It really isn't. We have essentially no growth, and yet Labour's aim is not just to match long term trend growth, but to beat it significantly. Labour needs the economy to perform better than it perhaps has for 30+ years. Anything less than that and their plans are in trouble.
Labour made the rod for their own back — deliver above trend growth but stay away from the main fiscal levers — so they are going to need a huge amount of good luck to succeed. A complete lunatic takes over the US in a few days time and he is planning on picking fights with most countries in the West, Labour's job would have been difficult enough as it is, God help us if there is some sort of trade war.
As per usual I have posted to the last thread long after it died. If any one is interested I commented on what I perceived as the inappropriate use of the words 'coconut' for Kemi B and 'evil' for Keir S.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
He did nothing about either Medicare or Social Security in his first term, just ramped up borrowing to give tax cuts to the broligarchy.
Sandpit is rewriting some history here, as Republicans voted against attempts to address that drug pricing he complains of. He also doesn't seem to understand how the healthcare market works in the US.
Medicare accounts for around a fifth of healthcare spending in the US, and Part D - the drugs bit - about a quarter of that fifth. The Biden legislation already addresses 20% of that drugs spend.
That's still a large chunk of change, but it's not going to do more than tickle the funding for Trump's proposed tax cut.
Truss' problem was that she and Kwarteng cut taxes without also cutting spending which expanded borrowing and spooked the markets. Starmer and Reeves are unpopular because of their tax rises and winter fuel allowance cuts but those measures are more fiscally disciplined, longer term we will see if they hit growth
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
He did nothing about either Medicare or Social Security in his first term, just ramped up borrowing to give tax cuts to the broligarchy.
Sandpit is rewriting some history here, as Republicans voted against attempts to address that drug pricing he complains of. He also doesn't seem to understand how the healthcare market works in the US.
Medicare accounts for around a fifth of healthcare spending in the US, and Part D - the drugs bit - about a quarter of that fifth. The Biden legislation already addresses 20% of that drugs spend.
That's still a large chunk of change, but it's not going to do more than tickle the funding for Trump's proposed tax cut.
I said that Trump found it impossible to get his reforms through a Congress that was totally bought and paid for by Big Phama - from both parties.
Yes Republicans voted against it, because Pfizer would have funded a primary candidate against them if they didn’t.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
CHIPS Act was the one thing that even Biden’s biggest opponents supported. It really had to be done, to avoid utter dependence on China and Taiwan.
It is a shame the democrats did not really seem to get enough credit for that in the November election.
Picking a hopeless candidate probably didn't help.
It will be a good legacy for Biden.
There’s a lot of books to be written about the state of the Democratic Party in the last 18 months.
They had plenty of opportunities to have Biden stand aside and choose someone who could beat Trump, and failed to take all of them until it was far too late, so they ended up with little choice but to impose the most unsuitable candidate on the party with no competitive primaries.
There’s loads of competent Dem Governors and Senators who could have stood up and done the job.
All would likely still have lost due to cost of living, which Trump now has to deal with. Not sure his tariffs will help
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
I’ve said for years that the next Labour Government had to be radical, and the last thing we needed was more Blair/Brown tinkering. Sadly the people at the top are straight out of that paradigm, devoid of vision.
We need investment in manufacturing, infrastructure, the green economy and our relationship with Europe. And an overhaul of local Government. If that meant putting income tax up by a penny or two then that should not have been ruled out.
It would have been really easy to blame on the last lot a 2p increase in income tax rates, with the intention to abolish before the next election, which would have given headroom for major reforms in service delivery elsewhere.
They have a huge majority, and there’s been so many issues left on the too-difficult list for too long.
Someone needs to really grasp the mettle, to merge employee NI into income tax and simplify much of the tax code.
Instead, a government run by the Process State guy intends to increase the cost of the bureaucracy, and appears wedded to Ed Miliband’s agenda of Net Zero no matter what the cost to the average man and woman in the street.
No NI should be ringfenced for social care, JSA and some healthcare costs
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
Truss' problem was that she and Kwarteng cut taxes without also cutting spending which expanded borrowing and spooked the markets. Starmer and Reeves are unpopular because of their tax how they were going to payrises and winter fuel allowance cuts but those measures are more fiscally disciplined, longer term we will see if they hit growth
Truss' problem was that she/they didn't tell anyone how they were going to pay for anything. They didn't give people something that they could even disagree with and argue against. And the markets really didn't and don't like economies casting off into the unknown.
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
Ive referred to it as low grade crappiness. Far too many basic things dont work or work badly, with a general expectation that the government cannot afford to fix things even as they take more from us and talk in grandiose terms that can come to look delusional.
We're rich in global terms, but we're waking up to the fact were poorer than we thought, but not enough to have a plan to turn it atound.
To illustrate your point look at the reaction on here from people who had a good service from the passport office. Genuine surprise/pleasure for what should really be the norm.
Take a look at the proportions of government spending that goes towards some of sort of investment (from preventative healthcare to transport infrastructure) from 2007 - 2024. It's frightening, and I think by far the biggest reason for the pickle we find ourselves in.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
He did nothing about either Medicare or Social Security in his first term, just ramped up borrowing to give tax cuts to the broligarchy.
Sandpit is rewriting some history here, as Republicans voted against attempts to address that drug pricing he complains of. He also doesn't seem to understand how the healthcare market works in the US.
Medicare accounts for around a fifth of healthcare spending in the US, and Part D - the drugs bit - about a quarter of that fifth. The Biden legislation already addresses 20% of that drugs spend.
That's still a large chunk of change, but it's not going to do more than tickle the funding for Trump's proposed tax cut.
I said that Trump found it impossible to get his reforms through a Congress that was totally bought and paid for by Big Phama - from both parties.
Yes Republicans voted against it, because Pfizer would have funded a primary candidate against them if they didn’t.
That’s what Trump is up against.
Paper tigers.
If a politician wanted to take on big industry then they could, and could win. So Pfizer funds a candidate against those who'd take them down - money isn't everything, as Trump has comfortably proved against Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and (I think?) Kamala Harris. Campaigning and message is just as critical; more so, probably. And what would the Big Pharma message be? Probably something to do with needing the prices to invest in research. Against which, a capable politician will highlight (1) Exec pay, (2) dividends, (3) people dying and bankrupted by costs. An unscrupulous one will also dox any executive who crosses their path, or put them in harm's way by some other means.
Taking on unpopular opponents should be meat and drink to politicians - hence, of course, the legalised bribery and corruption of campaign donations. However, Trump isn't particularly prone to listening to special pleading that doesn't fit his agenda and is willing to turn his base against Republican who don't toe his line. If he wanted to shake things up, he'd be the man to do it.
