I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
The whole Lords situation is currently in solar orbit with how ridiculous it is. £300 a day for 700 ?!? odd peers to go and snooze on the benches. More and more and more created by each PM - and the rate of retirements/deaths a trickle compared to new appointments.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
I’ve always wondered if the monarch would create 500 peers to abolish the lords.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
The whole Lords situation is currently in solar orbit with how ridiculous it is. £300 a day for 700 ?!? odd peers to go and snooze on the benches. More and more and more created by each PM - and the rate of retirements/deaths a trickle compared to new appointments.
You could make a reasonable case that the Lords has been an anachronism since the hereditary principle for royalty was abandoned in 1688.
The government’s borrowing bill rose by more than expected last month, helping push up the country’s debt ratio to over 100 per cent of GDP for the first time in more than 60 years.
Official figures showed that government borrowing rose by £20 billion in May, larger than the £18.3 billion expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility and beating economists’ estimates of about £19.5 billion.
The jump in borrowing was driven by a higher debt interest bill as inflation has remained stubbornly strong this year, alongside a rise in government spending on pay for NHS staff, energy subsidies for households, and an uprating in benefits, said the Office for National Statistics.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
I’ve always wondered if the monarch would create 500 peers to abolish the lords.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
But if you, er, your friend were the dictator you, er, your friend wouldn't need the Lords to vote through its abolition, shurely?
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
The government’s borrowing bill rose by more than expected last month, helping push up the country’s debt ratio to over 100 per cent of GDP for the first time in more than 60 years.
Official figures showed that government borrowing rose by £20 billion in May, larger than the £18.3 billion expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility and beating economists’ estimates of about £19.5 billion.
The jump in borrowing was driven by a higher debt interest bill as inflation has remained stubbornly strong this year, alongside a rise in government spending on pay for NHS staff, energy subsidies for households, and an uprating in benefits, said the Office for National Statistics.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
I’ve always wondered if the monarch would create 500 peers to abolish the lords.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
But if you, er, your friend were the dictator you, er, your friend wouldn't need the Lords to vote through its abolition, shurely?
I’d be a benign dictator.
Using my democratic legitimacy to ensure all my manifesto commitments would be delivered.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
The whole Lords situation is currently in solar orbit with how ridiculous it is. £300 a day for 700 ?!? odd peers to go and snooze on the benches. More and more and more created by each PM - and the rate of retirements/deaths a trickle compared to new appointments.
You could make a reasonable case that the Lords has been an anachronism since the hereditary principle for royalty was abandoned in 1688.
But somehow it keeps staggering on.
The main purpose of the Lords is to deflect criticism away from the Commons setup. That’s why it persists.
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want. Hopefully wages rise to meet it too.
A few years of moderately high wage and CPI growth, combined with moderate nominal falls in house prices, is just what is needed to rebalance the economy and bring back down real house prices down to a sensible level without having a major crash and massive negative equity.
For too long the only inflation people cared about was CPI inflation, and not inflation in the number one cost of living which is housing - which too many in charge mistakenly class as an "asset" instead of a "cost" which is what it really is.
Come to think of it, the hereditary principle for the Lords was actually abandoned in 1707 when the Scottish peerage elected representatives for the Lords rather than transferring en bloc (an arrangement that ironically only ended in 1963) and again confirmed by the Union with Ireland in 1801.
So that makes the suggestion it was hereditary and therefore reforming its mode of selection doubly anachronistic.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
The whole Lords situation is currently in solar orbit with how ridiculous it is. £300 a day for 700 ?!? odd peers to go and snooze on the benches. More and more and more created by each PM - and the rate of retirements/deaths a trickle compared to new appointments.
You could make a reasonable case that the Lords has been an anachronism since the hereditary principle for royalty was abandoned in 1688.
But somehow it keeps staggering on.
The Bill of Rights fine tunes the hereditary principle, but it is a stretch to say it abandons it.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
I’ve always wondered if the monarch would create 500 peers to abolish the lords.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
But if you, er, your friend were the dictator you, er, your friend wouldn't need the Lords to vote through its abolition, shurely?
I’d be a benign dictator.
Using my democratic legitimacy to ensure all my manifesto commitments would be delivered.
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Boris craves attention. Whilst it’s necessary to call out his BS, beyond that anything that puts the spotlight on him is playing into his agenda. The Tories need a strategy to make Boris boring, passé and irrelevant.
...
That's a rare example of a not-bad political cartoon. Not actually funny in the sense of 'would make you laugh'. But then none of them actually do that. But makes its point in a non-contrived way and in a way which doesn't make you think 'that could have been done much more succinctly and effectively in a sentence'.
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
Thanks to the pandemic response and the Treasury, not thanks to Gove.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
The whole Lords situation is currently in solar orbit with how ridiculous it is. £300 a day for 700 ?!? odd peers to go and snooze on the benches. More and more and more created by each PM - and the rate of retirements/deaths a trickle compared to new appointments.
You could make a reasonable case that the Lords has been an anachronism since the hereditary principle for royalty was abandoned in 1688.
But somehow it keeps staggering on.
The Bill of Rights fine tunes the hereditary principle, but it is a stretch to say it abandons it.
It set aside the King and his son in favour of his nephew, and finally in the Act of Settlement set aside almost all claimants in favour of a distant cousin on the grounds the aforesaid cousin was a Protestant.
I'd say that's abandoning or at least strictly modifying the hereditary principle.
And if it could be done for the most important title - why was it kept for any of them?
