Adam Boulton on Sky very grumpy that the threat level has gone down from 4 to 3
Do these journalists really want the economy to collapse, or is it more their hatred of Brexit and some perverse hope that the worse things get the better for their obession with the EU
Surely the day will come when every human failing isn't blamed on that person's (real or imagined) dislike of Brexit.
Trump is on the wrong side of Twitter again, this time for posting a fake CNN video and then denouncing fake news. The way he uses the word "fake" suggests more than a personality disorder.
Imagine what he might say if his Tulsa rally spreads SARS-Cov2 and kills people. "Fakes!" "Crisis actors!"
We seem to be eliminating various methods of (usual) spread.
Fleeting passing outdoors - Not particularly likely Sitting with your mates outdoors - Seems to be mainly OK Moving around indoors (Shopping) whilst trying to maintain a 2 metre distance - You'd be unlucky Mass gathering outdoors - Doesn't look to have taken R over 1.
Which really only leaves larger gatherings indoors. By elimination they pretty much MUST be superspreader events !
Hospitals no.1, I`d suggest
Difficult to eliminate hospitals though.
I don't know. Of course it depends where you start from. In my wife's hospital (in NRW), there has been only one known case of transmission within the hospital - a nurse who got it from a patient without symptoms who came in for something else. They were pretty well organised - made everyone in the hospital wear at least a surgical mask early on, started testing everyone coming into the hospital for any reason early on, separated the Covid cases, suspected Covid cases, and probably not Covid cases early on with separate entrances etc. Had enough PPE, regular testing of staff with no symptoms. It helps that the test results come back reasonable quickly - same day or next day.
Now they have zero Covid patients in the hospital - but very busy with the non-Covid patients again.
In the UK about 10% of swab confirmed Covid-19 infections are hospital acquired. That would be something like 30 000 infections.
If we are close to the point where nearly everyone working in a hospital has either had the virus or is immune from it, that must help contain the spread overall?
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
I have friends who are senior, high profile Labour economists (perhaps you are one of the latter, if not the former although maybe...).
They agree that Labour spent too much at a time of unprecedented receipts from eg the housing market, the City, and consumption taxes (because everyone was feeling rich because the value of their houses was going up). Lab introduced several measures around mortgages and inflation which exacerbated this.
There was a kernel of truth in the charge of non-roof fixing. And it was accepted by very bright Lab types although of course once the narrative had established itself, there was no way they could argue anything other than they hadn't overspent.
No I am a nobody, my only relationship to Labour is as an inactive member. I work in the private sector. I think with the benefit of hindsight Labour could have spent more sensibly, done more investment and less current spending especially. But they really did improve the quality of public services. Revenue consistently surprised to the upside over much of the period and there was a general failure to recognise that there was a bigger cyclical component to that than people realised. But this was an analytical failure more than a political one in my view. The financial sector was turning over huge amounts of tax revenue and the government started to think this was a permanent thing rather than indicative of an unsustainable boom. But exactly the same thing was happening in the US and other countries with similar financial systems. My point isn't that Labour are utterly blameless, simply that the state of the public finances in 2010 was primarily a function of what happened in 08-09 not what had happened before.
Your shtick is that you're a man of the world, bin wiv the laydees, fought it out mano a mano in the meanest streets of Basra, and are here to tell us about it. Fair enough, but if you attach all that value to lived experience, I have been hunting a couple of thousand times. You haven't.
I've never rimmed Elton John but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be into it.
That's not the question, the question is whether you should fetter Mr Furnish's right to do so. The answer is no.
The point is that I do not have to experience something personally to have an informed and settled view on it.
Adam Boulton on Sky very grumpy that the threat level has gone down from 4 to 3
Do these journalists really want the economy to collaps, or is it more their hatred of Brexit and some perverse hope that the worse things get the better for their obession with the EU
Fat Head is grumpy day in day out, it is a well known symptom of Brexit Derangement Syndrome.
You don't have to be vegan to think watching an animal being ripped to bits as the centrepiece of a social event is a prick's game.
There's no moral distinction between a pack of wolves hunting prey in the Yukon, and hounds doing the same with foxes in the English countryside too (as, indeed, do the foxes).
I think the objection revolves around the fact that humans enjoy it.
In general, I don't consider hunting with dogs to be cruel. One can use dogs to kill rabbits but not mink or foxes, which is pretty odd.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
Adam Boulton on Sky very grumpy that the threat level has gone down from 4 to 3
Do these journalists really want the economy to collaps, or is it more their hatred of Brexit and some perverse hope that the worse things get the better for their obession with the EU
Fat Head is grumpy day in day out, it is a well known symptom of Brexit Derangement Syndrome.
See Stark_Dawning comment to BigG.
In Boulton's case, it is absolutely true. Brexit has seriously effected his ability to report on anything in anything approaching a neutral way.
Trump is on the wrong side of Twitter again, this time for posting a fake CNN video and then denouncing fake news. The way he uses the word "fake" suggests more than a personality disorder.
Imagine what he might say if his Tulsa rally spreads SARS-Cov2 and kills people. "Fakes!" "Crisis actors!"
We seem to be eliminating various methods of (usual) spread.
Fleeting passing outdoors - Not particularly likely Sitting with your mates outdoors - Seems to be mainly OK Moving around indoors (Shopping) whilst trying to maintain a 2 metre distance - You'd be unlucky Mass gathering outdoors - Doesn't look to have taken R over 1.
Which really only leaves larger gatherings indoors. By elimination they pretty much MUST be superspreader events !
Hospitals no.1, I`d suggest
Difficult to eliminate hospitals though.
I don't know. Of course it depends where you start from. In my wife's hospital (in NRW), there has been only one known case of transmission within the hospital - a nurse who got it from a patient without symptoms who came in for something else. They were pretty well organised - made everyone in the hospital wear at least a surgical mask early on, started testing everyone coming into the hospital for any reason early on, separated the Covid cases, suspected Covid cases, and probably not Covid cases early on with separate entrances etc. Had enough PPE, regular testing of staff with no symptoms. It helps that the test results come back reasonable quickly - same day or next day.
Now they have zero Covid patients in the hospital - but very busy with the non-Covid patients again.
In the UK about 10% of swab confirmed Covid-19 infections are hospital acquired. That would be something like 30 000 infections.
If we are close to the point where nearly everyone working in a hospital has either had the virus or is immune from it, that must help contain the spread overall?
Your shtick is that you're a man of the world, bin wiv the laydees, fought it out mano a mano in the meanest streets of Basra, and are here to tell us about it. Fair enough, but if you attach all that value to lived experience, I have been hunting a couple of thousand times. You haven't.
I've never rimmed Elton John but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be into it.
That's not the question, the question is whether you should fetter Mr Furnish's right to do so. The answer is no.
The point is that I do not have to experience something personally to have an informed and settled view on it.
You don't have to be vegan to think watching an animal being ripped to bits as the centrepiece of a social event is a prick's game.
There's no moral distinction between a pack of wolves hunting prey in the Yukon, and hounds doing the same with foxes in the English countryside too (as, indeed, do the foxes).
I think the objection revolves around the fact that humans enjoy it.
In general, I don't consider hunting with dogs to be cruel. One can use dogs to kill rabbits but not mink or foxes, which is pretty odd.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
Johnson will probably bring it back for the exact same reason.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
I have friends who are senior, high profile Labour economists (perhaps you are one of the latter, if not the former although maybe...).
They agree that Labour spent too much at a time of unprecedented receipts from eg the housing market, the City, and consumption taxes (because everyone was feeling rich because the value of their houses was going up). Lab introduced several measures around mortgages and inflation which exacerbated this.
There was a kernel of truth in the charge of non-roof fixing. And it was accepted by very bright Lab types although of course once the narrative had established itself, there was no way they could argue anything other than they hadn't overspent.
No I am a nobody, my only relationship to Labour is as an inactive member. I work in the private sector. I think with the benefit of hindsight Labour could have spent more sensibly, done more investment and less current spending especially. But they really did improve the quality of public services. Revenue consistently surprised to the upside over much of the period and there was a general failure to recognise that there was a bigger cyclical component to that than people realised. But this was an analytical failure more than a political one in my view. The financial sector was turning over huge amounts of tax revenue and the government started to think this was a permanent thing rather than indicative of an unsustainable boom. But exactly the same thing was happening in the US and other countries with similar financial systems. My point isn't that Labour are utterly blameless, simply that the state of the public finances in 2010 was primarily a function of what happened in 08-09 not what had happened before.
The UK deficit as a percentage of GDP increased a comparable amount in the GFC as it did the previous recession.
The difference is that the baseline was a budget surplus in 1989 so the UK could afford a recession then. In 2007 the deficit was already irresponsibly 2.9% during the boom instead of a surplus going into the previous recession.
Had the UK been running a small surplus in 2007 then the deficit would have kicked in cyclically as it always does during recessions but would never have been 10% of GDP.
Do you think the right is about to split again? At a zenith in its power?
Unlikely. But I read the article as rumblings that there's a gap between what Professor Goodwin thought he was going to get from PM Johnson and what he's going to get. The clue lies in Boris's personality and history.
There are those who accuse Boris of being an instinctive liar. That's not totally fair. He's an incredible seductor. His key skill is the ability to size up his audience and tell them what they want to hear.
It's why he can attract the ladies. It's why he can bounce back from career disasters into new higher roles. It's why he can win elections.