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
I disagree as well and suspect some people who live a pretty nice life in a pretty nice part of the UK really have not got a clue as to what it is like in these places so just make an assumption.
Hospitality did badly over Xmas as did the high street. We were out in Newcastle a couple of times and it was quiet compared to previous years, especially prior to COVID. New Years eve afternoon may be down to the weather but not everything can be.
Our MP has now started a page for people to report potholes for the new fund. Together we can beat the pothole !!!! It is making a virtue out of a situation that should never be allowed to happen at the scale it has.
People don’t want a centrally-financed “potholes fund”, requiring thousands of pounds of form-filling cost. They want the council to come and fill in the damn potholes.
The key to all of this is the social care problem, which the government has decided to push to 2028.
Absolutely on both counts. It is the biggest deriliction of duty of labour to kick the can down the road and, I am afraid, those with the deeper pockets will have to pay. The current system is crucifying councils up and down the country.
Was the "death tax" really such a bad idea.
Our MP is cynically using potholes for his own benefit and I do not blame him.
Rachel Reeves says she wished she had arrived in the job and been told "'the money's coming in'... then I could have made different decisions".
"But in the circumstances that I inherited, I judged that I had to make sure the sums added up."
Asked if her decisions had damaged business confidence, Reeves asked: "What was the alternative?
The answer to that point is very simple
Reverse the employee NI tax cuts that should never have happened.
Or reverse the employee NI tax cuts by increasing income tax by 3% and keeping the WFA as a sweetener for those with very small private pensions...
See it's not exactly difficult...
They had already ruled out any change to income, VAT or NI taxes.
Labour judgment was they would not get elected unless they did.
History will mull that over in coming years. My view is it was unnecessary to tie their hands so hard like this given how detested the Tories had made themselves.
They should have just fronted it out with "no plans" and then done it or broken their pledge in the first budget, took the hit, and relied on the expectation that in 4 or 5 years time when they go to the country things will be better and they will get in on that.
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
Ive referred to it as low grade crappiness. Far too many basic things dont work or work badly, with a general expectation that the government cannot afford to fix things even as they take more from us and talk in grandiose terms that can come to look delusional.
We're rich in global terms, but we're waking up to the fact were poorer than we thought, but not enough to have a plan to turn it atound.
To illustrate your point look at the reaction on here from people who had a good service from the passport office. Genuine surprise/pleasure for what should really be the norm.
That's exactly it. And little things like councils being doled out extra money for potholes or competing to win part of a pot of money from whitehall to improve a high street scene (usually a new bike lane or pavement), it gives the impression these things are exceptional problems, when we think we should be able to maintain infrastructures as a standard.
Well apparently we can't.
It's a similar story wth domestic maintenance. Ever since the Polish plumbers went back home, it seems to have become almost impossible to find competent trademen. The last plumber we hired left things in a worse state than they were before, as well as charging handsomely for his services.
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
Ive referred to it as low grade crappiness. Far too many basic things dont work or work badly, with a general expectation that the government cannot afford to fix things even as they take more from us and talk in grandiose terms that can come to look delusional.
We're rich in global terms, but we're waking up to the fact were poorer than we thought, but not enough to have a plan to turn it atound.
To illustrate your point look at the reaction on here from people who had a good service from the passport office. Genuine surprise/pleasure for what should really be the norm.
Take a look at the proportions of government spending that goes towards some of sort of investment (from preventative healthcare to transport infrastructure) from 2007 - 2024. It's frightening, and I think by far the biggest reason for the pickle we find ourselves in.
And we're now in the bit of the doom loop where Figure 1 has to keep going up because Figure 9 went down.
You can sweat capital assets a bit more for a year or two. But eventually it catches up with you. You can skimp on preventative care for a while and it looks like painless savings. For a while. In the end, though, it gets horribly expensive and wasteful.
And short of the boffins coming up with a time machine to take us back to 2010 or so, or 2008, or whenever the government needed to make better decisions, we are where we are. Even if it's not where I would be starting from, sir.
On topic, it'd be interesting to compare these figures to Osborne's in about Dec 2010.
One of Labour's problems - the one that's driving the above figures - is that whereas Cameron and Osborne prepared the ground for austerity, and nailed the blame on Gordon Brown, Labour hasn't done the same in reverse. Sure, they blamed Liz Truss but Truss was two years before they took over and Sunak and Hunt got some credit for appearing to stabilized things.
So for Labour to now introduce austerity measures has come as a surprise and doesn't fit with their pre-election media and public narrative.
Plus, those measures are having an impact themselves, particularly the tax rises, which do seem to have prompted a reaction from business that's slowed growth, which in turn affects people's perceptions of Labour's management.
In reality, it's not all tax and spend. Labour could increase growth by removing structural barriers to it but the measures that would best work are ones they're instinctively against (less regulation and process), or are too timid to do (eg reducing trade barriers with the EU).
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
I’ve said for years that the next Labour Government had to be radical, and the last thing we needed was more Blair/Brown tinkering. Sadly the people at the top are straight out of that paradigm, devoid of vision.
We need investment in manufacturing, infrastructure, the green economy and our relationship with Europe. And an overhaul of local Government. If that meant putting income tax up by a penny or two then that should not have been ruled out.
It would have been really easy to blame on the last lot a 2p increase in income tax rates, with the intention to abolish before the next election, which would have given headroom for major reforms in service delivery elsewhere.
They have a huge majority, and there’s been so many issues left on the too-difficult list for too long.
Someone needs to really grasp the mettle, to merge employee NI into income tax and simplify much of the tax code.
Instead, a government run by the Process State guy intends to increase the cost of the bureaucracy, and appears wedded to Ed Miliband’s agenda of Net Zero no matter what the cost to the average man and woman in the street.
No NI should be ringfenced for social care, JSA and some healthcare costs
I'm sure all of those things are backed up by general taxation anyway. We should just bite the bullet and merge.
Social services would be better in NHS overview. It would Free up local authorities somewhat.
It really isn't. We have essentially no growth, and yet Labour's aim is not just to match long term trend growth, but to beat it significantly. Labour needs the economy to perform better than it perhaps has for 30+ years. Anything less than that and their plans are in trouble.
Labour made the rod for their own back — deliver above trend growth but stay away from the main fiscal levers — so they are going to need a huge amount of good luck to succeed. A complete lunatic takes over the US in a few days time and he is planning on picking fights with most countries in the West, Labour's job would have been difficult enough as it is, God help us if there is some sort of trade war.
I agree that Labour are taking a chance, and about Trump.
On the flip side, looking at the figures in the header, that 'bad' economy has been around for a few years now, and just a little stability is likely to knock it down considerably.
While a trade war might be a problem, I suspect Labour looked at the last parliament, where we had Covid plus an actual war in Europe, and took a chance that it won't be quite that bad.