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
My father also had Views on his record at DEFRA.
Put it this way, you think I hate him? You should have heard what Dad had to say!
The thing that many people in government refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Hell, even the New Statesman, that bastion of neoliberal consensus, accepts corporate greed is a significant factor:
I know it's irrelevant electorally because Gov'ts lose elections. And boy does it look like the Tories are going to lose this one - but just how will Labour sort the inflation mess out ?
Acquiescing to public sector pay demands might help the NHS - it certainly won't help inflation. Stopping new north sea oil licenses - in the long run that'll negatively affect our balance of payments and is probably a bit inflationary..
A bit of inflation will be the least of our problems when Starmer kills the UK Oil and Gas industry.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
I posted over a year ago that the government needed to look very aggressively at market competition because interest rates are only one lever against inflation.
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
For reasons entirely outside of Gove as BB points out.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
My father also had Views on his record at DEFRA.
Put it this way, you think I hate him? You should have heard what Dad had to say!
Well at least now we know where you got your irrational hatred from.
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
My father also had Views on his record at DEFRA.
Put it this way, you think I hate him? You should have heard what Dad had to say!
Well at least now we know where you got your irrational hatred from.
In case you've forgotten, he went to DEFRA and earned Dad's ire long after he'd screwed over education.
I know it's irrelevant electorally because Gov'ts lose elections. And boy does it look like the Tories are going to lose this one - but just how will Labour sort the inflation mess out ?
Acquiescing to public sector pay demands might help the NHS - it certainly won't help inflation. Stopping new north sea oil licenses - in the long run that'll negatively affect our balance of payments and is probably a bit inflationary..
A bit of inflation will be the least of our problems when Starmer kills the UK Oil and Gas industry.
He's gone back on that now. Presumably he now just means to asfixiate it using economic measures a la Sunak/Hunt.
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I posted over a year ago that the government needed to look very aggressively at market competition because interest rates are only one lever against inflation.
Also: where are government interest payments going? Aren't the beneficiaries of higher interest payments going to be doing something with their windfall?
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
My father also had Views on his record at DEFRA.
Put it this way, you think I hate him? You should have heard what Dad had to say!
Well at least now we know where you got your irrational hatred from.
In case you've forgotten, he went to DEFRA and earned Dad's ire long after he'd screwed over education.
In case you have forgotten education was screwed over long before Gove ever came on the scene. A third world system run entirely for vested interest and ideology.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
Okaaaay...well, it's their country.
It's caused all sorts of protocol issues for us when referring to it. Inflation Reduction Act is too much of a mouthful but IRA spelled out feels a little problematic, like the previously uncontroversial name Isis. So we've settled on pronouncing it the "Eye-ra".
I know it's irrelevant electorally because Gov'ts lose elections. And boy does it look like the Tories are going to lose this one - but just how will Labour sort the inflation mess out ?
Acquiescing to public sector pay demands might help the NHS - it certainly won't help inflation. Stopping new north sea oil licenses - in the long run that'll negatively affect our balance of payments and is probably a bit inflationary..
A bit of inflation will be the least of our problems when Starmer kills the UK Oil and Gas industry.
He's gone back on that now. Presumably he now just means to asfixiate it using economic measures a la Sunak/Hunt.
One of the things I don't know how to gauge in terms of public mood is Starmer's unreliability. I can't remember who here was arguing they view him more as a London liberal more to the left of Miliband (which I don't anymore, although did when I voted for him as leader) but his continued flip flopping and rejection of pledges and making new pledges makes it impossible for anyone to truly know what he will do. Perhaps he is just the world's most boring Rorschach test for what you think the baseline of the Labour party is, but I don't know how anyone can say what the likely policies of his government would be - let alone if you support them or not.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
The whole Lords situation is currently in solar orbit with how ridiculous it is. £300 a day for 700 ?!? odd peers to go and snooze on the benches. More and more and more created by each PM - and the rate of retirements/deaths a trickle compared to new appointments.
You could make a reasonable case that the Lords has been an anachronism since the hereditary principle for royalty was abandoned in 1688.
But somehow it keeps staggering on.
The Bill of Rights fine tunes the hereditary principle, but it is a stretch to say it abandons it.
It set aside the King and his son in favour of his nephew, and finally in the Act of Settlement set aside almost all claimants in favour of a distant cousin on the grounds the aforesaid cousin was a Protestant.
I'd say that's abandoning or at least strictly modifying the hereditary principle.
And if it could be done for the most important title - why was it kept for any of them?
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
I just love the fact that the Yanks have an "Inflation Reduction Act" which involves printing and pumping more money into the economy.
Its like any country that calls itself the "Democratic People's Republic of ..." - you instantly know its not democratically elected by the people.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
Okaaaay...well, it's their country.
It's caused all sorts of protocol issues for us when referring to it. Inflation Reduction Act is too much of a mouthful but IRA spelled out feels a little problematic, like the previously uncontroversial name Isis. So we've settled on pronouncing it the "Eye-ra".
Is Biden of the era of Irish American politicians who may or may not have sent some money over to the IRA via various channels, or is even he a bit too young for that?
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
It already stands for Individual Retirement Account (our SIPP) over there.
I posted over a year ago that the government needed to look very aggressively at market competition because interest rates are only one lever against inflation.
Also: where are government interest payments going? Aren't the beneficiaries of higher interest payments going to be doing something with their windfall?
