Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
Half price in WH Smiths at Edinburgh Waverley yesterday, but more interest discernible in the Journal of Knitting and Crochet Studies and the like.
New books are often heavily discounted in WHS though, aren't they.
I don't believe he holds the star quality value he once held. During peak Johnson circa 2020/21 the book would have sold like hot cakes.
Unless he has employed a ghost writer the book is most likely unreadable. Despite the Emperor's New Clothes reputation as a great literary figure, Johnson as both a raconteur and writer is running on empty and has been for years.
Oh come off it. He is streets ahead of any other ex-PM as a writer. That was his job before politics. He is just so far beyond the pale for you that you cannot conceive he has any positive qualities whatsoever.
I've read some very different views on that - and that was looong before Mr Johnson became PM or even Mayor.
I think he's a good writer. Not a literary master of profound insight, but a very talented hack who can knock out erudite and easy to read comic material with ease.
He's f*****' terrible. Florid language, self- aggrandisement and analogous nonsense.
I think Boris is a very bright man (and he was a great editor and should have been a great PM) but I find some agreement with you
His style can grate. When he nails it he nails it. He’s very funny when he gets it right
But too often he lapses into lazy purple prose with hints of learning
Somebody once said Boris Johnson’s best work is when he doesn’t think about it but is middling when he spends time thinking about it.
Isn’t that true of all of us? And 95% of cognitive work? Certainly creative work
As Picasso said, the best painting is done when you treat it as play, like a child doing colourful daubs for fun. You don’t worry what others might think, it is pure ludic pleasure. You are in “the zone”
When you write and "do(es)n’t think about it" you tend to get banned from this forum.
I mean, FFS how hard is it for the system to log your details once so that each time you are forwarded from one person to another you don't have to go right back to the start and explain everything again from scratch?
Some call-centre online chats now do this. Or at least, they now admit they do.
Of course, now the online chats begin with the AI, not a human. But spamming "operator" at them often works.
Wasn't this a thing @Leon spoke of some weeks/days back? Or is this a different company?
#NotebookLM yes, that's Google. But that is separate to Synthesia, which is a British startup that got massive funding about 6 months ago that allow for the creation of digital avatars for training videos. They look very ropey syncing to the podcast script.
Notable largely for having the lowest LabCon score of any poll yet. 53% vs 47% for the SPLORG.
The SPLORG is drawing closer.
And SPLORG is a monster that Lab/Con do not wish to discuss or draw attention to.
While I think it is improbable that this massive downward trend for Lab+Con will continue - they are already down 6 points since the 2024 election and 29 points down from the 2017 GE, it is not at all impossible. A next thinkable phase is that just as the populist opinion has switched to declaring it will vote Reform, centrist opinion could combine around the LDs. If tnat occurred SPLORG could go over 50, and at that figure there is something like a tipping point which gets noticed more widely than the wonks and anoraks.
I doubt it, the LDs are not trusted by centre left voters after the coalition and right of centre opponents of Labour will vote Tory or Reform still.
At general elections the LD vote remains largely upper middle class centrist Remainers, it is Reform eating into the white working class vote however
Yes, quite reasonable about the past. But the future does not always resemble it exactly. We would not have predicted that the Lab/Con combined level of support would drop from 82% to 53% (approx) in a very few years. Try this question: Who are centre left, centre right and centre voters to trust when they get disillusioned with Lab and Con? It isn't going to eb a new party; it isn't Reform and it isn't the hard left.
Sherlock Holmes may apply here: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the case".
Why not a new party?
Ask Shirley Williams, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey etc and the voters.
New parties have to serve a purpose that no other existing party (credibly) serves.
The SDP very nearly did. In 1981, the SDP-Liberal Alliance polled clear first for several months, peaking at over 50%. At that point, it (allied to an existing party, to be fair) was a genuine contender for power. But then Tory economic policies began to be seen as working, inflation and interest rates started coming down, and the Falklands happened. But for some time, it offered an alternative government that neither the incumbent one nor the official opposition could. Also worth noting that had Benn beaten Healey for the deputy leadership, there would probably have been a further exodus from Labour. Healey's win (by 1%) showed that the Party was redeemable and that not burning bridges was a percentage move for those with time and ambition.
Similarly, Change UK might have served a similar purpose had it (1) attracted more, and more heavyweight L:abour MPs, (2) had a clear-eyed mission, and (3) targeted the Lib Dems immediately. The LDs at the time were still suffering from post-coalitionitis and a clean centre-left party could have proven attractive, if it had the capacity to win elections. However, when it launched it not only didn't have the capacity but didn't even have the desire or the understanding of why it was necessary. That killed it immediately, though the disruption it caused did, ironically, generate a significant Lab-LD swing.
But that was then. To the extent that there's a gap in the market now, it's on the centre-right. But I really don't see the intensity of pressure that produces a structural realignment and new party this side of the next GE.
Is that dollar weighted ? If so, it will be skewed by a few very large donors.
The 2020/2024 difference is still notable.
From the article it sounds as though it isn't. It is just the number of executives that fall into each category.
Yes, this.
..One of the biggest causes of this shift was an unforced error by the Biden administration: the appointment of Gary Gensler as the head of the SEC. I don't think Biden did this because he was anti-crypto. He just wasn't paying attention... https://x.com/paulg/status/1847246542664560998
Trump, of course, only has a vague clue what crypto is, as they started giving him money.
I'm curious why it was an error.
The SEC has taken a very light touch with crypto, not the other way around as that Tweeter implies.
The crypto market is still full of scams and fraud.
The SEC has taken the view that all crypto tokens except Bitcoin are unregistered securities which are illegal to trade. It has sued basically all the non-scammy projects in the US and done almost nothing about scams. It has used various contradictory legal theories in different courts while opposing legislation to clear up what is and isn't legal on the grounds that it's all totally clear. The only people who benefit from this are people who are enthusiastic about Bitcoin, which is almost the only one that still wastes energy for no useful purpose.
The one useful legal action in the US was getting a little bit of useful information about USDT, which is an exceptionally shady stablecoin based on trusting that some friendly Italian gentlemen really have dollars in a bank somewhere for you, but that was SDNY, the SEC has been totally useless.
Notable largely for having the lowest LabCon score of any poll yet. 53% vs 47% for the SPLORG.
The SPLORG is drawing closer.
And SPLORG is a monster that Lab/Con do not wish to discuss or draw attention to.
While I think it is improbable that this massive downward trend for Lab+Con will continue - they are already down 6 points since the 2024 election and 29 points down from the 2017 GE, it is not at all impossible. A next thinkable phase is that just as the populist opinion has switched to declaring it will vote Reform, centrist opinion could combine around the LDs. If tnat occurred SPLORG could go over 50, and at that figure there is something like a tipping point which gets noticed more widely than the wonks and anoraks.
I doubt it, the LDs are not trusted by centre left voters after the coalition and right of centre opponents of Labour will vote Tory or Reform still.
At general elections the LD vote remains largely upper middle class centrist Remainers, it is Reform eating into the white working class vote however
Yes, quite reasonable about the past. But the future does not always resemble it exactly. We would not have predicted that the Lab/Con combined level of support would drop from 82% to 53% (approx) in a very few years. Try this question: Who are centre left, centre right and centre voters to trust when they get disillusioned with Lab and Con? It isn't going to eb a new party; it isn't Reform and it isn't the hard left.
Sherlock Holmes may apply here: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the case".
Why not a new party?
Ask Shirley Williams, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey etc and the voters.
Reform was a new party, once.
The SDP failed because tribal loyalty to Labour was still high.
The current polling suggests that, Labour and the Conservatives are near their core vote, the Lib Dem’s aren’t seen as the answer. A bunch of people are trying Reform, but the party itself is limited in appeal.
Ah No? How many local authorities are now being run by Lib Dems? Compared with the poor old Conservatives? Hmmmm? Lb Dems seem to be the answer at te locallevel. Perhaps this is why both Tories and Labour seem to want to centralise everything.
And in all fairness to the Lib Dems, Parliament has only just got started. Almost all of them are new to the job, and have only just got their support staff in place. I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of the new crop of Lib Dem MPs.
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
You all have no clue about the finances of publishing
42,000 hardback copies at £30 = £1.2m in the first week (the discounters absorb the discount), and this is in the first week, and it is just Nielsen bookscan. You can add on more for books not monitored by bookscan
Then we have commonwealth sales and English sales ex North America. Then paperback sales (usually magnitudes more than hardback). Then audio. Then life rights and movie rights. A canny publisher paying a large advance will have all of the first and a chunk of the latter
It is entirely feasible they will earn out the £3m advance paid to Boris. If they have world rights including North America then they will be cockahoop and will make a very fat profit, if they have a share of this they will be chucklesome
Nobody paid £30 though, it was £15 everywhere. Are you saying Amazon etc just eat that, so I presume made no money at all selling it?
ITS DISCOUNTED BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ITS A LOSS LEADER
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU MORONS
It's all muscle.
No, Leon's correct about the discount. Some of Rowling's books opened with big discounts in supermarkets, I think, even when selling millions.
But the sales figures don't seem as chunky as Boris himself, so far.
