They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Not recently. There were big improvements in the fifteen years after the fall of Communism, probably due to the imposition of West German property rights and laws on the East, but relative improvements pretty much stopped in the 2010s with the East still about a quarter poorer than the West.
Regions that level up do so not because of subsidies from the centre, but because they have governments that are pro-enterprise and pro-growth. For example, the South and Mountain West of the United States which have closed much of the income gap with the rest of the US since World War II - both those regions DO in fact receive significant federal subsidies, like the North of England or Eastern Germany, but they also both have vigorous entrepreneurial cultures and lighter regulation on such matters as planning (or zoning as Americans call it) in a way that their European counterparts simply do not. That's the crucial factor, not the magnitude of subsidies, many of which at best have small effects and at worst throttle whatever enterprise and initiative survives in the poorer regions.
Another important factor is genuine autonomy in regional government, allowing them to innovate and make mistakes, in a way which is totally alien to us in Britain, but which has let Texas, say, be pro-growth while California happily regulates itself to stagnation.
To go from about 35% or west german GDP per capita to about 80% is still a huge improvement, surely much bigger than anything in the UK. The main reason it has stalled recently is because of the lower productivity in the East, and one of the main reasons for this is because of the brain drain from East to West. This brain drain would have been worse without government support. I don't think there is any serious doubt that without the fiscal flow from West to East, the new Bundesländer would be far worse off today.
edited to add "federal subsidies, like the North of England or Eastern Germany" makes it sound like the north of england has had the same fiscal support as East Germany since 1991, which is surely not even close to right?
Indeedy.
The difference in investment N/S (especially London) in transport is stark.
Yes, in this case Fishing is talking nonsense, I think. The argument that poor regions don't need investment is both selfish and wrong.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
That’s not true, over the last 15 or so years, British governments have put serious effort into making the entire country a shithole, and with notable progress (in London etc) thereby finally eliminating much of the inequality that hitherto plagued us
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Thanks.
I'll have to go see Sandy Lane, Mansfield.
Its the only traditional industrial area on the list.
I'm listed as being the second most deprived decile, too. Although the other end of my road is in the 3rd most deprived, just one house beyond the other side (in the estate which is worse im) is in the 3rd most deprived too, and 100m away at the other end of a footpath is in the 2nd least deprived.
Artefacts of calculations with age of housing stock and ward boundaries, I would say, plus they may have drilled down to a single data item in the scorecard. Perhaps, given that the website listed is the "living wage something".
What these maps show is that there are far greater differences in affluence/deprivation within towns and districts than there are between different areas of the country.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
Around here, quite a chunk of economic policy was being designed around HS2.
Trump's inauguration being moved inside will presumably limit numbers so whether Liz Truss gets bumped...
Is it really weather or is security a factor? It being Trump.
Extreme cold has been forecast in Washington DC on inauguration day, with temperatures expected to hit a low of -11°C (12°F) and a high of -5°C (23°F). With wind chill factored in, the temperature will feel significantly colder. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceq9917rl18o
Trump's inauguration being moved inside will presumably limit numbers so whether Liz Truss gets bumped...
Is it really weather or is security a factor? It being Trump.
Extreme cold has been forecast in Washington DC on inauguration day, with temperatures expected to hit a low of -11°C (12°F) and a high of -5°C (23°F). With wind chill factored in, the temperature will feel significantly colder. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceq9917rl18o
It praises Merkel for getting ride of nuclear power, defence cuts and:
Merkel has scored points for her foreign policy endeavours, most recently ensuring that she is in constant dialogue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over the Crimea dispute. Thanks to her East German upbringing she knows Russian culture well and speaks Russian to an excellent standard, and while she is no fan of Putin the person (he reportedly lets his labrador loose around her, despite knowing of her fear of dogs), she sees it as her duty to keep communicating with him. She has emphasised to other western leaders that pressurising him too much could push Russia into political and economic chaos, which would be good neither for Russia, Germany nor Europe.
The nuclear power decision was perhaps the worst of the lot, but only because the general western acquiescence to Crimea (and failure to prepare for what would follow) wasn't all down to her.
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
Trump's inauguration being moved inside will presumably limit numbers so whether Liz Truss gets bumped...
Is it really weather or is security a factor? It being Trump.
Extreme cold has been forecast in Washington DC on inauguration day, with temperatures expected to hit a low of -11°C (12°F) and a high of -5°C (23°F). With wind chill factored in, the temperature will feel significantly colder. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceq9917rl18o
Fair enough. That is cold.
A chill wind blows in...
Perhaps not to leave for quite some time. Brrrr. Hunker down.
Trump administration to begin deportation of illegal immigrants on day one starting in Chicago
I thought Elon Musk lived in Texas?
1) ICE is deporting immigrants all the time. Every single day. Will there actually be a change? 2) Chicago is Sanctuary City. In American terms, this means that the city authorities don’t cooperate with ICE at an official level. So a local cop reporting an illegal to ICE will actually be disciplined for breaking the rules of his/her job. Stepping up deportations from Chicago will entail a big fight between Federal and local authorities. Grist to the MAGA mill.
The Overton window on deportation has really shifted in the US. According to a poll the other day, half support mass deportation of everyone illegal.
Even a few years ago that would have been about 10%
The Sanctuary City thing is a response to this.
Will there be tears about not being able to get staff to wash dishes in hotels and restaurants, a shortage of short order and fast food cooks, the lack of domestic cleaners, prices of legal gardeners going through the roof and crops not getting picked in time.
Am I outdated to think that many of the shitty jobs are done by illegal immigrants where their removal will directly affect them by removal/reduction of services and price increases as staffing costs shoot up through reduced supply. Or is there a surfeit of documented people willing to do grim jobs for peanuts?
Unknown on most of that. Staffing costs in the US have already gone through the roof. Driving inflation in food and other everyday items.
A common thing is that eating out used to be cheap in many parts of the US. Since COVID, the cost has rocketed. Which is the kind of inflation that really, really gets noticed.
Ironically, “AI” is coming for many of the shitty jobs.
Something to understand about the general immigration argument in the US. We discuss whether immigrants have suppressed wages in the U.K.
In the US, companies have bought in workers on H1B visas, and forced their American workers to train them up. With the explicit and announced plan of sending the immigrant workers back to India etc - fire the current workforce. Yes, that in-your-face.
Similar stuff happened with NAFTA and the Southern border.
Such practices have fuelled… well, you can fill in the rest.
Hang on, I don't understand your para 5. Bring in workers on H1B, train them,. send them home?
It's a complicated picture, but a large percentage of the lowest salaried H1B employees work for Indian outsourcing companies...