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I am in agreement with this, in principle at least. The trouble with inflation of course is that it's a difficult and unpredictable thing to tame once it's out in the wild. But in an ideal world we would have something like the following now:
- Wage inflation at 7% - CPI at 5% - Interest rates at about 4% - House price inflation at zero
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
Classic example of not applying the precautionary principle. If you have a second home in the EU then even if there's only a 20% risk of your lifestyle being affected by a vote for Brexit, why would you risk it? But some did.
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
Okaaaay...well, it's their country.
It's caused all sorts of protocol issues for us when referring to it. Inflation Reduction Act is too much of a mouthful but IRA spelled out feels a little problematic, like the previously uncontroversial name Isis. So we've settled on pronouncing it the "Eye-ra".
Is Biden of the era of Irish American politicians who may or may not have sent some money over to the IRA via various channels, or is even he a bit too young for that?
It was definitely a thing. I remember concerns about Ted Kennedy's attitude if he became president when he was challenging Carter for the Dem nomination.
Have we done the Survation survey on voters’ knowledge of what inflation means? Stunning ignorance. So ‘halving inflation’ is not a clever bit of spin but a poor one, as voters will see prices still rising and not believe claims of the pledge being met, even if it is.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
I just love the fact that the Yanks have an "Inflation Reduction Act" which involves printing and pumping more money into the economy.
Its like any country that calls itself the "Democratic People's Republic of ..." - you instantly know its not democratically elected by the people.
It's a bit like the recent UK Energy Security Bill.
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
Have you checked at the sites featuring the meerkats, loud opera singer or famous actress playing a pseudo-Bond Q role ?
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
The novelisation of Yes, Prime Minister ends with The National Education Service, and Hacker sadly realising that whatever wins he might achieve, nothing fundamental would change.
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
This is very selectve in its overview of his career. Both at Justice and DEFRA he made significant and lasting change in both culture and practice which have had long reaching positive effects.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Yet Justice is falling apart with cases taking years to get to court.
My father also had Views on his record at DEFRA.
Put it this way, you think I hate him? You should have heard what Dad had to say!
Well at least now we know where you got your irrational hatred from.
In case you've forgotten, he went to DEFRA and earned Dad's ire long after he'd screwed over education.
In case you have forgotten education was screwed over long before Gove ever came on the scene. A third world system run entirely for vested interest and ideology.
The irony of that post is while it was not necessarily true at the time Gove came into power, it was profoundly true of what he left. Especially in making it even more in hock to ideology - including some quite sinister ideologies - and vested interests which are not only not conducive to but positively opposed to the interests of children's education.
There were many problems in education in 2010. The exam system was not good. The curriculum was years out of date. Appointments to senior posts were profoundly corrupt. LEAs were a shambles.
What he left was an exam system that doesn't work at all, a curriculum that was based on naked nativism, a system of appointments to senior posts so corrupt that we actually have people who are entirely unqualified in senior positions and a series of expensive and mostly badly run academy chains taking the place of LEAs working as a gravy train for rather too many sponsoring organisations and their chums.
And I would gently suggest that rather than hector me about it, and attribute my understanding of just how bad things to an 'irrational hatred' of Gove, you remember that I am an expert in the field and you are not. Perhaps therefore the reason I disdain Gove is because I understand fully just how badly he messed up and you do not?
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
Classic example of not applying the precautionary principle. If you have a second home in the EU then even if there's only a 20% risk of your lifestyle being affected by a vote for Brexit, why would you risk it? But some did.
'Project Fear' was the greatest trick Dominic Cummings ever played. Every downside to Brexit was dismissed as a literal impossibility, and literally any person or institution that voiced caution was labelled tendentious, gullible, malign or intellectually feeble. It was a tour de force.
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I am in agreement with this, in principle at least. The trouble with inflation of course is that it's a difficult and unpredictable thing to tame once it's out in the wild. But in an ideal world we would have something like the following now:
- Wage inflation at 7% - CPI at 5% - Interest rates at about 4% - House price inflation at zero
Here's an interesting chart - the average mortgage on the average UK house assuming 0 deposit in Jan 1991 was £633.75.
Now adjusting that £633.75 for inflation (I'm using CPI-H here, other measures are available) and looking at the same av. mortgage payment on the av. house produces the following graph...
EDIT: The graph is mislabelled, the blue line = nominal payments.
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
Classic example of not applying the precautionary principle. If you have a second home in the EU then even if there's only a 20% risk of your lifestyle being affected by a vote for Brexit, why would you risk it? But some did.
Don't think they considered the risks at all. Most mistakes happen when you don't check your assumptions in my experience. Voting Leave was a case in point.
The thing that people refuse to contemplate is price gouging. Obviously the inflation issue we are having was not started by wage increases, because wages have been stagnant for a long time. So meeting inflation that wasn't caused by wage increases with methods that were designed to deal with wage increases will not help, and will indeed just harm poor people. Better would be to enforce monopoly / price fixing laws and tell shops that sell groceries in particular to stop skimming off the top. I know that the UK is worst hit by food inflation because most of our greenhouses are powered by fossil fuels that have been volatile since the start of the Ukraine war, but at the end of the day when stock prices are soaring and dividends are soaring and inflation is hitting the poorest (with the highest percentage increases hitting the cheapest food stuffs) at some point something has got to give.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Do you mean the IRS, or has Joe Biden embraced his Irishness in a new and slightly disturbing way?
The yanks are calling the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA - which I think Biden is fine with considering his Irishness
I just love the fact that the Yanks have an "Inflation Reduction Act" which involves printing and pumping more money into the economy.
