There is an extraordinary possibility that we shall see this player hit the jackpot as a teenager exactly once and never again, which would be sad but very memorable. For a parallel, does anyone remember Massie's match in 1972 at Lords? In his Test career he takes 31 wickets, 16 of them in one match.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
I’d agree with you on Corbyn. That’s not to say Some of his fellow travellers weren’t raging anti semites. But I don’t think he was. He just supports the underdog. If the Palestinian/Israeli situation was reversed he’d be supporting Israel.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
I disagree on that one; negative real interest rates is, for politicians, a very attractive path out of the mess (at least in the short term)
The EU's proposals for addressing the problems in NI are substantive & far reaching. They will effectively do away with all paperwork for goods destined for NI - instead of a border in Irish Sea, think of a “green” (NI-bound) & “red” (Single Market) lane 1/
All very sensible and reasonable from the EU side. Expect more histrionics from Frosty the no man.
The EU are coming to their senses as a direct result of Frosts hardline
Thank God the brilliant Lord Frost is here to save us from the terrible deal negotiated by that idiot Lord Frost.
The brilliant Lord Frost is able to win these negotiations because of the wisdom of his predecessor Lord Frost in negotiating in Article 16 into the Protocol.
He put the trap in and the EU walked blindly into it. Fantastic negotiations.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Probably true, but then again they wouldn’t have voted for Corbyn, either.
Absolutely. And the flag-waving racist will always beat the flag-burning one. What does stick in the throat a bit is the sheer hypocrisy you see on both sides that denies the racism of the one while deploring the racism of the other. It's almost as if racism isn't really that big a deal when your side does it.
What was all that nonsense you were posting on Twitter yesterday about below the line big shifts in the polling? Surely you’d look at previous polls before declaring non existent ‘big changes’
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
I disagree on that one; negative real interest rates is, for politicians, a very attractive path out of the mess (at least in the short term)
Yes, but negative interest at -5% is something else compared to -1%.
Not least because the spur to spend those devaluing savings fuels further inflation.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Probably true, but then again they wouldn’t have voted for Corbyn, either.
Absolutely. And the flag-waving racist will always beat the flag-burning one. What does stick in the throat a bit is the sheer hypocrisy you see on both sides that denies the racism of the one while deploring the racism of the other. It's almost as if racism isn't really that big a deal when your side does it.
What was all that nonsense you were posting on Twitter yesterday about below the line big shifts in the polling? Surely you’d look at previous polls before declaring non existent ‘big changes’
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Probably true, but then again they wouldn’t have voted for Corbyn, either.
Absolutely. And the flag-waving racist will always beat the flag-burning one. What does stick in the throat a bit is the sheer hypocrisy you see on both sides that denies the racism of the one while deploring the racism of the other. It's almost as if racism isn't really that big a deal when your side does it.
What was all that nonsense you were posting on Twitter yesterday about below the line big shifts in the polling? Surely you’d look at previous polls before declaring non existent ‘big changes’
The EU's proposals for addressing the problems in NI are substantive & far reaching. They will effectively do away with all paperwork for goods destined for NI - instead of a border in Irish Sea, think of a “green” (NI-bound) & “red” (Single Market) lane 1/
All very sensible and reasonable from the EU side. Expect more histrionics from Frosty the no man.
The EU are coming to their senses as a direct result of Frosts hardline
Thank God the brilliant Lord Frost is here to save us from the terrible deal negotiated by that idiot Lord Frost.
The brilliant Lord Frost is able to win these negotiations because of the wisdom of his predecessor Lord Frost in negotiating in Article 16 into the Protocol.
He put the trap in and the EU walked blindly into it. Fantastic negotiations.
Never change, Philip.
I've no reason to change. I'm about to be proven to have been right all along it seems.
I was the one insisting all along that A16 was a great idea, that A16 should be invoked/threatened. I was the one insisting all along no border in the Irish Sea, no dynamic alignment and no land border.
You lot kept saying that was "impossible" and now its happening you are grasping at straws rather than admitting you were wrong.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
It is quite ironic though that in 2018 face coverings were dehumanising and in 2020 compulsory. Covid was a very inclusive way of making orthodox Muslim women feel at home 🤣
As masks come off, I do notice how many men have grown rather unkempt grey beards*. One of many ways that sartorial standards have dropped since the years BC.
*not me. Being clean shaven is essential for a good FFP3 mask seal.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
Pretty sure he has said that he regrets some things he said as a journalist
Does anyone know what the process is for calling a by-election in Old Bexley & Sidcup. I am assuming it'll happen before Christmas, but does anyone know what steps there are in the process and what the expected timescales will be?
It is quite a safe seat, and a by election caused by a tragic death tends to get a sympathy vote rather than the response we see when occurring due to misdemeanours. I expect the Tory vote will be up in percentage terms, though on reduced turnout. If it even gets close then Tories should be very worried.
There is an extraordinary possibility that we shall see this player hit the jackpot as a teenager exactly once and never again, which would be sad but very memorable. For a parallel, does anyone remember Massie's match in 1972 at Lords? In his Test career he takes 31 wickets, 16 of them in one match.
I wondered about that at the time ..... the time of Raducanu's win, I mean. Fortunately for her she seems to be a sensible young woman and if it does all turn to ashes, she'll have the means, and I suspect the connections, to earn a good living outside tennis.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
It is quite ironic though that in 2018 face coverings were dehumanising and in 2020 compulsory. Covid was a very inclusive way of making orthodox Muslim women feel at home 🤣
As masks come off, I do notice how many men have grown rather unkempt grey beards*. One of many ways that sartorial standards have dropped since the years BC.
*not me. Being clean shaven is essential for a good FFP3 mask seal.
Well said.
There's a reason that I've been very anti-mask since the vaccine rollout happened. Masks were an emergency measure only, they're still dehumanising . . .
. . . although a facemask over nose and mouth is nothing like a burqa and to suggest they are comparable is like suggesting that an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini is like a burqa.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
I am old enough to remember when inflation was considered part of the sickness of economic decline.
It appears that the Johnson administration is busy removing every process and weakening every institution that could place a check on its decisions, as Ms Cyclefree explained the other day.
This leaves the Conservative Party at liberty to receive "donations" from all kinds of foreign regimes and tax dodgers. Britain and British interests are being sold off or even given away to these foreigners.
So I am not so sure how the British people will react when they realise that their heritage has been sold off by Johnson's Conservatives.
Surely there can be no heritage left to sell off? You spent all those years telling us Thatcher had, er, already sold off our heritage?
Our "heritage" gets sold off at £80bn a year. And it will continue to be so for as long as we run a deficit. Those are the facts. Suggesting that Boris or anyone else is doing this out of self interest is simply delusional. If we want British assets to stop being sold off we need to cut consumption and increase investment. I am not really sure that Boris is up for the pain that would involve.
Cut consumption or investment, you mean. Increase savings. It's the savings-investment gap that drives the current account deficit and corresponding financial account surplus (capital inflows/selling assets, however you want to call it). Personally I am fairly relaxed about the current account deficit, a lot of it is just accounting.
That is the mistake that we have made over the last 20 years. Of course a short term deficit is no longer a problem in a world of floating exchange rates and mobile capital. What we have is a massive improvement on the old fixed exchange rates where foreign exchange was an extremely limited commodity.
But the cumulative effect of these deficits over the last 20 years are horrendous. We have gone from a country that ran a significant surplus in invisibles (the income generated by our foreign investments minus the income generated here) to a major deficit. That makes our country poorer with every passing year. It means less tax to support our public services, it means a lower standard of living than we would otherwise have. We con ourselves about this by borrowing for consumption and unsecured debt is back up beyond 2008 levels. It is by far our most serious economic challenge.
I disagree. The current account deficit reflects the choices of people here and abroad to save and invest. I'm not convinced that there is a policy intervention that makes sense here. I.e. Why are these choices wrong? Plus there are accounting issues that probably make the deficit look worse than it is, eg earning returns on foreign investment via capital gains, which don't show up as a credit in the income account, rather than dividends, which do. I recall when I looked at this a few years ago that our Net International Investment Position has deteriorated a lot less than our accumulated current account deficits would suggest, which is a sign that the reported deficits are exaggerating the problem. (Although to be honest these data get revised so much - another problem - that perhaps that is no longer true). Our biggest economic problem in my view is the long tail of unproductive firms. Since more productive firms are more likely to export, then solving that problem may also "fix" the problem you see with the current account deficit, of course. Raising barriers to exporting, as Brexit has done, will tend to make the problem of low productivity firms worse.
I could choose to spend £1000 a week on high class wine. But there would be consequences as my assets diminished and the money for everything else was no longer available. Choices have consequences, that is a basic fact of life.