By the dismal standards of modern hardback sales (truly awful apart from a few cookery stars and celeb memoirs) 42,000 in a week for a political memoir costing £30 is extremely good in the UK
Books just don’t sell like they used to. Sad but true. Especially serious hardbacks
Put it this way. A lot of major political memoirs get big advances just because the publishers want to hobnob with the powerful and boast about so-and-so being on their list. The senior editors will expect the ex PM to attend to some of their wishes and invite then to his/her parties for a while. It’s a bit like lobbying, or buying the lingerie for the Labour premier’s wife
However with these sales figures I think Boris’ publishers will be happily looking forward to an actual profit not just influence
Notable largely for having the lowest LabCon score of any poll yet. 53% vs 47% for the SPLORG.
The SPLORG is drawing closer.
And SPLORG is a monster that Lab/Con do not wish to discuss or draw attention to.
While I think it is improbable that this massive downward trend for Lab+Con will continue - they are already down 6 points since the 2024 election and 29 points down from the 2017 GE, it is not at all impossible. A next thinkable phase is that just as the populist opinion has switched to declaring it will vote Reform, centrist opinion could combine around the LDs. If tnat occurred SPLORG could go over 50, and at that figure there is something like a tipping point which gets noticed more widely than the wonks and anoraks.
I doubt it, the LDs are not trusted by centre left voters after the coalition and right of centre opponents of Labour will vote Tory or Reform still.
At general elections the LD vote remains largely upper middle class centrist Remainers, it is Reform eating into the white working class vote however
Yes, quite reasonable about the past. But the future does not always resemble it exactly. We would not have predicted that the Lab/Con combined level of support would drop from 82% to 53% (approx) in a very few years. Try this question: Who are centre left, centre right and centre voters to trust when they get disillusioned with Lab and Con? It isn't going to eb a new party; it isn't Reform and it isn't the hard left.
Sherlock Holmes may apply here: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the case".
Why not a new party?
Ask Shirley Williams, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey etc and the voters.
Reform was a new party, once.
The SDP failed because tribal loyalty to Labour was still high.
The current polling suggests that, Labour and the Conservatives are near their core vote, the Lib Dem’s aren’t seen as the answer. A bunch of people are trying Reform, but the party itself is limited in appeal.
Ah No? How many local authorities are now being run by Lib Dems? Compared with the poor old Conservatives? Hmmmm? Lb Dems seem to be the answer at te locallevel. Perhaps this is why both Tories and Labour seem to want to centralise everything.
And in all fairness to the Lib Dems, Parliament has only just got started. Almost all of them are new to the job, and have only just got their support staff in place. I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of the new crop of Lib Dem MPs.
At least in England, the Tories control 37.5% of councils. The Lib Dems, 8.6%.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
They are the people PB can't fathom. The people for whom Trump is a reason to vote Republican. The reason why any other Republican would quite possibly lose this Presidential election quite handily, rather than romp home as per the PB consensus.
I think that an overlooked outcome is one where the Democrats take the House, hold the Senate, but Trump wins the Presidency.
The polls seem to be pointing to Trump outperforming Republican Senate candidates in quite a large number of states. I guess the alternative outcomes are that the Senate candidates ride Trump's coattails to victory (despite the polls), or it's only the Presidential polls that are being distorted in Trump's favour, and we're about to see a Democrat landslide that might give them control of Presidency, House and Senate.
There is a non-negligable chance that President Harris wins majorities in the House and the Senate too. Which would allow her to make some kick-ass changes. Legislation might convince at least two of the Supreme Court to jump before they are indicted. Breaking Trump's hold there will also allow major change to be secured.
Trump's "legacy" might not last very long at all if that is the case.
The media are absolute morons. In their minds everywhere is higher tax than the UK. You can move to Spain, Portugal and Italy and pay less tax as an entrepreneur. You don't need to go to the sandpit.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
All countries have not dissimilar problems, but we seem to have made some very poor decisions over the last couple of decades.
The relative cost of delivering infrastructure is just one example,
Notable largely for having the lowest LabCon score of any poll yet. 53% vs 47% for the SPLORG.
The SPLORG is drawing closer.
And SPLORG is a monster that Lab/Con do not wish to discuss or draw attention to.
While I think it is improbable that this massive downward trend for Lab+Con will continue - they are already down 6 points since the 2024 election and 29 points down from the 2017 GE, it is not at all impossible. A next thinkable phase is that just as the populist opinion has switched to declaring it will vote Reform, centrist opinion could combine around the LDs. If tnat occurred SPLORG could go over 50, and at that figure there is something like a tipping point which gets noticed more widely than the wonks and anoraks.
I doubt it, the LDs are not trusted by centre left voters after the coalition and right of centre opponents of Labour will vote Tory or Reform still.
At general elections the LD vote remains largely upper middle class centrist Remainers, it is Reform eating into the white working class vote however
Yes, quite reasonable about the past. But the future does not always resemble it exactly. We would not have predicted that the Lab/Con combined level of support would drop from 82% to 53% (approx) in a very few years. Try this question: Who are centre left, centre right and centre voters to trust when they get disillusioned with Lab and Con? It isn't going to eb a new party; it isn't Reform and it isn't the hard left.
Sherlock Holmes may apply here: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the case".
Why not a new party?
Ask Shirley Williams, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey etc and the voters.
Reform was a new party, once.
The SDP failed because tribal loyalty to Labour was still high.
The current polling suggests that, Labour and the Conservatives are near their core vote, the Lib Dem’s aren’t seen as the answer. A bunch of people are trying Reform, but the party itself is limited in appeal.
Ah No? How many local authorities are now being run by Lib Dems? Compared with the poor old Conservatives? Hmmmm? Lb Dems seem to be the answer at te locallevel. Perhaps this is why both Tories and Labour seem to want to centralise everything.
And in all fairness to the Lib Dems, Parliament has only just got started. Almost all of them are new to the job, and have only just got their support staff in place. I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of the new crop of Lib Dem MPs.
If the Lib Dem’s were seen by the general public as The Answer, they would be polling higher.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Better yet, Trump apparently thinks he can use tariffs to keep foreign goods out of the US, and simultaneously raise literally trillions in income by doing so.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
The trouble is that what the public wants (and votes for) is lowish tax and highish spending. You can make high tax'n'spend work, or low tax'n'spend. But we don't really want either of those. So we have had several decades of ruses to allow the government to tax us less than was really sustainable. Insufficient pension provision, North Sea and privatisation (which were never going to last for ever), PFI financial engineering, then pretending that maintainence cycles don't exist.
Long story short, for a long time the British public has had something... if not for nothing, on the cheap. And something for nothing is always followed by nothing for something. It's just maths.
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
You all have no clue about the finances of publishing
42,000 hardback copies at £30 = £1.2m in the first week (the discounters absorb the discount), and this is in the first week, and it is just Nielsen bookscan. You can add on more for books not monitored by bookscan
Then we have commonwealth sales and English sales ex North America. Then paperback sales (usually magnitudes more than hardback). Then audio. Then life rights and movie rights. A canny publisher paying a large advance will have all of the first and a chunk of the latter
It is entirely feasible they will earn out the £3m advance paid to Boris. If they have world rights including North America then they will be cockahoop and will make a very fat profit, if they have a share of this they will be chucklesome
Nobody paid £30 though, it was £15 everywhere. Are you saying Amazon etc just eat that, so I presume made no money at all selling it?
ITS DISCOUNTED BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ITS A LOSS LEADER
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU MORONS
I just find that a very odd business model. 50% discount from the get-go, which every book seller eats all of. Video games don't work that way, you get the discount down the line, but not if you have the hottest game on the market.
Yeah well you’re fucking clueless on this so shut up
In your experience what kind of a discount do you think Amazon will get?
I work in publishing, and write (although I only sell in a year what Boris is selling in a week), and from my experience, retail margins are pretty hefty.
Obviously for the biggest books, from the largest publishers, they have a bit more power, but then Amazon's market share is eye-watering, so there's a strong argument that they're the most powerful entity in publishing.
I'd expect that Amazon, are either still making a small profit, or have paid not much more than £15 for the book, so it's only a minor loss. When you take into account production, distribution, marketing etc., then the publisher would be getting nowhere near £1.2m from those 42000 books. If I had to estimate, I'd probably say a few hundred thousand is nearer the mark.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
The trouble is that what the public wants (and votes for) is lowish tax and highish spending. You can make high tax'n'spend work, or low tax'n'spend. But we don't really want either of those. So we have had several decades of ruses to allow the government to tax us less than was really sustainable. Insufficient pension provision, North Sea and privatisation (which were never going to last for ever), PFI financial engineering, then pretending that maintainence cycles don't exist.
Long story short, for a long time the British public has had something... if not for nothing, on the cheap. And something for nothing is always followed by nothing for something. It's just maths.
Well the foundational problem is productivity. 20 years of ever worsening productivity and very low growth. You need to be growing at 2% minimum every year just to stand still given inflation, and that is before you think about aging population, massive increase in the population numbers etc.
I mean, FFS how hard is it for the system to log your details once so that each time you are forwarded from one person to another you don't have to go right back to the start and explain everything again from scratch?
Some call-centre online chats now do this. Or at least, they now admit they do.
Of course, now the online chats begin with the AI, not a human. But spamming "operator" at them often works.
