Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
Unfortunately we were locked into the Common Market by then, so we were powerless to protect our industry from continental competition.
Do you really believe that? It's just the major suppliers/competitors for coal are places like the USA, Russia and South Africa, and for shipping it's the South and South-East Asia. Also Nissan only came to Sunderland because of the the then-ten-country EEC
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
There's an iPod on display in the Design Museum.
I’ve never found (and never will find) an adequate replacement for the combo of my now-dead laptop with iTunes (rip) and my 160gb iPod classic (also dead).
Loads of music not available to stream, and all my old cd library. Spotify is great - teenage me couldn’t have possibly dreamt of such a wonderful service - but I generally need internet, my phone battery is crap etc etc.
I agree entirely. Whenever my ipod classic breaks, I buy a replacement ipod classic off ebay.
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
In order to operate in a country, Starlink needs licensing from the government* of that country. This is under existing international telecommunications law. This is enforced both by the terminal and by the satellites - they don't broadcast to countries outside the agreements (apart from Iran).
As part of the granting of the license, nearly all governments, including the UK (IIRC) mandate that all traffic from their territorial domains is downlinked to station(s) within their territory and connects to the internet there. This means that each country retains control of internet access, even via Starlink
Starlink is gradually rolling out laser links between satellites. However, this won't be used as a way round this.
*Turning Starlink terminals on in Iran was an interesting exception, at the behest of the Biden adminstartion.
I was hoping a dish that I could link to the satellite directly.
Incidentally, how much does it cost to launch a microsat?
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
If you think the American government can't compel ISPs and phone carriers to bug your calls, then I've got a Nigerian bridge to sell you. And, as with superinjunctions, they are not allowed to tell anyone.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
There's an iPod on display in the Design Museum.
I’ve never found (and never will find) an adequate replacement for the combo of my now-dead laptop with iTunes (rip) and my 160gb iPod classic (also dead).
Loads of music not available to stream, and all my old cd library. Spotify is great - teenage me couldn’t have possibly dreamt of such a wonderful service - but I generally need internet, my phone battery is crap etc etc.
You can get your CD library turned into mp3 tracks by a number of services - you send them a case of your CDs and you get them back along with a download via google drive or similar in return.
I did mine, years ago - I keep the result on NAS box. For most people, it will sit on a corner of their computer.
You can get plenty of non-phone mp3 players. My sports watch acts as one - tough I don't use it for that.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
There's some good cricket matches on this afternoon.
Unfortunately, in one of them Gloucestershire are set to be on the wrong end of an absolute thrashing after Roderick played a fine innings for Worcestershire.
There's also some boring shit on at the bigger grounds, but we'll not talk about that.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
If you think the American government can't compel ISPs and phone carriers to bug your calls, then I've got a Nigerian bridge to sell you. And, as with superinjunctions, they are not allowed to tell anyone.
Oh, I'm sure they do. And I'm sure the happy little bugging bastitchs will continue. But there's a difference between analysis of petabytes for statistical purposes and bugging me personally, and bugging me personally bugs me. Personally.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
Did they have space?
Can you justify that comment?
The key question is, why should I?
Are you trying to shift the responsibility here?
I don't th'ink so, but if you want me too...
You know I'm only trying to rib on the subject of your mastery of puns.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
Did they have space?
Can you justify that comment?
The key question is, why should I?
Are you trying to shift the responsibility here?
I don't th'ink so, but if you want me too...
You know I'm only trying to rib on the subject of your mastery of puns.
Do you want jam on it?
Edit - Incidentally I missed a trick with that first pun. I should have asked if the museum was a space museum.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
If things keep going, in ten years time we'll be asking "what was a museum", twenty years "what was the internet", and thirty years "what was the US"?
Also for Tig...
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
In order to operate in a country, Starlink needs licensing from the government* of that country. This is under existing international telecommunications law. This is enforced both by the terminal and by the satellites - they don't broadcast to countries outside the agreements (apart from Iran).
As part of the granting of the license, nearly all governments, including the UK (IIRC) mandate that all traffic from their territorial domains is downlinked to station(s) within their territory and connects to the internet there. This means that each country retains control of internet access, even via Starlink
Starlink is gradually rolling out laser links between satellites. However, this won't be used as a way round this.
*Turning Starlink terminals on in Iran was an interesting exception, at the behest of the Biden adminstartion.
I was hoping a dish that I could link to the satellite directly.
Incidentally, how much does it cost to launch a microsat?
Starlink *is* about connecting to a satellite directly. Though the actual sat changes regularly as they move across the sky.
The issue is what happens next - most countries demand the "bent pipe" model. That is, you connect to the satellite. The satellite connects to a ground station in your country and from there to the Internet at large.
A cubesat is about $40K to get launched. That gives you a thing which you can communicate with a couple of minutes per day, for a few months.
