I suspect he does not, in fact, “do the math” on per capita growth.
Not sure what maths is required to know that IMF forecasts are always wrong. They're shit.
All forecasts are almost always wrong.
How much analysis is there of economic forecast accuracy?
For example, has anyone taken the OBR/IMF/whoever forecasts of economic growth at a 12-month lead time and plotted that against the outturn? If you were to calculate a skill score, would they show any skill?
There is a fair amount of analysis of forecast accuracy out there. The BOE regularly publishes analysis of its forecasts alongside those of outside forecasters. The OBR does too, IIRC. People have looked at the IMF forecasts, they're not that great but not especially bad, IIRC they are kind of in the pack compared alongside private sector forecasters. People on here get very riled up about IMF forecasts because the IMF is seen as part of the Remainer blob/globalist conspiracy, and so every upwards revision to the forecast is presented as a Gotcha moment and Brexit vindication. In reality, the energy shock has reversed more quickly than expected and European economies have proven more adaptable than expected, and that explains why, alongside other people, the Fund has revised up its UK forecast. At this point Brexit is mainly a supply side phenomenon in most people's forecasts, I would have thought, and won't be a major factor in near term growth forecasts either way.
On the effects of environmental regulations: Years ago I recall reading about a study of what happened to building in Southern California, after a slew of environmental regulations were enacted. Turns out that it took an average of five years to actually get through the paper work and build a house, starting with the initial proposal. The economists who made the study observed that five-year delay knocked almost all the small contractors out of the business -- and they were where the price competition came from.
Big contractors could set up a pipeline, and dedicate some employees to monitoring the pipeline, and clearing up any clogs in it; small contractors, for the most part, couldn't do that.
(Sorry to be vague. It's been a while. But the finding seemed plausible at the time, and even more so, now.)
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
If anyone wants a break from putting the world to rights they might find this interesting. At the Edinburgh festival I went to see a show which was a Scottish artist painting a nude in four different positions. They had some musicians there and they filmed it. Apparently it won the experimental award at the Film Arte in Berlin. The password is FLOW2023
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
Just to add, the Telegraph headline tomorrow is exactly this, what you raised Mex in answer to Big_G, fears the BoE has lost control of inflation, the Truss era pain and chaos such fear is beginning to threaten. All it needs is world markets fear UK has lost control of inflation to act as a spark, who knows what size of bonfire builtfrom poor hedging is out there waiting.
Maybe Rishi and Jeremy will achieve the double six roll of the dice by end 2023?
6% inflation 6% interest rates
😡😡😡
Inflation could still remain that high throughout 2023, underlying inflation is now nudging 7 going up.
I don’t think we could get remotely near 6% interest rates without the government surrounding the BoE with the armies tanks to take back control.
Yes fair point bearing in mind it took the Bank of England a year to wake up to the fact that inflation was getting out of control!
You are spot on pubman. BoE didn’t spot inflation from covid reboot coming at all, they were too slow to start raising rates, they also QE’d for too long too.
When the war kicked off, there was more inflation pain coming for UK than some other places due to our greater exposure to gas imports - what are they employed for and paid for if it’s not to know this, see what’s coming, and tackle it more promptly than they did?
MoonRabbit - Sorry to hear about your restaurant closing. It's across the continent from me, so I haven't had a chance to try it out, but it looks as if it was an interesting place to dine.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
Russian Su-34 jets bombing Russia proper. Maybe their hearts weren't in it - the turf took a pounding, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps? Not so much.
If anyone wants a break from putting the world to rights they might find this interesting. At the Edinburgh festival I went to see a show which was a Scottish artist painting a nude in four different positions. They had some musicians there and they filmed it. Apparently it won the experimental award at the Film Arte in Berlin. The password is FLOW2023
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
Off topic, but some of you may be as intrigued as I was around noon today. While grocery shopping, I spotted 2 signs saying: "Semi Bird for governor" and, below that, "Republican".
The incumbent Democrat, Jay Inslee*, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current term, and people are lining up to replace him, but this is the first Republican I have seen.
The election isn't until November 2024, so Bird is early -- though not the earliest.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
I’m glad you are back, because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder? Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure. I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today. And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons? I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
Russian Su-34 jets bombing Russia proper. Maybe their hearts weren't in it - the turf took a pounding, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps? Not so much.
I have no idea how difficult that is to do - what would be the accuracy for RAF pilots on the Cape Wrath range?
If it is pretty bad then I'd imagine that fear of being shot down by a MANPAD would have had something to do with it, particularly coming so soon after the losses over Bryansk.
Off topic, but some of you may be as intrigued as I was around noon today. While grocery shopping, I spotted 2 signs saying: "Semi Bird for governor" and, below that, "Republican".
The incumbent Democrat, Jay Inslee*, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current term, and people are lining up to replace him, but this is the first Republican I have seen.
The election isn't until November 2024, so Bird is early -- though not the earliest.
Russian Su-34 jets bombing Russia proper. Maybe their hearts weren't in it - the turf took a pounding, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps? Not so much.
The reality is that the Tories have run the economy into the ground since 2010 with their ideological experiment which has clearly failed. Austerity will be known as the biggest economic blunder in history.
The reality is that the Tories have run the economy into the ground since 2010 with their ideological experiment which has clearly failed. Austerity will be known as the biggest economic blunder in history.
The 'experiment' was to reduce borrowing and government spending and the deficit and in turn cut the rate of tax.
Labour, assuming they win the next election, will then do the reverse and increase government spending and borrowing again and likely increases taxes too, especially on above average earners and the wealthy
The reality is that the Tories have run the economy into the ground since 2010 with their ideological experiment which has clearly failed. Austerity will be known as the biggest economic blunder in history.
The 'experiment' was to reduce borrowing and government spending and the deficit and in turn cut the rate of tax.
Labour, assuming they win the next election, will then do the reverse and increase government spending and borrowing again and likely increases taxes too, especially on above average earners and the wealthy
The deficit is higher or lower than in 2010? The deficit as a percentage of GDP is higher or lower than in 2010?
HYUFD as you know you are one of my favourite posters, at least you don't dress up what you think. And I respect you for that, however much I disagree with it.
I think you will lose - but only to a Hung Parliament.
The only hope is a Ron DeSantis inspired fightback
We are British. Would it be too difficult to seek our own solutions with our own thoughts without subcontracting our thinking to whichever American is in right-wing vogue this week?
Much as I disagree with Matt Goodwin, he is British and I'm pretty sure he's met some British people occasionally. Although obviously not someone to tell him to do his shirt button up...
Off topic, but some of you may be as intrigued as I was around noon today. While grocery shopping, I spotted 2 signs saying: "Semi Bird for governor" and, below that, "Republican".
The incumbent Democrat, Jay Inslee*, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current term, and people are lining up to replace him, but this is the first Republican I have seen.
The election isn't until November 2024, so Bird is early -- though not the earliest.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
I’m glad you are back, because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder? Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure. I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today. And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons? I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
Ok. Let's start with a few basics.
- First of all, food prices are very much part of core inflation, contrary to your statement that they are not. This is why there is interest rate pressure because, while headline inflation is coming down, core inflation (which includes food prices) is remaining sticky. Hence why Joe Biden has focused on 'greedflation' from CPG companies.
- Second, the proper question to ask here is why L&G suddenly decides after one month's data that the UK is facing such a huge crisis. Now, having worked in the City for over 20 years and having dealt with plenty of fund managers, the argument would be the typical UK PM attitude i.e. short-term focus and a tendency to over-react. The fact that L&G is panicking is probably one of the greatest reassurances for me this is overdone.
- Yes, Thatcher's crusade was different from today. To reiterate, in the 1970s, the UK was facing a wage-price spiral effect, fuelled by the OPEC price rises, which had more impact in an (then) economy more dependent on oil. This is not the same issue.
Happy to have this debate with you tomorrow morning as it is midnight now but your comments are simply wrong.
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The part wage increases play in both 70s inflation and today IS a common denominator. Wilson and Heath governments wanted hot economies and growth - growth was a panacea to them, Wilson actually used forging an economy in white heat of technological revolution as a slogan, whilst Liz Truss “Growth, Growth and Growth” line might have been uttered in an Edward Heath speech, at some time, though never recorded due to fact everyone had fallen asleep by that point.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
And you would indeed be right that it was the OPEC price increases that fuelled things. However, UK labour militancy was also an issue pre-the OPEC increases. So the OPEC price increases were the immediate catalyst but the underlying issue re labour was there.
