Happy New Year everyone. If 2023 was good to you, may 2024 be at least as good. If 2023 was hard, then I wish you a better year. Love those around you, be kind to strangers, remember others may have had tough times too, hang on to hope, however unlikely hope may seem. Onwards and upward, or, if you prefer, Excelsior.
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Here's an interesting point therein;
When he became Leader of the Conservative Party, @RishiSunak's personal ratings were much better than his party's. That was never going to last - either he was going to drag it up to his level or, more likely, it was going to drag him down to its level... ...That's what's now happened - and as the chart below shows, the trigger for it appears to have been Sunak's decision in June to abstain in the vote on the Privileges Committee's report into Boris Johnson's conduct, with a further decline this autumn
It's a niche point... I wonder if abstention managed to annoy both sides on the question, though. It Betrayed Boris, but didn't actually show any moral fibre.
See also the dithering of the last few months and now the abortive makeup with Dom thing.
My immediate thought is: Cornwall, granite, mildly left; Glos, limestone, definitely right
Indeed the whole limestone belt across England is Tory
Well, I would suggest a variation on this. The electoral geography of France definitely follows geology. But it’s more complicated than limestone left granite right.
Limestone ridges tend to have poorish but well drained soil suitable for viticulture. In the presidentials they do well with Macron. Our commune in Saône et Loire voted something mad like 80% Macron. Granite is not very productive but suits cattle rearing. Just as in Britain, cattle country is conservative with a small c. In the presidential it scored well with les Républicains.
But Le Pen does well in lowland and coal bearing geology. Not granite. So do the far left. Industrial geology.
Look at the electoral map for Saône et Loire overlay geology. Macron on limestone, Républicains on granite (but not Beaujolais, which is Macron because its vines and orchards), Le Pen in Bresse.
Translate to Britain. Le Pen’s Anglo cousins in the coal-bearing uplands and alluvial lowlands of the East. Traditional Tories and orange bookers in the granite and metamorphic West Country. Lib Dems of of the post-2016 sort in the limestone regions of the downs, Surrey Hills and Wessex.
I think in England it may be simpler
Limestone areas tend to have more attractive towns and villages - because of the plentiful golden stone. That makes for more expensive houses and richer citizens = Tories
In France, the right soil type (ironically, usually poorer soil for general agriculture) can make a number of the locals into millionaires from wine.
I drove from Beaune to our house this afternoon, via Pommard, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. The area is ridiculous. Land so valuable you could buy a house, knock it down and sell for more money by planting vines.
Presumably the soil won't be great with all that builders rubble and the like?
Builders rubble is actually pretty good terroir.
There are large swathes of totally shit land planted with vines (and old ones at that) that only survive economically because of the village name.
Far better to get a decent wine from a good Châlonnais village like Mercurey or Givry, where only the quality land is bevined.
My secret vice is a particular Le Gros Plante du Pays Nantais which I gather is considered terrible stuff and rarely exported. But I suspect it supports various non-entity exurbs of Nantes.
I like it. Having planted Melon in my vineyard I know how unfashionable western Loire varieties are. But gros plant is fresh, interesting and underrated.
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
I'll settle for the option of the Romans then, who could move to the eastern part of the empire and be part of the eastern Roman Imperium until 1453, or stay west and throw in their lot with Theodoric and co, and be part of forming the even greater story of the formation of western Europe which is how and why I am able at this moment to listen to Mozart.
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Interesting thread, but from it "the trigger for [Sunak's personal favourability ratings declining to match those of the party] appears to have been Sunak's decision in June to abstain in the vote on the Privileges Committee's report into Boris Johnson's conduct" caught my eye. Did that really catch the public's attention? I had forgotten about it entirely...
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
I think that is failing to appreciate the culture of Gothic Italy, or Visigothic Spain, or Byzantium before it was trashed by the Justinian plague.
Italy changed, but the barbarians got a bad press. They were actually interesting cultures in their own right.
Following my Zulu reference I can say I saw it in Manchester in 1964/5 - with a Zulu. He explained all the chants - particularly the final one that was the tribute to fellow warriors before it was revealed on film by the Boer character.
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Barwell is about right but slightly underestimates the extent that the Tories can recover to lose with a degree of grace and respectability if they do it right and have a little luck. It is perfectly possible that they will lose but not give Labour a majority, especially if they wait until early autumn for the election.
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Pfft. These modern monarchs. No staying power. Thought the whole point of monarchy was that you were in it until the Lord called you upstairs. Even Popes are resigning now.
Yes, you get to be monarch and part of the price for that is you still do it when a dribbling old man, that's the deal!
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Barwell is about right but slightly underestimates the extent that the Tories can recover to lose with a degree of grace and respectability if they do it right and have a little luck. It is perfectly possible that they will lose but not give Labour a majority, especially if they wait until early autumn for the election.
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
The Tories have a history of needing more than one defeat to properly rethink.
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
I think that is failing to appreciate the culture of Gothic Italy, or Visigothic Spain, or Byzantium before it was trashed by the Justinian plague.
Italy changed, but the barbarians got a bad press. They were actually interesting cultures in their own right.
Yes, it is impossible to understand Europe without appreciating the 400-1000 period in all its amazing richness. It is they, once but no longer called 'the barbarian west', who are our cultural ancestors.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
I think that is failing to appreciate the culture of Gothic Italy, or Visigothic Spain, or Byzantium before it was trashed by the Justinian plague.
Italy changed, but the barbarians got a bad press. They were actually interesting cultures in their own right.
Yes, it is impossible to understand Europe without appreciating the 400-1000 period in all its amazing richness. It is they, once but no longer called 'the barbarian west', who are our cultural ancestors.
And it makes you appreciate the uniqueness of Great Britain. Europe was divided between Roman and ‘barbarian’ - principally Germanic (and not really as barbarian as all that, as Foxy says) spheres, with the cultural and linguistic and social consequences influencing the respective peoples through to the current day. GB (ex west Wales and the top of Scotland) is (almost) unique in having been romanised, then settled by Germanic peoples, and then semi-romanised again by the Normans (who were themselves semi-romanised Vikings).
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Barwell is about right but slightly underestimates the extent that the Tories can recover to lose with a degree of grace and respectability if they do it right and have a little luck. It is perfectly possible that they will lose but not give Labour a majority, especially if they wait until early autumn for the election.