So metropolitan liberals will have been told that Mayor of London Boris is the true Boris. One Nation Conservatives will have been told, with complete insincerity that the Department for International Development was completely safe. Professor Goodwin will have left meetings with a strong impression that Boris got the National Populist agenda and was going to deliver on it. Brexit will be somewhere on the scale of WTO to seamless co-operation, depending on the audience.
As a technique to get the lady, or the job, or the win, it's genius. It's a real talent. The trouble comes after that, when reality intrudes and you have to choose between having your cake and eating it.
And that's why he keeps losing the ladies, and the jobs, and virtually everyone who has had dealings with BoJo ends up regretting it. Whilst Boris as PM might be the exception, is there any reason to think it won't be?
Brilliant post.
I only agree up to a point.
Let's re-assess Boris's life next to this post. He will be married for a third time this year. In the last 33 years he will have spent a matter of weeks as an unmarried man. His last marriage lasted 27 years, despite his having had children by another woman during it, and numerous known affairs.
In his career, he was sacked for lying in the first weeks of his journalistic career and since then has had a steady relationship in various roles with a single newspaper group for over 30 years. He retained that relationship despite at one point promising to not go into politics, then to renege on it and did both at the same time.
In politics, his moves have been all within the party, he has had a constant political career for around 20 years.
To continue, much as Boris has been unfaithful in various aspects of his life, his CV is not of someone who cuts and runs after having been unfaithful. Rather he clings on and waits for the tide to turn.
I thing his ability to play one thing off against the other is seriously underestimated at the moment, I don't see someone likely to just walk away from being PM.
Sorry, editing problems, having to multipost here.
His way of being in life has led him to believe, possibly justifiable in cakeism. His quote on Trump - there'll be all sorts of chaos, all sorts of breakdowns - is a description of the MO his own chaotic life has made necessary.
He has three further long term relationships to deal with in his role as PM - party, public and EU, all of them hot/cold relationships that he has maintained for large portions of his adult life. How long before any of those bodies make a break with him. History suggests he is an able stringer, so probably a while.
A last point, on his health and the thought that he looks out of it.
Yes, he has been very ill, but I recall a point last year when he looked ragged and our of it, defeated and trapped in parliament, making shambolic appearances like the Wakefield police speech, no deal from the EU, and it was unclear where he could go.
I noted at the time that he looked to me to be classic adult ADHD, and thought a lack of personal structure in number 10 was affecting him badly. It sounds like Dom had the same thought at some stage - 2 page briefings, controlling how information got to him - such that the civil service, talking more metaphorically than I was, spoke of government by ADHD. The structure in number 10 has been disrupted again by COVID, and perhaps Boris's environment has become more chaotic again, baby, not firing on all cylinders, his staff focussed on the crisis and not much on looking after Boris!
There is an upside though. Boris will be accustomed to the chaos. Only just gettin through a day, only just getting away with it is his normal MO. Whereas a more neurotypical person would be tearing their hair out, he may barely notice that something is amiss. And his ability to just plod through the crisis as a pretty normal part of his life may confound those who are betting he is not long for this job.
Adam Boulton on Sky very grumpy that the threat level has gone down from 4 to 3
Do these journalists really want the economy to collapse, or is it more their hatred of Brexit and some perverse hope that the worse things get the better for their obession with the EU
Yes, certain sections of the media seem seriously upset at anything that comes across as good news for the government.
They need to take a long, hard look at themselves, but of course they won't. Clearly their bosses have thought that having Lobby hacks asking 'gotcha' questions of scientists is what the public want to hear during a global pandemic.
You don't have to be vegan to think watching an animal being ripped to bits as the centrepiece of a social event is a prick's game.
There's no moral distinction between a pack of wolves hunting prey in the Yukon, and hounds doing the same with foxes in the English countryside too (as, indeed, do the foxes).
I think the objection revolves around the fact that humans enjoy it.
In general, I don't consider hunting with dogs to be cruel. One can use dogs to kill rabbits but not mink or foxes, which is pretty odd.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
Johnson will probably bring it back for the exact same reason.
I doubt if he will, actually. The makeup of the Tories has changed so much it would be unlikely to pass.
Some people believe the lyrics of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot are about an enslaved person desiring freedom or death instead of slavery. Others argue it isn't, see Trev's interpretation.
And also "Cultural Appropriation"....a load of white poshos singing a black man's song about a black player.
Oh and @OnlyLivingBoy keeps referring to the UK running a similar deficit last year without noting of course that was from a very different starting point. The deficit worsened for years under Brown before the recession, the deficit improved for years under the Tories before the recession.
Labour pre-recession: UK cyclically adjusted primary deficit 2002: -0.50% UK cyclically adjusted primary deficit 2007: -3.54%
Tories pre-recession: UK cyclically adjusted primary deficit 2012: -3.87% UK cyclically adjusted primary deficit 2019: -0.63%
I support one of these and not the other for good reason!
You're 100% right. The booming 'noughties' should have been a time for saving money and paying down debts, not spending even more than your record earnings. The situation we find the public finances in at the moment, is a direct result of the 2002-2007 excess spending.
Some people believe the lyrics of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot are about an enslaved person desiring freedom or death instead of slavery. Others argue it isn't, see Trev's interpretation.
And also "Cultural Appropriation"....a load of white poshos singing a black man's song about a black player.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
Some people believe the lyrics of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot are about an enslaved person desiring freedom or death instead of slavery. Others argue it isn't, see Trev's interpretation.
And also "Cultural Appropriation"....a load of white poshos singing a black man's song about a black player.
That sounds like extremely small beer.
You watch it be banned now. I mean we can't have a black rice farmer on packets anymore....
And of course none of this shit does anything to combat actual racism. Is there any evidence of widespread racism at England Rugby games (hating the cheating French doesn't count)? And half the team are now BAME, so if you are a massive racist, going to have a bit of a hard time supporting them.
Your shtick is that you're a man of the world, bin wiv the laydees, fought it out mano a mano in the meanest streets of Basra, and are here to tell us about it. Fair enough, but if you attach all that value to lived experience, I have been hunting a couple of thousand times. You haven't.
I've never rimmed Elton John but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be into it.
That's not the question, the question is whether you should fetter Mr Furnish's right to do so. The answer is no.
The point is that I do not have to experience something personally to have an informed and settled view on it.
Your shtick is that you're a man of the world, bin wiv the laydees, fought it out mano a mano in the meanest streets of Basra, and are here to tell us about it. Fair enough, but if you attach all that value to lived experience, I have been hunting a couple of thousand times. You haven't.
I've never rimmed Elton John but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be into it.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
The direction of travel is much more important than a single annual snapshot taken out of context.
But apart from that, I agree, the government should have cut spending by much more than they did in the period 2010-2019, so as to be better set up for the next recession. The bonfire of the quangos and reform of the standing bureaucracy never really happened, and now we have a PM and his able assistant Dominic determined to see these long-overdue reforms through.
Trump is on the wrong side of Twitter again, this time for posting a fake CNN video and then denouncing fake news. The way he uses the word "fake" suggests more than a personality disorder.
Imagine what he might say if his Tulsa rally spreads SARS-Cov2 and kills people. "Fakes!" "Crisis actors!"
We seem to be eliminating various methods of (usual) spread.
Fleeting passing outdoors - Not particularly likely Sitting with your mates outdoors - Seems to be mainly OK Moving around indoors (Shopping) whilst trying to maintain a 2 metre distance - You'd be unlucky Mass gathering outdoors - Doesn't look to have taken R over 1.
Which really only leaves larger gatherings indoors. By elimination they pretty much MUST be superspreader events !
Hospitals no.1, I`d suggest
Difficult to eliminate hospitals though.
I don't know. Of course it depends where you start from. In my wife's hospital (in NRW), there has been only one known case of transmission within the hospital - a nurse who got it from a patient without symptoms who came in for something else. They were pretty well organised - made everyone in the hospital wear at least a surgical mask early on, started testing everyone coming into the hospital for any reason early on, separated the Covid cases, suspected Covid cases, and probably not Covid cases early on with separate entrances etc. Had enough PPE, regular testing of staff with no symptoms. It helps that the test results come back reasonable quickly - same day or next day.
Now they have zero Covid patients in the hospital - but very busy with the non-Covid patients again.
In the UK about 10% of swab confirmed Covid-19 infections are hospital acquired. That would be something like 30 000 infections.
If we are close to the point where nearly everyone working in a hospital has either had the virus or is immune from it, that must help contain the spread overall?
Only 10% in my hospital have tested antibody positive. I think most transmission is patient to patient.
On the other hand our PPE policy seems to be working.
Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208 ...Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued. A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance. Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless. Berlin's child welfare offices and the governing Senate turned a blind eye or even approved of the placements. Several years ago two of the victims came forward and told their story, since then the researchers at Hildesheim University have plowed through files and conducted interviews. What they found was a "network across educational institutions," the state youth welfare office and the Berlin Senate, in which pedophilia was "accepted, supported, defended." Kentler himself was in regular contact with the children and their foster fathers. He was never prosecuted: By the time his victims came forward, the statute of limitations for his actions had expired. This has also thus far prevented the victims from getting any compensation....
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
I have friends who are senior, high profile Labour economists (perhaps you are one of the latter, if not the former although maybe...).
