Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

New YouGov polling finds Tory collapse in its its heartlands – politicalbetting.com

1356711

Comments

  • FeersumEnjineeyaFeersumEnjineeya Posts: 4,310
    edited June 2023
    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    That looks like a ChatGPT response :grimace: And as we know, ChatGPT isn't good with figures.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,527
    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cicero said:

    The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rage-is-swallowing-even-the-middle-ground-9s0lg2nf0 (Paywall)

    I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.

    The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).

    There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.

    Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.

    The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.

    The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.

    This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.

    Good.

    In 5 years we could have a high tax, even higher inflation and higher interest rates deeply unpopular Labour government plagued with even more frequent strikes and with a big deficit and rising unemployment. The idea Labour will win the next general election and be in power for all time is complacency of the first degree from you and other left liberals
    I believe that Cicero is a former Tory voter ?

    Complacency is the belief that the Tory party is now anything more than a parody of what once could claim to be the natural party of government.
    It is complacency for any party to say they are 'the natural party of government' in a democracy, the Tories have suffered heavy defeats before in 1997, 2001. 1966, 1945, 1906, 1880 and against Palmerston on many occasions and always come back.

    The Whigs/Liberals I’m sure used to say the same thing. The only sure thing on this planet is change. Things are changing. Cameron has managed to discredit Euroscepticism and destroy the Tory Party. Well done him.
    The Liberals split three times in just 15 years (and when I say 'split' I mean, actually had separate organisations standing candidates against each other) to achieve that result. Also extensive changes in the franchise and the rise of a competitor party which was well-funded, well-organised and linked to a pre-existing mass movement.

    I do not say the Tories can't go the same way, but I do say the circumstances they face are not analogous to those of the Liberals from 1916-32.
    It is a constant frustration on this site that whenever one tries to draw even the vaguest analogy someone takes it literally, suggesting a perfect comparison was intended, to discredit it. Perfect analogies are impossible. Of course I’m not saying that exactly, or even substantially, the same thing is going to happen in both cases. The one and only point I was making related to hubris — as I think was clear.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,761
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    That’s because senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE 100 companies tend to be intelligent people. Intelligent people didn’t vote for Brexit.
  • Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Why would 45-79 decrease when you exclude 08-10?
  • MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained & you’ve bought a huge long term interest bet to go alongside your rent payments.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    Interest only mortgages are nuts.
    They are fine if you put the equivalent to the repayment element, into a stock market tracker every month. probably outperforms making repayments more often than not.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 27,676
    edited June 2023

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    That's just the rule of law. If you want to get rid of that fine but I wouldn't recommend it.
    It isn't really the rule of law - Cameronite reforms that made quangos quasi-independent have a lot to answer for. Most would agree that the NHS is badly run, but have any of those mismanaging it been dismissed or even challenged?

    *edit - ah I get you were speaking about the Rwanda policy specifically - sure. Just an example that Tory Ministers (especially right wing ones it would appear) aren't part of the elite.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Is this ChatGPT output?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,226
    ydoethur said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @steve_hawkes

    You do get the sense that - just like with energy bills - the Govt will ultimately cave to some degree on mortgages and come up with a support package of some kind.

    Some potential levers :.

    1) Longer term mortgages. Nationwide I believe offer the longest right now - Hunt could encourage other banks to offer long terms.
    2) 99 year heritable mortgages - a more extreme version of 1), done in Japan I think.
    3) Encourage banks to offer long term fixes (30 yr ?) - as happens in the USA. This way there's no shock for anyone midway through.

    Those would all be free for the Gov't, and of course it won't help the poor schmucks who can barely afford their interest only as it is ( I think theres still some about that were offered at the bottom of the rates cycle o_O !!! )
    There would be bitter regret and years of paying too much if interest rates dropped sharply - as happened in 2008.

    IIRC tracker mortgages have a lower rate on the long term average than fixed rate or they at least did so when I had a mortgage.
    I think I'd probably tracker now rather than 2 year fix if I had to now.
    Making the mortgage market ever more complicated hasn't worked.

    Instead simplify to:

    1) Minimum 5% deposit
    2) Maximum 30 years
    3) All mortgages are tracker at base rate +1%
    4) Interest only banned
    I would have said 3 would make things much worse, as it makes future financial planning very difficult. Yes, I know we've had stable interest rates for a long time but that's abnormal. A more usual scenario is they go up and down like Johnson's trousers.

    Instead, the presumption should be fixes for 7-10 years to give more stability.
    Too much stability reduces flexibility and ensures that when changes do come they can be more extreme than otherwise.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,226

    DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349
    edited June 2023

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    That looks like a ChatGPT response :grimace: And as we know, ChatGPT isn't good with figures.
    I've checked the 1979 to 2022 minus 2008-2010 average GDP per capita and it's correct to 0.01%. I have the spreadsheet.

    But you're right to be cautious!
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,594
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.

    The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.

    Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
    Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202

    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect and salesman had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    You use the word 'tedious'

    Seems quite apt
    Brave words from the man who once posted:

    My wife and I have a welcoming certificate from South Georgia and the South Shetland Islands
    As a matter of interest why is that tedious - I do not repeat it on a daily basis
    My family has the deeds to a house in the Falklands, written by hand on parchment! Not often you see that kind of legal document in the modern world.

    (I believe the house itself was sold sometime shortly after the Falklands War.)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,084
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    Yeah. I've recently discovered all my financially-sophisticated contemporaries who are now a lot wealthier than me had interest-only mortgages whereas I had repayment and thus could buy far less. Interest-only, low interest rates and a rampant stock market, it's easy with hindsight.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349
    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Is this ChatGPT output?
    It is Bard output.
  • DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,226
    glw said:

    Sandpit said:

    What’s Philip Hammond been smoking? Let’s increase immigration to keep wage pressure down, really? Because immigrants definitely don’t need anywhere to live.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/22/ftse-100-markets-news-interest-rate-rise-bank-of-england/

    The Government should relax immigration rules to help ease the mortgage crisis gripping Britain, a former chancellor has urged.