The policy mix needed to improve our balance of payments is quite complicated but it is necessary. We need to encourage saving, we need to discourage consumption, we need to eliminate (over time) the deficit run by the government on public spending, we need to encourage domestic substitution and build mutually supportive industries and businesses in the way that London has done so spectacularly in services. We need to encourage growth outside London by reducing bottlenecks and disincentives generated by poor infrastructure. We need to focus our education more on employability. We need to massively increase apprenticeships and boost productivity. We see strands of much of this in government policy and indeed in Boris's speech but the urgency and scale seem to me to be lacking.
We will never see that under the Tories for certain, they are too busy filling theirs and their chums pockets and the alternatives are just as bad for other reasons.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
I am old enough to remember when inflation was considered part of the sickness of economic decline.
The worry is inflation at a time of labour shortages. Once inflation starts feeding through into pay rates and back into prices, you have a vicious circle.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
I am old enough to remember when inflation was considered part of the sickness of economic decline.
We didn't have as much debt then. And I am not talking about 20% inflation either.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Probably true, but then again they wouldn’t have voted for Corbyn, either.
Absolutely. And the flag-waving racist will always beat the flag-burning one. What does stick in the throat a bit is the sheer hypocrisy you see on both sides that denies the racism of the one while deploring the racism of the other. It's almost as if racism isn't really that big a deal when your side does it.
What was all that nonsense you were posting on Twitter yesterday about below the line big shifts in the polling? Surely you’d look at previous polls before declaring non existent ‘big changes’
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
There is an extraordinary possibility that we shall see this player hit the jackpot as a teenager exactly once and never again, which would be sad but very memorable. For a parallel, does anyone remember Massie's match in 1972 at Lords? In his Test career he takes 31 wickets, 16 of them in one match.
I wondered about that at the time ..... the time of Raducanu's win, I mean. Fortunately for her she seems to be a sensible young woman and if it does all turn to ashes, she'll have the means, and I suspect the connections, to earn a good living outside tennis.
she will make so much in next couple of years regardless that the least of her worries , she will be earning huge money , more likely to be how could she spend it all in one lifetime.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
Ye gods, for a libertarian that's a bit rich. You say that the burqa "does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers". It really, really doesn't, does it? Letter box? Bank robber? Look again at a red letter box. It's a bit of poetic licence by Boris, but I don't think he meant it to be taken as literally as you do.
To me, the burqa makes people who wear it look like conservative/traditional Muslim women.
Suffice to say that you could make similarly offensive comparisons about the garb of Hasidic Jews in north London. But even Boris wouldn't really go there, would he?
I never thought I’d see the day I read this on the BBC:
Prof Christina Pagel and Prof Martin McKee, both of whom are members of Independent Sage, a self-appointed group of experts which has been critical of the approach taken by the government, wrote in the Guardian this week about the benefits of the "vaccine-plus" approaches taken on mainland Europe.
Despite Leon's earlier hyperbole, yesterday's Germany numbers outturned at new cases 9,742 (UK 36,060) and new deaths 78 (UK 124), with the German population being 25% larger than ours.
And the absence of testing probably explains all of the discrepancy.
Since case numbers have been fairly consistent for a while its reasonable to look at the ratio of deaths to cases. In Germany its 0.8%, in the UK its 0.3%, literally half the deaths per case than Germany are seeing.
Why? Because the UK is finding more cases and Germany aren't bothering to do so. And since its "deaths within 28 days" that means more deaths simply happening in the subsequent 28 days since you've got a larger pool to potentially die. In Germany people within 28 days of the virus could be dying but not counted since they're not being detected in the first place.
Turkmenistan has no covid. People are dying of pneumonia and so on, but not from covid, because whilst they test for covid they never return any positive test results, and so they don't find any covid infections, and as a consequence nobody dies from covid in Turkmenistan. Simples.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the solution is to just pay people more or something.
Absolutely. Any overall gap in the labour market can be plugged by paying people more - it's a sure-fire way of creating more people.
I’d agree with you on Corbyn. That’s not to say Some of his fellow travellers weren’t raging anti semites. But I don’t think he was. He just supports the underdog. If the Palestinian/Israeli situation was reversed he’d be supporting Israel.
Agreed. His blind spot is that he's averse to criticising even opponents personally, let alone allies, so if dodgy characters sign up to something he supports he's extraordinarily reluctant to denounce them.
I think most of his fans accept that he probably wasn't an ideal potential PM - just too stubborn (McDonnell, a more flexible politician in both good and bad senses, would have been better) - but there's a lot of affection for him in the grass roots and if Starmer can find a way to lift the whip exclusion I think quite a few lefties would forgive quite a bit of vagueness on other subjects. My preferred method would be a blanket amnesty, welcoming back the centre-right defectors while letting JC back into the PLP. I think that could reasonably be done as a broadening of the tent in both directions.
As a corollary to @MarqueeMark post and mine does that mean that if the Tories replace Boris at any time they will lose a lot of votes that they could never get under any other circumstances. If so it makes his position very strong.
The British pubic don't strike me as having enduring gratitude to their political leaders for anything. How long will the burning intensity of the gratitude the shitmunchers feel about Brexit endure?
That is a good point, but just because that was the case in the past doesn't mean it will be the case in the future. It seems to be taking a lot longer.
In support of your point though one of the most surprising for me (being an old codger) was the Eastbourne by election after Ian Gow was murdered. I thought there would be a combination of a sympathy vote plus an anti IRA vote by the Eastbourne public and they would reinstate a Conservative MP to show they would not be bullied by terrorist acts, but the public were happy to vote in a non Conservative after such an appalling act.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
Ye gods, for a libertarian that's a bit rich. You say that the burqa "does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers". It really, really doesn't, does it. Letter box? Bank robber? Look again at a red letter box.
To me, the burqa makes people who wear it look like conservative/traditional Muslim women.
Suffice to say that you could make similarly offensive comparisons about the garb of Hasidic Jews in north London. But even Boris wouldn't really go there, would he?
I don't think you know what libertarianism is.
A libertarian can have opinions but thinks that their own opinions shouldn't be forced onto others and that others can make their own choices.
My opinion of the burqa is that it is disgusting. It is repressive, misogynistic, unenlightened and evil. It is designed to dehumanise and segregate women from society. It should have absolutely no place in a modern free and liberal society where women are as respected as men.
But I do not wish to see it banned by law.
If Hasidic Jews start compelling women to be segregated from society then I'd say the same thing. Why shouldn't you? I do not respect organised religion and will attack any organised religion or any other cult or misogynistic attitude that is so repellant and disgusting in its treatment of women or anyone else. Why don't you?
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I am not a trader but my guess is that we will not see interest rates as "high" as 0.75% before the end of next year. But the trend will be going upwards, albeit slowly. My guess on Rishi is that there will be more spending (driven by his boss) and some stealth taxes to pay for it.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
Does anyone know what the process is for calling a by-election in Old Bexley & Sidcup. I am assuming it'll happen before Christmas, but does anyone know what steps there are in the process and what the expected timescales will be?
It is quite a safe seat, and a by election caused by a tragic death tends to get a sympathy vote rather than the response we see when occurring due to misdemeanours. I expect the Tory vote will be up in percentage terms, though on reduced turnout. If it even gets close then Tories should be very worried.
I think it will be hampered by the usual battle over who's the main challenger - on paper it should be Labour and the huge London Labour army will flood in, but I'm sure the LDs (who lost their deposit in 2017 but did go up to 8% last time) will do their usual "winning here" stuff, and if we're honest neither of them are likely to win so people may as well vote for whoever they actually prefer.
On the practicalities, Commons convention is to let the party holding the seat choose, with the constraint that if they put it off for months then the other side can move the writ too. I should think it'll be either very quick to get it out of the way before Xmas, or something like February.
The EU's proposals for addressing the problems in NI are substantive & far reaching. They will effectively do away with all paperwork for goods destined for NI - instead of a border in Irish Sea, think of a “green” (NI-bound) & “red” (Single Market) lane 1/
I hope UKG accepts this offer. Call them EU surrender terms if you will, but just do it. In a bad place if we don't, which is what the rest of the thread is saying.
I have a horrible feeling Frost may trigger A16 anyway. As well as being an out and out careerist who will say anything if he thinks it makes his master happy, he comes across as being just a bit stupid. He may not be reading the situation well.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the solution is to just pay people more or something.
Yes, it is.
We covered this the other day, demand for timber has gone through the roof in the USA and people are paying whatever it takes to buy timber and as a result global prices have surged all over the planet. Americans will just pay whatever it takes to get the timber, or not trade. That is how market economics works.
People here need to make a choice: pay the global price for timber, or don't. Whinging that the price has gone up won't get you anywhere.
It appears that the Johnson administration is busy removing every process and weakening every institution that could place a check on its decisions, as Ms Cyclefree explained the other day.
This leaves the Conservative Party at liberty to receive "donations" from all kinds of foreign regimes and tax dodgers. Britain and British interests are being sold off or even given away to these foreigners.
So I am not so sure how the British people will react when they realise that their heritage has been sold off by Johnson's Conservatives.
