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The Ashfield MP’s comments on the poor will be remembered – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited May 2022 in General
imageThe Ashfield MP’s comments on the poor will be remembered – politicalbetting.com

Anderson’s comment in the Commons on the cookery skills of poor people are getting a lot of negative coverage in the media and I really wonder if he will later see this as a gaffe that cost him his political career.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    First
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    Tuesday evening I gave £30 to a woman who claimed she had mental health issues and needed the money to pay for a hostel for the night. I do not know if her story was true but that is not the point. Why are these places not free? Like foodbanks or the NHS.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    Tuesday evening I gave £30 to a woman who claimed she had mental health issues and needed the money to pay for a hostel for the night. I do not know if her story was true but that is not the point. Why are these places not free? Like foodbanks or the NHS.

    Chugged
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    Tuesday evening I gave £30 to a woman who claimed she had mental health issues and needed the money to pay for a hostel for the night. I do not know if her story was true but that is not the point. Why are these places not free? Like foodbanks or the NHS.

    She probably went on to buy some smack.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    FPT:
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Telecoms group Vodafone is in talks to combine its UK operations with its domestic rival Three UK, the mobile operator owned by Hong Kong infrastructure conglomerate CK Hutchison, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

    The deal, if it materialised, would herald the latest attempt to consolidate the British mobile market as Vodafone faces pressure from Europe’s largest activist investor, Cevian Capital, to simplify its business, pursue deals in national markets and improve returns.

    A combination of Vodafone UK and Three UK would bring together the third and fourth largest mobile network operators in Britain, though any deal to reduce the number of leading brands from four to three would trigger scrutiny from competition authorities.

    Industry executives are hopeful that regulators’ increased awareness of the need to invest in network infrastructure has made them more amenable to mergers than they were in 2016, when the European Commission blocked a proposed merger between O2 and Three.....

    ...The exact structure being discussed between Vodafone and CK Hutchison could not be learnt, though Read has said on many occasions that he is focused on pursuing combinations more than outright purchases, given his ambitions to reduce the group’s debt.

    https://www.ft.com/content/c4f9aac3-94f0-4d4b-ae9b-5b9e97fbc2d1

    I don't see how that goes through. It's the number 3 player merging with number 4. All of this started when Ofcom allowed Orange and T-Mobile to merge which probably shouldn't have been.

    If I lose my roaming data with Vodafone I'll have to move to O2 despite the shit signal.
    I'm intrigued by that last sentence. Do you mean if you lose free roaming data? Or the ability to data roam? In the UK or abroad?

    Genuine questions.
    My contract with Vodafone includes free roaming in 83 countries, it's by far the best roaming data package offered in the country (and I tend to use it). If the merged entity gets rid of this option I'll move to the lesser contract on O2 for the roaming.
    Ah ok thanks for clarifying.

    In contrast, we switched from Vodafone to EE because the latter provide a signal that reaches inside the Faraday cage that is our house. I guess we will have to pay for an add-on roaming package for our planned trips to Europe this year - guess what I'm blaming that on? ;-)
    You should blame BT. Both Vodafone and O2 still have roaming data packages available, BT/EE are just looking to rinse money from their customers. I'd move to O2 and get a femtocell.
    Just checked the EE site:

    "If your plan started before 7 July 2021: If you're on a pay monthly plan and your contract started before 7 July 2021, these changes [EU charges] will not affect you."


    So it looks like I have free EU roaming, still.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    The Conservative Party isn't sure what it is for.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    edited May 2022
    FPT
    Nigelb said:

    ping said:

    Controversial post…..

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61414785

    “Labour MP Stella Creasy reveals rape threat while at Cambridge University”

    With respect to Ms Creasy, and all the other women (people) who have suffered sexual violence….

    I just don’t think this kind of story/revelation is politically smart. It smacks of naval gazing.

    You’re trying to convince the country to elect you as a party of government. To stand up for other people. To govern.

    This is a distraction. I think they think it humanises them. I think it diminishes them.

    No offence intended. Yes I do think sexual violence is a serious problem that needs to be tackled properly etc etc.

    Just don’t make it so much about YOU ffs. I don’t think Labour are ready for government. They need a grid and a media strategy and 100% focus on the VOTERS.

    That's a very odd comment.
    Backbench MPs talk about all kinds of stuff, all the time. Why single out this unless it makes you uncomfortable ?

    I don't disagree with your last two sentences, but they seem to me something of a non sequitur.
    I always feel uncomfortable when serious allegations are made to the press, without sufficient detail for a serious investigation.

    To give another example (from another party), Jamie Wallace MP claims he was raped.

    Perhaps he was, in which case he should be giving full details to the police (not partial details to the press).

    Sexual harassment or rape is very wrong.

    It is also a very serious allegation to make, and any very serious allegation warrants a very serious investigation to find out the truth.

    I can't see how we improve matters if (as Stella Creasey has done), you stay silent for 20 years, and then release the claims (without names) to the press.

    Even now, she could report the individuals responsible for the rape threat/sexual harassment to the police.

    And, Ms Creasy could name the individuals responsible for the (alleged) botched College response, which apparently led to her being censured by the College.

    Given how slowly things change at Cambridge, those individuals may still be running Magdalene College.

    Or, more likely, promoted to run EDI for the whole of Cambridge University. :wink:

    As it is, I tend to agree with @ping. It feels self-centered.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Tuesday evening I gave £30 to a woman who claimed she had mental health issues and needed the money to pay for a hostel for the night. I do not know if her story was true but that is not the point. Why are these places not free? Like foodbanks or the NHS.

    You were conned https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/hostels
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    He may or may not be idle but he's certainly rich:

    Lee Anderson MP, who today said poor people forced to use foodbanks 'cannot cook or budget properly' claimed £222,000 in expenses in 2020/21 - including £4,100 on travel and 'subsistence'

    https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1524418659485208577?s=20&t=-z3GB3vICjAhH21Ett5IAA
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Tuesday evening I gave £30 to a woman who claimed she had mental health issues and needed the money to pay for a hostel for the night. I do not know if her story was true but that is not the point. Why are these places not free? Like foodbanks or the NHS.

    NHS = taxes. Food banks = donations. Everything costs. Hostels = I think partly council, partly charity, so you could donate to Shelter or someone.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:

    Telecoms group Vodafone is in talks to combine its UK operations with its domestic rival Three UK, the mobile operator owned by Hong Kong infrastructure conglomerate CK Hutchison, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

    The deal, if it materialised, would herald the latest attempt to consolidate the British mobile market as Vodafone faces pressure from Europe’s largest activist investor, Cevian Capital, to simplify its business, pursue deals in national markets and improve returns.

