2 weeks to go till the by-elections and more want BoJo OUT – politicalbetting.com
Comments
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If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.0 -
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e7750 -
Some thoughts on growing and shrinking inequality:
1. In "Seeds of Albion", David Hackett Fischer contrasted the Puritans of New England with the Cavaliers farther south. The Puritans encouraged what we would now call "middle class" immigrants -- and discouraged both aristocrats and servants. The Cavaliers did the opposite.
2. After the United States sharply limited immigration in the 1920s, families became more equal. (Note that I said "after", not "because", though I do think that is one of the reasons for the growing equality during those decades.)
3. A surprisingly large amount of increasing family inequality in the US can be explained by changing famliy structures. There are far more families headed by single parents, usually women, now, that there were. (When Patrick Moynihan pointed out that this was a problem for black families, their illegitimacy rate was about 20 percent. Now it is much higher in most groups. Warning: Saying that didn't make Moynihan many friends.)
4. In the US, there seems to be more "assortative" mating than there once was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mating
Instead, for example, of a doctor marrying a nurse, we now have two doctors married to each other. And so on.2 -
Are you saying golf is a load of balls?Farooq said:
People who play golf are wankers. Pro or amateur, it's a universal rule. Everybody knows this.dixiedean said:Off topic. Don't know much about professional golf. And it's rarely discussed on here. But WTF is going on?
One issue I didn't foresee is golfers deciding they simply aren't paid enough.
Can someone explain?0 -
Standard Government policy and has been for years. Don’t insure or hedge risk (e.g. at lowest level no hire care in insured and at a higher level currency isn’t really hedged in MOD) because the balance sheet is big enough to manage those risks and over all you win.DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
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Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e7750 -
You think that's bad?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
Next up to buy is Mike Ashley.
They may prefer United Counties League North.
Gutted for Rooney and the players. They must be the only team ever to have been cheered on a lap of honour after being relegated.0 -
...
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John Major and Norman Lamont laugh at your innocence.DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e7750 -
They just want a larger wedge.ydoethur said:
Are you saying golf is a load of balls?Farooq said:
People who play golf are wankers. Pro or amateur, it's a universal rule. Everybody knows this.dixiedean said:Off topic. Don't know much about professional golf. And it's rarely discussed on here. But WTF is going on?
One issue I didn't foresee is golfers deciding they simply aren't paid enough.
Can someone explain?0 -
Brady won’t rule out another no-confidence vote on Johnson within a year
Chair of the 1922 Committee leaves door open to rule change as William Hague says PM could be ousted by other means0 -
A slice of the action?Foxy said:
They just want a larger wedge.ydoethur said:
Are you saying golf is a load of balls?Farooq said:
People who play golf are wankers. Pro or amateur, it's a universal rule. Everybody knows this.dixiedean said:Off topic. Don't know much about professional golf. And it's rarely discussed on here. But WTF is going on?
One issue I didn't foresee is golfers deciding they simply aren't paid enough.
Can someone explain?0 -
Wowsers.
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I think this is where we get into the difference between moderate amounts of relative inequality (as between a comfortably well-off small business owner and one of their employees, for example) and enormous amounts of relative inequality (as between Jeff Bezos and an Amazon warehouse worker, for example). I think most people would be fairly comfortable with the former; the latter I think is well beyond the level of reward needed to incentivise a bit of risk-taking and innovation, and I would be in favour of wealth tax or similar policy that evens things out a bit. (Bezos of course is an extreme outlier, but I think the principle applies further down the wealth scale too; there's a debate to be had about where and how progressively a wealth tax should kick in.)JosiasJessop said:That's interesting, thanks. My instinctive reaction is twofold: *anything* can be used to fray the social fabric of society if we let it. Even if it does not matter. Secondly, what would be the effects of not having significant inequalities? A lot of progress happens because people want to be part of that upper grouping. If the rewards are not there, would they strive as much?
My dad started a company in the 1970s; mortgaged his house and took risks. Those risks paid off and he became a moderately well-off person - not very rich, but comfortable. He did not take those risks just because of the joy of the work, but also because of the potential rewards. Does that make him greedy or a bad person? Was it bad that he employed dozens of people?
Among other things, there's got to be a lot of potential entrepreneurs in the least wealthy 50% of the population who are currently unable to have a go because they don't have, say, a house they could mortgage or a similar level of seed capital. So a bit less inequality might increase progress...
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If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.2
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Just outside of Hagerstown, and quite near Camp David.williamglenn said:Yet another mass shooting reported in the US a few minutes ago in Smithsburg, Maryland.
https://twitter.com/TasminMahfuz/status/15349850798559764480 -
On Lepanto
The north is full of tangled things,
Of texts and aching eyes.
And dead is all the innocence
Of anger surprise
And Christian killers Christian in a narrow dusty room.
And Christian feareth Christ who is a newer face of doom
And Christian hateth Mary that Christ kissed in Galilee
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
They just don’t write them like that anymore.1 -
At least 3 dead at a manufacturing plant.SeaShantyIrish2 said:
Just outside of Hagerstown, and quite near Camp David.williamglenn said:Yet another mass shooting reported in the US a few minutes ago in Smithsburg, Maryland.
https://twitter.com/TasminMahfuz/status/15349850798559764480 -
Like what?Andy_JS said:If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.
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FBI arrests Ryan Kelly, candidate for Michigan governor over Jan. 6.0
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Was there ever a genie in a bottle? I remember the lamp and the ring. I feel that Christina Aguilera is to blame for this confusion.Foxy said:
You aren't going to uninvent them. The genie is out of the bottle. We just have to learn to live with them.Andy_JS said:If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.
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Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.1 -
Good tweet about both Putin and Erdogan's sabre-ratlling today :
https://twitter.com/gnuseibeh/status/15349691703155957790 -
That is a good analogy. Leon is misunderstanding the issue. It is not solved by countries keen on tourists putting in good systems. You are scuppered by other locations actions.Foxy said:
Some years ago I entered America via Phoenix but left over the border to Mexico at Nogales, Mexico a few days later, so wasn't stamped as leaving USA. As such I was regarded as an illegal overstayer in the USA for some years. Fortunately I had been stamped leaving Mexico a fortnight after entering, so eventually got it sorted.kjh said:
Any UK passport holder needs to ensure they are recorded arriving and leaving the EU otherwise they will incorrectly be recorded still being in the EU. When they subsequently arrive in the EU (even though it is blindly obvious they must have previously left) they will be deported, possibly fined and possibly banned from ever re-entering if they are recorded as being present for more than 90 days in 180. It has been an issue with passport stamps, but hopefully won't be an issue now it is automated, but people are paranoid as you just don't know.RobD said:
This is for arrivals from other Schengen countries? I assume this is a short/medium term problem while the various databases are integrated.kjh said:
Sorry Leon you are not reading the post. You enter and leave country X, you then go to Portugal with their super-duper e-gate. Because you haven't been recorded leaving country X you now can't enter Portugal. It makes not a jot of difference Portugal are efficient you are not getting in.Leon said:
No, that shows I’m right. Countries desperate for UK tourists (and the UK tourist £ is mighty indeed) will make it easier, then it just depends on the lower-watt moron UK tourists to catch up, which they willkjh said:
You keep repeating point 2 even though it has been explained over and over again this is not the issue. Portugal do have e-gates for British tourists NOW, but it doesn't stop the problems because Brits then queue to get their passports stamped anyway because of paranoia. I have given you previously 2 examples where it has gone badly wrong. And of course it is NOT a poor EU country issue, but an all country issue because it doesn't matter if Portugal have it cracked it if a previous trip to somewhere else has messed up your records. Portugal might be 100% efficient but if your exit from another country hasn't been recorded you are not getting in to Portugal for your hols.Leon said:
I’ve probably travelled internationally more than anyone on this forum, since BrexitCookie said:
But is this really happening?rottenborough said:
Sometimes I think the whole 'going on holiday' thing and passport queues will actually be what does for Brexit.northern_monkey said:Honestly not seeking to trigger another debate on how easy/hard it is getting into the EU, or if it’s racist calling someone a gammon, it just made me chuckle.