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The part wage increases play in both 70s inflation and today IS a common denominator. Wilson and Heath governments wanted hot economies and growth - growth was a panacea to them, Wilson actually used forging an economy in white heat of technological revolution as a slogan, whilst Liz Truss “Growth, Growth and Growth” line might have been uttered in an Edward Heath speech, at some time, though never recorded due to fact everyone had fallen asleep by that point.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
I’m glad you are back, because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder? Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure. I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today. And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons? I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
Ok. Let's start with a few basics.
- First of all, food prices are very much part of core inflation, contrary to your statement that they are not. This is why there is interest rate pressure because, while headline inflation is coming down, core inflation (which includes food prices) is remaining sticky. Hence why Joe Biden has focused on 'greedflation' from CPG companies.
- Second, the proper question to ask here is why L&G suddenly decides after one month's data that the UK is facing such a huge crisis. Now, having worked in the City for over 20 years and having dealt with plenty of fund managers, the argument would be the typical UK PM attitude i.e. short-term focus and a tendency to over-react. The fact that L&G is panicking is probably one of the greatest reassurances for me this is overdone.
- Yes, Thatcher's crusade was different from today. To reiterate, in the 1970s, the UK was facing a wage-price spiral effect, fuelled by the OPEC price rises, which had more impact in an (then) economy more dependent on oil. This is not the same issue.
Happy to have this debate with you tomorrow morning as it is midnight now but your comments are simply wrong.
I’ll leave this one here for you then. “Hence why Joe Biden has focused on greedflation' from CPG companies.”
What % is Biden actually right, Greedinflation is fuelling current inflation making it sticky? Would you go as high as 50%? Would you say not at all?
The reality is that the Tories have run the economy into the ground since 2010 with their ideological experiment which has clearly failed. Austerity will be known as the biggest economic blunder in history.
The 'experiment' was to reduce borrowing and government spending and the deficit and in turn cut the rate of tax.
Labour, assuming they win the next election, will then do the reverse and increase government spending and borrowing again and likely increases taxes too, especially on above average earners and the wealthy
The deficit is higher or lower than in 2010? The deficit as a percentage of GDP is higher or lower than in 2010?
HYUFD as you know you are one of my favourite posters, at least you don't dress up what you think. And I respect you for that, however much I disagree with it.
I think you will lose - but only to a Hung Parliament.
Is the tax burden higher or lower as a % of GDP than it was in 2010? I think you already know the answer to that. Or at least you should.
It is higher than it has been at any time since the 1970s.
The reality is that the Tories have run the economy into the ground since 2010 with their ideological experiment which has clearly failed. Austerity will be known as the biggest economic blunder in history.
The 'experiment' was to reduce borrowing and government spending and the deficit and in turn cut the rate of tax.
Labour, assuming they win the next election, will then do the reverse and increase government spending and borrowing again and likely increases taxes too, especially on above average earners and the wealthy
The deficit is higher or lower than in 2010? The deficit as a percentage of GDP is higher or lower than in 2010?
HYUFD as you know you are one of my favourite posters, at least you don't dress up what you think. And I respect you for that, however much I disagree with it.
I think you will lose - but only to a Hung Parliament.
Is the tax burden higher or lower as a % of GDP than it was in 2010? I think you already know the answer to that. Or at least you should.
It is higher than it has been at any time since the 1970s.
Ultimately the Tories have failed then on their own terms.
“Our planning system is a dead hand on the tiller... Housebuilding, infrastructure, and business investment all grind to a halt... If Britain is to rebuild its industrial might, we must stop red tape from standing in the way of new industries and new jobs."
Spot on.
Shit. You would hope that senior Labour MPs would have some concept of what planning permisison is and the effect it has on infrastructure and housebuilding (clue - fuck all). Another one looking for cheap points to score that will have absolutely no effect on how quickly things get built.
You're so full of shit that planning permission has fuck all effect on housebuilding. Because you think after 10 years of planning appeals a housebuilder might be able get permission does not mean that it has no impact on the development.
You have been shot down over this so many times BR that I am amazed you have the audacity to even raise it again. You always talk bollocks over planning and get hauled up for it I would have thought you would have learnt your lesson by now.
LOL "shot down". Your definition of "shot down" is that developers can eventually get approval if they relentlessly drag this through the courts and appeals process for years.
I've said before and I'll say it again, that's not good enough. That means small developers, competition for the large ones, are stymied as they aren't able to do that.
If there is to be a permission process it needs to be resolved in days or weeks, not years or decades.
But while I respect you, you're so transparent. I find it utterly hilarious that when we started discussing this you were appalled at the idea of relaxing planning permission as it would lead to 'green' spaces being 'concreted' over and apparently I know 'the value of nothing'.
After we've all been back and forth on this topic many times, the simple reality is you know that morally now you don't have a leg to stand on. You know that those of us on my side of the argument are right. That the shortage of housing is a serious problem, a more serious problem than having more development. But you still don't want the development, but you won't advance an argument you know to be morally wrong - which I respect - so now you cling to this notion that planning is not the problem.
In a short space of time we've gone from dealing with planning reform being a terrible idea that would see mass developments you don't want, to planning not being an impediment to developments at all so its not responsible or needing to be resolved for the problem to be fixed.
I'm not the one who has been shot down. Your argument has - and you are a good man, you know it has too. Hence this fig leaf. You may be convincing yourself that planning is not the problem, but you're not convincing anyone else.
I have quoted actual figures. You have just blathered about spouting nonsense. I think we both know who understands the planning process and who doesn't. Maybe you should take some lessons.
You can start by answering why we should scrap planning permissions when they already provide for many more houses than the developers are apparently willing to build? Work out why those 1.1 million houses with existing planning permission have not yet been built and you might start to understand something about the subject. Until then you are just thrashing about in your normal clueless manner.
Planning permission volume says nothing about the time and complexity of achieving permission, nor the incentives thereby delivered to house builders.
Precisely, our flawed planning system means that the experts at handling the system (the large developers) play it to the best of their interest, rather than everyone else's - and because the system is broken, regardless of what Mr Tyndall reckons, small competitors struggle to take them on by doing small alternative projects instead.
In a free and healthy market, there would be a lot more developments happening by small developers. As there are in almost every country in the world with a better planning system. But they get stymied at the start and so we are left with what we're left with.
Besides, the fact that 60% of homes given permission are built is not necessarily a failing. There will be plenty of homes that are going to be built but haven't had the time to be built yet, but also not all homes that get permission perhaps should be built either.
In any industry, in any walk of life, companies investigate or start projects that then never get completed. Because the company concerned runs into financial difficulties, or problems occur, or the market changes, or a better alternative option becomes available instead which is proceeded with instead, or a plethora of other factors. There are problems with land banking and those problems are entirely caused by the broken planning system, but the fact that some projects fail is not something that should never happen.
Who here has gone their career without ever seeing a project that was started with the best of intentions having had the plug pulled on it before completion?
How much time do you want for them to be built given we have already been waiting more than a decade for some of them? Your answers reveal your desperation.
The reality is that the Tories have run the economy into the ground since 2010 with their ideological experiment which has clearly failed. Austerity will be known as the biggest economic blunder in history.
The 'experiment' was to reduce borrowing and government spending and the deficit and in turn cut the rate of tax.
Labour, assuming they win the next election, will then do the reverse and increase government spending and borrowing again and likely increases taxes too, especially on above average earners and the wealthy
The deficit is higher or lower than in 2010? The deficit as a percentage of GDP is higher or lower than in 2010?
HYUFD as you know you are one of my favourite posters, at least you don't dress up what you think. And I respect you for that, however much I disagree with it.
I think you will lose - but only to a Hung Parliament.
Is the tax burden higher or lower as a % of GDP than it was in 2010? I think you already know the answer to that. Or at least you should.
It is higher than it has been at any time since the 1970s.
Ultimately the Tories have failed then on their own terms.
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The part wage increases play in both 70s inflation and today IS a common denominator. Wilson and Heath governments wanted hot economies and growth - growth was a panacea to them, Wilson actually used forging an economy in white heat of technological revolution as a slogan, whilst Liz Truss “Growth, Growth and Growth” line might have been uttered in an Edward Heath speech, at some time, though never recorded due to fact everyone had fallen asleep by that point.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
I agree with you. This is disconcerting.
In her first term Lady Thatcher put taxes up, placed Windfall Taxes on Oil and Banks with the message, if UK households are struggling, those making profits will contribute to help out, we are all in it together. Oil bosses moaned about it would mean less investment, but Lady Thatcher faced them down with proper windfall taxes.