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
The Tories have a history of needing more than one defeat to properly rethink.
Doesn't every party thesedays?
Too many people left over who want to believe the public have made a mistake causing a doubledown of the stuff the public rejected, and not enough people flexible enough to change position quickly instead?
Being British is like being a Roman in about 437AD
Pretty much. Someone needs to write the British “Radetsky March”.
Americans are more like romans in about 336AD
You can see the signs of decline. Ominous signals. And yet the power of the Empire remains immense. And glorious villas are still built by the wealthy
Maybe. The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world. What a lucky people.
But they are invaded by “barbarians” (I mean that metaphorically not literally)
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
I think that is failing to appreciate the culture of Gothic Italy, or Visigothic Spain, or Byzantium before it was trashed by the Justinian plague.
Italy changed, but the barbarians got a bad press. They were actually interesting cultures in their own right.
Yes, it is impossible to understand Europe without appreciating the 400-1000 period in all its amazing richness. It is they, once but no longer called 'the barbarian west', who are our cultural ancestors.
That is of course the Romanticism/Classicism distinction.
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Barwell is about right but slightly underestimates the extent that the Tories can recover to lose with a degree of grace and respectability if they do it right and have a little luck. It is perfectly possible that they will lose but not give Labour a majority, especially if they wait until early autumn for the election.
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
The Tories have a history of needing more than one defeat to properly rethink.
Doesn't every party thesedays?
Too many people left over who want to believe the public have made a mistake causing a doubledown of the stuff the public rejected?
It’s essentially the change curve, or stages of grief, starting with denial, as applied to politics.
Following my Zulu reference I can say I saw it in Manchester in 1964/5 - with a Zulu. He explained all the chants - particularly the final one that was the tribute to fellow warriors before it was revealed on film by the Boer character.
Almost a shame he didn't reveal it was actually the Zulu extras saying the filmmakers sucked or something irreverent as a joke.
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Barwell is about right but slightly underestimates the extent that the Tories can recover to lose with a degree of grace and respectability if they do it right and have a little luck. It is perfectly possible that they will lose but not give Labour a majority, especially if they wait until early autumn for the election.
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
The Tories have a history of needing more than one defeat to properly rethink.
Doesn't every party thesedays?
Too many people left over who want to believe the public have made a mistake causing a doubledown of the stuff the public rejected, and not enough people flexible enough to change position quickly instead?
the people who are (will be) left after the first defeat are the hardcore who, by the very definition, will not be people who are going to appeal to the general public
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
And the big twist, on first watching, comes as a surprise. Or did to me, at least, although there are some hints to make you wonder, as I recall.
He's one of the more contemptible ones, because he's given over completely to everything Trump wants or says - he's backed down over his previously different Ukraine position for example - and it's not even as though it helps him, as Trump fans seem to think he's just pathetic.
Why sell your soul if you aren't even getting anything worthwhile for it? Have some self respect.
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
Sylvia Syms never looked better on screen. Topless John Mills and Anthony Quayle not so much.
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
Sylvia Syms never looked better on screen. Topless John Mills and Anthony Quayle not so much.
My immediate thought is: Cornwall, granite, mildly left; Glos, limestone, definitely right
Indeed the whole limestone belt across England is Tory
Well, I would suggest a variation on this. The electoral geography of France definitely follows geology. But it’s more complicated than limestone left granite right.
Limestone ridges tend to have poorish but well drained soil suitable for viticulture. In the presidentials they do well with Macron. Our commune in Saône et Loire voted something mad like 80% Macron. Granite is not very productive but suits cattle rearing. Just as in Britain, cattle country is conservative with a small c. In the presidential it scored well with les Républicains.
But Le Pen does well in lowland and coal bearing geology. Not granite. So do the far left. Industrial geology.
Look at the electoral map for Saône et Loire overlay geology. Macron on limestone, Républicains on granite (but not Beaujolais, which is Macron because its vines and orchards), Le Pen in Bresse.
Translate to Britain. Le Pen’s Anglo cousins in the coal-bearing uplands and alluvial lowlands of the East. Traditional Tories and orange bookers in the granite and metamorphic West Country. Lib Dems of of the post-2016 sort in the limestone regions of the downs, Surrey Hills and Wessex.
I think in England it may be simpler
Limestone areas tend to have more attractive towns and villages - because of the plentiful golden stone. That makes for more expensive houses and richer citizens = Tories
Rich rural people in Britain are still largely Tory and Lib Dem. Poor people are mainly Labour with some Boris Tories and kippers. So yes, that probably makes a difference.
France also has viticulture as a cultural phenomenon. That’s still a minority thing in Britain. Viti areas in most of the continent are economically centre-right, culturally centre-left. Woke capitalists. Macronists. Free democrats and CDUers. Ciudadanes. Lib Dems.
Watch as areas of Southern England become meaningfully viticultural. Sussex Weald, Kent downs, Hants downs, Surrey Hills, Crouch valley of Essex. Watch them go inexorably yellow.
And yet in the last French election I was amazed at how some of the richest, most venerated wine areas of Bordeaux voted solidly Le Pen
What’s that about?!
The Somewheres versus Anywheres distinction might be relevant. LePen is a Somewhere, Macron an Anywhere for example.
A distinction that Macron strangely doesn't bother to challenge. Yet Le Pen was born into the best connected society of Neuilly and St Cloud, while Macron is a provincial boy made good who has succeeded entirely through his own efforts.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Weimar Germany's problem was different. The debts it owed to the Allies were based on the 1913 Gold Mark rate. Hence it could not inflate its way out of that debt. However, by printing vast amounts of money, it did wipe out the war debt held by domestic households, mainly middle-class ones, thus wiping out their wealth.
My immediate thought is: Cornwall, granite, mildly left; Glos, limestone, definitely right
Indeed the whole limestone belt across England is Tory
Well, I would suggest a variation on this. The electoral geography of France definitely follows geology. But it’s more complicated than limestone left granite right.
Limestone ridges tend to have poorish but well drained soil suitable for viticulture. In the presidentials they do well with Macron. Our commune in Saône et Loire voted something mad like 80% Macron. Granite is not very productive but suits cattle rearing. Just as in Britain, cattle country is conservative with a small c. In the presidential it scored well with les Républicains.
But Le Pen does well in lowland and coal bearing geology. Not granite. So do the far left. Industrial geology.