Rather than the wrecking of GDP or the GFA.
Airports are certainly hellish, and the industry has fucked up massively. But the small sample of reports I have had of getting through passport control either into Europe or home again suggests no problems whatsoever.
There have been some people indignant that their passports were being stamped, which I think just amounted to those people indignant about Brexit, but in terms of getting through passport control I have heard many stories of seamlessness and no stories of long queues.
And, yes, there is evidence of longer queues for Brits in the EEA, because Brexit. I’ve experienced it. Weirdly, the worst was in Switzerland last summer, an extra 30-40 minutes. Enough to be quite irritating
Four points tho:
1. Nothing has changed outside the EEA
2. It is in the interests of any poorer EU country dependant on British tourists, to fix this: so you can expect this to be a temporary issue in Portugal, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, where they will get a new system in place, probably Spain too
3. Right now the picture is befuddled and obscured by Covid problems, and it’s hard to work out what is causing what
4. Medium term, e-gates will solve all of these issues
For the vast majority of people it isn't a problem. It hasn't been for me, except one not too long queue when the EU queue was empty, but that was just annoying rather than anything else.
Countries like Turkey are making it a breeze to get in. Southern Med EU countries will have to compete or lose billions
I assume this will become a vanishingly small issue as you say, but it has nothing to do with poor EU countries getting good systems to prevent it. It is out of their control.
@RobD my apologies, I badly worded one of my write ups which led you to believe I was referring to traveling directly from one EU country to another. I have only just realised that. What I meant was two separate trips to the EU with a gap between each trip but with the leaving of the first EU location not being recorded.0 -
Not to mention Iran turning cameras off at nuclear power plant.WhisperingOracle said:Good tweet about both Putin and Erdogan's sabre-ratlling today :
https://twitter.com/gnuseibeh/status/15349691703155957791 -
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt1 -
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e7752 -
Seemingly Phil Mickelson had millions and millions of dollars of gambling debts. He really, really needed the money.tlg86 said:
Bunch of has-beens collecting one last pay check.dixiedean said:Off topic. Don't know much about professional golf. And it's rarely discussed on here. But WTF is going on?
One issue I didn't foresee is golfers deciding they simply aren't paid enough.
Can someone explain?0 -
Indeed. It isn't great. That was the case with Bury, too. Difference being. You can get 30k every week at Derby.GarethoftheVale2 said:
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt
No club that big has gone bust for good in this country I think.
Third Lanark the biggest?
If the PM, or Labour, want a truly Populist and popular policy which won't cost much, sorting out rogues and charlatans in football might be a good place to start.1 -
I hope he doesn't mean reading PB.TheScreamingEagles said:
Like what?Andy_JS said:If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.
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A man who sent a racist death threat to Labour MP David Lammy is a 12-time Conservative election candidate and was a member of the Tory party until six days before his conviction, The Yorkshire Post can reveal
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/leeds-man-who-sent-racist-death-threat-to-david-lammy-is-12-time-conservative-election-candidate-37263131 -
Precisely this. I don't get how some people can be so against them. They are really useful.Foxy said:
You aren't going to uninvent them. The genie is out of the bottle. We just have to learn to live with them.Andy_JS said:If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.
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If I listed all the locations myself and OGH have written and/or publish PB threads then the troglodytes would be so pro smartphones.RobD said:
Precisely this. I don't get how some people can be so against them. They are really useful.Foxy said:
You aren't going to uninvent them. The genie is out of the bottle. We just have to learn to live with them.Andy_JS said:If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.
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No ground, owe millions to a company called MSD, owe millions to the taxman.dixiedean said:
Indeed. It isn't great. That was the case with Bury, too. Difference being. You can get 30k every week at Derby.GarethoftheVale2 said:
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt
No club that big has gone bust for good in this country I think.
Third Lanark the biggest?
Basically anyone taking over has to hope for a quick turnaround and 2 promotions to get a payoff. There have been rumours Ashley is waiting in the wings to swoop in at the last minute and play hardball. There have also been suggestions the council could buy the ground
On the plus side they have a much bigger fanbase and catchment then Bury did and you would expect them to eventually get back to the top 2 tiers if they survive0 -
That is so sweet. Just gave me a warm feeling (no rude posts please). Yep as I have said before you are one of my favourite posters.DavidL said:2 -
Bury's problem was that a new owner was never going to get a payoff with them being one of several smaller clubs in the shadow of the Manchester giants.
The situation is kind of messy now in that a new company has bought the ground and the original Bury FC and is trying to kind back in the league system. Meanwhile a phoenix club called Bury AFC has started again in the lower leagues and is sharing with Radcliffe Borough. It's not clear whether the two clubs will merge.1 -
It's because of the advertising revenue. They are a complete pain in the arse for street clutter, and incredibly ugly (except for the classic reds), but BT will fight to keep them. Ofcom also have quite strict rules for keeping them in areas with rubbish signal.Andy_JS said:
We'd be better off without it. Life was certainly better before it was invented.Leon said:
I can still remember, as a child, hearing the adults ask each other: “Do you have a telephone?”JosiasJessop said:
Fifty years takes us back to the year before my birth: 1972. Look at the UK in 1972 for the average person, and ask yourself were times better then? Black-and-white TV. No phone connection unless you were well-off (though that was changing). Strikes. Power cuts.Northern_Al said:
Fair enough. But my point really is that, if you ignore the occasional blip, like the current one, the history of the world over the last 50 years is that the rich have done nothing but get richer, both in absolute terms and relative to others. The gap between the super rich and the rest has increased, dare I say, exponentially.rcs1000 said:
Well, Elon has lost tens of billions with the Tesla share price down from $1,250 to $750.Northern_Al said:
My heart bleeds. I haven't seen evidence, however, of the very rich losing significant chunks of their portfolios.rcs1000 said:
That's simply not true.Northern_Al said:
No, it is not true that "everyone across the western world is going to be poorer". The very rich will not be poorer. They never are. They are the strongest, not the unions.Big_G_NorthWales said:
They will hasten the destruction of everyone's lives, incomes and see rocketing unemploymentpigeon said:
I've been predicting a return to widespread industrial action for some time. I hope that I'm right. I have developed a growing conviction that it is justifiable in most cases and is to be welcomed.northern_monkey said:
I hear people complaining about fuel prices and access to health services. I was earwhigging to a bloke in the supermarket the other day moaning about how hard it is to get through to a doctors surgery to speak to someone, never mind get an appointment. 'They keep telling me to go online. I don't want to go online, why can't I just ring up and speak to someone and get an appointment that day like I used to?'kyf_100 said:
The pain at the pump is all any of my friends outside of London talk about. Hard not to, when it's going up almost daily.Sandpit said:
It’s the sort of policy that’s worth a 10-point swing in the polls in a week. Tell the country that you understand there’s a problem, that it’s a temporary problem, and that here is a bunch of relief while that problem persists.wooliedyed said:
Yes, get petrol down to 'normal' and it will dwarf partygate in the polls. The only Tory leads from 95 to 2001 were the fuel protests. Petrol is the ballgame.Sandpit said:
The problem is that all the policymakers live in central London, and don’t care themselves about the cost of petrol on a daily basis.wooliedyed said:
But theyll wait till they are sub 30 and its been proposed by Reeves.Sandpit said:I’ll keep saying it. A huge amount of the inflation is coming from fuel prices. It costs £2bn a month to scrap fuel duty, 52p a litre, and it can be done overnight.
