Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
Whomever it was who thought up the sobriquet of "Rachel from Accounts" is a genius. She will never be able to shake it off.
If she'd been a serious character to start with - like Alistair Darling, say - it wouldn't have stuck. But she's fundamentally unserious. A serial liar. A party hack, with the understanding of making the economy grow tbat that implies. She thought all she had to do was be a Labour chancellor and all that was good would flow from that. She got the job because Labour is so obsessed with identity that it needed a female chancellor and Annelise Dodds had already proved she was useless. She is by several miles the most dimwitted chancellor of my lifetime. She makes Kwasi Kwarteng look a model of strategic thinking and vision and success.
She is (as you indicate) a political Chancellor, who came in with a political agenda. You can get away with that when you're handed a golden economic legacy like Brown was, but not when you come in after the last Government.
The most political Chancellor in living memory (by miles) was George Osborne. Meant as neither compliment nor insult, just a no frills statement of fact.
Quite possibly true. I hold no candle for him. But you can play political games when you have a 'moderately' successful economy. Reeves was passed a basket case (and yes, that was largely the Tories' fault). The economy was too sensitive for her politicking. She now realises she's fucked it I think.
This Adolescence row is almost as captivating as the drama. If you are racist and dim, the criminals are not like you - they're immigrants and blacks and pakis* and smackheads and other people you don't understand but have been told to fear.
Perps aren't working class white van man's kids. We're white. We're the victims. So of course it must have been manipulated by woke lefties.
And when you are as racist and dim as this, your obvious champion is [checks notes] Kemi Badenoch? A line from Lethal Weapon 2 springs to mind.
What is she thinking?
*I would apologise but this is the exact descriptor used by too many people to cover anyone of sub-continent extraction regardless of where they are from. Need to call it out
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
Whomever it was who thought up the sobriquet of "Rachel from Accounts" is a genius. She will never be able to shake it off.
If she'd been a serious character to start with - like Alistair Darling, say - it wouldn't have stuck. But she's fundamentally unserious. A serial liar. A party hack, with the understanding of making the economy grow tbat that implies. She thought all she had to do was be a Labour chancellor and all that was good would flow from that. She got the job because Labour is so obsessed with identity that it needed a female chancellor and Annelise Dodds had already proved she was useless. She is by several miles the most dimwitted chancellor of my lifetime. She makes Kwasi Kwarteng look a model of strategic thinking and vision and success.
She is (as you indicate) a political Chancellor, who came in with a political agenda. You can get away with that when you're handed a golden economic legacy like Brown was, but not when you come in after the last Government.
The most political Chancellor in living memory (by miles) was George Osborne. Meant as neither compliment nor insult, just a no frills statement of fact.
Quite possibly true. I hold no candle for him. But you can play political games when you have a 'moderately' successful economy. Reeves was passed a basket case (and yes, that was largely the Tories' fault). The economy was too sensitive for her politicking. She now realises she's fucked it I think.
She is noticeably worse at the media rounds of late, and I think this has something to do with her realising she’s made a mess of it and it’s hard for her to extract herself.
Whomever it was who thought up the sobriquet of "Rachel from Accounts" is a genius. She will never be able to shake it off.
If she'd been a serious character to start with - like Alistair Darling, say - it wouldn't have stuck. But she's fundamentally unserious. A serial liar. A party hack, with the understanding of making the economy grow tbat that implies. She thought all she had to do was be a Labour chancellor and all that was good would flow from that. She got the job because Labour is so obsessed with identity that it needed a female chancellor and Annelise Dodds had already proved she was useless. She is by several miles the most dimwitted chancellor of my lifetime. She makes Kwasi Kwarteng look a model of strategic thinking and vision and success.
She is (as you indicate) a political Chancellor, who came in with a political agenda. You can get away with that when you're handed a golden economic legacy like Brown was, but not when you come in after the last Government.
The most political Chancellor in living memory (by miles) was George Osborne. Meant as neither compliment nor insult, just a no frills statement of fact.
Quite possibly true. I hold no candle for him. But you can play political games when you have a 'moderately' successful economy. Reeves was passed a basket case (and yes, that was largely the Tories' fault). The economy was too sensitive for her politicking. She now realises she's fucked it I think.