It praises Merkel for getting ride of nuclear power, defence cuts and:
Merkel has scored points for her foreign policy endeavours, most recently ensuring that she is in constant dialogue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over the Crimea dispute. Thanks to her East German upbringing she knows Russian culture well and speaks Russian to an excellent standard, and while she is no fan of Putin the person (he reportedly lets his labrador loose around her, despite knowing of her fear of dogs), she sees it as her duty to keep communicating with him. She has emphasised to other western leaders that pressurising him too much could push Russia into political and economic chaos, which would be good neither for Russia, Germany nor Europe.
The nuclear power decision was perhaps the worst of the lot, but only because the general western acquiescence to Crimea (and failure to prepare for what would follow) wasn't all down to her.
The steadfast anti-LNG import facilities thing was egregious. Despite the fact that the campaigns against terminals were rather openly funded by Gazprom and related outfits. This even included having a go at Poland for looking at setting one up.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
That’s not true, over the last 15 or so years, British governments have put serious effort into making the entire country a shithole, and with notable progress (in London etc) thereby finally eliminating much of the inequality that hitherto plagued us
Inner West London however remains not only richer than any other part of the UK but also richer than any part of Germany too
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
If Reeves imposed a massive rise in air passenger duty on all flights to Spain and Greece and Florida that would solve the problems of half those areas (certainly in summer)
It would also solve several problems for the Conservatives, including their chronic lack of popularity.
Is that why you're proposing it?
Well Reform couldn't complain as the seaside resorts where they get some of their highest votes would be the biggest beneficiaries
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
That’s not true, over the last 15 or so years, British governments have put serious effort into making the entire country a shithole, and with notable progress (in London etc) thereby finally eliminating much of the inequality that hitherto plagued us
Inner West London however remains not only richer than any other part of the UK but also richer than any part of Germany too
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
For a President who intends very broad exercise of executive power, bypassing Congress, having the NSC as a rubber stamp, rather than a potential check, is essential.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
Trump administration to begin deportation of illegal immigrants on day one starting in Chicago
I thought Elon Musk lived in Texas?
1) ICE is deporting immigrants all the time. Every single day. Will there actually be a change? 2) Chicago is Sanctuary City. In American terms, this means that the city authorities don’t cooperate with ICE at an official level. So a local cop reporting an illegal to ICE will actually be disciplined for breaking the rules of his/her job. Stepping up deportations from Chicago will entail a big fight between Federal and local authorities. Grist to the MAGA mill.
The Overton window on deportation has really shifted in the US. According to a poll the other day, half support mass deportation of everyone illegal.
Even a few years ago that would have been about 10%
The Sanctuary City thing is a response to this.
Will there be tears about not being able to get staff to wash dishes in hotels and restaurants, a shortage of short order and fast food cooks, the lack of domestic cleaners, prices of legal gardeners going through the roof and crops not getting picked in time.
Am I outdated to think that many of the shitty jobs are done by illegal immigrants where their removal will directly affect them by removal/reduction of services and price increases as staffing costs shoot up through reduced supply. Or is there a surfeit of documented people willing to do grim jobs for peanuts?
Unknown on most of that. Staffing costs in the US have already gone through the roof. Driving inflation in food and other everyday items.
A common thing is that eating out used to be cheap in many parts of the US. Since COVID, the cost has rocketed. Which is the kind of inflation that really, really gets noticed.
Ironically, “AI” is coming for many of the shitty jobs.
Something to understand about the general immigration argument in the US. We discuss whether immigrants have suppressed wages in the U.K.
In the US, companies have bought in workers on H1B visas, and forced their American workers to train them up. With the explicit and announced plan of sending the immigrant workers back to India etc - fire the current workforce. Yes, that in-your-face.
Similar stuff happened with NAFTA and the Southern border.
Such practices have fuelled… well, you can fill in the rest.
Hang on, I don't understand your para 5. Bring in workers on H1B, train them,. send them home?
It's a complicated picture, but a large percentage of the lowest salaried H1B employees work for Indian outsourcing companies...
The nuclear power decision was perhaps the worst of the lot, but only because the general western acquiescence to Crimea (and failure to prepare for what would follow) wasn't all down to her.
Lots of blame to go around for lots of people.
But Merkel was for some reason held up to be the exemplar of good government.
In the end, there was very little to Merkel-worship. Just a vague sense that she was a nice person and — crucially — that conservatives disliked her.
She herself has learnt no lessons from that era. But her former admirers still might, with some guidance. So here goes.
Lesson one. Scientists aren’t “better”. The line on Merkel was that while Britain was run by glib humanities graduates, here was a physicist-chemist who brought empirical rigour to government. Well, it wasn’t the silver-tongued Oxonians who showed an almost theological aversion to nuclear power. Even if Merkel did have a thirst for detail, she also had the corollary: no larger picture, no sense of the connectedness of things. Whether a nation is run badly (Britain in recent years) or well (Britain in former times), generalists will tend to be in charge. The academic bent of the elite at the age of 18 can’t be a variable that explains much. Stop worrying about the PPE degree.
Lesson two. Just because a person lacks outward charisma doesn’t mean they have inner depths. (Call this the Gordon Brown Fallacy.) In all likelihood, there is even less to them than meets the eye. Merkel was said to embody a “post-heroic” style of leadership. A great strategic mind was said to smoulder away behind that quiet exterior and that coy rhombus of a hand gesture. Yeah, no. She was a sphinx without a secret. It is a type of person that recurs not just in history but in workplaces everywhere, forever having wisdom and high talent read into them.
The last lesson? It is the one with the least chance of being heeded, I’m afraid. Bad people can have good judgment, and vice versa. An issue should be approached on its own terms, not on the basis of who stands where on it. Donald Trump was right that European defence spending was, with honourable exceptions, disgraceful. He was right that German energy dependency would help “expansionist foreign powers”. And despite the constant suggestion in Merkel’s book, none of this is hindsight. It’s just sight.
For a sense of the tribal shallowness that can overcome smart people, remember that Brits who hated “austerity” swore by this fiscal hawk. Not only did the tension not bother them, I’m not sure it occurred to them in the first place. What mattered was that Merkel, in some ineffable way, seemed to be on the right team. From there, the rest could be backfilled. Her policies? Her track record of judgment? Such a bore.
Nothing captured Merkel Mania like the meme of her at a G7 summit, literally bearing down on Trump, who is seated with his arms folded. As soon as the photo was released, its message was unmistakable: the exasperated grown-up and the petulant child. No image since Dorian Gray’s portrait has aged worse.
Trump administration to begin deportation of illegal immigrants on day one starting in Chicago
I thought Elon Musk lived in Texas?
1) ICE is deporting immigrants all the time. Every single day. Will there actually be a change? 2) Chicago is Sanctuary City. In American terms, this means that the city authorities don’t cooperate with ICE at an official level. So a local cop reporting an illegal to ICE will actually be disciplined for breaking the rules of his/her job. Stepping up deportations from Chicago will entail a big fight between Federal and local authorities. Grist to the MAGA mill.