    A combination of Vodafone UK and Three UK would bring together the third and fourth largest mobile network operators in Britain, though any deal to reduce the number of leading brands from four to three would trigger scrutiny from competition authorities.

    Industry executives are hopeful that regulators’ increased awareness of the need to invest in network infrastructure has made them more amenable to mergers than they were in 2016, when the European Commission blocked a proposed merger between O2 and Three.....

    ...The exact structure being discussed between Vodafone and CK Hutchison could not be learnt, though Read has said on many occasions that he is focused on pursuing combinations more than outright purchases, given his ambitions to reduce the group’s debt.

    https://www.ft.com/content/c4f9aac3-94f0-4d4b-ae9b-5b9e97fbc2d1

    So, as a businessman who only yesterday was looking at phone contracts, I observed two offers:
    THREE: Unlimited everything: £10.83 a month
    VODA: Unlimited everythinng: £25 a month
    I can guess what the new pricing structure will be if Vodafone swallow up Three.
    You get what you pay for. I pay £31 per month and it has unlimited everything with 5G, Spotify and roaming in ~80 countries (including the US which is important for me). I'm also able to stream 4k video on 5G without any issues, sometimes it feels faster than my home broadband connection.
    Yeah I get all that. On a pre-price rise £9.99 a month (+VAT).
    Unlikely to include Spotify, but it's on Three which is a pile of wank in London. Their "5G" is a joke as they have too many people using the network. Three has always been a case of getting what you pay for, if you are fine with bad signal and slow data then it's good value, if you aren't then it's just wasted money.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    MaxPB said:

    Tuesday evening I gave £30 to a woman who claimed she had mental health issues and needed the money to pay for a hostel for the night. I do not know if her story was true but that is not the point. Why are these places not free? Like foodbanks or the NHS.

    She probably went on to buy some smack.
    If so smack was probably something she quite badly needed at that stage. Don't be so censorious.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    FPT:

    Good morning, everyone.

    Finland's going to join NATO, it seems.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61420185
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    1/ Finland & Sweden are set to adjust fundamentally to the new security reality in Europe with actions rather than just words - unlike much of the rest of Europe. This point was highlighted in 2 questions put to @BorisJohnson by UK journalists at a press conference in Helsinki.

    2/ One question was on why the UK has given so much money and weapons to Ukraine while many British people face a cost of living crisis that means they cannot afford to heat their homes.

    3/ The other question was on how credible any British pledge of military support to allies like Finland and Sweden can really be given the UK armed forces are now a fraction of the size they were three decades ago following cost-saving cuts and under-investment.


    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1524661374055559169
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    Responses to the whole Foodbank, 'eat or heat', 'millions of children starve' stuff which has suddenly emerged are not entirely predictable.

    A lot of middle class people think there is something called the 'working class' and they are sort of a single group, including all the millions of the new poor who have suddenly hit the headlines. They could not be more wrong. In my working class industrial town the middle classes are mostly fairly keen on the Guardian approach to things, while most of the WWC are rather more suspicious; and in particular are staggering self reliant.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    Morning all,
    Definitely spent too much time here yesterday - had a dream about being stuck in Wick with Rishi Sunak. Most odd.
    He was very relaxed about it all.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    He may or may not be idle but he's certainly rich:

    Lee Anderson MP, who today said poor people forced to use foodbanks 'cannot cook or budget properly' claimed £222,000 in expenses in 2020/21 - including £4,100 on travel and 'subsistence'

    https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1524418659485208577?s=20&t=-z3GB3vICjAhH21Ett5IAA
    MP expenses are always a bit of a red herring:
    1. They include office and staffing costs
    2. These are higher when its a new MP as there are start-up costs
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    New: What’s happening in Tory heartlands in the South? We ran a @kekstcnc @timesradio focus group of swing voters in Tiverton & Honiton who voted Conservative in 2019.

    None would vote Tory in the upcoming by-election, and all bar one said they will vote for the Lib Dems. (1/12)

    These voters – pro-Brexit Conservatives – feel extremely disappointed in the government with their frustrations led by Boris Johnson, lies over partygate, and a feeling that things promised have not been delivered.
    Here is what they said about the Conservative leader. (2/12) https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664028601192456/photo/1

    Boris Johnson is a direct block to them voting Conservative again.

    Most said they would “never” vote for the party until he left. In the words of a long-time Conservative: “When a dog bites you, you never know if it's going to bite you again. You can never trust him". (3/12)

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664032380215296
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Excl from todays paper - Boris Johnson made it clear to his Cabinet that Britain must wean itself off the ‘crack cocaine of spending’

    Comes amid growing clamour for cost of living bailout


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18539850/boris-johnson-boost-cost-of-living-bailout?utm_source=sharebar_app&utm_medium=sharebar_app&utm_campaign=sharebar_app_article
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Scott_xP said:

    1/ Finland & Sweden are set to adjust fundamentally to the new security reality in Europe with actions rather than just words - unlike much of the rest of Europe. This point was highlighted in 2 questions put to @BorisJohnson by UK journalists at a press conference in Helsinki.

    2/ One question was on why the UK has given so much money and weapons to Ukraine while many British people face a cost of living crisis that means they cannot afford to heat their homes.

    3/ The other question was on how credible any British pledge of military support to allies like Finland and Sweden can really be given the UK armed forces are now a fraction of the size they were three decades ago following cost-saving cuts and under-investment.


    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1524661374055559169

    UK-assisted Ukraine seem to be doing a pretty good job of resisting. As the old saying goes, it’s not the size that matters.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    The deserving and undeserving poor is a notion often promoted on PB:

    An example of the deserving poor is someone who is struggling on £150k a year and supplementary handouts from benefactors to cover maintenance payments and an unaffordable bon viveur lifestyle.

    An example of the undeserving poor is someone who is struggling on £15k a year and supplementary handouts from the state to cover fuel bills and an unaffordable three McDonalds' meals a day lifestyle.
    Reminds me of the time when Cameron and Osborne, both beneficiaries of large legacies for which they did nothing, promised to end the money-for-nothing society.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osborne-says-tories-will-end-the-moneyfornothing-society-1638508.html
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Telecoms group Vodafone is in talks to combine its UK operations with its domestic rival Three UK, the mobile operator owned by Hong Kong infrastructure conglomerate CK Hutchison, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

    The deal, if it materialised, would herald the latest attempt to consolidate the British mobile market as Vodafone faces pressure from Europe’s largest activist investor, Cevian Capital, to simplify its business, pursue deals in national markets and improve returns.