A huge amount of the cost comes back, by reducing inflationary pressure everywhere in the economy. It still makes petrol £1.20 or £1.30, which is where it was only a few months ago - but most importantly, it tells the country that the government is listening to them about the cost of living.
They really should care about it though, because the cost of transport fuels feed back into absolutely everything else.
The government has to wean itself off fuel duty anyway, may as well do it now when it’s politically prudent and massively popular. They can always bring it back as the oil price falls.
Bonus points if the green-minded Labour party oppose the cut.
People have moved on from partygate. What they see is a government that apparently doesn't have any answers to the cost of living crisis.
The only light for the government is that such observations among my friends are usually followed up by "the other lot don't have a clue what to do, either".
Oh, and the price of everything going up generally.
All this will sink the Tories, assuming this is being felt right across the country. Which it sounds like it is. That's what the vast majority of people who don't give two hoots about politics are worrying about.
Partygate and the aftermath cut through and sure people think Johnson's a lying buffoon, but people will vote on the above.
And it isn't going to get any easier. If we have a 70s redux this winter - stagflation, energy rationing, hell maybe even strikes - which some are forecasting, then they're done. Finito. Kaput.
I don't think Johnson's legacy is going to be looked on with any fondness in 10 years' time. In 20 years time I think we'll look back at it as a catastrophe.
The balance of economic and, therefore, political power in Britain has swung massively away from ordinary workers and towards a lucky and pampered generation of elderly homeowners and the downright rich. It's therefore high time that we had significant redistribution from the wealthy to the struggling.
We are never going to get that from the Tories because they only exist to transfer resources upwards. As far as I'm concerned, if strikes are going to both force bosses to heel and hasten the destruction of the current Government then they are to be celebrated twice over. Bring them on.
The strongest may try to hold the country to ransom, but this is the one time I am pleased we have a government who will resist unaffordable pay increases
You can wish it away but the fact is everyone across the western world is going to be poorer, and it is HMG responsibility to protect the poorest - it cannot protect everyone including well paid train drivers
The difference between the very rich and most people is that (for the ultra rich) a 50% reduction in the value of their portfolios affects their life not one jot. They have become absolutely a lot poorer, but the impact on their lives will be almost non-existent.
The Nasdaq has fallen from 16,000 to 12,000. That's a 25% drop. So he won't be the only one.
My point is not that the uber-rich aren't extremely well insulated (they are), but that in percentage terms they do lose out, and it is incorrect to claim that they are getting richer.
Yes, relative wealth has increased. But I'd argue that matters f***-all as long as most (nearly all) people have a better standard of living. How many people have outside loos nowadays?
I'd much rather live in 2022 (aside from Covid, which was a black swan) than 1972.
Meaning: do you have a telephone connection
The smartphone is surely the most important invention of the last 50 years
Interestingly, a lot of the phone boxes in urban areas are still operational. So a lot of people must still use them for some reason.
0 -
A football ground with no club to play there can't have much value.GarethoftheVale2 said:
No ground, owe millions to a company called MSD, owe millions to the taxman.dixiedean said:
Indeed. It isn't great. That was the case with Bury, too. Difference being. You can get 30k every week at Derby.GarethoftheVale2 said:
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt
No club that big has gone bust for good in this country I think.
Third Lanark the biggest?
Basically anyone taking over has to hope for a quick turnaround and 2 promotions to get a payoff. There have been rumours Ashley is waiting in the wings to swoop in at the last minute and play hardball. There have also been suggestions the council could buy the ground
On the plus side they have a much bigger fanbase and catchment then Bury did and you would expect them to eventually get back to the top 2 tiers if they survive
The new club should ground share with that outfit in West Bridgford and tell the owner of Pride Park to do one.0 -
The ground is only a couple of miles from the centre and near the river so the owner could try and redevelop for housing but presumably the council would be hostile to that.SandyRentool said:
A football ground with no club to play there can't have much value.GarethoftheVale2 said:
No ground, owe millions to a company called MSD, owe millions to the taxman.dixiedean said:
Indeed. It isn't great. That was the case with Bury, too. Difference being. You can get 30k every week at Derby.GarethoftheVale2 said:
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt
No club that big has gone bust for good in this country I think.
Third Lanark the biggest?
Basically anyone taking over has to hope for a quick turnaround and 2 promotions to get a payoff. There have been rumours Ashley is waiting in the wings to swoop in at the last minute and play hardball. There have also been suggestions the council could buy the ground
On the plus side they have a much bigger fanbase and catchment then Bury did and you would expect them to eventually get back to the top 2 tiers if they survive
The new club should ground share with that outfit in West Bridgford and tell the owner of Pride Park to do one.
There was all the saga with Coventry a few years back where they left the Ricoh twice - once for Northampton and then Birmingham0 -
Uncanny.TheScreamingEagles said:Wowsers.
You can almost begin to imagine the behind the scenes txts from Russian state TV whackos to Putin:
"Vlad, stop the killing, we are losing"
whilst every night they go on live and say 'nuke london'.
1 -
Interesting stuff going on at Bury. The original club, which was never liquidated, is out of administration, now owns Gigg Lane, having purchased it from the former owner. It is fan-owned, and volunteers are working to get the stadium all back in order.GarethoftheVale2 said:
No ground, owe millions to a company called MSD, owe millions to the taxman.dixiedean said:
Indeed. It isn't great. That was the case with Bury, too. Difference being. You can get 30k every week at Derby.GarethoftheVale2 said:
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt
No club that big has gone bust for good in this country I think.
Third Lanark the biggest?
Basically anyone taking over has to hope for a quick turnaround and 2 promotions to get a payoff. There have been rumours Ashley is waiting in the wings to swoop in at the last minute and play hardball. There have also been suggestions the council could buy the ground
On the plus side they have a much bigger fanbase and catchment then Bury did and you would expect them to eventually get back to the top 2 tiers if they survive
They have no team to play there. And aren't in a league anyway.
Meanwhile. There is another group of fans who started a new club, who won promotion to NWC Premier last season and have a contractual agreement to play at nearby Radcliffe next season. Bury AFC. They've been getting.around 1300 fans to every game.
