So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Thank you HY...er I mean Barty. I love it when you talk selective statistics.
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?
And yet the PISA ratings for the UK education system collapsed between 2000 and 2012 (from 7th to 24th in maths. Similar falls in Science and reading.) and only started to recover after the Tory reforms were introduced.
Perhaps I am being a bit thick here, but surely any subsidy for mortgage holders simply negates the point of putting up interest rates, and sets up further rises.
Apart from being a daft way to spend tax payers money.
Yes, it’s possibly the stupidist housing policy suggestion since “help to buy”. UK house prices need to be allowed to fall, in some areas substantially. The only useful policy suggestion at this point, is to encourage longer-term fixes on mortgage rates, but that requires substantial liquidity in longer-term capital and bond markets. 10y and 20y money needs to be cheaper than 2y and 5y money.
The victims of the Titanic submarine disaster are believed to be alive 3,800m under the Atlantic Ocean and desperately trying to raise help.
GB News understands regular SOS taps have been heard and two vehicles, which could only dive to 3000m, both imploded when they attempted to plunge lower.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Thank you HY...er I mean Barty. I love it when you talk selective statistics.
The selective statistics make my point.
The world is complicated. Just as Sweden has 9.7% inflation currently, there is no reason to believe the UK would not have ~8.1% even in a parallel universe where we voted Remain.
We'd have still been as reliant on gas as we are for our energy etc
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
2) is not how things work. You can only foreclose on a mortgage if the borrower defaults.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
The victims of the Titanic submarine disaster are believed to be alive 3,800m under the Atlantic Ocean and desperately trying to raise help.
GB News understands regular SOS taps have been heard and two vehicles, which could only dive to 3000m, both imploded when they attempted to plunge lower.
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
2) is not how things work. You can only foreclose on a mortgage if the borrower defaults.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
I agree that inflation figures are nonsense, but its not just in the UK and not because of food.
Food and other essentials are going up by more than 8% and that's reported in the official statistics and weighted appropriately.
The problem with inflation isn't what's being included, its what's not being included. In the 1970s the number one cost in a household's budget was food. In 2020s the number one cost in a household's budget is housing.
But the latter is not included properly in inflation figures.
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
It is fairly remarkable that Cameron, who wasn't the worst of communicators, failed to get people like that onside.
Similarly, I often end up listening to Farming Today when I wake up early. Farmers who appear complaining about Brexit, having voted for it, seems an almost daily occurrence.
Best bit is Tony n Suze from Manchester
“We can only stay here for four days, in order to have a longer stay this summer. These new post-Brexit travel rules are driving us mad and killing our dolce vita. We’re second-home owners, we should be treated differently from other Brit tourists. This cottage has cost us a fortune to restyle. We thought we were going to spend our future life here,” says Tony, who used to work at a software company...."
That's not a parody ?
Probably not. It is startling how many people honestly believed that freedom of movement was only about Johnny Foreigner coming here to pick carrots and strawberries and not about our freedom to travel to and live/work in Foreignland.
This compounded with massive net migration figures, overseen by a government whose simple policy is to have more and fewer migrants simultaneously, cannot assist the cause of all those people who thought it a good idea to leave the EU without joining EEA/EFTA.
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
Best post I have read here in a long time. I especially liked the bit about getting rid of planning. It would also have the secondary effect of improving infrastructure including roads, 4G/5G etc
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
You're not the only one. Moneysavingexpert and Which (as I commented yesterday) are saying exactly the same. And as time goes on, that inflation measure moves on,l excluding the previous inflation already oven-baked in, as Mr J Might say.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Lots of people vote for things/parties they don't understand. For example throughout the decades a high percentage of Labour voters have been in favour of reducing immigration, and obviously must not have realised that Labour has been in favour of more immigration since the 1960s.
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?
And yet the PISA ratings for the UK education system collapsed between 2000 and 2012 (from 7th to 24th in maths. Similar falls in Science and reading.) and only started to recover after the Tory reforms were introduced.
On the other hand, there is a time lag in those ratings, surely? Not familiar with the details.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
You're not the only one. Moneysavingexpert and Which (as I commented yesterday) are saying exactly the same. And as time goes on, that inflation measure moves on,l excluding the previous inflation already oven-baked in, as Mr J Might say.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
There is a post on Reddit (which can't be accessed right now due to some dispute) that says the Mail popup is not really Chrome, it's some kind of fake
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
I agree that inflation figures are nonsense, but its not just in the UK and not because of food.
Food and other essentials are going up by more than 8% and that's reported in the official statistics and weighted appropriately.
The problem with inflation isn't what's being included, its what's not being included. In the 1970s the number one cost in a household's budget was food. In 2020s the number one cost in a household's budget is housing.
But the latter is not included properly in inflation figures.
Three things have been obvious for years to most ordinary non economists, and attention to them 10/20 years ago would have changed things for the better.