Its like any country that calls itself the "Democratic People's Republic of ..." - you instantly know its not democratically elected by the people.
It's a bit like the recent UK Energy Security Bill.
It was all about Joe Manchin. He objected to the original Dem proposals because they were inflationary so they made a couple of window dressings and renamed it to pander to his ego, and hey presto Manchin voted for it.
I'm not an economist, but I have a few friends who are (one did an actuarial degree and that never made sense to me) and they are big MMT proponents. From my limited understanding, their argument for how to deal with current inflation is just wealth redistribution - that taxes are not about "balancing the books" but instead to keep money flowing in the system, and the easiest way to do that would be to take it from the piles of money hoarded by the rich and give it to the poor who will spend it immediately on goods they need - this reduces excess profit seeking (because what's the point of too much profit if the gov is going to just take it away anyway) and solves any crisis in spending power for lower earners. It also stimulates growth - again, if you give poor people a pound they will spend it, if you give a rich person a pound it will sit and accrue interest because it will likely just be invested in inflated assets (housing and stocks). Outside of a moral argument (protestant work ethic people saying people should earn their money need not apply), is this viable economics?
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
I was listening to Will Shirer's diaries (can't quite remember which one) where he describes the opening stages of the Second World War on the Western Front. In it he talks about the state of the British youth, malnourished, rickety, pigeon chested with bad eyesight and remarks that, in contrast to the Germans, the UK had spent the inter-war years neglecting their youth.
Going back to the Boer War, the state of the health of the urban working class was so shocking that even Parliament recognised that it was a serious national security issue.
Our national default is that we love our animals better than our children. When times are good, it's not so much a problem, there's enough to go around but when times are hard then the youth are neglected.
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
Classic example of not applying the precautionary principle. If you have a second home in the EU then even if there's only a 20% risk of your lifestyle being affected by a vote for Brexit, why would you risk it? But some did.
Don't think they considered the risks at all. Most mistakes happen when you don't check your assumptions in my experience. Voting Leave was a case in point.
The bad bits weren't going to happen because they needed us more than we needed them.
Which is why we could use our freedom to go and have affairs with some more glamorous countries whilst still having food and sex at home when we wanted it.
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
BIB is problematic. If its the average then use that. Why then have up to? Its mixed reporting.
There are national trends in adult height - I believe the Dutch are among the tallest on average.
I think they mean the average UK height is 7cm lower than the average in the tallest country, which is OK if you're benchmarking against the best.
But that part isn't a trend as stated, although there does also seem to be a negative trend. UK children used to be amongst the tallest now they are relatively much shorter.
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
They always say that in my experience, for all forms of insurance. Without fail. It's their stock excuse. And then they magically come up with a vastly reduced quote once you decline to accept their quote and say that you are about to put the phone down in order to search a better deal on comparison sites.
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
Surely a notable fat short arsed fatherer of sprogs can’t have had that much of an impact?
Joking aside, that’s actually quite bloody shocking. Will Leon be replicating his ‘A Nation in Decline’ tour in the UK?
I don't understand why people are shocked - appalled, yes, but it has been screamed from the rooftops by many since the beginning of the austerity period that some of the hardest hit will be children; nobody should be surprised by this outcome. The normalisation of food banks is really new. We know child poverty has increased since austerity started, and we know that the modern average increase in height is primarily due to calorific intake increases. If we have a society that is finding it harder to feed themselves and their families well, then of course average heights will decrease.
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
Insuring two motorbikes now costs me nearly 3 grand/year. TPO.
Can't get car insurance at any price so they are all insured in Mrs DA's name with me as a named driver. TPF&T. I also appear to be on some sort of blacklist that makes it impossible to hire a car in any country in the OECD.
The house and outbuildings are only insured by Walther/S&W/Ruger. I don't dial 999.
I'm not an economist, but I have a few friends who are (one did an actuarial degree and that never made sense to me) and they are big MMT proponents. From my limited understanding, their argument for how to deal with current inflation is just wealth redistribution - that taxes are not about "balancing the books" but instead to keep money flowing in the system, and the easiest way to do that would be to take it from the piles of money hoarded by the rich and give it to the poor who will spend it immediately on goods they need - this reduces excess profit seeking (because what's the point of too much profit if the gov is going to just take it away anyway) and solves any crisis in spending power for lower earners. It also stimulates growth - again, if you give poor people a pound they will spend it, if you give a rich person a pound it will sit and accrue interest because it will likely just be invested in inflated assets (housing and stocks). Outside of a moral argument (protestant work ethic people saying people should earn their money need not apply), is this viable economics?
Well it's not MMT because that fell apart when Truss decided to spend money and the markets said happy to do that but we would need a return of x% a year to cover it.
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
Classic example of not applying the precautionary principle. If you have a second home in the EU then even if there's only a 20% risk of your lifestyle being affected by a vote for Brexit, why would you risk it? But some did.
I'm not an economist, but I have a few friends who are (one did an actuarial degree and that never made sense to me) and they are big MMT proponents. From my limited understanding, their argument for how to deal with current inflation is just wealth redistribution - that taxes are not about "balancing the books" but instead to keep money flowing in the system, and the easiest way to do that would be to take it from the piles of money hoarded by the rich and give it to the poor who will spend it immediately on goods they need - this reduces excess profit seeking (because what's the point of too much profit if the gov is going to just take it away anyway) and solves any crisis in spending power for lower earners. It also stimulates growth - again, if you give poor people a pound they will spend it, if you give a rich person a pound it will sit and accrue interest because it will likely just be invested in inflated assets (housing and stocks). Outside of a moral argument (protestant work ethic people saying people should earn their money need not apply), is this viable economics?