Look at the electoral map for Saône et Loire overlay geology. Macron on limestone, Républicains on granite (but not Beaujolais, which is Macron because its vines and orchards), Le Pen in Bresse.
Translate to Britain. Le Pen’s Anglo cousins in the coal-bearing uplands and alluvial lowlands of the East. Traditional Tories and orange bookers in the granite and metamorphic West Country. Lib Dems of of the post-2016 sort in the limestone regions of the downs, Surrey Hills and Wessex.
I think in England it may be simpler
Limestone areas tend to have more attractive towns and villages - because of the plentiful golden stone. That makes for more expensive houses and richer citizens = Tories
Rich rural people in Britain are still largely Tory and Lib Dem. Poor people are mainly Labour with some Boris Tories and kippers. So yes, that probably makes a difference.
France also has viticulture as a cultural phenomenon. That’s still a minority thing in Britain. Viti areas in most of the continent are economically centre-right, culturally centre-left. Woke capitalists. Macronists. Free democrats and CDUers. Ciudadanes. Lib Dems.
Watch as areas of Southern England become meaningfully viticultural. Sussex Weald, Kent downs, Hants downs, Surrey Hills, Crouch valley of Essex. Watch them go inexorably yellow.
And yet in the last French election I was amazed at how some of the richest, most venerated wine areas of Bordeaux voted solidly Le Pen
What’s that about?!
The Somewheres versus Anywheres distinction might be relevant. LePen is a Somewhere, Macron an Anywhere for example.
A distinction that Macron strangely doesn't bother to challenge. Yet Le Pen was born into the best connected society of Neuilly and St Cloud, while Macron is a provincial boy made good who has succeeded entirely through his own efforts.
LePen père, Jean-Marie, fitted in with the nobs of Neuilly! Knock me down with a feather
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
Hitler’s favourite movie was a proto-Zulu pro-British empire epic called “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer”
True story
Howard Hughes's favorite film was "Ice Station Zebra".
"Ice Station Zebra" has the same plot as "A Devil Wears Prada". An ingenue is given a mission that they dislike, is told off in an epic speech by a non-British actor playing a supercilious man with a British accent, is betrayed by a comrade but still wins the day, leaving with what they came to get.
Never understood it. Zebras don't live in the Arctic.
And as I can't be fussed to hang around for the bells, Happy New Year, one and all!
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
Hitler’s favourite movie was a proto-Zulu pro-British empire epic called “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer”
True story
Howard Hughes's favorite film was "Ice Station Zebra".
"Ice Station Zebra" has the same plot as "A Devil Wears Prada". An ingenue is given a mission that they dislike, is told off in an epic speech by a non-British actor playing a supercilious man with a British accent, is betrayed by a comrade but still wins the day, leaving with what they came to get.
Never understood it. Zebras don't live in the Arctic.
And as I can't be fussed to hang around for the bells, Happy New Year, one and all!
It always depressed me that CCTV seemed not to deter our own ne'er-do-wells who seemed quite happy to stab or rob in front of cameras. There does seem to have been a recent change to wearing ski masks or balaclavas so perhaps they are learning (although it might be bystanders filming on phones rather than CCTV).
Being blunt a 1997 result for the Tories looks like a great result for them and way better than I think they are going to get.
Barwell is about right but slightly underestimates the extent that the Tories can recover to lose with a degree of grace and respectability if they do it right and have a little luck. It is perfectly possible that they will lose but not give Labour a majority, especially if they wait until early autumn for the election.
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
The Tories have a history of needing more than one defeat to properly rethink.
Doesn't every party thesedays?
Too many people left over who want to believe the public have made a mistake causing a doubledown of the stuff the public rejected, and not enough people flexible enough to change position quickly instead?
We see that here. Quite a few PB Tories convinced that Starmer will rapidly become unpopular and that will have folk flocking back to the blues.
The first may well be true but the second doesn't follow from it.
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
I may be conflating two stories, but as I understand, from today Dominic Cummings must be kept on a leash and muzzled when out in public.
By coincidence, I am watching This England and Dominic Cummings has just driven to Durham. As a drama, given its cast and subject matter, it is quite dull, no patch on When Boris Met Dave or Partygate or Brexit: the uncivil war. Surely all PBers will spend the New Year watching drama docs about Boris.
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
Yes, some great points.
I watched "Battle of Britain" yesterday, and that is of a similar era to Zulu, but also gets the flag waving patriotism right. The Germans are neither distant figures, nor stereotyped ogres, but depicted sympathetically, much as the Zulus in Zulu.
The air scenes are still phenomenal, with the repetition, fatigue, fear, courage and isolation contrasting well with the bonhomie, and empty places in messes just right at getting the pathos over.
The other thing that the film does well is to lose the individual stories in the overall narrative rather than focus on some superhero character. Just people doing their duty bravely.
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Off topic. US civil war. Again. I’m still not getting the memo. I looked up the recommended book - Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson the Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
Part 1. the books wiki page. Michael P. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Penn State asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom", “A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom.
In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."
So Redneck Rabbits question of the day: out of the two sides in the conflict, whose position was closest to the Founding Fathers?
Off topic. US civil war. Again. I’m still not getting the memo. I looked up the recommended book - Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson the Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
Part 1. the books wiki page. Michael P. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Penn State asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom", “A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom.
In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."
So Redneck Rabbits question of the day: out of the two sides in the conflict, whose position was closest to the Founding Fathers?
Part 2. Next Looked at a few Amazon reviews, and one reviewer David Hawkins didn’t like the book at all. “This book was hugely disappointing. It is more about the author's attempt to revise history to fit his particular views than about actual history. In other words fiction placed placed in a historical setting.
As far as I could determine the majority of his sources were abolitionists. Fine they were a literate and vocal minority and by a minority I mean they represented less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008) of the population of the United States at that time. So to rely on such a small segment of the population is hardly in keeping with any semblance of historical veracity.