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
Ive referred to it as low grade crappiness. Far too many basic things dont work or work badly, with a general expectation that the government cannot afford to fix things even as they take more from us and talk in grandiose terms that can come to look delusional.
We're rich in global terms, but we're waking up to the fact were poorer than we thought, but not enough to have a plan to turn it atound.
To illustrate your point look at the reaction on here from people who had a good service from the passport office. Genuine surprise/pleasure for what should really be the norm.
That's exactly it. And little things like councils being doled out extra money for potholes or competing to win part of a pot of money from whitehall to improve a high street scene (usually a new bike lane or pavement), it gives the impression these things are exceptional problems, when we think we should be able to maintain infrastructures as a standard.
Well apparently we can't.
It's a similar story wth domestic maintenance. Ever since the Polish plumbers went back home, it seems to have become almost impossible to find competent trademen. The last plumber we hired left things in a worse state than they were before, as well as charging handsomely for his services.
Good morning
We have an excellent plumber, electrician, and gardeners now we cannot do the garden, but they all went to school with our children who are 59, 54 and 50 and are on what's app with us
And on topic when you have talked doom and gloom for months, have no actual plan, and produce a growth and job destroying budget then why is anyone surprised the government is closing in on Truss's ratings
Also the whole of our area including Llandudno, Conwy, the Conwy Valley, Colwyn Bay and Llandulas have had no wate4 since this time yesterday with a major failure of the supply pipe with likely reconnection by Sunday at the earliest
Yesterday all schools, shops, leisure facilities were closes and no water bottles anywhere even as far away as Queensferry and homeowners collecting sea water from the beach5
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
I disagree as well and suspect some people who live a pretty nice life in a pretty nice part of the UK really have not got a clue as to what it is like in these places so just make an assumption.
I met some friends in Northampton last year. (They were on an extended canal boat trip and it was the weekend most convenient for me to join them). Catching a train home on Sunday afternoon it struck me just how run down and depressing the town centre was, in a place that I wouldn't have thought was particularly poor. Of course the state of high streets is partly due to the rise of Internet shopping rather than just economic decline, but it was certainly noticeable
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
Rachel Reeves says she wished she had arrived in the job and been told "'the money's coming in'... then I could have made different decisions".
"But in the circumstances that I inherited, I judged that I had to make sure the sums added up."
Asked if her decisions had damaged business confidence, Reeves asked: "What was the alternative?
The answer to that point is very simple
Reverse the employee NI tax cuts that should never have happened.
Or reverse the employee NI tax cuts by increasing income tax by 3% and keeping the WFA as a sweetener for those with very small private pensions...
See it's not exactly difficult...
They had already ruled out any change to income, VAT or NI taxes.
Labour judgment was they would not get elected unless they did.
History will mull that over in coming years. My view is it was unnecessary to tie their hands so hard like this given how detested the Tories had made themselves.
Labour ended up on 33% with the pledge on taxes. They would almost certainly be sub 30% without it. Perhaps that would still just have been enough, but no strategist in spring 2024 would have thought Labour sub 30% = Lab majority.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
He did nothing about either Medicare or Social Security in his first term, just ramped up borrowing to give tax cuts to the broligarchy.
Sandpit is rewriting some history here, as Republicans voted against attempts to address that drug pricing he complains of. He also doesn't seem to understand how the healthcare market works in the US.
Medicare accounts for around a fifth of healthcare spending in the US, and Part D - the drugs bit - about a quarter of that fifth. The Biden legislation already addresses 20% of that drugs spend.
That's still a large chunk of change, but it's not going to do more than tickle the funding for Trump's proposed tax cut.
I said that Trump found it impossible to get his reforms through a Congress that was totally bought and paid for by Big Phama - from both parties.
Yes Republicans voted against it, because Pfizer would have funded a primary candidate against them if they didn’t.
That’s what Trump is up against.
Paper tigers.
If a politician wanted to take on big industry then they could, and could win. So Pfizer funds a candidate against those who'd take them down - money isn't everything, as Trump has comfortably proved against Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and (I think?) Kamala Harris. Campaigning and message is just as critical; more so, probably. And what would the Big Pharma message be? Probably something to do with needing the prices to invest in research. Against which, a capable politician will highlight (1) Exec pay, (2) dividends, (3) people dying and bankrupted by costs. An unscrupulous one will also dox any executive who crosses their path, or put them in harm's way by some other means.
Taking on unpopular opponents should be meat and drink to politicians - hence, of course, the legalised bribery and corruption of campaign donations. However, Trump isn't particularly prone to listening to special pleading that doesn't fit his agenda and is willing to turn his base against Republican who don't toe his line. If he wanted to shake things up, he'd be the man to do it.
This is why I think Trump is keeping close to Elon Musk, despite the billionaire businessman going somewhat off the reservation in recent weeks, but who’s going to do old-fashioned primary politics against those Republicans who don’t want to follow the President’s agenda.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
I disagree. There is a veneer of economic output in places, and not even that in large parts of the country. Hospitality appears to have had a poor Christmas, retail likewise. People are struggling for money and that means they can't spend it in sufficient quantities to keep the economy turning.
Seriously, there's an awful lot of towns and some cities which are visibly broken in places, with a lack of money and ideas to turn it around. When your community is visibly tatty and its getting worse not better, its no wonder people feel gloomy.
Ive referred to it as low grade crappiness. Far too many basic things dont work or work badly, with a general expectation that the government cannot afford to fix things even as they take more from us and talk in grandiose terms that can come to look delusional.
We're rich in global terms, but we're waking up to the fact were poorer than we thought, but not enough to have a plan to turn it atound.
That is all true, but also applies equally to the UK private sector. Getting anything done, from estate agent to car purchase, to finding a cleaner or decorator, to booking trains, arranging broadband, etc is more complicated than it needs to be and a ballache to fix as soon it goes slightly wrong.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
At least give Rolls Royce the order for the SMR nuclear power stations.
There’s three competitors here, USA, UK, and China. The US is still waiting for its first order, the UK has a tentative order from a Czech company*, and the Chinese are behind in development but we know will sell them to all of their client states quickly once they’re ready.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
Labour's stolid stability may look at lot more alluring by 2028/9 if the euro implodes thanks to rise of AfD in Germany.
Four years is a long time in politics especially in the early 21st century - where chaos and volatility seems to be the plat du jour.
A Euro collapse is such a black swan that I doubt that we could even get close to predicting the domestic consequences. The voters could, for example, either decide that Reform is no-long necessary and go home or more could decide that they were right and they could see their support rise. Both, I think, are equally as likely.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
At least give Rolls Royce the order for the SMR nuclear power stations.
There’s three competitors here, USA, UK, and China. The US is still waiting for its first order, the UK has a tentative order from a Czech company*, and the Chinese are behind in development but we know will sell them to all of their client states quickly once they’re ready.