I'll grant that I don't really understand economics and so this limits the usefulness of any comments on it I might make, but I get the impression Labour did not think things were as bad as they themselves were saying it was, with the classic assumption that a few tweaks here or there would have a bigger positive impact than was the case. And that after trying a few things they are realising that, actually, we're just kind of screwed and to effect major change big things would be needed - and that is always high risk.
Labour's best policy on growth by far is housebuilding.
But here we are again, people telling us that Labour is finished. If Labour still leads most polls, how bad must the Tories be? And the Putin Party? They have peaked.
I send my pizza out for laser cutting. The edge is just outstanding. Unfortunately the pizzas haven't stood up to the 3-day turnaround and it seems pineapple and lasers don't work so well together. Also you can get quite hungry over 3 days.
What's worse still is that UPS are hopeless with pizza delivery.
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 38m Leavitt: "My understanding is that the tariff announcement will come tomorrow. They will be effective immediately ... he's talked a lot about April 2 as 'Liberation Day' for America. It would be taking place today if not for April Fools Day."
Hundreds of federal health workers, including doctors in senior leadership positions, began hearing early Tuesday morning that they are losing their jobs, part of a vast restructuring that will winnow down the agencies charged with regulating food and drugs, protecting Americans from disease and researching new treatments and cures.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that he is shrinking his department by 10,000 employees.
NY Times
I'm sure it will all be done in an evidence based and logical fashion.
The nice big round number is bloody big clue it won't be.
Adolescence has become a culture war thing, even though it didn't need to be.
Interesting how some things dodge this, like Bridgerton, and some don't.
Yes, that's true. I'm pretty woke but I found the colour-blind casting in the second series of Wolf Hall incongruous, even jarring. Particularly difficult to get past given the first series did not have that policy and the whole point is to be an ultra-realistic imagining of what happened.
Whomever it was who thought up the sobriquet of "Rachel from Accounts" is a genius. She will never be able to shake it off.
If she'd been a serious character to start with - like Alistair Darling, say - it wouldn't have stuck. But she's fundamentally unserious. A serial liar. A party hack, with the understanding of making the economy grow tbat that implies. She thought all she had to do was be a Labour chancellor and all that was good would flow from that. She got the job because Labour is so obsessed with identity that it needed a female chancellor and Annelise Dodds had already proved she was useless. She is by several miles the most dimwitted chancellor of my lifetime. She makes Kwasi Kwarteng look a model of strategic thinking and vision and success.
She is (as you indicate) a political Chancellor, who came in with a political agenda. You can get away with that when you're handed a golden economic legacy like Brown was, but not when you come in after the last Government.
The most political Chancellor in living memory (by miles) was George Osborne. Meant as neither compliment nor insult, just a no frills statement of fact.
Quite possibly true. I hold no candle for him. But you can play political games when you have a 'moderately' successful economy. Reeves was passed a basket case (and yes, that was largely the Tories' fault). The economy was too sensitive for her politicking. She now realises she's fucked it I think.
I'll grant that I don't really understand economics and so this limits the usefulness of any comments on it I might make, but I get the impression Labour did not think things were as bad as they themselves were saying it was, with the classic assumption that a few tweaks here or there would have a bigger positive impact than was the case. And that after trying a few things they are realising that, actually, we're just kind of screwed and to effect major change big things would be needed - and that is always high risk.
The best theory I heard expounded, with which I wholly agree, was that Rachel (and probably Labour as a whole - she doesn't strike me as an original thinker) wanted a Brownite narrative arc. Starting off with harsh meanness (handily blamed on the Tories) to look competent, 'tough decisions' as we heard endlessly, saving up to shower people with pork before the election. The issue with such play acting being that the economy isn't in the state left by the Tories in 1997.
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
Labour's best policy on growth by far is housebuilding.
But here we are again, people telling us that Labour is finished. If Labour still leads most polls, how bad must the Tories be? And the Putin Party? They have peaked.
Hundreds of federal health workers, including doctors in senior leadership positions, began hearing early Tuesday morning that they are losing their jobs, part of a vast restructuring that will winnow down the agencies charged with regulating food and drugs, protecting Americans from disease and researching new treatments and cures.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that he is shrinking his department by 10,000 employees.