They agree that Labour spent too much at a time of unprecedented receipts from eg the housing market, the City, and consumption taxes (because everyone was feeling rich because the value of their houses was going up). Lab introduced several measures around mortgages and inflation which exacerbated this.
There was a kernel of truth in the charge of non-roof fixing. And it was accepted by very bright Lab types although of course once the narrative had established itself, there was no way they could argue anything other than they hadn't overspent.
No I am a nobody, my only relationship to Labour is as an inactive member. I work in the private sector. I think with the benefit of hindsight Labour could have spent more sensibly, done more investment and less current spending especially. But they really did improve the quality of public services. Revenue consistently surprised to the upside over much of the period and there was a general failure to recognise that there was a bigger cyclical component to that than people realised. But this was an analytical failure more than a political one in my view. The financial sector was turning over huge amounts of tax revenue and the government started to think this was a permanent thing rather than indicative of an unsustainable boom. But exactly the same thing was happening in the US and other countries with similar financial systems. My point isn't that Labour are utterly blameless, simply that the state of the public finances in 2010 was primarily a function of what happened in 08-09 not what had happened before.
The UK deficit as a percentage of GDP increased a comparable amount in the GFC as it did the previous recession.
The difference is that the baseline was a budget surplus in 1989 so the UK could afford a recession then. In 2007 the deficit was already irresponsibly 2.9% during the boom instead of a surplus going into the previous recession.
Had the UK been running a small surplus in 2007 then the deficit would have kicked in cyclically as it always does during recessions but would never have been 10% of GDP.
We had a fiscal surplus in 1989 because the economy was in an unsustainable inflationary boom created by Nigel Lawson's mismanagement of the economy, whereas the global financial crisis was a global shock that hit the UK economy when it was growing more or less at trend.
Do you think the right is about to split again? At a zenith in its power?
Unlikely. But I read the article as rumblings that there's a gap between what Professor Goodwin thought he was going to get from PM Johnson and what he's going to get. The clue lies in Boris's personality and history.
There are those who accuse Boris of being an instinctive liar. That's not totally fair. He's an incredible seductor. His key skill is the ability to size up his audience and tell them what they want to hear.
It's why he can attract the ladies. It's why he can bounce back from career disasters into new higher roles. It's why he can win elections.
So metropolitan liberals will have been told that Mayor of London Boris is the true Boris. One Nation Conservatives will have been told, with complete insincerity that the Department for International Development was completely safe. Professor Goodwin will have left meetings with a strong impression that Boris got the National Populist agenda and was going to deliver on it. Brexit will be somewhere on the scale of WTO to seamless co-operation, depending on the audience.
As a technique to get the lady, or the job, or the win, it's genius. It's a real talent. The trouble comes after that, when reality intrudes and you have to choose between having your cake and eating it.
And that's why he keeps losing the ladies, and the jobs, and virtually everyone who has had dealings with BoJo ends up regretting it. Whilst Boris as PM might be the exception, is there any reason to think it won't be?
Brilliant post.
I only agree up to a point.
Let's re-assess Boris's life next to this post. He will be married for a third time this year. In the last 33 years he will have spent a matter of weeks as an unmarried man. His last marriage lasted 27 years, despite his having had children by another woman during it, and numerous known affairs.
In his career, he was sacked for lying in the first weeks of his journalistic career and since then has had a steady relationship in various roles with a single newspaper group for over 30 years. He retained that relationship despite at one point promising to not go into politics, then to renege on it and did both at the same time.
In politics, his moves have been all within the party, he has had a constant political career for around 20 years.
To continue, much as Boris has been unfaithful in various aspects of his life, his CV is not of someone who cuts and runs after having been unfaithful. Rather he clings on and waits for the tide to turn.
I thing his ability to play one thing off against the other is seriously underestimated at the moment, I don't see someone likely to just walk away from being PM.
Sorry, editing problems, having to multipost here.
His way of being in life has led him to believe, possibly justifiable in cakeism. His quote on Trump - there'll be all sorts of chaos, all sorts of breakdowns - is a description of the MO his own chaotic life has made necessary.
He has three further long term relationships to deal with in his role as PM - party, public and EU, all of them hot/cold relationships that he has maintained for large portions of his adult life. How long before any of those bodies make a break with him. History suggests he is an able stringer, so probably a while.
A last point, on his health and the thought that he looks out of it.
Yes, he has been very ill, but I recall a point last year when he looked ragged and our of it, defeated and trapped in parliament, making shambolic appearances like the Wakefield police speech, no deal from the EU, and it was unclear where he could go.
I noted at the time that he looked to me to be classic adult ADHD, and thought a lack of personal structure in number 10 was affecting him badly. It sounds like Dom had the same thought at some stage - 2 page briefings, controlling how information got to him - such that the civil service, talking more metaphorically than I was, spoke of government by ADHD. The structure in number 10 has been disrupted again by COVID, and perhaps Boris's environment has become more chaotic again, baby, not firing on all cylinders, his staff focussed on the crisis and not much on looking after Boris!
There is an upside though. Boris will be accustomed to the chaos. Only just gettin through a day, only just getting away with it is his normal MO. Whereas a more neurotypical person would be tearing their hair out, he may barely notice that something is amiss. And his ability to just plod through the crisis as a pretty normal part of his life may confound those who are betting he is not long for this job.
All very good points. It's easy to underestimate how far sheer chutzpah can get you and for how long, and I'm sure I'm prone to this.
You don't have to be vegan to think watching an animal being ripped to bits as the centrepiece of a social event is a prick's game.
There's no moral distinction between a pack of wolves hunting prey in the Yukon, and hounds doing the same with foxes in the English countryside too (as, indeed, do the foxes).
I think the objection revolves around the fact that humans enjoy it.
In general, I don't consider hunting with dogs to be cruel. One can use dogs to kill rabbits but not mink or foxes, which is pretty odd.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
Johnson will probably bring it back for the exact same reason.
Isn't Carrie a bunny lover? She could well become a bunny boiler, if Boris repeals the 2004 Hunting Act.
I don't know. Of course it depends where you start from. In my wife's hospital (in NRW), there has been only one known case of transmission within the hospital - a nurse who got it from a patient without symptoms who came in for something else. They were pretty well organised - made everyone in the hospital wear at least a surgical mask early on, started testing everyone coming into the hospital for any reason early on, separated the Covid cases, suspected Covid cases, and probably not Covid cases early on with separate entrances etc. Had enough PPE, regular testing of staff with no symptoms. It helps that the test results come back reasonable quickly - same day or next day.
Now they have zero Covid patients in the hospital - but very busy with the non-Covid patients again.
In the UK about 10% of swab confirmed Covid-19 infections are hospital acquired. That would be something like 30 000 infections.
If we are close to the point where nearly everyone working in a hospital has either had the virus or is immune from it, that must help contain the spread overall?
Only 10% in my hospital have tested antibody positive. I think most transmission is patient to patient.
On the other hand our PPE policy seems to be working.
Good luck, hopefully we're now close to the point where the heath services understand the virus enough to stop it spreading in hospitals!
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
You're still conflating debt and deficit.
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
Trump is on the wrong side of Twitter again, this time for posting a fake CNN video and then denouncing fake news. The way he uses the word "fake" suggests more than a personality disorder.
Imagine what he might say if his Tulsa rally spreads SARS-Cov2 and kills people. "Fakes!" "Crisis actors!"
We seem to be eliminating various methods of (usual) spread.
Fleeting passing outdoors - Not particularly likely Sitting with your mates outdoors - Seems to be mainly OK Moving around indoors (Shopping) whilst trying to maintain a 2 metre distance - You'd be unlucky Mass gathering outdoors - Doesn't look to have taken R over 1.
Which really only leaves larger gatherings indoors. By elimination they pretty much MUST be superspreader events !
Hospitals no.1, I`d suggest
Difficult to eliminate hospitals though.
Not if Coronavirus patients use different hospitals, staffed by immune medical staff.
Adam Boulton on Sky very grumpy that the threat level has gone down from 4 to 3
Do these journalists really want the economy to collapse, or is it more their hatred of Brexit and some perverse hope that the worse things get the better for their obession with the EU
Yes, certain sections of the media seem seriously upset at anything that comes across as good news for the government.
They need to take a long, hard look at themselves, but of course they won't. Clearly their bosses have thought that having Lobby hacks asking 'gotcha' questions of scientists is what the public want to hear during a global pandemic.
I agree. Clearly there are many in the press, media and the commentariat who are relishing the current plight the country is in and have little interest in things getting better or good news for the govt.
The govt itself has played it very poorly allowing themselves to take the flak for many things that were not down to them or not down to them solely. Care home PPE !!!!
Your shtick is that you're a man of the world, bin wiv the laydees, fought it out mano a mano in the meanest streets of Basra, and are here to tell us about it. Fair enough, but if you attach all that value to lived experience, I have been hunting a couple of thousand times. You haven't.
I've never rimmed Elton John but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be into it.
I've heard its not what it's cracked up to be. A bit shit really.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
People should use their best judgement, except when it conflicts with Phillip's.
Trump is on the wrong side of Twitter again, this time for posting a fake CNN video and then denouncing fake news. The way he uses the word "fake" suggests more than a personality disorder.
Imagine what he might say if his Tulsa rally spreads SARS-Cov2 and kills people. "Fakes!" "Crisis actors!"
We seem to be eliminating various methods of (usual) spread.