It would be a start. Our competition rules are another self inflicted harm we need to get rid of. I would have no problem with us working with a larger group, whether the EU or NAFTA or CPTPP but we are doing ourselves no favours playing by a set of rules designed for a different world and frankly ignored by our competitors. To take your example, what chance is there that RR will be in the running in China?
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
The problem with government investment becomes apparent when you talk to politicians and civil servants.
“We should invest small amounts in a range of solutions, see which ones are best and pick those.”
“But that’s so inefficient - think of the headlines about failure. We need to pick the technologies, put all our resources behind them…”
In the case of ZEVs - they spent billions over decades backing hydrogen. Because hydrogen was the correct industrial policy and politically useful as well. Sadly, hydrogen itself didn’t attend all the right meetings and failed to cooperate.
Which is why I suggest (for example) a subsidy of x per Wh of ZEV storage on actual sold vehicles. Scaled to U.K. content. So you are not backing one battery technology. It’s not even backing batteries. Just the entire space of ZEVs.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
Pure self harm. Madness.
Also incredibly amusing.
Yes, the EU damaging European industry is a real rib tickler.
Labour's stolid stability may look at lot more alluring by 2028/9 if the euro implodes thanks to rise of AfD in Germany.
Four years is a long time in politics especially in the early 21st century - where chaos and volatility seems to be the plat du jour.
A Euro collapse is such a black swan that I doubt that we could even get close to predicting the domestic consequences. The voters could, for example, either decide that Reform is no-long necessary and go home or more could decide that they were right and they could see their support rise. Both, I think, are equally as likely.
The Euro is likely to go back under the US Dollar this year. 1.03 today, having lost 8% in the last six months.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
Pure self harm. Madness.
Also incredibly amusing.
Yes, the EU damaging European industry is a real rib tickler.
European industry has only itself to blame. These are the people who were merrily cheating NOx tests until someone caught them. EU regulation on automotive has been if anything too weak, not too strong, because of the strength of the German car lobby.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
No, the fault lies entirely with the politicians.
If there had been no legislation about EVs, they would have grown organically and eventually be better than ICE vehicles for the majority of buyers, maybe in 15 years’ time instead of in 5 years’ time.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
Tell that to the Chinese manufacturers who already put the investment in. The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
No, the fault lies entirely with the politicians.
If there had been no legislation about EVs, they would have grown organically and eventually be better than ICE vehicles for the majority of buyers, maybe in 15 years’ time instead of in 5 years’ time.
In 15 years time Chinese made vehicles would already be taking 90% of the market.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
Maybe the EU (and the UK) might watch and learn. Your alternative - and I know it's trendy what with Trump and all that - is to erect massive tariff barriers. And deny the consumer what they want. And what is already available.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
My theory is that it all started going wrong when the media stopped reporting the monthly trade balance.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
Tell that to the Chinese manufacturers who already put the investment in. The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The tech is ready. It's just that European manufacturers assumed they could stare down the EU on the regulations and save themselves lots of bother.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
At least give Rolls Royce the order for the SMR nuclear power stations.
There’s three competitors here, USA, UK, and China. The US is still waiting for its first order, the UK has a tentative order from a Czech company*, and the Chinese are behind in development but we know will sell them to all of their client states quickly once they’re ready.
It would be a start. Our competition rules are another self inflicted harm we need to get rid of. I would have no problem with us working with a larger group, whether the EU or NAFTA or CPTPP but we are doing ourselves no favours playing by a set of rules designed for a different world and frankly ignored by our competitors. To take your example, what chance is there that RR will be in the running in China?
The chance that RR is in the running for a Chinese plant is precisely zero. Because of course it is.
Meanwhile, Western governments will still look to buy the Chinese solution if it’s a bit cheaper than the Western one.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
It’s a story from the FT, not from some random person on twitter.
State subsidies are generally not thought of as a winning idea because the state is generally hopeless at picking winners. But what if Xi is right. What if subsidising BYD IS actually the right move to achieve EV dominance.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
Tell that to the Chinese manufacturers who already put the investment in. The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
No, the blame lies entirely with the EU (and UK) for trying to push a technology that isn’t ready, including the infrastructure.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
So what. You're a middle man who makes a living as a consultant. I doubt you have any knowledge of manufacturing processes.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
Maybe the EU (and the UK) might watch and learn.
Sure, but that's a hard rewiring of how western economies work, would you be comfortable with the state pumping billions into UK car companies and have those execs take home tens of millions per year still and those companies making billions in profit for their shareholders with near zero direct ROI for the state? China is able to do this because the state owns a big part of its industries so on order to ape the Chinese model you have to become comfortable with the state owning big chunks of UK industry and we all know how that went in the 70s.
No, our way forwards is, as a single voice, telling China to get fucked and lock them out of our markets until the state subsidy programmes are eliminated.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
Danny Masterson, Prince Andrew, and Neil Gaiman all share the same lawyer. Must come in handy.
Gaiman is going to need a good lawyer. We’ve moved on from “possible cancellation of projects” to “possible prison sentence.”
Nothing to do with what he's being accused of - but there are few creative types that my view of has changed so dramatically from 'quite like' to absolutely furious with. I still can't think of Good Omens 2 without getting cross.
I'm reminded of Christopher Hitchens' famous comment:
"Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite"
Gaiman likewise, is performative. He has loudly championed the need to “believe all women”, and has presented himself as an ally to feminist causes. Always be wary of those whose politics are performative. All too often, they're doing the very things they condemn.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
Tell that to the Chinese manufacturers who already put the investment in. The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
OK, we've hit the twat event horizon. Time for me to get back to work.
If you don't want to be called out for being a snide twat, well, just don't be one.
Try being courteous and civil instead.
I said investment is going in and it is. Up here, the new factory I mentioned plus also the investment in AESC to support Nissan and other suppliers are investing. No need to respond with a shitty comment.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
No, the blame lies entirely with the EU (and UK) for trying to push a technology that isn’t ready, including the infrastructure.
So the technology is ready for the Chinese but not for the EU and UK? That makes no sense at all.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
Maybe the EU (and the UK) might watch and learn.
Sure, but that's a hard rewiring of how western economies work, would you be comfortable with the state pumping billions into UK car companies and have those execs take home tens of millions per year still and those companies making billions in profit for their shareholders with near zero direct ROI for the state? China is able to do this because the state owns a big part of its industries so on order to ape the Chinese model you have to become comfortable with the state owning big chunks of UK industry and we all know how that went in the 70s.
No, our way forwards is, as a single voice, telling China to get fucked and lock them out of our markets until the state subsidy programmes are eliminated.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
So what. You're a middle man who makes a living as a consultant. I doubt you have any knowledge of manufacturing processes.