1) That QE is simply printing money by another name and will therefore be inflationary
2) That having an inflation target of 2% but not including the price of houses/housing in the index will (aided by QE) cause an asset bubble.
3) Virtually zero interest rates distorts markets and will lead to intractable problems of asset price rises and encourage bad lending and borrowing.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
There is a post on Reddit (which can't be accessed right now due to some dispute) that says the Mail popup is not really Chrome, it's some kind of fake
It'll be absolute positioning of a CSS modal, styled to look like a Chrome notification. Get an ad blocker and it will go away
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
There is a post on Reddit (which can't be accessed right now due to some dispute) that says the Mail popup is not really Chrome, it's some kind of fake
I may have "solved" it - for now - by putting my computer on permanent Do Not Disturb, which means I don't get ANY notifications about anything. Not ideal, but it's better than learning about the Titanic sub rescue EVERY SIXTY FIVE SECONDS
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Paywalled but my subjective, sorry, my lived experience of taking prescription modafinil is that while it does aid concentration, it narrows focus which may or may not be a good thing. If you like, it keeps you awake but does not stop you getting tired.
You can read a few articles every so often by registering without paying.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
There is a post on Reddit (which can't be accessed right now due to some dispute) that says the Mail popup is not really Chrome, it's some kind of fake
I may have "solved" it - for now - by putting my computer on permanent Do Not Disturb, which means I don't get ANY notifications about anything. Not ideal, but it's better than learning about the Titanic sub rescue EVERY SIXTY FIVE SECONDS
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
Well, yes, but food inflation (which is very high) is only part of overall inflation.
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
Starmer got monstered by a very impressive Sunak. Not mentioning Sunak's vote failure was a massive error, same goes for Flynn, although he did manage to bring in Brexit as the problem. Rishi handled both very well.
The mortgage issue was batted back as Labour's failure.
Possibly Starmer's worst performance against Sunak and a much improved Sunak. Not least because Starmer was rubbish.
Hmm, didn't you say much the same last week? I didn't listen to PMQs so don't have a view, but I don't get the impression that you've been an SKS fan at any time.
Starmer asked the same question six times and each time got a non-answer from Sunak. He didn't mention Sunak's no vote. He didn't mention Sunak's tacit contempt of parliament by not voting in favour of the committee report. He didn't mention inflation or the boats failures. He was useless and he had stacks of material to bury Sunak under. He was unacceptably poor.
- the blog is by no means routinely supportive of Starmer, but this time says
"It was obvious that Keir Starmer won those exchanges when Rishi Sunak started his final answer with the words: “No amount of personal attacks and petty point-scoring will disguise the fact that [Starmer] does not have a plan for this country.” Complaining about “personal attacks and petty point-scoring” at PMQs is a serious category error; it is a bit like playing football and then moaning about your opponents only being interested in kicking the ball into the back of your net.
PMQs is an environment where leaders have to combine clear, broad-brush strategic messaging with sly digs that undermine the standing and authority of their rivals. It is a hard trick to pull off; too high-minded, and you look naive; too personal, and you just look nasty. Starmer gets the balance just about right, and today his jibes against Sunak were considerably more effective than anything coming in the opposite direction." (extract - the blog has considerably more).
I think the Committee report and who voted on it is a Westminster issue and unlikely to resonate much with the public. By contrast, he does mention mortgage inflation at some length, with a telling example.
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
Mortgage rights are only worth anything in default, not if payments remain current
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?
And yet the PISA ratings for the UK education system collapsed between 2000 and 2012 (from 7th to 24th in maths. Similar falls in Science and reading.) and only started to recover after the Tory reforms were introduced.
In all the last, abject 13 years of Tory government, one of the few areas of competence - in my personal experience as a parent (others may differ) - has been education. Far from perfect - what is? - but definite improvements
The popularity of UK universities abroad is testament to that, even if it is a kind of Ponzi scheme
I am grasping at straws when I try and think of any other notable improvements 2010-2023. The Liz Line in infrastructure, I guess. You could argue Cameron lanced the boil of Scottish independence by calling and winning the indyref but then the desire for indy only grew after that, the UK just got lucky with the recent inplosion of the SNP
After that..... uhm..... anything else? Can anyone name anything else the Tories have done which is definitely good?
(Let's ignore Brexit, no one is going to change their minds on that, it is theological)
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Norman Lamont says the financial chaos is not due to Brexit. Hooray.
Actually a former member of the Bank of England Committee said on Sophie on Sunday that the financial chaos is rooted in covid and Ukraine and only in part Brexit
For you, Lamont and Ridge's guest there are 30 other economic commentators who do blame Brexit.
He did reference Brexit but covid and the war in Ukraine are the main drivers
I agree. Perhaps 20% of 30% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit. You might say it was a mistake to vote for something with a similar effect to the worst pandemic of recent times and the first full scale war in Europe in 80 years.