Contrast with Liz Truss first PMQs. Starmer asked, you said on leadership hustings no windfall taxes, do you intend to stick with that? She replied, yes I do. Same old Labour wanting to put up taxes.
Lady Thatcher drew the poison of inflation out of UKs system, with cuts, monetary tightening and recession. Truss was the “Growth, growth growth” Primeminister.
Liz Truss was a Thatcher tribute act which did not understand Margaret Thatcher or Thatcherism at all.
Truss was probably surrounded by and controlled by city types, who have their own agenda’s. If you come across someone admitting to be one of those, it’s fair to presume they have their own agenda what governments should and should not do, that may come from a self interest point of view. The sort of positions Lady Thatcher was not afraid to face down on our behalf. Nor am I.
It’s not the questions The Kitchen Cabinet is answering here we should take note of, but the ones being avoided. For the last two months at least, UK businesses have put up prices by more than their costs have risen - the latest data for April shows input prices were up by 3.9%, while output prices increased by 5.4%. I’m not all wrong on that 🙂
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The part wage increases play in both 70s inflation and today IS a common denominator. Wilson and Heath governments wanted hot economies and growth - growth was a panacea to them, Wilson actually used forging an economy in white heat of technological revolution as a slogan, whilst Liz Truss “Growth, Growth and Growth” line might have been uttered in an Edward Heath speech, at some time, though never recorded due to fact everyone had fallen asleep by that point.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
I agree with you. This is disconcerting.
In her first term Lady Thatcher put taxes up, placed Windfall Taxes on Oil and Banks with the message, if UK households are struggling, those making profits will contribute to help out, we are all in it together. Oil bosses moaned about it would mean less investment, but Lady Thatcher faced them down with proper windfall taxes.
Contrast with Liz Truss first PMQs. Starmer asked, you said on leadership hustings no windfall taxes, do you intend to stick with that? She replied, yes I do. Same old Labour wanting to put up taxes.
Lady Thatcher drew the poison of inflation out of UKs system, with cuts, monetary tightening and recession. Truss was the “Growth, growth growth” Primeminister.
Liz Truss was a Thatcher tribute act which did not understand Margaret Thatcher or Thatcherism at all.
Truss was probably surrounded by and controlled by city types, who have their own agenda’s. If you come across someone admitting to be one of those, it’s fair to presume they have their own agenda what governments should and should not do, that may come from a self interest point of view. The sort of positions Lady Thatcher was not afraid to face down on our behalf. Nor am I.
It’s not the questions The Kitchen Cabinet is answering here we should take note of, but the ones being avoided. For the last two months at least, UK businesses have put up prices by more than their costs have risen - the latest data for April shows input prices were up by 3.9%, while output prices increased by 5.4%. I’m not all wrong on that 🙂
Sadly the result of the windfall tax has been a complete collapse in investment and a shift of exploration and development out of the North Sea on a scale never seen before. We have just had the largest surrender of drilling licences in the history of the North Sea.
Do now we will end up relying on more imported oil and gas - exactly the opposite of the stated aim of the Government
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
I am not being partisan at all. I have offered an alternative economic view. Whether my thesis based on my recollection of A level economics textbooks from over forty years ago is right or wrong remains to be seen.
Off topic, but some of you may be as intrigued as I was around noon today. While grocery shopping, I spotted 2 signs saying: "Semi Bird for governor" and, below that, "Republican".
The incumbent Democrat, Jay Inslee*, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current term, and people are lining up to replace him, but this is the first Republican I have seen.
The election isn't until November 2024, so Bird is early -- though not the earliest.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
I’m glad you are back, because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder? Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure. I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today. And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons? I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
Top work from you tonight Rabbit. I was away watching two episodes of Walter Presents the Hunter. A tale of post Falcone mafia busting, set in Palermo..
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The part wage increases play in both 70s inflation and today IS a common denominator. Wilson and Heath governments wanted hot economies and growth - growth was a panacea to them, Wilson actually used forging an economy in white heat of technological revolution as a slogan, whilst Liz Truss “Growth, Growth and Growth” line might have been uttered in an Edward Heath speech, at some time, though never recorded due to fact everyone had fallen asleep by that point.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
I agree with you. This is disconcerting.
In her first term Lady Thatcher put taxes up, placed Windfall Taxes on Oil and Banks with the message, if UK households are struggling, those making profits will contribute to help out, we are all in it together. Oil bosses moaned about it would mean less investment, but Lady Thatcher faced them down with proper windfall taxes.
Contrast with Liz Truss first PMQs. Starmer asked, you said on leadership hustings no windfall taxes, do you intend to stick with that? She replied, yes I do. Same old Labour wanting to put up taxes.
Lady Thatcher drew the poison of inflation out of UKs system, with cuts, monetary tightening and recession. Truss was the “Growth, growth growth” Primeminister.
Liz Truss was a Thatcher tribute act which did not understand Margaret Thatcher or Thatcherism at all.
Truss was probably surrounded by and controlled by city types, who have their own agenda’s. If you come across someone admitting to be one of those, it’s fair to presume they have their own agenda what governments should and should not do, that may come from a self interest point of view. The sort of positions Lady Thatcher was not afraid to face down on our behalf. Nor am I.
It’s not the questions The Kitchen Cabinet is answering here we should take note of, but the ones being avoided. For the last two months at least, UK businesses have put up prices by more than their costs have risen - the latest data for April shows input prices were up by 3.9%, while output prices increased by 5.4%. I’m not all wrong on that 🙂
Sadly the result of the windfall tax has been a complete collapse in investment and a shift of exploration and development out of the North Sea on a scale never seen before. We have just had the largest surrender of drilling licences in the history of the North Sea.
Do now we will end up relying on more imported oil and gas - exactly the opposite of the stated aim of the Government
It was certainly our need to import gas which heated up UK inflation.
As I understand it though, when the industry made the same threats to Lady Thatcher but she pressed on, windfall tax didn’t turn out to have had such a huge impact as threatened on investment. Each situation can be different obviously, but are there other considerations today acting on exploration and development investment in the North Sea, that were not so much in play in the early eighties?
The climate change targets probably a much bigger consideration for investors now than back then? If an investor considers how climate change action is likely to play out in coming years, could this be a factor in not willing to invest what could turn out to be wasted money? Will they get a better return investing in movies, or VR headsets, so better options these days to invest money in?
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
I’m glad you are back, because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder? Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure. I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today. And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons? I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
Top work from you tonight Rabbit. I was away watching two episodes of Walter Presents the Hunter. A tale of post Falcone mafia busting, set in Palermo..
Oh I see, you had your feet up enjoying yourself and left me doing all the work, battling the greed driven agenda of city types and Trussites 🤷♀️
The number of people in prison in England and Wales has increased from 81,866 in October last year to 85,193 now according to the Howard League for Penal Reform, a 4% increase in about 7 months.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
Lady Thatcher left inflation where she found it, at around 10 per cent when she became PM and when she resigned.
Great 80s retro video game concept: attack of the woke blob. I can visualise it now, can your NatCon robots blast away the ever expanding woke blob using their unidirectional free speech cannons, before they get eaten up?
Knight more northerners to level up our honours, officials told
They have told the English National Opera to move to Manchester and made Treasury officials relocate to Teesside. Now the last bastion of the establishment is to be “levelled up” after Rishi Sunak instructed Whitehall officials to give more knighthoods, damehoods and other honours to people living outside of London and the southeast. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/knight-more-northerners-to-level-up-our-honours-officials-told-vck5l87k6 (£££)
"The British planning system implemented in 1947 created the worst possible incentives for the political groups it was trying to placate."
Our problem is we gold plate due-process and have loads of cynics and curmudgeonly types who are all too happy to invest all their time and energy in gaming the already turgid system to make it as slow as possible.
It's too much hard work to do the opposite and no-one can be arsed.
It comes back to a central point: judicial review is a truly terrible idea that should be abandoned. The focus on process rather than substance is both intellectually dishonest and fundamentally pointless. What we need to focus on are substantive appeals. Was the decision actually right? Not correctly arrived at, with every box ticked, but right? If it was get on with it. If not look at it again.
Interesting but not convinced. JR is a means in general of holding power to account. Those who inflict on us massive and complex regulation should not get away with breaking their own rules and short circuiting their own processes.
Secondly, on the whole the question is whether a decision is reasonable, lawful and rational rather than whether it is right. There are no such things as 'right' decisions.
So for example the concept of consultation is often key to decision making. You should not be able to attenuate that process just because a judge thinks you made the 'right' decision.