NY Times
I'm sure it will all be done in an evidence based and logical fashion.
The nice big round number is bloody big clue it won't be.
It will be driven by body thetans or whatever different form of crankery is going through Kennedy's addled mind at any given moment (whatever else he is, he's not as far gone as the former, probably).
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
Whomever it was who thought up the sobriquet of "Rachel from Accounts" is a genius. She will never be able to shake it off.
If she'd been a serious character to start with - like Alistair Darling, say - it wouldn't have stuck. But she's fundamentally unserious. A serial liar. A party hack, with the understanding of making the economy grow tbat that implies. She thought all she had to do was be a Labour chancellor and all that was good would flow from that. She got the job because Labour is so obsessed with identity that it needed a female chancellor and Annelise Dodds had already proved she was useless. She is by several miles the most dimwitted chancellor of my lifetime. She makes Kwasi Kwarteng look a model of strategic thinking and vision and success.
She is (as you indicate) a political Chancellor, who came in with a political agenda. You can get away with that when you're handed a golden economic legacy like Brown was, but not when you come in after the last Government.
The most political Chancellor in living memory (by miles) was George Osborne. Meant as neither compliment nor insult, just a no frills statement of fact.
Quite possibly true. I hold no candle for him. But you can play political games when you have a 'moderately' successful economy. Reeves was passed a basket case (and yes, that was largely the Tories' fault). The economy was too sensitive for her politicking. She now realises she's fucked it I think.
Might pick up a bit. At least expectations are coming down now. That's half the battle.
Labour's best policy on growth by far is housebuilding.
It is, until they dare to...
(at this point, the line went muffled.)
But yes- ungumming planning in general is the main lever available. And the right thing to do. Trouble is, it's not quick, and the howls of protest will come quite a bit before the photo-ops of smiley people moving into new communities.
It will get worse before it gets better. Which is Reeves why might as well stay- there is still quite a bit of toxic waste to clear up. The only way a chancellor could be popular right now would be to be an utter charlatan.
Labour's best policy on growth by far is housebuilding.
It is, until they dare to...
(at this point, the line went muffled.)
But yes- ungumming planning in general is the main lever available. And the right thing to do. Trouble is, it's not quick, and the howls of protest will come quite a bit before the photo-ops of smiley people moving into new communities.
It will get worse before it gets better. Which is Reeves might as well stay- there is still quite a bit of toxic waste to clear up. The only way a chancellor could be popular right now would be to be an utter charlatan.
On planning the hope will be that they can get the ball rolling and change the NIMBY momentum, and that takes on a bit of a life on its own such that the inevitable backlash cannot halt the general restructuring of our approach.
When the line was cancelled to Manchester (but committed to Euston - is this still happening?) by Sunak, Andy Street was trying to get private finance to get it to Manchester. Shouldn't it have been the Euston bit that was given over to private financing, given that there are a lot more big business and financial backers in London? So spend public money getting it to Manchester, and let London pay for it to get to Euston. It's for London's benefit anyway.
Labour's best policy on growth by far is housebuilding.
It is, until they dare to...
(at this point, the line went muffled.)
But yes- ungumming planning in general is the main lever available. And the right thing to do. Trouble is, it's not quick, and the howls of protest will come quite a bit before the photo-ops of smiley people moving into new communities.
It will get worse before it gets better. Which is Reeves might as well stay- there is still quite a bit of toxic waste to clear up. The only way a chancellor could be popular right now would be to be an utter charlatan.
The fact the Tories have nothing on growth to offer is why Labour wins by default.
The economy is significantly better and NHS better in two years and Starmer retires, somebody else takes over and Labour wins again. That's still my central forecast.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
‘Her ego is too big - almost the entire nation has watched it!’
Caller Dean explains to James O’Brien why Kemi Badenoch should watch Adolescence.
"Almost the entire nation has watched it". I wonder how this statement compares to reality.
BARB thinks about 13 million watched episode 1 between the 10th and 23rd. 9.4 (ish) for episode 4.