Fleeting passing outdoors - Not particularly likely Sitting with your mates outdoors - Seems to be mainly OK Moving around indoors (Shopping) whilst trying to maintain a 2 metre distance - You'd be unlucky Mass gathering outdoors - Doesn't look to have taken R over 1.
Which really only leaves larger gatherings indoors. By elimination they pretty much MUST be superspreader events !
Hospitals no.1, I`d suggest
Difficult to eliminate hospitals though.
Not if Coronavirus patients use different hospitals, staffed by immune medical staff.
It needs to be done the other way around, have non-coronavirus hospitals, with everyone tested every few days.
Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208 ...Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued. A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance. Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless. Berlin's child welfare offices and the governing Senate turned a blind eye or even approved of the placements. Several years ago two of the victims came forward and told their story, since then the researchers at Hildesheim University have plowed through files and conducted interviews. What they found was a "network across educational institutions," the state youth welfare office and the Berlin Senate, in which pedophilia was "accepted, supported, defended." Kentler himself was in regular contact with the children and their foster fathers. He was never prosecuted: By the time his victims came forward, the statute of limitations for his actions had expired. This has also thus far prevented the victims from getting any compensation....
Some people believe the lyrics of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot are about an enslaved person desiring freedom or death instead of slavery. Others argue it isn't, see Trev's interpretation.
And also "Cultural Appropriation"....a load of white poshos singing a black man's song about a black player.
It used to be sung in the back of the coach on the way home accompanied by obscene hand-gestures. As, indeed, was Cwm Rhondda. Not an experience I wish to repeat (or even remember) but it made one look impressively well-rounded on the UCCA form.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
People should use their best judgement, except when it conflicts with Phillip's.
Not at all, if your best judgement contradicts with mine you should follow your best judgement.
I don't want to be responsible for you! I'm responsible for me and my family and that's enough thank you very much.
Some people believe the lyrics of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot are about an enslaved person desiring freedom or death instead of slavery. Others argue it isn't, see Trev's interpretation.
And also "Cultural Appropriation"....a load of white poshos singing a black man's song about a black player.
That sounds like extremely small beer.
You watch it be banned now. I mean we can't have a black rice farmer on packets anymore....
And of course none of this shit does anything to combat actual racism. Is there any evidence of widespread racism at England Rugby games (hating the cheating French doesn't count)? And half the team are now BAME, so if you are a massive racist, going to have a bit of a hard time supporting them.
Unfortunately, the experience with football is that the racist supporters remain racist even if their team has several minority players. They kind of make up a "he's OK 'cos he's one of ours" category in their minds.
As for Sweet Low, Sweet Chariot, it is a great song and is a black protest song. By it being popular more people learn about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway. To sing it is not being racist.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
People should use their best judgement, except when it conflicts with Phillip's.
Not at all, if your best judgement contradicts with mine you should follow your best judgement.
I don't want to be responsible for you! I'm responsible for me and my family and that's enough thank you very much.
Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208 ...Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued. A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance. Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless. Berlin's child welfare offices and the governing Senate turned a blind eye or even approved of the placements. Several years ago two of the victims came forward and told their story, since then the researchers at Hildesheim University have plowed through files and conducted interviews. What they found was a "network across educational institutions," the state youth welfare office and the Berlin Senate, in which pedophilia was "accepted, supported, defended." Kentler himself was in regular contact with the children and their foster fathers. He was never prosecuted: By the time his victims came forward, the statute of limitations for his actions had expired. This has also thus far prevented the victims from getting any compensation....
Adam Boulton on Sky very grumpy that the threat level has gone down from 4 to 3
Do these journalists really want the economy to collapse, or is it more their hatred of Brexit and some perverse hope that the worse things get the better for their obession with the EU
Surely the day will come when every human failing isn't blamed on that person's (real or imagined) dislike of Brexit.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
People should use their best judgement, except when it conflicts with Phillip's.
Not at all, if your best judgement contradicts with mine you should follow your best judgement.
I don't want to be responsible for you! I'm responsible for me and my family and that's enough thank you very much.
But hunting should be outlawed?
That's my opinion in the same way I think other animal torture should be.
If you believe otherwise feel free to vote otherwise.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Do you think the right is about to split again? At a zenith in its power?
Unlikely. But I read the article as rumblings that there's a gap between what Professor Goodwin thought he was going to get from PM Johnson and what he's going to get. The clue lies in Boris's personality and history.
There are those who accuse Boris of being an instinctive liar. That's not totally fair. He's an incredible seductor. His key skill is the ability to size up his audience and tell them what they want to hear.
It's why he can attract the ladies. It's why he can bounce back from career disasters into new higher roles. It's why he can win elections.
So metropolitan liberals will have been told that Mayor of London Boris is the true Boris. One Nation Conservatives will have been told, with complete insincerity that the Department for International Development was completely safe. Professor Goodwin will have left meetings with a strong impression that Boris got the National Populist agenda and was going to deliver on it. Brexit will be somewhere on the scale of WTO to seamless co-operation, depending on the audience.
As a technique to get the lady, or the job, or the win, it's genius. It's a real talent. The trouble comes after that, when reality intrudes and you have to choose between having your cake and eating it.
And that's why he keeps losing the ladies, and the jobs, and virtually everyone who has had dealings with BoJo ends up regretting it. Whilst Boris as PM might be the exception, is there any reason to think it won't be?
Brilliant post.
I only agree up to a point.
Let's re-assess Boris's life next to this post. He will be married for a third time this year. In the last 33 years he will have spent a matter of weeks as an unmarried man. His last marriage lasted 27 years, despite his having had children by another woman during it, and numerous known affairs.
In his career, he was sacked for lying in the first weeks of his journalistic career and since then has had a steady relationship in various roles with a single newspaper group for over 30 years. He retained that relationship despite at one point promising to not go into politics, then to renege on it and did both at the same time.
In politics, his moves have been all within the party, he has had a constant political career for around 20 years.
To continue, much as Boris has been unfaithful in various aspects of his life, his CV is not of someone who cuts and runs after having been unfaithful. Rather he clings on and waits for the tide to turn.
I thing his ability to play one thing off against the other is seriously underestimated at the moment, I don't see someone likely to just walk away from being PM.
Sorry, editing problems, having to multipost here.
His way of being in life has led him to believe, possibly justifiable in cakeism. His quote on Trump - there'll be all sorts of chaos, all sorts of breakdowns - is a description of the MO his own chaotic life has made necessary.
He has three further long term relationships to deal with in his role as PM - party, public and EU, all of them hot/cold relationships that he has maintained for large portions of his adult life. How long before any of those bodies make a break with him. History suggests he is an able stringer, so probably a while.
A last point, on his health and the thought that he looks out of it.
Yes, he has been very ill, but I recall a point last year when he looked ragged and our of it, defeated and trapped in parliament, making shambolic appearances like the Wakefield police speech, no deal from the EU, and it was unclear where he could go.
I noted at the time that he looked to me to be classic adult ADHD, and thought a lack of personal structure in number 10 was affecting him badly. It sounds like Dom had the same thought at some stage - 2 page briefings, controlling how information got to him - such that the civil service, talking more metaphorically than I was, spoke of government by ADHD. The structure in number 10 has been disrupted again by COVID, and perhaps Boris's environment has become more chaotic again, baby, not firing on all cylinders, his staff focussed on the crisis and not much on looking after Boris!
There is an upside though. Boris will be accustomed to the chaos. Only just gettin through a day, only just getting away with it is his normal MO. Whereas a more neurotypical person would be tearing their hair out, he may barely notice that something is amiss. And his ability to just plod through the crisis as a pretty normal part of his life may confound those who are betting he is not long for this job.
All very good points. It's easy to underestimate how far sheer chutzpah can get you and for how long, and I'm sure I'm prone to this.
I'm kicking myself now.
This flowed pretty readily because I had a couple of paragraphs written and a lot of the argument straight in my head for a thread header. The word chutzpah was certainly on my mind and would have worked its way in in drafting.
But, work contract to check, end version to perfect, maybe wouldn't have happened at all, so piggybacking on your contribution was too good an opportunity to miss.
To be honest I cannot understand why the US has nobody worthy of the office of President
In other news
Drakeford has bowed to pressure and from the 6th July is abandoning the 5 mile driving restriction and opening the holiday and leisure industry
Best news of the day for us in North Wales
Rochdale Pioneer can come here to Wales for his holidays and he will be very welcome
Only if he stays within 5 miles of Offa's Dyke!
5 mile rule goes and not before time, so you can travel throughout Wales
According to the BBC it's 'could be lifted in two weeks'.
Drakeford has had no choice but to lift it and to open the holiday industry in Wales from mid july. The anger and dismay from organisations and individuals reported daily across the Welsh media came to a head yesteday with a meeting with him, hence today's announcement
Also all the UK has now moved from 4 to 3 so no excuse, and no doubt Nicola will follow if only to give Scotland a chance to mitigate the damage to their industry and economy over the essential summer holiday season
Johnson hasn't opened up the English leisure and holiday industry any faster. In fact I don't think that we even have the confirmed opening daters that Wales now has.
There is something strange when comparing the 2010 and 2015 graphs. In 2015 the tories are slightly down and labour very slightly up. Neither seem to have benefitted from the collapse in LD votes in 2015.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
That seems to me to be exactly what I said. He kept you busy with it for years until finally he decided to throw you a bone to distract you.
