That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
Yes, as I speculated a couple of threads back, it may be that the Mayor and Home Secretary are counting on Cressida Dick to enact other reforms with a view to enhancing both crime prevention and detection.
Or it might just be they don't want to admit their judgment if her was wrong.
Would that apply to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister, neither of whom was involved in her appointment in 2017? No, there must be more to it than that.
They just have very poor judgment, then.
The question is why, with so many examples of bad decision-making over the years, Cressida Dick has been allowed to stay in post, supported by both Conservatives and Labour?
Has she got something on them? Do they genuinely think she's the best person for an undeniably tough role? Are her known mistakes outweighed by unpublicised victories? Is she just a canny political operator? Is she a convenient scapegoat? All of the above?
That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
Yes, as I speculated a couple of threads back, it may be that the Mayor and Home Secretary are counting on Cressida Dick to enact other reforms with a view to enhancing both crime prevention and detection.
Or it might just be they don't want to admit their judgment if her was wrong.
Would that apply to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister, neither of whom was involved in her appointment in 2017? No, there must be more to it than that.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
Nope. Those looking to move with negative equity, will need to find a pile of cash to pay off their existing mortgage after the sale, plus another pile of cash for the deposit on the new place, plus another pile of cash for the costs of moving.
If you have a £300k mortgage on a £250k house, you’re utterly screwed if for any reason you need to sell up.
That has been a solved problem for a long time. In NI negative equity mortgages have existed since 2011 allowing the negative equity to be transferred as you moved house because allowing people to move increases the likelihood of the loan being paid off eventually
Negative equity re-mortgages or house moves, really? News to me, that one.
Sounds like the banks simply kicking the can down the road.
While PB Tories are getting hot under the collar about smears, perhaps they can weigh in on this grubby idea ? ...No misdeeds alleged. Simply the fact he was there when [insert crime here] outraged the populace. Invite the inference. Not refuted by Starmer who does not even know it has been sent. Worth a try....
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
While PB Tories are getting hot under the collar about smears, perhaps they can weigh in on this grubby idea ? ...No misdeeds alleged. Simply the fact he was there when [insert crime here] outraged the populace. Invite the inference. Not refuted by Starmer who does not even know it has been sent. Worth a try....
Quite.. the BBC shouod be more careful before smearing someone. There is no evidence this giy has done anything wrong, not saying he hasnt but the BBC piece is full of holes as its all smear and innuendo
It's not smearing him to say that he was involved (perhaps unwittingly) in the payment of what the Swedish company involved has admitted was (and has been punished for) a $200m bribe.
No.nention of perhaps unwittingly as far as I recall.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
Corrections happen sometimes. Letting things fester like they are now is shit idea for those looking to get on the ladder and eventually people are going to react and say enough is enough.
To take the example of someone who bought a £300k property then its declined to £250k then if they're 5+ years into their mortgage repayments then they're unlikely to be in that much if any negative equity.
It will be a loss for those who want equity in their property investment but less of an issue for those who want a home to live in.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
Corrections happen sometimes. Letting things fester like they are now is shit idea for those looking to get on the ladder and eventually people are going to react and say enough is enough.
To take the example of someone who bought a £300k property then its declined to £250k then if they're 5+ years into their mortgage repayments then they're unlikely to be in that much if any negative equity.
It will be a loss for those who want equity in their property investment but less of an issue for those who want a home to live in.
A lot of mortgages are interest only. Truly the never never.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
But don't forget the increase in house-to-income ratios preceded the fall in interest rates, it didn't follow it.
So unless the underlying supply and demand issues are fixed, the ratios will remain crazy even when interest rates rise again.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
A period of flat house prices and higher inflation would achieve Philip's aims over time. Not sure the core pensioner vote would be as keen, though.
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Exactly this.
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
The easiest two ways to improve the productivity of a nurse:
1. Make sure she is only doing nursing, and not other work which could be done by someone less qualified and lower-paid 2. Invest in capital equipment, for example patient monitors and alarms, which allows her to more effectively allocate her time.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
As this is still going on AND there is a role for both army drivers it is absolutely clear that there is a shortage of ADR drivers at least in southern England. "Just pay more" didn't produce trained drivers - I know, its a shock.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
Nope. Those looking to move with negative equity, will need to find a pile of cash to pay off their existing mortgage after the sale, plus another pile of cash for the deposit on the new place, plus another pile of cash for the costs of moving.
If you have a £300k mortgage on a £250k house, you’re utterly screwed if for any reason you need to sell up.
That has been a solved problem for a long time. In NI negative equity mortgages have existed since 2011 allowing the negative equity to be transferred as you moved house because allowing people to move increases the likelihood of the loan being paid off eventually
The other solution is the American one (in most states) - non-recourse loans, where, in essence, you can walk away and leave the bank with the house and they can't come after you.
In practice, your credit takes a catastrophic hit, but I'm sure there is something satisfying about screwing over a bank.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
But don't forget the increase in house-to-income ratios preceded the fall in interest rates, it didn't follow it.
So unless the underlying supply and demand issues are fixed, the ratios will remain crazy even when interest rates rise again.
Exactly. It's a multiplication. We're moving from a high house price to income ratio times a modest interest payment to the same times a much higher interest payment. Those mortgages will be unaffordable, even if inflation has the beneficial effect of reducing house prices in real terms.
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Best get off to work, where staff shortages are a major drag on my own productivity!
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
Nope. Those looking to move with negative equity, will need to find a pile of cash to pay off their existing mortgage after the sale, plus another pile of cash for the deposit on the new place, plus another pile of cash for the costs of moving.
If you have a £300k mortgage on a £250k house, you’re utterly screwed if for any reason you need to sell up.