    Lord Hammond, who led the Treasury under Theresa May, said the Government has to strike a “balance” between the “politically toxic” increase in immigration with the impact of rising mortgage rates.

    Relaxing immigration could help deal with record rises in wages across Britain by creating more competition for jobs and lowering workers’ ability to push for pay increases.

    More immigration when we are at record levels, and in order to suppress wage increases at the bottom. Is Hammond working for the Labour Party?
    Hammond has never had a problem with property price inflation.

    He's someone who believes in a rentier economy where income comes from ownership rather than a productive economy where income comes from work.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,226

    DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
    And wages would rise in those that would still exist.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,544
    Miklosvar said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained & you’ve bought a huge long term interest bet to go alongside your rent payments.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    Interest only mortgages are nuts.
    They are fine if you put the equivalent to the repayment element, into a stock market tracker every month. probably outperforms making repayments more often than not.
    Except the housing and equity market risks are correlated, so in the scenario where the housing market goes south you can't sell the house or use your equity wealth to clear the mortgage liability. All leveraged plays are fine until they don't work out. It's not a sensible way to manage your family's finances IMHO, because it's not robust to a downside scenario even if most of the time it pays off.
    Not wanting to sound smug but I used the last ten years to pay off the mortgage on our house, when I'm sure plenty of people would have traded up to a much more expensive property with a hefty mortgage, for precisely this reason. I feel for people who have taken on too much leverage to afford a normal family home but I don't have too much sympathy for well-off people who've over-extended themselves out of greed or for lifestyle porn reasons. They've taken an unnecessary gamble with their family finances and don't deserve to be bailed out.
  • DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
    And wages would rise in those that would still exist.
    Yes, I did say that. The point is that the people now doing them would otherwise have had better paying jobs.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Why would 45-79 decrease when you exclude 08-10?
    Because I moved from GDP growth to GDP per capita growth in response to HYUFD
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,544

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    That's just the rule of law. If you want to get rid of that fine but I wouldn't recommend it.
    It isn't really the rule of law - Cameronite reforms that made quangos quasi-independent have a lot to answer for. Most would agree that the NHS is badly run, but have any of those mismanaging it been dismissed or even challenged?

    *edit - ah I get you were speaking about the Rwanda policy specifically - sure. Just an example that Tory Ministers (especially right wing ones it would appear) aren't part of the elite.
    Not really. Even the elite need should have to obey the law, we're not Russia.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    Should add: you can borrow far, far more /when interest rates are low/ ! When interest rates go up, the ratio between IO & repayment narrows, so the amount extra you can borrow also collapses.

    For an £800 monthly payment at 1.5% interest you can cover a £200k repayment mortgage, but you can cover the interest on a £581k IO mortgage. If interest rates hit 7%, that £800 will cover a £137k IO mortgage or a £113k repayment mortgage.

    So for an interest rate rise from 1.5% -> 7% we’ve gone from IO mortgages enabling nearly a tripling of lending to only enabling a 20% increase. That’s a huge difference & it’s why IO mortgages are so destabilising & inflationary over the interest rate cycle: they release vast sums of £ into the economy when interest rates are low, which then becomes unsupportable levels of debt when interest rates rise, so the borrowers default, but the cash has already been spent.

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    Which would mean rampant UK inflation when we need higher rates to reduce it we had no power to implement
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,455
    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    mickydroy said:

    what 3 word slogan they run on now, beats me

    Obvious.


    Should really have been a bulldog, or the Dulux sheepdog, but otherwise spot in.

    The Tory party is just going through the motions.
    Isn't that an English Mastiff, btw? So not entirely irrelevant if so.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    Barnesian said:

    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Is this ChatGPT output?
    It is Bard output.
    Untrustable then.

    Christ people, just drop the numbers in a spreadsheet. You can’t trust an LLM to get sums right reliably, they’re just not capable of it.
  • CorrectHorseBatCorrectHorseBat Posts: 1,761
    Weak Rishi, call a GE.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    edited June 2023
    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Why would 45-79 decrease when you exclude 08-10?
    Because I moved from GDP growth to GDP per capita growth in response to HYUFD
    In 1979 the UK had amongst the lowest gdp per capitas in western Europe, by 1990 the highest. That was when the main growth went even if you switched from GDP growth to per capita when it didn't suit your argument.

    UK gdp per capita $7k in 1979, $19k in 1990
    https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-per-capita
  • eekeek Posts: 27,481
    edited June 2023
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,258

    Barnesian said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @faisalislam

    NEW

    Former Bank of Eng Dep Governor Charlie Bean to on Today:
    “It’s pretty clear that our inflation problem is a bit worse than elsewhere”…

    Points to post-pandemic labour market losing 500k workers, and then Brexit making access to workers “less elastic”

    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1671779233083916288

    Except we have established that net migration reached a new peak last year at over 600k. Some left after Brexit but many more came from around the world. Our labour market remains remarkably elastic. What we are not getting is productivity growth that can drive down prices. Poor productivity + higher wages, specifically increases in the NMW, = inflation. QED.
    You can get high productivity growth in every sector and yet still get poor productivity growth overall. For example productivity in the retail sector is increasing as we move to DIY at the checkout and on-line trading.

    The reason is a changing mix from high productivity sectors to poor productivity sectors - a trading down in the economy to poorly paid low productivity jobs such as shelf filling, care homes, delivery services.