So. Two fan owned clubs. One with an EFL ground.but no team.
And one with a team. And a heck of a lot of fans at that level, but no ground.
They need to start liking.each other soon.1 -
This is quite a worrying thread from Erdogan, because so much of it genuinely straight out of Putin's book. Also very similar is the drumbeat of jingoism from his supporters below.
https://twitter.com/RTErdogan/status/15349547577139609620 -
Yes, like most things there's a scale from the reasonable to the nutty. My attitudes were shaped partly by growing up in Denmark, where there were certainly different levels of wealth and some very rich people, but because taxation was pretty high and the services that it paid for were generally good, there was both an element of redistribution and a sense that it didn't matter so much. State schools were so good and well-funded that private schools were only there to cater for specialist interests, e.g. a music academy. Public transport was good, but anyway nearly everyone cycled on the separate cycle paths - we knew a Supreme Court judge who unaffectedly cycled to the Court every day. When everyone is living well, you don't much care if some are living exceptionally well and have a big villa and a yacht. Conversely, if you pay up to 50% of tax on your whole income, you really don't feel any inhibttion about spending the rest on whatever you like - and by and large, everyone's fine with you doing that too.pm215 said:
I think this is where we get into the difference between moderate amounts of relative inequality (as between a comfortably well-off small business owner and one of their employees, for example) and enormous amounts of relative inequality (as between Jeff Bezos and an Amazon warehouse worker, for example). I think most people would be fairly comfortable with the former; the latter I think is well beyond the level of reward needed to incentivise a bit of risk-taking and innovation, and I would be in favour of wealth tax or similar policy that evens things out a bit. (Bezos of course is an extreme outlier, but I think the principle applies further down the wealth scale too; there's a debate to be had about where and how progressively a wealth tax should kick in.)JosiasJessop said:That's interesting, thanks. My instinctive reaction is twofold: *anything* can be used to fray the social fabric of society if we let it. Even if it does not matter. Secondly, what would be the effects of not having significant inequalities? A lot of progress happens because people want to be part of that upper grouping. If the rewards are not there, would they strive as much?
My dad started a company in the 1970s; mortgaged his house and took risks. Those risks paid off and he became a moderately well-off person - not very rich, but comfortable. He did not take those risks just because of the joy of the work, but also because of the potential rewards. Does that make him greedy or a bad person? Was it bad that he employed dozens of people?
Among other things, there's got to be a lot of potential entrepreneurs in the least wealthy 50% of the population who are currently unable to have a go because they don't have, say, a house they could mortgage or a similar level of seed capital. So a bit less inequality might increase progress...
In Britain, many people's experience of life is that they only just get by, while others are extraordinarily wealthy and have education and other benefits which are simply out of reach of the rest. It feels an unreasonable result of what is probably partly hard work but also partly good luck.1 -
Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.3 -
Interesting from Stroud...
https://novaramedia.com/2022/06/09/in-stroud-starmers-labour-is-undermining-local-leaders-again/
Seems, if Novara can be believed, that a candidate who had previously worked well with Greens was blocked.
Stroud is well Green Party territory and has been for years.
0 -
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?0 -
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.0 -
Quite. I get Andy doesnt want or like smartphones, but the need to denigrate them as a concept I just do not get. Just continue to not buy one! So long as theres no talk of discriminating against those without one.rcs1000 said:
If you think about it, 99.9% of all human activity is unnecessary.Andy_JS said:If you think about it 99.9% of activity carried out on smartphones is totally unnecessary.
0 -
Who predicted this economic crisis as result of worlds post covid reboot?MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Has it caught everyone unawares or did the intelligent grown up people know inflation spikes and and patchy growth rebound causing recession was on cards long before covid was actually done?0 -
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.2 -
Sunak's boss wont be bothered. He has no idea about even the basics of money.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?
2 -
No.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
The irony was while as a whole the EU (ex-UK) has crap demography, inflexible Labour law etc which compared unfavourably with the U.K., it was aspects of EU membership (FOM, Single Market) that allowed the U.K. to (relatively) prosper.
Once you take those planks away, and add the general illiteracy of a Brexit party that has spent the last five years denying the laws of physics and the existence of any trade-offs, you get where the U.K. is today.2 -
-
Equivalent to a penny or two on income tax.rottenborough said:
Sunak's boss wont be bothered. He has no idea about even the basics of money.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?0 -
Timothy Snyder
@TimothyDSnyder
If Ukraine loses this war, it might well be because others used bad history to give themselves bad reasons to waste time during the weeks that will define the decades to come. 10/10
https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/15349237004867829761 -
The collective wisdom of pb.com today was that the country should give up all the tax revenue from fuel duty. It's a pretty unreal sort of atmosphere. I'd always regarded opinion on here to be more in favour of financial rectitude than most places.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.0 -
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.0 -
Amazing how quickly a country can shred its credit and its reputation.darkage said:
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.0 -
I thought we effectively didn't pay any interest on the QE debt, because the BoE returned all the interest paid to it by the Treasury - but my understanding of all the details and nuances is poor.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?0 -
Yes, a lot of people on here pretend to be fiscal conservatives. That’s until there’s an energy crisis.LostPassword said:
The collective wisdom of pb.com today was that the country should give up all the tax revenue from fuel duty. It's a pretty unreal sort of atmosphere. I'd always regarded opinion on here to be more in favour of financial rectitude than most places.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
They don’t like it up ‘em, the gammony-wammonys.0 -
Covid obscured everything for quite a while.darkage said:
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.0 -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61718906
Fun article on inflation in a country unused to it for decades - Japan.0 -
I think if they were to go bust before the new season's fixtures are released then there would be a team reprieved at each level from L1 downwards, probably keeping going until some team turns down the reprieve and then that level will play one short.GarethoftheVale2 said:
Derby have already been relegated from the Championship so it would be one short in L1.dixiedean said:
Just ran a team short when Bury went pop.rcs1000 said:
If it goes bust it will be dropped down at least one division, possibly two.rcs1000 said:
Maybe only two Premier League clubs will get the drop... could Burnley be saved?TheScreamingEagles said:Looks like Derby County might be going under.
Their poor fans.
So either:
(1) They run the Championship with one less team
(2) There will be an additional promotion from the First Division
(3) They only demote two teams from the Premier League
Of course, if they drop Derby County down a division (or two), then (2) makes more sense. But this is football. Anything is possible.
There are other potential buyers though. And why not?
They are potentially a long-term Premier League side.
The key problems are that the former owner still owns the ground and they have a huge pile of debt
If they go bust after the fixtures are released then L1 will play one short.0 -
There was quite a bit of expectation of an inflation crisis from at least autumn last year, and I posted about it on here.MoonRabbit said:
Who predicted this economic crisis as result of worlds post covid reboot?MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Has it caught everyone unawares or did the intelligent grown up people know inflation spikes and and patchy growth rebound causing recession was on cards long before covid was actually done?
Beth Rigby even asked Boris about it in October.
He did his usual cake-eating act.
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1445364929905758212?s=21&t=BhVUr8YdjnkIwypBTDrc5A1 -
The underlying reality is that politicians are ultimately just a reflection of the people that vote them in.Gardenwalker said:
Covid obscured everything for quite a while.darkage said:
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
The options in 2019 were two variations of 'too good to be true'.