Ambasat were trying to offer a kind of pico sat thing, but this seems to have died as project. They seem to be offering ballon launches mostly now.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
If things keep going, in ten years time we'll be asking "what was a museum", twenty years "what was the internet", and thirty years "what was the US"?
Also for Tig...
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
It's kind of like an iPhone, only it didn't do anything except play music.
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
If you think the American government can't compel ISPs and phone carriers to bug your calls, then I've got a Nigerian bridge to sell you. And, as with superinjunctions, they are not allowed to tell anyone.
Oh, I'm sure they do. And I'm sure the happy little bugging bastitchs will continue. But there's a difference between analysis of petabytes for statistical purposes and bugging me personally, and bugging me personally bugs me. Personally.
That is what I am trying to get at. The American government can bug you personally and keep it a secret.
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
In order to operate in a country, Starlink needs licensing from the government* of that country. This is under existing international telecommunications law. This is enforced both by the terminal and by the satellites - they don't broadcast to countries outside the agreements (apart from Iran).
As part of the granting of the license, nearly all governments, including the UK (IIRC) mandate that all traffic from their territorial domains is downlinked to station(s) within their territory and connects to the internet there. This means that each country retains control of internet access, even via Starlink
Starlink is gradually rolling out laser links between satellites. However, this won't be used as a way round this.
*Turning Starlink terminals on in Iran was an interesting exception, at the behest of the Biden adminstartion.
I was hoping a dish that I could link to the satellite directly.
Incidentally, how much does it cost to launch a microsat?
Starlink *is* about connecting to a satellite directly. Though the actual sat changes regularly as they move across the sky.
The issue is what happens next - most countries demand the "bent pipe" model. That is, you connect to the satellite. The satellite connects to a ground station in your country and from there to the Internet at large.
A cubesat is about $40K to get launched. That gives you a thing which you can communicate with a couple of minutes per day, for a few months.
Ambasat were trying to offer a kind of pico sat thing, but this seems to have died as project. They seem to be offering ballon launches mostly now.
Some years ago, there was an incident where someone got arrested for telling a PC that the horse he (the PC) was riding looked gay.
Not long after I was walking though Oxford. To my astonishment, I recognised a horse I used to ride. A police horse now. The thing was, that the horse in question was very, very gay. I'm talking Quentin Crisp x Liberace x Freddy Mercury.
For a moment, I was tempted. But plod have no sense of humour.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
If things keep going, in ten years time we'll be asking "what was a museum", twenty years "what was the internet", and thirty years "what was the US"?
Also for Tig...
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
It's kind of like an iPhone, only it didn't do anything except play music.
Plenty of non-phone mp3* players still exist. Tons of them on Amazon. Hell, my watch can do that - didn't want it as a feature, but it is there in just about all the models that Garmin make.
*Most will play just about any format of digital music.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
I am sorry to break it to you. Even the government had to disband it's Department for Brexit Opportunities (titter) because it could not find any. There are no benefits of Brexit. There are no fairies at the end of the garden. There are no alien landings.
But I just showed you one. We are now free of burdensome EU regulation on AI. We can develop it as we wish. Now, we may fuck this up - given our recent track record, that's probably a good bet - but at least with Brexit we have the opportunity to steer our own course. That is a palpable benefit. It's up to us to exploit it, or not
“The UK’s approach is driven, in a post-Brexit world, by a desire to encourage AI investment,” [the expert] added, which gives the U.K. more “freedom and flexibility to pitch regulation at the appropriate level to encourage investment,” he said in an email to CNBC.
In contrast the EU’s AI Act could make France “less attractive” for investment in artificial intelligence given that it lays down “a burdensome regulatory regime” for AI, Tanna said."
I will see whether I can throw you another straw to grasp at.
For there to be genuine "benefits of Brexit" for any business, the benefit will need to demonstrably outweigh the disbenefit. As I have self interest in AI I will happily concede if that turns out to be the case. At the moment it seems very unlikely that many businesses that are using AI enabled products would think they have an overall benefit by the UK not being part of the the biggest single market in the world.
We shall see
"The EU Should Learn From How the UK Regulates AI to Stay Competitive"
Though before we preen ourselves too much about the UK's tech savvy, remember that, as things stand, HMG is about to regulate online messaging out of existence;
On an entirely unrelated point, where do I get a VPN registered in a US state with freedom-of-speech laws or a Starlink uplink to bypass the UK entirely? Asking for a paranoid friend who wants to live in a free bloody country.
In order to operate in a country, Starlink needs licensing from the government* of that country. This is under existing international telecommunications law. This is enforced both by the terminal and by the satellites - they don't broadcast to countries outside the agreements (apart from Iran).