With democracy so populist and government so banal and arrogant, the right to hold power to account is especially important. M
JR is like the secret ballot - one of those things that separates us from North Korea.
The issue is the repeat cycles of judicial review on different details. It should be a once and done review of everything
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
May I politely suggest that instead of "the unions", the quadrupling of fuel prices in 1973/4, the IMF loan in the 1970's and the rise in GBP as USD was allowed to fall, may actually have been the driver?
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The part wage increases play in both 70s inflation and today IS a common denominator. Wilson and Heath governments wanted hot economies and growth - growth was a panacea to them, Wilson actually used forging an economy in white heat of technological revolution as a slogan, whilst Liz Truss “Growth, Growth and Growth” line might have been uttered in an Edward Heath speech, at some time, though never recorded due to fact everyone had fallen asleep by that point.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
I agree with you. This is disconcerting.
In her first term Lady Thatcher put taxes up, placed Windfall Taxes on Oil and Banks with the message, if UK households are struggling, those making profits will contribute to help out, we are all in it together. Oil bosses moaned about it would mean less investment, but Lady Thatcher faced them down with proper windfall taxes.
Contrast with Liz Truss first PMQs. Starmer asked, you said on leadership hustings no windfall taxes, do you intend to stick with that? She replied, yes I do. Same old Labour wanting to put up taxes.
Lady Thatcher drew the poison of inflation out of UKs system, with cuts, monetary tightening and recession. Truss was the “Growth, growth growth” Primeminister.
Liz Truss was a Thatcher tribute act which did not understand Margaret Thatcher or Thatcherism at all.
Truss was probably surrounded by and controlled by city types, who have their own agenda’s. If you come across someone admitting to be one of those, it’s fair to presume they have their own agenda what governments should and should not do, that may come from a self interest point of view. The sort of positions Lady Thatcher was not afraid to face down on our behalf. Nor am I.
It’s not the questions The Kitchen Cabinet is answering here we should take note of, but the ones being avoided. For the last two months at least, UK businesses have put up prices by more than their costs have risen - the latest data for April shows input prices were up by 3.9%, while output prices increased by 5.4%. I’m not all wrong on that 🙂
Sadly the result of the windfall tax has been a complete collapse in investment and a shift of exploration and development out of the North Sea on a scale never seen before. We have just had the largest surrender of drilling licences in the history of the North Sea.
Do now we will end up relying on more imported oil and gas - exactly the opposite of the stated aim of the Government
Yet labour are still banging on about the need for a ‘proper’ windfall tax on the ‘energy giants’.
When first mooted there was pushback from the Tories on the grounds it would discourage investment. Yet they went with it. Now they, and we, will reap the consequences. Yet we still hear from politicians advocating it that it would not affect investment based on this guys statement.
If Labour want to up my taxes - additional rate tax payer - then please do. Clearly low tax has failed.
Low,tax. Are you crazy. We are in a high tax environment and it is only going to increase. Look at the predicted future impact of fiscal drag on those hard done by teachers and nurses for example.
Guto Harri’s podcast on Global Player, spilling the beans on the chaos inside number ten during the final days of Johnson, is well worth a listen. “Unprecedented”.
What is clear from these articles is that there is an emerging justification for cutting down trees on the grounds of 'safety', ie fear of crime. There is a new set of ideas emerging that public spaces should be open and provide natural surveillance and this is often linked to women's safety.
If Labour want to up my taxes - additional rate tax payer - then please do. Clearly low tax has failed.
Low,tax. Are you crazy. We are in a high tax environment and it is only going to increase. Look at the predicted future impact of fiscal drag on those hard done by teachers and nurses for example.
I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a low tax environment.
One thing’s for sure. If taxes go up, the money will just be pissed away on some vanity project and consultants’ fees.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
Brexit, innit.
Well if we're using Brexit parameters, is the German economy larger today than it was on 31st of January 2020 than say the UK?
Brexit parameters are simply whatever parameters you want to select that you think support your argument.
We're not in a recession, Germany are.
If it were the other way round you can be 100% sure Brexit would be pointed to as the cause and the EU the solution.
This is timely reminder it's not that simple.
But of course you were right, Brexit has had a negative impact on the German economy. Not sure why that would be a point in Brexit's favour.
So your claimis that Germany staying in the EU was affected badly enough by Brexit that they went into recession whereas the UK which actually left the EU wasn't affectd sufficiently to go into recession?
Doesn't exacty match the Remainer narrative of the last few years does it.
(To be honest I think Brexit has bugger all to do with it either way. The economic hit has been way overstated and it is primarily Germany's unfortunate but inevitable reliance on Russian energy that has been the main issue)
As my short comment didn't mention the UK at all it's very bizarre of you to put those words into my mouth.
As for Germany's recession, I'm sure other factors are bigger, but if exports to the UK account directly for over 2% of German GDP, it wouldn't take such a big reduction due to Brexit to make 0.3% difference.
Russian Su-34 jets bombing Russia proper. Maybe their hearts weren't in it - the turf took a pounding, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps? Not so much.
It’s hard not to laugh at the comedy military in Russia. They can’t hit targets from a hundred feet away, and they have air defences that point the wrong way and don’t know which are their own aircraft. At least we can now all see the ineptitude, which somehow so scared the West for the past several decades.
The institutions that have been captured by the left-wing are the Civil Service, quangos, charities, universities and, erm, private industry.
The answer is for the government to appoint thousands of right-wingers "to run every single government department and quango".
Another problem solved. Next, inflation in tin-foil prices.
The telegraph are not going to lead any 'fightback', they are culturally irrelevant. This is not a good idea, appointing 'right wing' figureheads that find out that they have no power - in most cases this just sets off a cycle of distrust and reaction. It just empowers the people they are trying to fight.
'Woke' capture does exist, but it is quite superficial in my experience. The best way of addressing it getting involved in the institutions. The problem is that many of them were deserted during austerity and handed over to activists. My own professional institution is an example of this, it now requires its members to commit to 'equity' rather than 'equality' in its code of conduct, a change that was forced through by activists but no one can explain what it means.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
If Labour want to up my taxes - additional rate tax payer - then please do. Clearly low tax has failed.
Low,tax. Are you crazy. We are in a high tax environment and it is only going to increase. Look at the predicted future impact of fiscal drag on those hard done by teachers and nurses for example.
I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a low tax environment.
One thing’s for sure. If taxes go up, the money will just be pissed away on some vanity project and consultants’ fees.
And whatever they went up by it wouldn’t be enough.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
Brexit, innit.
Well if we're using Brexit parameters, is the German economy larger today than it was on 31st of January 2020 than say the UK?
Brexit parameters are simply whatever parameters you want to select that you think support your argument.
We're not in a recession, Germany are.
If it were the other way round you can be 100% sure Brexit would be pointed to as the cause and the EU the solution.
This is timely reminder it's not that simple.
But of course you were right, Brexit has had a negative impact on the German economy. Not sure why that would be a point in Brexit's favour.
So your claimis that Germany staying in the EU was affected badly enough by Brexit that they went into recession whereas the UK which actually left the EU wasn't affectd sufficiently to go into recession?
Doesn't exacty match the Remainer narrative of the last few years does it.
(To be honest I think Brexit has bugger all to do with it either way. The economic hit has been way overstated and it is primarily Germany's unfortunate but inevitable reliance on Russian energy that has been the main issue)
As my short comment didn't mention the UK at all it's very bizarre of you to put those words into my mouth.
As for Germany's recession, I'm sure other factors are bigger, but if exports to the UK account directly for over 2% of German GDP, it wouldn't take such a big reduction due to Brexit to make 0.3% difference.
The main reason German GDP contracted in Q1, triggering a technical recession, was that government spending fell sharply as anti-Covid measures came to an end. A secondary factor was the impact of the war on Ukraine. Output in the German industrial sectors most dependent on energy is down over 15%. Consumer spending has also been hit by higher prices, like here. On Brexit, it is foolish to look for a quarter to quarter impact, except when eg there is a significant sudden change in trading regime. A lot of the commentary on here is a bit naive. But research by the Centre for European Reform on the negative economic impact of Brexit (that finds about a 4% reduction in UK GDP) is, in my professional opinion, quite compelling.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
Germany has formally entered a recession after its economy suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office shows.
The figures will be a blow to the government, which last month boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year, saying GDP will rise by 0.4% - up from a 0.2% expansion predicted in late January.
Economists said high inflation hit consumer spending, with prices in April 7.2% higher than a year ago.
GDP reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country.