When are you going to return the money that Michael Brown stole from pensioners and gave to the LibDems.
Yes, I know you followed all the correct procedures yada yada but take a step back. It’s STOLEN money. From PENSIONERS. Do the right thing FFS.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
Ye gods, for a libertarian that's a bit rich. You say that the burqa "does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers". It really, really doesn't, does it? Letter box? Bank robber? Look again at a red letter box. It's a bit of poetic licence by Boris, but I don't think he meant it to be taken as literally as you do.
To me, the burqa makes people who wear it look like conservative/traditional Muslim women.
Suffice to say that you could make similarly offensive comparisons about the garb of Hasidic Jews in north London. But even Boris wouldn't really go there, would he?
Was in our local hospital o/p last week, escorting/supporting wife. Two ladies came in in burquas and veils, plus a man in Afghan-style clothes. Don't know where the man and one of the ladies went, but the other sat down in the waiting area and took from under her robe a smart-looking MacBook and apparently started to work.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
These shortages and short term price spikes are the inevitable consequence of the disruption caused by Covid. We are by no means through this but I expect things to return to something more like "normal" over the next year. In particular, as Robert explained so lucidly yesterday, fracking gas from the US will once again change the energy market for the better in about 6 months.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
It's certainly the case that more restrictions remain in place in most EU countries; from my own observations people are taking precautions very seriously in Germany, a little less so in Italy (the areas I visited are likely unrepresentative anyway) and even less so in France. Given the thoroughness of the German approach, their figures are the ones to watch to see how much difference the precautions make.
I well remember last year, when the UK had a bad September (our weather was poor) while I was away in Germany and Italy and they were having a much better time of it - only for their rates to shoot up once I was back in October and their weather had turned. Whether the weather will make such a difference now that most adults are vaccinated will be key.
Anyone who thinks that treating women as second class citizens to be segregated from society is wrong but has no objection to the burqa because its related to a religion is no better whatsoever than those who belittle the abuse of children by Catholic priests because they wish to defend the Church.
Abusing women or children is wrong. I couldn't care less if that upsets religious individuals: don't abuse women or children.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Don’t worry - if they ever get sacked by Boris, Labour will remember their heritage as it becomes “Boris sacked BAME ministers”
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things. I also note that Jeremy Corbyn had very prominent Jewish backers, Jewish friends and appointed Jews to senior positions.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
It's certainly the case that more restrictions remain in place in most EU countries; from my own observations people are taking precautions very seriously in Germany, a little less so in Italy (the areas I visited are likely unrepresentative anyway) and even less so in France. Given the thoroughness of the German approach, their figures are the ones to watch to see how much difference the precautions make.
I well remember last year, when the UK had a bad September (our weather was poor) while I was away in Germany and Italy and they were having a much better time of it - only for their rates to shoot up once I was back in October and their weather had turned. Whether the weather will make such a difference now that most adults are vaccinated will be key.
It probably comes down to having good hygiene at this point. Scottish deaths are currently quarter of their peak and hospitalisations are running at half peak. English ones only lower because the peak was higher. Vaccines make a huge difference but Covid is still kicking.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the solution is to just pay people more or something.
Yes, it is.
We covered this the other day, demand for timber has gone through the roof in the USA and people are paying whatever it takes to buy timber and as a result global prices have surged all over the planet. Americans will just pay whatever it takes to get the timber, or not trade. That is how market economics works.
People here need to make a choice: pay the global price for timber, or don't. Whinging that the price has gone up won't get you anywhere.
Does anyone know what the process is for calling a by-election in Old Bexley & Sidcup. I am assuming it'll happen before Christmas, but does anyone know what steps there are in the process and what the expected timescales will be?
It is quite a safe seat, and a by election caused by a tragic death tends to get a sympathy vote rather than the response we see when occurring due to misdemeanours. I expect the Tory vote will be up in percentage terms, though on reduced turnout. If it even gets close then Tories should be very worried.
I'm certain you're right, but I was wondering about the process and the timescales.
Just wondering about betting markets. I made a prediction on the Lib Dem vote number and I was rightly challenged on it. I'd like to put my money where my mouth is. But I think the kind of bet I want to place might need me to request odds. I just want to know when to put something in my diary so I don't forget. Related, which betting companies will be the most responsive to me requesting odds on a by-election?
S markets seems very likely, now Shadsy is there.
I expect the writ will be moved quickly and the election in November. I don't think the Tories would want the sympathy to dissipate and a rival to build up a head of steam.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the solution is to just pay people more or something.
Yes, it is.
We covered this the other day, demand for timber has gone through the roof in the USA and people are paying whatever it takes to buy timber and as a result global prices have surged all over the planet. Americans will just pay whatever it takes to get the timber, or not trade. That is how market economics works.
People here need to make a choice: pay the global price for timber, or don't. Whinging that the price has gone up won't get you anywhere.
FFS, give us a break from your crass stupidity
Understanding how the market works isn't crass stupidity. It is understanding economics.
People whinging that the price of timber has gone up without bothering to look into why it has gone up: that is crass stupidity.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
I am old enough to remember when inflation was considered part of the sickness of economic decline.
In general inflation is bad for older cautious asset holders, and good for those with no assets and debt holders.
I am struggling to remember which of these groups both turns out to vote and when they do vote Tory. But I am sure it is one of them.
It is one of the biggest of the White Swans currently swimming towards Boris.
The Tory voter base likes: low debt, no inflation, regular pension increases, and decent interest rates on cash deposits.
Of those four, the first and last are out of sight, the second is becoming remote, and the third may not be enough.
The Tories are only surviving because no party can credibly offer something better than this disaster.
"Time for a change" will be the only policy that actually works for the opposition.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
It's certainly the case that more restrictions remain in place in most EU countries; from my own observations people are taking precautions very seriously in Germany, a little less so in Italy (the areas I visited are likely unrepresentative anyway) and even less so in France. Given the thoroughness of the German approach, their figures are the ones to watch to see how much difference the precautions make.
I well remember last year, when the UK had a bad September (our weather was poor) while I was away in Germany and Italy and they were having a much better time of it - only for their rates to shoot up once I was back in October and their weather had turned. Whether the weather will make such a difference now that most adults are vaccinated will be key.
It probably comes down to having good hygiene at this point. Scottish deaths are currently quarter of their peak and hospitalisations are running at half peak. English ones only lower because the peak was higher. Vaccines make a huge difference but Covid is still kicking.
Does not seem to be helping NHS, my wife has just had her telephone consultation with consultant rescheduled to end of February 2022. It is a joke, that will make it 10 months between telephone calls.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the solution is to just pay people more or something.
Yes, it is.
We covered this the other day, demand for timber has gone through the roof in the USA and people are paying whatever it takes to buy timber and as a result global prices have surged all over the planet. Americans will just pay whatever it takes to get the timber, or not trade. That is how market economics works.
People here need to make a choice: pay the global price for timber, or don't. Whinging that the price has gone up won't get you anywhere.
I believe in the free market and I often agree with you, but I find your single-minded dedication to it verges on risible idealism. You hang far too much on singular ideas and your good advocacy for free market principles is slightly spoiled as a result. In this case, you're missing the benefits of stability and slow change.
A virtue done to the detriment of all others is sin.
Agreed. The market needs to be regulated and it is the job of governments to help people adapt to change over a period rather than have everything collapse on them at once. But governments are not omnipotent and the winds of change are blowing particularly strongly right now.
The EU's proposals for addressing the problems in NI are substantive & far reaching. They will effectively do away with all paperwork for goods destined for NI - instead of a border in Irish Sea, think of a “green” (NI-bound) & “red” (Single Market) lane 1/
All very sensible and reasonable from the EU side. Expect more histrionics from Frosty the no man.
The EU are coming to their senses as a direct result of Frosts hardline
Thank God the brilliant Lord Frost is here to save us from the terrible deal negotiated by that idiot Lord Frost.
The brilliant Lord Frost is able to win these negotiations because of the wisdom of his predecessor Lord Frost in negotiating in Article 16 into the Protocol.
He put the trap in and the EU walked blindly into it. Fantastic negotiations.
I wouldn't say 6% of people in Northern Ireland who trust the UK government to do the right thing on the Northern Ireland Protocol is a huge endorsement of the Brilliant Lord Frost.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
There's racism and racism, sadly. Not to condone any variety of it, but having, let us say, laughed at a couple of Bernard Mannings jokes in one's youth, say, is not in the same league as pursuing actively racist policies as potential prime minister. Johnson has said things in print which are thoughtless and offensive, but they wouldn't on their own stop me voting for him. Other things do, though.
That's a very honest response.
Johnson says things in print that are thoughtless and offensive about all sorts of things. It was his shtick. I’m sure he has said nasty things about women and gingers and pigeon fanciers and pot bellied pig owners as well as Africans and gay people and Muslims.
And then you look at what he does.