    High productivity will come from high growth in the technology, finance, pharmaceutical, defence and specialised manufacturing sectors based on rapidly growing exports. That's not happening fast enough. We're not very good as a nation at overseas sales and marketing.
    Instead we decided to create a taxpayer subsidised hand car wash sector rife with exploitation and criminality.
    I went for the more expensive hand wash last time and it was worth the money. Much better than the machine.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,314

    DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
    And wages would rise in those that would still exist.
    Yes, I did say that. The point is that the people now doing them would otherwise have had better paying jobs.
    Except there’s full employment. Those people already have better-paying jobs, and the vacancies are at the bottom. So they either need to raise wages, or invest in capital equipment to substitute labour.

    Importing hundreds of thousands of minimum-wage (or worse) workers shoudn’t be an option.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,271
    On immigration, the skilled worker visa shortage occupation list indicates that such visas are available to immigrant workers paid 80% of the job's usual going rate. So the government is using immigrant labour to undercut wages through these visas. The list is here (there is a separate list for health/social care and education):

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-shortage-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-shortage-occupations

    The list, of course, keeps being expanded, which is why immigration figures are going up. So what Hammond was suggesting isn't that far removed from what's happening anyway - many of the jobs on the list, and on the separate healthcare list, are not well paid.

    I was most amused to see "Artists - all jobs" on the list (3411). No idea what that's about.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,258
    Oh god a 'cage fight' between Musk and Zuckerberg. What a bucket of absolute wank. Whither the world?
  • CorrectHorseBatCorrectHorseBat Posts: 1,761
    I am Horse.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440

    I am Horse.

    Morning Denzil.
  • CorrectHorseBatCorrectHorseBat Posts: 1,761
    Pulpstar said:

    I am Horse.

    Morning Denzil.
    I am Horse.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    Farooq said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    I don't think Ukraine's joining any time soon. There are accession criteria that are quite challenging to meet. There are national vetos. It'll be a long process and success is far from guaranteed. Witness Turkey.
    I'm not so sure about that.
    Of the EU awkward squad, only Hungary would be likely to oppose.
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,605
    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    Interest rates for savers.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 31,358
    The bar chart isn't very enlightening, because it shows the Tories down 19% and Labour up 11%. LDs are the same as before. What happened to the other 8%?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    Interest rates for savers.
    They've got all the world's stock markets to invest in.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    The press seem to have no problem finding people on IO mortgages.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,527
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?
    HYUFD is never wrong. Has never contemplated being wrong. Can never be wrong. In his head. The rest of us, with our catalogue of human misjudgments and regrets, can only stare in awe.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349
    edited June 2023
    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Is this ChatGPT output?
    It is Bard output.
    Untrustable then.

    Christ people, just drop the numbers in a spreadsheet. You can’t trust an LLM to get sums right reliably, they’re just not capable of it.
    I have dropped them in a spreadsheet as a check. Bard is correct in this instance. I agree with your general point. It's worth checking.

    EDIT I needed a very quick response to HYFUD. The checking came later. :)
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757

    Pulpstar said:

    I am Horse.

    Morning Denzil.
    I am Horse.
    Course you are, dear.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H0dKc9QG9E
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,605
    Pulpstar said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    Interest rates for savers.
    They've got all the world's stock markets to invest in.
    Not everyone wants to tie their savings up in the markets and even those who do want less riskier savings vehicles as part of a balanced approach.

    It took many years to get there but I have one years salary available on deposit. Higher interest rates are good for me even though that buffoon of a chancellor is reducing the amount of interest we can get before we have to pay tax.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,258
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    The press seem to have no problem finding people on IO mortgages.
    IO makes sense if you're in the property game for profit. Less so on your home.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,084
    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Why would 45-79 decrease when you exclude 08-10?
    Because I moved from GDP growth to GDP per capita growth in response to HYUFD
    In 1979 the UK had amongst the lowest gdp per capitas in western Europe, by 1990 the highest. That was when the main growth went even if you switched from GDP growth to per capita when it didn't suit your argument.

    UK gdp per capita $7k in 1979, $19k in 1990
    https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-per-capita
    Presumably most of that growth came from the City.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349
    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    15% swing since the GE from the Tories to Lab in rural areas.

    Another Brexit dividend.

    The Tories aren’t in stepmom territory they are looking at Canada 1993.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the current Conservative Party died on its arse, and from the ashes came a right of centre internationalist, non racist party perhaps called "One Nation" and all the corrupt halfwits and drama queens that have decimated your party just returned back up into Farage's rectum.
    The only party that would replace the Tories is Farage's. About 2/3 of the current Tory vote is closer to Farage than Hunt
    I don't believe we have an appetite for right wing extremism in this country.

    The Conservative Party as it stands is an unhappy coalition of right wing populists and One Nation Tories. There is a much bigger voter base for a party of One Nation Tories to tap into. Butskellism lives!
    Heathism over Thatcherism in other words. In reality only if Labour returns to the Corbynite left, otherwise swing voters won't switch from a more centrist Labour party unless a Labour government mucks up the economy whether the Tories are Thatcherite or Heathite
    Yes they will.

    Have you not heard of the Post-War (pre-Thatcher) Consensus?
    Which saw Labour win 6 out of 10 general elections between 1945 and 1979?

    While the Conservatives have won 8 out of 11 general elections since Thatcher came in in 1979
    ...


    Exclude the 2008-2010 GFC under Labour and it was higher since 1979.

    Strikes less frequent, industry more efficient, gdp per capita and home ownership also higher than 1945-1979
    ..

    Why would 45-79 decrease when you exclude 08-10?
    Because I moved from GDP growth to GDP per capita growth in response to HYUFD
    In 1979 the UK had amongst the lowest gdp per capitas in western Europe, by 1990 the highest. That was when the main growth went even if you switched from GDP growth to per capita when it didn't suit your argument.

    UK gdp per capita $7k in 1979, $19k in 1990
    https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-per-capita
    "even if you switched from GDP growth to per capita when it didn't suit your argument." What!!