I mean this one was infuriating. I spoke to 4 different people in one insurance company about getting a lapsed policy reinstated (my car was nicked, found again and taken to the garage where it's been held hostage for 3 months). Each time they passed me on to a department they promised was the right one to help. After nearly an hour and giving my name, date of birth, postcode and an account of my situation 4 times, I finally got a quote so ridiculous that I bid my farewells, hung up and bought the same cover from the same insurer via comparethemarket.com for £400 less, in about 5 minutes.
Call centres seem to me a good example of the false economies that are all pervasive in the corporate world. Instead of, say, 100 people who are well trained, knowledgeable enough to be able to problem-solve and with the authority to do more than one basic task, they end up with 1,000 people each of whom is given a basic script, a computer that says no to any kind of personal initiative, and evidently virtually no training.
I am now fully expecting to move residency for tax purposes next year. I don't particularly want to, as I've been in quite poor health for a while now. But I'll be leaving hundreds of thousands on the table next year if I stay, assuming the reported tax rises come to pass.
It is the laffer curve in action. I was expecting to pay hundreds of thousands in tax next year and now it will be nothing. Or, churlishly, the other option is to just retire and draw down 50k a year until I keel over. So even if they do something phenomenally stupid like an exit tax, I'll be paying a lot less than I planned to. Either way, the government will be getting a lot less tax off me next year than they would have.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
The trouble is that what the public wants (and votes for) is lowish tax and highish spending. You can make high tax'n'spend work, or low tax'n'spend. But we don't really want either of those. So we have had several decades of ruses to allow the government to tax us less than was really sustainable. Insufficient pension provision, North Sea and privatisation (which were never going to last for ever), PFI financial engineering, then pretending that maintainence cycles don't exist.
Long story short, for a long time the British public has had something... if not for nothing, on the cheap. And something for nothing is always followed by nothing for something. It's just maths.
Well the foundational problem is productivity. 20 years of ever worsening productivity and very low growth. You need 2% grown minimum every year just to stand still given inflation, and that is before you think about aging population, massive increase in the population numbers etc.
Hmmm... 20 years of worsening productivity, you say? How long has PB been running?
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
You all have no clue about the finances of publishing
42,000 hardback copies at £30 = £1.2m in the first week (the discounters absorb the discount), and this is in the first week, and it is just Nielsen bookscan. You can add on more for books not monitored by bookscan
Then we have commonwealth sales and English sales ex North America. Then paperback sales (usually magnitudes more than hardback). Then audio. Then life rights and movie rights. A canny publisher paying a large advance will have all of the first and a chunk of the latter
It is entirely feasible they will earn out the £3m advance paid to Boris. If they have world rights including North America then they will be cockahoop and will make a very fat profit, if they have a share of this they will be chucklesome
Nobody paid £30 though, it was £15 everywhere. Are you saying Amazon etc just eat that, so I presume made no money at all selling it?
ITS DISCOUNTED BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ITS A LOSS LEADER
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU MORONS
I just find that a very odd business model. 50% discount from the get-go, which every book seller eats all of. Video games don't work that way, you get the discount down the line, but not if you have the hottest game on the market.
Yeah well you’re fucking clueless on this so shut up
In your experience what kind of a discount do you think Amazon will get?
I work in publishing, and write (although I only sell in a year what Boris is selling in a week), and from my experience, retail margins are pretty hefty.
Obviously for the biggest books, from the largest publishers, they have a bit more power, but then Amazon's market share is eye-watering, so there's a strong argument that they're the most powerful entity in publishing.
I'd expect that Amazon, are either still making a small profit, or have paid not much more than £15 for the book, so it's only a minor loss. When you take into account production, distribution, marketing etc., then the publisher would be getting nowhere near £1.2m from those 42000 books. If I had to estimate, I'd probably say a few hundred thousand is nearer the mark.
I presume with books marketing isn't anything like film, where you double your spend on making the movie to market it. Then the film marker only gets 50% of ticket sales, so basically it has to gross 4x the cost before you have made your money back.
Obviously you then get a few more bites of the cherry with steaming / tv distribution, but its a fraction of the movie theatre price / bum on seat.
VAT is a regressive tax. Only the Conservatives have raised VAT rates. I thought they were the party of low taxation. Someone needs to tell the RedWall.
That's one ambiguous headline! "Rachel Reeves to hammer families in Budget by 'cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty relief'..."
Cutting inheritance tax? You'd think the Mail would be all over that!
(It's actually inheritance tax 'relief' - i.e. allowances - that are allegedly to be cut)
If she were clever she would indeed cut IHT (the rate of which is an outlier in developed economies) and restrict reliefs (the breadth of which is also an outlier). That would net her more revenue while looking like a tax cut. A 20 or 25% tax affecting a much wider section of the wealthy end of the population would net much more.
I mean, FFS how hard is it for the system to log your details once so that each time you are forwarded from one person to another you don't have to go right back to the start and explain everything again from scratch?
Some call-centre online chats now do this. Or at least, they now admit they do.
Of course, now the online chats begin with the AI, not a human. But spamming "operator" at them often works.
I mean this one was infuriating. I spoke to 4 different people in one insurance company about getting a lapsed policy reinstated (my car was nicked, found again and taken to the garage where it's been held hostage for 3 months). Each time they passed me on to a department they promised was the right one to help. After nearly an hour and giving my name, date of birth, postcode and an account of my situation 4 times, I finally got a quote so ridiculous that I bid my farewells, hung up and bought the same cover from the same insurer via comparethemarket.com for £400 less, in about 5 minutes.
Call centres seem to me a good example of the false economies that are all pervasive in the corporate world. Instead of, say, 100 people who are well trained, knowledgeable enough to be able to problem-solve and with the authority to do more than one basic task, they end up with 1,000 people each of whom is given a basic script, a computer that says no to any kind of personal initiative, and evidently virtually no training.
The odd company that actually has knowledgeable people on the end of the phone... Well, they do well, with me anyway. It's worth a bit of a premium.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Coming back to Leons comments about blow jobs, i remember a friend of mine saying his girlfriend gave him oral sex for one hour the previous night. I said she must either be very good at it or very bad.... He looked a bit disappointed...
County Council Elections next year, should be good for the Cons, Greens and Reform, bad for Labour and a holding exercise for the Lib Dems, who'll make as many gains from Labour as they lose to the Cons.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
The trouble is that what the public wants (and votes for) is lowish tax and highish spending. You can make high tax'n'spend work, or low tax'n'spend. But we don't really want either of those. So we have had several decades of ruses to allow the government to tax us less than was really sustainable. Insufficient pension provision, North Sea and privatisation (which were never going to last for ever), PFI financial engineering, then pretending that maintainence cycles don't exist.
Long story short, for a long time the British public has had something... if not for nothing, on the cheap. And something for nothing is always followed by nothing for something. It's just maths.
Well the foundational problem is productivity. 20 years of ever worsening productivity and very low growth. You need to be growing at 2% minimum every year just to stand still given inflation, and that is before you think about aging population, massive increase in the population numbers etc.
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
1. Infrastructure costs a fortune to deliver because: a. Land is so expensive, because b. Planning is so restrictive, and, relatedly, c. The planning process takes forever, hence d. Legal costs are so high because everything gets challenged; also e. We're just not very good at delivering these things, so f. They get chopped, changed and delayed along the way to 'save costs' (but more commonly, extend costs).
2. Entitlement culture. See people thinking millionaires should get winter fuel allowance. Or indeed all sorts of things that were paid for by borrowing, selling off assets and running other deficits.
3. All that borrowing since 2008 has created a lot of interest to service. it's not free money and never was.
4. An aging population / sub-replacement birth rate. Which means we import a lot of labour, adding to the pressure on infrastructure (see (1) above). One reason for which is high housing costs. Also see above.
5. Patch-up repairs, both because of (1) and a lack of cash in the first place (plus arbitrary fiscal rules) mean the state's real estate is also aging and worsening.
But good luck tackling both (1) and (2), particularly when you've not done the ground-work of establishing the political narrative. It's not enough to say 'things are crap and we'll fix it' without also explaining why and how - which Labour hasn't (unlike Reform, even if Reform's explanations are at best simplistic). Meanwhile, rich vocal old Nimbys continue to block any attempt to really get to grips with either.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
You all have no clue about the finances of publishing
42,000 hardback copies at £30 = £1.2m in the first week (the discounters absorb the discount), and this is in the first week, and it is just Nielsen bookscan. You can add on more for books not monitored by bookscan
Then we have commonwealth sales and English sales ex North America. Then paperback sales (usually magnitudes more than hardback). Then audio. Then life rights and movie rights. A canny publisher paying a large advance will have all of the first and a chunk of the latter
It is entirely feasible they will earn out the £3m advance paid to Boris. If they have world rights including North America then they will be cockahoop and will make a very fat profit, if they have a share of this they will be chucklesome
Nobody paid £30 though, it was £15 everywhere. Are you saying Amazon etc just eat that, so I presume made no money at all selling it?
ITS DISCOUNTED BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ITS A LOSS LEADER
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU MORONS
I just find that a very odd business model. 50% discount from the get-go, which every book seller eats all of. Video games don't work that way, you get the discount down the line, but not if you have the hottest game on the market. My understanding is lots of food when first introduced they do offers, but the producer eats that discount. etc.
Publishing is a very strange business. The vast majority of published books lose money, but more and more books get published because it's impossible to identify the next bestseller any other way.
I mean, FFS how hard is it for the system to log your details once so that each time you are forwarded from one person to another you don't have to go right back to the start and explain everything again from scratch?