As part of the granting of the license, nearly all governments, including the UK (IIRC) mandate that all traffic from their territorial domains is downlinked to station(s) within their territory and connects to the internet there. This means that each country retains control of internet access, even via Starlink
Starlink is gradually rolling out laser links between satellites. However, this won't be used as a way round this.
*Turning Starlink terminals on in Iran was an interesting exception, at the behest of the Biden adminstartion.
I was hoping a dish that I could link to the satellite directly.
Incidentally, how much does it cost to launch a microsat?
Starlink *is* about connecting to a satellite directly. Though the actual sat changes regularly as they move across the sky.
The issue is what happens next - most countries demand the "bent pipe" model. That is, you connect to the satellite. The satellite connects to a ground station in your country and from there to the Internet at large.
A cubesat is about $40K to get launched. That gives you a thing which you can communicate with a couple of minutes per day, for a few months.
Ambasat were trying to offer a kind of pico sat thing, but this seems to have died as project. They seem to be offering ballon launches mostly now.
OK. Two questions:
How do I pretend to be a ground station?
How do I launch a balloon to provide a pseudosat?
For Starlink - you can't. That is trying to hack the system, and they've resisted the attempts made by nation states. See Russia in the Ukraine war. Incidentally, the drone attack boats Ukraine are using use Starlink to communicate.
For pseudosats - look into amateur weather balloons. Don't just launch something - you can foul up air traffic control and damage other peoples hobbies. If you look around on the internet, there are always informed amateurs, in your locality, who can point you in the right direction. Make sure you know the legal situation first.
Some years ago, there was an incident where someone got arrested for telling a PC that the horse he (the PC) was riding looked gay.
Not long after I was walking though Oxford. To my astonishment, I recognised a horse I used to ride. A police horse now. The thing was, that the horse in question was very, very gay. I'm talking Quentin Crisp x Liberace x Freddy Mercury.
For a moment, I was tempted. But plod have no sense of humour.
Perhaps your horse would have been less of a precious princess than the bob-haired WPC. Perhaps she was wearing comfortable shoes.
Some years ago, there was an incident where someone got arrested for telling a PC that the horse he (the PC) was riding looked gay.
Not long after I was walking though Oxford. To my astonishment, I recognised a horse I used to ride. A police horse now. The thing was, that the horse in question was very, very gay. I'm talking Quentin Crisp x Liberace x Freddy Mercury.
For a moment, I was tempted. But plod have no sense of humour.
I can understand a horse being a hoofer - but how on earth did it play the piano ?
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
It's a fine Aristotelian drama, with unity of action, place and time. There is perhaps an overemphasis on the element of spectacle, which he tended to deprecate.
Some years ago, there was an incident where someone got arrested for telling a PC that the horse he (the PC) was riding looked gay.
Not long after I was walking though Oxford. To my astonishment, I recognised a horse I used to ride. A police horse now. The thing was, that the horse in question was very, very gay. I'm talking Quentin Crisp x Liberace x Freddy Mercury.
For a moment, I was tempted. But plod have no sense of humour.
I can understand a horse being a hoofer - but how on earth did it play the piano ?
Some years ago, there was an incident where someone got arrested for telling a PC that the horse he (the PC) was riding looked gay.
Not long after I was walking though Oxford. To my astonishment, I recognised a horse I used to ride. A police horse now. The thing was, that the horse in question was very, very gay. I'm talking Quentin Crisp x Liberace x Freddy Mercury.
For a moment, I was tempted. But plod have no sense of humour.
I can understand a horse being a hoofer - but how on earth did it play the piano ?
"Dissident republicans claiming to be in possession of leaked PSNI information, chief constable says
PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne says it's being considered whether some officers need to be moved from their usual places of work, while others may have unusual surnames that could lead to early identification."
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
If things keep going, in ten years time we'll be asking "what was a museum", twenty years "what was the internet", and thirty years "what was the US"?
Also for Tig...
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
It's kind of like an iPhone, only it didn't do anything except play music.
I seem to remember Gordon Brown had one and claimed something to do with The Arctic Monkeys
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
It's a fine Aristotelian drama, with unity of action, place and time. There is perhaps an overemphasis on the element of spectacle, which he tended to deprecate.
Now you’ve got me trying to find the brilliant Jane Austen/Terminator crossover that someone wrote years ago.
"Indeed," said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), "I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character."
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
One Brexit benefit to be is the advice I've been giving financial services execs/companies whose jobs are moving/want to move roles to the EU. It's sad seeing the jobs go but it's a solid stream of income as I advise people how to do it.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
If things keep going, in ten years time we'll be asking "what was a museum", twenty years "what was the internet", and thirty years "what was the US"?
Also for Tig...
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
It's kind of like an iPhone, only it didn't do anything except play music.