He chases a laugh. That’s ok in a comic journalist. More troubling in a prime minister
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
Does anyone know what the process is for calling a by-election in Old Bexley & Sidcup. I am assuming it'll happen before Christmas, but does anyone know what steps there are in the process and what the expected timescales will be?
It is quite a safe seat, and a by election caused by a tragic death tends to get a sympathy vote rather than the response we see when occurring due to misdemeanours. I expect the Tory vote will be up in percentage terms, though on reduced turnout. If it even gets close then Tories should be very worried.
I think it will be hampered by the usual battle over who's the main challenger - on paper it should be Labour and the huge London Labour army will flood in, but I'm sure the LDs (who lost their deposit in 2017 but did go up to 8% last time) will do their usual "winning here" stuff, and if we're honest neither of them are likely to win so people may as well vote for whoever they actually prefer.
On the practicalities, Commons convention is to let the party holding the seat choose, with the constraint that if they put it off for months then the other side can move the writ too. I should think it'll be either very quick to get it out of the way before Xmas, or something like February.
Anecdotally I don’t see any appetite in the local / London Lib Dems to contest this seat hard. Often when a seat becomes empty if it looks like a prospect the emails and WhatsApps ramp up immediately and we get calls from London HQ to rally the troops. None of that at all. Now, this silence may very well be just a period of respectful silence after the sad news, but even then I think I’d have detected rumblings by now.
The EU's proposals for addressing the problems in NI are substantive & far reaching. They will effectively do away with all paperwork for goods destined for NI - instead of a border in Irish Sea, think of a “green” (NI-bound) & “red” (Single Market) lane 1/
All very sensible and reasonable from the EU side. Expect more histrionics from Frosty the no man.
The EU are coming to their senses as a direct result of Frosts hardline
Thank God the brilliant Lord Frost is here to save us from the terrible deal negotiated by that idiot Lord Frost.
The brilliant Lord Frost is able to win these negotiations because of the wisdom of his predecessor Lord Frost in negotiating in Article 16 into the Protocol.
He put the trap in and the EU walked blindly into it. Fantastic negotiations.
I wouldn't say 6% of people in Northern Ireland who trust the UK government to do the right thing on the Northern Ireland Protocol is a huge endorsement of the Brilliant Lord Frost.
There is no real doubt that the only available Brexit (short of the impossible no deal) was a deal which had to be accepted and then changed by operation of political forces. This is the process. It's the best that could be done.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
It's certainly the case that more restrictions remain in place in most EU countries; from my own observations people are taking precautions very seriously in Germany, a little less so in Italy (the areas I visited are likely unrepresentative anyway) and even less so in France. Given the thoroughness of the German approach, their figures are the ones to watch to see how much difference the precautions make.
I well remember last year, when the UK had a bad September (our weather was poor) while I was away in Germany and Italy and they were having a much better time of it - only for their rates to shoot up once I was back in October and their weather had turned. Whether the weather will make such a difference now that most adults are vaccinated will be key.
It probably comes down to having good hygiene at this point. Scottish deaths are currently quarter of their peak and hospitalisations are running at half peak. English ones only lower because the peak was higher. Vaccines make a huge difference but Covid is still kicking.
Does not seem to be helping NHS, my wife has just had her telephone consultation with consultant rescheduled to end of February 2022. It is a joke, that will make it 10 months between telephone calls.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the solution is to just pay people more or something.
Yes, it is.
We covered this the other day, demand for timber has gone through the roof in the USA and people are paying whatever it takes to buy timber and as a result global prices have surged all over the planet. Americans will just pay whatever it takes to get the timber, or not trade. That is how market economics works.
People here need to make a choice: pay the global price for timber, or don't. Whinging that the price has gone up won't get you anywhere.
I believe in the free market and I often agree with you, but I find your single-minded dedication to it verges on risible idealism. You hang far too much on singular ideas and your good advocacy for free market principles is slightly spoiled as a result. In this case, you're missing the benefits of stability and slow change.
A virtue done to the detriment of all others is sin.
You can't buck the market. Read DavidL's excellent article he shared and then come back and say that its "risible idealism" to realise that the market price of timber has gone up because of global conditions. 🤦♂️
What should be done? Should the government pay the difference on the global price to ensure there's been no price rise? The price has gone up, just as the price of gas has gone up, globally. This is a rebound as there'd been little demand so production halted and the price crashed and now demand has resumed faster than production has resumed. Globally.
Give it 12 months and production will be running full pelt again and the price will be lowered again. This has been explained time and again to you, but if you want to call understanding what is going on "risible" then just continue to be pig ignorant.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
It will be the other way around, they will face restrictions because not enough people built up immunity during the summer. I'd much, much rather be in our position than in any of those.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
We're still testing like we were back in the peak of the pandemic and the more you test the more cases you'll find.
I wonder if it's time to stop most of the testing except people who are sick enough to present at hospital?
I have wondered the same. I think that the reason we have not is that our government is still really working towards a form of herd immunity and need to see how far we have got. I suspect that they are relaxed and possibly even pleased that so many of us are getting a booster in the form of a mild infection and the number in hospital remains under 7k. It removes a risk factor from the winter if we have a particularly bad flu season as some are forecasting.
The rate of infection in many countries is being understated, it is probably even being understated here, but low levels of infection right now may also prove to be a serious problem in December-February. We shall see.
Mr. Observer, that sentiment might make you feel better but pretending that the current fool in Number 10 was/is as morally repugnant as Corbyn is to rewrite history.
Boris Johnson is a self-absorbed, short-termist, spendaholic buffoon. Corbyn is and was a far left lunatic. I'll take an idiot over a socialist/communist any day of the week.
Aside from the name-calling, what is it that you feared Corbyn might do and that Boris has not done?
Given nuclear secrets to our enemies.
France is not our enemy. Do you mean Russia, the country whose spies tried to recruit one recent Prime Minister and which bankrolls the Conservative Party?
Johnson is also subsidising the Russian space program by $50m/month through OneWeb while spending £140m a year on the UK Space Command to contest... er... Russia in space.
Except we’re only on the hook for a bit of that. India is now the largest shareholder.
Hanwha bought an 8.8% stake in OneWeb through its defense division Hanwha Systems, which acquired British antenna startup Phasor Solutions last year as part of its growing space ambitions.
U.K.-headquartered OneWeb expects regulatory approvals to complete the Hanwha transaction in the first half of 2022, bringing its total investment since emerging from bankruptcy protection in November to $2.7 billion.
The startup has said it only needed $2.4 billion to fund its initial constellation of 648 satellites in low Earth orbit.
It reached that in June, after Indian telecom company Bharti Global doubled its investment to $1 billion to secure what would have been a 38.6% stake before Hanwha’s announcement.
The U.K. government, French satellite operator Eutelsat and Japanese internet giant Softbank were each in line for just under 20% after making their own investments. ..
Did you see the research on using LEO satellites for positioning? With the full constellation it would be more accurate than anything planned.
Lots of interesting stuff going on, and while we’re very much in the second rank, we’re still a player. The OneWeb investment has turned out considerably better than originally feared, if only because most of the funding is coming from elsewhere.
But that’s the nature of this kind of investment. The original sponsor (in the case the government) takes a large stake at a relatively low value and then is diluted at higher prices. Most of the funding always comes from elsewhere.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Agreed completely.
Doesn't change what I said though. Rampant inflation is bad. Zero inflation is bad. Deflation is bad.
We need moderate inflation, preferably 3-5% per annum like we had in the postwar years. A couple of decades of that, like we had a couple of decades postwar, will help rapidly shrink our debts just as it did postwar.
There is no viable alternative really. Otherwise without inflation the alternative frankly is permanent austerity because our debts are just too high.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
This now recurring attempt to suggest that the fact that Boris has destroyed everyone he's been up against (and you can add Cameron & May), is a question mark for him to answer, is frankly a bit desperate. I hate the bloke, but trying to suggest he's not top tier electoral box office is laughable.
Does anyone know what the process is for calling a by-election in Old Bexley & Sidcup. I am assuming it'll happen before Christmas, but does anyone know what steps there are in the process and what the expected timescales will be?
It is quite a safe seat, and a by election caused by a tragic death tends to get a sympathy vote rather than the response we see when occurring due to misdemeanours. I expect the Tory vote will be up in percentage terms, though on reduced turnout. If it even gets close then Tories should be very worried.
I'm certain you're right, but I was wondering about the process and the timescales.
Just wondering about betting markets. I made a prediction on the Lib Dem vote number and I was rightly challenged on it. I'd like to put my money where my mouth is. But I think the kind of bet I want to place might need me to request odds. I just want to know when to put something in my diary so I don't forget. Related, which betting companies will be the most responsive to me requesting odds on a by-election?
S markets seems very likely, now Shadsy is there.
I expect the writ will be moved quickly and the election in November. I don't think the Tories would want the sympathy to dissipate and a rival to build up a head of steam.