Some call-centre online chats now do this. Or at least, they now admit they do.
Of course, now the online chats begin with the AI, not a human. But spamming "operator" at them often works.
I mean this one was infuriating. I spoke to 4 different people in one insurance company about getting a lapsed policy reinstated (my car was nicked, found again and taken to the garage where it's been held hostage for 3 months). Each time they passed me on to a department they promised was the right one to help. After nearly an hour and giving my name, date of birth, postcode and an account of my situation 4 times, I finally got a quote so ridiculous that I bid my farewells, hung up and bought the same cover from the same insurer via comparethemarket.com for £400 less, in about 5 minutes.
Call centres seem to me a good example of the false economies that are all pervasive in the corporate world. Instead of, say, 100 people who are well trained, knowledgeable enough to be able to problem-solve and with the authority to do more than one basic task, they end up with 1,000 people each of whom is given a basic script, a computer that says no to any kind of personal initiative, and evidently virtually no training.
The odd company that actually has knowledgeable people on the end of the phone... Well, they do well, with me anyway. It's worth a bit of a premium.
Yes, occasionally I'll call or email customer services at some smallish retail business and get a person who actually knows exactly what to do, doesn't need to pass me on to another team and follows up afterwards. They may even use their initiative on the phone. It's revelatory when it happens.
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
Half price in WH Smiths at Edinburgh Waverley yesterday, but more interest discernible in the Journal of Knitting and Crochet Studies and the like.
New books are often heavily discounted in WHS though, aren't they.
I don't believe he holds the star quality value he once held. During peak Johnson circa 2020/21 the book would have sold like hot cakes.
Unless he has employed a ghost writer the book is most likely unreadable. Despite the Emperor's New Clothes reputation as a great literary figure, Johnson as both a raconteur and writer is running on empty and has been for years.
Oh come off it. He is streets ahead of any other ex-PM as a writer. That was his job before politics. He is just so far beyond the pale for you that you cannot conceive he has any positive qualities whatsoever.
I've read some very different views on that - and that was looong before Mr Johnson became PM or even Mayor.
I think he's a good writer. Not a literary master of profound insight, but a very talented hack who can knock out erudite and easy to read comic material with ease.
Thanks to you and others - certainly confirming the mix of opinions I recall (partly cos it depends on the genre, evidently).
I have some sympathy with the point re genre, about the problem of having to think about it. I was once writing a piece for a newspaper to deadline the next morning when suffering from viral gastroenteritis at both ends. A journalist friend (on a very different newspaper) loved it so much that he urged me to enter it for a major science journalism competition ...
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
Competitive democratic elections are terrible for long-term planning. It's much easier to make 10, 20, 30 or even 100 year plans when the same party is meant to be in power forever. I don't know what the fix is, and even if there is one by the time we find and implement it the likes of China will be way ahead of us.
County Council Elections next year, should be good for the Cons, Greens and Reform, bad for Labour and a holding exercise for the Lib Dems, who'll make as many gains from Labour as they lose to the Cons.
Lib Dems have done so well in the last several rounds of council elections - better than they were ever doing in polls - that I expect they will fall back simply because of a small upturn in Tory support. I doubt they will win anywhere near enough from Labour to offset this. There aren't that many Labour councils where the Lib Dems are the main opposition.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Well it doesn't get reported much (and I doubt Krugman and his ilk have looked into it in any great detail), but it's definitely part of Trump's policy platform and he hasn't exactly been silent on it.
For example this was just last week:
"Perhaps the most important element of my plan to make America extraordinarily wealthy again is reciprocity. It's a word that's very important in my plan because we generally don't charge tariffs. I started that process, it was so great, with the vans and the small trucks, etc," Trump said Thursday in a major economic policy speech."
It's all quite gauling when Hunt was offering us a reduction in NI to zero and improved public services.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
In the extremely unlikely event of Hunt having been in a position to deliver a budget this autumn, it would have been pretty much as brutal - even if the brutality had slightly (or even very) different targets.
How is it that spending, tax and borrowing are seemingly always in such a Gordion knot ?
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
The trouble is that what the public wants (and votes for) is lowish tax and highish spending. You can make high tax'n'spend work, or low tax'n'spend. But we don't really want either of those. So we have had several decades of ruses to allow the government to tax us less than was really sustainable. Insufficient pension provision, North Sea and privatisation (which were never going to last for ever), PFI financial engineering, then pretending that maintainence cycles don't exist.
Long story short, for a long time the British public has had something... if not for nothing, on the cheap. And something for nothing is always followed by nothing for something. It's just maths.
Well the foundational problem is productivity. 20 years of ever worsening productivity and very low growth. You need to be growing at 2% minimum every year just to stand still given inflation, and that is before you think about aging population, massive increase in the population numbers etc.
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
Its also difficult to entice people to be more productive when that extra effort is unlikely to be reflected in salary increases.
Certainly a generalisation but speaking to people in low paid service sector roles it seems that there is little expectation that hard work will be remunerated. Just above minimum wage stays just above minium wage regardless of the employee and only management positions get the sniff of a bonus.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
That's one ambiguous headline! "Rachel Reeves to hammer families in Budget by 'cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty relief'..."
Cutting inheritance tax? You'd think the Mail would be all over that!
(It's actually inheritance tax 'relief' - i.e. allowances - that are allegedly to be cut)
It'll be fine. Just don't die under a Labour Government...
Or have a home owning parent who dies or be a pensioner trying to keep warm in winter or an entrepreneur trying to start a business or own a family farm providing part of the nation's food supply or be saving for a pension...
That's one ambiguous headline! "Rachel Reeves to hammer families in Budget by 'cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty relief'..."
Cutting inheritance tax? You'd think the Mail would be all over that!
(It's actually inheritance tax 'relief' - i.e. allowances - that are allegedly to be cut)
It'll be fine. Just don't die under a Labour Government...
To be fair to Labour, given the financial armegeddon apparently coming (per the Telegraph and co) no one will actually have anything to pass on, so we can all stop worrying about inheritance tax
County Council Elections next year, should be good for the Cons, Greens and Reform, bad for Labour and a holding exercise for the Lib Dems, who'll make as many gains from Labour as they lose to the Cons.
The LDs should make gains from 2021 as they are polling at least as well as then while the Tories are down about 10% from the 36% they got then. However Tory county councillors without Reform candidates in their wards facing a LD threat may still hold on.
Labour yes likely lose seats to Reform, the Greens, Independents and the LDs and again if Reform aren't standing to Tories
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
You all have no clue about the finances of publishing
42,000 hardback copies at £30 = £1.2m in the first week (the discounters absorb the discount), and this is in the first week, and it is just Nielsen bookscan. You can add on more for books not monitored by bookscan
Then we have commonwealth sales and English sales ex North America. Then paperback sales (usually magnitudes more than hardback). Then audio. Then life rights and movie rights. A canny publisher paying a large advance will have all of the first and a chunk of the latter
It is entirely feasible they will earn out the £3m advance paid to Boris. If they have world rights including North America then they will be cockahoop and will make a very fat profit, if they have a share of this they will be chucklesome
Nobody paid £30 though, it was £15 everywhere. Are you saying Amazon etc just eat that, so I presume made no money at all selling it?
ITS DISCOUNTED BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ITS A LOSS LEADER
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU MORONS
I just find that a very odd business model. 50% discount from the get-go, which every book seller eats all of. Video games don't work that way, you get the discount down the line, but not if you have the hottest game on the market.
Yeah well you’re fucking clueless on this so shut up
In your experience what kind of a discount do you think Amazon will get?
I work in publishing, and write (although I only sell in a year what Boris is selling in a week), and from my experience, retail margins are pretty hefty.
Obviously for the biggest books, from the largest publishers, they have a bit more power, but then Amazon's market share is eye-watering, so there's a strong argument that they're the most powerful entity in publishing.
I'd expect that Amazon, are either still making a small profit, or have paid not much more than £15 for the book, so it's only a minor loss. When you take into account production, distribution, marketing etc., then the publisher would be getting nowhere near £1.2m from those 42000 books. If I had to estimate, I'd probably say a few hundred thousand is nearer the mark.
A lot of Amazon purchasers will add at least one additional item, to get free postage, or will be Prime members, the fee for which is largely profit anyway.
Notable largely for having the lowest LabCon score of any poll yet. 53% vs 47% for the SPLORG.
The SPLORG is drawing closer.
And SPLORG is a monster that Lab/Con do not wish to discuss or draw attention to.
While I think it is improbable that this massive downward trend for Lab+Con will continue - they are already down 6 points since the 2024 election and 29 points down from the 2017 GE, it is not at all impossible. A next thinkable phase is that just as the populist opinion has switched to declaring it will vote Reform, centrist opinion could combine around the LDs. If tnat occurred SPLORG could go over 50, and at that figure there is something like a tipping point which gets noticed more widely than the wonks and anoraks.
I doubt it, the LDs are not trusted by centre left voters after the coalition and right of centre opponents of Labour will vote Tory or Reform still.
At general elections the LD vote remains largely upper middle class centrist Remainers, it is Reform eating into the white working class vote however
Yes, quite reasonable about the past. But the future does not always resemble it exactly. We would not have predicted that the Lab/Con combined level of support would drop from 82% to 53% (approx) in a very few years. Try this question: Who are centre left, centre right and centre voters to trust when they get disillusioned with Lab and Con? It isn't going to eb a new party; it isn't Reform and it isn't the hard left.