I seem to remember Gordon Brown had one and claimed something to do with The Arctic Monkeys
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Now remind me, HY, old chap. On that binary questioned referendum back in 2016 did you not voted Remain? That is correct nest-ce-pas?
Do you describe yourself as a "die-soft" remainer?
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
Why surprised? We have a 1932 Imperial model 50, makes an interesting conversation point - half a dozen of those in the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
More (c) Not giving further bungs to keep industries on life support that were actually dead and starting to smell the place up.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Now remind me, HY, old chap. On that binary questioned referendum back in 2016 did you not voted Remain? That is correct nest-ce-pas?
Do you describe yourself as a "die-soft" remainer?
HYUFD's principles are whatever CCHQ tell him they are.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
It's a fine Aristotelian drama, with unity of action, place and time. There is perhaps an overemphasis on the element of spectacle, which he tended to deprecate.
Now you’ve got me trying to find the brilliant Jane Austen/Terminator crossover that someone wrote years ago.
"Indeed," said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), "I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character."
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
More (c) Not giving further bungs to keep industries on life support that were actually dead and starting to smell the place up.
Just thinkiong about industrial museums - like the one at Bath. The lemonade factory. From memory it was of a facotry that closed c. 1970, and I saw it c. 1985. The machines seemed unbelievably ancient ...
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Now remind me, HY, old chap. On that binary questioned referendum back in 2016 did you not voted Remain? That is correct nest-ce-pas?
Do you describe yourself as a "die-soft" remainer?
HYUFD's principles are whatever CCHQ tell him they are.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
More (c) Not giving further bungs to keep industries on life support that were actually dead and starting to smell the place up.
Just thinkiong about industrial museums - like the one at Bath. The lemonade factory. From memory it was of a facotry that closed c. 1970, and I saw it c. 1985. The machines seemed unbelievably ancient ...
The one that stuck in my mind was a hydraulic press from 1898 that was in a factory that closed in 1986, in Birmingham. If nothing else it is was unbelievably dangerous - if a pipe had burst, they was no shielding for the operators, who had to turn manual controls on the pipework.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
It's a fine Aristotelian drama, with unity of action, place and time. There is perhaps an overemphasis on the element of spectacle, which he tended to deprecate.
Now you’ve got me trying to find the brilliant Jane Austen/Terminator crossover that someone wrote years ago.
"Indeed," said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), "I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character."
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Now remind me, HY, old chap. On that binary questioned referendum back in 2016 did you not voted Remain? That is correct nest-ce-pas?
Do you describe yourself as a "die-soft" remainer?
He was just confused by the absence of Plaid Cymru on the ballot.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
One Brexit benefit to be is the advice I've been giving financial services execs/companies whose jobs are moving/want to move roles to the EU. It's sad seeing the jobs go but it's a solid stream of income as I advise people how to do it.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
More (c) Not giving further bungs to keep industries on life support that were actually dead and starting to smell the place up.
Just thinkiong about industrial museums - like the one at Bath. The lemonade factory. From memory it was of a facotry that closed c. 1970, and I saw it c. 1985. The machines seemed unbelievably ancient ...
The one that stuck in my mind was a hydraulic press from 1898 that was in a factory that closed in 1986, in Birmingham. If nothing else it is was unbelievably dangerous - if a pipe had burst, they was no shielding for the operators, who had to turn manual controls on the pipework.
That sort of thing in my case, too - there was a filling machine which only had a very coarse wire screen around the bottle if it was flawed and blew when being filled up. Really stuck in the mind.,
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
"The man in the white suit" and "I'm Alright Jack" both covered the union - management conflicts quite well.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
"The man in the white suit" and "I'm Alright Jack" both covered the union - management conflicts quite well.
There’s a great scene in COAYC where the union chap from the toilet factory is outraged that the restaurant staff are on strike, affecting his lunch.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
Not as good - or balanced - as I'm All Right Jack, I think. Though the timing is somewhat earler for that latter.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
"The man in the white suit" and "I'm Alright Jack" both covered the union - management conflicts quite well.
Thanks - was trying to remember the Guinness film too ...
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
"Financial Centre of Europe" has started to look a less convincing title since 2016. I was talking to a colleague who trades European sovereign bonds, who said that ten years ago his counterparts were all sat in London, and now most of them aren't. He was very bearish about the UK. Now for some people, a diminished, less dominant, London will be what they want, and I get that. All I say is, be careful what you wish for.
Diehard Remainers like you told us Brexit would have seen Paris and Frankfurt overtake London as the European financial centre long ago, they haven't
Er no I don't think so. Brexit was never likely to see a single European financial centre emerge to supplant London because none of them have the infrastructure to do that (and probably only Paris has the desire to). But what was predicted was that London would gradually lose market share and personnel to other European centres as well as to NY and Asian centres, and that is certainly happening, as my colleague's comment illustrates. I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
One Brexit benefit to be is the advice I've been giving financial services execs/companies whose jobs are moving/want to move roles to the EU. It's sad seeing the jobs go but it's a solid stream of income as I advise people how to do it.