On topic, it'd be interesting to compare these figures to Osborne's in about Dec 2010.
One of Labour's problems - the one that's driving the above figures - is that whereas Cameron and Osborne prepared the ground for austerity, and nailed the blame on Gordon Brown, Labour hasn't done the same in reverse. Sure, they blamed Liz Truss but Truss was two years before they took over and Sunak and Hunt got some credit for appearing to stabilized things.
So for Labour to now introduce austerity measures has come as a surprise and doesn't fit with their pre-election media and public narrative.
Plus, those measures are having an impact themselves, particularly the tax rises, which do seem to have prompted a reaction from business that's slowed growth, which in turn affects people's perceptions of Labour's management.
In reality, it's not all tax and spend. Labour could increase growth by removing structural barriers to it but the measures that would best work are ones they're instinctively against (less regulation and process), or are too timid to do (eg reducing trade barriers with the EU).
Cameron and Osborne also had the benefit of, in addition to inheriting a big deficit, inheriting public services that were generally in pretty good shape. They could cut/freeze spending without things being seen to immediately break. Labour don't have that luxury - inherited tight financials and public services that are clearly falling apart and need investment.
I still think they should be doing better, but it is a politically very difficult situation they've come into.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
This has undoubtedly been a success for America. It was driven by strategic reasons because they were concerned that if China took Taiwan they would lose access to their chips and be at an impossible economic disadvantage but it is also indicative that we need to look at certain key shibboleths of our macro-economic/political assumptions.
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
At least give Rolls Royce the order for the SMR nuclear power stations.
There’s three competitors here, USA, UK, and China. The US is still waiting for its first order, the UK has a tentative order from a Czech company*, and the Chinese are behind in development but we know will sell them to all of their client states quickly once they’re ready.
It would be a start. Our competition rules are another self inflicted harm we need to get rid of. I would have no problem with us working with a larger group, whether the EU or NAFTA or CPTPP but we are doing ourselves no favours playing by a set of rules designed for a different world and frankly ignored by our competitors. To take your example, what chance is there that RR will be in the running in China?
The chance that RR is in the running for a Chinese plant is precisely zero. Because of course it is.
Meanwhile, Western governments will still look to buy the Chinese solution if it’s a bit cheaper than the Western one.
Going all electric is one thing, generating the power is quite another.
Charging was restricted on my EV by the grid at the weekend due to high levels of demand.
The Labour employer NI changes clearly will cause trouble for business using lots of part time, low paid workers, but should, surely, raise productivity as investment in processes/automation starts to look more attractive than another person shuffling boxes around on minimum wage?
There are real (negative) impacts, of course, but it will be interesting to see where productivity goes.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Biden did do something. Though it’s arguable how much the tech boom was already baked in, the CHIPS Act etc.
CHIPS Act was the one thing that even Biden’s biggest opponents supported. It really had to be done, to avoid utter dependence on China and Taiwan.
I wonder how many of the new factories Harris visited on the election campaign.
She seems to have visited one in Michigan in the last week of October.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
So what. You're a middle man who makes a living as a consultant. I doubt you have any knowledge of manufacturing processes.
Perhaps he advises vineyards on setting up their facilities for making the wine. Nice gig.
I worked with a company in Germany that sold product into German vineyards. Had a couple of ace afternoons drinking wine with them in a lovely part of rural Germany.
As per usual I have posted to the last thread long after it died. If any one is interested I commented on what I perceived as the inappropriate use of the words 'coconut' for Kemi B and 'evil' for Keir S.
Are people saying Badenoch is hard and hairy on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside?
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
So what. You're a middle man who makes a living as a consultant. I doubt you have any knowledge of manufacturing processes.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
So what. You're a middle man who makes a living as a consultant. I doubt you have any knowledge of manufacturing processes.
Rachel Reeves says she wished she had arrived in the job and been told "'the money's coming in'... then I could have made different decisions".
"But in the circumstances that I inherited, I judged that I had to make sure the sums added up."
Asked if her decisions had damaged business confidence, Reeves asked: "What was the alternative?
The answer to that point is very simple
Reverse the employee NI tax cuts that should never have happened.
Or reverse the employee NI tax cuts by increasing income tax by 3% and keeping the WFA as a sweetener for those with very small private pensions...
See it's not exactly difficult...
They had already ruled out any change to income, VAT or NI taxes.
Labour judgment was they would not get elected unless they did.
History will mull that over in coming years. My view is it was unnecessary to tie their hands so hard like this given how detested the Tories had made themselves.
Labour ended up on 33% with the pledge on taxes. They would almost certainly be sub 30% without it. Perhaps that would still just have been enough, but no strategist in spring 2024 would have thought Labour sub 30% = Lab majority.
I don't think it's that transactional. Labour drifted downwards from the mid-40s to the mid-30s in no small part because they failed to dominate the story that the Tories had created the problem and they had a plan to fix it.
They were so scared of saying what their plan was that (1) they let others in with their own plans, which peeled off a load of voters anyway, and (2) they now don't have a mandate now they can't avoid implementing a plan as they're in government.
Remember: their starting point wasn't the 35% they ended up with but the 45% they started off with when the election was called. It was absolutely not inevitable that they would lose 10 points over the course of the campaign.
There is no reason that we should not be having decent economic growth.
Our demographics are not that bad.
Technology is still developing in leaps and bounds.
The problem is far too many people have a vested interest in preventing growth.
Tackle that, everything else goes away. But the problem is tackling that will entail telling voters they don't have the right to stand in the way of growth and we need politicians with the cojones to do that.
I hoped a newly elected Government with 5 years and a landslide majority might do it. Sadly, no, it seems.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
No, the blame lies entirely with the EU (and UK) for trying to push a technology that isn’t ready, including the infrastructure.
So the technology is ready for the Chinese but not for the EU and UK? That makes no sense at all.
Yes the Chinese are ahead on the technology.
So European governments have decided to sell out to the Chinese in the name of “Net Zero” rather than support their own domestic industries.
I was enjoying the "means-testing" the state pension thread...
Several things to unpick in that incoherent phone-in response. 1) is she saying they'll means rest the state pension? Penalising those who saved for a pension, paid off their mortgage and paid into ISAs.
2) How will they deny it? Massive spin, full on gaslighting denial of the recording or just silence? Obvs they'll have a lot of help, don't expect there'll be anything about it in Mail, Telegraph or Express.
3) Do they ever let her out again?
I expect that this will just be wiped, in a year's time you'll struggle to find it in an internet search, like John Whittingdale's dating mishaps.
Focussing the uplift of the state pension on the poorest pensioners doesn’t seem too objectionable. How you do that is another matter, most likely through the tax system rather than means-testing a portion of the pension.