That has been a solved problem for a long time. In NI negative equity mortgages have existed since 2011 allowing the negative equity to be transferred as you moved house because allowing people to move increases the likelihood of the loan being paid off eventually
The other solution is the American one (in most states) - non-recourse loans, where, in essence, you can walk away and leave the bank with the house and they can't come after you.
In practice, your credit takes a catastrophic hit, but I'm sure there is something satisfying about screwing over a bank.
The problem with that is you still end up with massive house prices rises and falls. In theory banks should be more careful lending money when there is greater risk but I seriously doubt it would have any impact.
Quite.. the BBC shouod be more careful before smearing someone. There is no evidence this giy has done anything wrong, not saying he hasnt but the BBC piece is full of holes as its all smear and innuendo
It's not smearing him to say that he was involved (perhaps unwittingly) in the payment of what the Swedish company involved has admitted was (and has been punished for) a $200m bribe.
No.nention of perhaps unwittingly as far as I recall.
That was my own generous interpretation. The BBC report sets out the bald facts, along with Mr Amersi's denials of wrongdoing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58783460 I don't really see how it is a smear.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
Corrections happen sometimes. Letting things fester like they are now is shit idea for those looking to get on the ladder and eventually people are going to react and say enough is enough.
To take the example of someone who bought a £300k property then its declined to £250k then if they're 5+ years into their mortgage repayments then they're unlikely to be in that much if any negative equity.
It will be a loss for those who want equity in their property investment but less of an issue for those who want a home to live in.
The other issue with negative equity is people feel poorer and stop spending. Now driving up the savings rate may be no bad thing… unless your employment depends on that spending.
A slow real decline is the least worst way out of the problem - and if prices stay flat as inflation spikes, that may be no bad thing.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
Nope. Those looking to move with negative equity, will need to find a pile of cash to pay off their existing mortgage after the sale, plus another pile of cash for the deposit on the new place, plus another pile of cash for the costs of moving.
If you have a £300k mortgage on a £250k house, you’re utterly screwed if for any reason you need to sell up.
That has been a solved problem for a long time. In NI negative equity mortgages have existed since 2011 allowing the negative equity to be transferred as you moved house because allowing people to move increases the likelihood of the loan being paid off eventually
The other solution is the American one (in most states) - non-recourse loans, where, in essence, you can walk away and leave the bank with the house and they can't come after you.
In practice, your credit takes a catastrophic hit, but I'm sure there is something satisfying about screwing over a bank.
Try getting the banks to agree to lend on that basis. My hazy understanding is the US banks do so as a consequence of the New Deal in return for being bailed out.
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
Is he a liar? Yes. A prolific one. We have absolute proof of this Is he incompetent? Yes, with multiple examples of the man not having a clue about detail Is he shameless? Absolutely. Is he politically a smash hit? Oh yes. He manages to get himself in the right place at the right time. Won London twice - a Labour city. Bet on the winning horse at the referendum. Survived being fired for being a shit foreign secretary to then land the top job. Won an 80 seat election whilst betting the farm on a pair of 4s.
This is why the mouth foamers in Labour don't get anywhere. Yes it is easy to call Beaker names or point to his endless stupid gaffs. But he is a prolific winner. There is something about him which protects him from political norms as any other politician would have been killed and buried in a political shallow grave for what he has done.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
Corrections happen sometimes. Letting things fester like they are now is shit idea for those looking to get on the ladder and eventually people are going to react and say enough is enough.
To take the example of someone who bought a £300k property then its declined to £250k then if they're 5+ years into their mortgage repayments then they're unlikely to be in that much if any negative equity.
It will be a loss for those who want equity in their property investment but less of an issue for those who want a home to live in.
The other issue with negative equity is people feel poorer and stop spending. Now driving up the savings rate may be no bad thing… unless your employment depends on that spending.
A slow real decline is the least worst way out of the problem - and if prices stay flat as inflation spikes, that may be no bad thing.
Indeed, though critics of inflation would also be keen to say that inflation has the same impact.
My preferred solution is inflation + flattish prices > crash > status quo.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Exactly this.
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
There will be winners and losers in a house price crash. The losers will overwhelmingly be existing Tory voters.
From a fairness perspective I think the disruption and pain it would cause to many is justified simply because even more are excluded or over paying for housing currently. From a political perspective it makes no sense for the government to try and make it happen though. Sooner or later it will happen whether the incumbant government wants it to or not, it is a bubble.
If we had a good mechanism for flat house prices and moderate wage inflation that would be ideal, but we don't, and even if we did a government would not stick to it and would throw in some house price inflationary schemes whenever the opposition get closer.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
But don't forget the increase in house-to-income ratios preceded the fall in interest rates, it didn't follow it.
So unless the underlying supply and demand issues are fixed, the ratios will remain crazy even when interest rates rise again.
Exactly. It's a multiplication. We're moving from a high house price to income ratio times a modest interest payment to the same times a much higher interest payment. Those mortgages will be unaffordable, even if inflation has the beneficial effect of reducing house prices in real terms.
Because mortgage rates have been so low the increase in monthly payments will oversized. Average mortgage payment rates at the moment I think are 2% or so. If they go up to 5%, which is likely, monthly payments will double.
Re all the inflation stuff and rising interest rates etc.
The biggest driver of inflation at the moment is China - in its demands for raw materials, shipping freight etc etc. That makes hiking interest rates to stop inflation incredibly self-destructive and, more to the point, useless because it will have no influence on what the Chinese do.
It is why this inflation "crisis" is different from previous ones - it is the first time in the modern world that one global behemoth which, crucially, does its own thing and where the normal rules of free market trade do not apply, is the catalyst for the rise.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
The easiest two ways to improve the productivity of a nurse:
1. Make sure she is only doing nursing, and not other work which could be done by someone less qualified and lower-paid 2. Invest in capital equipment, for example patient monitors and alarms, which allows her to more effectively allocate her time.