To be honest I cannot understand why the US has nobody worthy of the office of President
In other news
Drakeford has bowed to pressure and from the 6th July is abandoning the 5 mile driving restriction and opening the holiday and leisure industry
Best news of the day for us in North Wales
Rochdale Pioneer can come here to Wales for his holidays and he will be very welcome
Only if he stays within 5 miles of Offa's Dyke!
5 mile rule goes and not before time, so you can travel throughout Wales
According to the BBC it's 'could be lifted in two weeks'.
Drakeford has had no choice but to lift it and to open the holiday industry in Wales from mid july. The anger and dismay from organisations and individuals reported daily across the Welsh media came to a head yesteday with a meeting with him, hence today's announcement
Also all the UK has now moved from 4 to 3 so no excuse, and no doubt Nicola will follow if only to give Scotland a chance to mitigate the damage to their industry and economy over the essential summer holiday season
Johnson hasn't opened up the English leisure and holiday industry any faster. In fact I don't think that we even have the confirmed opening daters that Wales now has.
My family and I have spent most of the morning celebrating via email that it looks like our holiday in Meirionnydd is on!
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
You're still conflating debt and deficit.
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
But the deficit wasn't increasing. In 2007 it was at the same level as 2002. If you think the level of debt was ok then by definition the deficit was ok since the debt is the accumulated deficits. If the government had kept running surpluses like it did in 2001 I think you'd have had a debt to GDP ratio somewhere in the teens, which would have been interesting from a gilt market POV.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
People should use their best judgement, except when it conflicts with Phillip's.
Not at all, if your best judgement contradicts with mine you should follow your best judgement.
I don't want to be responsible for you! I'm responsible for me and my family and that's enough thank you very much.
But hunting should be outlawed?
That's my opinion in the same way I think other animal torture should be.
If you believe otherwise feel free to vote otherwise.
There is a difference between the standard of treatment that is applied to animals we breed for our own purposes (pets, livestock) and wild animals. Some reasons for this are: -Our own animals are purely there at our behest, so it is our responsibility to ensure they live and die well. -Our own animals have no chance to escape their fate, animals being hunted do -The end for any wild animal would not be considered humane by our standards. They will die of disease, starvation, or being attacked by another animal. So being killed by human intervention is not necessarily a downgrade -In most (all?) cases, the wild animal is being hunted for food, or because it is a pest.
These reasons are not a justification for hunting, per se, but they are a clear reason for different classifications of animal receiving different treatment.
There is something strange when comparing the 2010 and 2015 graphs. In 2015 the tories are slightly down and labour very slightly up. Neither seem to have benefitted from the collapse in LD votes in 2015.
The Labour vote in 2015 is up amongst all voters under 65 on 2010 on that chart ie from the LDs, the Tories vote largely unchanged on 2010 (they won some from the LDs but lost some to UKIP too)
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
You're still conflating debt and deficit.
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
But the deficit wasn't increasing. In 2007 it was at the same level as 2002. If you think the level of debt was ok then by definition the deficit was ok since the debt is the accumulated deficits. If the government had kept running surpluses like it did in 2001 I think you'd have had a debt to GDP ratio somewhere in the teens, which would have been interesting from a gilt market POV.
No by definition it doesn't mean that since the two are different things.
The government could and should have ran a small surplus, say ~0.1 to 0.5% of GDP from 2001 to 2007. Had they done so the UK would have been very well prepared when the next inevitable recession came around instead of caught with our pants down having already splashed the cash, pissed away a budget surplus and gone to a 2.9% recession during a boom.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
You're still conflating debt and deficit.
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
But the deficit wasn't increasing. In 2007 it was at the same level as 2002. If you think the level of debt was ok then by definition the deficit was ok since the debt is the accumulated deficits. If the government had kept running surpluses like it did in 2001 I think you'd have had a debt to GDP ratio somewhere in the teens, which would have been interesting from a gilt market POV.
No by definition it doesn't mean that since the two are different things.
The government could and should have ran a small surplus, say ~0.1 to 0.5% of GDP from 2001 to 2007. Had they done so the UK would have been very well prepared when the next inevitable recession came around instead of caught with our pants down having already splashed the cash, pissed away a budget surplus and gone to a 2.9% recession during a boom.
Never mind a surplus. A balanced budget would have done nicely.
Try hunting, and then come and tell us what's cruel about it.
Oh God, they've been activated.
Quite. I always found that Marion Stamp Dawkins's approach to animal cruelty was the best. She asked the animals what they thought! IIRC she demonstrated that a chicken would put up with a lot of discomfort (e.g. poorer bedding, colder conditions) rather than live in a battery cage.
Another approach is to see what their biochemistry says, such as the famouys study of Exmoor dog hunting of Red Deer by Bateson and Bradshaw, whose abstract is a masterpiece of scientific irony
"When red deer (Cervus elaphus) were hunted by humans with hounds the average distance travelled was at least 19 km. This study of 64 hunted red deer provides the first empirical evidence on their state at the time of death. Blood and muscle samples obtained from hunted deer after death were compared with samples from 50 non-hunted red deer that had been cleanly shot with rifles. The effects on deer of long hunts were (i) depletion of carbohydrate resources for powering muscles, (ii) disruption of muscle tissue, and (iii) elevated secretion of beta-endorphin. High concentrations of cortisol, typically associated with extreme physiological and psychological stress, were found. Damage to red blood cells occurred early in the hunts; possible mechanisms are discussed. Taken together, the evidence suggests that red deer are not well-adapted by their evolutionary or individual history to cope with the level of activity imposed on them when hunted with hounds."
On the same basis, when you see that a fox is running away rather than staying to play the game ...
Reynard the spoilsport. One wonders if the need, nay compulsion, for fox hunters to claim no cruelty to the fox betrays a certain defensiveness on the subject.
Fortunately, debating fox-hunting is pointless, it's massively unpopular and any party putting in their manifesto would be committing electoral suicide.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
You're still conflating debt and deficit.
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
But the deficit wasn't increasing. In 2007 it was at the same level as 2002. If you think the level of debt was ok then by definition the deficit was ok since the debt is the accumulated deficits. If the government had kept running surpluses like it did in 2001 I think you'd have had a debt to GDP ratio somewhere in the teens, which would have been interesting from a gilt market POV.
No by definition it doesn't mean that since the two are different things.
The government could and should have ran a small surplus, say ~0.1 to 0.5% of GDP from 2001 to 2007. Had they done so the UK would have been very well prepared when the next inevitable recession came around instead of caught with our pants down having already splashed the cash, pissed away a budget surplus and gone to a 2.9% recession during a boom.
Never mind a surplus. A balanced budget would have done nicely.
Indeed you are 100% correct.
It wouldn't even have to be perfectly balanced. Even if it had been balanced at 0% +/- 1% the UK could have absorbed the GFC without much drama had that happened.
The deficit increase caused by the recession wasn't exceptionally large. What caused the crisis is how high the deficit was pre-crisis, not the crisis spending in isolation.
Try hunting, and then come and tell us what's cruel about it.
Oh God, they've been activated.
Quite. I always found that Marion Stamp Dawkins's approach to animal cruelty was the best. She asked the animals what they thought! IIRC she demonstrated that a chicken would put up with a lot of discomfort (e.g. poorer bedding, colder conditions) rather than live in a battery cage.
Another approach is to see what their biochemistry says, such as the famouys study of Exmoor dog hunting of Red Deer by Bateson and Bradshaw, whose abstract is a masterpiece of scientific irony
"When red deer (Cervus elaphus) were hunted by humans with hounds the average distance travelled was at least 19 km. This study of 64 hunted red deer provides the first empirical evidence on their state at the time of death. Blood and muscle samples obtained from hunted deer after death were compared with samples from 50 non-hunted red deer that had been cleanly shot with rifles. The effects on deer of long hunts were (i) depletion of carbohydrate resources for powering muscles, (ii) disruption of muscle tissue, and (iii) elevated secretion of beta-endorphin. High concentrations of cortisol, typically associated with extreme physiological and psychological stress, were found. Damage to red blood cells occurred early in the hunts; possible mechanisms are discussed. Taken together, the evidence suggests that red deer are not well-adapted by their evolutionary or individual history to cope with the level of activity imposed on them when hunted with hounds."
On the same basis, when you see that a fox is running away rather than staying to play the game ...
Reynard the spoilsport. One wonders if the need, nay compulsion, for fox hunters to claim no cruelty to the fox betrays a certain defensiveness on the subject.
Fortunately, debating fox-hunting is pointless, it's massively unpopular and any party putting in their manifesto would be committing electoral suicide.
The last party to even promise a free vote *did* commit electoral suicide. Heck, they nearly lost an election to Jeremy Corbyn.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
If hunt supporters are reduced to appealing to libertarian consistency, then they really are in desperate straits...
Absolutely not, it has always been the backbone of the argument. I wanna do it, nobody stops me; you don't wanna do it, nobody makes you.
Can the fox give it bollocks too, if he doesn't fancy it?
I don't think vermin in general are allowed the choice in these matters.
I suppose you think trading and eating wild animals is fine too, after all what possible harm could that cause?
Try hunting, and then come and tell us what's cruel about it.
Oh God, they've been activated.
Quite. I always found that Marion Stamp Dawkins's approach to animal cruelty was the best. She asked the animals what they thought! IIRC she demonstrated that a chicken would put up with a lot of discomfort (e.g. poorer bedding, colder conditions) rather than live in a battery cage.