The Overton window on deportation has really shifted in the US. According to a poll the other day, half support mass deportation of everyone illegal.
Even a few years ago that would have been about 10%
The Sanctuary City thing is a response to this.
Will there be tears about not being able to get staff to wash dishes in hotels and restaurants, a shortage of short order and fast food cooks, the lack of domestic cleaners, prices of legal gardeners going through the roof and crops not getting picked in time.
Am I outdated to think that many of the shitty jobs are done by illegal immigrants where their removal will directly affect them by removal/reduction of services and price increases as staffing costs shoot up through reduced supply. Or is there a surfeit of documented people willing to do grim jobs for peanuts?
Unknown on most of that. Staffing costs in the US have already gone through the roof. Driving inflation in food and other everyday items.
A common thing is that eating out used to be cheap in many parts of the US. Since COVID, the cost has rocketed. Which is the kind of inflation that really, really gets noticed.
Ironically, “AI” is coming for many of the shitty jobs.
Something to understand about the general immigration argument in the US. We discuss whether immigrants have suppressed wages in the U.K.
In the US, companies have bought in workers on H1B visas, and forced their American workers to train them up. With the explicit and announced plan of sending the immigrant workers back to India etc - fire the current workforce. Yes, that in-your-face.
Similar stuff happened with NAFTA and the Southern border.
Such practices have fuelled… well, you can fill in the rest.
Hang on, I don't understand your para 5. Bring in workers on H1B, train them,. send them home?
It's a complicated picture, but a large percentage of the lowest salaried H1B employees work for Indian outsourcing companies...
Ah, thanks ...
The problem is that the lowest paid Indian outsourcing workers are not very good. Because the good ones are all in permanent jobs in places like the US. Where they can make an order of magnitude more money.
So the employers tried bringing workers over to train. Hoping that quality and productivity would rub off in, some magical way.
Look at these robots. Kinell. I don’t think many people realise how fast robotics has advanced in the last 2-3 years. They are close to replacing humans in most physical jobs - they can also now do fine motor tasks as well, peeling an apple, stacking a dishwasher, folding clothes, washing a wine glass, wanking you off while moaning about Scottish subsamples, anything around the house
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
See also Liz Truss, anyone advised by #ClassicDom, and even back to New Labour, hence SpAds. We have had three decades of rule by politicians who thought Yes Minister was a documentary.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
Plus,
1 catastrophic immigration policies that please no one
2 regulatory lunacy on “new technology” - thanks Thierry Breton (the UK might escape the worst of this)
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
The solution was and is for the government to flood the market with cheap zero carbon electricity and then allow capitalism to do what it does best, use that energy for the best uses globally without even having to think about net zero. Instead we have the opposite.
Oil and gas is irrelevant for the most part if we have cheap and plentiful electricity. That is, and always will be, the solution.
What utter nonsense. Although I think we all now know @williamglenn 's real name for he surely wrote that piece. Nonetheless garbage from start to finish.
Look at these robots. Kinell. I don’t think many people realise how fast robotics has advanced in the last 2-3 years. They are close to replacing humans in most physical jobs - they can also now do fine motor tasks as well, peeling an apple, stacking a dishwasher, folding clothes, washing a wine glass, wanking you off while moaning about Scottish subsamples, anything around the house
'They are close to replacing humans in most physical jobs' which would be a global problem and make a universal basic income funded by a robot tax inevitable
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
I think these times are pretty zippy really. When you go by car you overtake replacement bus services from the 1950s.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
The solution was and is for the government to flood the market with cheap zero carbon electricity and then allow capitalism to do what it does best, use that energy for the best uses globally without even having to think about net zero. Instead we have the opposite.
Oil and gas is irrelevant for the most part if we have cheap and plentiful electricity. That is, and always will be, the solution.
You can have cheap and reliable electricity, or you can have zero carbon electricity. You can't, despite what the more deluded net zero fanatics pretend, have both. That is a main (but not the only) reason why our electricity prices are some of the highest in the world.
So oil and gas will still be relevant for decades if not ever, unless we want to commit economic suicide.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
We will see how Trump's tariffs pan out, if they boost US manufacturing and industry expect the likes of Le Pen, the AfD and Farage to try and follow suit here. If they don't but just lead to a US-EU-China trade war that damages all of those economies but the US most of all they won't.
If Trump's abandonment of net zero also boosts the US economy that will also push pressure for similar changes here (whatever the climate change impact) as will has mass deportation of immigrants be followed by the populist nationalist European right
What utter nonsense. Although I think we all now know @williamglenn 's real name for he surely wrote that piece. Nonetheless garbage from start to finish.
Author has two middle initials, and uses them in public. An example of what Kingsley Amis called an "Infallible wanker detector".
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
Net Zero didn't force Germany to shutter nuclear power; or prevent us subsidising UK battery plants a decade back (when it was already obvious the market wasn't going to help in time).
And the US reshoring industry ought to be something Europe is doing, too.
Granted that would require very different policies than those that have prevailed.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
The solution was and is for the government to flood the market with cheap zero carbon electricity and then allow capitalism to do what it does best, use that energy for the best uses globally without even having to think about net zero. Instead we have the opposite.
Oil and gas is irrelevant for the most part if we have cheap and plentiful electricity. That is, and always will be, the solution.
You can have cheap and reliable electricity, or you can have zero carbon electricity. You can't, despite what the more deluded net zero fanatics pretend, have both. That is a main (but not the only) reason why our electricity prices are some of the highest in the world.
So oil and gas will still be relevant for decades if not ever, unless we want to commit economic suicide.
Utter rubbish. Solar is dirt cheap now and we can capitalise nuclear and tidal and wind against tax receipts without having to put pounds on every kwh of electricity. These huge capital projects are the kind of things the government should have been sinking billions into from both tax and borrowing over the last 20 years.
You build the infrastructure and then let business flourish. That is what China does.
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
For a President who intends very broad exercise of executive power, bypassing Congress, having the NSC as a rubber stamp, rather than a potential check, is essential.
In addition to its general powers, for the really paranoid, the NSC also has oversight of these:
...The High Value Detainee Interrogation Group also reports to the NSC... Kill authorizations One of the tasks of the National Security Council is to determine and identify people, including United States citizens who are deemed to be threats to national security and add them to a "kill list"...
Look at these robots. Kinell. I don’t think many people realise how fast robotics has advanced in the last 2-3 years. They are close to replacing humans in most physical jobs - they can also now do fine motor tasks as well, peeling an apple, stacking a dishwasher, folding clothes, washing a wine glass, wanking you off while moaning about Scottish subsamples, anything around the house
'They are close to replacing humans in most physical jobs' which would be a global problem and make a universal basic income funded by a robot tax inevitable
Extrapolating population trends for China isn't an exact science. Post-WWII, the number of *global total deaths* did not surpass the record set in 1960 for almost 60 years, despite the world population more than doubling. It took COVID to finally break it... https://x.com/StatisticUrban/status/1879796208778240225
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
Have you read Project 2025?
"Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress" Note President first - Congress second - Constitution?
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
The solution was and is for the government to flood the market with cheap zero carbon electricity and then allow capitalism to do what it does best, use that energy for the best uses globally without even having to think about net zero. Instead we have the opposite.
Oil and gas is irrelevant for the most part if we have cheap and plentiful electricity. That is, and always will be, the solution.
You can have cheap and reliable electricity, or you can have zero carbon electricity. You can't, despite what the more deluded net zero fanatics pretend, have both. That is a main (but not the only) reason why our electricity prices are some of the highest in the world.
So oil and gas will still be relevant for decades if not ever, unless we want to commit economic suicide.
Utter rubbish. Solar is dirt cheap now and we can capitalise nuclear and tidal and wind against tax receipts without having to put pounds on every kwh of electricity. These huge capital projects are the kind of things the government should have been sinking billions into from both tax and borrowing over the last 20 years.
You build the infrastructure and then let business flourish. That is what China does.
"Research has shown that the United Kingdom spends more of its time in making partisan unfavourable comparisons between itself and other selectively chosen comparator countries than any other country in the EU"
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
The solution was and is for the government to flood the market with cheap zero carbon electricity and then allow capitalism to do what it does best, use that energy for the best uses globally without even having to think about net zero. Instead we have the opposite.
Oil and gas is irrelevant for the most part if we have cheap and plentiful electricity. That is, and always will be, the solution.
You can have cheap and reliable electricity, or you can have zero carbon electricity. You can't, despite what the more deluded net zero fanatics pretend, have both. That is a main (but not the only) reason why our electricity prices are some of the highest in the world.
So oil and gas will still be relevant for decades if not ever, unless we want to commit economic suicide.
Utter rubbish. Solar is dirt cheap now and we can capitalise nuclear and tidal and wind against tax receipts without having to put pounds on every kwh of electricity. These huge capital projects are the kind of things the government should have been sinking billions into from both tax and borrowing over the last 20 years.
You build the infrastructure and then let business flourish. That is what China does.
"Research has shown that the United Kingdom spends more of its time in making partisan unfavourable comparisons between itself and other selectively chosen comparator countries than any other country in the EU"
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
Only an hour to Tamworth which is actually to the north-east of B'ham.
What we should have built in my opinion is a MagLev along the route of the M40 motorway. Would have taken 25 mins to B'ham and 45 mins to M'chester.
He got the photo, but hardly the one he'd have wanted.
German Foreign Minister Baerbock left a government meeting, refusing a photo with Scholz after his decision to block the allocation of a new aid package to Ukraine, — Bild https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1880546218193064084
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
The political differences between what was Prussia and what were the western German little statelets go way back into history, however. Prussia has always leaned towards authoritarianism. As also in France, Spain, Italy and the UK, electoral geography rests at least partly on centuries of prior experience.
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
See also Liz Truss, anyone advised by #ClassicDom, and even back to New Labour, hence SpAds. We have had three decades of rule by politicians who thought Yes Minister was a documentary.
Any incoming UK government will have to do the same. The lesson of Sue Gray is horrific. And Rachel Reeves's husband is head of DEFRA. How could anyone trust him even if he wasn't married to the worst Chancellor since the Restoration ? I strongly suspect there are many who hold politically sensitive jobs who actually lied to be appointed. That is not trivial. There is a good case for recovering every penny they have been paid since they took up the job which it was effectively unlawful for them to hold.
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
Not the same thing given that Germany had only been united in 1871.
Not to mention that Austria would historically have been counted as part of Germany but was only part of the German state between 1938 and 1945.
Or for that matter those other parts of Europe which had also been part of the German state - Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Prussia etc.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
Only an hour to Tamworth which is actually to the north-east of B'ham.
What we should have built in my opinion is a MagLev along the route of the M40 motorway. Would have taken 25 mins to B'ham and 45 mins to M'chester.
One might argue that the Maglev tech wasn’t quite there when HS2 was proposed, but it was definitely the way forward and at least some research should have gone into the concept.
"Opinion Data Points Young people are hanging out less — it may be harming their mental health Could the decline of face-to-face interaction tie together several modern mysteries? John Burn-Murdoch"
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
Not the same thing given that Germany had only been united in 1871.
Not to mention that Austria would historically have been counted as part of Germany but was only part of the German state between 1938 and 1945.
Or for that matter those other parts of Europe which had also been part of the German state - Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Prussia etc.
It always seems curious that Italy and Germany are relatively recent countries. Italy was fragmented ever since Justinian's megalomania destroyed the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and Germany was never united despite Germanic people being a thing for thousands of years (until the late 19th century).
England/France are both much older, but you can argue about the date they started really existing in a modern sense.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
Best to aspire to what's realistic imo. Which is to perform at the upper end of Western European growth. It helps nobody to pretend a leap from the pack is possible if we just did (insert here a politically driven personal opinion of what government policies should be).
Our main problem isn't lack of total prosperity it's the grossly unequal way it's distributed. This is where government focus ought to be imo. Esp a Labour government.
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
Not the same thing given that Germany had only been united in 1871.
Not to mention that Austria would historically have been counted as part of Germany but was only part of the German state between 1938 and 1945.
Or for that matter those other parts of Europe which had also been part of the German state - Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Prussia etc.
It always seems curious that Italy and Germany are relatively recent countries. Italy was fragmented ever since Justinian's megalomania destroyed the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and Germany was never united despite Germanic people being a thing for thousands of years (until the late 19th century).
England/France are both much older, but you can argue about the date they started really existing in a modern sense.
The Romans wimping out of conquering the German barbarians is probably one of the most consequential decisions of global history.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
Best to aspire to what's realistic imo. Which is to perform at the upper end of Western European growth. It helps nobody to pretend a leap from the pack is possible if we just did (insert here a politically driven personal opinion of what government policies should be).
Our main problem isn't lack of total prosperity it's the grossly unequal way it's distributed. This is where government focus ought to be imo. Esp a Labour government.
How do you do that in a way that doesn't involve handouts, which we know doesn't solve anything in the long-term.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
Only an hour to Tamworth which is actually to the north-east of B'ham.
What we should have built in my opinion is a MagLev along the route of the M40 motorway. Would have taken 25 mins to B'ham and 45 mins to M'chester.
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
Not the same thing given that Germany had only been united in 1871.
Not to mention that Austria would historically have been counted as part of Germany but was only part of the German state between 1938 and 1945.
Or for that matter those other parts of Europe which had also been part of the German state - Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Prussia etc.