Well it's not MMT because that fell apart when Truss decided to spend money and the markets said happy to do that but we would need a return of x% a year to cover it.
Truss' plan wasn't MMT, as far as I'm aware, it was just Reaganomics. Everyone I know (and maybe this is just because I'm a lefty) who talks about MMT says that taxes are essential - although again not as a method of balancing the books, because that doesn't matter if you can print your own money and have a modern economy, but as a release valve for inflation.
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
They always say that in my experience, for all forms of insurance. Without fail. It's their stock excuse. And then they magically come up with a vastly reduced quote once you decline to accept their quote and say that you are about to put the phone down in order to search a better deal on comparison sites.
It's everyone's absolute duty to try and get the lowest possible prices too - even if they can afford the higher ones to try and tame inflation too.
Just had a house insurance renewal quote. 75% increase. Saga. Bloke on phone said it was market and the rise not untypical. And could do little to reduce. Is this common experience? Is insurance especially inflationery?
My experience too. Was with a company that was quite cheap and which we were happy with. Price increased 30%. Checked with a few other companies , all much more expensive, so stuck with the quote.
I suspect it has something to do with the rule change last year where insurance companies were banned from offering new customers better rates than existing. So they competed to get the customers to switch and once locked in jacked the prices up. A case of unintended consequences, I guess.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
I’ve always wondered if the monarch would create 500 peers to abolish the lords.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
But if you, er, your friend were the dictator you, er, your friend wouldn't need the Lords to vote through its abolition, shurely?
I’d be a benign dictator.
Using my democratic legitimacy to ensure all my manifesto commitments would be delivered.
Really?
If I had the job I would do the full Monty.
Parades of flagwaving school children, tanks in Trafalgar Square, a picture of myself on every wall enforced by arbitrary power, destruction of historic sites to build grandiose gaudy palaces. That sort of thing...
I'm not an economist, but I have a few friends who are (one did an actuarial degree and that never made sense to me) and they are big MMT proponents. From my limited understanding, their argument for how to deal with current inflation is just wealth redistribution - that taxes are not about "balancing the books" but instead to keep money flowing in the system, and the easiest way to do that would be to take it from the piles of money hoarded by the rich and give it to the poor who will spend it immediately on goods they need - this reduces excess profit seeking (because what's the point of too much profit if the gov is going to just take it away anyway) and solves any crisis in spending power for lower earners. It also stimulates growth - again, if you give poor people a pound they will spend it, if you give a rich person a pound it will sit and accrue interest because it will likely just be invested in inflated assets (housing and stocks). Outside of a moral argument (protestant work ethic people saying people should earn their money need not apply), is this viable economics?
Well it's not MMT because that fell apart when Truss decided to spend money and the markets said happy to do that but we would need a return of x% a year to cover it.
Truss' plan wasn't MMT, as far as I'm aware, it was just Reaganomics. Everyone I know (and maybe this is just because I'm a lefty) who talks about MMT says that taxes are essential - although again not as a method of balancing the books, because that doesn't matter if you can print your own money and have a modern economy, but as a release valve for inflation.
And what you're describing isn't MMT either but just soak the rich tax and spend.
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I am in agreement with this, in principle at least. The trouble with inflation of course is that it's a difficult and unpredictable thing to tame once it's out in the wild. But in an ideal world we would have something like the following now:
- Wage inflation at 7% - CPI at 5% - Interest rates at about 4% - House price inflation at zero
Thanks, yeah that sounds ideal.
Even then it'd take more than a decade to bring house costs back down to a semi-reasonable income multiple, they'd still be high by historic standards even after a decade of that. However realistically 2% real wage growth seems unlikely at the moment, so I'd probably tweak your numbers a bit.
Wage inflation at 8% CPI at 7% Interest rates at about 5% House price -2% (so moderate deflation)
Even those fairly extreme looking numbers would still take a decade to get us back down to a reasonable house price to income multiplier.
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I am in agreement with this, in principle at least. The trouble with inflation of course is that it's a difficult and unpredictable thing to tame once it's out in the wild. But in an ideal world we would have something like the following now:
- Wage inflation at 7% - CPI at 5% - Interest rates at about 4% - House price inflation at zero
Thanks, yeah that sounds ideal.
Even then it'd take more than a decade to bring house costs back down to a semi-reasonable income multiple, they'd still be high by historic standards even after a decade of that. However realistically 2% real wage growth seems unlikely at the moment, so I'd probably tweak your numbers a bit.
Wage inflation at 8% CPI at 7% Interest rates at about 5% House price -2% (so moderate deflation)
Even those fairly extreme looking numbers would still take a decade to get us back down to a reasonable house price to income multiplier.
I think the wage/house price ratios will be back in line quicker than you'll think. Pretty much the entirity of house price rises since at least 1991 are explainable by generally falling interest rates.
I am not sure which flip flop this day is for Keir Starmer
Yesterday I will stop resignation honours lists
Today labour will appoint over 100 peers as we do not have the expertise in government on our own benches
Those two statements aren't contradictory.
If you look at the reason it is reasonable, Labour only has 174 peers, making up just 22% of the total.
Crossbenchers have 183 peers and the Tories have 263 peers.
This is to stop the Tories denying the will of the people after the next election.
You should spend some time reading up on the People's Budget of 1909/10.