Perhaps 0.2% to 0.3% of the current cost of living increases are due to Brexit.
The pandemic is perhaps about 49.9% and the war in Ukraine is about 49.9%
The US has Covid but not Ukraine as a material factor - inflation 4% The EU has Covid & Ukraine but not Brexit as a material factor - inflation 6.1% The UK has all - inflation 8.1%
The US had both as material factors and had double-digit inflation recently. The Federal Reserve was a lot more aggressive than the Bank of England.
UK currently has 8.1% inflation Sweden currently has 9.7% inflation Poland currently has 13% inflation
Its almost as if there's more going on than just Brexit.
Inflation figures in Britain are c*ck, as they probably are in those other countries too. Soon if I have the time I will look at my weekly Tesco's bills and plot them on a graph. Dunno about everyone else, but my expenditure on food and other essentials has risen at far more than 8% in the past year, and it's not because I'm eating more or differently or using more washing powder etc. etc.
Food inflation is only a part of overall inflation. Of course inflation is different in different parts of the economy, it always is. Headline inflation doesn't necessarily match your personal experience, nor mine, and furthermore yours and mine might not match each other. Even two shoppers in the same Tesco might experience different rates, depending on what they buy.
Save yourself the effort of going through your receipts. The effect is well known already.
There’s a suggestion that the highest inflation in supermarkets, has been of the cheapest own-brand “value” lines. If you buy mostly those, you may see 20-30% inflation in your weekly shopping bill.
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?
And yet the PISA ratings for the UK education system collapsed between 2000 and 2012 (from 7th to 24th in maths. Similar falls in Science and reading.) and only started to recover after the Tory reforms were introduced.
In all the last, abject 13 years of Tory government, one of the few areas of competence - in my personal experience as a parent (others may differ) - has been education. Far from perfect - what is? - but definite improvements
The popularity of UK universities abroad is testament to that, even if it is a kind of Ponzi scheme
I am grasping at straws when I try and think of any other notable improvements 2010-2023. The Liz Line in infrastructure, I guess. You could argue Cameron lanced the boil of Scottish independence by calling and winning the indyref but then the desire for indy only grew after that, the UK just got lucky with the recent inplosion of the SNP
After that..... uhm..... anything else? Can anyone name anything else the Tories have done which is definitely good?
(Let's ignore Brexit, no one is going to change their minds on that, it is theological)
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
I think you're putting the c**t before the horse by assuming what the intended word was. Or, if it's a young male horse, the c**t before the c**t.
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
That’s on the automatic list - c-word uncensored puts you in the bin, until a moderator reviews your account. OGH doesn’t like it.
There’s also some generic Vanilla rules that run on the background. A couple of weeks ago I had a post deleted (presumably by Vanilla rather than a human PB moderator), that referenced a famously unlawful number from 2007.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In which case I don't agree with your premise, the economy has not always been organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy. Indeed many wealthy people have lost a fortune in shocks, and so long as the state doesn't intervene to prevent businesses like Lehman's from collapsing they always will.
Working people don't get better off by living a life on benefits, that's a poverty trap that means your aspiration is only to keep what you get from welfare, while the rich can benefit from growth.
Working people get better off by ensuring wages are growing and that people keep more of their wages. The Conservatives used to believe in this, under people like Thatcher, which is why I supported them. They don't anymore under Rishi it seems, which is why I don't support them anymore.
If you want policies to help people, then work out the impediments stopping people from keeping more of their wages and look for ways to remove them. Especially when those working for a living can be paying 70%+ of their marginal wages in real taxation.
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Is there a list of forum rules anywhere? I don't want to be banned and I can't go back and edit the offending post now to remove that word.
ETA: I do realise the irony here in acting rashly without due awareness of the potential consequences for me of my own actions.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
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?
And yet the PISA ratings for the UK education system collapsed between 2000 and 2012 (from 7th to 24th in maths. Similar falls in Science and reading.) and only started to recover after the Tory reforms were introduced.
In all the last, abject 13 years of Tory government, one of the few areas of competence - in my personal experience as a parent (others may differ) - has been education. Far from perfect - what is? - but definite improvements
The popularity of UK universities abroad is testament to that, even if it is a kind of Ponzi scheme
I am grasping at straws when I try and think of any other notable improvements 2010-2023. The Liz Line in infrastructure, I guess. You could argue Cameron lanced the boil of Scottish independence by calling and winning the indyref but then the desire for indy only grew after that, the UK just got lucky with the recent inplosion of the SNP
After that..... uhm..... anything else? Can anyone name anything else the Tories have done which is definitely good?
(Let's ignore Brexit, no one is going to change their minds on that, it is theological)
2010-23? Equal marriage in England and Wales.