So what we have here is a modern day abolitionist wannabe parroting the biased view points of his predecessors rather than a valid work of historical value. The times he quotes southern politicians he fails to emphasize that they represented only 25% of the population of the south (the Southern elites were as educated as they were short sighted and biased), He totally ignores the views of those that actually had to fight the war. They were largely illiterate farmers that were often conscripts, drafted to fight as cannon fodder. That they should resent slaves is no surprise as they were forced to fight for the plantation owners, but they had no interests in owning or keeping slaves. They fought rather than be imprisoned or worse. Those poor whites that volunteered do so to protect their homes and families from the Northern Aggressors, basically the same reasons soldiers have fought for throughout history,
This Author also ignored why the South chose that time to rebel against the Union, They actually had no need to. Slavery was Constitutionally protected and the North could not amend the Constitution to erase it. Quite the opposite in fact. There was a Constitutional amendment in process at the time that Lincoln strongly endorsed, the Corwin Amendment, to make the Constitution proof against any changes to change the status of slavery. Yet the Southern states chose that time to withdraw from the Union. This is a topic that revisionists never try and answer because it refutes the contention that the war was all about freeing the slaves.”
“less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008)” seems a remarkably researched stat. Or BS. 🤔
Off topic. US civil war. Again. I’m still not getting the memo. I looked up the recommended book - Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson the Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
Part 1. the books wiki page. Michael P. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Penn State asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom", “A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom.
In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."
So Redneck Rabbits question of the day: out of the two sides in the conflict, whose position was closest to the Founding Fathers?
Part 2. Next Looked at a few Amazon reviews, and one reviewer David Hawkins didn’t like the book at all. “This book was hugely disappointing. It is more about the author's attempt to revise history to fit his particular views than about actual history. In other words fiction placed placed in a historical setting.
As far as I could determine the majority of his sources were abolitionists. Fine they were a literate and vocal minority and by a minority I mean they represented less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008) of the population of the United States at that time. So to rely on such a small segment of the population is hardly in keeping with any semblance of historical veracity.
So what we have here is a modern day abolitionist wannabe parroting the biased view points of his predecessors rather than a valid work of historical value. The times he quotes southern politicians he fails to emphasize that they represented only 25% of the population of the south (the Southern elites were as educated as they were short sighted and biased), He totally ignores the views of those that actually had to fight the war. They were largely illiterate farmers that were often conscripts, drafted to fight as cannon fodder. That they should resent slaves is no surprise as they were forced to fight for the plantation owners, but they had no interests in owning or keeping slaves. They fought rather than be imprisoned or worse. Those poor whites that volunteered do so to protect their homes and families from the Northern Aggressors, basically the same reasons soldiers have fought for throughout history,
This Author also ignored why the South chose that time to rebel against the Union, They actually had no need to. Slavery was Constitutionally protected and the North could not amend the Constitution to erase it. Quite the opposite in fact. There was a Constitutional amendment in process at the time that Lincoln strongly endorsed, the Corwin Amendment, to make the Constitution proof against any changes to change the status of slavery. Yet the Southern states chose that time to withdraw from the Union. This is a topic that revisionists never try and answer because it refutes the contention that the war was all about freeing the slaves.”
“less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008)” seems a remarkably researched stat. Or BS. 🤔
Part 3. Nic Haley was asked: what was the civil war about. I now think the strongest reply is to say Freedom. Not just spin that covers all bases, as a politician could say she was talking freedom of enslaved people. But understanding the definition of Freedom, as set in the US constitution by the founding fathers, very much fuelled to the quarrel.
Now I could be wrong in this conclusion - as so many insist the correct answer is say slavery - yet so much seems to point to it being about freedom: not just one Amazon review, and not just Prof Johnson’s criticism of McPherson’s book, but even McPherson in his own words are all very close to the same points I have been making in recent days: not just this danger of revisionist history, in what matters more to us these days getting amplified in todays history books, but a misunderstanding before a word of any book is written, if the conflict itself revolved around a political and constitutional definition: both sides fought on basis they were the ones remaining true to the founding fathers who created the United States, after winning freedom from the British. So any accurate book needs to understand and fairly represent not just self interest of the belligerents, but the belief on both sides their position was the true Freedom of the United States.
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Starmer will also likely do worse than Blair did in Kent and Essex and the Midlands and North even if Labour and the LDs do better in London and Southern Remain seats than they did against Major
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Starmer will also likely do worse than Blair did in Kent and Essex and the Midlands and North even if Labour and the LDs do better in London and Southern Remain seats than they did against Major
I was at Elementary school in Atlanta for some years in the 1970s including quite a bit of history of the Civil War and Georgia's part in it. I wouldn't claim this as anything like modern historiography and analysis, it was an Elementary School. There was a strong whiff of "Noble Cause" to the teaching, minimising slavery as a cause, and stressing "States Rights" etc
While there is scope for academic discussion there is more than a whiff of denialism of the fundamental evil of chattel slavery to the debate, particularly in the Southern States themselves. I can see why Haleys answer was so contentious. Of course the cause was states rights - the right of states to permit the abomination of slavery.
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
Yes, some great points.
I watched "Battle of Britain" yesterday, and that is of a similar era to Zulu, but also gets the flag waving patriotism right. The Germans are neither distant figures, nor stereotyped ogres, but depicted sympathetically, much as the Zulus in Zulu.
The air scenes are still phenomenal, with the repetition, fatigue, fear, courage and isolation contrasting well with the bonhomie, and empty places in messes just right at getting the pathos over.
The other thing that the film does well is to lose the individual stories in the overall narrative rather than focus on some superhero character. Just people doing their duty bravely.
I recall seeing it as a kid. With the usual childhood bloodthirstiness, loved it.
Amazing cast (in retrospect). Also first crush Susanna York.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Why do you think we have had horrendous asset price inflation over the last 15 years?
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Starmer will also likely do worse than Blair did in Kent and Essex and the Midlands and North even if Labour and the LDs do better in London and Southern Remain seats than they did against Major
It depends on the amount of tactical voting.
There was massive tactical voting in 1997 so that was factored in. It will be weaker in Leave seats than Remain seats however now
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Starmer will also likely do worse than Blair did in Kent and Essex and the Midlands and North even if Labour and the LDs do better in London and Southern Remain seats than they did against Major
I think you have a large amount of hopinion there...
He's one of the more contemptible ones, because he's given over completely to everything Trump wants or says - he's backed down over his previously different Ukraine position for example - and it's not even as though it helps him, as Trump fans seem to think he's just pathetic.
Why sell your soul if you aren't even getting anything worthwhile for it? Have some self respect.
As I'm a about to head to bed and fall asleep listening to the Nine Tailors - happy new year. I may even go crazy and fall asleep to one of the 'new' Poirot novels that's on Audible. Madness, I know.