    You switched from GDP growth to per capita hoping to strengthen your argument but I showed that is didn't! Come on.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    edited June 2023
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
  • Sandpit said:

    DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
    And wages would rise in those that would still exist.
    Yes, I did say that. The point is that the people now doing them would otherwise have had better paying jobs.
    Except there’s full employment. Those people already have better-paying jobs, and the vacancies are at the bottom. So they either need to raise wages, or invest in capital equipment to substitute labour.

    Importing hundreds of thousands of minimum-wage (or worse) workers shoudn’t be an option.
    Yes, that is exactly my point. The wages for the lowest-paying occupations will indeed rise, but, in a full-employment environment, the people filling them will be coming from jobs that currently pay better.

    If you remove a load of people doing low-skilled work from the labour market in a full-employment environment, the net result is that the wages for that work increase and some of it is mechanised. But the remaining jobs will have to be filled with people would would otherwise have continued in better paying jobs.And the only way this happens is that there are fewer better paying jobs, which means there has to be economic shrinkage and rising unemployment.

    On the face of it, it's pretty obvious that the outcome of removing a bunch of people who do useful work for low pay isn't going to have a beneficial effect on a country's economic situation.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    I don't think Ukraine's joining any time soon. There are accession criteria that are quite challenging to meet. There are national vetos. It'll be a long process and success is far from guaranteed. Witness Turkey.
    I'm not so sure about that.
    Of the EU awkward squad, only Hungary would be likely to oppose.
    It'll depend on who exactly is on the hook for rebuilding whatever's left of Ukraine because that's going to be decades and hundreds of billions. If China and the USA can be hoodwinked into paying for some, or ideally, most of it then opposition inside the EU to Ukraine's membership will be attenuated. If all the EU are getting is a wrecked shit hole that's a money furnace then there will be more Ukro-skeptics than just Hungary (and Slovakia if Fico wins this year's election).
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    edited June 2023
    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    NB https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2023-06/UK Finance Interest Only Mortgages Update.pdf says that there are currently ~1million outstanding IO (or partial IO) mortgages in the UK: 700k pure IO & 222k part/part.

    That’s about 10% of the UK mortgage population. Be interesting to know what the % is by value.

    There were 3million IO mortgages outstanding back in 2013, presumably a hangover from the 2008 boom/bust.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 59,139
    The thing HMG could do on mortgages is to cap at the margins, so whilst everyone feels some pain far fewer go bankrupt in jumping from a 1% rate to a 6% rate, or similar, at renewal.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 16,544
    Sandpit said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained & you’ve bought a huge long term interest bet to go alongside your rent payments.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    But you have a 20/1 or 10/1 leverage on the investment, something that’s almost impossible for the average investor elsewhere.

    Which is great when house prices are continually rising…
    It's blooming hard to beat the returns from that sort of leverage (see also the saucier kind of hedge fund). Lawson and Brown both gave Britain something for nothing, and Britain has come to expect this as their due.

    And leaving aside the moral aspect (why invest and work if you can make more with a one-way punt), something for nothing tends to be followed by nothing for something.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    edited June 2023
    Dura_Ace said:

    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    I don't think Ukraine's joining any time soon. There are accession criteria that are quite challenging to meet. There are national vetos. It'll be a long process and success is far from guaranteed. Witness Turkey.
    I'm not so sure about that.
    Of the EU awkward squad, only Hungary would be likely to oppose.
    It'll depend on who exactly is on the hook for rebuilding whatever's left of Ukraine because that's going to be decades and hundreds of billions. If China and the USA can be hoodwinked into paying for some, or ideally, most of it then opposition inside the EU to Ukraine's membership will be attenuated. If all the EU are getting is a wrecked shit hole that's a money furnace then there will be more Ukro-skeptics than just Hungary (and Slovakia if Fico wins this year's election).
    We'll see.
    For now the signs are the EU is perhaps serious.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-new-marshall-plan-the-eu-takes-a-bet-on-rebuilding-ukraine-russia-war/amp/

    As an investment which irrevocably changes the terms of trade - and balance of power - with their bellicose and malign eastern neighbour, it might even be worth it.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,084
    Dura_Ace said:

    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    I don't think Ukraine's joining any time soon. There are accession criteria that are quite challenging to meet. There are national vetos. It'll be a long process and success is far from guaranteed. Witness Turkey.
    I'm not so sure about that.
    Of the EU awkward squad, only Hungary would be likely to oppose.
    It'll depend on who exactly is on the hook for rebuilding whatever's left of Ukraine because that's going to be decades and hundreds of billions. If China and the USA can be hoodwinked into paying for some, or ideally, most of it then opposition inside the EU to Ukraine's membership will be attenuated. If all the EU are getting is a wrecked shit hole that's a money furnace then there will be more Ukro-skeptics than just Hungary (and Slovakia if Fico wins this year's election).
    Or sell Crimea to Russia for £500 billion and use it to rebuild Ukraine. Russia is sitting on a fortune it can't spend, and since the USA came about partly through land purchases, there'd be no objection there.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    edited June 2023
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    NB https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2023-06/UK Finance Interest Only Mortgages Update.pdf says that there are currently ~1million outstanding IO (or partial IO) mortgages in the UK: 700k pure IO & 222k part/part.

    That’s about 10% of the UK mortgage population. Be interesting to know what the % is by value.