I am not sure your post is as clever as you think it is. Reduced consumer spending as you say has tipped Germany into a one quarter technical recession, we have avoided that, just. Reduced German consumer spending is beneficial for reducing inflation, perhaps their interest rates will remain more stable than ours. UK consumer spending remains buoyant which is why we are having to increase interest rates to suppress consumer spending. That in turn has potential for all sorts of recessionary pressures.
It’s a good spot of thinking from you Mex, and a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - Lady Thatcher used a recession with added monetary tightening (two fingers to a Keynesian approach) to drive the inflationary poison out our system, that Labour government just couldn’t get to grips with. Is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?
You and @Mexicanpete are trying to turn a positive into a negative, and for political reasons. If UK consumer spending is holding up unexpectedly, that is a positive, not a negative - it shows that consumers believe, all other things being equal, that their personal situation remains positive. If consumers reduce their spending - as in Germany - it shows they are more pessimistic.
I know you both have political reasons for pushing your view but your arguments simply do not make sense.
Oh I relish this argument with you. Prepare to be blasted out the pond. Have you never heard of Lady Thatchers great success beating inflation and how she did it? You have, because I just explained it to you.
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
Happy to have the argument with you. A few things:
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong. - The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick. - Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation. - The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
I’m glad you are back, because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder? Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure. I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today. And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons? I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
Ok. Let's start with a few basics.
- First of all, food prices are very much part of core inflation, contrary to your statement that they are not. This is why there is interest rate pressure because, while headline inflation is coming down, core inflation (which includes food prices) is remaining sticky. Hence why Joe Biden has focused on 'greedflation' from CPG companies.
- Second, the proper question to ask here is why L&G suddenly decides after one month's data that the UK is facing such a huge crisis. Now, having worked in the City for over 20 years and having dealt with plenty of fund managers, the argument would be the typical UK PM attitude i.e. short-term focus and a tendency to over-react. The fact that L&G is panicking is probably one of the greatest reassurances for me this is overdone.
- Yes, Thatcher's crusade was different from today. To reiterate, in the 1970s, the UK was facing a wage-price spiral effect, fuelled by the OPEC price rises, which had more impact in an (then) economy more dependent on oil. This is not the same issue.
Happy to have this debate with you tomorrow morning as it is midnight now but your comments are simply wrong.
Core inflation excludes food and energy (as purchased directly by the consumer). It only includes food and energy indirectly to the extent they are inputs in the prices of other goods and services.
Same here, strange to actually hear the voice of a PB’er however I was disappointed that the interview didn’t have a background track of some Barry White to highlight his position as PB’s resident Love Animal who Loves Animals.
Russian Su-34 jets bombing Russia proper. Maybe their hearts weren't in it - the turf took a pounding, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps? Not so much.
It’s hard not to laugh at the comedy military in Russia. They can’t hit targets from a hundred feet away, and they have air defences that point the wrong way and don’t know which are their own aircraft. At least we can now all see the ineptitude, which somehow so scared the West for the past several decades.
Which, if you recall, is exactly why I erroneously predicted that they would not invade at all. At the time I based this on their military ineptitude, stating that their prowess was wildly overestimated.
All because I once worked in east-west intelligence. The Russkies were pretty crap and some of their equipment laughably so.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
Russian Su-34 jets bombing Russia proper. Maybe their hearts weren't in it - the turf took a pounding, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps? Not so much.
It’s hard not to laugh at the comedy military in Russia. They can’t hit targets from a hundred feet away, and they have air defences that point the wrong way and don’t know which are their own aircraft. At least we can now all see the ineptitude, which somehow so scared the West for the past several decades.
Which, if you recall, is exactly why I erroneously predicted that they would not invade at all. At the time I based this on their military ineptitude, stating that their prowess was wildly overestimated.
All because I once worked in east-west intelligence. The Russkies were pretty crap and some of their equipment laughably so.
IMV your thinking on this was wrong for three reasons:
1) The state of a military is irrelevant to a dictator or near-dictator such as Putin. If he wants something, he will order it be done, and he expects it to be done. This is made worse if his underlings feed him a worldview he wants, rather than the real situation.
2) Russia very nearly won. It only required one or more little changes - a better result at Hostomel, or the assassination of Zelensky - and we would now be in a very different world. Putin's decision to invade was evil, but it was not stupid or crazy. His decision to keep on fighting the war is, though.
3) It has worked before. In Georgia, in Chechnya, in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Syria. He asked the military to do something, and they did it - although Chechnya was exceptionally bloody.
These were the reasons I thought he would go for it.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
One of the threads in the Brexit tapestry was a wish by some for more good old-fashioned patriotism. See this from the MP for Romford. (Quite mad, but genuinely reflective of how some think.)
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
"Woke" is classifying everyone by identity group, the hierarchy of which is determined by intersectionality, and ceasing to treat them as an individual; it is a form of cultural marxism and is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges it. The standard form being, "so, you're a secret bigot then?" and thus raises the cost of opposition so high that people fold. Common sense is lost in the quest you seek, which is just to be fair to people. People stop thinking and start following.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
"Woke" is classifying everyone by identity group, the hierarchy of which is determined by intersectionality, and ceasing to treat them as an individual; it is a form of cultural marxism and is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges it. The standard form being, "so, you're a secret bigot then?" and thus raises the cost of opposition so high that people fold. Common sense is lost in the quest you seek, which is just to be fair to people. People stop thinking and start following.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
That's a definition, but not one fellow anti-wokeist De-Santis would agree with. One that bans books and removes rights. That's where 'anti-woke' leads, and will lead.
I disagree with the "It leads to stupidity like ..." It doesn't. You've jsut picked a list of things you don't like and blamed it on 'woke'.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
"Woke" is classifying everyone by identity group, the hierarchy of which is determined by intersectionality, and ceasing to treat them as an individual; it is a form of cultural marxism and is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges it. The standard form being, "so, you're a secret bigot then?" and thus raises the cost of opposition so high that people fold. Common sense is lost in the quest you seek, which is just to be fair to people. People stop thinking and start following.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
Well DeSantis embodies your fundamental woke characteristics. He "is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges" him.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
"Woke" is classifying everyone by identity group, the hierarchy of which is determined by intersectionality, and ceasing to treat them as an individual; it is a form of cultural marxism and is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges it. The standard form being, "so, you're a secret bigot then?" and thus raises the cost of opposition so high that people fold. Common sense is lost in the quest you seek, which is just to be fair to people. People stop thinking and start following.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
That's a definition, but not one fellow anti-wokeist De-Santis would agree with. One that bans books and removes rights. That's where 'anti-woke' leads, and will lead.
I disagree with the "It leads to stupidity like ..." It doesn't. You've jsut picked a list of things you don't like and blamed it on 'woke'.
But in essence woke is no more than " a list of things you don't like". It is a wholly confected construct.
Gun control is woke, school shooters are not.
Black lives matter is woke, vigilante executions of unarmed black teenagers is not.
LGBT plus is woke, a redneck impregnating his daughter is not.
Pulling down Confederate statues is woke, banning liberal literature in Florida schools is not.
What does it all.mean? Who are the woke blob? It is all nonsense.
As someone from the Jeremy Clarkson wing of the LDs I should be offended by woke, but I'm not. Yes I get irritated by the occasional nonsense, but that is how it has always been. In the old days we had political correctness and 'jobsworth', both of which got up my nose, but really this campaign against woke leads to nonsense like Florida.
I'm 68, but I want to see things move on. I have no desire to go back to the 50s which seems to be the desire of many anti woke campaigners. Just ignore any nonsense.
But if you want to be offended by woke there is an excellent web that will alert you to any woke occurrences so you don't miss out on being offended at all.
For @leon and @Casino_Royale if you do a search on 'woke alerts' you can arrange to have texts sent to you notifying you of woke advertising as they happen.
So just in case you start to succumb to the woke onslaught you can be invigorated by some new extreme outrages of woke behaviour.
As someone from the Jeremy Clarkson wing of the no should be offended by woke, but I'm not. Yes I get irritated by the occasional nonsense, but that is how it has always been. In the old days we had political correctness and 'jobsworth', both of which got up my nose, but really this campaign against woke leads to nonsense like Florida.
I'm 68, but I want to see things move on. I have no desire to go back to the 50s which seems to be the desire of many anti woke campaigners. Just ignore any nonsense.
But if you want to be offended by woke there is an excellent web that will alert you to any woke occurrences so you don't miss out on being offended at all.
It's interesting how the straw man keeps coming back here.
No-one, least of all myself, has argued "to go back to the 50s" - this is simply failing to engage with the argument, and it's interesting you then follow up with a non-sequiter and a bit of ad-hominem.