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Starmer will also likely do worse than Blair did in Kent and Essex and the Midlands and North even if Labour and the LDs do better in London and Southern Remain seats than they did against Major
It depends on the amount of tactical voting.
There was massive tactical voting in 1997 so that was factored in. It will be weaker in Leave seats than Remain seats however now
no matter how bad it is now the current government doesn't have Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell ruthlessly exploiting them. SKS now isn't TB from 1996
Off topic. US civil war. Again. I’m still not getting the memo. I looked up the recommended book - Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson the Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
Part 1. the books wiki page. Michael P. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Penn State asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom", “A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom.
In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."
So Redneck Rabbits question of the day: out of the two sides in the conflict, whose position was closest to the Founding Fathers?
Part 2. Next Looked at a few Amazon reviews, and one reviewer David Hawkins didn’t like the book at all. “This book was hugely disappointing. It is more about the author's attempt to revise history to fit his particular views than about actual history. In other words fiction placed placed in a historical setting.
As far as I could determine the majority of his sources were abolitionists. Fine they were a literate and vocal minority and by a minority I mean they represented less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008) of the population of the United States at that time. So to rely on such a small segment of the population is hardly in keeping with any semblance of historical veracity.
So what we have here is a modern day abolitionist wannabe parroting the biased view points of his predecessors rather than a valid work of historical value. The times he quotes southern politicians he fails to emphasize that they represented only 25% of the population of the south (the Southern elites were as educated as they were short sighted and biased), He totally ignores the views of those that actually had to fight the war. They were largely illiterate farmers that were often conscripts, drafted to fight as cannon fodder. That they should resent slaves is no surprise as they were forced to fight for the plantation owners, but they had no interests in owning or keeping slaves. They fought rather than be imprisoned or worse. Those poor whites that volunteered do so to protect their homes and families from the Northern Aggressors, basically the same reasons soldiers have fought for throughout history,
This Author also ignored why the South chose that time to rebel against the Union, They actually had no need to. Slavery was Constitutionally protected and the North could not amend the Constitution to erase it. Quite the opposite in fact. There was a Constitutional amendment in process at the time that Lincoln strongly endorsed, the Corwin Amendment, to make the Constitution proof against any changes to change the status of slavery. Yet the Southern states chose that time to withdraw from the Union. This is a topic that revisionists never try and answer because it refutes the contention that the war was all about freeing the slaves.”
“less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008)” seems a remarkably researched stat. Or BS. 🤔
Part 3. Nic Haley was asked: what was the civil war about. I now think the strongest reply is to say Freedom. Not just spin that covers all bases, as a politician could say she was talking freedom of enslaved people. But understanding the definition of Freedom, as set in the US constitution by the founding fathers, very much fuelled to the quarrel.
Now I could be wrong in this conclusion - as so many insist the correct answer is say slavery - yet so much seems to point to it being about freedom: not just one Amazon review, and not just Prof Johnson’s criticism of McPherson’s book, but even McPherson in his own words are all very close to the same points I have been making in recent days: not just this danger of revisionist history, in what matters more to us these days getting amplified in todays history books, but a misunderstanding before a word of any book is written, if the conflict itself revolved around a political and constitutional definition: both sides fought on basis they were the ones remaining true to the founding fathers who created the United States, after winning freedom from the British. So any accurate book needs to understand and fairly represent not just self interest of the belligerents, but the belief on both sides their position was the true Freedom of the United States.
As @SeaShantyIrish2 has explained at greater length, that’s just revisionism. Slavery was front and centre in the political battles that led up to the war; was pretty well the single issue if the presidential election which preceded it, as was the explicit issue, proclaimed by them at the time, on which the southern states seceded.
I have rigged up a projector at home and am working through various unseen (by me) classics.
So far, Mean Streets (1973) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Both deserved classics.
Zulu (1964) was much better than I thought it would be. I wonder if readers can recommend other “British Westerns”.
Have you seen "Carry on up the Khyber"?
I have not seen any Carry On film since the early 90s. I’m not overly keen to exhume them, to be honest.
The Khyber is genius.
They are great period pieces if viewed in the right spirit.
More seriously, I would recommend "the four feathers" 1939 version, though the 2002 was good too. Also "the life and death of Colonel Blimp"
I have not seen the Four Feathers.
Colonel Blimp I saw some time ago and didn’t really “get”. Also not much fussed by A Matter of Life and Death. But (like Scorsese), the Red Shoes is one of my favourite films.
As for comedy period pieces, I’m Alright Jack (1959) has aged pretty well.
"The Man who would be King" (1975) is well worth a look too.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
Ice Cold in Alex is a great call for more than one reason. In particular, many 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tried to get a female love interest into a war film - when wars at the time were not best known for women. Some of these were done well; others... not so well.
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
Somewhat related - past couple of weeks I've been listening to the R4 version of 'The Russia House' starring Tom Baker. Very well done and worth looking out.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Why do you think we have had horrendous asset price inflation over the last 15 years?
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Why do you think we have had horrendous asset price inflation over the last 15 years?
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
In 2008ish special financial instruments were created to expand the money supply
This prevented a depression
We then got used to it
We are now removing this artificial money via other financial operations
It isn't working as much as we like and the bits that do work hurt
So we "mined the future" in 2008 and now the future has arrived and we are paying our past selves back retrospectively. Which sucks.
(Incidentally you may want to consider the Ray Bradbury story "Night Call, Collect" or the film "Looper")
Listen to my last words, anywhere! Listen all you boards, governments, syndicates, nations of the world, And you, powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory, To take what is not yours, To sell out your sons forever! To sell the ground from unborn feet forever.
Kemi Badenoch has a clear lead in a New Year ConservativeHome next Conservative leader survey. Badenoch has 38%, Mordaunt 23% and Braverman 14% in the first of many likely polls and surveys as to who will succeed Sunak as Tory leader and become Leader of the Opposition if he does lose the next general election and Starmer becomes PM "Badenoch leads Mordaunt in our first Next Tory Leader survey in two years | Conservative Home" https://conservativehome.com/2023/12/31/badenoch-leads-mordaunt-in-our-first-next-tory-leader-poll-in-two-years/
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
However the Tories will win more seats in Scotland than 1997 so could go either way
Starmer will also likely do worse than Blair did in Kent and Essex and the Midlands and North even if Labour and the LDs do better in London and Southern Remain seats than they did against Major
I think you have a large amount of hopinion there...