The Tories didn't do that. More Tories voted against it than for it. Cameron deserves credit, as do all the MPs of whichever party who voted for it. But if you want to judge the Conservative Party as a whole on it, they net opposed it, so they can fuck off on that front.
Ah, thanks. And look at the C of E. Okay, scratch equal marriage for gays. What else?
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In that case, the best thing that’s happened to British workers in a generation has been the EU exit - as there’s now employers fighting over employees, and not the other way around.
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Is there a list of forum rules anywhere? I don't want to be banned and I can't go back and edit the offending post now to remove that word.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
wwe.malwarebytes.com. Recommended for all Windows users anyway.
It sounds like Windows notification bar messages. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get you instructions on stopping them.
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.
I didn't say it was unreasonable it just looks like flip flopping again
It only looks like flip flopping if you’re a partisan.
It is still bollocks and shows that it will just be another bunch of grifters looking to line their own pockets with legions of sockpuppets in plum public jobs.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
wwe.malwarebytes.com. Recommended for all Windows users anyway.
It sounds like Windows notification bar messages. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get you instructions on stopping them.
wwe? Is that the subdomain for when you're really wrestling with malware?
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Is there a list of forum rules anywhere? I don't want to be banned and I can't go back and edit the offending post now to remove that word.
1. Don't say cnut 2. Radiohead are awesome 3. Pineapple on pizza is fantas[BANNED - Moderator]
4. If you are a genuine Britisher who actually, weirdly, is anti-vax and bigoted don’t make your first day of posting a Saturday morning and remember to use punctuation.
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
What utter bollocks. Not even economics for Dummies of Dummies.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In that case, the best thing that’s happened to British workers in a generation has been the EU exit - as there’s now employers fighting over employees, and not the other way around.
Depends I think it's just moved things round a bit.
It used to be that those just above minimum wage were impacted because of Eastern Europeans coming here to get work.
Now it's people in skilled jobs not getting payrises because there are plenty of overseas people willing to take a job that pays £45,000 say for £40,000..
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In that case, the best thing that’s happened to British workers in a generation has been the EU exit - as there’s now employers fighting over employees, and not the other way around.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
Would it be a bad thing to get rid of all notifications?
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
House prices are set at the margins - with prices based on the maximum a person can borrow. Which is why up North you see 2 up 2 down terrance houses for £100.000+ because BTL landlords paid stupid money for them..
I highly doubt Leon is even having problems, this is just the latest attention-seeking effort. Ignore.
If I seek or need attention, you'll certainly know about it. Because I will come up with something a tad more exciting than "the Daily Mail is sending me notifications"
Even as I type this, another has appeared. It's like catching smallpox and watching the lesions grow. AAAAARGH
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
Would it be a bad thing to get rid of all notifications?
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
Best post I have read here in a long time. I especially liked the bit about getting rid of planning. It would also have the secondary effect of improving infrastructure including roads, 4G/5G etc
No surprise a nutter like you would think it was good
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
You whingers just want something for nothing. Back when men were men we had to do it all ourselves , no help from anyone and just hard graft. 21st century has produced nothing but lazy whining whingers.
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
Best post I have read here in a long time. I especially liked the bit about getting rid of planning. It would also have the secondary effect of improving infrastructure including roads, 4G/5G etc
No surprise a nutter like you would think it was good
1) Nationalise the banks. At that point, the state owns all the mortgage rights.
2) Let the state exercise those rights. At that point, all previously mortgaged properties now belong to the state.
3) Offer occupants lifelong heritable tenancies at very low rents.
4) Meanwhile, get rid of planning permission rules. This will crash the sh*t out of what remains of the "market" in privately-owned houses. (Yes, it's simple supply and demand.)
Most importantly, people get OUT OF DEBT and they are now living SECURELY and not under the boot of private landlords or moneylenders.
5) Allow remaining owner-occupiers (i.e. not landlords) the right to sell their houses to the state at what are now the crashed market prices, in return not only for those prices but also for lifelong tenancies as above. Soon they will wake up and smell the coffee.
It's time to think differently. That house prices are so high is absolutely f*cking ridiculous, and I am f*cked if I have any time whatsoever for the view that nothing can be done, which equates to the view that the banks are too big to be allowed to fail, which is closely related to the idiotic bourgeois belief that money is some kind of factor of production.
Smash the banks and see what happens.
Best post I have read here in a long time. I especially liked the bit about getting rid of planning. It would also have the secondary effect of improving infrastructure including roads, 4G/5G etc
No surprise a nutter like you would think it was good
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Is there a list of forum rules anywhere? I don't want to be banned and I can't go back and edit the offending post now to remove that word.
1. Don't say cnut 2. Radiohead are awesome 3. Pineapple on pizza is fantas[BANNED - Moderator]
Radiohead just are. To pronounce them awesome would be to claim the right to judge them; they exist in a realm beyond judgment.