'Almost the entire nation' doesn't watch much. It's not true of a World Cup final, the Queen's funeral, General election coverage, or, SFAICS anything else whatsoever.
BTW what was Adolescence about? Was it any good? I was with the 55 million who did something else.
It would actually be interesting to know, with qualitative and quantitative rigour, what the 40 million people who didn't watch the Queen's funeral did instead.
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
‘Her ego is too big - almost the entire nation has watched it!’
Caller Dean explains to James O’Brien why Kemi Badenoch should watch Adolescence.
"Almost the entire nation has watched it". I wonder how this statement compares to reality.
BARB thinks about 13 million watched episode 1 between the 10th and 23rd. 9.4 (ish) for episode 4.
'Almost the entire nation' doesn't watch much. It's not true of a World Cup final, the Queen's funeral, General election coverage, or, SFAICS anything else whatsoever.
BTW what was Adolescence about? Was it any good? I was with the 55 million who did something else.
It would actually be interesting to know, with qualitative and quantitative rigour, what the 40 million people who didn't watch the Queen's funeral did instead.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
As regards to planning there are in fact some easy wins. Many applications are delayed by the backlog in planning departments but in my recent experience this has got a bit better recently, we gave had one consent given and another allocated to a senior planning officer who is engaging constructively in the last month. Whether this is due to the current government or was already in train I don't know. It still takes far to long to get allocated a planning officer. And it is a lottery who one gets, in general a senior one is better because they take a pragmatic view if the application is in line with policy whilst junior ones can be more pedantic about box ticking. Obviously we have as a society in the longer term some difficult decisions to make about how much land we allocate to new housing. But so much of the low level of current housebuilding is actually due to the slowness and pedantry of the planning process, and the sheer number of hoops a development has to jump through ti get approved. And of course its not just governments thst are making lives difficult for developers. The banks and providers of finance hsve increasingly made their due diligence processes painful and slow, really since 2008 it has been increasingly difficult to get mainstream finance for housing developers.
That is way more than I'd have guessed. I don't. I do however have 3 months of free Apple due to a recent purchase of a digital product from Currys. It's a Currys "perk". I could have chosen a different one but after much humming and hahing I went for the 3 months free Apple. It's allowed me to watch Slow Horses (v good) and next up is Ted Lasso. Pretty good perk. Also happy with the product I bought. I think these unremarkable but satisfactory life experiences are underreported. If we heard more about them it might cheer everyone up a bit.
Some more stats here. Netflix is the third biggest 'broadcaster' block and - surprisingly - it's monthly reach is only nine percentage points behind the BBC - though with only about half the average daily viewer minutes.
The BBC appears to still have a bigger share of total viewing minutes, than ALL the streaming platforms put together.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I think it's almost certain America will tumble into recession in the next year, given all the craziness that's going on there.
If America tumbles into recession, we all tumble into recession. I admire @BatteryCorrectHorse optimism but I'm really not seeing it.
Edit: Our recession will probably be worse than most nations for the reasons @DavidL outlines.
Labour's best policy on growth by far is housebuilding.
But here we are again, people telling us that Labour is finished. If Labour still leads most polls, how bad must the Tories be? And the Putin Party? They have peaked.
Labour has years for something to turn up.
Labour want houses, The builders wont build, It is all poo.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is they are the government responsible for our economy and security and they are about to be hit by an express train
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is they are the government responsible for our economy and security and they are about to be hit by an express train
Wouldn't it be fantastic if Trump can deliver us a Nigey Government?
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is they are the government responsible for our economy and security and they are about to be hit by an express train
Wouldn't it be fantastic if Trump can deliver us a Nigey Government?
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is they are the government responsible for our economy and security and they are about to be hit by an express train
I doubt it. The trains are usually cancelled, and when they do run they're not particularly express.
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is they are the government responsible for our economy and security and they are about to be hit by an express train
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is they are the government responsible for our economy and security and they are about to be hit by an express train
I doubt it. The trains are usually cancelled, and when they do run they're not particularly express.
Whomever it was who thought up the sobriquet of "Rachel from Accounts" is a genius. She will never be able to shake it off.