Another approach is to see what their biochemistry says, such as the famouys study of Exmoor dog hunting of Red Deer by Bateson and Bradshaw, whose abstract is a masterpiece of scientific irony
"When red deer (Cervus elaphus) were hunted by humans with hounds the average distance travelled was at least 19 km. This study of 64 hunted red deer provides the first empirical evidence on their state at the time of death. Blood and muscle samples obtained from hunted deer after death were compared with samples from 50 non-hunted red deer that had been cleanly shot with rifles. The effects on deer of long hunts were (i) depletion of carbohydrate resources for powering muscles, (ii) disruption of muscle tissue, and (iii) elevated secretion of beta-endorphin. High concentrations of cortisol, typically associated with extreme physiological and psychological stress, were found. Damage to red blood cells occurred early in the hunts; possible mechanisms are discussed. Taken together, the evidence suggests that red deer are not well-adapted by their evolutionary or individual history to cope with the level of activity imposed on them when hunted with hounds."
On the same basis, when you see that a fox is running away rather than staying to play the game ...
Reynard the spoilsport. One wonders if the need, nay compulsion, for fox hunters to claim no cruelty to the fox betrays a certain defensiveness on the subject.
Fortunately, debating fox-hunting is pointless, it's massively unpopular and any party putting in their manifesto would be committing electoral suicide.
Indeed. That may have made all the difference to May losing her majority.
Hunting appeals only to the hardcore Tories, it doesn't gain votes, and can really turnoff a lot of less Turnip Taliban Tories. It only shifts votes in one direction.
Try hunting, and then come and tell us what's cruel about it.
Oh God, they've been activated.
Quite. I always found that Marion Stamp Dawkins's approach to animal cruelty was the best. She asked the animals what they thought! IIRC she demonstrated that a chicken would put up with a lot of discomfort (e.g. poorer bedding, colder conditions) rather than live in a battery cage.
Another approach is to see what their biochemistry says, such as the famouys study of Exmoor dog hunting of Red Deer by Bateson and Bradshaw, whose abstract is a masterpiece of scientific irony
"When red deer (Cervus elaphus) were hunted by humans with hounds the average distance travelled was at least 19 km. This study of 64 hunted red deer provides the first empirical evidence on their state at the time of death. Blood and muscle samples obtained from hunted deer after death were compared with samples from 50 non-hunted red deer that had been cleanly shot with rifles. The effects on deer of long hunts were (i) depletion of carbohydrate resources for powering muscles, (ii) disruption of muscle tissue, and (iii) elevated secretion of beta-endorphin. High concentrations of cortisol, typically associated with extreme physiological and psychological stress, were found. Damage to red blood cells occurred early in the hunts; possible mechanisms are discussed. Taken together, the evidence suggests that red deer are not well-adapted by their evolutionary or individual history to cope with the level of activity imposed on them when hunted with hounds."
On the same basis, when you see that a fox is running away rather than staying to play the game ...
Reynard the spoilsport. One wonders if the need, nay compulsion, for fox hunters to claim no cruelty to the fox betrays a certain defensiveness on the subject.
Fortunately, debating fox-hunting is pointless, it's massively unpopular and any party putting in their manifesto would be committing electoral suicide.
The last party to even promise a free vote *did* commit electoral suicide. Heck, they nearly lost an election to Jeremy Corbyn.
I don’t think the lesson will be soon forgotten!
Its moot and over. Only obsessive cranks on either side still go on about it, which is just as well for huntings supporters given the ban was so half-arsed.
Its not going to be revisited so its not going to be properly banned, nor is it going to be properly legalised. Instead its just going to be a proper British fudge and life goes on.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
If hunt supporters are reduced to appealing to libertarian consistency, then they really are in desperate straits...
Absolutely not, it has always been the backbone of the argument. I wanna do it, nobody stops me; you don't wanna do it, nobody makes you.
Can the fox give it bollocks too, if he doesn't fancy it?
I don't think vermin in general are allowed the choice in these matters.
I suppose you think trading and eating wild animals is fine too, after all what possible harm could that cause?
Eating farmed animals is generally better I agree. Wild seafood is good though.
Try hunting, and then come and tell us what's cruel about it.
Oh God, they've been activated.
Quite. I always found that Marion Stamp Dawkins's approach to animal cruelty was the best. She asked the animals what they thought! IIRC she demonstrated that a chicken would put up with a lot of discomfort (e.g. poorer bedding, colder conditions) rather than live in a battery cage.
Another approach is to see what their biochemistry says, such as the famouys study of Exmoor dog hunting of Red Deer by Bateson and Bradshaw, whose abstract is a masterpiece of scientific irony
"When red deer (Cervus elaphus) were hunted by humans with hounds the average distance travelled was at least 19 km. This study of 64 hunted red deer provides the first empirical evidence on their state at the time of death. Blood and muscle samples obtained from hunted deer after death were compared with samples from 50 non-hunted red deer that had been cleanly shot with rifles. The effects on deer of long hunts were (i) depletion of carbohydrate resources for powering muscles, (ii) disruption of muscle tissue, and (iii) elevated secretion of beta-endorphin. High concentrations of cortisol, typically associated with extreme physiological and psychological stress, were found. Damage to red blood cells occurred early in the hunts; possible mechanisms are discussed. Taken together, the evidence suggests that red deer are not well-adapted by their evolutionary or individual history to cope with the level of activity imposed on them when hunted with hounds."
On the same basis, when you see that a fox is running away rather than staying to play the game ...
Reynard the spoilsport. One wonders if the need, nay compulsion, for fox hunters to claim no cruelty to the fox betrays a certain defensiveness on the subject.
Fortunately, debating fox-hunting is pointless, it's massively unpopular and any party putting in their manifesto would be committing electoral suicide.
Indeed. That May have made all the difference to May losing her majority.
Hunting appeals only to the hardcore Tories, it doesn't gain votes, and can really turnoff a lot of less Turnip Taliban Tories. It only shifts votes in one direction.
In most of the country yes but in very rural areas it can still benefit the Tories eg the Tories regained Taunton from the LDs in 2001 as the Tory candidate was pro hunting and the LD incumbent Jackie Ballard was anti hunting
It wouldn't even have to be perfectly balanced. Even if it had been balanced at 0% +/- 1% the UK could have absorbed the GFC without much drama had that happened.
The deficit increase caused by the recession wasn't exceptionally large. What caused the crisis is how high the deficit was pre-crisis, not the crisis spending in isolation.
The frustration with Labour’s economic management is the errors that were obvious at the time look worse with hindsight.
Imagine if Blair had sunk one tenth of the political capital he expended on Iraq by moving Brown and embarking on a truly radical reform of the tax and welfare system. Or indeed, just on raising taxes generally.
The problem was less that they were spending, but that they weren’t matching it to income at a time when income could have been adjusted.
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
And yet Labour "destroyed the public finances" by doing exactly what you are describing. Let's look at the OBR data. Global financial crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2007, % GDP): 2.9% Cyclically adjusted terms: 2.0% Debt before crisis (2007, % GDP): 34.2% Change in debt to GDP ratio 1997-2007: -1.5pp Borrowing at peak (2009): 10.2%. Coronavirus crisis: Borrowing before crisis (2019): 2.8% Cyclically adjusted terms: 1.6% Debt before crisis (2019, % GDP): 79.7% Change in debt to GDP ratio 2009-2019: +16.8pp Borrowing at peak (2020, OBR forecast): 15.2%. So prior to the global financial crisis, Labour had brought down the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years and was running a deficit to GDP ratio of about the same size as the one the current government was running going into the current crisis (having presided over a 17pp increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the previous ten years). I am not going to criticise the government for borrowing more, they are doing exactly the right thing. I merely note that Labour did the same thing in 08-09 and were crucified for it by Tories ever since. The level of intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You're talking absolute nonsense!
Labour had inherited a balanced budget with the deficit coming down to surplus and then chose, for no good reason, to blow the budget out to a budget deficit during growth times. Labour created the deficit from 2002 onwards, that is what caused the problem.
The Tories inherited Labour's economic catastrophe and brought the deficit down.
To claim the Tories had increased the debt to GDP is absolute garbage and shows you to be totally ignorant. The Tories reduced the deficit every year, they didn't create it as Labour had previously. There was no alternative to debt going up unless the Tories had been far more austere ending the deficit overnight.
You keep calling it Labour's economic catastrophe, you're high on your own supply. There was a global financial crisis (the clue is in the word "global"). Could we have been keeping a closer eye on the banks? Sure, but I don't remember the Tories calling for tougher regulation at the time. And again, this was a global problem since banking rules are largely determined at the international level. Yes the deficit was coming down when Labour came in. Why? Because the Tories had mismanaged the economy in the late 1980s, created an unsustainable boom and the resulting recession had crashed the public finances. They were in the process of restoring some semblance of sanity after debt had risen to 37% of GDP by 1996. Labour continued that process so that by 2000 it was running a 1.4% of GDP surplus and debt had fallen to just 27% of GDP (creating concerns that there wouldn't be enough debt to satisfy demands by the financial system). With debt under control and with a dire need for investment in public services, Labour increased borrowing to 2.9% of GDP, which was the average level for the 1979-1996 period so was hardly profligate or dangerous unless you want to accuse Thatcher and Major of that too.