Sherlock Holmes may apply here: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the case".
Why not a new party?
Ask Shirley Williams, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey etc and the voters.
Reform was a new party, once.
The SDP failed because tribal loyalty to Labour was still high.
The current polling suggests that, Labour and the Conservatives are near their core vote, the Lib Dem’s aren’t seen as the answer. A bunch of people are trying Reform, but the party itself is limited in appeal.
Ah No? How many local authorities are now being run by Lib Dems? Compared with the poor old Conservatives? Hmmmm? Lb Dems seem to be the answer at te locallevel. Perhaps this is why both Tories and Labour seem to want to centralise everything.
And in all fairness to the Lib Dems, Parliament has only just got started. Almost all of them are new to the job, and have only just got their support staff in place. I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of the new crop of Lib Dem MPs.
If the Lib Dem’s were seen by the general public as The Answer, they would be polling higher.
The key word there is "seen" - so you are quite right. Lib Dem visibility is very patchy, but I ought to be better now that we have replaced the SNP as third party in the House of Commons.
Effectively, visibility and targeting are very much the same thing. So you could say that where the Lib Dems were visible, they did very well at the last general election, and in fact almost overtook the Tories in terms of the number of seats.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
We're talking of the US, though. What a few PB oddballs think is not really going to affect the presidential election.
County Council Elections next year, should be good for the Cons, Greens and Reform, bad for Labour and a holding exercise for the Lib Dems, who'll make as many gains from Labour as they lose to the Cons.
Not so fast. Cons.were top dogs during the 2021 elections. They were hugely popular.
Remember there may be no love for Labour but the Cons nationally are still despised.
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
Competitive democratic elections are terrible for long-term planning. It's much easier to make 10, 20, 30 or even 100 year plans when the same party is meant to be in power forever. I don't know what the fix is, and even if there is one by the time we find and implement it the likes of China will be way ahead of us.
The obvious answer is my forthcoming UnDicatorship.
Including
1) Heavily armed traffic wardens 2) Alvis Saracen armoured cars for teachers in all schools. 3) All pupils in Zorb balls 4) Manned mission to land the entire DfE on the Sun. 5) A mandatory vote on Scottish Independence every single day.
And many more policies in the same vein.
Oh, and my revolutionary voting system. Which combines FPTP and all forms of AV. It’s perfectly proportional and vote counting is instant. Opportunities for fraud - zero.
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
You all have no clue about the finances of publishing
42,000 hardback copies at £30 = £1.2m in the first week (the discounters absorb the discount), and this is in the first week, and it is just Nielsen bookscan. You can add on more for books not monitored by bookscan
Then we have commonwealth sales and English sales ex North America. Then paperback sales (usually magnitudes more than hardback). Then audio. Then life rights and movie rights. A canny publisher paying a large advance will have all of the first and a chunk of the latter
It is entirely feasible they will earn out the £3m advance paid to Boris. If they have world rights including North America then they will be cockahoop and will make a very fat profit, if they have a share of this they will be chucklesome
Nobody paid £30 though, it was £15 everywhere. Are you saying Amazon etc just eat that, so I presume made no money at all selling it?
ITS DISCOUNTED BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ITS A LOSS LEADER
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU MORONS
I just find that a very odd business model. 50% discount from the get-go, which every book seller eats all of. Video games don't work that way, you get the discount down the line, but not if you have the hottest game on the market.
Yeah well you’re fucking clueless on this so shut up
In your experience what kind of a discount do you think Amazon will get?
I work in publishing, and write (although I only sell in a year what Boris is selling in a week), and from my experience, retail margins are pretty hefty.
Obviously for the biggest books, from the largest publishers, they have a bit more power, but then Amazon's market share is eye-watering, so there's a strong argument that they're the most powerful entity in publishing.
I'd expect that Amazon, are either still making a small profit, or have paid not much more than £15 for the book, so it's only a minor loss. When you take into account production, distribution, marketing etc., then the publisher would be getting nowhere near £1.2m from those 42000 books. If I had to estimate, I'd probably say a few hundred thousand is nearer the mark.
A lot of Amazon purchasers will add at least one additional item, to get free postage, or will be Prime members, the fee for which is largely profit anyway.
Hence why Amazon can sell for such low prices, but I was talking about what would be left over for the publisher. I think they'll be getting around the £15 and they still have distribution, print, marketing costs, and more.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
That's one ambiguous headline! "Rachel Reeves to hammer families in Budget by 'cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty relief'..."
Cutting inheritance tax? You'd think the Mail would be all over that!
(It's actually inheritance tax 'relief' - i.e. allowances - that are allegedly to be cut)
It'll be fine. Just don't die under a Labour Government...
Or have a home owning parent who dies or be a pensioner trying to keep warm in winter or an entrepreneur trying to start a business or own a family farm providing part of the nation's food supply or be saving for a pension...
That's one ambiguous headline! "Rachel Reeves to hammer families in Budget by 'cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty relief'..."
Cutting inheritance tax? You'd think the Mail would be all over that!
(It's actually inheritance tax 'relief' - i.e. allowances - that are allegedly to be cut)
It'll be fine. Just don't die under a Labour Government...
Or have a home owning parent who dies or be a pensioner trying to keep warm in winter or an entrepreneur trying to start a business or own a family farm providing part of the nation's food supply or be saving for a pension...
You love unearned income.
When it comes to food supply which team brought in the disastrous -for-farmers- Brexit? Most farms will be limited companies so the next inline generation will already be a Director inline for the company tied cottage.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
The idea of making tariffs symmetrical dates back to "The Japanese Are Taking Over The World" scare of the late 80s. A lot was made of certain Japanese tariffs which, effectively, blocked foreign goods.
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
Competitive democratic elections are terrible for long-term planning. It's much easier to make 10, 20, 30 or even 100 year plans when the same party is meant to be in power forever. I don't know what the fix is, and even if there is one by the time we find and implement it the likes of China will be way ahead of us.
The obvious answer is my forthcoming UnDicatorship.
Including
1) Heavily armed traffic wardens 2) Alvis Saracen armoured cars for teachers in all schools. 3) All pupils in Zorb balls 4) Manned mission to land the entire DfE on the Sun. 5) A mandatory vote on Scottish Independence every single day.
And many more policies in the same vein.
Oh, and my revolutionary voting system. Which combines FPTP and all forms of AV. It’s perfectly proportional and vote counting is instant. Opportunities for fraud - zero.
On one hand, I don't think that is quite what they mean by One Man, One Vote.
On the other, armoured cars for me and Zorb balls for them...
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
Competitive democratic elections are terrible for long-term planning. It's much easier to make 10, 20, 30 or even 100 year plans when the same party is meant to be in power forever. I don't know what the fix is, and even if there is one by the time we find and implement it the likes of China will be way ahead of us.
The obvious answer is my forthcoming UnDicatorship.
Including
1) Heavily armed traffic wardens 2) Alvis Saracen armoured cars for teachers in all schools. 3) All pupils in Zorb balls 4) Manned mission to land the entire DfE on the Sun. 5) A mandatory vote on Scottish Independence every single day.
And many more policies in the same vein.
Oh, and my revolutionary voting system. Which combines FPTP and all forms of AV. It’s perfectly proportional and vote counting is instant. Opportunities for fraud - zero.
On one hand, I don't think that is quite what they mean by One Man, One Vote.
On the other, armoured cars for me and Zorb balls for them...
Pupils in Zorb balls means -
- zero infection of pupils by teachers, for anything (HEPA filter included) - zero infection of teachers by pupils. - zero violence between any combination of pupils and teachers (knife proof plastic) - zero safe guarding issues. - lack of class room space? Stack the pupils… - truancy will be very difficult. - the teachers can relax by playing car football with the pupils in the playground, using the Saracens…
This could be the greatest advance in education ever.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
I think he genuinely thinks they're a tax on foreigners and also a boost for domestic producers: a win-win. He will use them as leverage but he'll also want to impose them for their own sake.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
Personally, I'd put the roots of the problem further back than that.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
Competitive democratic elections are terrible for long-term planning. It's much easier to make 10, 20, 30 or even 100 year plans when the same party is meant to be in power forever. I don't know what the fix is, and even if there is one by the time we find and implement it the likes of China will be way ahead of us.
The obvious answer is my forthcoming UnDicatorship.
Including
1) Heavily armed traffic wardens 2) Alvis Saracen armoured cars for teachers in all schools. 3) All pupils in Zorb balls 4) Manned mission to land the entire DfE on the Sun. 5) A mandatory vote on Scottish Independence every single day.
And many more policies in the same vein.
Oh, and my revolutionary voting system. Which combines FPTP and all forms of AV. It’s perfectly proportional and vote counting is instant. Opportunities for fraud - zero.
On one hand, I don't think that is quite what they mean by One Man, One Vote.
On the other, armoured cars for me and Zorb balls for them...
When my eldest was about 9 or something, we were on a Tube train. She was demanding democracy in the family. I explained the One Man, One vote joke. Which she solemnly considered.
A chap on the seats opposite, Nigerian I would guess, nearly fell off his seat laughing. I'd generalised the explanation as "Just as in some countries, where the people in charge wear all the medals...."