    There were 3million IO mortgages outstanding back in 2013, presumably a hangover from the 2008 boom/bust.
    A huge amount of the IO will be BTL I think seeing as tax rules make capital mortgages a complete non starter. I was on a small IO till about 2015 iirc. The criteria for OO tightened up after that.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,379
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    Which way did you vote btw?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,358
    @steverichards14
    No minister to defend Brexit in front of an audience of Brexiteers:

    https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1671823205672144898

    @gavinesler
    It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 41,462
    Dura_Ace said:

    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    I don't think Ukraine's joining any time soon. There are accession criteria that are quite challenging to meet. There are national vetos. It'll be a long process and success is far from guaranteed. Witness Turkey.
    I'm not so sure about that.
    Of the EU awkward squad, only Hungary would be likely to oppose.
    It'll depend on who exactly is on the hook for rebuilding whatever's left of Ukraine because that's going to be decades and hundreds of billions. If China and the USA can be hoodwinked into paying for some, or ideally, most of it then opposition inside the EU to Ukraine's membership will be attenuated. If all the EU are getting is a wrecked shit hole that's a money furnace then there will be more Ukro-skeptics than just Hungary (and Slovakia if Fico wins this year's election).
    But there are also great opportunities; the ledger is not all on the negative side.

    Then there are the moral issues as well.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    Pulpstar said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    NB https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2023-06/UK Finance Interest Only Mortgages Update.pdf says that there are currently ~1million outstanding IO (or partial IO) mortgages in the UK: 700k pure IO & 222k part/part.

    That’s about 10% of the UK mortgage population. Be interesting to know what the % is by value.

    There were 3million IO mortgages outstanding back in 2013, presumably a hangover from the 2008 boom/bust.
    A huge amount of the IO will be BTL I think seeing as tax rules make capital mortgages a complete non starter. I was on a small IO till about 2015 iirc. The criteria for OO tightened up after that.
    Yeah, these seem to be “homeowner” mortgages, so presumably not BTL.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 70,627
    edited June 2023

    Dura_Ace said:

    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    Pulpstar said:

    If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.

    What's not to like

    I don't think Ukraine's joining any time soon. There are accession criteria that are quite challenging to meet. There are national vetos. It'll be a long process and success is far from guaranteed. Witness Turkey.
    I'm not so sure about that.
    Of the EU awkward squad, only Hungary would be likely to oppose.
    It'll depend on who exactly is on the hook for rebuilding whatever's left of Ukraine because that's going to be decades and hundreds of billions. If China and the USA can be hoodwinked into paying for some, or ideally, most of it then opposition inside the EU to Ukraine's membership will be attenuated. If all the EU are getting is a wrecked shit hole that's a money furnace then there will be more Ukro-skeptics than just Hungary (and Slovakia if Fico wins this year's election).
    Or sell Crimea to Russia for £500 billion and use it to rebuild Ukraine. Russia is sitting on a fortune it can't spend, and since the USA came about partly through land purchases, there'd be no objection there.
    Crimea is not a viable state if detached from Ukraine. Khrushchev understood this. Even Putin seems to on a fairly basic level.

    The reason the Russians are so anxious to control it is so they can have access to the gas deposits in the Black Sea, plus control the Kerch Strait and the approach to Odessa.

    The reason Ukraine are adamant they won't give it up is for exactly the same reason.

    (Incidentally this is why Crimea was annexed to the RSSR in 1922 after the conquest of Ukraine in the first place.)
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,358
    @steverichards14
    I recall EU diplomats telling me post 2016 that UK was least suited to leave partly because of N.Ireland.. but also its dependence on single market in which its economy had flourished.They spoke out of bewilderment..the argument already lost.And here we are..
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 70,627
    What is it about groups with the acronym 'DfE' that they are all utter bellends who spend their time wrecking the education system?

    Further education lecturers won't receive £3,000 one-off payment
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-65979796
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    edited June 2023

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    Which way did you vote btw?
    Remain but I am not pretending to be an anti elite rebel.

    The real anti elite rebels are the few who are Socialists, voted for Corbyn but also voted Leave and still back Brexit and are religious social conservatives.

    Everyone else is still largely in agreement with today's UK elite on at least half the issues
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,314

    Sandpit said:

    DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
    And wages would rise in those that would still exist.
    Yes, I did say that. The point is that the people now doing them would otherwise have had better paying jobs.
    Except there’s full employment. Those people already have better-paying jobs, and the vacancies are at the bottom. So they either need to raise wages, or invest in capital equipment to substitute labour.

    Importing hundreds of thousands of minimum-wage (or worse) workers shoudn’t be an option.
    Yes, that is exactly my point. The wages for the lowest-paying occupations will indeed rise, but, in a full-employment environment, the people filling them will be coming from jobs that currently pay better.

    If you remove a load of people doing low-skilled work from the labour market in a full-employment environment, the net result is that the wages for that work increase and some of it is mechanised. But the remaining jobs will have to be filled with people would would otherwise have continued in better paying jobs.And the only way this happens is that there are fewer better paying jobs, which means there has to be economic shrinkage and rising unemployment.

    On the face of it, it's pretty obvious that the outcome of removing a bunch of people who do useful work for low pay isn't going to have a beneficial effect on a country's economic situation.
    Why would anyone be voluntarily moving from a higher-paying job to a lower-paying job?

    For those moving involuntarily, they should be very happy that the legal minimum wage is no longer the ceiling in so many industries.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,206
    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    I recall EU diplomats telling me post 2016 that UK was least suited to leave partly because of N.Ireland.. but also its dependence on single market in which its economy had flourished.They spoke out of bewilderment..the argument already lost.And here we are..

    "flourished" as in we had 6 0f the 10poorest regions in Western Europe, Which wasnt the case when we went in,
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,503
    Fcuk the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston and all those driving to it. A sweaty hour in a tailback already.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,258
    edited June 2023
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    Which way did you vote btw?
    Remain but I am not pretending to be an anti elite rebel.

    The real anti elite rebels are the few who are Socialists, voted for Corbyn but also voted Leave and still back Brexit and are religious social conservatives.

    Everyone else is still largely in agreement with today's UK elite on at least half the issues
    Religious, socially conservative, Corbynite leavers ... that's quite a niche group of people you're homing in on there.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    Pulpstar said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    NB https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2023-06/UK Finance Interest Only Mortgages Update.pdf says that there are currently ~1million outstanding IO (or partial IO) mortgages in the UK: 700k pure IO & 222k part/part.

