so millions of people under 40 can't afford to provide a home for their families!
It has been a tough few years, hasn’t it?
Hopefully things are a bit more orderly by the time she’s an adult.
You can see the commercial here: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/bq4G/taltz-psoriasis-up-to-90-of-patients
I had a coffee there earlier, and happened to mention that I used to live in Archway and remember the 41, which used (in the late ‘80s) to wend its way across North London toward Tottenham, and it didn’t call at Trafalgar Square. She says the bus dates from 1963 and maybe it did then. I rather doubt it, but maybe someone knows for sure…
Owen: You are left wing in the abstract
Jess: No no - I am left wing in the world I live in...
Owen: [blah][mumble], So erm, what, erm...
Jess: I spend my entire life fighting for people who have absolutely nothing.
Owen: erm, yeh, erm...
https://twitter.com/clarelouisekc/status/1575063517958389761
Given that these are the purist worshippers at the pristine alter of, erm... free markets.
https://www.londonbuses.co.uk/_routes/current/041.html
He is comprehensively trounced by Ms Phillips there.
Almost none of them are safe now. The country has woken up to this bollx and its boiling with anger.
Truss is doing the exact opposite of what Cameron and Osborne did in 2010.
They came to power with a policy of austerity: belts need to be tightened to pay for the excesses of the past. And belts were tightened - there were cuts to things like the court system that have had significant longer term negative impacts. But the point is, there were cuts. And this was because the government recognized that after the expenses of bailing out the banks after the GFC, the State needed reduce the deficit.
Truss and Kwarteng are going at this the other way. Instead of trying to close the gap between tax revenues and expenditure, they are going in the other direction. They are going full Keynesian - government deficits are, intrinisically, expansionary, and they are following the principle that expanded the economy will (one day, somehow) pay for itself.
May I quote Callaghan in 1976: We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1787890-james-callaghan-we-used-to-think-that-you-could-spend-your-way-out/
But you appreciate those mistakes alone don’t trigger the market, for they are not the cause of the market concern? Is UK in position to borrow a quarter of a trillion for a regressive hand outs programme is the fundamental issue or question the markets have been wrestling with.
Can you see that difference, between communication errors, and a fundamental issue the markets need us to address?
Because every other Central Bank in the world is about 175% of GDP behind the Bank of Japan.
It is certainly as important as the “discovery” of electricity or internal combustion, and possibly as epochal as the Industrial Revolution
Won’t arrive in time to save the UK Tories, tho, and maybe not in time to save humanity from Putin
Labour are always shite. And they have absolutely no clue how to deal with the particularly venomous shite they are obliged to serve this time around. So they will be shiter than normal. Does Sir Kir Royale Starmer strike you as a deep philosophical thinker? Does his idea for a “Green British State Energy Provider” suggest a man who has thought long and hard about our abiding problems, and come up with a solution?
Lol
But you do need to accept that:
(a) The Truss/Sunak tax cuts are unlikely to generate sufficient economic activity to cover their cost
(b) The piper will have to be paid: this means either expenditure will need to be reduced to close the gap, or that the Government/BoE will end up - like today - buying bonds to keep prices down. (Which has the same effect as Cameron/Osborne.)
https://twitter.com/dcist/status/1575125774113378306?s=21&t=LbHQzQaEVCUpfxtcG3ldIA
I’m relocating a couple of hundred miles to the NE tomorrow, but I’m not sure how much help that’s going to be.
At least, it looks likely that this storm will be deadly enough to retire the name from the list, so this will be the last ever hurricane to share my name….when I got an online invite earlier to download an “Ian tracker” it did spook me, momentarily.