People have given up on reality, preferring a fantasy world.
The dam was bust around about 2015.
I still don't really know if Johnson was a bad choice, compared with the alternative.
0 -
And yet the same story is playing out across the EU. It's a lazy answer and if anything it completely ignores the actual issue of older wealthy people assuming that their "hard work" has handed them an entitlement to never having to face hardship again. This isn't a UK specific issue though I'd say it's worse here because old people in the UK are used to paying their local Polish plumber £50 cash in hand to do something that should cost £125 to get done properly.Gardenwalker said:
No.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
The irony was while as a whole the EU (ex-UK) has crap demography, inflexible Labour law etc which compared unfavourably with the U.K., it was aspects of EU membership (FOM, Single Market) that allowed the U.K. to (relatively) prosper.
Once you take those planks away, and add the general illiteracy of a Brexit party that has spent the last five years denying the laws of physics and the existence of any trade-offs, you get where the U.K. is today.
We have a problem where the global pain of high prices are being unfairly loaded on working age people who can ill afford it while wealthy older people are being protected from the majority of the pain. At the same time we have a completely ineffective and dishonest government pretending there's nothing wrong and as anyone knows, it's impossible to actually fix anything until you admit there's a problem. Is a future Labour government going to put taxes up on older people and cut them for working age people? Are they fuck. They may loosen immigration restrictions on EU people but that's really only papering over the cracks and does nothing to solve the underlying issue that UK society is now firmly against those who produce and in heavily favour of those who consume. We are living beyond our means and now the bill has come due.2 -
No I agree with you. It just doesn’t seem possible they could lose £11B as incompetently as that. The way the story is told must be twisting the truth a bit.LostPassword said:
I thought we effectively didn't pay any interest on the QE debt, because the BoE returned all the interest paid to it by the Treasury - but my understanding of all the details and nuances is poor.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?0 -
So easy to forget about Corbyn.darkage said:
The underlying reality is that politicians are ultimately just a reflection of the people that vote them in.Gardenwalker said:
Covid obscured everything for quite a while.darkage said:
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
The options in 2019 were two variations of 'too good to be true'.
People have given up on reality, preferring a fantasy world.
The dam was bust around about 2015.
I still don't really know if Johnson was a bad choice, compared with the alternative.
Of course he himself was a reaction to the ongoing impoverishment of the young and poor, to the extent that Labour pressed the “insane” button.3 -
Not for ever though. We only have to pay penny or 2 on our income tax for a short time to make up for this clerical error?Gardenwalker said:
Equivalent to a penny or two on income tax.rottenborough said:
Sunak's boss wont be bothered. He has no idea about even the basics of money.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?
Still bit embarrassing though.0 -
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.2 -
@MaxPB you haven’t actually addressed my points.
The U.K. was able to ameliorate (though not eliminate) its demographic challenge via FOM. And it was able to maintain its economic strategy as Europe’s financial entrepôt inside the single market.
The comparison is not U.K. versus, say, Italy.
It’s U.K. today versus the counterfactual of U.K. with FOM and the Single Market.
Anyway, where we agree is that it’s totally fucked and a necessary but not sufficient condition of un-fucking it is the elimination of this government.0 -
But is Keir Starmer a Healy or a Wilson? No. He's simply incapable of carrying Labour and it's voters who want perpetual unfunded spending rises into austerity and the kind of public spending cuts we need to balance the books.Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.0 -
Bloody panicking sheep, I wouldn't want them besides me in a trench, or a pandemic for that matter.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
I am old enough to remember when you were predicting a massive economic boom.
Nothing is ever as good as it seems, or as bad as it seems.0 -
I know people disagree with me on this, but I blame George Osborne. He talked a really good talk on the need to balance the books, and to do so fairly, but in practice he ensured that favoured interest groups were sheltered from the costs of austerity, while those who were not favoured suffered more. We were not all in it together.darkage said:
The underlying reality is that politicians are ultimately just a reflection of the people that vote them in.Gardenwalker said:
Covid obscured everything for quite a while.darkage said:
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
The options in 2019 were two variations of 'too good to be true'.
People have given up on reality, preferring a fantasy world.
The dam was bust around about 2015.
I still don't really know if Johnson was a bad choice, compared with the alternative.
And then he encouraged a spurt in house prices in a desperate attempt to win the 2015 general election. Then he missed all his fiscal targets anyway.
The thing is that the public were receptive to the political message. They accepted that there was no money left, and that recovering the position would mean we couldn't have everything we wanted. And Osborne squandered that support. This puts us in a much weaker position politically.4 -
A year.MoonRabbit said:
Not for ever though. We only have to pay penny or 2 on our income tax for a short time to make up for this clerical error?Gardenwalker said:
Equivalent to a penny or two on income tax.rottenborough said:
Sunak's boss wont be bothered. He has no idea about even the basics of money.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?
Still bit embarrassing though.
Its quite a lot of money, tbh.0 -
That's just papering over the cracks, as I said. It's a completely unconvincing argument that a few hundred thousand net beneficiary immigrants would change the situation. No, the UK needs to cut spending on old people yesterday and needs a government that can tell them to get fucked when the moan about the "hard work" they did.Gardenwalker said:@MaxPB you haven’t actually addressed my points.
The U.K. was able to ameliorate (though not eliminate) its demographic challenge via FOM. And it was able to maintain its economic strategy as Europe’s financial entrepôt inside the single market.
The comparison is not U.K. versus, say, Italy.
It’s U.K. today versus the counterfactual of U.K. with FOM and the Single Market.
Anyway, where we agree is that it’s totally fucked and a necessary but not sufficient condition of un-fucking it is the elimination of this government.1 -
That clip hasn’t aged very well 🫢 and of course Biden had poured gas on his own fire and BoE had not long stopped printing money when Rigby asked that.Gardenwalker said:
There was quite a bit of expectation of an inflation crisis from at least autumn last year, and I posted about it on here.MoonRabbit said:
Who predicted this economic crisis as result of worlds post covid reboot?MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Has it caught everyone unawares or did the intelligent grown up people know inflation spikes and and patchy growth rebound causing recession was on cards long before covid was actually done?
Beth Rigby even asked Boris about it in October.
He did his usual cake-eating act.
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1445364929905758212?s=21&t=BhVUr8YdjnkIwypBTDrc5A
But I meant earlier, and by brighter people than politicians - economists in the city on nice salaries advising those investing huge sums or how to trade, or uni doctors and professors. Way back at start of world lockdown surely there were people whose specialism was to predict this reaction to reboot and how to plan for it?0 -
I just want to repeat @Stuartinromford’s last para because it’s a bloody vital point.