If she'd been a serious character to start with - like Alistair Darling, say - it wouldn't have stuck. But she's fundamentally unserious. A serial liar. A party hack, with the understanding of making the economy grow tbat that implies. She thought all she had to do was be a Labour chancellor and all that was good would flow from that. She got the job because Labour is so obsessed with identity that it needed a female chancellor and Annelise Dodds had already proved she was useless. She is by several miles the most dimwitted chancellor of my lifetime. She makes Kwasi Kwarteng look a model of strategic thinking and vision and success.
She is (as you indicate) a political Chancellor, who came in with a political agenda. You can get away with that when you're handed a golden economic legacy like Brown was, but not when you come in after the last Government.
The most political Chancellor in living memory (by miles) was George Osborne. Meant as neither compliment nor insult, just a no frills statement of fact.
Quite possibly true. I hold no candle for him. But you can play political games when you have a 'moderately' successful economy. Reeves was passed a basket case (and yes, that was largely the Tories' fault). The economy was too sensitive for her politicking. She now realises she's fucked it I think.
The economy was pretty grim under Osborne, with fairly low growth, and I don't think anyone these days claims that his version of Austerity boosted the economy as he thought it would.
He also had the Omnishambles budget, amongst quite a few lows, and more than once his approval ratings dipped close to what Reeves' are now (and that at a time when approval ratings were a little kinder).
Reeves right now looks politically like a mess, but plenty of other long serving politicians have been written off and bounced back. Considering we've had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and the cost of living crisis in the last Parliament, a few years where the World doesn't fall apart might be all she needs to hang on.
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
When the line was cancelled to Manchester (but committed to Euston - is this still happening?) by Sunak, Andy Street was trying to get private finance to get it to Manchester. Shouldn't it have been the Euston bit that was given over to private financing, given that there are a lot more big business and financial backers in London? So spend public money getting it to Manchester, and let London pay for it to get to Euston. It's for London's benefit anyway.
No?
It's a bit of a fantasy that "private finance" will pay for Euston.
Sure, they'll pay for development, and be willing to accept a tax for the land value uplift and profit that results, but it'll be in the hundreds of millions and not the tens of billions that's needed.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
1. When Americas "litigation" culture caught on here.
2. Since the 00's, standards and politeness have been generally slipping.
I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago and I saw two burly security guards walking the corridor like nightclub bouncers.
I thought what a shame they are even needed in a place built for healing.
Obviously we have as a society in the longer term some difficult decisions to make about how much land we allocate to new housing...
It should be the market, not "society", that decides how much land is allocated to new housing, as it was in the 1930s and before, when we survived somehow.
At least, excluding AONBs, National Parks and so on.
A man should be allowed to build a house on his own land, if it meets the building regulations. And it should be the private sector, not a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats, that decides where towns spring up or die.
The Town and County Planning Act has been the most disastrous of Labour's post-war legislations, worse even than the various nationalisations of everything, or the crippling level of peacetime taxation.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Feck. I absolutely hate agreeing with anything Peston says. But our trade minister, on Today this morning, seemed to me to be taking exactly the opposite approach, seeking to suck up to Trump even after he has hit us with tariffs, in the hope of some special deal. Utterly delusional.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
We absolutely need to do this. Cockmunch MAGA types arrogantly claim the world needs Murica more than they need us.
Naah, bugger that. Imagine the collective power of the free world if it opens up trade *without* Murica? Add China to the list - they just did the Asian deal with South Korea and Japan.
Come on Donald, make our day. And of course when he changes his mind and tries to claim victory, the free world should continue on the new path.
Trade without Frontiers, to misquote Peter Gabriel
Obviously we have as a society in the longer term some difficult decisions to make about how much land we allocate to new housing...
It should be the market, not "society", that decides how much land is allocated to new housing, as it was in the 1930s and before, when we survived somehow.
At least, excluding AONBs, National Parks and so on.
A man should be allowed to build a house on his own land, if it meets the building regulations.
The Town and County Planning Act has been the most disastrous of Labour's post-war legislations, worse even than the various nationalisations of everything, or the crippling level of peacetime taxation.
I disagree.
It was legislation of its time - the desire of people to live with a bit of countryside and cleaner air not too far away. The densely-packed polluted industrial cities of the first half of the 20th century were not the living to which the post war generation aspired.