    A combination of Vodafone UK and Three UK would bring together the third and fourth largest mobile network operators in Britain, though any deal to reduce the number of leading brands from four to three would trigger scrutiny from competition authorities.

    Industry executives are hopeful that regulators’ increased awareness of the need to invest in network infrastructure has made them more amenable to mergers than they were in 2016, when the European Commission blocked a proposed merger between O2 and Three.....

    ...The exact structure being discussed between Vodafone and CK Hutchison could not be learnt, though Read has said on many occasions that he is focused on pursuing combinations more than outright purchases, given his ambitions to reduce the group’s debt.

    https://www.ft.com/content/c4f9aac3-94f0-4d4b-ae9b-5b9e97fbc2d1

    So, as a businessman who only yesterday was looking at phone contracts, I observed two offers:
    THREE: Unlimited everything: £10.83 a month
    VODA: Unlimited everythinng: £25 a month
    I can guess what the new pricing structure will be if Vodafone swallow up Three.
    You get what you pay for. I pay £31 per month and it has unlimited everything with 5G, Spotify and roaming in ~80 countries (including the US which is important for me). I'm also able to stream 4k video on 5G without any issues, sometimes it feels faster than my home broadband connection.
    Yeah I get all that. On a pre-price rise £9.99 a month (+VAT).
    Unlikely to include Spotify, but it's on Three which is a pile of wank in London. Their "5G" is a joke as they have too many people using the network. Three has always been a case of getting what you pay for, if you are fine with bad signal and slow data then it's good value, if you aren't then it's just wasted money.
    Thats me told - if I had seen any issues with either speed on bandwidth would I have stuck with them? Was on Smarty before I took on a business contract so am well aware of the network.

    To be fair it doesn't include Spotify but as I have a family premium plan that is cheaper than the difference between the Three and Vodafone plans it doesn't matter.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Cookie said:

    Morning all,
    Definitely spent too much time here yesterday - had a dream about being stuck in Wick with Rishi Sunak. Most odd.
    He was very relaxed about it all.

    Just wander into Pultneytown and the distillery and you wouldn't care any more...
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    Great to hear your latest upbeat report @Cicero - keep safe and keep posting!
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    edited May 2022
    A pincer squeeze in Wakefield and Tiverton would do for Big Dog I feel. (However, that's been said before).
    Two very different places. Neither looks anywhere close to ones you'd choose to fight right now.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Scott_xP said:

    New: What’s happening in Tory heartlands in the South? We ran a @kekstcnc @timesradio focus group of swing voters in Tiverton & Honiton who voted Conservative in 2019.

    None would vote Tory in the upcoming by-election, and all bar one said they will vote for the Lib Dems. (1/12)

    These voters – pro-Brexit Conservatives – feel extremely disappointed in the government with their frustrations led by Boris Johnson, lies over partygate, and a feeling that things promised have not been delivered.
    Here is what they said about the Conservative leader. (2/12) https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664028601192456/photo/1

    Boris Johnson is a direct block to them voting Conservative again.

    Most said they would “never” vote for the party until he left. In the words of a long-time Conservative: “When a dog bites you, you never know if it's going to bite you again. You can never trust him". (3/12)

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664032380215296

    Naah. HY can assure us all that these Tory voters were never Tory voters. Liars the lot of them.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    Great to hear - Estonia was always a defensive line we would not let Putin cross. As you point out the Russian efforts are really starting to fail, with poor maintenance and open sabotage now a real thing.

    Never mind threatening other countries and nuclear war, I wonder if he will end up fighting a civil war against insurgents.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    The deserving and undeserving poor is a notion often promoted on PB:

    An example of the deserving poor is someone who is struggling on £150k a year and supplementary handouts from benefactors to cover maintenance payments and an unaffordable bon viveur lifestyle.

    An example of the undeserving poor is someone who is struggling on £15k a year and supplementary handouts from the state to cover fuel bills and an unaffordable three McDonalds' meals a day lifestyle.
    Reminds me of the time when Cameron and Osborne, both beneficiaries of large legacies for which they did nothing, promised to end the money-for-nothing society.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osborne-says-tories-will-end-the-moneyfornothing-society-1638508.html
    Yes, the moralising from the likes of Osborne on this front was sickening.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415

    2/ One question was on why the UK has given so much money and weapons to Ukraine while many British people face a cost of living crisis that means they cannot afford to heat their homes.

    3/ The other question was on how credible any British pledge of military support to allies like Finland and Sweden can really be given the UK armed forces are now a fraction of the size they were three decades ago following cost-saving cuts and under-investment.

    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1524661374055559169</blockq

    I think 2) and 3) are great questions . Johnson loves being Churchill , ignoring the rules , rallying to the "cause"! but most people are wary of this and dont really think its the UK's war at all . The excuse that Johnson cannot resign because we are at "war" is ridiculous - we are not at war and long may it stay that way
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    He may or may not be idle but he's certainly rich:

    Lee Anderson MP, who today said poor people forced to use foodbanks 'cannot cook or budget properly' claimed £222,000 in expenses in 2020/21 - including £4,100 on travel and 'subsistence'

    https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1524418659485208577?s=20&t=-z3GB3vICjAhH21Ett5IAA
    MP expenses are always a bit of a red herring:
    1. They include office and staffing costs
    2. These are higher when its a new MP as there are start-up costs

    I actually think MPs should be paid more. At the same time it's undeniable that a) Anderson is relatively rich and b) he's blaming the poor for their own poverty.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    The clearest sign of how badly Russia is doing is that their main tabloid has an article headlined "What is the secret of the Ukrainian army?" that explains that it is a powerful combination of "a Russian soldier, a fascist officer and an American general".

    https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1524647544307036163
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    Scott_xP said:

    New: What’s happening in Tory heartlands in the South? We ran a @kekstcnc @timesradio focus group of swing voters in Tiverton & Honiton who voted Conservative in 2019.

    None would vote Tory in the upcoming by-election, and all bar one said they will vote for the Lib Dems. (1/12)

    These voters – pro-Brexit Conservatives – feel extremely disappointed in the government with their frustrations led by Boris Johnson, lies over partygate, and a feeling that things promised have not been delivered.
    Here is what they said about the Conservative leader. (2/12) https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664028601192456/photo/1

    Boris Johnson is a direct block to them voting Conservative again.