…the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet. 2 -
It certainly sounds it when you compare it to things - Boris vote winning housing strategy building on legacy of Lady Thatcher launched today is only 500M capped 3B uncapped. That 11B could have been good in health service, in levelling up, in transport, most of all with families on breadline with cost of living, eleven billion flushed down drain through incompetence is hard to take 😕Gardenwalker said:
A year.MoonRabbit said:
Not for ever though. We only have to pay penny or 2 on our income tax for a short time to make up for this clerical error?Gardenwalker said:
Equivalent to a penny or two on income tax.rottenborough said:
Sunak's boss wont be bothered. He has no idea about even the basics of money.MoonRabbit said:
I don’t actually believe it’s possibleBenpointer said:
It wasn't long ago Big_G was telling us how Sunak was ideally cut out to be CoE because he was used to dealing with large sum's of money (presumably, his wife's).DavidL said:
Possibly because he did not want to alert the market as to how fast interest rates might rise.TheScreamingEagles said:
Governments and Chancellors have been doing this for decades, why did Sunak decide not to?DavidL said:
As I have said it is not so simple. Insurance of this type would undoubtedly have increased the cost of future gilt sales.Luckyguy1983 said:
I should have said 'should be'. Sunak is 100% presentation, zero effectiveness.dixiedean said:
As if.Luckyguy1983 said:
That’s a resigning matter.TheScreamingEagles said:Oh Rishi, you're not dishy any more.
Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt.
Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process.
The loss to taxpayers is greater than the amount Conservatives have accused former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown of costing the UK between 2003 and 2010, when he sold some of the nation’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
Jagjit Chadha, director of Niesr, said Sunak’s decisions had saddled the UK with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”, adding that it was the Treasury’s fault.
“It would have been much better to have reduced the scale of short-term liabilities earlier, as we argued for some time, and to exploit the benefits of longer-term debt issuance,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/90025f48-858f-40c5-a011-3f285f05e775
The FT must be spinning it in some way?
Still bit embarrassing though.
Its quite a lot of money, tbh.0 -
In my experience, it is quite difficult to get people to see past self interest. They keep finding ways to justify their self interest back to themselves. This is something that I have found endlessly frustrating in dealing with people. But in the end, it is perhaps best thought of as an inevitable human flaw, unchangeable at the macro level.MaxPB said:
And yet the same story is playing out across the EU. It's a lazy answer and if anything it completely ignores the actual issue of older wealthy people assuming that their "hard work" has handed them an entitlement to never having to face hardship again. This isn't a UK specific issue though I'd say it's worse here because old people in the UK are used to paying their local Polish plumber £50 cash in hand to do something that should cost £125 to get done properly.Gardenwalker said:
No.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
The irony was while as a whole the EU (ex-UK) has crap demography, inflexible Labour law etc which compared unfavourably with the U.K., it was aspects of EU membership (FOM, Single Market) that allowed the U.K. to (relatively) prosper.
Once you take those planks away, and add the general illiteracy of a Brexit party that has spent the last five years denying the laws of physics and the existence of any trade-offs, you get where the U.K. is today.
We have a problem where the global pain of high prices are being unfairly loaded on working age people who can ill afford it while wealthy older people are being protected from the majority of the pain. At the same time we have a completely ineffective and dishonest government pretending there's nothing wrong and as anyone knows, it's impossible to actually fix anything until you admit there's a problem. Is a future Labour government going to put taxes up on older people and cut them for working age people? Are they fuck. They may loosen immigration restrictions on EU people but that's really only papering over the cracks and does nothing to solve the underlying issue that UK society is now firmly against those who produce and in heavily favour of those who consume. We are living beyond our means and now the bill has come due.1 -
Yes.LostPassword said:
I know people disagree with me on this, but I blame George Osborne. He talked a really good talk on the need to balance the books, and to do so fairly, but in practice he ensured that favoured interest groups were sheltered from the costs of austerity, while those who were not favoured suffered more. We were not all in it together.darkage said:
The underlying reality is that politicians are ultimately just a reflection of the people that vote them in.Gardenwalker said:
Covid obscured everything for quite a while.darkage said:
Intriguing as to how it is only now that the UK government has lost market credibility. The danger signs have been there for a long time. Since 2019.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
The options in 2019 were two variations of 'too good to be true'.
People have given up on reality, preferring a fantasy world.
The dam was bust around about 2015.
I still don't really know if Johnson was a bad choice, compared with the alternative.
And then he encouraged a spurt in house prices in a desperate attempt to win the 2015 general election. Then he missed all his fiscal targets anyway.
The thing is that the public were receptive to the political message. They accepted that there was no money left, and that recovering the position would mean we couldn't have everything we wanted. And Osborne squandered that support. This puts us in a much weaker position politically.
Having said that, the general mainstream analysis was broadly supportive, because he charted a course out of the GFC.
It is only with hindsight really that economists now understand that austerity stunted productivity and probably weakened some government functions to the point of effective collapse.
Osborne of course was only Chancellor for 6 years. We’ve had 6 more years of denial, inactivity and increasing fantasy.0 -
EU membership isn't really the be-all and end-all and most important factor in determining Britain's economic destiny, though. The quality of its economic and political leadership is.Gardenwalker said:I just want to repeat @Stuartinromford’s last para because it’s a bloody vital point.
…the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Imagine the counterfactual where the Brexit referendum went to plan, and Boris Johnson becomes PM of a UK still within the EU after Cameron retires in 2018, as the standard bearer of diehard Leavers not willing to accept the result of the referendum. How well would that have gone?
We know what Johnson is like. We know what his instincts for profligacy are, from debacles like the Garden Bridge. As a country we would fundamentally be in the same deep hole because of his poor leadership, and the political damage wrought by Osborne's botched and partial austerity.
And if you mainly blame Brexit for our difficult situation then how can you do the right things to fix it? You end up thinking that we just have to renegotiate membership of the Single Market and avoid all the hard choices.0 -
When I said my prayers last night, which I always do kneeling naked, I prayed for you Nick, to see some love action soon. So if something happens, you know why, it’s we have a caring God.NickPalmer said:
Yes, like most things there's a scale from the reasonable to the nutty. My attitudes were shaped partly by growing up in Denmark, where there were certainly different levels of wealth and some very rich people, but because taxation was pretty high and the services that it paid for were generally good, there was both an element of redistribution and a sense that it didn't matter so much. State schools were so good and well-funded that private schools were only there to cater for specialist interests, e.g. a music academy. Public transport was good, but anyway nearly everyone cycled on the separate cycle paths - we knew a Supreme Court judge who unaffectedly cycled to the Court every day. When everyone is living well, you don't much care if some are living exceptionally well and have a big villa and a yacht. Conversely, if you pay up to 50% of tax on your whole income, you really don't feel any inhibttion about spending the rest on whatever you like - and by and large, everyone's fine with you doing that too.pm215 said:
I think this is where we get into the difference between moderate amounts of relative inequality (as between a comfortably well-off small business owner and one of their employees, for example) and enormous amounts of relative inequality (as between Jeff Bezos and an Amazon warehouse worker, for example). I think most people would be fairly comfortable with the former; the latter I think is well beyond the level of reward needed to incentivise a bit of risk-taking and innovation, and I would be in favour of wealth tax or similar policy that evens things out a bit. (Bezos of course is an extreme outlier, but I think the principle applies further down the wealth scale too; there's a debate to be had about where and how progressively a wealth tax should kick in.)JosiasJessop said:That's interesting, thanks. My instinctive reaction is twofold: *anything* can be used to fray the social fabric of society if we let it. Even if it does not matter. Secondly, what would be the effects of not having significant inequalities? A lot of progress happens because people want to be part of that upper grouping. If the rewards are not there, would they strive as much?