I've said this before on here (and before the current craze for biometrics on watches), but the biggest advancement in patient care (and possibly health as a whole) will be personalised biometric devices.
This can be for inside hospitals (e.g. see the stuff Sensium and others are doing), or outside. An issue is overwhelming healthcare with false positives: ML and other techniques can help personalise the data: e.g. if your 'natural' heart rate is a little faster or slower than your cohort. Or even how it varies over the day.
I can see this being revolutionary in healthcare. And if anyone ever manages what Theranos promised, particularly if we can get them into every GP surgery, or even home ...
Quite.. the BBC shouod be more careful before smearing someone. There is no evidence this giy has done anything wrong, not saying he hasnt but the BBC piece is full of holes as its all smear and innuendo
That's what the media does and to be honest the public doesn't care about the details. The expenses scandal was typical of this with those who were largely innocent being caught up with the villians. It isn't fair but people and organisations in these arenas should be extra careful. In the business I ran the potential for conflict of interest was huge so I made sure that even where there wasn't one, one could not be made up or imagined.
However in all your posts you do seem to want to wrap up the conservatives in cotton wool. Are you going to post the same next time there is a potential labour scandal?
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Why?
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
For all that you post some brilliant stuff you also post absurd stuff. Politically what you suggest will be a disaster. On our screens and in our newspapers will be "down on the farm" style piles of pig corpses that have been shot and are now rotting. On the other hand we won't have processed pigs through abattoirs and factories which means a big shortage of pork products in the run up to Christmas when demand is at its highest.
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
Nope. Those looking to move with negative equity, will need to find a pile of cash to pay off their existing mortgage after the sale, plus another pile of cash for the deposit on the new place, plus another pile of cash for the costs of moving.
If you have a £300k mortgage on a £250k house, you’re utterly screwed if for any reason you need to sell up.
That has been a solved problem for a long time. In NI negative equity mortgages have existed since 2011 allowing the negative equity to be transferred as you moved house because allowing people to move increases the likelihood of the loan being paid off eventually
The other solution is the American one (in most states) - non-recourse loans, where, in essence, you can walk away and leave the bank with the house and they can't come after you.
In practice, your credit takes a catastrophic hit, but I'm sure there is something satisfying about screwing over a bank.
The problem with that is you still end up with massive house prices rises and falls. In theory banks should be more careful lending money when there is greater risk but I seriously doubt it would have any impact.
I think it would have a considerable impact, which was why some countries have financial crises when they do, and others have them at different times. For example, Canada and Sweden had severe crises in their housing market in the early 90s, and put in place much tougher lending standards on the banks. Partly as a result, they were much less affected by the financial crisis in 2008, though the subsequent economic contraction hit them too.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
Maybe we will also see a medium-term shift in long-distance freight from road to rail, which requires significantly less labour.
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
Re all the inflation stuff and rising interest rates etc.
The biggest driver of inflation at the moment is China - in its demands for raw materials, shipping freight etc etc. That makes hiking interest rates to stop inflation incredibly self-destructive and, more to the point, useless because it will have no influence on what the Chinese do.
It is why this inflation "crisis" is different from previous ones - it is the first time in the modern world that one global behemoth which, crucially, does its own thing and where the normal rules of free market trade do not apply, is the catalyst for the rise.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
And even if it were to happen, it wouldn't help drivers who were unwilling/unable to retrain as something else.
It looks like Islamic extremists may have succeeded in murdering the Swedish artist Lars Vilks at the third attempt. The Swedish state media outlets and police are trying to stay neutral, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the motorway accident where Vilks and his two plain-clothes protection officers died in their unmarked police car was “illogical”, to quote the SR reporter on the spot. The HGV driver is seriously injured, but will hopefully be able to give a witness account.
A police sergeant has escaped disciplinary proceedings after being photographed while dressed as paedophile Jimmy Savile on his stag weekend alongside a group of fellow officers.
What do we think? Sackable offence, or none of the employer’s business?
Poor taste but he was on his free time, and not representing the police, so none of the employers business.
Re all the inflation stuff and rising interest rates etc.
The biggest driver of inflation at the moment is China - in its demands for raw materials, shipping freight etc etc. That makes hiking interest rates to stop inflation incredibly self-destructive and, more to the point, useless because it will have no influence on what the Chinese do.
It is why this inflation "crisis" is different from previous ones - it is the first time in the modern world that one global behemoth which, crucially, does its own thing and where the normal rules of free market trade do not apply, is the catalyst for the rise.
Put like that, it all sounds a bit OPEC '73
Slight difference. The relative change in 1973 was much greater than it is now and Oil literally drove everything. It was also coming off the US ditching Bretton Woods in 1971.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Mr. Dickson, sad to hear that he was likely murdered over a cartoon.
I'm sure 'Je suis Charlie' will be on a few politicians' lips, until the headlines fade and we go back to craven appeasement (cf Batley Grammar School).
While PB Tories are getting hot under the collar about smears, perhaps they can weigh in on this grubby idea ? ...No misdeeds alleged. Simply the fact he was there when [insert crime here] outraged the populace. Invite the inference. Not refuted by Starmer who does not even know it has been sent. Worth a try....
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
The problem with that argument is that the Government has been manipulating the market to avoid a crash since about 2008.
The only thing keeping things so high is insanely low interest rates which may not be achievable if inflation actually does take off.
Both were obviously negatives last time round, I lean towards thinking Corbyn was the bigger factor. Not sure the polling enables you to disentangle Corbyn from Brexit though, because Corbyn's embrace of ref 2 is surely part of why some people weren't happy with him.