    Most said they would “never” vote for the party until he left. In the words of a long-time Conservative: “When a dog bites you, you never know if it's going to bite you again. You can never trust him". (3/12)

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664032380215296

    Naah. HY can assure us all that these Tory voters were never Tory voters. Liars the lot of them.
    Yep, according to him I am not a True Conservative because I refuse to endorse The Clown by voting Conservative while he is leader. The reality is that as I am quite a bit older than him I have probably voted Conservative more than he has, and held moderately senior positions in the voluntary party
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Oracle, it remains ridiculous the right gets attacked by the left for a culture war, when the left have gone for it all guns blazing and are shocked and appalled that not everyone on the other side is literally kneeling before their cause.
  • theakestheakes Posts: 839
    Finland and Sweden join Nato, could be the bargaining chip to end the war, applications can be suspended, delayed etc if Russia gets out of Ukraine.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited May 2022

    Mr. Oracle, it remains ridiculous the right gets attacked by the left for a culture war, when the left have gone for it all guns blazing and are shocked and appalled that not everyone on the other side is literally kneeling before their cause.

    I suggest you read the article, Mr Dancer. The sacrificial victim of the government's opportunistic culture wars and the press in this case was not really doing any cancelling himself at all.

    And I'm hardly an uncritical supporter of identity politics myself, either.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013

    Scott_xP said:

    New: What’s happening in Tory heartlands in the South? We ran a @kekstcnc @timesradio focus group of swing voters in Tiverton & Honiton who voted Conservative in 2019.

    None would vote Tory in the upcoming by-election, and all bar one said they will vote for the Lib Dems. (1/12)

    These voters – pro-Brexit Conservatives – feel extremely disappointed in the government with their frustrations led by Boris Johnson, lies over partygate, and a feeling that things promised have not been delivered.
    Here is what they said about the Conservative leader. (2/12) https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664028601192456/photo/1

    Boris Johnson is a direct block to them voting Conservative again.

    Most said they would “never” vote for the party until he left. In the words of a long-time Conservative: “When a dog bites you, you never know if it's going to bite you again. You can never trust him". (3/12)

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664032380215296

    Naah. HY can assure us all that these Tory voters were never Tory voters. Liars the lot of them.
    Yep, according to him I am not a True Conservative because I refuse to endorse The Clown by voting Conservative while he is leader. The reality is that as I am quite a bit older than him I have probably voted Conservative more than he has, and held moderately senior positions in the voluntary party
    Have you ever voted Plaid Cymru? If the answer is no you aren't a True Tory.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013

    Mr. Oracle, it remains ridiculous the right gets attacked by the left for a culture war, when the left have gone for it all guns blazing and are shocked and appalled that not everyone on the other side is literally kneeling before their cause.

    Honestly don't care for either side of the culture war. And neither will the people who are struggling to get by who see a government who is both failing to do anything to assist and is now sneering at them.

    Condescending incompetence is hardly a winning position. Hence the need to find something - anything - as a distraction. So idiot scroungers who can't feed themselves on 30p a day, don't think about that when you vote, instead think about ladywang monsters out to molest your womenfolk!
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089
    Scott_xP said:

    Excl from todays paper - Boris Johnson made it clear to his Cabinet that Britain must wean itself off the ‘crack cocaine of spending’

    Comes amid growing clamour for cost of living bailout


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18539850/boris-johnson-boost-cost-of-living-bailout?utm_source=sharebar_app&utm_medium=sharebar_app&utm_campaign=sharebar_app_article

    I know BoJo likes to think of himself as the embodiment of the nation, but the psychology of that remark is grimly fascinating.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Oracle, my general point on the left promoting a culture war and acting aggrieved when the other side has the temerity to fight back stands.

    On the article: the exaggerations of the truth to the point of being very misleading and the hounding of the man in question sounds absolutely horrendous.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Pioneers, a largely pointless altercation with the EU over NI is going to be the distraction the blonde moron goes for to try and shift the narrative.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Scott_xP said:

    Excl from todays paper - Boris Johnson made it clear to his Cabinet that Britain must wean itself off the ‘crack cocaine of spending’

    Comes amid growing clamour for cost of living bailout


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18539850/boris-johnson-boost-cost-of-living-bailout?utm_source=sharebar_app&utm_medium=sharebar_app&utm_campaign=sharebar_app_article

    I know BoJo likes to think of himself as the embodiment of the nation, but the psychology of that remark is grimly fascinating.
    Love to know how he plans to do that - but there is £22bn being spent on housing benefit - which props up house prices....
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    A grim tale of antisemitism here, and a victim of the Mail and Johnson's culture wars. The implied assertion that the entirety of cancel culture, on the other side, is all an illusion, isn't quite right either, but this article tells you almost everything you need to know about why we have such a dreadful government.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/12/hate-mail-death-threats-culture-war-matthew-katzman-cancelling-queen

    Great story. Like the header reminds those of us of a leftish persuasion why underneath it all Tories are unreformable.

    The most anti semitic comment I have seen in the last several years was a remark from Quentin Letts in the Mail about Ed Miliband.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    Thought this was an excellent turn of phrase by the BBC reporter outside Kharkiv:
    "War in the Kharkiv region has changed - it's now a game of hawk and mouse, where each side's drones circle constantly, trying to pinpoint the enemy's tanks and guns, for targeting by artillery."

    Hawk and mouse. Excellent.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    Good post, and we all hope that the glimmers of optimism turn to reality. That said, I watched Dan Snow's excellent documentary on shell shock/PTSD last night. It was pretty harrowing and I couldn't help wondering how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are going to be severely mentally scarred by Putin's evil adventure long after the guns fall silent.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Cookie said:

    Morning all,
    Definitely spent too much time here yesterday - had a dream about being stuck in Wick with Rishi Sunak. Most odd.
    He was very relaxed about it all.

    Could have been worse, you could have been stuck there with SeanT.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    Scott_xP said:

    Excl from todays paper - Boris Johnson made it clear to his Cabinet that Britain must wean itself off the ‘crack cocaine of spending’

    Comes amid growing clamour for cost of living bailout


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18539850/boris-johnson-boost-cost-of-living-bailout?utm_source=sharebar_app&utm_medium=sharebar_app&utm_campaign=sharebar_app_article

    I know BoJo likes to think of himself as the embodiment of the nation, but the psychology of that remark is grimly fascinating.
    I don't think he's come up with it himself. We've heard similar from Sunak, and someone here who lunched with a high up recently (I forget who), said that they're all having the fear of God put into them about the national debt.