No the recent local election results confirm that trend
I was at Elementary school in Atlanta for some years in the 1970s including quite a bit of history of the Civil War and Georgia's part in it. I wouldn't claim this as anything like modern historiography and analysis, it was an Elementary School. There was a strong whiff of "Noble Cause" to the teaching, minimising slavery as a cause, and stressing "States Rights" etc
While there is scope for academic discussion there is more than a whiff of denialism of the fundamental evil of chattel slavery to the debate, particularly in the Southern States themselves. I can see why Haleys answer was so contentious. Of course the cause was states rights - the right of states to permit the abomination of slavery.
The civil war history teaching wasn't (according to my wife) wildly different in California back then - which shows the ubiquity of the lost cause myth making.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Why do you think we have had horrendous asset price inflation over the last 15 years?
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
In 2008ish special financial instruments were created to expand the money supply
This prevented a depression
We then got used to it
We are now removing this artificial money via other financial operations
It isn't working as much as we like and the bits that do work hurt
So we "mined the future" in 2008 and now the future has arrived and we are paying our past selves back retrospectively. Which sucks.
(Incidentally you may want to consider the Ray Bradbury story "Night Call, Collect" or the film "Looper")
Not quite
We are not “paying ourselves back”
What we did was artificially inflate the economy with new money to prevent deflation. Politicians ignored asset price inflation because the voters they focused on were net owners of assets. Too bad it sucks for the young and the poor.
Then inflation spilled over into consumer price inflation which their voters did care about.
So they are deflating the economy to reduce consumer price inflation.
So anyhoo. Before 2023 leaves us, here are my brief memories of the year
The articles continued. Although I regret the Spectatorisation of PB, the articles are worth reading. @Cyclefree's Post Office series was notable and should be written into a book (hint! hint!). @Alanbrooke pulled off a surprisingly good series in rapid succession. But for me the best were two surprises: @OnlyLivingBoy's modelling article and @DougSeal's South Africa article, which both pulled off the trifecta of being good analysis with betting implications
As for comments, the usual to-ing and fro-in, but the two that struck home were @kjh and @IanB2's little dogs, with @kjh's teaching the dog the three-ball-trick just edging it
The most poignant was @Cookie's comment about a young friend of the family who on entering Big School was subdued, saying "Nobody wants to play any more. They just want to talk", which reduced me to tears briefly
Following my Zulu reference I can say I saw it in Manchester in 1964/5 - with a Zulu. He explained all the chants - particularly the final one that was the tribute to fellow warriors before it was revealed on film by the Boer character.
Did your friend agree, that the good guys won?
OR was he too consumed by the bigotry of anticymraegism?
Off topic. US civil war. Again. I’m still not getting the memo. I looked up the recommended book - Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson the Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
Part 1. the books wiki page. Michael P. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Penn State asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom", “A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom.
In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."
So Redneck Rabbits question of the day: out of the two sides in the conflict, whose position was closest to the Founding Fathers?
Perhaps you might try reading the actual book? And other about Civil War.
WAY more informative - also entertaining and enlightening - that debating a text YOU HAVE NOT READ.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Why do you think we have had horrendous asset price inflation over the last 15 years?
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
In 2008ish special financial instruments were created to expand the money supply
This prevented a depression
We then got used to it
We are now removing this artificial money via other financial operations
It isn't working as much as we like and the bits that do work hurt
So we "mined the future" in 2008 and now the future has arrived and we are paying our past selves back retrospectively. Which sucks.
(Incidentally you may want to consider the Ray Bradbury story "Night Call, Collect" or the film "Looper")
Not quite
We are not “paying ourselves back”
What we did was artificially inflate the economy with new money to prevent deflation. Politicians ignored asset price inflation because the voters they focused on were net owners of assets. Too bad it sucks for the young and the poor.
Then inflation spilled over into consumer price inflation which their voters did care about.
So they are deflating the economy to reduce consumer price inflation.
Ironically much of the inflation has sod all to do with money supply and was caused by supply restrictions in the aftermath of the pandemic and SMO.
1st of the month. Bill-paying day. The last day of payments from my Barclays Premier account before it is downgraded on the 2nd because I'm a pound shop Nigel Farage.
1st of the month. Bill-paying day. The last day of payments from my Barclays Premier account before it is downgraded on the 2nd because I'm a pound shop Nigel Farage.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged politicians not to treat their opponents as enemies but fellow human beings. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67844356
I was at Elementary school in Atlanta for some years in the 1970s including quite a bit of history of the Civil War and Georgia's part in it. I wouldn't claim this as anything like modern historiography and analysis, it was an Elementary School. There was a strong whiff of "Noble Cause" to the teaching, minimising slavery as a cause, and stressing "States Rights" etc
While there is scope for academic discussion there is more than a whiff of denialism of the fundamental evil of chattel slavery to the debate, particularly in the Southern States themselves. I can see why Haleys answer was so contentious. Of course the cause was states rights - the right of states to permit the abomination of slavery.
The civil war history teaching wasn't (according to my wife) wildly different in California back then - which shows the ubiquity of the lost cause myth making.
I watched Buster Keaton's "The General" with Fox Jr2 a couple of years back. It floored him to see that the Confederates were written as the good guys...
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
You continually misunderstand d this. It’s not a “loss” in the normal sense
Basically these bonds were bought will printed money.
They are being sold for less than they were bought for.
All that means is that the money supply will have permanently expanded rather than been fully sterilised
No, you continually misunderstand this. The Government is committed to funding the Bank's losses on its bond sales at the Treasury's expense. That's real taxpayer's (and borrowed) money being paid over each month and it is therefore directly comparable to the impact of public spending or tax cuts on the public finances.
The borrowed money is coming from the Bank of England.
I do this for a living. What do you do?
I'm a Marketing Manager for SMEs. I'm good at my job and proud of what I do. Perhaps my lack of professional experience in this area is why I have done my homework, whereas you have not. The borrowed money being remitted to the Bank is being borrowed on the international money markets; it is not coming from the Bank of England, or what would be the point of the entire exercise?
Everything I have said on this subject is entirely valid, the Bank bung is public spending drawn from the same pot as hospitals, HS2 and cuts in tax.