What is clear is that neither Owen Jones nor Peter Mandelson are prepared to accept that they got their analysis wrong. Starmer, I sense, has recognised both errors.
Anyway -> that's looking to the past. In the future, agree with Mike that Starmer's position isn't actually too bad. The central thing is we need a Starmer as PM instead of Boris Johnson. That looks possible, although I'd be happier to see Labour leads in the polls.
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
Day 9 of a petrol panic is not the best time to suggest the government has very much control over markets. What it does with housing is to fan the flames - stamp duty holidays routinely increase prices 20x as much as the SD savings - which ultimately makes things worse.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
Of all the major forms of goods transport, rail is by far the most likely to be the first to shift to automated driving. Rail traffic control is already very strictly governed by a huge body of complex safety rules (not dissimilar from air traffic control), which computers are great at storing, interpreting and implementing, while many humans struggle (tiredness, loss of focus, poor memory especially in unusual situations, laziness, short-cut taking etc etc).
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
It looks like Islamic extremists may have succeeded in murdering the Swedish artist Lars Vilks at the third attempt. The Swedish state media outlets and police are trying to stay neutral, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the motorway accident where Vilks and his two plain-clothes protection officers died in their unmarked police car was “illogical”, to quote the SR reporter on the spot. The HGV driver is seriously injured, but will hopefully be able to give a witness account.
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
Is he a liar? Yes. A prolific one. We have absolute proof of this Is he incompetent? Yes, with multiple examples of the man not having a clue about detail Is he shameless? Absolutely. Is he politically a smash hit? Oh yes. He manages to get himself in the right place at the right time. Won London twice - a Labour city. Bet on the winning horse at the referendum. Survived being fired for being a shit foreign secretary to then land the top job. Won an 80 seat election whilst betting the farm on a pair of 4s.
This is why the mouth foamers in Labour don't get anywhere. Yes it is easy to call Beaker names or point to his endless stupid gaffs. But he is a prolific winner. There is something about him which protects him from political norms as any other politician would have been killed and buried in a political shallow grave for what he has done.
It does raise the question why voters go for leaders with antisocial personality traits - the inability to tell right from wrong, lies from the truth; lack of empathy; making stuff up on the hoof; disregard for process and rules; poor management of money. These are the traits you shouldn't want in your leaders.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
Corrections happen sometimes. Letting things fester like they are now is shit idea for those looking to get on the ladder and eventually people are going to react and say enough is enough.
To take the example of someone who bought a £300k property then its declined to £250k then if they're 5+ years into their mortgage repayments then they're unlikely to be in that much if any negative equity.
It will be a loss for those who want equity in their property investment but less of an issue for those who want a home to live in.
Your precise phrase was “we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity”
Which is an unbelievable crap idea even on the @Philip_Thompson scale of crap hobbyhorses
Your example of someone having paid off £30k of principal plus interest in 5 years is very unlikely. Assuming a 10% deposit (itself £30k) and - for simplicity - 2% interest on the £270k mortgage they will have paid £57k in interest and principal over 5 years. Let’s say £12k a year.
Working on the basis that it shouldn’t be more than 40% of net income that means a net income of £30k or about £45-50k gross.
So effectively you would be saying to a couple each earning the median wage “bad luck, shouldn’t matter that all your hard work has been wiped out and your savings eliminated. May be you should have rented and then someone else would have had all the worry”
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
The problem with that argument is that the Government has been manipulating the market to avoid a crash since about 2008.
The only thing keeping things so high is insanely low interest rates which may not be achievable if inflation actually does take off.
Thing is, how many journalists understand monetary policy? If inflation stays high or worse, will they start asking the BoE awkward questions? I'm not so sure. After all, it's not the government's responsibility, which makes for an interesting dynamic.
Also, those journalists who do understand monetary policy may keep their gobs shut. I think safe to assume that a lot of journalists have fairly sizeable mortgages.
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
The start of all this is artificial super low interest rates. Now in place for well over a decade. The reason for them is so that governments can borrow for free, but the effect is that borrowers can do the same. Which of course raises house prices, and other things you can borrow securely to purchase.
Asset holders like high values. Existing low interest borrowers like low interest rates. The victims are: cautious savers, mostly older, and non asset holders who would like, not unreasonably, to own a house as an asset to live in.
In much of the north this is currently tolerable. In London and SE it looks intolerable.
The status quo just about keeps the Tories in the lead, probably on the basis that any other government will handle it worse.
I can see no change which would not be economically and politically catastrophic. Equally the status quo cannot, under the laws of gravity, remain in place for ever. It relies on: low inflation, zero interest rates, unaffordable house prices in the south, government debt rising to over 3 tn, BoE conjuring tricks over QE and gilts and the mysterious gift of confidence in the total system.
Which is why there is, IMHO, around a 40% chance that a non Tory will be PM after the next election, whose name is probably SKS.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
The future is here, just unevenly distributed.
That is especially true of technology where a lot of things already exist but aren't practical just yet but in 3-5 years time as processor speeds continue to improve...
That still won't be enough to solve the problem of self driving cars though.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
I’m on my phone so can’t look at the stats but would be surprised if wages have to double or triple outside London.
But we are looking at a 10 year+ adjustment for this to be a soft landing, you are right.
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
I don't see how a house price crash is stopped artificially.
If inflation leads to interest rate rises which leads to mortgage defaults, basic supply and demand suggests house prices fall.
I am not sure how inflation can be controlled on the back of Sunak's fiscal policy to date. Now, interest rates can be controlled by government assuming the BoE isn't as independent as we are lead to believe.