    Ideologically I'm in favour of sound public finances, though it seems oddly timed. Others here with greater economics knowledge than me have questioned this emphasis coming so strongly to the fore now.
  • DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    I agree with you.

    Which is why we should not be worried when companies say they can not find staff, the solution is that companies need to treat their staff as valued and respected.

    Firms need to invest in training, pay a decent salary and treat people with respect to earn some loyalty.

    Let bad employers who can't do that, find they have no staff and go out of business, as the good employers get people instead.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    He may or may not be idle but he's certainly rich:

    Lee Anderson MP, who today said poor people forced to use foodbanks 'cannot cook or budget properly' claimed £222,000 in expenses in 2020/21 - including £4,100 on travel and 'subsistence'

    https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1524418659485208577?s=20&t=-z3GB3vICjAhH21Ett5IAA
    MP expenses are always a bit of a red herring:
    1. They include office and staffing costs
    2. These are higher when its a new MP as there are start-up costs
    Yea but you can get a lot of 30p meals for £4100 ! Classic case of politician opening mouth without engaging brain
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Results from a focus group in Tiverton

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664133366525952

    Lib Dems will win because Boris isn't liked and they won't vote Labour.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    I agree with you.

    Which is why we should not be worried when companies say they can not find staff, the solution is that companies need to treat their staff as valued and respected.

    Firms need to invest in training, pay a decent salary and treat people with respect to earn some loyalty.

    Let bad employers who can't do that, find they have no staff and go out of business, as the good employers get people instead.
    So says someone who I can have a pretty good guess has never run a business and never employed anyone. Actually "Bart", do you have any experience of anything that you opine on?
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited May 2022

    Mr. Oracle, my general point on the left promoting a culture war and acting aggrieved when the other side has the temerity to fight back stands.

    On the article: the exaggerations of the truth to the point of being very misleading and the hounding of the man in question sounds absolutely horrendous.

    I agree that you could argue that some of the most extreme elements of the "identity left" over several decades have a share of the responsibility, if it is anything like as coherent a cultural force as that, but this particular individual certainly has none at all.

    He seems to be a fairly apolitical maths phd student ; he only has any significance to anything if newspapers like the Mail are allowed to on a whim dictate to the rest of society, and then government, who is part of the out-group, or "baddie group".
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    But why did noone else in the EZ produce jobs like we did? That is the mystery. Our employment laws were largely set to European standards. We had a relatively high and increasing minimum wage (Germany didn't even have one for nearly all of that period). And the money spent on takeaways and deliveries was substantial in cumulo and should have boosted GDP by more than it did. My speculation is that we are not very good at measuring that kind of spending, partly because there is significant under declaration of it. We get the employment part because people need to be registered to get in work benefits but the money taken largely disappears from the figures.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Oracle, aye, poor chap sounds totally innocent and got a pile of shit poured over him by the Mail (and politicians).
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    dixiedean said:

    The Conservative Party isn't sure what it is for.

    I can tell you what it is for in the current age. It is for the maintenance of the egotistical ambition of it's "leader". Nothing less, nothing more. They all swear fealty to Lord Boris of Twat.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited May 2022
    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Lots of people have more than one job, which boosts employment rates. Most economic statistics are at best approximations, which makes them especially problematic when making international comparisons. Is British inflation higher than French? Well, we measure inflation by looking at prices of a basket of goods. Is our basket the same as the French? No. Is British CPI the same as British RPI? No.

    What of GDP? Remember the amusement a few years back about including hookers and cocaine? Russia apparently has a lot of people in free flats. It could immediately increase its GDP by charging rent and giving all the tenants a benefit payment that exactly covered the rent.

    Economic statistics are better than nothing, and surprisingly robust but beware of politicians misleading the public and even themselves because they've not quite understood that GDP or inflation or unemployment is not a physical quality like mass but closer to a psychological construct like intelligence, where problems of definition and measurement are closely intertwined, along with the risk of mischief -making.
  • DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    I agree with you.

    Which is why we should not be worried when companies say they can not find staff, the solution is that companies need to treat their staff as valued and respected.

    Firms need to invest in training, pay a decent salary and treat people with respect to earn some loyalty.

    Let bad employers who can't do that, find they have no staff and go out of business, as the good employers get people instead.
    So says someone who I can have a pretty good guess has never run a business and never employed anyone. Actually "Bart", do you have any experience of anything that you opine on?
    I have actually and I have always considered treating my colleagues with respect as the most important principle of being a good employer.

    I believe in karma, not as a religious concept, but as a principled one. If you treat your staff well, they will treat you well and everyone is happier for it. Recruitment and training is disruptive and companies with extremely high staff turnovers (except for industries where that's necessary) tend to have serious problems.

    If you don't agree treating your colleagues with respect is a key principle for a decent employer, then that is rather concerning.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited May 2022
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    But why did noone else in the EZ produce jobs like we did? That is the mystery. Our employment laws were largely set to European standards. We had a relatively high and increasing minimum wage (Germany didn't even have one for nearly all of that period). And the money spent on takeaways and deliveries was substantial in cumulo and should have boosted GDP by more than it did. My speculation is that we are not very good at measuring that kind of spending, partly because there is significant under declaration of it. We get the employment part because people need to be registered to get in work benefits but the money taken largely disappears from the figures.
    We should have that information from 2017 onwards though as Uber eats and similar took off because they will be separately reporting the figures and it's hard to hide money when someone else is reporting what is going on...

    It's one reason why taxi drivers have shown large increases (largest by type of job) in reported income from 2010 onwards. It's hard to hide payments when it's not cash in hand...
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    DavidL said:

    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    Thought this was an excellent turn of phrase by the BBC reporter outside Kharkiv:
    "War in the Kharkiv region has changed - it's now a game of hawk and mouse, where each side's drones circle constantly, trying to pinpoint the enemy's tanks and guns, for targeting by artillery."

    Hawk and mouse. Excellent.
    It's not all drones, if this thread is accurate:
    https://twitter.com/kms_d4k/status/1524506107615584256
    I am UA military engineering + EOD officer. I have served one turn in Donbas prior to the recent invasion.