Not sure about the sympathy vote.... see Chesham & Amersham...., and there's also the question of Christmas 'going wrong' ...... shortages and so on. If that happens, the electorate, even one very Tory inclined, could become 'ungrateful'.
Boris's polling stays high because he told people that under him, there would be no attempts to evade the will of the people, no ever more ludicrous attempts to go for a second referendum or delay delay delay until the voters magically said "OK - lets forget about Brexit".
People didn't expect a perfect Brexit. The Europhiles had spent decades sewing us into the fabric of the EEC --> EU such that it was MEANT to be impossible for us to leave. But the voters gave the Government a single, simple instruction: get us out the EU regardless. Starmer said, er, no. Boris said righto - and did.
One of the candidates for PM next time has listened to the people and done as instructed. The other did everything he could, for years, to thwart them.
Look no further for the reason Boris will win next time out.
Sadly I think you may have nailed it with that post. People talk about how useless Starmer is, but he isn't Corbyn. On top of which is the golden rule that Govt lose elections, oppositions don't win them and Boris has certainly had enough events for that rule to be confirmed and it isn't happening at all.
I think Brexit has broken that rule.
Whether remainers or leavers, whether accepting the result or not most are either pro Boris or anti Boris based on what he did on Brexit still.
In 1945 a Conservative voter was talking to his son, later an historian, about the National government in the 1930s. His son, a Labour voter, listed all the failures on rearmament, on unemployment, on social reform, on industrial development, and his father nodded agreement with all of them. Then he cut in, and “with a catch in his voice said, ‘But don’t forget, they gave us the tariff.’ There was a generation of Conservative history in his words.”
Tariff reform from 1903 to 1932 was frequently compared to the travails of the Tories over Europe from 1989 to date (E. H. H. Green and Robert Blake spring to mind). I wonder if the outcome could be similar - that it shores up the base to the extent it’s very hard for any other party to win a majority for the next 30 years except under very exceptional circumstances.
It's a different base to Thatcher's wins in the 80's. They might prove more fickle. But I suspect not at the next election, with Starmer as the alternative.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
For "Johnson is a racist" is this the best you've got?
There are more recent comments. Muslim women looking like bank robbers and letter boxes etc.
But as I said, his racism doesn't even reach the top 10 reasons that I think him unfit for public office.
A comment made in a not so serious article, comments made in a jocular manner.
I’m no fan of the PM or the Shambles of a govt but I don’t think he’s a racist and there really is little concrete to say he is.
I don't think Boris is a racist (mind you, I don't think Corbyn is either). Boris's article (2018 - so not back in the mists of time) was actually supporting the right of Muslim women to dress as they wished.
But typically, he threw it away for the giggles. Why did he choose to use the 'jocular' reference to women looking like 'letterboxes' and 'bank robbers'? For laughs, that's why. But some Muslim women found it offensive, and there was evidence of the debate provoking some racists to ridicule Muslim women in the street.
So no, Boris isn't a racist; but in 2018 some dog whistle jocularity had a real world impact. I don't think he would repeat it.
If you're trying to convince those who are leaning towards saying that the burqa should be banned that it shouldn't be (and bear in mind it has been banned in much of Europe so could have been here) then you surely talk to people in a way they can relate to not in a way that others can relate to.
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
It is quite ironic though that in 2018 face coverings were dehumanising and in 2020 compulsory. Covid was a very inclusive way of making orthodox Muslim women feel at home 🤣
As masks come off, I do notice how many men have grown rather unkempt grey beards*. One of many ways that sartorial standards have dropped since the years BC.
*not me. Being clean shaven is essential for a good FFP3 mask seal.
Well said.
There's a reason that I've been very anti-mask since the vaccine rollout happened. Masks were an emergency measure only, they're still dehumanising . . .
. . . although a facemask over nose and mouth is nothing like a burqa and to suggest they are comparable is like suggesting that an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini is like a burqa.
You need to slow down - in your frenzy you've blown that jokey analogy at the end.
Should end with ... "is like a ballgown" (or similar).
The Times this morning is really going on hard against the government. It looks coordinated.
In the first 10 pages: “gas levy gets green light” has a very (unfairly) negative take on the proposals, “employers have lost faith in inflated exam grades”, “Johnson is enjoying his party but may soon be facing g a hangover”, “factory bosses warn of closures”, “if we can’t slaughter pigs next week I won’t know what to do”.
There’s a business vs government vibe to it. The trouble is a lot of it is conflating Brexit/Covid disruptions with resistance to anything that brings us towards net zero or reduced reliance fossil fuels, which muddles the message rather.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Nobody was thrilled about 9% inflation, why would they be?
And crucially there were NO index linked gilts until 1981. Now 25% of government debt is indexed. "Inflating away debt" now creates a positive feedback loop.
The EU's proposals for addressing the problems in NI are substantive & far reaching. They will effectively do away with all paperwork for goods destined for NI - instead of a border in Irish Sea, think of a “green” (NI-bound) & “red” (Single Market) lane 1/
All very sensible and reasonable from the EU side. Expect more histrionics from Frosty the no man.
The EU are coming to their senses as a direct result of Frosts hardline
Thank God the brilliant Lord Frost is here to save us from the terrible deal negotiated by that idiot Lord Frost.
The brilliant Lord Frost is able to win these negotiations because of the wisdom of his predecessor Lord Frost in negotiating in Article 16 into the Protocol.
He put the trap in and the EU walked blindly into it. Fantastic negotiations.
I wouldn't say 6% of people in Northern Ireland who trust the UK government to do the right thing on the Northern Ireland Protocol is a huge endorsement of the Brilliant Lord Frost.
There is no real doubt that the only available Brexit (short of the impossible no deal) was a deal which had to be accepted and then changed by operation of political forces. This is the process. It's the best that could be done.
This argument is eating away at any consensus within Northern Ireland, beyond the damage of Brexit/Protocol itself. It needs to be put to bed. If these terms are workable, UKG might huff and puff - the important thing is to agree and move on.
That's before considering the possible fallout on wider UK/Europe relations.
Developers here should be done for fraud. It is a simple con. Blaming covid delays when accepting money last month and failing to provide what you promise is a pathetic excuse.
Nothing will happen to the developers, except big bonuses all around.
Although it sounds from the article that they have refunded her money and are allowing her to live on site rent free. Sub-optimal that it has overrun, of course, but the developer appears to be behaving reasonably?
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
We're still testing like we were back in the peak of the pandemic and the more you test the more cases you'll find.
I wonder if it's time to stop most of the testing except people who are sick enough to present at hospital?
No I think they do have much lower incidence, but that's a function of their policies being geared towards lowering case levels. The UK has got no NPIs in place to reduce infections which is why we get 30-40k per day. The thinking in the UK is that for every thousand people that got it over the summer it was 950 people that wouldn't get it during the winter NHS flu crisis. Over the summer we've been clocking in about 1m infections per month, 80% of which are in unvaccinated cohorts. That's about 4.5m people who now have immunity rather than getting COVID in winter when initial viral loads will be higher because of increased indoor socialising.
Getting unvaccinated people into the immunity funnel via natural infection in the summer is a much better prospect than them getting in the winter.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Nobody was thrilled about 9% inflation, why would they be?
And crucially there were NO index linked gilts until 1981. Now 25% of government debt is indexed. "Inflating away debt" now creates a positive feedback loop.
Correct me if I'm wrong but if 25% of debt is indexed, then doesn't that mean 75% of debt is not?
Deflating away 75% of debt when debt is 100% of GDP is better than deflating away 0% of it.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Agreed completely.
Doesn't change what I said though. Rampant inflation is bad. Zero inflation is bad. Deflation is bad.
We need moderate inflation, preferably 3-5% per annum like we had in the postwar years. A couple of decades of that, like we had a couple of decades postwar, will help rapidly shrink our debts just as it did postwar.
There is no viable alternative really. Otherwise without inflation the alternative frankly is permanent austerity because our debts are just too high.
No it won't, because index linking.
Once again you fall foul of the dictum that we should state everything as simply as possible but not more simply.
I’d agree with you on Corbyn. That’s not to say Some of his fellow travellers weren’t raging anti semites. But I don’t think he was. He just supports the underdog. If the Palestinian/Israeli situation was reversed he’d be supporting Israel.
Agreed. His blind spot is that he's averse to criticising even opponents personally, let alone allies, so if dodgy characters sign up to something he supports he's extraordinarily reluctant to denounce them.
I think most of his fans accept that he probably wasn't an ideal potential PM - just too stubborn (McDonnell, a more flexible politician in both good and bad senses, would have been better) - but there's a lot of affection for him in the grass roots and if Starmer can find a way to lift the whip exclusion I think quite a few lefties would forgive quite a bit of vagueness on other subjects. My preferred method would be a blanket amnesty, welcoming back the centre-right defectors while letting JC back into the PLP. I think that could reasonably be done as a broadening of the tent in both directions.