I am not so sure (since the fuel crisis) as I once was, "it is the economy, stupid". The economy may crash, but this government can ride the storm with some astute cynical politicking. Polling has already suggested the last Labour Government (from 11 years ago) were almost equally to blame as the current one for the fuel crisis. Dowden's speech last night went big on woke and the causes of woke, and Johnson, despite inviting in EU truckers, is in his next breath waging war on low paid foreign workers (also inflationary). If re-election is the only target, that's the way to go.
Mr. Dickson, sad to hear that he was likely murdered over a cartoon.
I'm sure 'Je suis Charlie' will be on a few politicians' lips, until the headlines fade and we go back to craven appeasement (cf Batley Grammar School).
There is a lot of soul searching going on in Sweden today. The state and especially the art community treated Vilks like shit. He was effectively ostracised.
Re all the inflation stuff and rising interest rates etc.
The biggest driver of inflation at the moment is China - in its demands for raw materials, shipping freight etc etc. That makes hiking interest rates to stop inflation incredibly self-destructive and, more to the point, useless because it will have no influence on what the Chinese do.
It is why this inflation "crisis" is different from previous ones - it is the first time in the modern world that one global behemoth which, crucially, does its own thing and where the normal rules of free market trade do not apply, is the catalyst for the rise.
Actually, this is similar to 2011. The spike in oil prices led to inflation and the BoE did nothing for the reasons you give. What annoyed me is that the BoE had their cake and ate it. In 2014-15 when oil prices fell sharply and suppressed inflation, the BoE decided to keep rates low because inflation was low.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
Is he a liar? Yes. A prolific one. We have absolute proof of this Is he incompetent? Yes, with multiple examples of the man not having a clue about detail Is he shameless? Absolutely. Is he politically a smash hit? Oh yes. He manages to get himself in the right place at the right time. Won London twice - a Labour city. Bet on the winning horse at the referendum. Survived being fired for being a shit foreign secretary to then land the top job. Won an 80 seat election whilst betting the farm on a pair of 4s.
This is why the mouth foamers in Labour don't get anywhere. Yes it is easy to call Beaker names or point to his endless stupid gaffs. But he is a prolific winner. There is something about him which protects him from political norms as any other politician would have been killed and buried in a political shallow grave for what he has done.
It does raise the question why voters go for leaders with antisocial personality traits - the inability to tell right from wrong, lies from the truth; lack of empathy; making stuff up on the hoof; disregard for process and rules; poor management of money. These are the traits you shouldn't want in your leaders.
Trump is the same.
You are correct, but these types of personalities are superficially attractive so it shouldn't be surprising. Actually the bigger question is how did John Major win and how do you replicate getting a dull person to win.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Exactly this.
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
Inflation would feed through to asset price inflation. You can’t just say “assuming it doesn’t”.
It’s really very simple: you need real house prices to grow at less than real wages for an extended period. Best would be decent real wage growth and flat nominal house prices.
Consumer price Inflation is about eroding the real value of debt, not impacting the house price/wage multiple. Also May be necessary but probably counterproductive in solving the housing issue
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
Day 9 of a petrol panic is not the best time to suggest the government has very much control over markets. What it does with housing is to fan the flames - stamp duty holidays routinely increase prices 20x as much as the SD savings - which ultimately makes things worse.
The pandemic stamp duty holiday, at a time of increased demand for larger homes, was with hindsight nonsensical. It was a great opportunity for the government to increase revenues at an otherwise difficult time.
That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
Yes, as I speculated a couple of threads back, it may be that the Mayor and Home Secretary are counting on Cressida Dick to enact other reforms with a view to enhancing both crime prevention and detection.
Perhaps Johnson and Patel see her as supportive in their move towards a permanent dictatorship. After all, Dick's record does not show her to be overwhelmingly concerned with the rights of the individual.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
It's the responsibility of the company to run their business profitably, not to sort out system issues. Given they flagged up the issues to government months ago with proposed measures and the government chose to ignore them and insult them at the same time, I struggle to see where they failed to meet their responsibilities.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
There is a large number on PB who refuse to believe that there was any petrol shortage and it was all project fire.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
Yes. This deserves the widest audience. A system where all sorts of activities are built around ways of life being good enough for Johnny foreigner but not good enough for us is the sort of attitude you may expect from Saudi Arabia or Hampstead, but is absolutely unworthy of a nation with some self respect.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
But don't forget the increase in house-to-income ratios preceded the fall in interest rates, it didn't follow it.
So unless the underlying supply and demand issues are fixed, the ratios will remain crazy even when interest rates rise again.
Exactly. It's a multiplication. We're moving from a high house price to income ratio times a modest interest payment to the same times a much higher interest payment. Those mortgages will be unaffordable, even if inflation has the beneficial effect of reducing house prices in real terms.
Because mortgage rates have been so low the increase in monthly payments will oversized. Average mortgage payment rates at the moment I think are 2% or so. If they go up to 5%, which is likely, monthly payments will double.
It will be brutal.
It’s why I fixed for 7 years at 1.49% earlier this year
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
Yet Microsoft invested $8.5bn cash to buy Skype, the pioneer of mass-market video calling, and spent a decade making it worse - so when the necessity arose, other platforms (Apple, Cisco, Zoom) were by far the most popular. MS’s offering, Teams, was not based on Skype and was stil the least preferred solution.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Exactly this.
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
Inflation would feed through to asset price inflation. You can’t just say “assuming it doesn’t”.
It’s really very simple: you need real house prices to grow at less than real wages for an extended period. Best would be decent real wage growth and flat nominal house prices.
Consumer price Inflation is about eroding the real value of debt, not impacting the house price/wage multiple. Also May be necessary but probably counterproductive in solving the housing issue
The best way to achieve that would be to increase house construction in the areas where it is unaffordable.
Difficult in London but easier in southern England generally.
So here's a suggestion - any business which wants to import workers has to fund an equivalent number of houses.