    Recently, I have accomplished a mission which made huge impact on Russian losses and completely screwed up their plans to encircle Lysychansk....
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    Cookie said:

    Morning all,
    Definitely spent too much time here yesterday - had a dream about being stuck in Wick with Rishi Sunak. Most odd.
    He was very relaxed about it all.

    Was he looking at you funny?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    Selebian said:

    On cookgate :wink:

    Silly, really, isn't it? Could have been expressed/done in a different way. Not the poor are profligate idiots and we do compulsory re-education for them, but "when people get in touch with the food bank, we don't just help with their immediate need, we also offer classes on how to cook low cost meals and, on completion, given them a convenient starter pack to cover a few of the meals we've taught them how to cook".

    Essentially the same policy (but with a bit more carrot than stick) but much more sympathetic presentation.

    Well yes. The killer line is this.

    “There’s not this massive use for food banks in this country,”

    Self-evidently there is.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    I agree with you.

    Which is why we should not be worried when companies say they can not find staff, the solution is that companies need to treat their staff as valued and respected.

    Firms need to invest in training, pay a decent salary and treat people with respect to earn some loyalty.

    Let bad employers who can't do that, find they have no staff and go out of business, as the good employers get people instead.
    So says someone who I can have a pretty good guess has never run a business and never employed anyone. Actually "Bart", do you have any experience of anything that you opine on?
    I have actually and I have always considered treating my colleagues with respect as the most important principle of being a good employer.

    I believe in karma, not as a religious concept, but as a principled one. If you treat your staff well, they will treat you well and everyone is happier for it. Recruitment and training is disruptive and companies with extremely high staff turnovers (except for industries where that's necessary) tend to have serious problems.

    If you don't agree treating your colleagues with respect is a key principle for a decent employer, then that is rather concerning.
    I have written books on the subject, so your concern is unnecessary. Run a business have you? Sorry, but I very much doubt it.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047
    edited May 2022

    Cookie said:

    Morning all,
    Definitely spent too much time here yesterday - had a dream about being stuck in Wick with Rishi Sunak. Most odd.
    He was very relaxed about it all.

    Was he looking at you funny?
    He was staring at his groin, but that was attributable to the height difference.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    The myth of the 'feckless poor' persists amongst the idle rich.

    That would have been fair if the comment had been made by Rees-Mogg. Not so much by a former Labour councillor....
    He may or may not be idle but he's certainly rich:

    Lee Anderson MP, who today said poor people forced to use foodbanks 'cannot cook or budget properly' claimed £222,000 in expenses in 2020/21 - including £4,100 on travel and 'subsistence'

    https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1524418659485208577?s=20&t=-z3GB3vICjAhH21Ett5IAA
    MP expenses are always a bit of a red herring:
    1. They include office and staffing costs
    2. These are higher when its a new MP as there are start-up costs

    I actually think MPs should be paid more. At the same time it's undeniable that a) Anderson is relatively rich and b) he's blaming the poor for their own poverty.
    I am not sure he was doing that, but it was certainly unwise to enable his opponents to spin it that way
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047
    Selebian said:

    On cookgate :wink:

    Silly, really, isn't it? Could have been expressed/done in a different way. Not the poor are profligate idiots and we do compulsory re-education for them, but "when people get in touch with the food bank, we don't just help with their immediate need, we also offer classes on how to cook low cost meals and, on completion, given them a convenient starter pack to cover a few of the meals we've taught them how to cook".

    Essentially the same policy (but with a bit more carrot than stick) but much more sympathetic presentation.

    Very true.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited May 2022

    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    The clearest sign of how badly Russia is doing is that their main tabloid has an article headlined "What is the secret of the Ukrainian army?" that explains that it is a powerful combination of "a Russian soldier, a fascist officer and an American general".

    https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1524647544307036163
    They're still asserting that all Ukrainians are really Russians, then.

    This seems to be closer to the reality of actual Russian soldiers:
    https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1524525506288398336

    It's fairly clear whose leaders bear most similarity to fascists.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    eek said:

    Results from a focus group in Tiverton

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664133366525952

    Lib Dems will win because Boris isn't liked and they won't vote Labour.

    There's something pure about a vote for the Lib Dems. It's quite simply a vote against Boris Johnson and the Tories. No baggage attached to the vote at all.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited May 2022
    For those following the collapse in the stablecoin markets - Tether is now trading at below $1 so at some point soon that whole ponzi scheme will be revealed to be the ponzi scheme it is.

  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,283
    edited May 2022
    Roger said:

    eek said:

    Results from a focus group in Tiverton

    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1524664133366525952

    Lib Dems will win because Boris isn't liked and they won't vote Labour.

    There's something pure about a vote for the Lib Dems. It's quite simply a vote against Boris Johnson and the Tories. No baggage attached to the vote at all.
    Tiverton will almost certainly go back to the Tories after they lose it at the by-election. I'd say 99% chance of a LD gain at the BE and 99% Tory win at the GE. All a bit predictable.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited May 2022
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    But why did noone else in the EZ produce jobs like we did? That is the mystery. Our employment laws were largely set to European standards. We had a relatively high and increasing minimum wage (Germany didn't even have one for nearly all of that period). And the money spent on takeaways and deliveries was substantial in cumulo and should have boosted GDP by more than it did. My speculation is that we are not very good at measuring that kind of spending, partly because there is significant under declaration of it. We get the employment part because people need to be registered to get in work benefits but the money taken largely disappears from the figures.
    Universal credit, and the easy availability of casual work also helped. @RochdalePioneers and @BartholomewRoberts also raise good points about the need to treat human capital as valuable, and invest in training and development. At the bottom end of the labour market, we now no longer have virtually unlimited supply, so there will be a need to replace labour with capital as the cost of labour rises.

    Yes, some businesses will find things difficult in this new environment, but no-one bar a few VC investors ever thought that delivering a can of coke and a packet of crisps to someone’s front door, was ever going to be a profitable business model. Nor washing cars inside and out for a tenner.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    theakes said:

    Finland and Sweden join Nato, could be the bargaining chip to end the war, applications can be suspended, delayed etc if Russia gets out of Ukraine.

    I'm not sure about that.
    Their leaders have made it clear publicly that normalising relations with Russia is unlikely while Putin is in place, because they simply cannot trust him.