If NI and tax were combined, the tax rate would have to increase, and this would mean a greater tax take from richer pensioners. This would automatically means test the more well off. The less well off on the older pension wouldn't pay tax so the triple lock value would apply fully to them
That’s probably the fairest way to do it, or maybe some form of taper to reduce a part of the pension down to zero, leaving a minimum amount for everyone.
Although it’s already taxed as income - if you have no other income you don’t pay tax (personal allowance) but otherwise you are
Looks like the License Fee is on its last legs as Lisa Nandy rules out General Taxation to fund the BBC but says the BBC needs more money - it doesn't, it needs pruning not maintaining.
"Ms Nandy acknowledged that a subscription model was among the options which were left after ruling out general taxation, but added: “It also leaves a whole range of options which the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has been exploring over recent years.
“In other countries in Europe, they find different ways of raising money.
“In France, for example, they have a levy on cinemas. I’m not committing to any of these things at this stage.”"
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
Pharma companies don’t take doctors on fancy holidays - that’s illegal.
Drug costs are also only 15% of healthcare costs. Yes Medicare/Medicaid should be using its pricing power, but even a 20-30% reduction will only result in a 3-4% reduction in healthcare costs. Worth having but not transformational
Looks like the License Fee is on its last legs as Lisa Nandy rules out General Taxation to fund the BBC but says the BBC needs more money - it doesn't, it needs pruning not maintaining.
"Ms Nandy acknowledged that a subscription model was among the options which were left after ruling out general taxation, but added: “It also leaves a whole range of options which the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has been exploring over recent years.
“In other countries in Europe, they find different ways of raising money.
“In France, for example, they have a levy on cinemas. I’m not committing to any of these things at this stage.”"
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
The fault lies with the car manufacturers, and is surely the opposite of trying to push the tech before it's ready. They have been sleeping at the wheel and trying to squeeze out their final few years of old ICE vehicles while dripping out high end EVs, and at the same time Chinese competitors have grabbed the bull by the horns and threaten to dominate the mass market.
With tens of billions in state subsidies. It's not a fair fight.
He's a Lib Dem, their knowledge of anything to do with manufacturing is minute.
I literally make a living from advising companies on where to locate factories.
So what. You're a middle man who makes a living as a consultant. I doubt you have any knowledge of manufacturing processes.
I was enjoying the "means-testing" the state pension thread...
Several things to unpick in that incoherent phone-in response. 1) is she saying they'll means rest the state pension? Penalising those who saved for a pension, paid off their mortgage and paid into ISAs.
2) How will they deny it? Massive spin, full on gaslighting denial of the recording or just silence? Obvs they'll have a lot of help, don't expect there'll be anything about it in Mail, Telegraph or Express.
3) Do they ever let her out again?
I expect that this will just be wiped, in a year's time you'll struggle to find it in an internet search, like John Whittingdale's dating mishaps.
Focussing the uplift of the state pension on the poorest pensioners doesn’t seem too objectionable. How you do that is another matter, most likely through the tax system rather than means-testing a portion of the pension.
If NI and tax were combined, the tax rate would have to increase, and this would mean a greater tax take from richer pensioners. This would automatically means test the more well off. The less well off on the older pension wouldn't pay tax so the triple lock value would apply fully to them
As many people have previously stated, the tax-free allowance should be at the level of the state pension. Someone depending only on the state pension shouldn't be paying any income tax as that's a pointless exercise of giving with one hand and taking with the other.
You took over Bart Simpson's role , the pension is less than the tax allowance so pensioners currently don't pay tax if they have been feckless and spent all their money. Only the mugs who saved money pay tax as pensioners. How thick are people on here.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
Tell that to the Chinese manufacturers who already put the investment in. The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
I think those consecutive posts to @TimS were completely out of order @taz. There is no reason you can't be polite. And to suggest that no LD knows anything about manufacturing is a bizarre generalisation particularly if they are specifically involved in that type of business. Are there other industries and businesses you also think we can't do? Just wondering as some having retired from running a successful business.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
No, the blame lies entirely with the EU (and UK) for trying to push a technology that isn’t ready, including the infrastructure.
So the technology is ready for the Chinese but not for the EU and UK? That makes no sense at all.
Yes the Chinese are ahead on the technology.
So European governments have decided to sell out to the Chinese in the name of “Net Zero” rather than support their own domestic industries.
There's a bizarre left/right reversal going on here*, re subsidies/tariffs versus free trade. The new right is quite different to the one I grew up with and so, it seems, is the left. I'm still somewhere in the centre, but some of my formerly left-wing positions now seem right-wing and vice-versa!
The Labour employer NI changes clearly will cause trouble for business using lots of part time, low paid workers, but should, surely, raise productivity as investment in processes/automation starts to look more attractive than another person shuffling boxes around on minimum wage?
There are real (negative) impacts, of course, but it will be interesting to see where productivity goes.
It is also an NI cut for small business even though the govt have been abysmal in telling anyone this.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
No, the blame lies entirely with the EU (and UK) for trying to push a technology that isn’t ready, including the infrastructure.
So the technology is ready for the Chinese but not for the EU and UK? That makes no sense at all.
Yes the Chinese are ahead on the technology.
So European governments have decided to sell out to the Chinese in the name of “Net Zero” rather than support their own domestic industries.
There's a bizarre left/right reversal going on here*, re subsidies/tariffs versus free trade. The new right is quite different to the one I grew up with and so, it seems, is the left. I'm still somewhere in the centre, but some of my formerly left-wing positions now seem right-wing and vice-versa!
*and elsewhere, US, for example
The right have moved from free markets managed well to drive meritocracy to crony capitalism subsidised by the state. The left seem a bit scared to change anything which comes across as not having a clue what to do.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
Regulating your own industry out of existence just proves what a regulatory superpower you are.
Insane behaviour. Should have pushed it back to 2025. The investment is going in but it takes time.
Tell that to the Chinese manufacturers who already put the investment in. The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
I think those consecutive posts to @TimS were completely out of order @taz. There is no reason you can't be polite. And to suggest that no LD knows anything about manufacturing is a bizarre generalisation particularly if they are specifically involved in that type of business. Are there other industries and businesses you also think we can't do? Just wondering as some having retired from running a successful business.
Well I am sorry but his response to me was snide and inappropriate and I responded accordingly. I am polite to people who are polite to me but I take umbrage at being talked down to.
I made a perfectly reasonable comment that investment is being put into EV's. Indeed a new factory was announced up here yesterday.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
What the hell are they drinking in Brussels?
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
You don't have to take every tweet that William posts at face value. In reality, the chances that EU car makers will pay anything to Chinese manufactures are approximately zero. While you might argue that the EU's approach towards driving the shift to EVs is flawed, the blame for falling behind the Chinese on EV production lies more with the car companies themselves than with the EU.