Furthermore, apeals to your own expertise have no bearing on the discussion except to invalidate your own arguments.
May be this will help:
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money 2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply 3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market 4. The money that it received was cancelled 5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Very interesting. Why didn't post Versailles Germany do the same? Create money out of thin air. It would have stopped the hyper inflation...
Why do you think we have had horrendous asset price inflation over the last 15 years?
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
In 2008ish special financial instruments were created to expand the money supply
This prevented a depression
We then got used to it
We are now removing this artificial money via other financial operations
It isn't working as much as we like and the bits that do work hurt
So we "mined the future" in 2008 and now the future has arrived and we are paying our past selves back retrospectively. Which sucks.
(Incidentally you may want to consider the Ray Bradbury story "Night Call, Collect" or the film "Looper")
Not quite
We are not “paying ourselves back”
What we did was artificially inflate the economy with new money to prevent deflation. Politicians ignored asset price inflation because the voters they focused on were net owners of assets. Too bad it sucks for the young and the poor.
Then inflation spilled over into consumer price inflation which their voters did care about.
So they are deflating the economy to reduce consumer price inflation.
Ironically much of the inflation has sod all to do with money supply and was caused by supply restrictions in the aftermath of the pandemic and SMO.
Yes.
Although to be clear the asset price inflation was caused by the money supply; the consumer price inflation by supply constraints and excess savings being spent in the pursuit of a fin de siecle exuberance
Comments
The geography of the US is just about perfect if you want to maintain prosperity in a chaotic world.
What a lucky people.
If 2023 was good to you, may 2024 be at least as good.
If 2023 was hard, then I wish you a better year.
Love those around you, be kind to strangers, remember others may have had tough times too, hang on to hope, however unlikely hope may seem.
Onwards and upward, or, if you prefer, Excelsior.
Seriously. The influx of migrants at the border is spookily reminiscent of what happened at the edge of the empire. Meanwhile the urban centres decline and the rich decamp to gated villas. And tyrants rule in the capital
Exactly as in Rome in its last century of greatness - 300-400AD
https://x.com/nfergus/status/1741547139304755343?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg
Right up @Leon’s alley.
When he became Leader of the Conservative Party, @RishiSunak's personal ratings were much better than his party's. That was never going to last - either he was going to drag it up to his level or, more likely, it was going to drag him down to its level...
...That's what's now happened - and as the chart below shows, the trigger for it appears to have been Sunak's decision in June to abstain in the vote on the Privileges Committee's report into Boris Johnson's conduct, with a further decline this autumn
https://twitter.com/GavinBarwell/status/1741505399931490411
It's a niche point... I wonder if abstention managed to annoy both sides on the question, though. It Betrayed Boris, but didn't actually show any moral fibre.
See also the dithering of the last few months and now the abortive makeup with Dom thing.
Something Major was guilty of too often as well.
Other good films set in the Empire "Ice Cold in Alex" and "A Town Like Alice".
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Italy changed, but the barbarians got a bad press. They were actually interesting cultures in their own right.
Metaphorically.
https://twitter.com/mkonnikova/status/1609353300155027464
A result giving a centre left government and allows the Tories to rethink would not be bad at all.
We can use our bank reserves to buy bonds
The money we used to buy bonds when we were doing QE did not come from government taxation or borrowing. Instead, like other central banks, we can create money digitally in the form of ‘central bank reserves’.
We use these reserves to buy bonds. Bonds are essentially IOUs issued by the government and businesses as a means of borrowing money.
Now that we are reversing QE, some of those bonds will mature and we are selling others to investors. When that happens, the money we created to buy the bonds disappears and the overall amount of money in the economy will go down.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/quantitative-easing
The point that you are missing is this is not a fiscal operation it is a monetary one.
1. The bank created money
2. It used that money to buy bonds thereby increasing the money supply
3. It has sold some of the bonds back into the market
4. The money that it received was cancelled
5. More money was issued in 1 than was cancelled in 4 meaning the overall money supply has increased
The money flows between the Treasury and the Bank are irrelevant - they are left pocket / right pocket accounting
The “losses” that you are so fixated on are from money that was created out of nothing in the first place. This wasn’t an asset that the bank has always had and sold for a loss. It was an asset they bought with something they created and then partially reversed that process.
Too many people left over who want to believe the public have made a mistake causing a doubledown of the stuff the public rejected, and not enough people flexible enough to change position quickly instead?
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=365901
But Ice Cold in Alex gave a really believable reason for women to be there, kills one of them off (I guess that's not too much of a spoiler...) and includes her well in the action and plot. And even better, there was no love story. The women were just there, trying to survive as the men were.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4383307-graham-backtracks-on-earlier-jan-6-criticism-of-trump-it-depends-on-what-the-conduct-is/
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday appeared to backtrack on earlier criticism of former President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 and suggested instead that his presidential immunity defense was “a legitimate claim” as he moves forward with various court battles...
Why sell your soul if you aren't even getting anything worthwhile for it? Have some self respect.
Topless John Mills and Anthony Quayle not so much.
And as I can't be fussed to hang around for the bells, Happy New Year, one and all!
The first may well be true but the second doesn't follow from it.
My prediction is that the election will be at the beginning of October.
Labour will win a decent majority, having done well in Scotland. But the main feature of the election will be a Tory collapse in the SE, where the blue wall will well and truly break. The Tories may exceed expectations in the Midlands but will lose seats in the SE that have never been lost before, to both Labour and LibDem. Coupled with the red wall returning to type, this will result in a worse Tory performance than 1997.
Although Trump's to be even worse still. January looks like it could be truly wretched.
An image of the burning Crimean bridge with the caption “2024. To be continued…”
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1741575054394114409
Although, on a political betting site, it will be much happier for some than others.
I watched "Battle of Britain" yesterday, and that is of a similar era to Zulu, but also gets the flag waving patriotism right. The Germans are neither distant figures, nor stereotyped ogres, but depicted sympathetically, much as the Zulus in Zulu.
The air scenes are still phenomenal, with the repetition, fatigue, fear, courage and isolation contrasting well with the bonhomie, and empty places in messes just right at getting the pathos over.
The other thing that the film does well is to lose the individual stories in the overall narrative rather than focus on some superhero character. Just people doing their duty bravely.