It always seems curious that Italy and Germany are relatively recent countries. Italy was fragmented ever since Justinian's megalomania destroyed the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and Germany was never united despite Germanic people being a thing for thousands of years (until the late 19th century).
England/France are both much older, but you can argue about the date they started really existing in a modern sense.
The Romans wimping out of conquering the German barbarians is probably one of the most consequential decisions of global history.
Mr. B2, they were on their way to expanding the empire. If Varus had been more competent or Tiberius hadn't had to take soldiers to the Balkans (I think there was an uprising) things could've been very different.
"Opinion Data Points Young people are hanging out less — it may be harming their mental health Could the decline of face-to-face interaction tie together several modern mysteries? John Burn-Murdoch"
"The most obvious culprit in terms of timing and age gradient is the proliferation of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media, which has kicked into overdrive with the era of short-form video. Of all the dozens of activities rated in the American time-use data, solitary hours spent gaming, scrolling social media and watching videos are rated as the least meaningful.
The fact that these ratings are given by the very teens and young adults spending hours glued to their devices underscores the tragedy at the heart of this story: the people suffering are on some level aware of what’s going wrong, but seem powerless to prevent it."
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
You’re just showing yourself up again, with such ignorance.
The UK has been selling itself as a historical theme park to Americans since well before we joined the EU, and once they emerged from poverty and dictatorship, Spain and Italy have successfully been doing the same. More lately the same countries have sold themselves to the growing number of Chinese, Korean and Indian tourists.
Yet the US and France remain the two places that receive the largest number of international tourism visits.
I have been thinking a bit in the last few hours about German reunification and its economic consequences. It had huge effects not only on Germany but also on the UK - the higher interest rates it needed in Germany caused the UK to have to leave the ERM in September 1992, for instance.
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
Mrs Thatcher thought reuniting the two Germanys would be a catastrophe. She would have been happy for East Germany to have joined the EC and let time be the leveller. She fell out with Helmut Kohl over it as I remember. I think she has been proven right.
She was wrong to oppose it - it was completely inevitable, and consistent with the UN principles the UK signed up to, especially self-determination, and what we were supposed to have been fighting the Cold War for. It antagonised the Germans pointlessly.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
After all, the thought experiment goes something like this.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
Not the same thing given that Germany had only been united in 1871.
Not to mention that Austria would historically have been counted as part of Germany but was only part of the German state between 1938 and 1945.
Or for that matter those other parts of Europe which had also been part of the German state - Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Prussia etc.
And if 'England' had precipitated a world war other countries might have considered it prudent to divide and rule us. A return of the Danelaw, perhaps.
That’s what happens when you let the Russians rule you for a few decades.
That's why being so pro-Putin surprises me so much about the AfD.
He who pays the piper I suppose.
The point is that German governments will break the "Schwarze Null" (no deficit) rule for bailing out banks, fighting COVID, and supporting Ukraine, but not to raise living standards in the East to those of the West.
OTOH, Germany has been more successful in closing the gap between east and west, than the UK has been in closing the gap between richer and poorer regions in the UK.
Or the UK has been remarkably bad at closing the gap in its English regions. I believe 30 years ago most of the top ten most deprived areas in the UK were in Scotland, now:
Top twenty most deprived regions in the UK
Tendring- around St Osyth and Seawick Blackpool- the Area near The Central Pier Blackpool- Around the Promenade by the North Pier Thanet- In Cliftonville West Blackpool- in the Region by the South Pier Tendring- in the Area by Clacton-On-The-Sea Blackpool- in the Region That Falls between Waterloo Road and St Chad’s Station Coventry- In the Area around Hillmorton Road In Henly Blackpool- In Woolman Road As Well As Clinton Avenue Waveney- In the Location of the South Pier in Lowestoft Blackpool-Around the Cookson Street Kingston upon Hull- near St John’s Grove North East Lincolnshire- In the Area That Is Around Oxford Street in Grimsby Burnley- The Area That Falls On Tay Street and Howard Street Burnley- The Region That Lies Between Belvedere Road and the Church Street Mansfield- In Sandy Lane Blackpool- In Carshalton Road As Well As Clevedon Road Blackburn with Darwen- The Region of Wensley Fold Great Yarmouth- By the Seafront
Of course the Anglobrits will insist this is down to the generosity and wisdom of successive UK governments, whose consistent qualities everyone can agree have been generosity and wisdom.
Mad idea. Turn Blackpool, Margate and Yarmouth into resorts to attract Spanish families on holiday seeking to escape the summer heat from global warming. Stuff them full of tapas restaurants and flamenco bars. No idea what to do with Burnley, sorry.
New Labour wanted to turn it into Vegas by building a super casino.
What it needs is a fast train to Manchester. 45mins instead of 1h20 would make a big difference long term. Expensive though, no doubt.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
1 hr 20 is Birmingham. Current London to Manc time is 2hrs 8 mins approx.
Only an hour to Tamworth which is actually to the north-east of B'ham.
What we should have built in my opinion is a MagLev along the route of the M40 motorway. Would have taken 25 mins to B'ham and 45 mins to M'chester.
One might argue that the Maglev tech wasn’t quite there when HS2 was proposed, but it was definitely the way forward and at least some research should have gone into the concept.
Research has gone into the Maglev concept for decades. Germany and Japan both developed different Maglev concepts, and China built one line on the German system's lines. Germany's abandoned their system after a fatal ('impossible') crash. China built a single line a couple of decades ago, and did not extend that line, let alone build another. Japan's progress towards Maglev as a mass transportation system is glacial.
You may want to ask why this has happened. It is not due to a lack of will, development, or finance.
Hyping Maglev is stupid. Not as stupid as hyping Hyperloop, but stupid nonetheless.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
Best to aspire to what's realistic imo. Which is to perform at the upper end of Western European growth. It helps nobody to pretend a leap from the pack is possible if we just did (insert here a politically driven personal opinion of what government policies should be).
Our main problem isn't lack of total prosperity it's the grossly unequal way it's distributed. This is where government focus ought to be imo. Esp a Labour government.
How do you do that in a way that doesn't involve handouts, which we know doesn't solve anything in the long-term.
Good question. If it were easy we'd have done it. High tax and spend is redistributive but the spend needs to be productive and the tax to be short of punitive. Then (this is central) a high quality egalitarian education system. And public ownership of utilities and core infrastructure. Insourcing of essential services. Big programme of housebuilding esp social housing for rent. General theme being a widening of access and opportunity with the dividends of success going back to all the people rather than being creamed off by just a few.
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
Nigel Farage tops a new YouGov poll of who voters think would be the best prime minister
Nigel Farage - 20 Keir Starmer - 19 Kemi Badenoch - 9 Ed Davey - 8 Don't know - 44
Not sure I'm familiar with this Mr (or Ms?) Don't Know.