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
Day 9 of a petrol panic is not the best time to suggest the government has very much control over markets. What it does with housing is to fan the flames - stamp duty holidays routinely increase prices 20x as much as the SD savings - which ultimately makes things worse.
The pandemic stamp duty holiday, at a time of increased demand for larger homes, was with hindsight nonsensical. It was a great opportunity for the government to increase revenues at an otherwise difficult time.
Perhaps it is because competence is boring. "Everything is fine!" does not sell newspapers, or garner clicks, or create talk down the pub/coffee house.
"By 'eck, Jeremiah, I was just thinking the other day, there's nowt wrong." "Indeed, Samuel, there isn't." (Crickets chirp)
Looking at the prospect of a house price collapse, the gov't won't allow it to happen. It will do all in its power to prevent it. If it fails and it happens anyway (which is not completely impossible), it will lose the next election, badly.
Day 9 of a petrol panic is not the best time to suggest the government has very much control over markets. What it does with housing is to fan the flames - stamp duty holidays routinely increase prices 20x as much as the SD savings - which ultimately makes things worse.
The pandemic stamp duty holiday, at a time of increased demand for larger homes, was with hindsight nonsensical. It was a great opportunity for the government to increase revenues at an otherwise difficult time.
It was nonsensical even without hindsight.
There was an argument, that it might have stopped the market gumming up completely, but they should have cancelled it last summer, when it became clear the market had quickly returned to normal.
That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
Yes, as I speculated a couple of threads back, it may be that the Mayor and Home Secretary are counting on Cressida Dick to enact other reforms with a view to enhancing both crime prevention and detection.
Perhaps Johnson and Patel see her as supportive in their move towards a permanent dictatorship. After all, Dick's record does not show her to be overwhelmingly concerned with the rights of the individual.
Good morning
I would just say that we have GE24 which gives you and HMG opponents the opportunity to change the government for one of your choosing
The only caveat is is that you have to put forward a programme for government that the public vote for and so far, despite lots of anger and fury, it seems it is not working but you do have time so maybe make a start by clearly stating that rejoining the EU is the no 1 objective
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
Yet Microsoft invested $8.5bn cash to buy Skype, and spend a decade making it worse - so when the necessity arose, other platforms (Apple, Cisco, Zoom) were by far the most popular. MS’s offering, Teams, was not based on Skype and was stil the least preferred solution.
True. But show Skype/Teams to the 22-year old me, back in 1995, and I've have been flabberghasted. It may be poor compared to its competitors now, but it's amazing from that perspective. What was the nearest thing to it back in the mid-nineties? Lotus Notes?
And as it would have shown me the direction of travel, probably much, much richer today.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
Yes. This deserves the widest audience. A system where all sorts of activities are built around ways of life being good enough for Johnny foreigner but not good enough for us is the sort of attitude you may expect from Saudi Arabia or Hampstead, but is absolutely unworthy of a nation with some self respect.
Your point about expecting it from Hampstead is why it won't get the widest audience. Many of those who set the public agenda benefit from such low-cost labour in terms of cleaners, baristas etc.
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
Is he a liar? Yes. A prolific one. We have absolute proof of this Is he incompetent? Yes, with multiple examples of the man not having a clue about detail Is he shameless? Absolutely. Is he politically a smash hit? Oh yes. He manages to get himself in the right place at the right time. Won London twice - a Labour city. Bet on the winning horse at the referendum. Survived being fired for being a shit foreign secretary to then land the top job. Won an 80 seat election whilst betting the farm on a pair of 4s.
This is why the mouth foamers in Labour don't get anywhere. Yes it is easy to call Beaker names or point to his endless stupid gaffs. But he is a prolific winner. There is something about him which protects him from political norms as any other politician would have been killed and buried in a political shallow grave for what he has done.
It does raise the question why voters go for leaders with antisocial personality traits - the inability to tell right from wrong, lies from the truth; lack of empathy; making stuff up on the hoof; disregard for process and rules; poor management of money. These are the traits you shouldn't want in your leaders.
Trump is the same.
The poor old voter can only choose between at most two candidates for PM. These are decided internally by a party process. It is there, in the MPs and party membership, you need to send the psychoanalysts to report back.
Boris is a special case. He is a political genius and, in the public mind, the only person who could 'Get Brexit Done.
IMHO SKS is in general an excellent profile to be PM. But lacks the one magic ingredient - the one which last week would have got the crowd and the nation laughing at the hecklers instead of (dangerously) feeling a bit sorry for decent old SKS.
Which is why, if he becomes PM, it will be at the head of a rainbow alliance and not in his own right.
Re all the inflation stuff and rising interest rates etc.
The biggest driver of inflation at the moment is China - in its demands for raw materials, shipping freight etc etc. That makes hiking interest rates to stop inflation incredibly self-destructive and, more to the point, useless because it will have no influence on what the Chinese do.
It is why this inflation "crisis" is different from previous ones - it is the first time in the modern world that one global behemoth which, crucially, does its own thing and where the normal rules of free market trade do not apply, is the catalyst for the rise.
Actually, this is similar to 2011. The spike in oil prices led to inflation and the BoE did nothing for the reasons you give. What annoyed me is that the BoE had their cake and ate it. In 2014-15 when oil prices fell sharply and suppressed inflation, the BoE decided to keep rates low because inflation was low.
Yes, the 2011 analogy is a good one and probably why Banks don't want to jack up the rates now.
The elephant in the room, and why the BoE and the Fed, didn't put up interest rates in 2015 is that many mortgaged households would have been unable to cope if interest rates had risen even by 1-2%. Now, it might be this time that increasing wages at the lower end particularly persuades the Central Banks that consumers can now take the point. I doubt that though (and the politicians will keep demanding cheap money).