I’m still not getting the memo. I looked up the recommended book - Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson the Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
Part 1. the books wiki page.
Michael P. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Penn State asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom",
“A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom.
In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."
So Redneck Rabbits question of the day: out of the two sides in the conflict, whose position was closest to the Founding Fathers?
Next Looked at a few Amazon reviews, and one reviewer David Hawkins didn’t like the book at all.
“This book was hugely disappointing. It is more about the author's attempt to revise history to fit his particular views than about actual history. In other words fiction placed placed in a historical setting.
As far as I could determine the majority of his sources were abolitionists. Fine they were a literate and vocal minority and by a minority I mean they represented less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008) of the population of the United States at that time. So to rely on such a small segment of the population is hardly in keeping with any semblance of historical veracity.
So what we have here is a modern day abolitionist wannabe parroting the biased view points of his predecessors rather than a valid work of historical value. The times he quotes southern politicians he fails to emphasize that they represented only 25% of the population of the south (the Southern elites were as educated as they were short sighted and biased), He totally ignores the views of those that actually had to fight the war. They were largely illiterate farmers that were often
conscripts, drafted to fight as cannon fodder. That they should resent slaves is no surprise as they were forced to fight for the plantation owners, but they had no interests in owning or keeping slaves. They fought rather than be imprisoned or worse. Those poor whites that volunteered do so to protect their homes and families from the Northern Aggressors, basically the same reasons soldiers have fought for throughout history,
This Author also ignored why the South chose that time to rebel against the Union, They actually had no need to. Slavery was Constitutionally protected and the North could not amend the Constitution to erase it. Quite the opposite in fact. There was a Constitutional amendment in process at the time that Lincoln strongly endorsed, the Corwin Amendment, to make the Constitution proof against any changes to change the status of slavery. Yet the Southern states chose that time to withdraw from the Union. This is a topic that revisionists never try and answer because it refutes the contention that the war was all about freeing the slaves.”
“less than eight tenths of a percent, (0.008)” seems a remarkably researched stat. Or BS. 🤔
Nic Haley was asked: what was the civil war about. I now think the strongest reply is to say Freedom. Not just spin that covers all bases, as a politician could say she was talking freedom of enslaved people. But understanding the definition of Freedom, as set in the US constitution by the founding fathers, very much fuelled to the quarrel.
Now I could be wrong in this conclusion - as so many insist the correct answer is say slavery - yet so much seems to point to it being about freedom: not just one Amazon review, and not just Prof Johnson’s criticism of McPherson’s book, but even McPherson in his own words are all very close to the same points I have been making in recent days: not just this danger of revisionist history, in what matters more to us these days getting amplified in todays history books, but a misunderstanding before a word of any book is written, if the conflict itself revolved around a political and constitutional definition: both sides fought on basis they were the ones remaining true to the founding fathers who created the United States, after winning freedom from the British. So any accurate book needs to understand and fairly represent not just self interest of the belligerents, but the belief on both sides their position was the true Freedom of the United States.
Oh dear
"Iran's IRIS 'Alborz' warship has entered the Red Sea near Yemen."
Happy New Year
While there is scope for academic discussion there is more than a whiff of denialism of the fundamental evil of chattel slavery to the debate, particularly in the Southern States themselves. I can see why Haleys answer was so contentious. Of course the cause was states rights - the right of states to permit the abomination of slavery.
With the usual childhood bloodthirstiness, loved it.
Amazing cast (in retrospect).
Also first crush Susanna York.
Asset price inflation sounds less positive than rising house prices doesn’t it?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HPxHEVA1wds&pp=ygUZbWFuIGZvciBhbGwgc2Vhc29ucyB3YWxlcw==
Slavery was front and centre in the political battles that led up to the war; was pretty well the single issue if the presidential election which preceded it, as was the explicit issue, proclaimed by them at the time, on which the southern states seceded.
There’s no one ‘true to the founding fathers’, as they were just as split on the issue of slavery. Though Lincoln made a pretty good case for the the Constitution’s meaning as a compromise:
https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm
Which the South hated.
- In 2008ish special financial instruments were created to expand the money supply
- This prevented a depression
- We then got used to it
- We are now removing this artificial money via other financial operations
- It isn't working as much as we like and the bits that do work hurt
So we "mined the future" in 2008 and now the future has arrived and we are paying our past selves back retrospectively. Which sucks.(Incidentally you may want to consider the Ray Bradbury story "Night Call, Collect" or the film "Looper")
"Badenoch leads Mordaunt in our first Next Tory Leader survey in two years | Conservative Home" https://conservativehome.com/2023/12/31/badenoch-leads-mordaunt-in-our-first-next-tory-leader-poll-in-two-years/
We are not “paying ourselves back”
What we did was artificially inflate the economy with new money to prevent deflation. Politicians ignored asset price inflation because the voters they focused on were net owners of assets. Too bad it sucks for the young and the poor.
Then inflation spilled over into consumer price inflation which their voters did care about.
So they are deflating the economy to reduce consumer price inflation.
The articles continued. Although I regret the Spectatorisation of PB, the articles are worth reading. @Cyclefree's Post Office series was notable and should be written into a book (hint! hint!). @Alanbrooke pulled off a surprisingly good series in rapid succession. But for me the best were two surprises: @OnlyLivingBoy's modelling article and @DougSeal's South Africa article, which both pulled off the trifecta of being good analysis with betting implications
As for comments, the usual to-ing and fro-in, but the two that struck home were @kjh and @IanB2's little dogs, with @kjh's teaching the dog the three-ball-trick just edging it
The most poignant was @Cookie's comment about a young friend of the family who on entering Big School was subdued, saying "Nobody wants to play any more. They just want to talk", which reduced me to tears briefly
2023 was rubbish. Let's hope 2024 is better
@OnlyLivingBoy: https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/09/17/why-labours-chances-of-winning-a-majority-are-more-than-50/
@DuraAce: https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/12/21/the-view-from-south-africa/
@kjh: https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4614914/#Comment_4614914
OR was he too consumed by the bigotry of anticymraegism?
It might not be as bad as it could be...
WAY more informative - also entertaining and enlightening - that debating a text YOU HAVE NOT READ.
The
Tories
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67844356
Although to be clear the asset price inflation was caused by the money supply; the consumer price inflation by supply constraints and excess savings being spent in the pursuit of a fin de siecle exuberance