Mr Don't-Know is the none-of-the-above candidate. He doesn't actually have any policies but he appeals equally to disgruntled voters who are aching for change and to those who decry it. His inspiration is the mid-19th century Know Nothing Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
It's something I intend to do, visit one of the death camps. I feel it's an obligation if that doesn't sound too precious.
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
It's something I intend to do, visit one of the death camps. I feel it's an obligation if that doesn't sound too precious.
I once heard the UUP leader, James Molyneaux, describe his experience as one of the first into Belsen. He said it gave him nightmares for years.
Trump administration to begin deportation of illegal immigrants on day one starting in Chicago
I thought Elon Musk lived in Texas?
1) ICE is deporting immigrants all the time. Every single day. Will there actually be a change? 2) Chicago is Sanctuary City. In American terms, this means that the city authorities don’t cooperate with ICE at an official level. So a local cop reporting an illegal to ICE will actually be disciplined for breaking the rules of his/her job. Stepping up deportations from Chicago will entail a big fight between Federal and local authorities. Grist to the MAGA mill.
The Overton window on deportation has really shifted in the US. According to a poll the other day, half support mass deportation of everyone illegal.
Even a few years ago that would have been about 10%
The Sanctuary City thing is a response to this.
Will there be tears about not being able to get staff to wash dishes in hotels and restaurants, a shortage of short order and fast food cooks, the lack of domestic cleaners, prices of legal gardeners going through the roof and crops not getting picked in time.
Am I outdated to think that many of the shitty jobs are done by illegal immigrants where their removal will directly affect them by removal/reduction of services and price increases as staffing costs shoot up through reduced supply. Or is there a surfeit of documented people willing to do grim jobs for peanuts?
Unknown on most of that. Staffing costs in the US have already gone through the roof. Driving inflation in food and other everyday items.
A common thing is that eating out used to be cheap in many parts of the US. Since COVID, the cost has rocketed. Which is the kind of inflation that really, really gets noticed.
Ironically, “AI” is coming for many of the shitty jobs.
Something to understand about the general immigration argument in the US. We discuss whether immigrants have suppressed wages in the U.K.
In the US, companies have bought in workers on H1B visas, and forced their American workers to train them up. With the explicit and announced plan of sending the immigrant workers back to India etc - fire the current workforce. Yes, that in-your-face.
Similar stuff happened with NAFTA and the Southern border.
Such practices have fuelled… well, you can fill in the rest.
Hang on, I don't understand your para 5. Bring in workers on H1B, train them,. send them home?
It's a complicated picture, but a large percentage of the lowest salaried H1B employees work for Indian outsourcing companies...
Ah, thanks ...
The problem is that the lowest paid Indian outsourcing workers are not very good. Because the good ones are all in permanent jobs in places like the US. Where they can make an order of magnitude more money.
So the employers tried bringing workers over to train. Hoping that quality and productivity would rub off in, some magical way.
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
It's something I intend to do, visit one of the death camps. I feel it's an obligation if that doesn't sound too precious.
I once heard the UUP leader, James Molyneaux, describe his experience as one of the first into Belsen. He said it gave him nightmares for years.
They're just less bad than they are for France, Germany and Italy.
It used to be that comparing the UK with Italy felt like cheating. Now comparing it with Germany feels like cheating. I suppose we're down to comparing ourselves with France now.
It has long been my rule of thumb that regardless of partisans on either side of any debate, we are doing roughly the same as France.
If we perform broadly in line with our European peers that's ok imo. I don't see any reason we should be an outlier either up or down.
It’s really not OK if the whole of Western Europe is in major relative decline compared to the rest of the world. Which it is. We are now in serious danger of being entirely deindustrialised, and becoming a quaint tourist destination for rich Asians and North Americans, The EU is partly responsible for this disaster, but Britain’s failure shows that individual countries can also put on a solo show of abject misgovernment
The combination of the drive to Net Zero, carbon trading, and Trump/Biden's reshoring is genuinely fucking up Europe and UK. As in *properly* breaking it.
Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.
Net Zero didn't force Germany to shutter nuclear power; or prevent us subsidising UK battery plants a decade back (when it was already obvious the market wasn't going to help in time).
And the US reshoring industry ought to be something Europe is doing, too.
Granted that would require very different policies than those that have prevailed.
I was watching a YouTube video about John Deere and Case furtively and then openly moving to Mexico, Italy and the Far East. Wide scale reshoring of manufacturing is going to be like taking the eggs from a baked cake and returning them to their shells. Continuing the analogy the work should have gone on before the eggs were broken .
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
We visited Bergen Belsen and Mauthousen many years ago and took our three children, and the experience lives with them to this day and actually my daughter [53] referred to them only last week
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
It's something I intend to do, visit one of the death camps. I feel it's an obligation if that doesn't sound too precious.
I once heard the UUP leader, James Molyneaux, describe his experience as one of the first into Belsen. He said it gave him nightmares for years.
Yes, I don't see how it couldn't.
My town Sedbergh is twinned with Zrece in Slovenia. Just about every time we take a group over we take them to Frankolovo. Very hard for the teenagers who go skiing, hard for me and I've been maybe four times. Very hard for any known politician. Starmer is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. Probably better to have gone without all the cameras. Another place related to Nazi atrocities the Museum of Deportations and the Resistance in the Citadelle in Besak, Besancon. I haven't been to any of the "big" holocaust sites but I don't think the lesser ones are any less moving. Oh and the market square in Grand Fougeres so like Allo, Allo. That makes it even worse.
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
See also Liz Truss, anyone advised by #ClassicDom, and even back to New Labour, hence SpAds. We have had three decades of rule by politicians who thought Yes Minister was a documentary.
Any incoming UK government will have to do the same. The lesson of Sue Gray is horrific. And Rachel Reeves's husband is head of DEFRA. How could anyone trust him even if he wasn't married to the worst Chancellor since the Restoration ? I strongly suspect there are many who hold politically sensitive jobs who actually lied to be appointed. That is not trivial. There is a good case for recovering every penny they have been paid since they took up the job which it was effectively unlawful for them to hold.
It is lords who are barred from voting, not civil servants.
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
It's something I intend to do, visit one of the death camps. I feel it's an obligation if that doesn't sound too precious.
Have you visited the kindertransport memorial at Liverpool Street station in London?
Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
See also Liz Truss, anyone advised by #ClassicDom, and even back to New Labour, hence SpAds. We have had three decades of rule by politicians who thought Yes Minister was a documentary.
Any incoming UK government will have to do the same. The lesson of Sue Gray is horrific. And Rachel Reeves's husband is head of DEFRA. How could anyone trust him even if he wasn't married to the worst Chancellor since the Restoration ? I strongly suspect there are many who hold politically sensitive jobs who actually lied to be appointed. That is not trivial. There is a good case for recovering every penny they have been paid since they took up the job which it was effectively unlawful for them to hold.