No, the blame lies entirely with the EU (and UK) for trying to push a technology that isn’t ready, including the infrastructure.
So the technology is ready for the Chinese but not for the EU and UK? That makes no sense at all.
Yes the Chinese are ahead on the technology.
So European governments have decided to sell out to the Chinese in the name of “Net Zero” rather than support their own domestic industries.
There's a bizarre left/right reversal going on here*, re subsidies/tariffs versus free trade. The new right is quite different to the one I grew up with and so, it seems, is the left. I'm still somewhere in the centre, but some of my formerly left-wing positions now seem right-wing and vice-versa!
*and elsewhere, US, for example
The right have moved from free markets managed well to drive meritocracy to crony capitalism subsidised by the state. The left seem a bit scared to change anything which comes across as not having a clue what to do.
Notions of right and left change over time. The Town & Country Planning Act 1948, was considered an appalling interference with property rights by Conservatives and economic liberals at the time, yet many would now die in the ditch for the Green Belt.
As mentioned the other day, much of the West is at the sort of tipping point we saw in 1945 and in 1979.
There needs to be radical change, and the people are going to vote for those offering it.
Starmer is fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or whatever is your preferred metaphor for making only minor changes when major changes are required.
Yes but what are these “major changes” of which you speak? I imagine it’s the tired old mantra of spending cuts which affect the poorest the hardest as public services are reduced or withdrawn and tax cuts which will inevitably only make the richest richer still and accelerate wealth inequality.
It’s not either 1945 or 1979 and the “solutions” then won’t be the solutions now.
In truth nobody has come up with an effective economic model to promote growth since the collapse of the last Ponzi scheme in 2008.
Oh indeed so.
At least the Americans are about to try and do something, even if you disagree with it and dislike the characters involved. It may or may not work, but at least they’re trying.
Meanwhile, European governments are either going nowhere or electing fringe politicians.
It’s going to be a turbulent few years ahead for us all.
Argentina maybe. Trump won't touch Social Security or Medicare.
He will pay for his tax cuts for the 1% of the 1% with ramped up borrowing. It will be inflationary, and quite a sugar rush of growth, at the expense of long term worsening of the American finances.
Trump is very much gunning for the cost of Medicare, and the legislation that forces them to pay list price for drugs while the phama companies take doctors on fancy holidays and advertise on TV.
Pharma companies don’t take doctors on fancy holidays - that’s illegal.
Drug costs are also only 15% of healthcare costs. Yes Medicare/Medicaid should be using its pricing power, but even a 20-30% reduction will only result in a 3-4% reduction in healthcare costs. Worth having but not transformational
Oh, definitely not holidays, just conferences in Aspen in the winter and Barbados in the summer. How bad that anyone might think that these are holidays rather than important work meetings to which the attendees for some reason bring their families.
Comments
Labour made the rod for their own back — deliver above trend growth but stay away from the main fiscal levers — so they are going to need a huge amount of good luck to succeed. A complete lunatic takes over the US in a few days time and he is planning on picking fights with most countries in the West, Labour's job would have been difficult enough as it is, God help us if there is some sort of trade war.
He also doesn't seem to understand how the healthcare market works in the US.
Medicare accounts for around a fifth of healthcare spending in the US, and Part D - the drugs bit - about a quarter of that fifth.
The Biden legislation already addresses 20% of that drugs spend.
That's still a large chunk of change, but it's not going to do more than tickle the funding for Trump's proposed tax cut.
Still little bits of ice about. Surprised it's lasted so long.
It’s actually about barristers having an obligation not to turn down clients on the basis of reputation etc.
Both barristers and clients can seek each other out. And do.
Yes Republicans voted against it, because Pfizer would have funded a primary candidate against them if they didn’t.
That’s what Trump is up against.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/17/seoul-cheonggyecheon-motorway-turned-into-a-stream
Well worth a visit.
He's in bed with big business, especially oligarchs.
Four years is a long time in politics especially in the early 21st century - where chaos and volatility seems to be the plat du jour.
So from Figure 9 we are not back to 2010 levels.
Figure 1 just goes up and up.
If a politician wanted to take on big industry then they could, and could win. So Pfizer funds a candidate against those who'd take them down - money isn't everything, as Trump has comfortably proved against Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and (I think?) Kamala Harris. Campaigning and message is just as critical; more so, probably. And what would the Big Pharma message be? Probably something to do with needing the prices to invest in research. Against which, a capable politician will highlight (1) Exec pay, (2) dividends, (3) people dying and bankrupted by costs. An unscrupulous one will also dox any executive who crosses their path, or put them in harm's way by some other means.
Taking on unpopular opponents should be meat and drink to politicians - hence, of course, the legalised bribery and corruption of campaign donations. However, Trump isn't particularly prone to listening to special pleading that doesn't fit his agenda and is willing to turn his base against Republican who don't toe his line. If he wanted to shake things up, he'd be the man to do it.
Was the "death tax" really such a bad idea.
Our MP is cynically using potholes for his own benefit and I do not blame him.
If you let rich fuckwits do what they want, people die. Generally not just the rich fuckwits, sadly...
You can sweat capital assets a bit more for a year or two. But eventually it catches up with you. You can skimp on preventative care for a while and it looks like painless savings. For a while. In the end, though, it gets horribly expensive and wasteful.
And short of the boffins coming up with a time machine to take us back to 2010 or so, or 2008, or whenever the government needed to make better decisions, we are where we are. Even if it's not where I would be starting from, sir.
One of Labour's problems - the one that's driving the above figures - is that whereas Cameron and Osborne prepared the ground for austerity, and nailed the blame on Gordon Brown, Labour hasn't done the same in reverse. Sure, they blamed Liz Truss but Truss was two years before they took over and Sunak and Hunt got some credit for appearing to stabilized things.
So for Labour to now introduce austerity measures has come as a surprise and doesn't fit with their pre-election media and public narrative.
Plus, those measures are having an impact themselves, particularly the tax rises, which do seem to have prompted a reaction from business that's slowed growth, which in turn affects people's perceptions of Labour's management.
In reality, it's not all tax and spend. Labour could increase growth by removing structural barriers to it but the measures that would best work are ones they're instinctively against (less regulation and process), or are too timid to do (eg reducing trade barriers with the EU).
Social services would be better in NHS overview. It would Free up local authorities somewhat.
On the flip side, looking at the figures in the header, that 'bad' economy has been around for a few years now, and just a little stability is likely to knock it down considerably.
While a trade war might be a problem, I suspect Labour looked at the last parliament, where we had Covid plus an actual war in Europe, and took a chance that it won't be quite that bad.