Mr. Dickson, sad to hear that he was likely murdered over a cartoon.
I'm sure 'Je suis Charlie' will be on a few politicians' lips, until the headlines fade and we go back to craven appeasement (cf Batley Grammar School).
There is a lot of soul searching going on in Sweden today. The state and especially the art community treated Vilks like shit. He was effectively ostracised.
Yes but will something be done or will it be, as Morris said, back to normal?
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Reducing staffing levels and automating some care is the key to getting higher output in the NHS for the same money because most of the cost of the NHS is accounted for by salaries.
However, that will be resisted every step of the way with lots of strikes - and oodles of public sympathy - because NHS workers are fetishized and lionised.
We'd rather keep our religious beliefs about it intact than save more lives.
Comments
Has she got something on them? Do they genuinely think she's the best person for an undeniably tough role? Are her known mistakes outweighed by unpublicised victories? Is she just a canny political operator? Is she a convenient scapegoat? All of the above?
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
Sounds like the banks simply kicking the can down the road.
He’s a leftie (don’t know about party)
Tories just (quietly) taking notes, then. 😊
To take the example of someone who bought a £300k property then its declined to £250k then if they're 5+ years into their mortgage repayments then they're unlikely to be in that much if any negative equity.
It will be a loss for those who want equity in their property investment but less of an issue for those who want a home to live in.
Water down the cgt exemption
So unless the underlying supply and demand issues are fixed, the ratios will remain crazy even when interest rates rise again.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Not sure the core pensioner vote would be as keen, though.
IS BORIS JOHNSON A LIAR?
And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
He is both the most underrated and overrated politician I’ve come across: dismissed as unserious by many, even after he has outmaneuvered them. In Paris, he remains a figure of bemused disdain, despite spending the past six months quietly working with the U.S. and Australia to steal the “contract of the century” from France.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/10/boris-johnson/620269/
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
1. Make sure she is only doing nursing, and not other work which could be done by someone less qualified and lower-paid
2. Invest in capital equipment, for example patient monitors and alarms, which allows her to more effectively allocate her time.
In practice, your credit takes a catastrophic hit, but I'm sure there is something satisfying about screwing over a bank.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Best get off to work, where staff shortages are a major drag on my own productivity!
The BBC report sets out the bald facts, along with Mr Amersi's denials of wrongdoing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58783460
I don't really see how it is a smear.
A slow real decline is the least worst way out of the problem - and if prices stay flat as inflation spikes, that may be no bad thing.
Is he incompetent? Yes, with multiple examples of the man not having a clue about detail
Is he shameless? Absolutely.
Is he politically a smash hit? Oh yes. He manages to get himself in the right place at the right time. Won London twice - a Labour city. Bet on the winning horse at the referendum. Survived being fired for being a shit foreign secretary to then land the top job. Won an 80 seat election whilst betting the farm on a pair of 4s.
This is why the mouth foamers in Labour don't get anywhere. Yes it is easy to call Beaker names or point to his endless stupid gaffs. But he is a prolific winner. There is something about him which protects him from political norms as any other politician would have been killed and buried in a political shallow grave for what he has done.
My preferred solution is inflation + flattish prices > crash > status quo.
From a fairness perspective I think the disruption and pain it would cause to many is justified simply because even more are excluded or over paying for housing currently. From a political perspective it makes no sense for the government to try and make it happen though. Sooner or later it will happen whether the incumbant government wants it to or not, it is a bubble.
If we had a good mechanism for flat house prices and moderate wage inflation that would be ideal, but we don't, and even if we did a government would not stick to it and would throw in some house price inflationary schemes whenever the opposition get closer.
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
It will be brutal.
The biggest driver of inflation at the moment is China - in its demands for raw materials, shipping freight etc etc. That makes hiking interest rates to stop inflation incredibly self-destructive and, more to the point, useless because it will have no influence on what the Chinese do.
It is why this inflation "crisis" is different from previous ones - it is the first time in the modern world that one global behemoth which, crucially, does its own thing and where the normal rules of free market trade do not apply, is the catalyst for the rise.
This can be for inside hospitals (e.g. see the stuff Sensium and others are doing), or outside. An issue is overwhelming healthcare with false positives: ML and other techniques can help personalise the data: e.g. if your 'natural' heart rate is a little faster or slower than your cohort. Or even how it varies over the day.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/covid-byproduct-smartwatch-increasingly-illness-detector
An example is using smartwatch data to detect covid infection *before* it becomes symptomatic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6
I can see this being revolutionary in healthcare. And if anyone ever manages what Theranos promised, particularly if we can get them into every GP surgery, or even home ...
However in all your posts you do seem to want to wrap up the conservatives in cotton wool. Are you going to post the same next time there is a potential labour scandal?
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
Which is roughly where we came in.
It looks like Islamic extremists may have succeeded in murdering the Swedish artist Lars Vilks at the third attempt. The Swedish state media outlets and police are trying to stay neutral, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the motorway accident where Vilks and his two plain-clothes protection officers died in their unmarked police car was “illogical”, to quote the SR reporter on the spot. The HGV driver is seriously injured, but will hopefully be able to give a witness account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
I'm sure 'Je suis Charlie' will be on a few politicians' lips, until the headlines fade and we go back to craven appeasement (cf Batley Grammar School).
The only thing keeping things so high is insanely low interest rates which may not be achievable if inflation actually does take off.
What is clear is that neither Owen Jones nor Peter Mandelson are prepared to accept that they got their analysis wrong. Starmer, I sense, has recognised both errors.
Anyway -> that's looking to the past. In the future, agree with Mike that Starmer's position isn't actually too bad. The central thing is we need a Starmer as PM instead of Boris Johnson. That looks possible, although I'd be happier to see Labour leads in the polls.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
https://twitter.com/NetworkRailSCOT/status/1444641633564168196
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
Trump is the same.