Labour created the deficit to 2.9 which was far too high and profligate and dangerous for that stage of the economic cycle.
That 2.9% was the average level for the 1979-1996 period is meaningless. You need to consider the stage of the economic cycle, during 1979-1996 the deficit generally went down during times of growth and up during recessions. As is sane and sensible.
When the UK went into recession during the 1979-1996 period it did so from a budget surplus allowing the deficit to go back up again and then start coming back down again.
Blowing the deficit up BEFORE the recession is what Labour did that was so catastrophic.
But they didn't blow up the deficit. If you look at the cyclically adjusted primary deficit (to control for cyclical effects), it declined by 1.3pp of GDP between 2004 and 2006. Yes, it widened by 0.8pp of GDP in 2007. But if you think that is blowing the deficit up what do you make of the 1.1pp widening of the deficit in 2019? Do you think the current government was blowing up the deficit before the Covid crisis by letting it increase like that? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing wrong with running a deficit over the course of the cycle, in fact it's essential unless you want the debt to GDP ratio to decline to zero over time - which would be a disaster given the essential role public debt plays in the financial system. Yet when you look at the same cyclically adjusted data
What's your citation please for those cyclically adjusted figures?
The UK deficit was blown up BEFORE the recession, which was inexcusable economic mismanagement by Labour.
Yes running a deficit over the course of the cycle is reasonable. However 2002-2007 was pre-recession not post-recession. That was the time to be paying down the debt not blowing it up which left us completely exposed when the recession inevitably came.
Thankfully 2010-2019 the Tories didn't make that mistake and reduced the deficit.
The cyclically adjusted primary deficit data are from the OBR, you will find them on their website. The point is that Labour had already paid down the debt prior to 2001, to the point where it was less than 27% of GDP. (If it had gone down much more, the financial system would have run out of sterling safe assets - in fact the shortage of safe assets globally was one of the reasons for the explosion of financial engineering that helped to cause the GFC). It subsequently increased to 34% of GDP by 2007, which was still lower than the level it had inherited in 1997. And most of that increase occurred during 2001-04. I'm afraid the data don't really support your script. I know that Labour has lost the popular narrative on this. But I would expect better informed discussion on this forum.
You are confusing deficit and debt. You need to learn the difference between the two. That helps explain why you seem to erroneously believe the Tories are responsible for the debt going up during their tenure.
Blowing up the deficit before 2007 was grossly irresponsible and the UK has paid the price for that.
Ha ha, thanks for the economics lesson. I think if you read my posts you will see clearly that I understand the distinction pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly as I am a macroeconomist. You keep saying Labour blew up the deficit before 2007, despite the fact that I have shown you that it was not increasing rapidly in 2007 and was at levels considered perfectly safe (so much so that the current government was running a deficit of the same size last year), while the level of debt in 2007 was smaller as a % of GDP than in 1997 when Labour came into power.
Trying to conflate the deficit in 2007 (after a decade and a half of uninterrupted growth, and representing an increase in borrowing before the recession) with the deficit up to this year (falling sharply on an annual basis) is disingenuous at best.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
My point is that if increasing the deficit is so bad, why did the government increase it last year? If a 2.9% of GDP deficit was so bad in 2007, why is a 2.8% deficit ok in 2019? If you think governments should be running surpluses, why has the UK government only run a surplus in six years out of the last 50 (and three of those were under the last Labour government)? If you think 34% of GDP was an unreasonable amount of debt in 2007, what number do you think it should have been (bearing in mind the role of gilts in the financial system)?
You're still conflating debt and deficit.
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
But the deficit wasn't increasing. In 2007 it was at the same level as 2002. If you think the level of debt was ok then by definition the deficit was ok since the debt is the accumulated deficits. If the government had kept running surpluses like it did in 2001 I think you'd have had a debt to GDP ratio somewhere in the teens, which would have been interesting from a gilt market POV.
Spot the anomaly in this graph. If spending was counter-cyclical, as Keynes suggests should be the case, and as you are suggesting Gordon Brown did - where was the 2002-2005 recession, because there wasn't one!
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Tone has said that the hunting ban is the only piece of legislation he regrets passing.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Tone has said that the hunting ban is the only piece of legislation he regrets passing.
Didn't he say the Freedom of Information Act as well?
It wouldn't even have to be perfectly balanced. Even if it had been balanced at 0% +/- 1% the UK could have absorbed the GFC without much drama had that happened.
The deficit increase caused by the recession wasn't exceptionally large. What caused the crisis is how high the deficit was pre-crisis, not the crisis spending in isolation.
The frustration with Labour’s economic management is the errors that were obvious at the time look worse with hindsight.
Imagine if Blair had sunk one tenth of the political capital he expended on Iraq by moving Brown and embarking on a truly radical reform of the tax and welfare system. Or indeed, just on raising taxes generally.
The problem was less that they were spending, but that they weren’t matching it to income at a time when income could have been adjusted.
Brown increased the top rate of income tax as PM and we all remember the 10p tax rate fiasco
Fake news once you take into account "debt" to the Bank of England the reality is very different.
That entire months borrowing was paid for by the BoE yesterday.
Weird how we can suddenly lend money to ourselves after so long being told it was impossible and we would be saddling our grandchildren with debt. Tory economics folks
There's a difference between borrowing for an economic crisis during the crisis and doing so during times of growth. If you don't understand that I'm not sure how to break it down into smaller pieces to explain it to you.
Unless...the level of poverty in this country and in particular the level of child poverty constitutes a crisis every bit as grave as the Coronavirus? Or the closure of libraries represents a crisis for peoples' literacy and access to learning. Or the rundown of the NHS constitutes a crisis which...etc.
One man's crisis is another's BAU. Once you get to choose the crisis (by being in government) you can justify anything.
No because the difference between a health crisis and what you're describing is it is temporary. We will get through the coronavirus crisis to the other side. Once we are through to the other side of the pandemic then we will need to restore balance to the economy.
That's not the case with writing blank cheques for permanent things. I'm assuming you don't want the library open temporarily? If you want the library permanently open you need to be able to afford it.
That is your definition of a crisis which justifies near-unlimited borrowing. And your criteria about libraries. The govt can make its own definitions. Including a Labour government.
No the definition of recession and growth is a global one, not mine.
Absolutely. What is the global definition of a crisis?
A recession.
I specifically said an economic crisis as opposed to "times of growth". After the recession the deficit will need to be resolved.
You have deemed an "economic crisis" as being worthy of spaffing money up the wall and turning on the spending taps.
But Labour might say that a "library crisis" is worthy of doing the same.
You have accepted that a crisis (economic in this case) justifies such borrowing. And other governments are therefore justified, by your own argument, in deeming other crises likewise worthy.
Once you have decided that a crisis is justification for such spending then lo there will be crises.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession has been accepted for centuries.
Countercyclical borrowing during a recession is not a novel idea invented by the Tories during this recession.
If other parties wish to tear up economics and borrow more during growth times then I will oppose that as I always have. If my party sought to do that I would too.
A recession being justification for such borrowing was accepted centuries before I was born and always will be accepted. Your whatabouterism is absurd.
In a recession all progressives become Keynesians. During periods of growth, they stop being Keynesians.
I am not sure I would describe Philip as a progressive lol. Reactionary contrarian perhaps.
I'm not a progressive, I'm a libertarian.
I'm not who Malmesbury was referring to though, [I think] he was agreeing with me.
You proved yesterday you are not a libertarian or a liberal (small l). You said you are against countrysports (bloodsports as you call them). To be a true liberal, or even more so, a libertarian you need to oppose laws that restrict the rights of individuals even if you morally disapprove. To be a libertarian you would also need to be in favour of a massive relaxation of gun laws back to pre-1914 levels. So, sorry to disappoint you, you are neither. Reactionary contrarian fits you. Wear it with pride!
I think Nigel has skewered you on this one Philip TBF. I too would have expected you to be opposed to the state banning of country sports on libertarian grounds.
Sports that don't involve animal cruelty absolutely I'm opposed to banning. If you want to go hurling, or play polo or croquet or roll cheese down hills or whatever other country pursuits you may find interesting then I couldn't care less.
I do not approve of lifting bans on animal cruelty. If I saw someone torturing a cat or dog I don't think that needs to be legal in order to be libertarian.
As I said, fox hunting is not cruel.
I don't agree.
But do you accept that if it is cruel then its reasonable for it to be banned?
Or do you think eg a pet owner should be able to torture their pet without the law getting involved? I don't and I don't think that's a liberal policy.
You are perfectly at liberty to think it's cruel. As are vegetarians to think firing a bolt into a cow's head is cruel. I think the issue here is not to want to impose your views on others.
Not the vegetarian on eating meat, not you on hunting.
That surely is the mark of a libertarian.
I don't know any libertarians that think its OK to torture cats and dogs and that all laws on animal cruelty should be abolished. There might be some, but again there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
Why are you talking about cats and dogs. We were talking about hunting. Which was found to be not cruel. And yet you want to abolish it.
Oh of course _you_ think hunting is cruel but as a libertarian you should not want to abolish it just because you have a personal view on it. cf vegetarians.
If hunt supporters are reduced to appealing to libertarian consistency, then they really are in desperate straits...
Absolutely not, it has always been the backbone of the argument. I wanna do it, nobody stops me; you don't wanna do it, nobody makes you.
Can the fox give it bollocks too, if he doesn't fancy it?