How not to run a country
Liz Truss’s new government may already be dead in the water"
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/09/28/how-not-to-run-a-country
https://twitter.com/lizzo/status/1575003731640274944?s=46&t=33CSSZ4ONPWy2TZlMrcp_w
And yet, for half of America, Madison is a Founding Father. And his crystal flute is worthy of serious respect. So this is the liberal half of America saying to these patriots “fuck your history, horrible white people, we shake our fat asses as we play your sacred objects, you evil slaving fools”
Thus: it is yet another step towards civil war
And I don't think half of the American population was involved in the decision for her to play it.
And I don't think a black woman playing the flute wearing the exact level of skimpiness of plenty of pop artists is saying "fuck you" to anyone.
Historical musical instruments are quite commonly taken out of museums to be played in a concert or similar.
To put it bluntly, if the artist was a thin, conventionally attractive pop star I doubt you or anyone else would have given half a shit about this story. ‘Twerking Obesely’ - is that inherently more disrespectful than, say, one of the ‘gorgeous young uni students’ you identified on the train the other day twerking in their presumably thinner bodies?
Now, I do agree with your initial comment in that if it is a social commentary stunt thing it’s an interesting one, but not just because Madison *owned* slaves - his fathering of a child with one, Sally Hemings, could lend itself to something saying a sexualised playing of the flute is reclaiming that sexuality, etc etc. It’s an interesting art thing through that lens but honestly it seems like a flute player wanted to play an iconic flute of historical significance, much like a guitar player wouldn’t turn down the chance to play a guitar owned by a former President / Prime Minister either.
Just a bit tiring how these things all get chucked into the same culture war lens when they’re 99% of the time a non-story, stoked by a media that is desperate to have something that the rage-induced social-media algorithms give huge momentum to as print media dies out.
People have been saying ‘America is fucked / Britain has gone to the dogs / The Roman Empire ain’t what it once was’ since the first caveman discovered fire, but there’s certainly far bigger things you or anyone else could point to if you want to say any one single thing is evidence of that point.
It's a woman playing a flute.
A side point - whilst I disagree with @Leon as to the intention of the performance / the message it sends - when I saw the tweet my mind was instinctively drawn to think “How would X person in America react to this?” based on the amount of quote tweets I saw it had attracted.
It made me think of the articles and books on social media affecting our response to things and I wish there was a way to phrase that instinctive response. Ie: I almost felt pulled in to check the quote tweets because “I bet Republicans are going mad in the replies”
There’s no way that’s a healthy instinctive reaction to have because it definitely robs us all of a lot of time and makes the internet a less discursive place. Makes me long for the pre-quote tweet days when it seemed the pile-ons were harder to coordinate or fall into
The ‘handout program’ is an emergency measure; if you’re going to cap energy prices, it’s the only way to do it within a reasonable timeframe (ie right now). Coupling it with a program of tax cuts - promising growth but providing no justification for that other than the bare assertion - is what made it fiscally incredible. Tacking a tax cut only for the wealthiest on top of that made it political suicide.
“Regressive” is a red herring; you could address that through the tax system.
The basic problem is that any energy price cap that’s effective would be very expensive.
Now you could argue we shouldn’t have capped energy prices, but the economic fallout from that might well be equally severe.
What no politician has really been honest about is how much the spike in energy prices has cost us. As I’ve said before, it’s made the country significantly poorer, and the argument is really about how that pain is shared out. That we don’t know how long it might last makes it harder still. A new government isn’t going to change that.
If successive governments hadn’t put off decisions about nuclear and renewables for a decade or more while we relied on cheap imported gas, we’d be in a considerably better position.
And if course those needed investment are going to cost a great deal more to finance, now.
And where was his outrage on behalf of the slave owning founding fathers (sorry, ‘Founding Fathers’) when Hamilton came out ?
… Madison, you're mad as a hatter, son, take your medicine
Damn, you're in worse shape than the national debt is in
Sittin' there useless as two shits
Hey, turn around, bend over, I'll show you where my shoe fits..
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2022/09/29/bonds-and-mortgages/
If you're more interested in being outraged by Truss, I am sure Scott P has some interesting Tweets for you to read.