We seem to be pretending that the BOE are independent when they aren't - they are de facto answerable to the Chancellor and if he loses confidence in the Governor, that is curtains, regardless of contract length. The Bank needs to end its policy of selling off Government bonds at a loss, and instead wait till they mature - this is effectively being subsidised by the Treasury and it can be confirmed privately that this will no longer be available. They also need to stop their Don Quixote act tilting at inflation using interest rate rises, when any halfwit can see that the inflation isn't being caused by an excess in disposable income.
The fact is that Hunt (and Sunak) are actually aligned with the Bank's maniacal approach, and are presiding over a developing economic crisis. Hunt shouldn't be in a job, and frankly he should resign from public life. Sunak should go too, but it's the Chancellor's immediate responsibility to resign if they fail this badly.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Is there a list of forum rules anywhere? I don't want to be banned and I can't go back and edit the offending post now to remove that word.
ETA: I do realise the irony here in acting rashly without due awareness of the potential consequences for me of my own actions.
I wouldn't worry. I believe there is an alternative punishment to banning - namely, being made to eat three bowlfuls of your username.
Starmer got monstered by a very impressive Sunak. Not mentioning Sunak's vote failure was a massive error, same goes for Flynn, although he did manage to bring in Brexit as the problem. Rishi handled both very well.
The mortgage issue was batted back as Labour's failure.
Possibly Starmer's worst performance against Sunak and a much improved Sunak. Not least because Starmer was rubbish.
Starmer links chaotic Conservative government to people being poorer. Can Sunak convince people that correlation doesn't imply causation?
I think very clever from SKS.
What if he could? It is no good for Rishi if he tells people that yes, my government is chaotic, and yes, you are poorer, but the good news is these are not connected.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In that case, the best thing that’s happened to British workers in a generation has been the EU exit - as there’s now employers fighting over employees, and not the other way around.
Delusion or heatstroke from the sand dunes
You think it’s better to have an unlimited number of minimum-wage immigrant workers, willing to live in ‘bed space’, both driving down the wages and increasing the demand for housing, of the unskilled British worker?
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It's mad. It seems to have largely stopped while I am browsing online (I think) but now these pop up notifications (bottom right of screen) are appearing when I am NOT browsing, eg if I am using Word. So it has infiltratd my actual computer/OS
Then there is the NCA which has been found by a police watchdog to tolerate predatory sexual behaviour by its staff - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sex-predators-tolerated-at-national-crime-agency-z3c25bq7j - problems known to the leadership with nothing done. Apparently being there is like going into "an old fashioned CID office". The usual pointless apology has been offered.
Not to be outdone, the Scouts are currently carrying out an investigation into claims they silenced women who made allegations of sexual abuse. Millions have been paid out to victims but it is said that their safeguarding policies are still inadequate.
Is there any evidence that we have gone back to the 70s, versus never left?
I think that the behaviour was simply hidden behind a wall of performative bullshit - organisations awarding themselves trophies for safe guarding, inclusivity etc, while not really changing.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
You whingers just want something for nothing. Back when men were men we had to do it all ourselves , no help from anyone and just hard graft. 21st century has produced nothing but lazy whining whingers.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In that case, the best thing that’s happened to British workers in a generation has been the EU exit - as there’s now employers fighting over employees, and not the other way around.
Depends I think it's just moved things round a bit.
It used to be that those just above minimum wage were impacted because of Eastern Europeans coming here to get work.
Now it's people in skilled jobs not getting payrises because there are plenty of overseas people willing to take a job that pays £45,000 say for £40,000..
That’s true to a limited extent, yes. But it’s an easier problem for the government to solve, than a massive underclass who can’t afford any standard of living at all.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
So can we say a system works if it doesn't work for a generation? @numbertwelve Your definition of the system working seems, in my mind, to be social democracy - and the last person who advocated that was called a literal Stalinist for years. Like, that is not Thatcherism or Reaganism, and that is the current system we live under - neoliberalism won.
The system worked under Thatcher and Major. It broke under Blair and Brown, before interest rates fell down to zero.
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
I'm not just talking about housing, although that is a big factor. I'm talking about how the whole economy is organised to extract value from workers to give it to the already wealthy, and how any shock to the economy has a response that buggers the poor and insulates the rich. Austerity cut the social safety net to the bone, but the argument was that the Great Recession was terrible and balancing the budget will provide stability in the future. 0% interest rates were not used at that time to do Keynesianism, because neoliberal economics argues Keynesianism is bad, actually. Now that interest rates are going up, it is still the poor and workers who are most impacted, and now the argument is a recession is NECESSARY to fix the economy, and the Labour party are essentially saying they need MORE austerity. So what is the average person to look at with hope? What policies are being proposed that actually help people? What is an economy for if not to organise resources and labour towards the needs of the greater populace; which we are not doing?