Which is an unbelievable crap idea even on the @Philip_Thompson scale of crap hobbyhorses
Your example of someone having paid off £30k of principal plus interest in 5 years is very unlikely. Assuming a 10% deposit (itself £30k) and - for simplicity - 2% interest on the £270k mortgage they will have paid £57k in interest and principal over 5 years. Let’s say £12k a year.
Working on the basis that it shouldn’t be more than 40% of net income that means a net income of £30k or about £45-50k gross.
So effectively you would be saying to a couple each earning the median wage “bad luck, shouldn’t matter that all your hard work has been wiped out and your savings eliminated. May be you should have rented and then someone else would have had all the worry”
Also, those journalists who do understand monetary policy may keep their gobs shut. I think safe to assume that a lot of journalists have fairly sizeable mortgages.
Asset holders like high values. Existing low interest borrowers like low interest rates. The victims are: cautious savers, mostly older, and non asset holders who would like, not unreasonably, to own a house as an asset to live in.
In much of the north this is currently tolerable. In London and SE it looks intolerable.
The status quo just about keeps the Tories in the lead, probably on the basis that any other government will handle it worse.
I can see no change which would not be economically and politically catastrophic. Equally the status quo cannot, under the laws of gravity, remain in place for ever. It relies on: low inflation, zero interest rates, unaffordable house prices in the south, government debt rising to over 3 tn, BoE conjuring tricks over QE and gilts and the mysterious gift of confidence in the total system.
Which is why there is, IMHO, around a 40% chance that a non Tory will be PM after the next election, whose name is probably SKS.
That is especially true of technology where a lot of things already exist but aren't practical just yet but in 3-5 years time as processor speeds continue to improve...
That still won't be enough to solve the problem of self driving cars though.
But we are looking at a 10 year+ adjustment for this to be a soft landing, you are right.
If inflation leads to interest rate rises which leads to mortgage defaults, basic supply and demand suggests house prices fall.
I am not sure how inflation can be controlled on the back of Sunak's fiscal policy to date. Now, interest rates can be controlled by government assuming the BoE isn't as independent as we are lead to believe.
I am not so sure (since the fuel crisis) as I once was, "it is the economy, stupid". The economy may crash, but this government can ride the storm with some astute cynical politicking. Polling has already suggested the last Labour Government (from 11 years ago) were almost equally to blame as the current one for the fuel crisis. Dowden's speech last night went big on woke and the causes of woke, and Johnson, despite inviting in EU truckers, is in his next breath waging war on low paid foreign workers (also inflationary). If re-election is the only target, that's the way to go.
Oh, and we are in the mood for scapegoats.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
https://exbulletin.com/world/international/1041086/
It’s really very simple: you need real house prices to grow at less than real wages for an extended period. Best would be decent real wage growth and flat nominal house prices.
Consumer price Inflation is about eroding the real value of debt, not impacting the house price/wage multiple. Also May be necessary but probably counterproductive in solving the housing issue
Difficult in London but easier in southern England generally.
So here's a suggestion - any business which wants to import workers has to fund an equivalent number of houses.
Perhaps it is because competence is boring. "Everything is fine!" does not sell newspapers, or garner clicks, or create talk down the pub/coffee house.
"By 'eck, Jeremiah, I was just thinking the other day, there's nowt wrong."
"Indeed, Samuel, there isn't."
(Crickets chirp)
I would just say that we have GE24 which gives you and HMG opponents the opportunity to change the government for one of your choosing
The only caveat is is that you have to put forward a programme for government that the public vote for and so far, despite lots of anger and fury, it seems it is not working but you do have time so maybe make a start by clearly stating that rejoining the EU is the no 1 objective
At least that would be honest
And as it would have shown me the direction of travel, probably much, much richer today.
Boris is a special case. He is a political genius and, in the public mind, the only person who could 'Get Brexit Done.
IMHO SKS is in general an excellent profile to be PM. But lacks the one magic ingredient - the one which last week would have got the crowd and the nation laughing at the hecklers instead of (dangerously) feeling a bit sorry for decent old SKS.
Which is why, if he becomes PM, it will be at the head of a rainbow alliance and not in his own right.
He went from harmless old cuddly Trot Grandpa to a clear and present danger to the UK in the eyes of the voters.
I think every political party/leader in the Commons said it was Russia whereas Corbyn was nah.
IIRC Keiran Pedley has a piece/twitter thread on it.
People often ask what impact Corbyn’s response to the Skripal poisoning had on his ratings.
Here are his net satisfaction ratings in 2018. Poisoning happened in March.
2018
Jan -11
March -15
April -27
May -24
June -26
July -30
Sept -42
Oct - 31
Dec -32
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1300880341570379776
Remember 1974.
https://twitter.com/neildrewitt/status/1444929021914099719
It is amusing to see ministers this week claiming "we don't want to intervene in the market" and "we can't wave a magic wand"
A wave on the magic wand of Brexit caused the greatest market intervention in a century...
The elephant in the room, and why the BoE and the Fed, didn't put up interest rates in 2015 is that many mortgaged households would have been unable to cope if interest rates had risen even by 1-2%. Now, it might be this time that increasing wages at the lower end particularly persuades the Central Banks that consumers can now take the point. I doubt that though (and the politicians will keep demanding cheap money).
We could do with some research as to how different areas were affected.
To me there seems to be a very close correlation to an area's housing affordability and its supply fragility.
However, that will be resisted every step of the way with lots of strikes - and oodles of public sympathy - because NHS workers are fetishized and lionised.
We'd rather keep our religious beliefs about it intact than save more lives.