Rachel Reeves is preparing to extend the freeze on income tax thresholds in a move that will raise £7 billion a year, according to reports. The stealth tax raid, announced in 2021 by Rishi Sunak, is now expected to continue beyond a previous deadline of 2028.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Well it doesn't get reported much (and I doubt Krugman and his ilk have looked into it in any great detail), but it's definitely part of Trump's policy platform and he hasn't exactly been silent on it.
For example this was just last week:
"Perhaps the most important element of my plan to make America extraordinarily wealthy again is reciprocity. It's a word that's very important in my plan because we generally don't charge tariffs. I started that process, it was so great, with the vans and the small trucks, etc," Trump said Thursday in a major economic policy speech."
It's what we need to do with China. They put tariffs up on key UK products where they want to build homegrown industries. We put up with this with zero response why exactly? It doesn't make them 'like' us or be nice to us. They'd be a better negotiating partner if we gave them a shred of a reason to respect us.
Notable largely for having the lowest LabCon score of any poll yet. 53% vs 47% for the SPLORG.
The SPLORG is drawing closer.
And SPLORG is a monster that Lab/Con do not wish to discuss or draw attention to.
While I think it is improbable that this massive downward trend for Lab+Con will continue - they are already down 6 points since the 2024 election and 29 points down from the 2017 GE, it is not at all impossible. A next thinkable phase is that just as the populist opinion has switched to declaring it will vote Reform, centrist opinion could combine around the LDs. If tnat occurred SPLORG could go over 50, and at that figure there is something like a tipping point which gets noticed more widely than the wonks and anoraks.
I doubt it, the LDs are not trusted by centre left voters after the coalition and right of centre opponents of Labour will vote Tory or Reform still.
At general elections the LD vote remains largely upper middle class centrist Remainers, it is Reform eating into the white working class vote however
Yes, quite reasonable about the past. But the future does not always resemble it exactly. We would not have predicted that the Lab/Con combined level of support would drop from 82% to 53% (approx) in a very few years. Try this question: Who are centre left, centre right and centre voters to trust when they get disillusioned with Lab and Con? It isn't going to eb a new party; it isn't Reform and it isn't the hard left.
Sherlock Holmes may apply here: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the case".
Why not a new party?
Ask Shirley Williams, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey etc and the voters.
Reform was a new party, once.
The SDP failed because tribal loyalty to Labour was still high.
The current polling suggests that, Labour and the Conservatives are near their core vote, the Lib Dem’s aren’t seen as the answer. A bunch of people are trying Reform, but the party itself is limited in appeal.
Ah No? How many local authorities are now being run by Lib Dems? Compared with the poor old Conservatives? Hmmmm? Lb Dems seem to be the answer at te locallevel. Perhaps this is why both Tories and Labour seem to want to centralise everything.
And in all fairness to the Lib Dems, Parliament has only just got started. Almost all of them are new to the job, and have only just got their support staff in place. I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of the new crop of Lib Dem MPs.
At least in England, the Tories control 37.5% of councils. The Lib Dems, 8.6%.
Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
I am sure our correspondent from the Flint Knappers Weekly told us this was flying off the shelves at a rate similar to Prince Harry's Spare....which sold 10x in the first week. I think might have fallen for some spin from the insiders trying to save face.
40k is more than Cameron and everybody since, but its not Thatcher or Blair level. They are never getting their £3 million back.
Currently half price on Amazon.
Who is the publisher that swallowed Johnson's shtick?
There is a long, long history of publishers paying well over the odds for political memoirs.
It might be linked {Innocent face} to the phenomenon of people paying vast sums for ex-politicians to speak at their events.
I popped in earlier for a breather on a very ungentlemanly, busy Friday to see war raging over the discounting of Boris' book.
I assumed we would have at least reached a consensus, or at least an uneasy peace, by now.
I'm keen to know the outcome.
Leon says Boris and his book are so gorgeous that WHSmith are discounting as a loss leader. I say they are discounting because the book is shite and no one (except 40,000 PB Tories) is buying it.
Rachel Reeves is preparing to extend the freeze on income tax thresholds in a move that will raise £7 billion a year, according to reports. The stealth tax raid, announced in 2021 by Rishi Sunak, is now expected to continue beyond a previous deadline of 2028.
Shortly everybody will end up being a higher rate tax payer....
That doesn't look coherent to me. So the Telegrunt is arguing that Rachel Reeves will do something immediately that is a political cost now but has no material benefit until 2029?
If she was going to announce that the logical time would be after the 2028 Election. The only possible reason I can see is if it would make a difference to long term forecasts, but I can't see how that would make a material practical difference now when there are other larger factors affecting the short-term prospects.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
I think he genuinely thinks they're a tax on foreigners and also a boost for domestic producers: a win-win. He will use them as leverage but he'll also want to impose them for their own sake.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
You haven't been following his comments about Taiwan and S Korea, then ? He wants a payment of something like $10bn pa from each to maintain the US military alliance.
I popped in earlier for a breather on a very ungentlemanly, busy Friday to see war raging over the discounting of Boris' book.
I assumed we would have at least reached a consensus, or at least an uneasy peace, by now.
I'm keen to know the outcome.
Leon says Boris and his book are so gorgeous that WHSmith are discounting as a loss leader. I say they are discounting because the book is shite and no one (except 40,000 PB Tories) is buying it.
There's quite a funny anecdote about Boris Johnson, in the London Review of Books this week.
His classics professor at Oxford, Oswyn Murray, which apparently mentions that he sent Johnson a "renunciation of friendship" as soon as he heard he was becoming Prime Ministed. When asked what this was, Murray said it was a "renunciation amicitiae", which was issued by Roman Emperors when someone had fallen short of expectations to such an extent , that the recommendation was either that they should either go off and commit suicide somewhere, or "go into exile on the Black Sea."
Murray has *written a book which says", it should ofcourse say below.
It seems to be some sort of weighty tome about the history of teaching classics at Oxford, but seems also to include the Boris Johndon anecdote, as he taught him there in the '80s.
It's probably a Leon style extrapolation from Zelensky's speech where he said that the only way Ukraine survives a peace agreement with Russia is either as a NATO member, or if they possess nuclear weapons.
Rachel Reeves is preparing to extend the freeze on income tax thresholds in a move that will raise £7 billion a year, according to reports. The stealth tax raid, announced in 2021 by Rishi Sunak, is now expected to continue beyond a previous deadline of 2028.
Shortly everybody will end up being a higher rate tax payer....
That doesn't look coherent to me. So the Telegrunt is arguing that Rachel Reeves will do something immediately that is a political cost now but has no material benefit until 2029?
If she was going to announce that the logical time would be after the 2028 Election. The only possible reason I can see is if it would make a difference to long term forecasts, but I can't see how that would make a material practical difference now when there are other larger factors affecting the short-term prospects.
I popped in earlier for a breather on a very ungentlemanly, busy Friday to see war raging over the discounting of Boris' book.
I assumed we would have at least reached a consensus, or at least an uneasy peace, by now.
I'm keen to know the outcome.
Leon says Boris and his book are so gorgeous that WHSmith are discounting as a loss leader. I say they are discounting because the book is shite and no one (except 40,000 PB Tories) is buying it.
There's quite a funny anecdote about Boris Johnson, in the London Review of Books this week.
His classics professor at Oxford, Oswyn Murray, which apparently mentions that he sent Johnson a "renunciation of friendship" as soon as he heard he was becoming Prime Ministed. When asked what this was, Murray said it was a "renunciation amicitiae", which was issued by Roman Emperors when someone had fallen short of expectations to such an extent , that the recommendation was either that they should either go off and commit suicide somewhere, or "go into exile on the Black Sea."
Rachel Reeves is preparing to extend the freeze on income tax thresholds in a move that will raise £7 billion a year, according to reports. The stealth tax raid, announced in 2021 by Rishi Sunak, is now expected to continue beyond a previous deadline of 2028.
Shortly everybody will end up being a higher rate tax payer....
That doesn't look coherent to me. So the Telegrunt is arguing that Rachel Reeves will do something immediately that is a political cost now but has no material benefit until 2029?
If she was going to announce that the logical time would be after the 2028 Election. The only possible reason I can see is if it would make a difference to long term forecasts, but I can't see how that would make a material practical difference now when there are other larger factors affecting the short-term prospects.
I would suggest all the speculation about Reeves Autumn Statement is exactly that, and we have only 12 days to wait for the real thing so assume it is just kite flying
However, there is no doubt all the doom and gloom from Starmer and Reeves has been damaging to many investors and it has been left far too long to the Statement
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
I think he genuinely thinks they're a tax on foreigners and also a boost for domestic producers: a win-win. He will use them as leverage but he'll also want to impose them for their own sake.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
You haven't been following his comments about Taiwan and S Korea, then ? He wants a payment of something like $10bn pa from each to maintain the US military alliance.
Of course for $10bn pa, S Korea (and probably Taiwan) could each run their own nuclear deterrent. S Korea already has the missiles and the sub building capacity. Both have the power plants; S Korea has considerably more nuclear engineering expertise.
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
I think he genuinely thinks they're a tax on foreigners and also a boost for domestic producers: a win-win. He will use them as leverage but he'll also want to impose them for their own sake.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
You haven't been following his comments about Taiwan and S Korea, then ? He wants a payment of something like $10bn pa from each to maintain the US military alliance.