    That’s about 10% of the UK mortgage population. Be interesting to know what the % is by value.

    There were 3million IO mortgages outstanding back in 2013, presumably a hangover from the 2008 boom/bust.
    A huge amount of the IO will be BTL I think seeing as tax rules make capital mortgages a complete non starter. I was on a small IO till about 2015 iirc. The criteria for OO tightened up after that.
    Looking at the data on the FCA website I think BTL mortgages make up about 15% of the outstanding mortgage body, so that’s another million - 1.5million mortgages? If most of those are IO then that will have a significant impact on the housing market.
  • FeersumEnjineeyaFeersumEnjineeya Posts: 4,310
    edited June 2023
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    DougSeal said:

    Roger said:

    Brexit is the ticking time bomb as anyone listening to the two interviews this morning will know. The public now sense that something has gone badly wrong and they want answers.

    It's becoming the disaster that dares not speak it's name. Even the interviewers skipped around it like they were dancing on coals. Surely now it's chief architect had been banished in shame someone would break the omerta?

    But not a word. Just platitude after tedious platitude.

    This could well end up costing Labour. At the moment It's a Tory disaster. For some reason Labour look determined to share it.

    What do you expect them to do, Roger? Commit to rejoin? Seriously. Have think about what that entails. Many of us want to rejoin but you coming on here night after night after night day after day after day moaning about it is not going to allow for that. It's a generational project and sadly many of us on here will be dead when it happens. 2016 is over. We lost. Get over it. Fight the next one. You are incredibly tedious on this topic.

    Oh, and your "Boris ever finds his way to the Cote d'Azur he'll be strung up" comment on expat property woes last night was exactly the reason we need people like you to STFU.
    You want to rejoin. Cool.

    Work out how to get from here to there. If you simply expect the magic fairy to wave a wand etc...

    For example, Starmer isn't going to actively seek to reduce the wages of the low skilled. So, freedom of movement will be and issue - until a way round that is put in place.

    So what you need to do is construct a set of policies by which you can freedom of movement, without reducing wages at the low end. This is possible.

    It does mean that the shortage of sufficiently obsequious waiters may continue. But we all have to make sacrifices.
    But freedom of movement didn't reduce wages for low-skilled Brits; it reduced wages for low-skilled occupations. This is an important difference and one that people repeatedly fail to appreciate.

    When freedom of movement ended, we had almost full employment. There weren't hordes of low-skilled Brits sitting around twiddling their thumbs while immigrants did the crap jobs. No, the low-skilled Brits were more likely to have had roles one step up the ladder. When freedom of movement ended, the wages for the crap jobs rose, but to fill those crap jobs, Brits need to take a step down the ladder to a rung that has risen but isn't as high as the one they were on.

    That's why the end of freedom of movement will mean lower, rather than higher, wages for low-skilled Brits. This will gradually become more evident as time goes on.
    In reality those low skilled jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.
    Some will, but not all.
    And wages would rise in those that would still exist.
    Yes, I did say that. The point is that the people now doing them would otherwise have had better paying jobs.
    Except there’s full employment. Those people already have better-paying jobs, and the vacancies are at the bottom. So they either need to raise wages, or invest in capital equipment to substitute labour.

    Importing hundreds of thousands of minimum-wage (or worse) workers shoudn’t be an option.
    Yes, that is exactly my point. The wages for the lowest-paying occupations will indeed rise, but, in a full-employment environment, the people filling them will be coming from jobs that currently pay better.

    If you remove a load of people doing low-skilled work from the labour market in a full-employment environment, the net result is that the wages for that work increase and some of it is mechanised. But the remaining jobs will have to be filled with people would would otherwise have continued in better paying jobs.And the only way this happens is that there are fewer better paying jobs, which means there has to be economic shrinkage and rising unemployment.

    On the face of it, it's pretty obvious that the outcome of removing a bunch of people who do useful work for low pay isn't going to have a beneficial effect on a country's economic situation.
    Why would anyone be voluntarily moving from a higher-paying job to a lower-paying job?

    For those moving involuntarily, they should be very happy that the legal minimum wage is no longer the ceiling in so many industries.
    It's more the case that some of those people starting their careers will be have to start a rung lower than they would otherwise have been able to. The net result, though, is that wages for Brits will, on average, be lower without freedom of movement because more of them will have to do the lowest-paying work, even though the lowest-paying work pays better than before.

    Edit: Surely this argument must be even more obvious to you in the Middle East. What would happen to the economy of your host country if all the cheap Indian and other labour were sent packing?
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,206
    Farooq said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    I recall EU diplomats telling me post 2016 that UK was least suited to leave partly because of N.Ireland.. but also its dependence on single market in which its economy had flourished.They spoke out of bewilderment..the argument already lost.And here we are..

    "flourished" as in we had 6 0f the 10poorest regions in Western Europe, Which wasnt the case when we went in,
    Where were the poorest regions in Western Europe when we went in?
    Start with Ireland
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,358
    @BloombergUK

    Less than a fifth of Brexit voters believe it has been a success seven years on from the referendum vote, according to a new poll

    https://twitter.com/BloombergUK/status/1671832787375071233
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,978
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    Projection (noun) (PSYCHOLOGY)

    [ C or U ] PSYCHOLOGY specialized
    the act of imagining that someone else feels a particular emotion or wants something when in fact it is you who feels this way; an example of this act:
    Projection is where you see in others what is really within yourself.
    The relative's negativity toward the patient involves a projection of the relative's own feelings of vulnerability from previous personal distress.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in the UK voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    Who said I'm a victim? I'm challenging your purported facts, that's all. You spoke of "senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos" political beliefs and I started from the assumption that you weren't just pulling it out of your arse and you had some facts.