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
I recently rewatched Carry On At Your Convenience. I know it’s not a documentary, any more than Yes Minister is, but it captures the union struggles of the day superbly.
"The man in the white suit" and "I'm Alright Jack" both covered the union - management conflicts quite well.
Thanks - was trying to remember the Guinness film too ...
My dad has some funny stories about trying to work done in the BREL works in Derby. Getting the work done was not a priority. Neither was safety...
Judging by her photo, the officer is scarcely going out of her way to avoid looking like a lesbian.
Careful you don't say she looks like a lesbian!
When Elon Musk takes it to the next level with Neuralink, it will be a social credit jeopardising incident merely to think a police officer looks like a lesbian.
A fair few commenters at the Heil are supportive of the police over this arrest - not so much because of wokery, I reckon, but because they believe the girl was council trash who deserved a good kicking "rude".
Indeed, the human desire to make every datapoint fit a storyline is a very dangerous cognitive bias.
We see that here with the belief that because we had 18 years of Tory rule, followed by 13 years of New Labour, followed by another 14 years of Conservative government, then we must now be due 10-15 years of Labour again.
There is no rule to this pattern. And yet it's remarkably persistent.
Its not a rule, but its most probable.
People are pissed off with the Tories now. Unless or until they become more pissed off with Labour than the Tories, then they're likely to re-elect Labour.
Predictions are normally about odds and what is more likely. Currently Labour being in power for a decade is much more likely than not, but it certainly is not guaranteed.
If Labour win the next election, as expected, then they will take over in exceptionally poor circumstances with a tedious, risk-averse leader, and little thought about what to do about Britain's problems beyond a pastiche of Blairite slogans. I think there's a greater than normal potential for the situation to unravel rapidly.
I would have the situation closer to finely balanced than much more likely.
But the circumstances aren't exceptionally poor. That's the frustrating thing.
The economic situation has some real positives, but the Government is either too piss-poor to sell them as positives, or worse is seeing them as negatives.
We have full employment which most likely isn't going to change that significantly. Inflation is due to fall back, which won't reverse the pain of the last couple of years but will mean new pain won't be happening. Real wages should be growing - and its a Government choice not a law of the economy that they're not right now.
Our biggest problems as an economy are that our debt is too high, and the cost of houses are too high, and we should have have moderately high inflation soon which is perfect for handling both of those by allowing deflating both of them as a ratio to GDP/income.
Starmer is a very lucky general and I think he's going to inherit a mixed-golden economic legacy, and worse for the Tories one they've talked down so won't even be able to take credit for and he will be able to claim the credit then.
Average wages are growing about 6 to 7%, any more than that and that would push up inflation at about 7 to 8% yet further
Average wages are declining.
If a wages go up by 7% when inflation is 10% then that's a 3% pay cut, not a pay rise.
But what's worse is that Sunak froze tax thresholds. So when wages go up by 7% then Sunak taxes you more, while your pay is declining.
So someone on UC, with a Student Loan, facing a 78.4% real tax rate may get a 7% pay rise, but of that they keep only 1.5% of that while inflation is 10%. So that's an 8.5% pay cut.
That's fucking shit.
Inflation is now 7-8%, put average wages up to 8-10%+ and you get an inflationary wage spiral.
Basic economics
An economist would know that inflation has been a lot higher and wages have not kept up for that time. So there is a huge deflationary chunk already built in before you start worrying aboiut wages a percentage point or two above inflation for a brief period.
And if average wages had been 10%+ last year, inflation would now also be 10%+ and rising not fallen to 7% now which is closer in line with average wages anyway.
We have historically had long periods where wages rose faster than inflation. Would that not be a good situation to return to?
Yes, the 1970s and no it would not be, the UK economy was a basket case, with soaring inflation and regular strikes led by powerful trade unions, which was why the government changed so frequently
So, the Brexit Tories have taken us back to the 1970s with their inflation, air of dilapidation of public services and widespread strikes. If only we had some better music with it...
(As a matter of fact GDP growth in the UK was higher in the 1970s in the UK than the 1980s: 30.39% from 70-79; 26.66% from 80-89. So the UK economy was not a basket case in the 1970s, indeed rather vigorous compared to today)
Though the 1970s GDP really needs to be split around 1974. Very healthy growth at the start of the decade, abysmal growth for the rest of it.
The UK was a basket case by the end of the 1970s.