My dad started a company in the 1970s; mortgaged his house and took risks. Those risks paid off and he became a moderately well-off person - not very rich, but comfortable. He did not take those risks just because of the joy of the work, but also because of the potential rewards. Does that make him greedy or a bad person? Was it bad that he employed dozens of people?
Among other things, there's got to be a lot of potential entrepreneurs in the least wealthy 50% of the population who are currently unable to have a go because they don't have, say, a house they could mortgage or a similar level of seed capital. So a bit less inequality might increase progress...
In Britain, many people's experience of life is that they only just get by, while others are extraordinarily wealthy and have education and other benefits which are simply out of reach of the rest. It feels an unreasonable result of what is probably partly hard work but also partly good luck.
In the meantime, have you tried Crusader Kings III? https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/crusader-kings-iii/about1 -
The two things (Brexit and leadership) are to me inseparable. Brexit was a sign of deep decadence among both the political class and voters.LostPassword said:
EU membership isn't really the be-all and end-all and most important factor in determining Britain's economic destiny, though. The quality of its economic and political leadership is.Gardenwalker said:I just want to repeat @Stuartinromford’s last para because it’s a bloody vital point.
…the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Imagine the counterfactual where the Brexit referendum went to plan, and Boris Johnson becomes PM of a UK still within the EU after Cameron retires in 2018, as the standard bearer of diehard Leavers not willing to accept the result of the referendum. How well would that have gone?
We know what Johnson is like. We know what his instincts for profligacy are, from debacles like the Garden Bridge. As a country we would fundamentally be in the same deep hole because of his poor leadership, and the political damage wrought by Osborne's botched and partial austerity.
And if you mainly blame Brexit for our difficult situation then how can you do the right things to fix it? You end up thinking that we just have to renegotiate membership of the Single Market and avoid all the hard choices.
Or course Brexit is not the be-all and end-all.
Other models are available. But they require a wrestling with reality, choices, and indeed much sacrifice during any transition.
To date it is still not clear what model Britain thinks it is aiming at.4 -
Starmer's not ideal, sure. However, he has quietly but effectively locked the Corbynites back in the nursery. And a politician who is mediocre at the retail stuff might be what we need- a more ruthless electoral machine will always be tempted to sugar the pill too much.MaxPB said:
But is Keir Starmer a Healy or a Wilson? No. He's simply incapable of carrying Labour and it's voters who want perpetual unfunded spending rises into austerity and the kind of public spending cuts we need to balance the books.Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Most importantly of all, unlike the current Conservative leadership or followership, he shows some evidence of a grip on reality. Johnson doesn't have that, indeed has made a career out of casting those who try to force reality on him into the outer darkness. Once you acknowledge reality, a lot of the necessary follows.
Starmer might not be able to make all this work. But unless the Conservatives do an impossible flip-flop over Johnson and his works he's the least bad immediate hope.
Don't have nightmares, everyone.2 -
Between 75 and 100 % per cent in Turkey currebtly. These things are feeding geopolitical tensions.carnforth said:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61718906
Fun article on inflation in a country unused to it for decades - Japan.0 -
Thank you! Haven't tried Crusader Kings III - is it good?MoonRabbit said:
When I said my prayers last night, which I always do kneeling naked, I prayed for you Nick, to see some love action soon. So if something happens, you know why, it’s we have a caring God.
In the meantime, have you tried Crusader Kings III? https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/crusader-kings-iii/about0 -
It's trying to aim at something?Gardenwalker said:
The two things (Brexit and leadership) are to me inseparable. Brexit was a sign of deep decadence among both the political class and voters.LostPassword said:
EU membership isn't really the be-all and end-all and most important factor in determining Britain's economic destiny, though. The quality of its economic and political leadership is.Gardenwalker said:I just want to repeat @Stuartinromford’s last para because it’s a bloody vital point.
…the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Imagine the counterfactual where the Brexit referendum went to plan, and Boris Johnson becomes PM of a UK still within the EU after Cameron retires in 2018, as the standard bearer of diehard Leavers not willing to accept the result of the referendum. How well would that have gone?
We know what Johnson is like. We know what his instincts for profligacy are, from debacles like the Garden Bridge. As a country we would fundamentally be in the same deep hole because of his poor leadership, and the political damage wrought by Osborne's botched and partial austerity.
And if you mainly blame Brexit for our difficult situation then how can you do the right things to fix it? You end up thinking that we just have to renegotiate membership of the Single Market and avoid all the hard choices.
Or course Brexit is not the be-all and end-all.
Other models are available. But they require a wrestling with reality, choices, and indeed much sacrifice during any transition.
To date it is still not clear what model Britain thinks it is aiming at.0 -
Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Is there any evidence that the current Labour leadership are even thinking of doing the tough measures you say will be needed?
None at all as far as I can see.
And as for @MaxPB - he is probably right that Britain's economic prospects are poor. But I note that he omits to mention one of the reasons for this - Brexit - which he supported.
Until we accept that and think about how to deal with the damage that has caused we won't get anywhere. The Tories won't. Labour seem too scared even to utter the word. So things will continue to get worse.0 -
Once again, what specifically would it have changed? The issue is that we, as a nation, are living beyond our means and the older generation is impoverishing those below it to do so. Brexit doesn't change anything except potentially holding down wages and service costs for those older people. No, it isn't Brexit, it's the selfish baby boomer generation who are unwilling to make the same sacrifices their parents made for the good of the nation. They don't just want to keep all of their own accumulated wealth, they also want to leech off the incomes of younger people through rent and tax transfers.Cyclefree said:Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Is there any evidence that the current Labour leadership are even thinking of doing the tough measures you say will be needed?
None at all as far as I can see.
And as for @MaxPB - he is probably right that Britain's economic prospects are poor. But I note that he omits to mention one of the reasons for this - Brexit - which he supported.
Until we accept that and think about how to deal with the damage that has caused we won't get anywhere. The Tories won't. Labour seem too scared even to utter the word. So things will continue to get worse.
You're the person complaining about the trains being late when the issue is the giant asteroid in the sky about to annihilate the population.3 -
I was surprised to learn recently that Sweden apparently has a very big wealth gap, with the top 10% owning 60-70% of the nation's wealth.NickPalmer said:
Yes, like most things there's a scale from the reasonable to the nutty. My attitudes were shaped partly by growing up in Denmark, where there were certainly different levels of wealth and some very rich people, but because taxation was pretty high and the services that it paid for were generally good, there was both an element of redistribution and a sense that it didn't matter so much. State schools were so good and well-funded that private schools were only there to cater for specialist interests, e.g. a music academy. Public transport was good, but anyway nearly everyone cycled on the separate cycle paths - we knew a Supreme Court judge who unaffectedly cycled to the Court every day. When everyone is living well, you don't much care if some are living exceptionally well and have a big villa and a yacht. Conversely, if you pay up to 50% of tax on your whole income, you really don't feel any inhibttion about spending the rest on whatever you like - and by and large, everyone's fine with you doing that too.pm215 said:
I think this is where we get into the difference between moderate amounts of relative inequality (as between a comfortably well-off small business owner and one of their employees, for example) and enormous amounts of relative inequality (as between Jeff Bezos and an Amazon warehouse worker, for example). I think most people would be fairly comfortable with the former; the latter I think is well beyond the level of reward needed to incentivise a bit of risk-taking and innovation, and I would be in favour of wealth tax or similar policy that evens things out a bit. (Bezos of course is an extreme outlier, but I think the principle applies further down the wealth scale too; there's a debate to be had about where and how progressively a wealth tax should kick in.)JosiasJessop said:That's interesting, thanks. My instinctive reaction is twofold: *anything* can be used to fray the social fabric of society if we let it. Even if it does not matter. Secondly, what would be the effects of not having significant inequalities? A lot of progress happens because people want to be part of that upper grouping. If the rewards are not there, would they strive as much?