    Rebuilding trust, post war, is going to take some time and effort.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    FTSE down 2.25% this morning.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,258
    Samos is, in places, quite stunning. Vivid green stands of cypress trees, whitewashed chapels snoozing between. The cloudless sky gazes serenely down. Wow
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited May 2022
    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Alex Cole-Hamilton, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats:

    - "We have flipped a lot of communities who have traditionally voted Tory, they have now realised they get a better service with the Liberal Democrats."

    Just as in southern England, the Lib Dem uptick in Scotland terrifies the Tories. But for a different reason: any significant SCon to SLD tactical unwind will see all SCon seats fall… not to the Lib Dems, but to the SNP.

    If I was Douglas Ross I’d be doing everything in my power to attract these floating voters. Shame his bosses in London are doing everything they can to repel and disgust them.

    I'm very pleased with the progress we have made in Banff and Buchan Coast. Taking seats in Fraserburgh and Peterhead shows there is opposition to the idiot Duguid. But yes, come the general election the challenge is replace the mince with something more palatable, and if that means SNP then fine.
    Er, point of order, nothing wrong with mince. It's positively sentient when cooked with shallots, as opposed to the ScoTories at present.
    Shallots you say? Gotta try that.
    Fiddly. 10x as much chopping as onions for a less than 1000% gain.
    FPT - but a crucial and imperative issue of current affairs, for @StuartDickson as well: I put them in whole (peeled of brown skin) for a stew or mince, or cut almost halfway throuigh for a large bud or clove or whatever the term is. So no chopping needed.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    eek said:

    For those following the collapse in the stablecoin markets - Tether is now trading at below $1 so at some point soon that whole ponzi scheme will be revealed to be the ponzi scheme it is.

    Tether is teetering on the edge now, could be about to make a big boom.

    DeFi = deregulated finance.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089

    dixiedean said:

    The Conservative Party isn't sure what it is for.

    I can tell you what it is for in the current age. It is for the maintenance of the egotistical ambition of it's "leader". Nothing less, nothing more. They all swear fealty to Lord Boris of Twat.
    And he, in turn, lets his minions bask in the reflected glory of being in the leader's gang. Paradoxically, the more they prove their loyalty by abasing themselves, the greater that glory is.

    From the outside, it looks stupid (because it is) but it's a setup that is remarkably robust.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Breaking - Met have recommended 100 partygate fines in total - 50 more
    https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1524676412715773952
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    This is an interesting one for students of government. This journalist seems to be suggesting that Kit Malthouse is a member of cabinet. My understanding is that as a junior minister he is not. Sloppy journalism or am I technically wrong?

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/voices-these-are-the-five-words-that-expose-boris-johnson-s-government/ar-AAX9mTB?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=741221543c8248e58142251d09cb8eee
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    Selebian said:

    On cookgate :wink:

    Silly, really, isn't it? Could have been expressed/done in a different way. Not the poor are profligate idiots and we do compulsory re-education for them, but "when people get in touch with the food bank, we don't just help with their immediate need, we also offer classes on how to cook low cost meals and, on completion, given them a convenient starter pack to cover a few of the meals we've taught them how to cook".

    Essentially the same policy (but with a bit more carrot than stick) but much more sympathetic presentation.

    So essentially he's a bit thick and shit at politics? No bar to advancement in the BJ party of course..
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Surely this one is pretty simple. Different jobs deliver different levels of economic output. The "jobs miracle" delivered an awful lot of low paid low output low security jobs. Whilst I have a lot of respect for the physical effort made by the Uber Eats cyclists delivering people's booze and crisps order its hardly GDP-generating.

    What we need to do - as has been the case for the lost decade back to 2012 - is invest in training and skills and manufacturing. Make more stuff, improve balance of payments, increase disposable incomes - the virtuous circle.

    The problem is that in the 2008 era we replaced capitalism with bankism. Borrow cheap money, invest it, deliver a return on investment, reinvest the profits is now seen as "who will pay for it" subsidy.
    But why did noone else in the EZ produce jobs like we did? That is the mystery. Our employment laws were largely set to European standards. We had a relatively high and increasing minimum wage (Germany didn't even have one for nearly all of that period). And the money spent on takeaways and deliveries was substantial in cumulo and should have boosted GDP by more than it did. My speculation is that we are not very good at measuring that kind of spending, partly because there is significant under declaration of it. We get the employment part because people need to be registered to get in work benefits but the money taken largely disappears from the figures.
    My hypothesis is that we created a lot of service jobs. There has been an explosion in companies offering practically immediate delivery of takeways and now groceries. They just don't exist on that scale in Europe because their societies haven't de-evo;ved like we have where as the ex Commercial Director of Sainsburys put it "people expect a store open 24/7 in their back garden with someone on hand to bring things to the instantly for free"

    We have become overly reliant on service industries which produce less GDP vs other economies more focused on producing industries which generate more GDP. Again, the people employed to cycle beer and crisps from Tesco Express to someone's house have my respect because they work very hard with minimal pay and no security. But they do not generate economic output, they simply replace the person walking to the shop themselves to buy the same stuff.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited May 2022

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    Look at this from 2013...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/07/bank-of-england-forward-guidance-eurozone#block-52021439e4b0afb9dd11aa37

    The Bank of England plans to keep interest rates at a record low until unemployment falls to 7% - something unlikely for another three years - in a major new departure for British monetary policy.

    Barely a month after Canadian Mark Carney took over from the long-serving Mervyn King as BoE governor, the central bank said on Wednesday that it would keep interest rates at 0.5 percent unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability


    Unemployment went below 7% just five months later and it kept on falling. Today it stands at 3.8%.

    The issue then was that we imported a lot of deflation from China. Raising interest rates may have ended up causing deflation.
    There was also a truly massive deflationary effect from the gradual unwinding of the mountains of "fantasy money" that had been created on the back of CDOs and similar financial products post 2008 which went on for several years. That came close to driving several parts of the world into deflation and the EZ dipped into it more than once.

    The British jobs miracle, post 2012, however, remains largely unexplained. Why did it happen here? How did so little of that growth end up being reflected in GDP? Are our GDP figures correct? What policies do we need to sustain high employment? Can we improve productivity within that mix? Are we right about productivity? The reason it is found to be so low is that we effectively divide the number of people in work by the output. As that number went up and the measured output didn't productivity fell, but did it?

    These are not just historical issues. They are right at the centre of the economic challenges we face today. I am not sure I believe the official figures.
    Lots of people have more than one job, which boosts employment rates. Most economic statistics are at best approximations, which makes them especially problematic when making international comparisons. Is British inflation higher than French? Well, we measure inflation by looking at prices of a basket of goods. Is our basket the same as the French? No. Is British CPI the same as British RPI? No.