    So cough up or admit that you were pulling it out of your arse.
    or CHAT GPT?

    Actually I checked with BARD. It came up with:

    Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland
    is a Conservative politician who has served as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice since 2019. He is a self-described "social conservative" and has said that he believes in "traditional values". He is also a supporter of Brexit and has said that he believes that leaving the European Union will allow the UK to "take back control" of its borders and laws.

    Sir Philip Rutnam is a British lawyer who served as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office from 2017 to 2019. He is a self-described "one-nation conservative" and has said that he believes in "limited government" and "individual responsibility". He is also a supporter of Brexit and has said that he believes that leaving the European Union will allow the UK to "take back control" of its borders and laws.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    Phil said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Is there any reason why this deserves sympathy ?

    Rachelle Gleed, 53, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, describes the situation as "ridiculous, scary and very, very stressful".

    The mother-of-two has a rental property with an interest-only mortgage deal that ends in October and is facing an increase from £500 a month to £1,471.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65761233

    It seems a lot of people have been buying houses on IO mortgages & they’re finding out exactly what that means: It’s just renting from the bank instead of from a landlord, only you have all the responsibility for keeping the property maintained.

    The BoE/government should probably have banned IO mortgages for house purchase decades ago. They’re incredibly pro-cyclical & strongly contribute to the boom/bust housing cycle which has been the bane of this country for my entire life.
    I don't believe that for a second - interest rates were low but the capital repayment in the early years of a mortgage is so low that it hardly makes any difference.

    The issue are 4 fold

    House prices are too high (because supply is dire)
    Wages are too low (it's remarkable how many jobs that paid £30k 13 years ago still pay that now)
    Banks lent people too much over too long a period - with interest rates at 2% loans should have been 20 years max but instead banks were happy to extend to 35 years
    Debts / Monthly repayments that looked affordable when interest rates were 2% don't look so great when rates are 5%+ and still rising.
    Rubbish. When interest rates are low, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are a fraction of those on a repayment mortgage.

    Consider a £200k mortgage. At 1.5%, the monthly payments on an IO mortgage are £250 / month. For a repayment mortgage they’re £800 / month.

    You can borrow far, far more on an IO mortgage for the same monthly payment which is why they’re so pro-cyclical & inflationary - they amplify the booms in house prices as people chase the prices up to limit of that which banks are willing to lend. In a more perfect world banks would restrict lending themselves in boom times but the internal incentives just don’t line up to make that happen.
    My problem is I don't believe anyone has been able to get an interest only mortgage for the past 10 years - banks don't trust the repayment mechanisms so it adds risk and risks means higher interest rates.
    NB https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2023-06/UK Finance Interest Only Mortgages Update.pdf says that there are currently ~1million outstanding IO (or partial IO) mortgages in the UK: 700k pure IO & 222k part/part.

    That’s about 10% of the UK mortgage population. Be interesting to know what the % is by value.

    There were 3million IO mortgages outstanding back in 2013, presumably a hangover from the 2008 boom/bust.
    A huge amount of the IO will be BTL I think seeing as tax rules make capital mortgages a complete non starter. I was on a small IO till about 2015 iirc. The criteria for OO tightened up after that.
    Looking at the data on the FCA website I think BTL mortgages make up about 15% of the outstanding mortgage body, so that’s another million - 1.5million mortgages? If most of those are IO then that will have a significant impact on the housing market.
    They'll have to err sell. 15 minutes till we find out the move of 4D chess master Bailey.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,314
    Interest rate announcement in 5 minutes’ time. What do we reckon, 50bps, or does the BoE chicken out again?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    Which way did you vote btw?
    Remain but I am not pretending to be an anti elite rebel.

    The real anti elite rebels are the few who are Socialists, voted for Corbyn but also voted Leave and still back Brexit and are religious social conservatives.

    Everyone else is still largely in agreement with today's UK elite on at least half the issues
    Religious, socially conservative, Corbynite leavers ... that's quite a niche group of people you're homing in on there.
    Mick Lynch isn't far off
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,594
    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    No minister to defend Brexit in front of an audience of Brexiteers:

    https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1671823205672144898

    @gavinesler
    It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?

    Rishi needs to start piling the failures of Brexit firmly at Boris's door. Emphasize that it was nice idea comprehensively cocked up by Boris, his incompetence and his egotism. The Boris myth must be destroyed for all the Tories' sake, and Brexit is the perfect place to start.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,206
    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    I recall EU diplomats telling me post 2016 that UK was least suited to leave partly because of N.Ireland.. but also its dependence on single market in which its economy had flourished.They spoke out of bewilderment..the argument already lost.And here we are..

    "flourished" as in we had 6 0f the 10poorest regions in Western Europe, Which wasnt the case when we went in,
    Where were the poorest regions in Western Europe when we went in?
    Start with Ireland
    Is that you saying you don't know exactly? Because I don't even know where to look for these data.
    well being old enough to recall when we went in reland was miles behind the UK and the whole of the Mezzogiorno wasnt exactly rolling in cash. Thats where youll find the poorest regions in 1973.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,206

    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    No minister to defend Brexit in front of an audience of Brexiteers:

    https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1671823205672144898

    @gavinesler
    It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?

    Rishi needs to start piling the failures of Brexit firmly at Boris's door. Emphasize that it was nice idea comprehensively cocked up by Boris, his incompetence and his egotism. The Boris myth must be destroyed for all the Tories' sake, and Brexit is the perfect place to start.
    Who would he be kidding apart from himself ? The conservatives are failing because they dont have conservative policies and the voters can see that.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 62,022
    5%
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    5%.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,202
    edited June 2023
    Boom. 0.5% rise.