In that case, the best thing that’s happened to British workers in a generation has been the EU exit - as there’s now employers fighting over employees, and not the other way around.
But the government is still following a policy of trying to discipline workers - that's why they're fighting against pay rises so much. Not because of inflation but because, ideologically, they don't want workers to be able to flex their muscles. You see that here even more so than the US (at a federal level, red-states are disciplining labour by literally allowing children to work again and other measures).
In case anyone is feeling unduly optimistic after today's flood of good news, on all fronts, a reminder that it is now midsummer, and the days get shorter from here on. Winter is coming
A necessary corrective to some of this afternoon's irrational exuberance, perhaps
Starmer got monstered by a very impressive Sunak. Not mentioning Sunak's vote failure was a massive error, same goes for Flynn, although he did manage to bring in Brexit as the problem. Rishi handled both very well.
The mortgage issue was batted back as Labour's failure.
Possibly Starmer's worst performance against Sunak and a much improved Sunak. Not least because Starmer was rubbish.
Hmm, didn't you say much the same last week? I didn't listen to PMQs so don't have a view, but I don't get the impression that you've been an SKS fan at any time.
Starmer asked the same question six times and each time got a non-answer from Sunak. He didn't mention Sunak's no vote. He didn't mention Sunak's tacit contempt of parliament by not voting in favour of the committee report. He didn't mention inflation or the boats failures. He was useless and he had stacks of material to bury Sunak under. He was unacceptably poor.
- the blog is by no means routinely supportive of Starmer, but this time says
"It was obvious that Keir Starmer won those exchanges when Rishi Sunak started his final answer with the words: “No amount of personal attacks and petty point-scoring will disguise the fact that [Starmer] does not have a plan for this country.” Complaining about “personal attacks and petty point-scoring” at PMQs is a serious category error; it is a bit like playing football and then moaning about your opponents only being interested in kicking the ball into the back of your net.
PMQs is an environment where leaders have to combine clear, broad-brush strategic messaging with sly digs that undermine the standing and authority of their rivals. It is a hard trick to pull off; too high-minded, and you look naive; too personal, and you just look nasty. Starmer gets the balance just about right, and today his jibes against Sunak were considerably more effective than anything coming in the opposite direction." (extract - the blog has considerably more).
I think the Committee report and who voted on it is a Westminster issue and unlikely to resonate much with the public. By contrast, he does mention mortgage inflation at some length, with a telling example.
You may have a point.
The media are picking mortgage chaos for their 30 second sound bites for news bulletins on the back of PMQs.
Personally I am constantly disappointed when Starmer appears to let Sunak off the hook at PMQs.
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
Correct. Most people under 40 don’t know anything except interest rates being effectively zero.
How this came about is not surprising - a planning system gradually accumulated that resulted in slow house building. This worked when the population was increasing slowly.
It began to fail when the population began to increase rapidly.
I do like the brain stretching by those who advocate rapid population increase, but don’t want rapid home building to match - because “save the countryside”…
- All the flats are empty. - All the flats have been stolen by Fu Manchu. - There are enough bedrooms - just need to allocate them by the National Home Allocation service. - living in HMO is perfectly fine for people raising families. - Etc
The simple reality is that the ship has sailed. The people exist. They are not going to vanish. We have 8 million fewer homes than France and a similar population.
Then there is the NCA which has been found by a police watchdog to tolerate predatory sexual behaviour by its staff - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sex-predators-tolerated-at-national-crime-agency-z3c25bq7j - problems known to the leadership with nothing done. Apparently being there is like going into "an old fashioned CID office". The usual pointless apology has been offered.
Not to be outdone, the Scouts are currently carrying out an investigation into claims they silenced women who made allegations of sexual abuse. Millions have been paid out to victims but it is said that their safeguarding policies are still inadequate.
Is there any evidence that we have gone back to the 70s, versus never left?
I think that the behaviour was simply hidden behind a wall of performative bullshit - organisations awarding themselves trophies for safe guarding, inclusivity etc, while not really changing.
Increasingly the brief period of (at least Western) prosperity for even the working classes (50s-90s) looks less like a new normal, and a blip between different forms of capitalist feudalism where workers are constantly under the boot of the propertied class. History didn't end with the collapse of the USSR, it was aborted...
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.
It's tempting to laugh at people like that, but I think it shows just how poor political discourse was during the referendum. I keep saying this, but the remain side needed to present Freedom of Movement as a *Positive* to Brits, not something that had to be "endured".
Are we allowed to use the word 'c**t' on this forum?
No, we are not. It is a banning offence.
It seems to be unevenly enforced
To be fair the mods don't read every post, but it seems to be consistently enforced when they do see it.
Is there a list of forum rules anywhere? I don't want to be banned and I can't go back and edit the offending post now to remove that word.
ETA: I do realise the irony here in acting rashly without due awareness of the potential consequences for me of my own actions.