My dad started a company in the 1970s; mortgaged his house and took risks. Those risks paid off and he became a moderately well-off person - not very rich, but comfortable. He did not take those risks just because of the joy of the work, but also because of the potential rewards. Does that make him greedy or a bad person? Was it bad that he employed dozens of people?
Among other things, there's got to be a lot of potential entrepreneurs in the least wealthy 50% of the population who are currently unable to have a go because they don't have, say, a house they could mortgage or a similar level of seed capital. So a bit less inequality might increase progress...
In Britain, many people's experience of life is that they only just get by, while others are extraordinarily wealthy and have education and other benefits which are simply out of reach of the rest. It feels an unreasonable result of what is probably partly hard work but also partly good luck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_Sweden0 -
it's the selfish baby boomer generation that inflicted an inane brexit on the rest of us.MaxPB said:
Once again, what specifically would it have changed? The issue is that we, as a nation, are living beyond our means and the older generation is impoverishing those below it to do so. Brexit doesn't change anything except potentially holding down wages and service costs for those older people. No, it isn't Brexit, it's the selfish baby boomer generation who are unwilling to make the same sacrifices their parents made for the good of the nation. They don't just want to keep all of their own accumulated wealth, they also want to leech off the incomes of younger people through rent and tax transfers.Cyclefree said:Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Is there any evidence that the current Labour leadership are even thinking of doing the tough measures you say will be needed?
None at all as far as I can see.
And as for @MaxPB - he is probably right that Britain's economic prospects are poor. But I note that he omits to mention one of the reasons for this - Brexit - which he supported.
Until we accept that and think about how to deal with the damage that has caused we won't get anywhere. The Tories won't. Labour seem too scared even to utter the word. So things will continue to get worse.
You're the person complaining about the trains being late when the issue is the giant asteroid in the sky about to annihilate the population.2 -
Egged on in fact by Max.Tres said:
it's the selfish baby boomer generation that inflicted an inane brexit on the rest of us.MaxPB said:
Once again, what specifically would it have changed? The issue is that we, as a nation, are living beyond our means and the older generation is impoverishing those below it to do so. Brexit doesn't change anything except potentially holding down wages and service costs for those older people. No, it isn't Brexit, it's the selfish baby boomer generation who are unwilling to make the same sacrifices their parents made for the good of the nation. They don't just want to keep all of their own accumulated wealth, they also want to leech off the incomes of younger people through rent and tax transfers.Cyclefree said:Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Is there any evidence that the current Labour leadership are even thinking of doing the tough measures you say will be needed?
None at all as far as I can see.
And as for @MaxPB - he is probably right that Britain's economic prospects are poor. But I note that he omits to mention one of the reasons for this - Brexit - which he supported.
Until we accept that and think about how to deal with the damage that has caused we won't get anywhere. The Tories won't. Labour seem too scared even to utter the word. So things will continue to get worse.
You're the person complaining about the trains being late when the issue is the giant asteroid in the sky about to annihilate the population.1 -
https://twitter.com/danlp86/status/1535021851893800960
Wes is superb. Future leader.
He should be fronting Labour at every chance.0 -
A large number of Brexit voters were between 50 and 60. These are not the Baby Boomer generation.Tres said:
it's the selfish baby boomer generation that inflicted an inane brexit on the rest of us.MaxPB said:
Once again, what specifically would it have changed? The issue is that we, as a nation, are living beyond our means and the older generation is impoverishing those below it to do so. Brexit doesn't change anything except potentially holding down wages and service costs for those older people. No, it isn't Brexit, it's the selfish baby boomer generation who are unwilling to make the same sacrifices their parents made for the good of the nation. They don't just want to keep all of their own accumulated wealth, they also want to leech off the incomes of younger people through rent and tax transfers.Cyclefree said:Stuartinromford said:
That's not entirely new though. The same generation who now ferociously vote themselves pension increases and house price rises are the same ones who supported the squeezing of their parents' pensions in the 1980s to help make the Thatcher tax cuts add up.MaxPB said:
That's such a lazy answer when we consider the same is happening all across Europe. The working population is being squeezed by the non-working population everywhere and the UK is no exception. Old people want their 11% pension rises and will impoverish younger people to feather their nests.Gardenwalker said:
Perfectly obvious trajectory since 2016.MaxPB said:Another pretty depressing day at the coalface. I really don't think people understand just how bad things are about to get in the UK (and across Europe).
The UK government has lost market credibility, I've never seen anything like it. One of the directors said that this hasn't happened since the 70s and it won't change without the government falling and being replaced. Though that time the profligate Labour government was replaced by Mrs Thatcher, is Starmer going to bring the same economic revolution that she did? Fuck no he isn't. So our hopes lie in the coward Tory MPs deposing Boris and cleaning house within the party and moving back to fiscal responsibility and then also winning in 2024. I don't see it, the UK is too used to living beyond its means and now it will vote for a government that says it will never have to pay the bill for this.
The last two days have been genuinely depressing. As someone who really does care about the country and where we're headed this is quite possibly the worst I've ever felt about our future. During COVID there was always the sunlit uplands of unlockdown. This time there's no immediate future I can see where the UK regains the credibility that Boris and his cohort of idiots have thrown away. Labour won't get it back so we are where we are until 2029 at least.
Sorry. I take no pleasure from it, I’m British, my kids are British. Besides which, I still own property there.
A lost decade or two decades.
A potential Labour government has a few things going for it, though. For a start, their client vote looks like being "people in work", as opposed to the retired and rentiers. Also, Labour in government have been able to do austerity when they absolutely have to (think of Healey or Cripps)- if there's unpleasant medicine to be given, Labour are trusted to give it in a way that Conservatives never can be. Makes sense, because even good Conservative ministers can't shake off the impression that they are enjoying meanness.
Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. It needs the present government to fail so utterly, the be so discredited, that the opposition can take over and do the necessary thing without electoral pushback. But anyone has to be better than a Prime Minister willing to do to business what happens to stepmoms in those videos. Or the kind of casual decadance that says it's OK for the enconomy to have fifty years of meh because then we will realise the benefits of Renewed National Vigour. That's pretty much my daughter's entire working lifetime, and she hasn't started her GCSEs yet.
Is there any evidence that the current Labour leadership are even thinking of doing the tough measures you say will be needed?
None at all as far as I can see.
And as for @MaxPB - he is probably right that Britain's economic prospects are poor. But I note that he omits to mention one of the reasons for this - Brexit - which he supported.
Until we accept that and think about how to deal with the damage that has caused we won't get anywhere. The Tories won't. Labour seem too scared even to utter the word. So things will continue to get worse.
You're the person complaining about the trains being late when the issue is the giant asteroid in the sky about to annihilate the population.0