Yes that's mainly fair. Problem I have is that people have changed the goalposts over time. I don't have an issue in saying that Corbyn could have done better on the issue between 2015-18 but the discourse on the issue has been completely mad on this since 2018. I'm not convinced that Margaret Hodge really thinks that Corbyn is a raging antisemite for example and is more to do with petty personal/factional beef going back to her time as leader of Islington Council.
I'm pretty sure that Corbyn won't be allowed to stand at the next election like Williamson or Godsiff although I can't see any proper reason for personal membership expulsion and that would be grounds for a proper legal challenge.
I think restoring the whip would be a waste of time since opinions on Corbyn are so polarised particularly in the PLP and virtually no-one is going to change their mind.
Corbyn is also unlikely to stand as independent (although it can't be 100% ruled out) as he has proper loyalty to the party unlike Chris Williamson and is more comparable to Ken Livingstone in that respect.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Agreed completely.
Doesn't change what I said though. Rampant inflation is bad. Zero inflation is bad. Deflation is bad.
We need moderate inflation, preferably 3-5% per annum like we had in the postwar years. A couple of decades of that, like we had a couple of decades postwar, will help rapidly shrink our debts just as it did postwar.
There is no viable alternative really. Otherwise without inflation the alternative frankly is permanent austerity because our debts are just too high.
No it won't, because index linking.
Once again you fall foul of the dictum that we should state everything as simply as possible but not more simply.
You just implicitly stated that 75% of our debt is not index-linked.
If only 25% is index-linked, then that can be lived with while the rest is deflated.
You are being overly simplistic in thinking that just because a [small] fraction of our debt is index-linked, that nothing can be done about the rest of it.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
Supplies of ash are through the roof in Devon - because 1 in 6 trees is ash and, well, die-back is rampant.
The only issue is getting the people to fell them. They have a nasty habit of just dropping big limbs, which makes folk very wary of how to take them down.
There will be a great opportunity for anyone who wants to set up large scale nurseries of resistant strains....
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Nobody was thrilled about 9% inflation, why would they be?
And crucially there were NO index linked gilts until 1981. Now 25% of government debt is indexed. "Inflating away debt" now creates a positive feedback loop.
Correct me if I'm wrong but if 25% of debt is indexed, then doesn't that mean 75% of debt is not?
Deflating away 75% of debt when debt is 100% of GDP is better than deflating away 0% of it.
Well, no, because the linkers aren't unaffected. The sums are too difficult for me but I think it works like this
300 conventional 100 indexed
100% inflation
So you really owe only 150 in old money on the 300 debt, but the 100 becomes 200 (still really 100), so your exposure on the linkers becomes relatively larger, and you are still exposed on them.
Add indexed obligations other than gilts, e.g. pensions, and the deal really doesn't look attractive.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
We're still testing like we were back in the peak of the pandemic and the more you test the more cases you'll find.
I wonder if it's time to stop most of the testing except people who are sick enough to present at hospital?
No. The UK testing rate is nearly double that of the next closest, France, and six times Germany or Spain
Positivity - France appears to be well under control - high levels of testing, low positivity. Germany is not meeting the WHO criterion for "pandemic under control" of a rate below 5%, as relatively recently was Spain.
And on another important metric - Case Fatality Rate - the UK is doing well - suggesting that those getting infected are the least likely to die:
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
We're still testing like we were back in the peak of the pandemic and the more you test the more cases you'll find.
I wonder if it's time to stop most of the testing except people who are sick enough to present at hospital?
No. The UK testing rate is nearly double that of the next closest, France, and six times Germany or Spain
Positivity - France appears to be well under control - high levels of testing, low positivity. Germany is not meeting the WHO criterion for "pandemic under control" of a rate below 5%, as relatively recently was Spain.
Get your free test kits now. I'd expect them to start charging in the next month or two.
It appears that the Johnson administration is busy removing every process and weakening every institution that could place a check on its decisions, as Ms Cyclefree explained the other day.
This leaves the Conservative Party at liberty to receive "donations" from all kinds of foreign regimes and tax dodgers. Britain and British interests are being sold off or even given away to these foreigners.
So I am not so sure how the British people will react when they realise that their heritage has been sold off by Johnson's Conservatives.
When are you going to return the money that Michael Brown stole from pensioners and gave to the LibDems.
Yes, I know you followed all the correct procedures yada yada but take a step back. It’s STOLEN money. From PENSIONERS. Do the right thing FFS.
How did this money come to be in possession of @ClippP
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
Supplies of ash are through the roof in Devon - because 1 in 6 trees is ash and, well, die-back is rampant.
The only issue is getting the people to fell them. They have a nasty habit of just dropping big limbs, which makes folk very wary of how to take them down.
There will be a great opportunity for anyone who wants to set up large scale nurseries of resistant strains....
Ash of course can be burned green, if used for firewood.
I’d agree with you on Corbyn. That’s not to say Some of his fellow travellers weren’t raging anti semites. But I don’t think he was. He just supports the underdog. If the Palestinian/Israeli situation was reversed he’d be supporting Israel.
Agreed. His blind spot is that he's averse to criticising even opponents personally, let alone allies, so if dodgy characters sign up to something he supports he's extraordinarily reluctant to denounce them.
I think most of his fans accept that he probably wasn't an ideal potential PM - just too stubborn (McDonnell, a more flexible politician in both good and bad senses, would have been better) - but there's a lot of affection for him in the grass roots and if Starmer can find a way to lift the whip exclusion I think quite a few lefties would forgive quite a bit of vagueness on other subjects. My preferred method would be a blanket amnesty, welcoming back the centre-right defectors while letting JC back into the PLP. I think that could reasonably be done as a broadening of the tent in both directions.
I never thought Corbyn was an anti semite in fact quite the opposite. I thought he was the victim of a very devious plan by some unscrupulous people which will become clear in the months or years to come.
Having said that I never thought the accusations of anti semitism had anything to do with him not winning the election. I don't think it moved the needle one iota.
He was poison for other reasons and it's for these that I don't believe he should ever be invited back. It was a coup. He and his clique of old fashioned dinosaurs came close to wrecking the party for ever.
It might already be too late. I'm not convinced that Labour won't have to split to win again. Starmer is doing the right things but it's difficult to believe that the leaders of the putsch that put him there aren't still there. The McCluskies the Long Baileys The Pidcocks the McDonalls....Even the names send a shudder through erstwhile Labour voters.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
^THIS^
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think though that politicians and financiers are nowhere near in control of inflation, and it is rather more like riding a tiger than a dressage horse.
Nobody was thrilled about 9% inflation, why would they be?
And crucially there were NO index linked gilts until 1981. Now 25% of government debt is indexed. "Inflating away debt" now creates a positive feedback loop.
Correct me if I'm wrong but if 25% of debt is indexed, then doesn't that mean 75% of debt is not?
Deflating away 75% of debt when debt is 100% of GDP is better than deflating away 0% of it.
Well, no, because the linkers aren't unaffected. The sums are too difficult for me but I think it works like this
300 conventional 100 indexed
100% inflation
So you really owe only 150 in old money on the 300 debt, but the 100 becomes 200 (still really 100), so your exposure on the linkers becomes relatively larger, and you are still exposed on them.
Add indexed obligations other than gilts, e.g. pensions, and the deal really doesn't look attractive.
Yes your obligations on the linked ones becomes relatively larger but in real terms they're no larger and you're still far better off than you were.
Using your numbers the 100 remained 100 in real terms, the 300 became 150 in real terms. So in total the 400 became 250 in real terms. That is a 37.5% real terms reduction in debt.
Since our debt-to-GDP is around 100% of GDP then that would mean inflation alone without any other factors dropping our debt-to-GDP down to 62.5% of GDP. That is much, much healthier and gives the country breathing space.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
It's certainly the case that more restrictions remain in place in most EU countries; from my own observations people are taking precautions very seriously in Germany, a little less so in Italy (the areas I visited are likely unrepresentative anyway) and even less so in France. Given the thoroughness of the German approach, their figures are the ones to watch to see how much difference the precautions make.
I well remember last year, when the UK had a bad September (our weather was poor) while I was away in Germany and Italy and they were having a much better time of it - only for their rates to shoot up once I was back in October and their weather had turned. Whether the weather will make such a difference now that most adults are vaccinated will be key.
It probably comes down to having good hygiene at this point. Scottish deaths are currently quarter of their peak and hospitalisations are running at half peak. English ones only lower because the peak was higher. Vaccines make a huge difference but Covid is still kicking.
Does not seem to be helping NHS, my wife has just had her telephone consultation with consultant rescheduled to end of February 2022. It is a joke, that will make it 10 months between telephone calls.
That isn't good at all Malc. I've got an 'in person' consultant appointment on Thursday and I really, really hope it goes ahead. Can't walk far, or drive, at the moment.