    What of GDP? Remember the amusement a few years back about including hookers and cocaine? Russia apparently has a lot of people in free flats. It could immediately increase its GDP by charging rent and giving all the tenants a benefit payment that exactly covered the rent.

    Economic statistics are better than nothing, and surprisingly robust but beware of politicians misleading the public and even themselves because they've not quite understood that GDP or inflation or unemployment is not a physical quality like mass but closer to a psychological construct like intelligence, where problems of definition and measurement are closely intertwined, along with the risk of mischief -making.
    An on-topic question is whether the MP for Ashfield uses subsidised House of Commons soup kitchens restaurants. And if the Commons charges full price for meals but runs at a loss because they need to stay open all the time (and I'm not saying that is the case) then is said MP enjoying subsidised food or not?
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Nigelb said:

    Cicero said:

    Even though the move has been expected for several weeks now, the announcement that the Finnish government is officially seeking to join NATO "without delay" has been greeted with a real sense of relief in Tallinn. The near certain accession of Finland and highly likely accession of Sweden transforms the security postion of Estonia and the other Baltic states drastically for the better. Estonian President Karis was visiting Helsinki yesterday and there was almost a sense of celebration that Estonia´s sister nation has recognised the serious danger that Putin´s Russia now poses to the entire civilised world. Nevertheless this relief is tempered by the knowledge that the crisis is still serious.
    The US intelligence assessment that the war could last for months or even years to come and the concerns of Western Europe do not match the sense that we have in Estonia, at least based on the Russian losses, as reported. The defeat of Russian forces in Kharkiv that has followed the defeat at the gates of Kyiv, underlines that Western intelligence has consistently over estimated Russian strength and underestimated the Ukrainians. Furthermore, Putin is losing his freedom of action: any attempt to institute conscription may be met with open rebellion, and the repeated arson and bomb attacks in Russia suggests to many here that an anti war resistance movement is growing inside Russia itself.
    Superior training and tactics, better equipment, higher morale, all favour the Ukrainians, yet the view remains that Putin is solidly entrenched and capable of victory in the war. This is not an assessment that chimes with the Estonians. Unless the Ukrainian losses are many multiples of those reported, the most likely end of the war can only come with a culmination that renders the Russian armed forces combat ineffective, military jargon for complete defeat. While Ukrainian victory is by no means certain, the latest victory on top of a major increase in the number of Ukrainian fresh troops and better kit is inexorably tipping the balance.

    The clearest sign of how badly Russia is doing is that their main tabloid has an article headlined "What is the secret of the Ukrainian army?" that explains that it is a powerful combination of "a Russian soldier, a fascist officer and an American general".

    https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1524647544307036163
    They're still asserting that all Ukrainians are really Russians, then.

    This seems to be closer to the reality of actual Russian soldiers:
    https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1524525506288398336

    It's fairly clear whose leaders bear most similarity to fascists.
    Not sure I want to watch that thanks.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited May 2022
    Leon said:

    Samos is, in places, quite stunning. Vivid green stands of cypress trees, whitewashed chapels snoozing between. The cloudless sky gazes serenely down. Wow

    Samos is indeed very beautiful and green, outside the over-developed areas. It's a very big island, so there's a lot left to go. Part of the Ionian heartland, like Chios.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837

    This is an interesting one for students of government. This journalist seems to be suggesting that Kit Malthouse is a member of cabinet. My understanding is that as a junior minister he is not. Sloppy journalism or am I technically wrong?

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/voices-these-are-the-five-words-that-expose-boris-johnson-s-government/ar-AAX9mTB?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=741221543c8248e58142251d09cb8eee

    He attends Cabinet but isn't a member of it.
    It's easily seen on Gov.uk.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,283
    FPT

    Andy_JS said:

    Heathener said:

    Morning all! Several jaw-dropping stories I have read on twitter:
    1) Dartford Tories photographed laughing and grinning as they open a foodbank. Then photograohed tucking into sandwiches and cherry bakewells as the celebratory buffet
    2) Matt "I love parmos me!" Vickers car-crash session with Iain Dale on LBC. Defends the Ashfield MP and his "people are foodbanks are thick, I got a chef to feed people on 30p a day", then agrees with another panelist that after the energy rises thats no longer possible. Then says the people of NI voted against the protocol and Iain Dale has to repeatedly remind him that he's factually wrong. Then he says people voted Sinn Fein in protest of the protocol despite Sinn Fein supporting it.

    I know we get told that we shouldn't call Tories thick as mince. But...

    But why why why aren't Labour 20% ahead? It's hitting me hard.

    I think Sir Keir, nice chap though he is, needs to go. We need someone from a working class background who represents a northern constituency.

    If we don't win back 'some' of the red wall seats we're doomed to more of this ghastly culture war: stoking the flames of hatred in order to win power.

    Labour isn’t 20 points ahead because it spent the best part of a decade trashing its brand. You don’t turn that around in two years. The key thing for the preservation of the UK’s democracy and the primacy of the rule of law is that the Tories are well behind. They just scraped a national vote share of 30% and there is no UKIP or Reform vote to squeeze. If they don’t turn their current position around by winning back voters lost to the left of them they will be out of power in two years’ time (assuming they have not managed to fully rig the system in the meantime). On 13th December 2019 that did not look like an even remotely realistic prospect.

    The Rallings and Thrasher figures were Lab 35%, Con 33%.
    Isn't that extrapolation based on a national model taking account of areas that were not voting, rather than considering demographic turnout?
    I don't know exactly but their vote share projection is considered to be just as reliable as the BBC one.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088
    Morning all.

    Question: does anyone have a link to an actual quote of what Liz Truss said when she "threatened to tear up the NIP"? Was it imlpementing Article 16, or something else?
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    dixiedean said:

    The Conservative Party isn't sure what it is for.

    I can tell you what it is for in the current age. It is for the maintenance of the egotistical ambition of it's "leader". Nothing less, nothing more. They all swear fealty to Lord Boris of Twat.
    And he, in turn, lets his minions bask in the reflected glory of being in the leader's gang. Paradoxically, the more they prove their loyalty by abasing themselves, the greater that glory is.

    From the outside, it looks stupid (because it is) but it's a setup that is remarkably robust.
    Until one day someone knocks over one of the cards
This discussion has been closed.