It is lords who are barred from voting, not civil servants.
My experience is local government more than national but the rationale is just the same. How could you trust a council officer if there was even a possibility he was attending monthly meetings for your political opponents. I stand by what I wrote Sue Gray's behaviour was horrific. For me the decision to employ her for the Labour Party was the first indicator that Keir Starmer wasn't up to the job.
Only the paranoid could see digital driving licences as a prototype ID card.
Oh, hold on. They will be accessed on a new government smartphone app and could be accepted as a form of ID when buying alcohol, voting, or boarding domestic flights. ... considering integrating other services into the app, such as tax payments and benefits claims.
Only the paranoid could see digital driving licences as a prototype ID card.
Oh, hold on. They will be accessed on a new government smartphone app and could be accepted as a form of ID when buying alcohol, voting, or boarding domestic flights. ... considering integrating other services into the app, such as tax payments and benefits claims.
What about non-drivers? Hmmm ... could be renamed "driving status docuiments" - free for non-drivers?
Only the paranoid could see digital driving licences as a prototype ID card.
Oh, hold on. They will be accessed on a new government smartphone app and could be accepted as a form of ID when buying alcohol, voting, or boarding domestic flights. ... considering integrating other services into the app, such as tax payments and benefits claims.
As long as having a non-digital card is still allowed, and people aren't pressured to get a digital one by — say — making it more expensive.
'Reverence was possibly not the uppermost thought in the mind of John, a young man eager to share his distinctive take on the proceedings.
“The thing about having late opening hours at such an esteemed exhibition as this is that you’re able to take small doses of mushrooms that really enhance Van Gogh,” he says. “That’s just not possible if you visit during the day.”
[...] About 150 years ago, when he was in his early 20s, Van Gogh, whose preferred poison was absinthe, used to frequent the National Gallery.'
Keir Starmer visiting Auschwitz appears to have triggered a lot of interesting people...
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
Having visited Bergen-Belsen near Hannover some time ago, I would urge people to visit and learn. There were a wider collection of victims transported there than contemporary history suggests. An example of what happens with untrammelled power.
It's something I intend to do, visit one of the death camps. I feel it's an obligation if that doesn't sound too precious.
I once heard the UUP leader, James Molyneaux, describe his experience as one of the first into Belsen. He said it gave him nightmares for years.
I've never visited a camp, and have no real desire to. I can all too easily believe what went on at them.
However: a little over a decade ago, I went to a talk by Eric 'Winkle' Brown at Cambridge University. He was an elderly man, and the talk was meant to be about aeronautics. Instead, about half of it was about his time in Germany, and when he helped liberate Bergen-Belsen. The talk has stuck with us ever since. I'd never listened IRL to someone who had been to the camps, and it was sombre, thought-provoking and chilling.
Comments
The argument that poor regions don't need investment is both selfish and wrong.
Similarly, some suggested a "Stoke" route for HS2, which could have revived Stoke on Trent.
Then Rishi stabbed us all in the front.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That's Modi or Erdogan playbook - apply a personal loyalty test to the professional civil service, replacing best advice with what the boss wants to hear.
Trump’s planning a flood of immigration executive orders on Day 1
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/17/trump-day-one-immigration-executive-actions-004480
But Merkel was for some reason held up to be the exemplar of good government.
In the end, there was very little to Merkel-worship. Just a vague sense that she was a nice person and — crucially — that conservatives disliked her.
She herself has learnt no lessons from that era. But her former admirers still might, with some guidance. So here goes.
Lesson one. Scientists aren’t “better”. The line on Merkel was that while Britain was run by glib humanities graduates, here was a physicist-chemist who brought empirical rigour to government. Well, it wasn’t the silver-tongued Oxonians who showed an almost theological aversion to nuclear power. Even if Merkel did have a thirst for detail, she also had the corollary: no larger picture, no sense of the connectedness of things. Whether a nation is run badly (Britain in recent years) or well (Britain in former times), generalists will tend to be in charge. The academic bent of the elite at the age of 18 can’t be a variable that explains much. Stop worrying about the PPE degree.
Lesson two. Just because a person lacks outward charisma doesn’t mean they have inner depths. (Call this the Gordon Brown Fallacy.) In all likelihood, there is even less to them than meets the eye. Merkel was said to embody a “post-heroic” style of leadership. A great strategic mind was said to smoulder away behind that quiet exterior and that coy rhombus of a hand gesture. Yeah, no. She was a sphinx without a secret. It is a type of person that recurs not just in history but in workplaces everywhere, forever having wisdom and high talent read into them.
The last lesson? It is the one with the least chance of being heeded, I’m afraid. Bad people can have good judgment, and vice versa. An issue should be approached on its own terms, not on the basis of who stands where on it. Donald Trump was right that European defence spending was, with honourable exceptions, disgraceful. He was right that German energy dependency would help “expansionist foreign powers”. And despite the constant suggestion in Merkel’s book, none of this is hindsight. It’s just sight.
For a sense of the tribal shallowness that can overcome smart people, remember that Brits who hated “austerity” swore by this fiscal hawk. Not only did the tension not bother them, I’m not sure it occurred to them in the first place. What mattered was that Merkel, in some ineffable way, seemed to be on the right team. From there, the rest could be backfilled. Her policies? Her track record of judgment? Such a bore.
Nothing captured Merkel Mania like the meme of her at a G7 summit, literally bearing down on Trump, who is seated with his arms folded. As soon as the photo was released, its message was unmistakable: the exasperated grown-up and the petulant child. No image since Dorian Gray’s portrait has aged worse.
https://www.ft.com/content/ee6ec516-22c0-48b1-9346-5268a38234ab
So the employers tried bringing workers over to train. Hoping that quality and productivity would rub off in, some magical way.
Look at these robots. Kinell. I don’t think many people realise how fast robotics has advanced in the last 2-3 years. They are close to replacing humans in most physical jobs - they can also now do fine motor tasks as well, peeling an apple, stacking a dishwasher, folding clothes, washing a wine glass, wanking you off while moaning about Scottish subsamples, anything around the house
https://youtu.be/CIkdq7Zf4Zw?si=wOwgSQmPkC-XdqJe
- Net Zero forces abandoning old plant and buying new, which is killing some industries
- Carbon trading forces transfer of wealth from Europe/UK to China
- US reshoring forces transfer of industry from Europe/UK to USA
There's a lot of ruin in a country but the UK seems determined to plumb the depths.1 catastrophic immigration policies that please no one
2 regulatory lunacy on “new technology” - thanks Thierry Breton (the UK might escape the worst of this)
3 everything else
Oil and gas is irrelevant for the most part if we have cheap and plentiful electricity. That is, and always will be, the solution.
