Categories
The long term economic plan – politicalbetting.com
The long term economic plan – politicalbetting.com
This explains why Labour are generally ahead of the Tories in the voting intention figures.
1
This explains why Labour are generally ahead of the Tories in the voting intention figures.
Comments
But I'm not sure that any economically literate plan is politically saleable. Too many voters have a stake in the current system, which is delivering stagnation. We may need a few more years of coasting lazily along before there is a mood for radical change.
As for being right, they seem on current polling to be heading very right, which will be even more wrong.
But the economically literate ones aren't politically saleable and vice versa. And politics has taken primacy over economics since we gave our politics to a bunch of economically illiterate professional politicians whose idol is Tony Blair, a man who was forever triangulating.
And, unsurprisingly, we end up with complacent stagnation.
Just how much shittier under Labour has been the surprise.
We're told that when Kemi Badenoch orders an English breakfast she makes sure she has a lot of butter. Not for the toast - as you might think - but to butter everything else on the plate.
Consumer confidence is on the floor.
I hope the optimistic messaging coming from govt translates to the wider economy and we can turn the corner.
https://www.farrer.co.uk/people/monopoly-hopkins/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna192030
There is so much wrong with this.
Adams offering a political deal for personal gain
Trump accepting it
The DOJ imposing it
The DA quitting is the only good part of the story
And then the DOJ open an investigation into her for refusing orders
When the fuck will America wake up
https://x.com/wallstengine/status/1890300077555773575?s=61
Battlelines are being redrawn. It’s Oligarchy vs Democracy now.
We need to rebuild our defence industry and work more closely with European allies.
Whilst she had a terrible thing happen I’m also sort of pleased that MI5 are ruthless and will do whatever necessary.
Edit: Ah I looked.
However,, I expect the usual trust question would reverse the order, myth over evidence.
We mustn't leap straight from the frying pan into the fire.
They're removing all the checks and balances. They are not draining the swamp; they're adding more water.
And bodies.
But the statement "Or the French and Germans who tried to screw us over when we exercised our democratic right embodied in its own constitution to leave their club? " is interesting. Surely you mean: "Who tried to look after their own interests, as we tried to look after our own interests?"
Or do you expect other countries to do exactly what we want?
Let’s see what Le Pen does in power. I don’t think she’ll be flocking to kiss Putler’s ring.
This is what his critics do not understand. They mistakenly think that he thinks that his tariffs will reduce America’s trade deficit on their own. He knows they will not. Their utility comes from their capacity to shock foreign central bankers into reducing domestic interest rates. Consequently, the euro, the yen and the renminbi will soften relative to the dollar. This will cancel out the price hikes of goods imported into the US, and leave the prices American consumers pay unaffected. The tariffed countries will be in effect paying for Trump’s tariffs.
Does this make any sense?
But tacit support for this kind of behaviour is a dangerous place to end up for a government, and why you need the press to dig into it.
Truss' tenure was the IEA doing real-world economics, they're crap at it. Their economic theories and modelling are heavily biased to reflect the political objectives of their funders
Shitter, crappier, less productive..
Are you now thinking we're still around about at GE 24 in reality?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c2k5e14vwx4o
-Delay but not cancellation of Net Zero
-Scrap Millitwit's GB Energy wheeze
-More North Sea oil and gas - not just new licenses but incentives for exploration
-Urgent action to maintain Grangemouth and virgin steel making capacity - break from previous Tory policy
-Government to take control of planning to greenlight key energy-producing projects currently on hold, with appropriate financial compensation for local residents
-SMRs to be ordered, to go in all decommissioned nuclear sites so that they can continue to produce power, with no need to plan and build new sites
-Urgent review of the spiralling cost of current nuclear energy projects
-Move away from intermittent power sources toward 'renewable but reliable' energy sources like tidal and energy from waste
-Something 'technical' like decoupling the electricity price from the gas price. The sell being 'only Kemi the engineer can manage this, Nigel isn't clever enough'.
I think the PCP would have to fall into line with this - Nigel has moved the window to the extent that the green crazies on the Tory benches can't really object as long as Kemi has agreed to preserve Net Zero.
It's obviously not as far as I'd go but hey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30ZQAyjCkUY
Look at the last 20 years of UK economic history and you see 3 major shocks, each of which left us reeling and suppressed growth afterwards. 3 notches down on the growth rate.
- the global financial crisis, which hit the FS heavy UK economy harder than most
- The Covid pandemic, which scythed through consumer spending for 2 years and coincided with our leaving the EU
- The Ukraine invasion and the surge in inflation, 1973-style, which choked off recovery.
So we’ve been bashed around by 3 brutal shocks, one of which also had a long term impact on public health and human wellbeing. The GDP chart suggests that even by doing nothing, we would return to half-decent growth simply by avoiding shocks for a few years.
The next telling stat is debt to gdp, and what this means for spending power.
Public debt to GDP has risen from a historically low 35% in 2007 to just under 100% now, the highest since the 60s, though not as high as the USA (123%) or France (111%).
But, look what’s happened to private debt in that time: it peaked at 248% in 2009. The average since the mid 90s is 209%. It is now only 161%. Of which household debt is 81% to GDP.
Britain’s households and businesses have stopped spending and upped saving. Selfish bastards. Just like the Japanese. So the government has had to take up the slack.
We used to worry about the feeble balance sheets of our consumers. No longer. There are plentiful assets out there and we just need to get everyone spending. Like the old days. Then the economy will grow, the VAT revenues will come pouring in and things will look much better.
Inducing a consumer and business boom is not “painful”, unless you’re a NIMBY. Instead of telling everyone that we must cut our cloth as a country and make difficult decisions, which just makes everyone even more depressed and stops them spending, we need them to go out there and hit the shops, and companies to up their budgets. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Bring back boom and bust!