Actually the 500 Liberal peers were granted (but never elevated) to pass the Parliament Act of 1911.
It would have been ironic if 500 Liberal peers had been created, giving them an inbuilt majority in the Lords in the 1920s even as their representation in the Commons dwindled to nothing...
I’ve always wondered if the monarch would create 500 peers to abolish the lords.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
But if you, er, your friend were the dictator you, er, your friend wouldn't need the Lords to vote through its abolition, shurely?
I’d be a benign dictator.
Using my democratic legitimacy to ensure all my manifesto commitments would be delivered.
Really?
If I had the job I would do the full Monty.
Parades of flagwaving school children, tanks in Trafalgar Square, a picture of myself on every wall enforced by arbitrary power, destruction of historic sites to build grandiose gaudy palaces. That sort of thing...
I would aim to model any dictator on Vetinari from Discworld - his absurdist nihilism allows him to recognise the futility in self aggrandisement and hedonism, and arguably tries to get things to function for the benefit of the many. The fact that many of the things that happen as consequences of that also happen to benefit him personally, if not in a monetary sense but in a personal sense, is pure coincidence, I'm sure...
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I am in agreement with this, in principle at least. The trouble with inflation of course is that it's a difficult and unpredictable thing to tame once it's out in the wild. But in an ideal world we would have something like the following now:
- Wage inflation at 7% - CPI at 5% - Interest rates at about 4% - House price inflation at zero
Thanks, yeah that sounds ideal.
Even then it'd take more than a decade to bring house costs back down to a semi-reasonable income multiple, they'd still be high by historic standards even after a decade of that. However realistically 2% real wage growth seems unlikely at the moment, so I'd probably tweak your numbers a bit.
Wage inflation at 8% CPI at 7% Interest rates at about 5% House price -2% (so moderate deflation)
Even those fairly extreme looking numbers would still take a decade to get us back down to a reasonable house price to income multiplier.
I think the wage/house price ratios will be back in line quicker than you'll think.
I would love it if you're right, but it will be only if the numbers are more extreme than those I wrote.
If enough idiots vote for him and he gets another MP gig, then surely the people have spoken/democracy in action, blah, blah, blah. But he ain't getting back in. He's done. Dusted. Labour are going to form the next government and Johnson will be irrelevant.
I've asked the following question many times, but never get an answer. Who do PB Tories actually want to lead the party?
Not my business, of course, but (pace ydoethur) Gove would be good - not bad at combative politics but also a genuine old-fashioned politician keen to change things for the good of the country. Some of his changes have been very controversial, but at least he enriches public debate. What do Sunak, Hunt, Mordaunt, etc. actually stand for? When did they last say anything new?
I think Gove has been around too long, and there are too many hostages to fortune in choosing him. The problem with others like Alex Chalk, for example, is that he is too public school smooth, and is unlikely to hold his seat anyway. Tobias Ellwood has also annoyed too many with his rebellious antics, but there is a portion of the party establishment that would go for him.
The puff piece for Penny Mordaunt in the Times today suggests that if she holds her own seat, she is in with a good shout. However, that is a pretty big "if".
The big deal for the post defeat Tories will be "Character", hence the interesting positioning of Mordaunt and Ellwood.
As an outsider, I was impressed by Little Tommy Tug in the first Tory leadership contest last year. Tugendhat was never in thrall to Boris Johnson and he wasn't afraid to say so, either. (Let's not forget his straightforward "no" while the other candidates prevaricated when asked if Johnson was honest during the TV debate.) He looked the part, sounded credible and didn't come across as a wall-eyed loon that would embarrass the country on the international stage if he got anywhere near the reins of power. All of which will rule him out if and when the Tories insist on going through the comfort zone phase of opposition after GE2023/4. (See also: Penny Dreadful, although she achieved the extraordinary feat of alienating both the moderates and the headbangers with her wishy-washiness on trans rights, of course.)
I think it was HYUFD that was ramping Steve Barclay as next Tory leader and (I can't believe I'm writing this but stopped clocks twice a day and all that) that doesn't seem to be an unreasonable prediction... although I wouldn't bank on Barclay if the headbangers are insistent on having one of their own as leader. Kemi Badenochpowell and Suella De Vil are not credible as potential PMs... but when did that stop a party membership (of any coloured rosette) opting for indulgence rather than credibility when choosing a leader?
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
I was listening to Will Shirer's diaries (can't quite remember which one) where he describes the opening stages of the Second World War on the Western Front. In it he talks about the state of the British youth, malnourished, rickety, pigeon chested with bad eyesight and remarks that, in contrast to the Germans, the UK had spent the inter-war years neglecting their youth.
Going back to the Boer War, the state of the health of the urban working class was so shocking that even Parliament recognised that it was a serious national security issue.
Our national default is that we love our animals better than our children. When times are good, it's not so much a problem, there's enough to go around but when times are hard then the youth are neglected.
Go to any poor area and the result of the last decade of Tory spite and meanness is there in front of your eyes, many of the children either too thin or too fat, self evidently not properly nourished. Recall that policies such as the welfare cap and the two child rule are designed specifically to "remind parents that children cost money" ie to make sure that poor parents don't have enough money to raise their children properly. That is government policy. And it is utterly self defeating of course because these children will grow up to be less intelligent, less productive and more sickly adults and the whole country will be poorer.
Good news IMHO that inflation is not falling as fast as people want.
It's a view. A fairly unique one.
Is it that unique?