So oil and gas will still be relevant for decades if not ever, unless we want to commit economic suicide.
If Trump's abandonment of net zero also boosts the US economy that will also push pressure for similar changes here (whatever the climate change impact) as will has mass deportation of immigrants be followed by the populist nationalist European right
And the US reshoring industry ought to be something Europe is doing, too.
Granted that would require very different policies than those that have prevailed.
You build the infrastructure and then let business flourish. That is what China does.
...The High Value Detainee Interrogation Group also reports to the NSC...
Kill authorizations
One of the tasks of the National Security Council is to determine and identify people, including United States citizens who are deemed to be threats to national security and add them to a "kill list"...
Post-WWII, the number of *global total deaths* did not surpass the record set in 1960 for almost 60 years, despite the world population more than doubling. It took COVID to finally break it...
https://x.com/StatisticUrban/status/1879796208778240225
"Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress" Note President first - Congress second - Constitution?
https://www.project2025.org/
Looking back, there's no doubt that it was done in about the worst way possible, one that guaranteed that the East would remain a welfare dependency of the West - Germany's own version of the North of England or southern Italy. Two terrible decisions in particular were key. One was to swap Ostmarks for Deutschmarks at (on average) 1.4:1 rather than a more market-driven, but politically unpopular rate of 2.5:1 or 3:1. That hugely increased the money supply in Germany as a whole, causing a short-lived boom, then higher interest rates, then a nationwide recession. In East Germany, it increased the price level, without increasing productivity, rendering the most of East German industry uncompetitive at a stroke.
The second blunder was to extend West Germany's already rather excessive welfare and economic regulation to the East, and giving special "solidarity" transfers on top. Like the South of England, or Scandanavia, West Germany can just about afford a huge welfare state and lots of regulation. East Germany certainly cannot. That was obviously supported by an unholy alliance of West German industry, which did not want to deal with cut-price competition from the East, and by welfare-dependents in the East, who wanted to live off West German unemployment and other benefits.
The inevitable results of these two policies, understandable politically but catastrophic economically, especially for the East, were to do quickly what deindustrialisation has done to the North of England over decades - impoverishment and dependency on handouts. And so you get the map that you have in the header.
Now, a generation down the line, there are clearly no easy answers. As so often in welfare-dependent, economically sclerotic Europe, the politically easy answers (yet more subsidies) will make things worse in the medium to long term, while the economically literate solutions (cutting taxes and benefits, deregulation) are politically hugely unpopular in the short term, which is how long most politicians think.
She was right about that many consequences would be adverse, but for the wrong reasons. She thought that an overly aggressive and assertive Germany would dominate Europe economically and eventually militarily. In fact, a self-absorbed and economically damaged Germany exported recession in the early 90s, unsustainable booms in the mid-2000s, especially to southern Europe, and now recession again.
I doubt she grasped the full economic consequences of German reunification for the money supply and inflation - if she had, she wouldn't have taken the UK into the ERM in October 1990. But, with hindsight, one can see that she should have got behind German reunification, which was inevitable, and tried to steer it towards a more Thatcherite direction. But there's only a limited amount a foreigner can do to influence German internal debates, so I doubt even the Iron Lady would have got very far.
What we should have built in my opinion is a MagLev along the route of the M40 motorway. Would have taken 25 mins to B'ham and 45 mins to M'chester.
German Foreign Minister Baerbock left a government meeting, refusing a photo with Scholz after his decision to block the allocation of a new aid package to Ukraine, — Bild
https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1880546218193064084
Instant classic.
Some alt-history dystopia leads to England being occupied and divided in two. Forty years later, how would we feel if we were told that reunification couldn't happen?
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1880582522033373564
Not to mention that Austria would historically have been counted as part of Germany but was only part of the German state between 1938 and 1945.
Or for that matter those other parts of Europe which had also been part of the German state - Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Prussia etc.
Young people are hanging out less — it may be harming their mental health
Could the decline of face-to-face interaction tie together several modern mysteries?
John Burn-Murdoch"
https://www.ft.com/content/23053544-fede-4c0d-8cda-174e9bdce348
https://archive.is/OAdqO#selection-1703.0-1729.17
England/France are both much older, but you can argue about the date they started really existing in a modern sense.
Our main problem isn't lack of total prosperity it's the grossly unequal way it's distributed. This is where government focus ought to be imo. Esp a Labour government.
"The most obvious culprit in terms of timing and age gradient is the proliferation of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media, which has kicked into overdrive with the era of short-form video. Of all the dozens of activities rated in the American time-use data, solitary hours spent gaming, scrolling social media and watching videos are rated as the least meaningful.
The fact that these ratings are given by the very teens and young adults spending hours glued to their devices underscores the tragedy at the heart of this story: the people suffering are on some level aware of what’s going wrong, but seem powerless to prevent it."
Nigel Farage tops a new YouGov poll of who voters think would be the best prime minister
Nigel Farage - 20
Keir Starmer - 19
Kemi Badenoch - 9
Ed Davey - 8
Don't know - 44
The UK has been selling itself as a historical theme park to Americans since well before we joined the EU, and once they emerged from poverty and dictatorship, Spain and Italy have successfully been doing the same. More lately the same countries have sold themselves to the growing number of Chinese, Korean and Indian tourists.
Yet the US and France remain the two places that receive the largest number of international tourism visits.
e.g. : "What sort of fuckin ghouls turn up for photoshoots at Auschwitz ?? Creepy creepy bastards"
You may want to ask why this has happened. It is not due to a lack of will, development, or finance.
Hyping Maglev is stupid. Not as stupid as hyping Hyperloop, but stupid nonetheless.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgkjjkjy4p8o
Only the paranoid could see digital driving licences as a prototype ID card.
Oh, hold on. They will be accessed on a new government smartphone app and could be accepted as a form of ID when buying alcohol, voting, or boarding domestic flights. ... considering integrating other services into the app, such as tax payments and benefits claims.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/17/meteorite-strike-video-canada
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/18/london-van-gogh-exhibition-all-nighter-national-gallery
'Reverence was possibly not the uppermost thought in the mind of John, a young man eager to share his distinctive take on the proceedings.
“The thing about having late opening hours at such an esteemed exhibition as this is that you’re able to take small doses of mushrooms that really enhance Van Gogh,” he says. “That’s just not possible if you visit during the day.”
[...] About 150 years ago, when he was in his early 20s, Van Gogh, whose preferred poison was absinthe, used to frequent the National Gallery.'
However: a little over a decade ago, I went to a talk by Eric 'Winkle' Brown at Cambridge University. He was an elderly man, and the talk was meant to be about aeronautics. Instead, about half of it was about his time in Germany, and when he helped liberate Bergen-Belsen. The talk has stuck with us ever since. I'd never listened IRL to someone who had been to the camps, and it was sombre, thought-provoking and chilling.