The way you "asked" your "question" re: misogynist c-word, clearly shows your "query" is rhetorical NOT inquisitive.
Also rude as fuck IMHO to abuse Our Gracious Host's VERY clear views on this point.
If I appear unusually gloomy, it’s not just the abyss of doom into which Britain is plunging - it’s also the fact I am still getting ruinously annoying Daily Mail notifications. Absolutely nothing - not even erasing chrome and reinstalling - fixes it. They are like cockroaches in a nuclear winter
So when the economy implodes and inflation is low and growth is poor causing a recession, the poor have to shoulder the burden via austerity.
When the economy implodes and inflation is high, the Bank of England should CAUSE a recession, forcing the poor to have less purchasing power and less job security, shouldering the burden anyway.
Why do we have this economic system? Like, it isn't a force of nature, we designed things this way - why is it talked about as if these aren't political decisions to allow rich people to stay rich and poor people to get poorer? It's obscene...
Because the system, if it is working properly, is the least worst option.
By working properly, I mean that there is support to allow those at the bottom to climb up the ladder, and protections in place to stop abuses from occurring at the top.
At the moment, it is hard to say that our system in the UK is working as well as it could be…. For a myriad of reasons I would blame on successive governments of all colours.
So the system has just never worked properly in my adult life? I am 32...
You whingers just want something for nothing. Back when men were men we had to do it all ourselves , no help from anyone and just hard graft. 21st century has produced nothing but lazy whining whingers.
In case anyone is feeling unduly optimistic after today's flood of good news, on all fronts, a reminder that it is now midsummer, and the days get shorter from here on. Winter is coming
A necessary corrective to some of this afternoon's irrational exuberance, perhaps
OTOH the weather is lovely here, 23°C 62% humidity, light winds, forecast for the next couple of weeks is good too.
I just achieved three minor successes this morning on behalf of Citizens Advice clients battling with the council and DWP. All good here.
(PS sorry about your unwanted Daily Heil notifications, despite my flippant comment earlier - sounds like Daily Hell to me.)
Comments
The victims of the Titanic submarine disaster are believed to be alive 3,800m under the Atlantic Ocean and desperately trying to raise help.
GB News understands regular SOS taps have been heard and two vehicles, which could only dive to 3000m, both imploded when they attempted to plunge lower.
GB News, must be true.
The world is complicated. Just as Sweden has 9.7% inflation currently, there is no reason to believe the UK would not have ~8.1% even in a parallel universe where we voted Remain.
We'd have still been as reliant on gas as we are for our energy etc
Follow this:
https://osxdaily.com/2019/06/02/how-reset-chrome-browser-default-settings/
You might want to export your bookmarks and history first.
Food and other essentials are going up by more than 8% and that's reported in the official statistics and weighted appropriately.
The problem with inflation isn't what's being included, its what's not being included. In the 1970s the number one cost in a household's budget was food. In 2020s the number one cost in a household's budget is housing.
But the latter is not included properly in inflation figures.
This compounded with massive net migration figures, overseen by a government whose simple policy is to have more and fewer migrants simultaneously, cannot assist the cause of all those people who thought it a good idea to leave the EU without joining EEA/EFTA.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/cost-of-cooking-a-family-meal-soars-by-up-to-27-as-price-of-some-ingredients-doubles-aA3K74w0eh7b
(But I also wonder about lead in petrol.)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/costoflivinginsights/food
We had a stable population, even sometimes declining population for decades with planning restrictions and the system was working.
Then population growth exploded at the turn of the century but planning restrictions were kept, so supply and demand became imbalanced and we've never had a working system since.
I personally am entirely comfortable with free movement and high migration - but it needs to be accompanied with free planning and high construction too. If people were able to come here without a visa, they should have been able to get a house built without planning too.
Now we have a shortfall of about 3 million houses as we have 99% occupancy rate in our houses when a stable rate and European average is about 90% occupancy. Even if net migration dropped to zero overnight, which it won't, we'd still need those 3 million houses building. We need more than that, to accompany continuing population growth.
1) That QE is simply printing money by another name and will therefore be inflationary
2) That having an inflation target of 2% but not including the price of houses/housing in the index will (aided by QE) cause an asset bubble.
3) Virtually zero interest rates distorts markets and will lead to intractable problems of asset price rises and encourage bad lending and borrowing.
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3296214?hl=en
Next, try adding a new user in Chrome, and see if the new user has the same issue.
If not, then add a new user in Windows, that will definitely, 100% not have the same issue, unless the DM website itself has changed.
Are these notifications on the Windows notifications bar, to the right hand side of the screen, or are they in the browser itself?
It is a banning offence.