I popped in earlier for a breather on a very ungentlemanly, busy Friday to see war raging over the discounting of Boris' book.
I assumed we would have at least reached a consensus, or at least an uneasy peace, by now.
I'm keen to know the outcome.
Leon says Boris and his book are so gorgeous that WHSmith are discounting as a loss leader. I say they are discounting because the book is shite and no one (except 40,000 PB Tories) is buying it.
There's quite a funny anecdote about Boris Johnson, in the London Review of Books this week.
His classics professor at Oxford, Oswyn Murray, which apparently mentions that he sent Johnson a "renunciation of friendship" as soon as he heard he was becoming Prime Ministed. When asked what this was, Murray said it was a "renunciation amicitiae", which was issued by Roman Emperors when someone had fallen short of expectations to such an extent , that the recommendation was either that they should either go off and commit suicide somewhere, or "go into exile on the Black Sea."
That's the one thanks Viewcode. The L.R.B. really is a gem o me for unpredictable intellectual stimulation, very much I think, like BBC2 in the late 'eighties. You might get the most obscure academic or artistic arcana, or the most current political and social , or some mixture of both.
I popped in earlier for a breather on a very ungentlemanly, busy Friday to see war raging over the discounting of Boris' book.
I assumed we would have at least reached a consensus, or at least an uneasy peace, by now.
I'm keen to know the outcome.
Leon says Boris and his book are so gorgeous that WHSmith are discounting as a loss leader. I say they are discounting because the book is shite and no one (except 40,000 PB Tories) is buying it.
There's quite a funny anecdote about Boris Johnson, in the London Review of Books this week.
His classics professor at Oxford, Oswyn Murray, which apparently mentions that he sent Johnson a "renunciation of friendship" as soon as he heard he was becoming Prime Ministed. When asked what this was, Murray said it was a "renunciation amicitiae", which was issued by Roman Emperors when someone had fallen short of expectations to such an extent , that the recommendation was either that they should either go off and commit suicide somewhere, or "go into exile on the Black Sea."
"In 1914, James Murray refused to sign the ‘Writers’ Manifesto’ denouncing the German invasion of Belgium – a ‘source of family pride’ for Murray. One of the organisers was Gilbert Murray (no relation), the Glasgow and Oxford Hellenist and future chairman of the League of Nations Union. Oswyn interprets a terse letter from Gilbert to James as indicating that he understood James’s position that signing the manifesto could imperil international collaboration on the OED (other interpretations are possible)."
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
I think he genuinely thinks they're a tax on foreigners and also a boost for domestic producers: a win-win. He will use them as leverage but he'll also want to impose them for their own sake.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
You haven't been following his comments about Taiwan and S Korea, then ? He wants a payment of something like $10bn pa from each to maintain the US military alliance.
Of course for $10bn pa, S Korea (and probably Taiwan) could each run their own nuclear deterrent. S Korea already has the missiles and the sub building capacity. Both have the power plants; S Korea has considerably more nuclear engineering expertise.
You can probably buy the whole team, packaged and ready to go, from Pakistan...
Rachel Reeves is preparing to extend the freeze on income tax thresholds in a move that will raise £7 billion a year, according to reports. The stealth tax raid, announced in 2021 by Rishi Sunak, is now expected to continue beyond a previous deadline of 2028.
Shortly everybody will end up being a higher rate tax payer....
That doesn't look coherent to me. So the Telegrunt is arguing that Rachel Reeves will do something immediately that is a political cost now but has no material benefit until 2029?
If she was going to announce that the logical time would be after the 2028 Election. The only possible reason I can see is if it would make a difference to long term forecasts, but I can't see how that would make a material practical difference now when there are other larger factors affecting the short-term prospects.
I would suggest all the speculation about Reeves Autumn Statement is exactly that, and we have only 12 days to wait for the real thing so assume it is just kite flying
However, there is no doubt all the doom and gloom from Starmer and Reeves has been damaging to many investors and it has been left far too long to the Statement
Poor politics from both
I tend to agree, although Truss and Kwarteng were very quick out of the blocks.
And Starmer and Reeves got free Taylor Swift tickets.
It's probably a Leon style extrapolation from Zelensky's speech where he said that the only way Ukraine survives a peace agreement with Russia is either as a NATO member, or if they possess nuclear weapons.
I tend to agree with him.
The quickest way for Ukraine to stop Putin and Taiwan to stop Xi is for both of them to get and test nuclear bombs
So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?
Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.
Edit: The pro, I think at least for Trump, is that it seems like a silver bullet solution to rustbelt voters who will vote for him. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the economics.
Krugman is spot on and virtually every serious international economist agrees with him. Virtually every attempt to target foreigners instead of sorting out your own problems backfires, and this will be no exception.
Of course if America is idiotic enough to elect Trump, it deserves everything it gets. Unfortunately the colleteral damage for the rest of the world would be huge.
Trump of course also imposed tariffs on EU and Chinese imports in 2016, the question is whether it sees enough US consumers switching to US made products to offset any rise in prices on foreign imports for those who still buy them and use their supplies
It's funny how the right can take something like the Laffer Curve as a matter of unimpeachable fact, and yet believe that the detail of how how you impose tariffs, and how high you set them, doesn't matter.
Isn't it more Trump acolytes rather than "the right". I mean @Fishing of this parish won't be voting for Trump and he's definitely of "the right". I'm not sure you'd find too many conservatives here that think Trump's tariffs would be a good idea tbh.
Isn't it possible Trump’s talk of raising tariffs is all "Art of the Deal" bluster, in the context of US tariffs on imports being lower than rates charged by other countries on equivalent goods exported from the US? A key plank of his trade policy is to introduce a Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite. Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
Trump's plans rely on the revenue from the tariffs to pay for tax cuts, so it doesn't work if they're just negotiating position.
Trump has said a lot of things about tariffs; much of them contradictory. But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
I think he genuinely thinks they're a tax on foreigners and also a boost for domestic producers: a win-win. He will use them as leverage but he'll also want to impose them for their own sake.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
You haven't been following his comments about Taiwan and S Korea, then ? He wants a payment of something like $10bn pa from each to maintain the US military alliance.
Into his personal bank account?
That's the Saudi cash (and the pardon quid pro quos) probably.
Comments
Of course, now the online chats begin with the AI, not a human. But spamming "operator" at them often works.
The SDP very nearly did. In 1981, the SDP-Liberal Alliance polled clear first for several months, peaking at over 50%. At that point, it (allied to an existing party, to be fair) was a genuine contender for power. But then Tory economic policies began to be seen as working, inflation and interest rates started coming down, and the Falklands happened. But for some time, it offered an alternative government that neither the incumbent one nor the official opposition could. Also worth noting that had Benn beaten Healey for the deputy leadership, there would probably have been a further exodus from Labour. Healey's win (by 1%) showed that the Party was redeemable and that not burning bridges was a percentage move for those with time and ambition.
Similarly, Change UK might have served a similar purpose had it (1) attracted more, and more heavyweight L:abour MPs, (2) had a clear-eyed mission, and (3) targeted the Lib Dems immediately. The LDs at the time were still suffering from post-coalitionitis and a clean centre-left party could have proven attractive, if it had the capacity to win elections. However, when it launched it not only didn't have the capacity but didn't even have the desire or the understanding of why it was necessary. That killed it immediately, though the disruption it caused did, ironically, generate a significant Lab-LD swing.
But that was then. To the extent that there's a gap in the market now, it's on the centre-right. But I really don't see the intensity of pressure that produces a structural realignment and new party this side of the next GE.
The one useful legal action in the US was getting a little bit of useful information about USDT, which is an exceptionally shady stablecoin based on trusting that some friendly Italian gentlemen really have dollars in a bank somewhere for you, but that was SDNY, the SEC has been totally useless.
And in all fairness to the Lib Dems, Parliament has only just got started. Almost all of them are new to the job, and have only just got their support staff in place. I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of the new crop of Lib Dem MPs.
However the budget rolls out, I don't think you'll like it.
Books just don’t sell like they used to. Sad but true. Especially serious hardbacks
Put it this way. A lot of major political memoirs get big advances just because the publishers want to hobnob with the powerful and boast about so-and-so being on their list. The senior editors will expect the ex PM to attend to some of their wishes and invite then to his/her parties for a while. It’s a bit like lobbying, or buying the lingerie for the Labour premier’s wife
However with these sales figures I think Boris’ publishers will be happily looking forward to an actual profit not just influence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_make-up_of_local_councils_in_the_United_Kingdom
I would not be surprised if the Tories are ahead in at least one poll by Christmas whether Badenoch or Jenrick replaces Sunak as leader
🥂
Are there things gov't shouldn't be doing that they do currently do ?
Do other countries have this issue to the extent we do ?
https://bsky.app/profile/pkrugman.bsky.social/post/3l6rwxtrmv42z
Trump's "legacy" might not last very long at all if that is the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4PWFVdSwwA
The media are absolute morons. In their minds everywhere is higher tax than the UK. You can move to Spain, Portugal and Italy and pay less tax as an entrepreneur. You don't need to go to the sandpit.
The relative cost of delivering infrastructure is just one example,
Better yet, Trump apparently thinks he can use tariffs to keep foreign goods out of the US, and simultaneously raise literally trillions in income by doing so.
"Rachel Reeves to hammer families in Budget by 'cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty relief'..."