It's quite clear to me why: you'd much prefer to stay on this safer turf than engage with the complexities of the issue because it's all about what tribe you belong to these days and signalling to other members of your tribe that you will continue to challenge and wrestle with the other tribe, regardless, can be relied upon to do so.
Essentially it's an exercise in social identity not a political debate.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
"Woke" is classifying everyone by identity group, the hierarchy of which is determined by intersectionality, and ceasing to treat them as an individual; it is a form of cultural marxism and is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges it. The standard form being, "so, you're a secret bigot then?" and thus raises the cost of opposition so high that people fold. Common sense is lost in the quest you seek, which is just to be fair to people. People stop thinking and start following.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
Well DeSantis embodies your fundamental woke characteristics. He "is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges" him.
There seems to be a strong (but not universal) correlation between the people who fought for Brexit and those who are now screeching about the opaque evils of 'woke'.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
It has long been my view that 'woke' can be evaluated as a response to Brexit, a form of cultural revenge. It is the one element of 'woke' that is quite positive, the total ruin and obsolescence of the racist element who thought they had got their country back in 2016.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
For me, the issue with 'woke' is that is undefined, and indefinable. A vehement anti-wokeist such as @Leon or @Casino_Royale probably has a very different definition to, say, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban just about everything that has happened since the 1950s. Yet by them all being 'anti-woke', they're bedfellows.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
"Woke" is classifying everyone by identity group, the hierarchy of which is determined by intersectionality, and ceasing to treat them as an individual; it is a form of cultural marxism and is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges it. The standard form being, "so, you're a secret bigot then?" and thus raises the cost of opposition so high that people fold. Common sense is lost in the quest you seek, which is just to be fair to people. People stop thinking and start following.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
Well DeSantis embodies your fundamental woke characteristics. He "is vindictive and censorious to anyone who disagrees with or challenges" him.
I don't carry a candle for DeSantis.
You and him are both anti-woke. You are in the same team.
When you argue against 'woke', you are giving ammunition to his arguments against woke. And his banning of books, removal or rights from people, etc, etc.
For @leon and @Casino_Royale if you do a search on 'woke alerts' you can arrange to have texts sent to you notifying you of woke advertising as they happen.
So just in case you start to succumb to the woke onslaught you can be invigorated by some new extreme outrages of woke behaviour.
I’ve just been to sainsburys. They’ve got a few things out to celebrate ‘pride’
No one seemed to care either way. They just went about the shopping.
The anti woke are a mirror of the stop funding hate loons and those on the other side of the debate. Lots of rage on social media but very little impact on real lives or peoples behaviour. More fool the social media accounts of these businesses for pandering to their whims.
For @leon and @Casino_Royale if you do a search on 'woke alerts' you can arrange to have texts sent to you notifying you of woke advertising as they happen.
So just in case you start to succumb to the woke onslaught you can be invigorated by some new extreme outrages of woke behaviour.
I’ve just been to sainsburys. They’ve got a few things out to celebrate ‘pride’
No one seemed to care either way. They just went about the shopping.
The anti woke are a mirror of the stop funding hate loons and those on the other side of the debate. Lots of rage on social media but very little impact on real lives or peoples behaviour. More fool the social media accounts of these businesses for pandering to their whims.
My views on this are all over the place and muddled - because they are often complex issues with muddy boundaries between respective rights, and differing views of history and society.
Therefore I'm all for Black History Month, but against mobs pulling down statues. I'm for Mary Seacole being taught in schools, but against Florence Nightingale being downgraded. I think the concept of 'privilege' is sound on a personal basis, but crummy when applied societally. I think we - as a nation - made hideous mistakes historically, but also that we have given a lot to the world. And I also believe in personal responsibility.
As I said, muddy. There's enough in there for everyone to dislike.
For @leon and @Casino_Royale if you do a search on 'woke alerts' you can arrange to have texts sent to you notifying you of woke advertising as they happen.
So just in case you start to succumb to the woke onslaught you can be invigorated by some new extreme outrages of woke behaviour.
I’ve just been to sainsburys. They’ve got a few things out to celebrate ‘pride’
No one seemed to care either way. They just went about the shopping.
The anti woke are a mirror of the stop funding hate loons and those on the other side of the debate. Lots of rage on social media but very little impact on real lives or peoples behaviour. More fool the social media accounts of these businesses for pandering to their whims.
My views on this are all over the place and muddled - because they are often complex issues with muddy boundaries between respective rights, and differing views of history and society.
Therefore I'm all for Black History Month, but against mobs pulling down statues. I'm for Mary Seacole being taught in schools, but against Florence Nightingale being downgraded. I think the concept of 'privilege' is sound on a personal basis, but crummy when applied societally. I think we - as a nation - made hideous mistakes historically, but also that we have given a lot to the world. And I also believe in personal responsibility.
As I said, muddy. There's enough in there for everyone to dislike.
OK, (just ducking out of meeting because this is an interesting point of view, and Teams has a wonderful camera-off feature) so maybe there's something visceral with the labelling here?
I agree with much of that - although not all -and on the previous thread you said I was a fellow traveller of DeSantis and book-burners and those who want to roll back civic rights, which I hope you'd do me the courtesy of recognising is clearly not what I believe in.
Maybe we should ditch the words Woke/anti-Woke entirely, and come up with a new taxonomy to describe point of view on the spectrum?
I am all in favour of treating farm animals - indeed, all animals - well. And kudos for Nick P for his work on this.
But I find it depressing that an issue likes this - or the Home Secretary's driving - gets more attention than the government's failure to accept IICSA's recommendations or implement many of them. The government is at least promising to implement single issue bills on the animals issue, though I am sceptical of such promises. They aren't even promising that much on the IICSA report. Children - particularly abused ones - are less important to our society, it seems, than speeding offences or animals.
I am all in favour of treating farm animals - indeed, all animals - well. And kudos for Nick P for his work on this.
But I find it depressing that an issue likes this - or the Home Secretary's driving - gets more attention than the government's failure to accept IICSA's recommendations or implement many of them. The government is at least promising to implement single issue bills on the animals issue, though I am sceptical of such promises. They aren't even promising that much on the IICSA report. Children - particularly abused ones - are less important to our society, it seems, than speeding offences or animals.
Animals are relatively simple, and you can project your own feelings onto them. Children are more complicated, and grow up to be complicated adults, with their own free will.
In a world of moral absolutes - see also the woke/anti-woke dichotomy - it's much more comfortable to deal with simple animals than complicated children.
But you'd hope that the institutions of government would be able to develop a more mature perspective. If you were an incurable optimist and still did things like hope.
For @leon and @Casino_Royale if you do a search on 'woke alerts' you can arrange to have texts sent to you notifying you of woke advertising as they happen.
So just in case you start to succumb to the woke onslaught you can be invigorated by some new extreme outrages of woke behaviour.
I’ve just been to sainsburys. They’ve got a few things out to celebrate ‘pride’
No one seemed to care either way. They just went about the shopping.
The anti woke are a mirror of the stop funding hate loons and those on the other side of the debate. Lots of rage on social media but very little impact on real lives or peoples behaviour. More fool the social media accounts of these businesses for pandering to their whims.
My views on this are all over the place and muddled - because they are often complex issues with muddy boundaries between respective rights, and differing views of history and society.
Therefore I'm all for Black History Month, but against mobs pulling down statues. I'm for Mary Seacole being taught in schools, but against Florence Nightingale being downgraded. I think the concept of 'privilege' is sound on a personal basis, but crummy when applied societally. I think we - as a nation - made hideous mistakes historically, but also that we have given a lot to the world. And I also believe in personal responsibility.
As I said, muddy. There's enough in there for everyone to dislike.
OK, (just ducking out of meeting because this is an interesting point of view, and Teams has a wonderful camera-off feature) so maybe there's something visceral with the labelling here?
I agree with much of that - although not all -and on the previous thread you said I was a fellow traveller of DeSantis and book-burners and those who want to roll back civic rights, which I hope you'd do me the courtesy of recognising is clearly not what I believe in.
Maybe we should ditch the words Woke/anti-Woke entirely, and come up with a new taxonomy to describe point of view on the spectrum?
Well, coming up with a new taxonomy, or terminology, is what experts in the field try to do, and then their new terminology, designed to be neutral and specific, is 'repurposed' by those who want to find something to complain about and to get others worked up about a non-issue.This is after all what has happened, as demonstrated on here today, with 'woke', which has just become this generation's version of 'politically correct'
See also: 'critical race theory' - not what the anti-woke say it is 'cisgender' - an attempt to be specific without having paragraphs of explanation 'black lives matter' - repurposed as meaning anti-white 'person/people with a uterus' - see 'cisgender' 'minority ethnic' - because all previous attempts had been tarnished by the anti brigade etc., etc.