Not sure either of your points stack up. I'll let others interpret the growth figures -
The UK was far from a basket case in the second half of the seventies. Ironically the myth of Thatcher could not have taken root but for it. The unfortunate timing of the 1974-79 Labour Government put it in the phase of capital investment for North Sea oil exploration, rather than allowing it to reap the benefits of that investment. Subsequently, Thatcher took advantage and then misused the benefits - she cut tax for the middle class and provided unemployment benefits for over three million people, instead of investing it. As a result we ended up with an economy dominated by the financial services sector in and around London, ultimately leaving us with the mess we have today.
Your version is the alternative myth of Fatcha, who alone is responsible for everything that's wrong with modern Britain.
Don't be silly.
The reality is that any reasonable analysis of the Thatcher era can't ignore that it was the root of a number of our current problems. The increasing concentration of wealth and political power in London is certainly one of them; the arse made of water privatisation another. Housing, too.
Of course there are balancing positives, but it was a decidedly mixed record.
If it wasn't for the Thatcher years London would not now be a global world city, nor the financial centre of Europe, fewer working class people would own their own homes and the mines would still largely have gone anyway
What's the point of a financial world centre if all the money drains away under the spivs? None at all to the residents of, say, Sedgefield.
Sedgefield schools, hospitals, police officers, state benefits are in large part paid for by taxes paid for by the City of London
Used to be paid locally. And Thatcher made no sane effort to keep industry going (by replacement).
Wrong, Nissan's factory came to Sunderland first in 1984 when Thatcher was PM
Forgotten that, fair enough. But still not enough across the wide swathes of devastation.
The problem was that swathes of British heavy industry were completely uninterested and opposed to modernisation. There was a very good book written by a chap who tried to save ship building. He would put together a deal only to find the ship builders preferred to go out of business rather than adapt. Both unions and management weren't interested. Why should they be? - all they knew was that another government bung would keep the yard limping along until the next election.
Go round the industrial museums, and giggle at how ancient the machines were. In the 1960s. Let alone the 80s.
Sure. Indeed I recall the stories from a chap who I used to know who worked in a cardboard box factory at exactly that period, and how the workies were treated like vermin by the managers in suits - wouldn't even say good morning.
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
More (c) Not giving further bungs to keep industries on life support that were actually dead and starting to smell the place up.
Just thinkiong about industrial museums - like the one at Bath. The lemonade factory. From memory it was of a facotry that closed c. 1970, and I saw it c. 1985. The machines seemed unbelievably ancient ...
The one that stuck in my mind was a hydraulic press from 1898 that was in a factory that closed in 1986, in Birmingham. If nothing else it is was unbelievably dangerous - if a pipe had burst, they was no shielding for the operators, who had to turn manual controls on the pipework.
That sort of thing in my case, too - there was a filling machine which only had a very coarse wire screen around the bottle if it was flawed and blew when being filled up. Really stuck in the mind.,
The incredibly ancient boiler testing guy at SMEE told me of the time that someone in a museum wanted to fire up an old steam boiler. A very old steam boiler. A riveted, square one. He deeclined to sign the certificate.
Judging by her photo, the officer is scarcely going out of her way to avoid looking like a lesbian.
Careful you don't say she looks like a lesbian!
When Elon Musk takes it to the next level with Neuralink, it will be a social credit jeopardising incident merely to think a police officer looks like a lesbian.
A fair few commenters at the Heil are supportive of the police over this arrest - not so much because of wokery, I reckon, but because they believe the girl was council trash who deserved a good kicking "rude".
"social credit jeopardising incident" - you mean "You are fined one half credit for a 'sotto voce' violation of the verbal-morality statute." ?
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
Also he stepped out of the limelight quite some time ago, so you've got to be fairly old to know much about him.
Guess so. Although people heavily into Dylan will likely have been into him too. That's how it was with me. Some great songs and call me superficial but a very cool look to go with it.
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
I imagine they said Look, we've been Levon and the Hawks, Canadian Squires, The Crackers, so let's just accept we're really shit at names.
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
I imagine they said Look, we've been Levon and the Hawks, Canadian Squires, The Crackers, so let's just accept we're really shit at names.
Certainly glad they changed from 'The Crackers'. That might have spoiled it for me, Weight or no Weight.
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
I imagine they said Look, we've been Levon and the Hawks, Canadian Squires, The Crackers, so let's just accept we're really shit at names.
Certainly glad they changed from 'The Crackers'. That might have spoiled it for me, Weight or no Weight.
They were better at album/song titles. Acadian Driftwood on Northern Lights, Southern Cross just frinstance
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
We can get a good sense of what Britain might have been like in the 1980s under a Labour government by reading their 1979 manifesto.
It advocated a continuance of prices & incomes policy, full employment, collective bargaining with the TUC and no strike law reform (indeed it proposed extending such rights into the private sector) and disarmament. It spends a lot of time attacking the free market. It says it wants higher wealth taxes (although raising the threshold for income tax at the lowest level) and phasing out private beds in the NHS. Also says it wants to phase out fee paying schools. Very limited scope to buy council houses.