I don't think vermin in general are allowed the choice in these matters.
I suppose you think trading and eating wild animals is fine too, after all what possible harm could that cause?
Eating farmed animals is generally better I agree. Wild seafood is good though.
All the pain we humans have suffered from Covid-19, Ebola, HIV-Aids, Sars has largely been self inflicted and stemmed from our refusal to treat other species with respect.
Will we learn from the experience? Not a chance, it's only a matter of time before the next pandemic hits us. As the world gets more overcrowded and habitats decrease I suspect they will become increasingly frequent.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Tone has said that the hunting ban is the only piece of legislation he regrets passing.
Didn't he say the Freedom of Information Act as well?
I haven't heard of that. With fox hunting, he felt it very much went against the New Labour doctrine of massive inclusivity. FOI? Perhaps ministers who didn't want their crap decisions made public felt alienated.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Tone has said that the hunting ban is the only piece of legislation he regrets passing.
Didn't he say the Freedom of Information Act as well?
I haven't heard of that. With fox hunting, he felt it very much went against the New Labour doctrine of massive inclusivity. FOI? Perhaps ministers who didn't want their crap decisions made public felt alienated.
"You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it."
These are the words Tony Blair addresses to himself in his memoirs while reflecting on his government's introduction of the Freedom of Information Act
Russian invasion of Belarus if the presidential election goes tits up. War between any combination of India, China and Pakistan. By election won by Farage's new Reform Party All Johnson's exes turn up to his wedding as happened to Paul Robinson in Neighbours.
Your shtick is that you're a man of the world, bin wiv the laydees, fought it out mano a mano in the meanest streets of Basra, and are here to tell us about it. Fair enough, but if you attach all that value to lived experience, I have been hunting a couple of thousand times. You haven't.
I've never rimmed Elton John but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be into it.
That's not the question, the question is whether you should fetter Mr Furnish's right to do so. The answer is no.
The point is that I do not have to experience something personally to have an informed and settled view on it.
But you don't. You have a view on some fantasy activity which entails "standing around watching a wild animal being ripped to pieces." I don't know what that is but it ain't fox hunting.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
Comments
I think with the benefit of hindsight Labour could have spent more sensibly, done more investment and less current spending especially. But they really did improve the quality of public services.
Revenue consistently surprised to the upside over much of the period and there was a general failure to recognise that there was a bigger cyclical component to that than people realised. But this was an analytical failure more than a political one in my view. The financial sector was turning over huge amounts of tax revenue and the government started to think this was a permanent thing rather than indicative of an unsustainable boom. But exactly the same thing was happening in the US and other countries with similar financial systems.
My point isn't that Labour are utterly blameless, simply that the state of the public finances in 2010 was primarily a function of what happened in 08-09 not what had happened before.
Is your argument really that the Tories have spent too much for the past decade, that 'austerity' wasn't done harshly enough and that we should have been well into the budget surplus by now?
And what if you tried it and you liked it?
https://twitter.com/tomilo/status/1273936794397138944
The difference is that the baseline was a budget surplus in 1989 so the UK could afford a recession then. In 2007 the deficit was already irresponsibly 2.9% during the boom instead of a surplus going into the previous recession.
Had the UK been running a small surplus in 2007 then the deficit would have kicked in cyclically as it always does during recessions but would never have been 10% of GDP.
Modern Labour can't.
Yes, he has been very ill, but I recall a point last year when he looked ragged and our of it, defeated and trapped in parliament, making shambolic appearances like the Wakefield police speech, no deal from the EU, and it was unclear where he could go.
I noted at the time that he looked to me to be classic adult ADHD, and thought a lack of personal structure in number 10 was affecting him badly. It sounds like Dom had the same thought at some stage - 2 page briefings, controlling how information got to him - such that the civil service, talking more metaphorically than I was, spoke of government by ADHD. The structure in number 10 has been disrupted again by COVID, and perhaps Boris's environment has become more chaotic again, baby, not firing on all cylinders, his staff focussed on the crisis and not much on looking after Boris!
There is an upside though. Boris will be accustomed to the chaos. Only just gettin through a day, only just getting away with it is his normal MO. Whereas a more neurotypical person would be tearing their hair out, he may barely notice that something is amiss. And his ability to just plod through the crisis as a pretty normal part of his life may confound those who are betting he is not long for this job.
They need to take a long, hard look at themselves, but of course they won't. Clearly their bosses have thought that having Lobby hacks asking 'gotcha' questions of scientists is what the public want to hear during a global pandemic.
May did of course try it, and didn't end well.
But then, she foxed up the whole thing.
And also "Cultural Appropriation"....a load of white poshos singing a black man's song about a black player.
And of course none of this shit does anything to combat actual racism. Is there any evidence of widespread racism at England Rugby games (hating the cheating French doesn't count)? And half the team are now BAME, so if you are a massive racist, going to have a bit of a hard time supporting them.
But apart from that, I agree, the government should have cut spending by much more than they did in the period 2010-2019, so as to be better set up for the next recession. The bonfire of the quangos and reform of the standing bureaucracy never really happened, and now we have a PM and his able assistant Dominic determined to see these long-overdue reforms through.
On the other hand our PPE policy seems to be working.
https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208
...Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued.
A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance.
Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless.
Berlin's child welfare offices and the governing Senate turned a blind eye or even approved of the placements.
Several years ago two of the victims came forward and told their story, since then the researchers at Hildesheim University have plowed through files and conducted interviews.
What they found was a "network across educational institutions," the state youth welfare office and the Berlin Senate, in which pedophilia was "accepted, supported, defended."
Kentler himself was in regular contact with the children and their foster fathers. He was never prosecuted: By the time his victims came forward, the statute of limitations for his actions had expired. This has also thus far prevented the victims from getting any compensation....
34% of GDP wasm't unreasonable, nobody said it was. The deficit pre-recession and increasing it was what was unreasonable.
The government deficit decreased consistently under the Tories and was 1.2% of GDP in 2018-19.
You do realise the 2019-20 deficit includes the start of the coronavirus crisis don't you? The last pre-crisis full economic year was 2018-19.
The govt itself has played it very poorly allowing themselves to take the flak for many things that were not down to them or not down to them solely. Care home PPE !!!!
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1273939531851599873?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HmmWb6rnkw
I don't want to be responsible for you! I'm responsible for me and my family and that's enough thank you very much.
As for Sweet Low, Sweet Chariot, it is a great song and is a black protest song. By it being popular more people learn about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway. To sing it is not being racist.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1273930192952713218?s=20
If you believe otherwise feel free to vote otherwise.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
This flowed pretty readily because I had a couple of paragraphs written and a lot of the argument straight in my head for a thread header. The word chutzpah was certainly on my mind and would have worked its way in in drafting.
But, work contract to check, end version to perfect, maybe wouldn't have happened at all, so piggybacking on your contribution was too good an opportunity to miss.
Dead cat material.
No way can I look at that graph and reconcile it to a 43-30 vote share.
Edit - in fact, it suggests that the Tory vote share in all categories was higher than its overall vote share. Which is mathematically impossible.
-Our own animals are purely there at our behest, so it is our responsibility to ensure they live and die well.
-Our own animals have no chance to escape their fate, animals being hunted do
-The end for any wild animal would not be considered humane by our standards. They will die of disease, starvation, or being attacked by another animal. So being killed by human intervention is not necessarily a downgrade
-In most (all?) cases, the wild animal is being hunted for food, or because it is a pest.
These reasons are not a justification for hunting, per se, but they are a clear reason for different classifications of animal receiving different treatment.
The government could and should have ran a small surplus, say ~0.1 to 0.5% of GDP from 2001 to 2007. Had they done so the UK would have been very well prepared when the next inevitable recession came around instead of caught with our pants down having already splashed the cash, pissed away a budget surplus and gone to a 2.9% recession during a boom.
It wouldn't even have to be perfectly balanced. Even if it had been balanced at 0% +/- 1% the UK could have absorbed the GFC without much drama had that happened.
The deficit increase caused by the recession wasn't exceptionally large. What caused the crisis is how high the deficit was pre-crisis, not the crisis spending in isolation.
I don’t think the lesson will be soon forgotten!
Hunting appeals only to the hardcore Tories, it doesn't gain votes, and can really turnoff a lot of less Turnip Taliban Tories. It only shifts votes in one direction.
Its not going to be revisited so its not going to be properly banned, nor is it going to be properly legalised. Instead its just going to be a proper British fudge and life goes on.
Imagine if Blair had sunk one tenth of the political capital he expended on Iraq by moving Brown and embarking on a truly radical reform of the tax and welfare system. Or indeed, just on raising taxes generally.
The problem was less that they were spending, but that they weren’t matching it to income at a time when income could have been adjusted.
Will we learn from the experience? Not a chance, it's only a matter of time before the next pandemic hits us. As the world gets more overcrowded and habitats decrease I suspect they will become increasingly frequent.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2010/09/why_tony_blair_thinks_he_was_a.html
"You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it."
These are the words Tony Blair addresses to himself in his memoirs while reflecting on his government's introduction of the Freedom of Information Act
What?
Russian invasion of Belarus if the presidential election goes tits up.
War between any combination of India, China and Pakistan.
By election won by Farage's new Reform Party
All Johnson's exes turn up to his wedding as happened to Paul Robinson in Neighbours.
But enough of this.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit
PartyCompany seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.