I sort of wonder if either it is somebody that is actually known to the public or very close to somebody who is very well known to the public.
I'd expect Labour to get 32-34% in a real election, especially if up against a Reform-Tory combo which is why they need to both poll higher and get a deal struck.
I want our secret services to be ruthless, terrifying to our enemies, doing things in the name of king and country that test ethical boundaries.
But I don’t want to know about it.
The level of Trump analysis is very clear from his stated belief that VAT is the same thing as a tariff. (Which the BBS reported quite uncritically, in the feeble manner if pretty well all their US coverage.)
The man is an ignoramus.
Warwick All Saints and Woodloes (Warwick) council by-election result:
GRN: 34.9% (+22.1)
REF: 21.8% (+21.8)
LAB: 19.4% (-24.7)
CON: 18.6% (-15.7)
LDEM: 5.3% (-3.5)
+/- 2023
Great result for my party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minutes
This means that country B’s currency weakens relative to the US
This means that to earn 100 Thalers in profit a company from country B can lower its prices which offsets the impact of tariffs
What he forgets is that most companies tend not to adjust their prices in response to currency fluctuations but bank the gain. And I’m not sure about why tariffs would force a reduction in interest rates (risk of recession may be?)
The drone was coming from the Northeast (Russian/Belarusian territory).
https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1890301199402037513
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1890303302933401726
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1890298176038682905
I'm sure that's totally a-okay to 'Green' @bigjohnowls ...
Although of course SKS cos playing as Reform is going to backfire badly for you.
These audits include briefing the crews on plans. The takeaway stat for me was that Equinor - one company - are planning on drilling 120 wells in Norway this year. At the same time the Norwegian government has licensed 43 wildcat and exploration Wells to be drilled this year.
The UK will be lucky you reach double figures for wells drilled and there will be no exploration wells.
Our whole energy policy is fucked.
And therefore a shill for imperialism and fascism,.
Could Hegseth be the first (of many no doubt) Trump appointment to hit the fan?
Now there are too many imponderables. In five years time it is possible that the US govt is led by mainstream democrats or old school conservatives again (unlikely), whilst Afd and Le Pen are in power in Germany and France. How can we realistically commit to anything? And people can't commit to us either because Farage.
All we can do is drift along, tactically avoid whatever mess we can and keep our fingers crossed.
Only a cretin would believe Russia would do that what do they have to gain?
Environmentalist Green?
Trot Green?
Hamas Apologist Green?
Putin Apologist Green?
Too confusing.
1) Starmer is bad for dissing Jezza.
2) Starmer supports Zelensky and opposes Putin
3) therefore Zelensky is bad and Putin is good.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
You are asking for more war, not less. You are an appeaser. And whilst most appeasers in the late 1930s did so for good, moral - even if mistaken - reasons; others had more malign motives.
You are in that latter category.
The rowing back was only in respect of his speaking for Trump. The actual message wasn't the issue; it was rather that the flunky shouldn't get ideas above his station.
Unlike yourself and most PBers who supported Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and wants bloodshed at every conceivable opportunity.
Wars are generally totally pointless and cost a fortune when we claim to have no money and should be avoided in almost all circumstances.
You voted for this shit.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5144026-trump-ukraine-peace-talks/
...Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who occasionally bucks Trump’s positions and is strongly aligned with Kyiv, said she is concerned about Ukraine’s fate.
“This was an unprovoked, unjustified invasion. I appreciate that the president is trying to achieve peace, but we have to make sure that Ukraine does not get the short end of a deal,” she said. ..
It works much better than the 'excuse' of being anti-war.
The subtitles have him saying “I thought it had swallowed me” not “it had swallowed me”.
In any event a human couldn’t fit into a whale’s throat, so at worst he was just in the whale’s mouth for a few seconds
They had two major choices: capitulate or fight. Would you have had them capitulate, and would you have the Baltic states, Romania, Poland etc all capitulate to Russia as well? Because Putin wants real or de facto control over them as well.
Where is your red line? At what point would you say "Enough!" ?
There are two obvious anomalies from the norm: the Trussocalypse* and the post election one which was optimistic from the change of government (a lesser degree seen with the two from Sunaks government). Now we have reverted to mean.
So under 4 different governments we have had no real improvement in optimism. Maybe there is no magic solution?
* I wonder if the forthcoming Farage chaos can top Truss? His unfunded tax cuts and spending plans are far more ambitious.
For 'peace'.
The independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr called Donald Trump “a terrible human being”, the “worse [sic] president ever” and “barely human”.
“He is probably a sociopath,”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/05/robert-f-kennedy-trump
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign on Friday and endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump, has a long history of criticizing the man he now supports, including calling Trump a “threat to democracy,” and, as recently as July, a “terrible president.”
For years, Kennedy has repeatedly condemned Trump, referring to him as a “bully,” who appealed to “bigotry,” “hatred,” “xenophobia” and “prejudice.” Among the chief attacks Kennedy has leveled at Trump through the 2024 campaign is to accuse him of corruption for turning his administration over to corporate lobbyists and special interests and failing to “drain the swamp” as he’d promised.
“I think President Trump is purposefully and systematically encouraging tyrannical governments around the world.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/26/politics/kfile-rfk-jr-trump-endorsement/index.html
It seems bizarre that you would dispute Ukraine's right to defend herself, but support that of the Palestinians. Certainly, I'm struggling to understand how Ukraine provoked Russia, and forced her to start the war.
Be consistent: I totally get it if you want to support the Palestinians. But to do so while denying the Ukrainian right to resist invasion is just sickening.