I'm sure North Sea oil revenues would have helped but it's hard to escape the conclusion this would have kept a regulated labour market, misallocated public resources with higher taxes to divert more resources into old industries to maintain employment, with inflation higher for longer, and delayed the growth of new services industries. Devolution might have come earlier. I doubt Callaghan would have disarmed but it says he wants to reduce defence spending overall and not sure he'd have gone for Trident. Also not sure he would have fully mobilised over the Falklands. NI looks about the same. Talks a bit about reform of CAP (what an oldy) and reform EEC community contribution.
Therefore, overall, I think it would have beem a continuation of 1970s policies and kept Britain poorer with less choice for longer.
Labour would have lost by a landslide in 1983/1984, IMHO.
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
The The - best band name ever!
It's not though - even when I first heard it via the some bizzare album I didn't think it was a good name. It's 'almost', and that's the way the tracks are too.
Why? Dunno. Perhaps to show they have old-fashioned values? (Though there are a few institutions in the US that still require carbon copies, which are easier to make with a typewriter.)
(My apologies to OGH, but I have nothing useful to say about those by-elections, other than that I like the names: "Rutherglen" and "Mid-Beds".)
And now has a far right government. All those lefties who shrug at the dinghy people and try to scupper ANY scheme to stall them could profitably look at what happened in Italy
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
The The - best band name ever!
It's not though - even when I first heard it via the some bizzare album I didn't think it was a good name. It's 'almost', and that's the way the tracks are too.
I can't post an image of this, and it'll no doubt change, but the BBC have a lovely snap of the NI chief of police in full banana republic gear - stars all over his shoulders and no end of braid.
Why? Dunno. Perhaps to show they have old-fashioned values? (Though there are a few institutions in the US that still require carbon copies, which are easier to make with a typewriter.)
(My apologies to OGH, but I have nothing useful to say about those by-elections, other than that I like the names: "Rutherglen" and "Mid-Beds".)
That's absolutely crazy.
To think, there are still places with bank branches.
And now has a far right government. All those lefties who shrug at the dinghy people and try to scupper ANY scheme to stall them could profitably look at what happened in Italy
How far righty is it, though, actually?
Modern definition seems to be about words/language and saying Trumpy stuff. Not actually beating up opponents, locking up judges, censoring the press, locking up minorities, summary executions and shootings, and militarising etc.
In fact, the one nation I can think of that is actually doing a little bit of that is Modi's India. China is doing almost all of it.
From the article: "Picture postcards of the era – a popular way for visitors to show families back home where they were visiting in the years before photography was commonplace – made much of the pub's quirks." Have we really reached the point now where we have to explain what a postcard is? I feel old!
Crikey, me too. OLD
Tho it makes sense. I wonder how many kids have any idea what a "typewriter" is, or what it does
My daughter told me the other day that I was officially old because “I was born in the era of typewriters”
I visited a museum in US and was surprised to find a typewriter on display
If things keep going, in ten years time we'll be asking "what was a museum", twenty years "what was the internet", and thirty years "what was the US"?
Also for Tig...
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
It's kind of like an iPhone, only it didn't do anything except play music.
It was bad enough when teenagers were asking what was a fax machine, a VHS recorder, or a modem. But yes, today’s teenagers won’t know what an iPod is, and that’s scary as hell!
Unless I've missed it not much love for Robbie Robertson on here then? He'd have been a PB sort of icon, I'd have thought. I pulled into Nazareth ...
A lot from me, but he gets billing about 30 places below BBC sitcom guy
They covered it on the Today prog at least. I was sad to hear he'd died. Long time ago now but I had a real 'Band' phase.
All those years ago, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Robbie and his mates spent hours throwing around ideas for the group's name and settled on "The Band".
The The - best band name ever!
It's not though - even when I first heard it via the some bizzare album I didn't think it was a good name. It's 'almost', and that's the way the tracks are too.
Pre-album appearance of "Photographic" by Depeche Mode!
Comments
Incidentally, how much does it cost to launch a microsat?
I did mine, years ago - I keep the result on NAS box. For most people, it will sit on a corner of their computer.
You can get plenty of non-phone mp3 players. My sports watch acts as one - tough I don't use it for that.
Unfortunately, in one of them Gloucestershire are set to be on the wrong end of an absolute thrashing after Roderick played a fine innings for Worcestershire.
There's also some boring shit on at the bigger grounds, but we'll not talk about that.
Edit - Incidentally I missed a trick with that first pun. I should have asked if the museum was a space museum.
What's an iPod? Asking now... and I am not a learned judge.....
The issue is what happens next - most countries demand the "bent pipe" model. That is, you connect to the satellite. The satellite connects to a ground station in your country and from there to the Internet at large.