Developers here should be done for fraud. It is a simple con. Blaming covid delays when accepting money last month and failing to provide what you promise is a pathetic excuse.
Nothing will happen to the developers, except big bonuses all around.
Although it sounds from the article that they have refunded her money and are allowing her to live on site rent free. Sub-optimal that it has overrun, of course, but the developer appears to be behaving reasonably?
Will be rather pleasant student accommodation when finished as well.
The pro-independence campaign would win a referendum if one was called tomorrow, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens has claimed.
Lorna Slater said Nicola Sturgeon was accurate when the First Minister last week insisted "I've got time on my side" as polling suggested a majority of younger Scots voters back ending the Union.
Speaking to the Record ahead of her party's autumn conference this weekend, the Green MSP said: "If Unionists want to win and have a chance of stopping Scottish independence, they need to call a referendum very soon.
"The longer they leave it, they more chance we have of winning.
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
I never thought Corbyn was an anti semite in fact quite the opposite. I thought he was the victim of a very devious plan by some unscrupulous people which will become clear in the months or years to come.
Let's all take a moment to mark the birth of the JezAnon conspiracy theory.
Anecdote alert: Just had delivery of logs from our usual supplier. He was very animated about the state of business. Demand has gone through the roof but he's struggling with supplies of timber for his business. A friend of his in construction ordered the a steel joist for a project 6 weeks ago - usual price £190. He's just ordered another one: £580!
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
Supplies of ash are through the roof in Devon - because 1 in 6 trees is ash and, well, die-back is rampant.
The only issue is getting the people to fell them. They have a nasty habit of just dropping big limbs, which makes folk very wary of how to take them down.
There will be a great opportunity for anyone who wants to set up large scale nurseries of resistant strains....
Ash of course can be burned green, if used for firewood.
Not from next May thanks to Gove. At least yes you can burn it green if you want, but your log supplier wont be able to supply you.
Had a similar discussion recently with my log supplier about state of the business. He was more animated about the new regulations than the amount of wood.
The pro-independence campaign would win a referendum if one was called tomorrow, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens has claimed.
Lorna Slater said Nicola Sturgeon was accurate when the First Minister last week insisted "I've got time on my side" as polling suggested a majority of younger Scots voters back ending the Union.
Speaking to the Record ahead of her party's autumn conference this weekend, the Green MSP said: "If Unionists want to win and have a chance of stopping Scottish independence, they need to call a referendum very soon.
"The longer they leave it, they more chance we have of winning.
Leaving aside the uncouthness of the point, I do wish when people made such a point that they added just a little bit more about why they presumably think that trend will not change, since they obviously know trends do change, else support would never have risen in the first place.
i really like Quincel's tips - credible, not hedged by getout clauses and lucidly explained. This one looks totally convincing.
Couple of non-partisan questions that affect some private arrangements: I gather from one passing remark that traders think bank rate will rise soon from 0.1% to 0.75%. Is that indeed what's expected, and when is it likely to happen? And what do we think Rishi is going to come with?
I think interest rates have to rise, and will do so, albeit slowly at first. Currently we have negative real interest rates because of inflation. To prevent that gap from increasing they need to go up, even before we get to the need for a positive return on savings. The government can only claim that the spike is temporary for a few months, not forever.
The combination of sub inflationary wage growth (with real pay cuts across many sectors), rising energy and food bills, increased NI, and fiscal drag on income tax thresholds is going to be quite some financial squeeze, even before we get rising interest rates.
Given the amount of debt would a bit of inflation be the worst thing in the world? If we could get on with some house building we might even manage to keep property prices stable.
I am old enough to remember when inflation was considered part of the sickness of economic decline.
The pro-independence campaign would win a referendum if one was called tomorrow, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens has claimed.
Lorna Slater said Nicola Sturgeon was accurate when the First Minister last week insisted "I've got time on my side" as polling suggested a majority of younger Scots voters back ending the Union.
Speaking to the Record ahead of her party's autumn conference this weekend, the Green MSP said: "If Unionists want to win and have a chance of stopping Scottish independence, they need to call a referendum very soon.
"The longer they leave it, they more chance we have of winning.
Leaving aside the uncouthness of the point, I do wish when people made such a point that they added just a little bit more about why they presumably think that trend will not change, since they obviously know trends do change, else support would never have risen in the first place.
A response to the presumed denial of the ref by Johnson I think.
Good point although BoJo has only ever been tested when fighting Labour figures who subsequently have been discredited - Ken & Jezza
Jezza was very much known to be, shall we say, soft on anti-Semitism when certain LibDems lent him their vote. No "I didn't know at the time" about that decision...
No-one who genuinely cared about preventing racists taking positions of power and responsibility would have voted Tory in December 2019.
Yes, because the party that has got British Indians as Chancellor and Home secretary, British Pakistanis as Health Secretary and Education Secretary and A British Ghanaian as Business Secretary is a racist party. This is why no one in the country takes Labour seriously on racial issues. You see all of the above as an race traitors and not really Indian, Pakistani or Ghanaian.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
No, I see Boris Johnson as a racist because he routinely says racist things.
That does make make me wonder why people invariably reference the same incidents and comments from in some cases a very long time ago.
Boris is certainly not racist in his appointments. If he is racist in his politics or personally I think the 'routinely' bit needs to be demonstrated with more effort - in the Corbyn example there were lots of past things he was criticised for, but also stuff he said in the present which accusers said showed the past comments as reflective of his current views and behaviour.
It took years of that before even many who hated Corbyn accused him directly, and even then most wouldn't go that far. For those who are persuadable that Boris is racist the argument needs up to date examples to get raised in addition to historic stuff.
It is his refusal to apologise or retract his statements that keeps them current. It wouldn't be hard to say that his language using "flag waving piccaninies with watermelon smiles" or "tank topped bum boys" was inappropriate, and that he would not say such things again.
He made the comment in 2002 and apologised for it in 2008:
The problem with people obsessing over inflation as our debt to GDP literally surpasses 100% and our housing bubble has reached 6-7x incomes is that they're like old generals fighting the last war.
Yes inflation was bad in the 70s. But zero inflation has been bad this century.
The postwar era of 3-5% inflation got it right. It worked. We need to get back to that, we're in a comparable position now post Covid to wartime debts too.
Yes in the future it may mean inflation gets out of control and needs bringing back down again. If so, we need to face that when we get there.
Comments
The burqa is dehumanising. It does make people look like letterboxes and bank robbers. If someone can say that but still says it shouldn't be banned, that carries more weight that those in denial who pretend there's nothing wrong with the burqa and its all sunshine and roses.
Not least because the spur to spend those devaluing savings fuels further inflation.
I was the one insisting all along that A16 was a great idea, that A16 should be invoked/threatened.
I was the one insisting all along no border in the Irish Sea, no dynamic alignment and no land border.
You lot kept saying that was "impossible" and now its happening you are grasping at straws rather than admitting you were wrong.
As masks come off, I do notice how many men have grown rather unkempt grey beards*. One of many ways that sartorial standards have dropped since the years BC.
*not me. Being clean shaven is essential for a good FFP3 mask seal.
There's a reason that I've been very anti-mask since the vaccine rollout happened. Masks were an emergency measure only, they're still dehumanising . . .
. . . although a facemask over nose and mouth is nothing like a burqa and to suggest they are comparable is like suggesting that an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini is like a burqa.
I think the shit is well and truly flying towards the fan.
To me, the burqa makes people who wear it look like conservative/traditional Muslim women.
Suffice to say that you could make similarly offensive comparisons about the garb of Hasidic Jews in north London. But even Boris wouldn't really go there, would he?
Its worth noting that in the 50s and 60s typically average between 3% and 5% with some years upto 9% and that was considered healthy at the time and helped the UK rapidly deflate our wartime debts. The oil shock of the 70s and having 20% inflation is completely different.
That's what we need again. We don't need 20% inflation, but nor do we need 0% either. Between 3-5% is the sweet spot we should be aiming for and a bit higher would be better than a bit lower than that.
I think most of his fans accept that he probably wasn't an ideal potential PM - just too stubborn (McDonnell, a more flexible politician in both good and bad senses, would have been better) - but there's a lot of affection for him in the grass roots and if Starmer can find a way to lift the whip exclusion I think quite a few lefties would forgive quite a bit of vagueness on other subjects. My preferred method would be a blanket amnesty, welcoming back the centre-right defectors while letting JC back into the PLP. I think that could reasonably be done as a broadening of the tent in both directions.
In support of your point though one of the most surprising for me (being an old codger) was the Eastbourne by election after Ian Gow was murdered. I thought there would be a combination of a sympathy vote plus an anti IRA vote by the Eastbourne public and they would reinstate a Conservative MP to show they would not be bullied by terrorist acts, but the public were happy to vote in a non Conservative after such an appalling act.
A libertarian can have opinions but thinks that their own opinions shouldn't be forced onto others and that others can make their own choices.