We have an excellent plumber, electrician, and gardeners now we cannot do the garden, but they all went to school with our children who are 59, 54 and 50 and are on what's app with us
And on topic when you have talked doom and gloom for months, have no actual plan, and produce a growth and job destroying budget then why is anyone surprised the government is closing in on Truss's ratings
Also the whole of our area including Llandudno, Conwy, the Conwy Valley, Colwyn Bay and Llandulas have had no wate4 since this time yesterday with a major failure of the supply pipe with likely reconnection by Sunday at the earliest
Yesterday all schools, shops, leisure facilities were closes and no water bottles anywhere even as far away as Queensferry and homeowners collecting sea water from the beach5
So, for example, governments can't pick winners. Well, actually, they can to the extent that they can facilitate certain sectors and create opportunities that business can exploit. Sure, this won't always work but the US policy of seeking the return of manufacturing to the US in replacement for offshoring has worked and created well paying jobs there.
Free trade is an unqualified good. No, its not. We have seen entire sectors of our economy wiped out by international competition leaving us open to exploitation by what become monopoly suppliers. The idea of comparative advantage really doesn't work when that advantage is made up of people working in something approaching slave conditions with a total disregard of safety and environmental standards. It also doesn't work when that advantage works across an entire swathe of production leaving us with nothing that can allow us to earn a living. We need to protect our manufactures from what amounts to unfair competition.
Personally, I am increasingly of the view that we need a more mercantilist system. We need to encourage, for example, battery production, Chip production and EV production here. And if that means giving up on the sort of nonsense that the EU was built on by allowing that production to be supported by the state (even if we seemed to be the only country that really applied those rules) so be it.
Reeves says she is focused on growth. But she runs policies that positively inhibits growth. She is not stupid. Why does she do this? Because our orthodoxy no longer fits our current economic circumstances. We need new thinking. Thinking that doesn't just talk about growth but takes positive steps to facilitate it.
European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels.
There’s three competitors here, USA, UK, and China. The US is still waiting for its first order, the UK has a tentative order from a Czech company*, and the Chinese are behind in development but we know will sell them to all of their client states quickly once they’re ready.
*https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2024/29-10-2024-rolls-royce-smr-and-cez-group-partner-to-deploy-smrs-in-uk-and-czechia.aspx
Trying to push the tech before it’s ready, is going to turn over the whole car industry to China.
Germany is about to become like the UK, only making top-end $100k domestic cars, with mass-production all either outsourced or imports.
“We should invest small amounts in a range of solutions, see which ones are best and pick those.”
“But that’s so inefficient - think of the headlines about failure. We need to pick the technologies, put all our resources behind them…”
In the case of ZEVs - they spent billions over decades backing hydrogen. Because hydrogen was the correct industrial policy and politically useful as well. Sadly, hydrogen itself didn’t attend all the right meetings and failed to cooperate.
Which is why I suggest (for example) a subsidy of x per Wh of ZEV storage on actual sold vehicles. Scaled to U.K. content. So you are not backing one battery technology. It’s not even backing batteries. Just the entire space of ZEVs.
If there had been no legislation about EVs, they would have grown organically and eventually be better than ICE vehicles for the majority of buyers, maybe in 15 years’ time instead of in 5 years’ time.
The investment is going in but it takes time sounds like something a water company boss would say.
Safeguarding, DBS, first aid courses...
This is proper cnut stuff.
And when and why they did that I'd love to know.
Meanwhile this was announced yesterday.
https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/nissan-sunderland-plant-to-get-electric-powertrains-from-new-jatco-factory/311689
They might still be right.
Meanwhile, Western governments will still look to buy the Chinese solution if it’s a bit cheaper than the Western one.
AML is not fun.
No, our way forwards is, as a single voice, telling China to get fucked and lock them out of our markets until the state subsidy programmes are eliminated.
"Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite"
Gaiman likewise, is performative. He has loudly championed the need to “believe all women”, and has presented himself as an ally to feminist causes. Always be wary of those whose politics are performative. All too often, they're doing the very things they condemn.
Try being courteous and civil instead.
I said investment is going in and it is. Up here, the new factory I mentioned plus also the investment in AESC to support Nissan and other suppliers are investing. No need to respond with a shitty comment.
I still think they should be doing better, but it is a politically very difficult situation they've come into.
Charging was restricted on my EV by the grid at the weekend due to high levels of demand.
There are real (negative) impacts, of course, but it will be interesting to see where productivity goes.
She seems to have visited one in Michigan in the last week of October.
I worked with a company in Germany that sold product into German vineyards. Had a couple of ace afternoons drinking wine with them in a lovely part of rural Germany.
2 votes for a 1/2 pt cut
3 votes for a 1/4 pt cut
4 votes for a hold.
They were so scared of saying what their plan was that (1) they let others in with their own plans, which peeled off a load of voters anyway, and (2) they now don't have a mandate now they can't avoid implementing a plan as they're in government.
Remember: their starting point wasn't the 35% they ended up with but the 45% they started off with when the election was called. It was absolutely not inevitable that they would lose 10 points over the course of the campaign.
Andy Bruce (Reuters) @bruceandy.bsky.social
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1h
Reasonably chunky drop in gilt yields this morning.
The GREAT PANIC of early 2025 has been wiped out.
Our demographics are not that bad.
Technology is still developing in leaps and bounds.
The problem is far too many people have a vested interest in preventing growth.
Tackle that, everything else goes away. But the problem is tackling that will entail telling voters they don't have the right to stand in the way of growth and we need politicians with the cojones to do that.
I hoped a newly elected Government with 5 years and a landslide majority might do it. Sadly, no, it seems.
So European governments have decided to sell out to the Chinese in the name of “Net Zero” rather than support their own domestic industries.
·
21m
Here's a fun one:
UK government bonds are now outperforming both US Treasuries and German Bunds this year following the recent relief rally across these markets
https://bsky.app/profile/chriswhittall.bsky.social
"Ms Nandy acknowledged that a subscription model was among the options which were left after ruling out general taxation, but added: “It also leaves a whole range of options which the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has been exploring over recent years.
“In other countries in Europe, they find different ways of raising money.
“In France, for example, they have a levy on cinemas. I’m not committing to any of these things at this stage.”"
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/general-taxation-not-considered-to-replace-bbc-licence-fee-culture-secretary/ar-AA1xmp3K?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=605f178d3e7a483db2a7c3d6ac222ddf&ei=61
Drug costs are also only 15% of healthcare costs. Yes Medicare/Medicaid should be using its pricing power, but even a 20-30% reduction will only result in a 3-4% reduction in healthcare costs. Worth having but not transformational
You wouldn't think they get the climate but they do and not due to global warming either. Been there years.
*and elsewhere, US, for example
I made a perfectly reasonable comment that investment is being put into EV's. Indeed a new factory was announced up here yesterday.