A cubesat is about $40K to get launched. That gives you a thing which you can communicate with a couple of minutes per day, for a few months.
Ambasat were trying to offer a kind of pico sat thing, but this seems to have died as project. They seem to be offering ballon launches mostly now.
Dontya just love WPC Plod?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12392871/Autistic-girl-16-arrested-dragged-screaming-home-Leeds-12-officers-saying-female-cop-looked-like-lesbian-nana.html?ico=related-replace
Not long after I was walking though Oxford. To my astonishment, I recognised a horse I used to ride. A police horse now. The thing was, that the horse in question was very, very gay. I'm talking Quentin Crisp x Liberace x Freddy Mercury.
For a moment, I was tempted. But plod have no sense of humour.
*Most will play just about any format of digital music.
I don't even like Diehard by the way. Christmas film or not, it's shit.
For pseudosats - look into amateur weather balloons. Don't just launch something - you can foul up air traffic control and damage other peoples hobbies. If you look around on the internet, there are always informed amateurs, in your locality, who can point you in the right direction. Make sure you know the legal situation first.
There is perhaps an overemphasis on the element of spectacle, which he tended to deprecate.
PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne says it's being considered whether some officers need to be moved from their usual places of work, while others may have unusual surnames that could lead to early identification."
https://news.sky.com/story/dissident-republicans-claiming-to-be-in-possession-of-leaked-psni-information-chief-constable-says-12937320
The Ying to the @williamglenn Yang.
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/accept-messed-up-sons-future-voting-brexit-2535728
Unfortunately beyond the paywall.
"Indeed," said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), "I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character."
And the unbelievably manky factories one could see from the train in the 1980s.
But
(a) that's not to justify as the NASTY UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS stuff we get from HYUFD et al on here.
and
(b) giving British industry the Bomber Harris treatment in the hope of a British Wirtschaftswunder - really?
Do you describe yourself as a "die-soft" remainer?
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2vgtyl
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ML6PZGl1xac?feature=share
Might have been this one.
https://beamishbuildings.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/codd-bottle-filler.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_All_Right_Jack
When Elon Musk takes it to the next level with Neuralink, it will be a social credit jeopardising incident merely to think a police officer looks like a lesbian.
A fair few commenters at the Heil are supportive of the police over this arrest - not so much because of wokery, I reckon, but because they believe the girl was council trash who deserved a good kicking "rude".
Deservedly so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t_URcod7mg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/09/comer-biden-analysis/
The 'investigation' into Biden by the Republicans in Congress is little more than an organised smear campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pLVdV9jWfSo
Pledge Watch:
— more than 100,000 people have now crossed the Channel since 2018, with another 400 believed to have arrived today (h/t @matt_dathan)
— NHS waiting list rises 100,000 on the previous month to a new record of 7.57 million (per NHS England)
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1689673861497798656
Somewhere in Downing Street there's a SPAD clutching his head and saying "that's not what we meant by small boats week".
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1689674436532670464
Italy got 105,000 in 2022.
It advocated a continuance of prices & incomes policy, full employment, collective bargaining with the TUC and no strike law reform (indeed it proposed extending such rights into the private sector) and disarmament. It spends a lot of time attacking the free market. It says it wants higher wealth taxes (although raising the threshold for income tax at the lowest level) and phasing out private beds in the NHS. Also says it wants to phase out fee paying schools. Very limited scope to buy council houses.
I'm sure North Sea oil revenues would have helped but it's hard to escape the conclusion this would have kept a regulated labour market, misallocated public resources with higher taxes to divert more resources into old industries to maintain employment, with inflation higher for longer, and delayed the growth of new services industries. Devolution might have come earlier. I doubt Callaghan would have disarmed but it says he wants to reduce defence spending overall and not sure he'd have gone for Trident. Also not sure he would have fully mobilised over the Falklands. NI looks about the same. Talks a bit about reform of CAP (what an oldy) and reform EEC community contribution.
Therefore, overall, I think it would have beem a continuation of 1970s policies and kept Britain poorer with less choice for longer.
Labour would have lost by a landslide in 1983/1984, IMHO.
Why? Dunno. Perhaps to show they have old-fashioned values? (Though there are a few institutions in the US that still require carbon copies, which are easier to make with a typewriter.)
(My apologies to OGH, but I have nothing useful to say about those by-elections, other than that I like the names: "Rutherglen" and "Mid-Beds".)
To think, there are still places with bank branches.
Modern definition seems to be about words/language and saying Trumpy stuff. Not actually beating up opponents, locking up judges, censoring the press, locking up minorities, summary executions and shootings, and militarising etc.
In fact, the one nation I can think of that is actually doing a little bit of that is Modi's India. China is doing almost all of it.
Even though I dont plan on voting for any politicians because they are all words thats start with the same letter as cauliflower