    I really should have fixed my mortgage for a decade. Still, five years is going to make a big difference.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,601
    It's 0.5%!
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,520
    0.5% rise. Correct decision.
  • 148grss148grss Posts: 4,155
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    I think he's referring to senior civil servants, judges and heads of quangos and coporates. Who never seem to get sacked, aren't accountable, yet wield the power to contradict elected politicians and even topple them. Suella Braverman isn't a member of the elite - she can't even get a plane to Rwanda.
    Yes, try and find a socially conservative, pro Brexit senior civil servant, judge or head of a quango or even FTSE 100 company
    Could you please list the senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos and FTSE100 companies and their political ideologies, please? Asking for a forum.
    See the number of FTSE 100 directors who signed a letter opposing Brexit or the SC's rulings against Boris or civil servants briefings v Braverman and Patel

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36592782
    51 directors out of (and this is an estimate) 700 directors?

    How are you getting on with the list of senior civil servants, judges, heads of quangos?


    You anti Brexit, left liberals are pathetic. Always have to be the victims, always oppressed by the elite.

    When the elite largely shares your anti Brexit, social liberalism.

    Just 25% of finance workers in the City of London voted Leave, compared to 52% of voters UK wide. Civil servants were even more anti Brexit.

    Indeed over 60% of investment bankers in London voted Remain, so you have more in common with them on Brexit than people in Stoke

    https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2016/07/this-is-how-city-of-london-workers-voted-in
    AND THEY LOST. Leavers won. If you're literally saying the "elite" are one side of a binary referendum, and the side that LOST, how can they be the ones who have all the power?

    "The enemy is both weak and strong"

    I do just wish that people would go back to saying what they really mean, and leave the dogwhistles behind. "North London liberal elite" "cosmopolitans" "liberal bankers". Goodwin just wants to say Jewish. "Cultural Marxist" - just say "Judaeo Bolshevism" dude, we know it's the same thing. Even if this isn't conscious anti-semitism it is the creation of an other using the exact same methods and arguments - "shadowy elites who don't share our values are out their trying to weaken the nation, which is represented by the real volk - I mean people". Just say it, be honest with yourselves.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,349
    ...
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,206
    edited June 2023
    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    I recall EU diplomats telling me post 2016 that UK was least suited to leave partly because of N.Ireland.. but also its dependence on single market in which its economy had flourished.They spoke out of bewilderment..the argument already lost.And here we are..

    "flourished" as in we had 6 0f the 10poorest regions in Western Europe, Which wasnt the case when we went in,
    Where were the poorest regions in Western Europe when we went in?
    Start with Ireland
    Is that you saying you don't know exactly? Because I don't even know where to look for these data.
    well being old enough to recall when we went in reland was miles behind the UK and the whole of the Mezzogiorno wasnt exactly rolling in cash. Thats where youll find the poorest regions in 1973.
    So you don't know. Your economic data is... you went for a drive fifty years ago.
    50 years ago I was 12 so I didnt drive anywhere,
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    edited June 2023
    148grss said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    '@GoodwinMJ
    ·
    17h
    The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1671518796559818757?s=20

    Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
    Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.

    The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
    Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
    The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.

    The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.

    Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
    Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
    Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.

    The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.

    What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.

    I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).

    The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
    The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.

    Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.

    The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,040
    When I look at the mess that is our effort at ‘border control’ it’s perhaps fortunate that the only land border we have is on the island of Ireland!
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,455

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    I recall EU diplomats telling me post 2016 that UK was least suited to leave partly because of N.Ireland.. but also its dependence on single market in which its economy had flourished.They spoke out of bewilderment..the argument already lost.And here we are..

    "flourished" as in we had 6 0f the 10poorest regions in Western Europe, Which wasnt the case when we went in,
    Where were the poorest regions in Western Europe when we went in?
    Start with Ireland
    Is that you saying you don't know exactly? Because I don't even know where to look for these data.
    well being old enough to recall when we went in reland was miles behind the UK and the whole of the Mezzogiorno wasnt exactly rolling in cash. Thats where youll find the poorest regions in 1973.
    So you don't know. Your economic data is... you went for a drive fifty years ago.
    %0 years ago I was 12 so I didnt drive anywhere,
    "go for a drive" applies to passengers too.
  • Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    No minister to defend Brexit in front of an audience of Brexiteers:

    https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1671823205672144898

    @gavinesler
    It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?

    Rishi needs to start piling the failures of Brexit firmly at Boris's door. Emphasize that it was nice idea comprehensively cocked up by Boris, his incompetence and his egotism. The Boris myth must be destroyed for all the Tories' sake, and Brexit is the perfect place to start.
    Who would he be kidding apart from himself ? The conservatives are failing because they dont have conservative policies and the voters can see that.
    The voters think the Conservatives aren't conservative enough, so they're going to vote Labour instead?
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,601
    6% by Dec 2023???
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,757

    Scott_xP said:

    @steverichards14
    No minister to defend Brexit in front of an audience of Brexiteers:

    https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1671823205672144898

    @gavinesler
    It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?

    Rishi needs to start piling the failures of Brexit firmly at Boris's door. Emphasize that it was nice idea comprehensively cocked up by Boris, his incompetence and his egotism. The Boris myth must be destroyed for all the Tories' sake, and Brexit is the perfect place to start.
    Who would he be kidding apart from himself ? The conservatives are failing because they dont have conservative policies and the voters can see that.
    What 'are' conservative policies?

    The public wants good public services. It wants society to work. It wants housing and jobs. The tories aren't delviering and no on thinks that doing things like cutting tax for the richest is going to deliver those things.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,057
    Cicero said:

    The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rage-is-swallowing-even-the-middle-ground-9s0lg2nf0 (Paywall)

    I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.

    The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).

    There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.

    Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.

    The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.

    The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.

    This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.

    Good.

    Non-paywall copy: https://archive.is/GEMJH
This discussion has been closed.