- the blog is by no means routinely supportive of Starmer, but this time says
"It was obvious that Keir Starmer won those exchanges when Rishi Sunak started his final answer with the words: “No amount of personal attacks and petty point-scoring will disguise the fact that [Starmer] does not have a plan for this country.” Complaining about “personal attacks and petty point-scoring” at PMQs is a serious category error; it is a bit like playing football and then moaning about your opponents only being interested in kicking the ball into the back of your net.
PMQs is an environment where leaders have to combine clear, broad-brush strategic messaging with sly digs that undermine the standing and authority of their rivals. It is a hard trick to pull off; too high-minded, and you look naive; too personal, and you just look nasty. Starmer gets the balance just about right, and today his jibes against Sunak were considerably more effective than anything coming in the opposite direction." (extract - the blog has considerably more).
I think the Committee report and who voted on it is a Westminster issue and unlikely to resonate much with the public. By contrast, he does mention mortgage inflation at some length, with a telling example.
The popularity of UK universities abroad is testament to that, even if it is a kind of Ponzi scheme
I am grasping at straws when I try and think of any other notable improvements 2010-2023. The Liz Line in infrastructure, I guess. You could argue Cameron lanced the boil of Scottish independence by calling and winning the indyref but then the desire for indy only grew after that, the UK just got lucky with the recent inplosion of the SNP
After that..... uhm..... anything else? Can anyone name anything else the Tories have done which is definitely good?
(Let's ignore Brexit, no one is going to change their minds on that, it is theological)
There’s also some generic Vanilla rules that run on the background. A couple of weeks ago I had a post deleted (presumably by Vanilla rather than a human PB moderator), that referenced a famously unlawful number from 2007.
Working people don't get better off by living a life on benefits, that's a poverty trap that means your aspiration is only to keep what you get from welfare, while the rich can benefit from growth.
Working people get better off by ensuring wages are growing and that people keep more of their wages. The Conservatives used to believe in this, under people like Thatcher, which is why I supported them. They don't anymore under Rishi it seems, which is why I don't support them anymore.
If you want policies to help people, then work out the impediments stopping people from keeping more of their wages and look for ways to remove them. Especially when those working for a living can be paying 70%+ of their marginal wages in real taxation.
PM me a screen shot of the problematic “notification”.
ETA: I do realise the irony here in acting rashly without due awareness of the potential consequences for me of my own actions.
Recommended for all Windows users anyway.
It sounds like Windows notification bar messages. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get you instructions on stopping them.
It used to be that those just above minimum wage were impacted because of Eastern Europeans coming here to get work.
Now it's people in skilled jobs not getting payrises because there are plenty of overseas people willing to take a job that pays £45,000 say for £40,000..
Even as I type this, another has appeared. It's like catching smallpox and watching the lesions grow. AAAAARGH
Got to say I don't think I would wise Leon's current problems on my worst enemy...
21st century has produced nothing but lazy whining whingers.
To pronounce them awesome would be to claim the right to judge them; they exist in a realm beyond judgment.
The fact is that Hunt (and Sunak) are actually aligned with the Bank's maniacal approach, and are presiding over a developing economic crisis. Hunt shouldn't be in a job, and frankly he should resign from public life. Sunak should go too, but it's the Chancellor's immediate responsibility to resign if they fail this badly.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-notification-settings-in-windows-8942c744-6198-fe56-4639-34320cf9444e
Asking for a friend...
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-remove-dailymailcom-windows-notification/bd6092bc-59c0-4669-a716-8d86e69205c1
I think that the behaviour was simply hidden behind a wall of performative bullshit - organisations awarding themselves trophies for safe guarding, inclusivity etc, while not really changing.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/national/hospital-locked-down-after-two-workers-stabbed/ar-AA1cQpVd?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=6071d52384934ca7bcc47c3c70365fbb&ei=46
A necessary corrective to some of this afternoon's irrational exuberance, perhaps
The media are picking mortgage chaos for their 30 second sound bites for news bulletins on the back of PMQs.
Personally I am constantly disappointed when Starmer appears to let Sunak off the hook at PMQs.
It began to fail when the population began to increase rapidly.
I do like the brain stretching by those who advocate rapid population increase, but don’t want rapid home building to match - because “save the countryside”…
- All the flats are empty.
- All the flats have been stolen by Fu Manchu.
- There are enough bedrooms - just need to allocate them by the National Home Allocation service.
- living in HMO is perfectly fine for people raising families.
- Etc
The simple reality is that the ship has sailed. The people exist. They are not going to vanish. We have 8 million fewer homes than France and a similar population.
Also rude as fuck IMHO to abuse Our Gracious Host's VERY clear views on this point.
I just achieved three minor successes this morning on behalf of Citizens Advice clients battling with the council and DWP. All good here.
(PS sorry about your unwanted Daily Heil notifications, despite my flippant comment earlier - sounds like Daily Hell to me.)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/21/orca-rams-yacht-off-shetland-first-such-incident-northern-waters