Every time the experts - normally the progressive side - try to defuse a debate by coming up with neutral terminology, the reactionary side say 'I haven't looked that term up, but it obviously means exactly what I think it, which is something derogatory to my side, so I'm going to shout about it.'
Comments
Big contractors could set up a pipeline, and dedicate some employees to monitoring the pipeline, and clearing up any clogs in it; small contractors, for the most part, couldn't do that.
(Sorry to be vague. It's been a while. But the finding seemed plausible at the time, and even more so, now.)
I am not politically spinning at all, I actually called it “a rather open question I wouldn’t expect a perfect answer posted back - is it better for UK to go into recession in 2023 and see off this inflation, or carry on overheating as revealed this week, with no control over inflation, especially food inflation, despite interest rates already up to where they are now?”
For political support, if it’s a party political question in your head, tomorrows Daily Telegraph is up now to support me, what actually happens if the markets fear we have lost control of inflation, fear it’s getting set in and self perpetuating like what destroyed us in the 70s?
So you are on the side of rejoicing that, without growth to speak off we avoided a technical recession, despite we don’t have hideous inflation, food inflation under control? That this is a moment to rejoice? That’s how you answer the question I set?
https://filmfreeway.com/Flow299
When the war kicked off, there was more inflation pain coming for UK than some other places due to our greater exposure to gas imports - what are they employed for and paid for if it’s not to know this, see what’s coming, and tackle it more promptly than they did?
- The Telegraph is not the omnipotent bearer of truth - it gets things wrong.
- The issue with inflation is not inflation in general but core inflation i.e. food prices primarily. Some of that is a lag effect (i.e. crops were planted in 2023 using fertilizer bought in 2022 at massively inflated prices) but a good amount of it is CPG companies thinking of locking in price rises now while the consumer will accept it - it is a permanent margin uplift effect for them if these prices stick.
- Thatcher and inflation was an entirely different thing, namely a wage-price inflation spiral, with unions being the main cause. This time round, real wage inflation (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is below headline inflation.
- The current inflation issue is not being caused by QE etc solely. QE may be part of this but much has to do with extraneous factors which raising interest rates won't solve - e.g. commodities coming from Russia, lingering adjustments to supply chains etc/
https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1661819276439724046
See: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1973-74
And unlike 2023, when HMG worked out that the solution was to import more and more migrant workers to suppress wages (oh, lucky us!), the 1970s unions were allowed to pursue higher salaries to preserve their members' standards of living due to an exogenous inflation pulse.
The incumbent Democrat, Jay Inslee*, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current term, and people are lining up to replace him, but this is the first Republican I have seen.
The election isn't until November 2024, so Bird is early -- though not the earliest.
If you are curious about Bird, here's the campaign site: https://www.birdforgovernor.com/
(*SS2 would probably disagree with me, but I think Inslee peaked as a basketball player in high school.)
You can rubbish the Telegraph article as much as you like, truth is it’s based on reporting facts from today that exist today, and remain in play regardless how much you deny or seek to avoid they are very much part of the bigger picture here. See attached, and compare with what I posted you thought was actually lefty talking UK down simply because we have Tory government. A recession would not have been ideal, though impact lessoned by unemployment is still very low and impact would it have had on monetary tightening being used to reign in inflation, help or hinder?
Food prices are not part of the core inflation rate, like energy costs being too volatile, they are removed to produce core inflation measure.
I wouldn’t agree with you the inflation Lady Thatcher fought and beat is all that different than what we fight today.
And my reference to QE is of more relevance to the huge bonfire of tinder waiting for the spark of chaos to set it alight - not cause of continued high inflation, but fuel on any market crash from greedy hedging.
So questions to you, you believe what sent inflation up, energy costs and you talk crops and fertiliser, so you expect inflation to calmly come down as energy and fertiliser costs come back to normal? You don’t see inflation staying high for other reasons?
I’ll give you some clues, if input prices are at 4% inflation, why would output prices be at 5.5% inflation or higher?
If it is pretty bad then I'd imagine that fear of being shot down by a MANPAD would have had something to do with it, particularly coming so soon after the losses over Bryansk.
Sounds like the best - and just about only - argument he's got!
The only hope is a Ron DeSantis inspired fightback against Left-wing institutional capture'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/24/woke-blobs-final-triumph-near/
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1661819867941445649
Labour, assuming they win the next election, will then do the reverse and increase government spending and borrowing again and likely increases taxes too, especially on above average earners and the wealthy
HYUFD as you know you are one of my favourite posters, at least you don't dress up what you think. And I respect you for that, however much I disagree with it.
I think you will lose - but only to a Hung Parliament.
Much as I disagree with Matt Goodwin, he is British and I'm pretty sure he's met some British people occasionally. Although obviously not someone to tell him to do his shirt button up...
- First of all, food prices are very much part of core inflation, contrary to your statement that they are not. This is why there is interest rate pressure because, while headline inflation is coming down, core inflation (which includes food prices) is remaining sticky. Hence why Joe Biden has focused on 'greedflation' from CPG companies.
- Second, the proper question to ask here is why L&G suddenly decides after one month's data that the UK is facing such a huge crisis. Now, having worked in the City for over 20 years and having dealt with plenty of fund managers, the argument would be the typical UK PM attitude i.e. short-term focus and a tendency to over-react. The fact that L&G is panicking is probably one of the greatest reassurances for me this is overdone.
- Yes, Thatcher's crusade was different from today. To reiterate, in the 1970s, the UK was facing a wage-price spiral effect, fuelled by the OPEC price rises, which had more impact in an (then) economy more dependent on oil. This is not the same issue.
Happy to have this debate with you tomorrow morning as it is midnight now but your comments are simply wrong.
Our Kitchen Cabinet has timewarped in from the seventies with the message “it’s growth, just rejoice at this news, sod monetary tightening and beating the scourge of inflation”.
What % is Biden actually right, Greedinflation is fuelling current inflation making it sticky? Would you go as high as 50%? Would you say not at all?
It is higher than it has been at any time since the 1970s.
You can start by answering why we should scrap planning permissions when they already provide for many more houses than the developers are apparently willing to build? Work out why those 1.1 million houses with existing planning permission have not yet been built and you might start to understand something about the subject. Until then you are just thrashing about in your normal clueless manner.
Contrast with Liz Truss first PMQs. Starmer asked, you said on leadership hustings no windfall taxes, do you intend to stick with that?
She replied, yes I do. Same old Labour wanting to put up taxes.
Lady Thatcher drew the poison of inflation out of UKs system, with cuts, monetary tightening and recession. Truss was the “Growth, growth growth” Primeminister.
Liz Truss was a Thatcher tribute act which did not understand Margaret Thatcher or Thatcherism at all.
Truss was probably surrounded by and controlled by city types, who have their own agenda’s. If you come across someone admitting to be one of those, it’s fair to presume they have their own agenda what governments should and should not do, that may come from a self interest point of view. The sort of positions Lady Thatcher was not afraid to face down on our behalf. Nor am I.
It’s not the questions The Kitchen Cabinet is answering here we should take note of, but the ones being avoided. For the last two months at least, UK businesses have put up prices by more than their costs have risen - the latest data for April shows input prices were up by 3.9%, while output prices increased by 5.4%. I’m not all wrong on that 🙂
Do now we will end up relying on more imported oil and gas - exactly the opposite of the stated aim of the Government
Am guessing that is NOT what YOU mean?
BTW, Olympia is state capital of WA State; shorthand for state government.
As I understand it though, when the industry made the same threats to Lady Thatcher but she pressed on, windfall tax didn’t turn out to have had such a huge impact as threatened on investment. Each situation can be different obviously, but are there other considerations today acting on exploration and development investment in the North Sea, that were not so much in play in the early eighties?
The climate change targets probably a much bigger consideration for investors now than back then? If an investor considers how climate change action is likely to play out in coming years, could this be a factor in not willing to invest what could turn out to be wasted money? Will they get a better return investing in movies, or VR headsets, so better options these days to invest money in?
https://howardleague.org/prison-watch/
https://web.archive.org/web/20221029195237/https://howardleague.org/prison-watch/
The answer is for the government to appoint thousands of right-wingers "to run every single government department and quango".
Another problem solved. Next, inflation in tin-foil prices.