My opinion of the burqa is that it is disgusting. It is repressive, misogynistic, unenlightened and evil. It is designed to dehumanise and segregate women from society. It should have absolutely no place in a modern free and liberal society where women are as respected as men.
But I do not wish to see it banned by law.
If Hasidic Jews start compelling women to be segregated from society then I'd say the same thing. Why shouldn't you? I do not respect organised religion and will attack any organised religion or any other cult or misogynistic attitude that is so repellant and disgusting in its treatment of women or anyone else. Why don't you?
If Corbyn had beaten Johnson, for example, I doubt you would be saying that “Prime Minister Corbyn” had been discredited
The implication of the article seems to be that France Germany and Spain have kept tighter restrictions in place. Do we think they will face higher case levels in the winter?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58849024
On the practicalities, Commons convention is to let the party holding the seat choose, with the constraint that if they put it off for months then the other side can move the writ too. I should think it'll be either very quick to get it out of the way before Xmas, or something like February.
I have a horrible feeling Frost may trigger A16 anyway. As well as being an out and out careerist who will say anything if he thinks it makes his master happy, he comes across as being just a bit stupid. He may not be reading the situation well.
We covered this the other day, demand for timber has gone through the roof in the USA and people are paying whatever it takes to buy timber and as a result global prices have surged all over the planet. Americans will just pay whatever it takes to get the timber, or not trade. That is how market economics works.
People here need to make a choice: pay the global price for timber, or don't. Whinging that the price has gone up won't get you anywhere.
Yes, I know you followed all the correct procedures yada yada but take a step back. It’s STOLEN money. From PENSIONERS. Do the right thing FFS.
These shortages and short term price spikes are the inevitable consequence of the disruption caused by Covid. We are by no means through this but I expect things to return to something more like "normal" over the next year. In particular, as Robert explained so lucidly yesterday, fracking gas from the US will once again change the energy market for the better in about 6 months.
I well remember last year, when the UK had a bad September (our weather was poor) while I was away in Germany and Italy and they were having a much better time of it - only for their rates to shoot up once I was back in October and their weather had turned. Whether the weather will make such a difference now that most adults are vaccinated will be key.
Abusing women or children is wrong. I couldn't care less if that upsets religious individuals: don't abuse women or children.
I expect the writ will be moved quickly and the election in November. I don't think the Tories would want the sympathy to dissipate and a rival to build up a head of steam.
People whinging that the price of timber has gone up without bothering to look into why it has gone up: that is crass stupidity.
I am struggling to remember which of these groups both turns out to vote and when they do vote Tory. But I am sure it is one of them.
It is one of the biggest of the White Swans currently swimming towards Boris.
The Tory voter base likes: low debt, no inflation, regular pension increases, and decent interest rates on cash deposits.
Of those four, the first and last are out of sight, the second is becoming remote, and the third may not be enough.
The Tories are only surviving because no party can credibly offer something better than this disaster.
"Time for a change" will be the only policy that actually works for the opposition.
And then you look at what he does.
He chases a laugh. That’s ok in a comic journalist. More troubling in a prime minister
We're still testing like we were back in the peak of the pandemic and the more you test the more cases you'll find.
I wonder if it's time to stop most of the testing except people who are sick enough to present at hospital?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/america-is-choking-under-an-everything-shortage/620322/
What should be done? Should the government pay the difference on the global price to ensure there's been no price rise? The price has gone up, just as the price of gas has gone up, globally. This is a rebound as there'd been little demand so production halted and the price crashed and now demand has resumed faster than production has resumed. Globally.
Give it 12 months and production will be running full pelt again and the price will be lowered again. This has been explained time and again to you, but if you want to call understanding what is going on "risible" then just continue to be pig ignorant.
The rate of infection in many countries is being understated, it is probably even being understated here, but low levels of infection right now may also prove to be a serious problem in December-February. We shall see.
Doesn't change what I said though. Rampant inflation is bad. Zero inflation is bad. Deflation is bad.
We need moderate inflation, preferably 3-5% per annum like we had in the postwar years. A couple of decades of that, like we had a couple of decades postwar, will help rapidly shrink our debts just as it did postwar.
There is no viable alternative really. Otherwise without inflation the alternative frankly is permanent austerity because our debts are just too high.
You know that her husband fled Russia in 2004 because he fell out with Putin
Should end with ... "is like a ballgown" (or similar).
In the first 10 pages: “gas levy gets green light” has a very (unfairly) negative take on the proposals, “employers have lost faith in inflated exam grades”, “Johnson is enjoying his party but may soon be facing g a hangover”, “factory bosses warn of closures”, “if we can’t slaughter pigs next week I won’t know what to do”.
There’s a business vs government vibe to it. The trouble is a lot of it is conflating Brexit/Covid disruptions with resistance to anything that brings us towards net zero or reduced reliance fossil fuels, which muddles the message rather.
And crucially there were NO index linked gilts until 1981. Now 25% of government debt is indexed. "Inflating away debt" now creates a positive feedback loop.
That's before considering the possible fallout on wider UK/Europe relations.
Getting unvaccinated people into the immunity funnel via natural infection in the summer is a much better prospect than them getting in the winter.
Deflating away 75% of debt when debt is 100% of GDP is better than deflating away 0% of it.
Once again you fall foul of the dictum that we should state everything as simply as possible but not more simply.
I'm pretty sure that Corbyn won't be allowed to stand at the next election like Williamson or Godsiff although I can't see any proper reason for personal membership expulsion and that would be grounds for a proper legal challenge.
I think restoring the whip would be a waste of time since opinions on Corbyn are so polarised particularly in the PLP and virtually no-one is going to change their mind.
Corbyn is also unlikely to stand as independent (although it can't be 100% ruled out) as he has proper loyalty to the party unlike Chris Williamson and is more comparable to Ken Livingstone in that respect.
If only 25% is index-linked, then that can be lived with while the rest is deflated.
You are being overly simplistic in thinking that just because a [small] fraction of our debt is index-linked, that nothing can be done about the rest of it.
The only issue is getting the people to fell them. They have a nasty habit of just dropping big limbs, which makes folk very wary of how to take them down.
There will be a great opportunity for anyone who wants to set up large scale nurseries of resistant strains....
300 conventional 100 indexed
100% inflation
So you really owe only 150 in old money on the 300 debt, but the 100 becomes 200 (still really 100), so your exposure on the linkers becomes relatively larger, and you are still exposed on them.
Add indexed obligations other than gilts, e.g. pensions, and the deal really doesn't look attractive.
Positivity - France appears to be well under control - high levels of testing, low positivity. Germany is not meeting the WHO criterion for "pandemic under control" of a rate below 5%, as relatively recently was Spain.
And on another important metric - Case Fatality Rate - the UK is doing well - suggesting that those getting infected are the least likely to die:
Having said that I never thought the accusations of anti semitism had anything to do with him not winning the election. I don't think it moved the needle one iota.
He was poison for other reasons and it's for these that I don't believe he should ever be invited back. It was a coup. He and his clique of old fashioned dinosaurs came close to wrecking the party for ever.
It might already be too late. I'm not convinced that Labour won't have to split to win again. Starmer is doing the right things but it's difficult to believe that the leaders of the putsch that put him there aren't still there. The McCluskies the Long Baileys The Pidcocks the McDonalls....Even the names send a shudder through erstwhile Labour voters.
Labour's best hope at the moment is Johnson.
Using your numbers the 100 remained 100 in real terms, the 300 became 150 in real terms. So in total the 400 became 250 in real terms. That is a 37.5% real terms reduction in debt.
Since our debt-to-GDP is around 100% of GDP then that would mean inflation alone without any other factors dropping our debt-to-GDP down to 62.5% of GDP. That is much, much healthier and gives the country breathing space.
The pro-independence campaign would win a referendum if one was called tomorrow, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens has claimed.
Lorna Slater said Nicola Sturgeon was accurate when the First Minister last week insisted "I've got time on my side" as polling suggested a majority of younger Scots voters back ending the Union.
Speaking to the Record ahead of her party's autumn conference this weekend, the Green MSP said: "If Unionists want to win and have a chance of stopping Scottish independence, they need to call a referendum very soon.
"The longer they leave it, they more chance we have of winning.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/yes-campaign-would-win-scottish-25168181
That's close to 8000 a week dying.
The worst is behind us: 48% (+3)
The worst is yet to come: 24% (-2)
Don’t know: 28% (-2)
Changes +/- 27 Sept
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1446777721900654593?s=20
Had a similar discussion recently with my log supplier about state of the business. He was more animated about the new regulations than the amount of wood.
Yes inflation was bad in the 70s. But zero inflation has been bad this century.
The postwar era of 3-5% inflation got it right. It worked. We need to get back to that, we're in a comparable position now post Covid to wartime debts too.
Yes in the future it may mean inflation gets out of control and needs bringing back down again. If so, we need to face that when we get there.