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
I am in agreement with this, in principle at least. The trouble with inflation of course is that it's a difficult and unpredictable thing to tame once it's out in the wild. But in an ideal world we would have something like the following now:
- Wage inflation at 7% - CPI at 5% - Interest rates at about 4% - House price inflation at zero
Thanks, yeah that sounds ideal.
Even then it'd take more than a decade to bring house costs back down to a semi-reasonable income multiple, they'd still be high by historic standards even after a decade of that. However realistically 2% real wage growth seems unlikely at the moment, so I'd probably tweak your numbers a bit.
Wage inflation at 8% CPI at 7% Interest rates at about 5% House price -2% (so moderate deflation)
Even those fairly extreme looking numbers would still take a decade to get us back down to a reasonable house price to income multiplier.
I think the wage/house price ratios will be back in line quicker than you'll think.
I would love it if you're right, but it will be only if the numbers are more extreme than those I wrote.
In which case what figures are you expecting?
Interest rates haven't (properly) risen yet. If/when they go over 6% we'll probably get a house price drop. Wage inflation will carry on at 7% for a bit eating into the multiplier.
Jesus Christ. Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
Meanwhile, in "another sign that something's not right" news,
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
I was listening to Will Shirer's diaries (can't quite remember which one) where he describes the opening stages of the Second World War on the Western Front. In it he talks about the state of the British youth, malnourished, rickety, pigeon chested with bad eyesight and remarks that, in contrast to the Germans, the UK had spent the inter-war years neglecting their youth.
Going back to the Boer War, the state of the health of the urban working class was so shocking that even Parliament recognised that it was a serious national security issue.
Our national default is that we love our animals better than our children. When times are good, it's not so much a problem, there's enough to go around but when times are hard then the youth are neglected.
Go to any poor area and the result of the last decade of Tory spite and meanness is there in front of your eyes, many of the children either too thin or too fat, self evidently not properly nourished. Recall that policies such as the welfare cap and the two child rule are designed specifically to "remind parents that children cost money" ie to make sure that poor parents don't have enough money to raise their children properly. That is government policy. And it is utterly self defeating of course because these children will grow up to be less intelligent, less productive and more sickly adults and the whole country will be poorer.
The two child rule for welfare is entirely reasonable. Children are a choice to have, and both contraception and abortion are free of charge on the NHS.
If you already have two children, why should the taxpayer pay for a third, fourth, fifth, sixth or more on welfare while those working for a living decide that more kids are unaffordable?
Comments
Let us return from Mars for a second.
Asking for a friend who would put abolition of the lords in his manifesto to be the country’s first directly elected dictator.
But somehow it keeps staggering on.
Official figures showed that government borrowing rose by £20 billion in May, larger than the £18.3 billion expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility and beating economists’ estimates of about £19.5 billion.
The jump in borrowing was driven by a higher debt interest bill as inflation has remained stubbornly strong this year, alongside a rise in government spending on pay for NHS staff, energy subsidies for households, and an uprating in benefits, said the Office for National Statistics.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-debt-borrowing-gdp-ons-2023-tmgpcg8cs
Gove's career has been about big, disruptive changes, whether at Education or Brexit. Both of those legacies are, at best, mixed, and his planning reforms have largely been blown up by Conservative Nimbies.
I do wonder if he's had his Jim Hacker moment.
Most voters wrongly think Sunak's halving inflation pledge would stop prices going up, poll suggests -
https://twitter.com/AndrewSparrow/status/1671451059510706177
Using my democratic legitimacy to ensure all my manifesto commitments would be delivered.
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/21st-century-biplane/
A few years of moderately high wage and CPI growth, combined with moderate nominal falls in house prices, is just what is needed to rebalance the economy and bring back down real house prices down to a sensible level without having a major crash and massive negative equity.
For too long the only inflation people cared about was CPI inflation, and not inflation in the number one cost of living which is housing - which too many in charge mistakenly class as an "asset" instead of a "cost" which is what it really is.
So that makes the suggestion it was hereditary and therefore reforming its mode of selection doubly anachronistic.
Radiohead on the radio 24/7
A better Britain, a brighter Britain.
He is very much a details, evidence based person. Looking at what the real problems are in departments and listening to all sides rather than just the usual lobbyists.
Not actually funny in the sense of 'would make you laugh'. But then none of them actually do that. But makes its point in a non-contrived way and in a way which doesn't make you think 'that could have been done much more succinctly and effectively in a sentence'.
I'd say that's abandoning or at least strictly modifying the hereditary principle.
And if it could be done for the most important title - why was it kept for any of them?
Put it this way, you think I hate him? You should have heard what Dad had to say!
Will the last person to leave Britain pls turn out the lights. How on earth could everything go so wrong?
The wage crunch is the worst since 1850 apparently, which is even beyond Big G’s recollection.
If the BoE and Government continue in their current course of action, they will see more strikes and worse results. The USA has gone full Keynesian - the IRA is moving money around and putting it in the pockets of those who need it. The UK has decided that after a decade of cutting spending to the bone, who really needs bones anyway - we can keep cutting through...
Hell, even the New Statesman, that bastion of neoliberal consensus, accepts corporate greed is a significant factor:
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2023/03/britain-rising-inflation-corporate-greed
There are multiple classes of inflation, but for too long only inflation in goods and services have been all the Bank of England concerned itself with. Despite the fact the number one cost in a household's budget is not food, its not electricity, its not gas, its not TVs or Sky or mobile phones. The main cost in a household's budget is housing.