They have told the English National Opera to move to Manchester and made Treasury officials relocate to Teesside. Now the last bastion of the establishment is to be “levelled up” after Rishi Sunak instructed Whitehall officials to give more knighthoods, damehoods and other honours to people living outside of London and the southeast.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/knight-more-northerners-to-level-up-our-honours-officials-told-vck5l87k6 (£££)
Arise Sir @TheScreamingEagles of the frozen north.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/plymouth-council-trees-cut-down-sex-lp6v2chtt (£££)
When first mooted there was pushback from the Tories on the grounds it would discourage investment. Yet they went with it. Now they, and we, will reap the consequences. Yet we still hear from politicians advocating it that it would not affect investment based on this guys statement.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/20/bp-admits-windfall-tax-will-not-affect-its-north-sea-investments-after-all
It makes you wonder why the just stop oil brigade are doing what they are doing. Govt and opposition policy are doing their work for ther.
https://twitter.com/wssenergy/status/1661680209169469440?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-12125755/US-drug-giant-Eli-Lilly-blasts-stifling-UK-regulations.html
One thing’s for sure. If taxes go up, the money will just be pissed away on some vanity project and consultants’ fees.
As for Germany's recession, I'm sure other factors are bigger, but if exports to the UK account directly for over 2% of German GDP, it wouldn't take such a big reduction due to Brexit to make 0.3% difference.
'Woke' capture does exist, but it is quite superficial in my experience. The best way of addressing it getting involved in the institutions. The problem is that many of them were deserted during austerity and handed over to activists. My own professional institution is an example of this, it now requires its members to commit to 'equity' rather than 'equality' in its code of conduct, a change that was forced through by activists but no one can explain what it means.
It's almost as though having hurt Britain once, they're coming back for another try.
Wise or foolish ? It’s not an asset class I really know a great deal about or the risks.
https://www.ft.com/content/8b34f1a3-8bf8-488f-b3ca-7858d5d8aa01
On Brexit, it is foolish to look for a quarter to quarter impact, except when eg there is a significant sudden change in trading regime. A lot of the commentary on here is a bit naive. But research by the Centre for European Reform on the negative economic impact of Brexit (that finds about a 4% reduction in UK GDP) is, in my professional opinion, quite compelling.
On balance though I would rather that neither Brexit nor 'woke' had ever happened.
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/media-spokespeople/dr-nick-palmer/
Every so often the Telegraph comes out with a sensible article. This one on Immigration is excellent. Everyone should read it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/25/the-tories-dont-want-to-reduce-immigration/
All because I once worked in east-west intelligence. The Russkies were pretty crap and some of their equipment laughably so.
Society has made massive progress in the last fifty years - or even the last thirty. Look at the way gay marriage went from being unthinkable to accepted and uncontroversial in many countries around the world in just a few years - even Ireland.
I'd argue that wokeism is not a response to Brexit, as it is an extension of societal trends and awareness that have been occurring for decades. And anti-wokeism is a reaction from people who don't like such change.
But if we take its simplest definition: "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", then I'd argue I'm woke. But that doesn't mean that I agree with everything people who are 'woke' say, or that I don't extend it myself: for instance I'd argue that the 'racial' word is unnecessary, and it should be "alert to *all* prejudice and discrimination".
It's bad now because the Conservatives are acting like Labour.
1) The state of a military is irrelevant to a dictator or near-dictator such as Putin. If he wants something, he will order it be done, and he expects it to be done. This is made worse if his underlings feed him a worldview he wants, rather than the real situation.
2) Russia very nearly won. It only required one or more little changes - a better result at Hostomel, or the assassination of Zelensky - and we would now be in a very different world. Putin's decision to invade was evil, but it was not stupid or crazy. His decision to keep on fighting the war is, though.
3) It has worked before. In Georgia, in Chechnya, in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Syria. He asked the military to do something, and they did it - although Chechnya was exceptionally bloody.
These were the reasons I thought he would go for it.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/conservative-mp-andrew-rosindell-calls-for-bbc-to-play-national-anthem-daily-in-honour-of-brexit-a3385986.html
And that didn't happen, because EU membership wasn't the reason those sort of behaviours died out. Much easier to blame that on a woke conspiracy.
It leads to stupidity like all our statues being torn down, women having penises, idiotic transgender laws in Scotland, museum collections being stripped away, a rolling calendar of identity group celebrations that are both ubiquitous and facile at the same time, rolling attacks on the institutions and histories of Western nations as being fundamentally criminal and racist, and it weakens and polarises our civic society and hugely emboldens our enemies at the same time.
That is "Woke", and that is why I oppose it. It's stupid.
I disagree with the "It leads to stupidity like ..." It doesn't. You've jsut picked a list of things you don't like and blamed it on 'woke'.
Gun control is woke, school shooters are not.
Black lives matter is woke, vigilante executions of unarmed black teenagers is not.
LGBT plus is woke, a redneck impregnating his daughter is not.
Pulling down Confederate statues is woke, banning liberal literature in Florida schools is not.
What does it all.mean? Who are the woke blob? It is all nonsense.
As someone from the Jeremy Clarkson wing of the LDs I should be offended by woke, but I'm not. Yes I get irritated by the occasional nonsense, but that is how it has always been. In the old days we had political correctness and 'jobsworth', both of which got up my nose, but really this campaign against woke leads to nonsense like Florida.
I'm 68, but I want to see things move on. I have no desire to go back to the 50s which seems to be the desire of many anti woke campaigners. Just ignore any nonsense.
But if you want to be offended by woke there is an excellent web that will alert you to any woke occurrences so you don't miss out on being offended at all.
So just in case you start to succumb to the woke onslaught you can be invigorated by some new extreme outrages of woke behaviour.
No-one, least of all myself, has argued "to go back to the 50s" - this is simply failing to engage with the argument, and it's interesting you then follow up with a non-sequiter and a bit of ad-hominem.
It's quite clear to me why: you'd much prefer to stay on this safer turf than engage with the complexities of the issue because it's all about what tribe you belong to these days and signalling to other members of your tribe that you will continue to challenge and wrestle with the other tribe, regardless, can be relied upon to do so.
Essentially it's an exercise in social identity not a political debate.
When you argue against 'woke', you are giving ammunition to his arguments against woke. And his banning of books, removal or rights from people, etc, etc.
This is where you are heading:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/here-is-a-look-at-the-laws-desantis-has-passed-as-florida-governor-from-abortion-to-guns
No one seemed to care either way. They just went about the shopping.
The anti woke are a mirror of the stop funding hate loons and those on the other side of the debate. Lots of rage on social media but very little impact on real lives or peoples behaviour. More fool the social media accounts of these businesses for pandering to their whims.
Therefore I'm all for Black History Month, but against mobs pulling down statues. I'm for Mary Seacole being taught in schools, but against Florence Nightingale being downgraded. I think the concept of 'privilege' is sound on a personal basis, but crummy when applied societally. I think we - as a nation - made hideous mistakes historically, but also that we have given a lot to the world. And I also believe in personal responsibility.
As I said, muddy. There's enough in there for everyone to dislike.
I agree with much of that - although not all -and on the previous thread you said I was a fellow traveller of DeSantis and book-burners and those who want to roll back civic rights, which I hope you'd do me the courtesy of recognising is clearly not what I believe in.
Maybe we should ditch the words Woke/anti-Woke entirely, and come up with a new taxonomy to describe point of view on the spectrum?
But I find it depressing that an issue likes this - or the Home Secretary's driving - gets more attention than the government's failure to accept IICSA's recommendations or implement many of them. The government is at least promising to implement single issue bills on the animals issue, though I am sceptical of such promises. They aren't even promising that much on the IICSA report. Children - particularly abused ones - are less important to our society, it seems, than speeding offences or animals.
In a world of moral absolutes - see also the woke/anti-woke dichotomy - it's much more comfortable to deal with simple animals than complicated children.
But you'd hope that the institutions of government would be able to develop a more mature perspective. If you were an incurable optimist and still did things like hope.
See also:
'critical race theory' - not what the anti-woke say it is
'cisgender' - an attempt to be specific without having paragraphs of explanation
'black lives matter' - repurposed as meaning anti-white
'person/people with a uterus' - see 'cisgender'
'minority ethnic' - because all previous attempts had been tarnished by the anti brigade
etc., etc.
Every time the experts - normally the progressive side - try to defuse a debate by coming up with neutral terminology, the reactionary side say 'I haven't looked that term up, but it obviously means exactly what I think it, which is something derogatory to my side, so I'm going to shout about it.'