Cutting inheritance tax? You'd think the Mail would be all over that!
(It's actually inheritance tax 'relief' - i.e. allowances - that are allegedly to be cut)
Even though they got their pay and their overtime and their pension contributions all through Covid.
Long story short, for a long time the British public has had something... if not for nothing, on the cheap. And something for nothing is always followed by nothing for something. It's just maths.
I work in publishing, and write (although I only sell in a year what Boris is selling in a week), and from my experience, retail margins are pretty hefty.
Obviously for the biggest books, from the largest publishers, they have a bit more power, but then Amazon's market share is eye-watering, so there's a strong argument that they're the most powerful entity in publishing.
I'd expect that Amazon, are either still making a small profit, or have paid not much more than £15 for the book, so it's only a minor loss. When you take into account production, distribution, marketing etc., then the publisher would be getting nowhere near £1.2m from those 42000 books. If I had to estimate, I'd probably say a few hundred thousand is nearer the mark.
Call centres seem to me a good example of the false economies that are all pervasive in the corporate world. Instead of, say, 100 people who are well trained, knowledgeable enough to be able to problem-solve and with the authority to do more than one basic task, they end up with 1,000 people each of whom is given a basic script, a computer that says no to any kind of personal initiative, and evidently virtually no training.
It is the laffer curve in action. I was expecting to pay hundreds of thousands in tax next year and now it will be nothing. Or, churlishly, the other option is to just retire and draw down 50k a year until I keel over. So even if they do something phenomenally stupid like an exit tax, I'll be paying a lot less than I planned to. Either way, the government will be getting a lot less tax off me next year than they would have.
Obviously you then get a few more bites of the cherry with steaming / tv distribution, but its a fraction of the movie theatre price / bum on seat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax_in_the_United_Kingdom
The Conservative Party are well versed as to the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
And so you would get into a game theory situation where other countries might rather reduce their own tariffs than suffer the increased rates charged by the US. Today’s Unhedged column in the FT covered exactly this scenario.
This has been tried before: The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley era and saw tariff rates plunging.
But how do you get better productivity? Training and equipping staff better, I reckon. And neither businesses or the state are keen on that if the payback time isn't measured in weeks. So it hasn't really happened, and now it's biting us on the bum.
As a country, we've been living off the capital of our inheritance for a while now, and it's really starting to show.
a. Land is so expensive, because
b. Planning is so restrictive, and, relatedly,
c. The planning process takes forever, hence
d. Legal costs are so high because everything gets challenged; also
e. We're just not very good at delivering these things, so
f. They get chopped, changed and delayed along the way to 'save costs' (but more commonly, extend costs).
2. Entitlement culture. See people thinking millionaires should get winter fuel allowance. Or indeed all sorts of things that were paid for by borrowing, selling off assets and running other deficits.
3. All that borrowing since 2008 has created a lot of interest to service. it's not free money and never was.
4. An aging population / sub-replacement birth rate. Which means we import a lot of labour, adding to the pressure on infrastructure (see (1) above). One reason for which is high housing costs. Also see above.
5. Patch-up repairs, both because of (1) and a lack of cash in the first place (plus arbitrary fiscal rules) mean the state's real estate is also aging and worsening.
But good luck tackling both (1) and (2), particularly when you've not done the ground-work of establishing the political narrative. It's not enough to say 'things are crap and we'll fix it' without also explaining why and how - which Labour hasn't (unlike Reform, even if Reform's explanations are at best simplistic). Meanwhile, rich vocal old Nimbys continue to block any attempt to really get to grips with either.
Reciprocal Trade Act, i.e. tariffs would go up only to match the rates that other countries currently charge. Or the opposite.
Hadn't heard of that bit till today ! It's certainly been kept quiet by Trump and his opponents. The policy would make more sense with that bit.
I have some sympathy with the point re genre, about the problem of having to think about it. I was once writing a piece for a newspaper to deadline the next morning when suffering from viral gastroenteritis at both ends. A journalist friend (on a very different newspaper) loved it so much that he urged me to enter it for a major science journalism competition ...
For example this was just last week:
"Perhaps the most important element of my plan to make America extraordinarily wealthy again is reciprocity. It's a word that's very important in my plan because we generally don't charge tariffs. I started that process, it was so great, with the vans and the small trucks, etc," Trump said Thursday in a major economic policy speech."
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/foreign-trade/trump-says-india-biggest-import-tariff-charger-vows-to-reciprocate-if-elected/articleshow/114148701.cms?from=mdr
Certainly a generalisation but speaking to people in low paid service sector roles it seems that there is little expectation that hard work will be remunerated. Just above minimum wage stays just above minium wage regardless of the employee and only management positions get the sniff of a bonus.
Labour yes likely lose seats to Reform, the Greens, Independents and the LDs and again if Reform aren't standing to Tories
Effectively, visibility and targeting are very much the same thing. So you could say that where the Lib Dems were visible, they did very well at the last general election, and in fact almost overtook the Tories in terms of the number of seats.
What a few PB oddballs think is not really going to affect the presidential election.
Remember there may be no love for Labour but the Cons nationally are still despised.
Including
1) Heavily armed traffic wardens
2) Alvis Saracen armoured cars for teachers in all schools.
3) All pupils in Zorb balls
4) Manned mission to land the entire DfE on the Sun.
5) A mandatory vote on Scottish Independence every single day.
And many more policies in the same vein.
Oh, and my revolutionary voting system. Which combines FPTP and all forms of AV. It’s perfectly proportional and vote counting is instant. Opportunities for fraud - zero.
But he does call them 'wonderful' and 'brilliant', which gives more of a clue to his thinking than something he's read off a teleprompter.
When it comes to food supply which team brought in the disastrous -for-farmers- Brexit? Most farms will be limited companies so the next inline generation will already be a Director inline for the company tied cottage.
On the other, armoured cars for me and Zorb balls for them...
- zero infection of pupils by teachers, for anything (HEPA filter included)
- zero infection of teachers by pupils.
- zero violence between any combination of pupils and teachers (knife proof plastic)
- zero safe guarding issues.
- lack of class room space? Stack the pupils…
- truancy will be very difficult.
- the teachers can relax by playing car football with the pupils in the playground, using the Saracens…
This could be the greatest advance in education ever.
To be honest, as long as he's just messing with taxes, it's not that important. It's when he starts using things like servicing Trident and F35s as leverage we need to really worry. And he would if he had any interest in defence matters. Fortunately, it scares him. Business and lawfare remain his comfort zones.
A chap on the seats opposite, Nigerian I would guess, nearly fell off his seat laughing. I'd generalised the explanation as "Just as in some countries, where the people in charge wear all the medals...."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/18/rachel-reeves-freeze-income-tax-thresholds-past-2028/
Shortly everybody will end up being a higher rate tax payer....
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/40695
I popped in earlier for a breather on a very ungentlemanly, busy Friday to see war raging over the discounting of Boris' book.
I assumed we would have at least reached a consensus, or at least an uneasy peace, by now.
I'm keen to know the outcome.
Could the success of Ten Years to Save The West presage a return to the stage for the former PM? Maybe so.
Maybe, just maybe, it is Mary Elizabeth Truss's time to shine.
If she was going to announce that the logical time would be after the 2028 Election. The only possible reason I can see is if it would make a difference to long term forecasts, but I can't see how that would make a material practical difference now when there are other larger factors affecting the short-term prospects.
Anyone?
Full article:
https://archive.ph/GNJuc
He wants a payment of something like $10bn pa from each to maintain the US military alliance.
His classics professor at Oxford, Oswyn Murray, which apparently mentions that he sent Johnson a "renunciation of friendship" as soon as he heard he was becoming Prime Ministed. When asked what this was, Murray said it was a "renunciation amicitiae", which was issued by Roman Emperors when someone had fallen short of expectations to such an extent , that the recommendation was
either that they should either go off and commit suicide somewhere, or "go into exile on the Black Sea."
It seems to be some sort of weighty tome about the history of teaching classics at Oxford, but seems also to include the Boris Johndon anecdote, as he taught him there in the '80s.
I tend to agree with him.
Don’t buy mutant XL bully cats, animal experts warn
New feline equivalent of banned American dog breed is vulnerable to serious health problems
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/18/american-xl-bully-cats-dogs-animals/
I would suggest all the speculation about Reeves Autumn Statement is exactly that, and we have only 12 days to wait for the real thing so assume it is just kite flying
However, there is no doubt all the doom and gloom from Starmer and Reeves has been damaging to many investors and it has been left far too long to the Statement
Poor politics from both
S Korea already has the missiles and the sub building capacity. Both have the power plants; S Korea has considerably more nuclear engineering expertise.
The L.R.B. really is a gem o me for unpredictable intellectual stimulation, very much I think, like BBC2 in the late 'eighties. You might get the most obscure academic or artistic arcana, or the most current political and social , or some mixture of both.
"In 1914, James Murray refused to sign the ‘Writers’ Manifesto’ denouncing the German invasion of Belgium – a ‘source of family pride’ for Murray. One of the organisers was Gilbert Murray (no relation), the Glasgow and Oxford Hellenist and future chairman of the League of Nations Union. Oswyn interprets a terse letter from Gilbert to James as indicating that he understood James’s position that signing the manifesto could imperil international collaboration on the OED (other interpretations are possible)."
And Starmer and Reeves got free Taylor Swift tickets.