And yet the number one cost in a household's budget was excluded from measurements of inflation. And then governments of both parties have tapped themselves on the back and said how great a job they're doing in keeping inflation low. Because goods imported from China are cheap, while the main cost in a household's budget has been going up - but we'll just ignore that.
For a long time on here I've been saying what an issue housing was, and I'd be fine with negative equity if it fixes it (including for myself, I bought last year so I'll be one of first hit if it happens). And many, many people here have responded saying the solution needed is not negative equity, but house prices growing at less than inflation to bring down real prices without negative equity.
Well how can the latter happen, if inflation doesn't exist or is at 2% or below?
Its remarkable how many people can simultaneously say they don't want the risk of negative equity so want to see house prices not fall but rise by less than inflation, while simultaneously saying they don't want any inflation. The two principles can't go together.
Now 100% of GDP, first time since 1961.
By his own logic, Rishi will want to avoid tax cuts.
But he won’t, because he’s bet the proverbial bank on that political strategy.
Its like any country that calls itself the "Democratic People's Republic of ..." - you instantly know its not democratically elected by the people.
Five-year-olds in Britain are on average up to seven centimetres shorter than their peers in other wealthy nations, in a trend described as “pretty startling”.
A poor national diet has been highlighted as a major culprit in Britain’s fall down international rankings of child height...
“It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe,” he added. “But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e5538510-0f87-11ee-a92d-cf7c831c99b5?shareToken=99c2af425af7826757d7d2a6a9f07fd3
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/how-brexit-killed-the-expat-dream/
FFS - what did these people think would happen?
Brexit - driving up inflation, making people poorer, not delivering anything that it promised except for the bastards who are happy to see us all poorer so they can profit.
- Wage inflation at 7%
- CPI at 5%
- Interest rates at about 4%
- House price inflation at zero
Britain really faces a perfect storm.
Every single chicken has come home to roost at the same time.
There are national trends in adult height - I believe the Dutch are among the tallest on average.
If children are further away at age 5 then age 19 wouldn't it be that the last five years have been worse assuming a frictionless environment?
There were many problems in education in 2010. The exam system was not good. The curriculum was years out of date. Appointments to senior posts were profoundly corrupt. LEAs were a shambles.
What he left was an exam system that doesn't work at all, a curriculum that was based on naked nativism, a system of appointments to senior posts so corrupt that we actually have people who are entirely unqualified in senior positions and a series of expensive and mostly badly run academy chains taking the place of LEAs working as a gravy train for rather too many sponsoring organisations and their chums.
And I would gently suggest that rather than hector me about it, and attribute my understanding of just how bad things to an 'irrational hatred' of Gove, you remember that I am an expert in the field and you are not. Perhaps therefore the reason I disdain Gove is because I understand fully just how badly he messed up and you do not?
As is the triple lock.
Joking aside, that’s actually quite bloody shocking. Will Leon be replicating his ‘A Nation in Decline’ tour in the UK?
Now adjusting that £633.75 for inflation (I'm using CPI-H here, other measures are available) and looking at the same av. mortgage payment on the av. house produces the following graph...
EDIT: The graph is mislabelled, the blue line = nominal payments.
Going back to the Boer War, the state of the health of the urban working class was so shocking that even Parliament recognised that it was a serious national security issue.
Our national default is that we love our animals better than our children. When times are good, it's not so much a problem, there's enough to go around but when times are hard then the youth are neglected.
Which is why we could use our freedom to go and have affairs with some more glamorous countries whilst still having food and sex at home when we wanted it.
But that part isn't a trend as stated, although there does also seem to be a negative trend. UK children used to be amongst the tallest now they are relatively much shorter.
Can't get car insurance at any price so they are all insured in Mrs DA's name with me as a named driver. TPF&T. I also appear to be on some sort of blacklist that makes it impossible to hire a car in any country in the OECD.
The house and outbuildings are only insured by Walther/S&W/Ruger. I don't dial 999.
I suspect it has something to do with the rule change last year where insurance companies were banned from offering new customers better rates than existing. So they competed to get the customers to switch and once locked in jacked the prices up. A case of unintended consequences, I guess.
If I had the job I would do the full Monty.
Parades of flagwaving school children, tanks in Trafalgar Square, a picture of myself on every wall enforced by arbitrary power, destruction of historic sites to build grandiose gaudy palaces. That sort of thing...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/21/rishi-sunak-news-latest-covid-lockdown-inquiry/
Even then it'd take more than a decade to bring house costs back down to a semi-reasonable income multiple, they'd still be high by historic standards even after a decade of that. However realistically 2% real wage growth seems unlikely at the moment, so I'd probably tweak your numbers a bit.
Wage inflation at 8%
CPI at 7%
Interest rates at about 5%
House price -2% (so moderate deflation)
Even those fairly extreme looking numbers would still take a decade to get us back down to a reasonable house price to income multiplier.
In which case what figures are you expecting?
I think it was HYUFD that was ramping Steve Barclay as next Tory leader and (I can't believe I'm writing this but stopped clocks twice a day and all that) that doesn't seem to be an unreasonable prediction... although I wouldn't bank on Barclay if the headbangers are insistent on having one of their own as leader. Kemi Badenochpowell and Suella De Vil are not credible as potential PMs... but when did that stop a party membership (of any coloured rosette) opting for indulgence rather than credibility when choosing a leader?
If you already have two children, why should the taxpayer pay for a third, fourth, fifth, sixth or more on welfare while those working for a living decide that more kids are unaffordable?