I do agree it's law which needs updating to reflect the very different time in which we now live.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
1. When Americas "litigation" culture caught on here.
2. Since the 00's, standards and politeness have been generally slipping.
I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago and I saw two burly security guards walking the corridor like nightclub bouncers.
I thought what a shame they are even needed in a place built for healing.
Yes, they ask about allergies everywhere - it's not just a British thing. The issue of abusive behaviour is more British - in Singapore, they don't have security in shops or in shopping malls and while I wouldn't pretend they don't have shop lifting it's not on the endemic scale it is in parts of Britain and there "seems" to be much more mutual respect and understanding.
Obviously we have as a society in the longer term some difficult decisions to make about how much land we allocate to new housing...
It should be the market, not "society", that decides how much land is allocated to new housing, as it was in the 1930s and before, when we survived somehow.
At least, excluding AONBs, National Parks and so on.
A man should be allowed to build a house on his own land, if it meets the building regulations.
The Town and County Planning Act has been the most disastrous of Labour's post-war legislations, worse even than the various nationalisations of everything, or the crippling level of peacetime taxation.
I disagree.
It was legislation of its time - the desire of people to live with a bit of countryside and cleaner air not too far away. The densely-packed polluted industrial cities of the first half of the 20th century were not the living to which the post war generation aspired.
I do agree it's law which needs updating to reflect the very different time in which we now live.
A salient example of how how periodic updating (in a coherent, thoughtful way, not reactive and piecemeal) of key legislation is important perhaps. Lots of little things that seemed reasonable over time, adding up to a system that imposes far too many hurdles, whilst still allowing the other side of developers to take the piss, pleasing no one.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
1. When Americas "litigation" culture caught on here.
2. Since the 00's, standards and politeness have been generally slipping.
I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago and I saw two burly security guards walking the corridor like nightclub bouncers.
I thought what a shame they are even needed in a place built for healing.
Yes, they ask about allergies everywhere - it's not just a British thing. The issue of abusive behaviour is more British - in Singapore, they don't have security in shops or in shopping malls and while I wouldn't pretend they don't have shop lifting it's not on the endemic scale it is in parts of Britain and there "seems" to be much more mutual respect and understanding.
I suspect a lot of the abusive/antisocial behaviour issues go back to drugs and alcohol?
I really don’t envy Reeves what she inherited. Hunt tiptoed in the right direction on some respects but it was deckchair’s on the Titanic stuff while the bigger picture was that an iceberg of debt was ripping a huge hole in the bow of the ship. It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending. But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
And tomorrow Trump steps in with tariffs to be implemented on the 3rd April 2025 unless you move your business to the US
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Trump is an ignorant incompetent moron ( yes we have abandoned the idea of going to the States) but an economy that had been run on sustainable lines, like Germany, for example, would have a range of options to offset the damage he is causing by boosting domestic demand.
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
Initially we will have to increase spending - we can’t just switch services off as that will cost more to mop the mess.
Let’s do the basics. We are desperately short of teaching and medical staff. There are trained people who aren’t working in the sector who need to be lured back in for ££££. And we need to invest strongly to train the next generation which will cost £££. We can’t divert cash from the existing budgets as that causes an even bigger collapse and an even bigger bill.
So spend more for a few years where the overspend is invested rather than burnt. At the same time we bonfire all the PFI deals. In the private sector contracts get renegotiated. The power gauge sits with the government - unless the foreign investment bank owner proposes an alternative use for the school building?
This can be done. Cut the waste, not services. The waste is in contracts and structures, not in the bank accounts of the disabled and poor.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
One reform that is perhaps needed is to restrict the ability of non-UK citizens to claim the state pension.
If you’ve paid your taxes then you should be able to claim some pension . Many though wouldn’t qualify for the full pension as they wouldn’t have enough qualifying years .
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
As a nation we: Don’t save enough for retirement Don’t pay remotely adequate social security cover for illness and unemployment and maternity Don’t have sufficient cash to spend to keep the economy viable in many towns up and down the land Don’t receive fit for purpose services like health and education or infrastructure provision
I’m not sure that people can pay more tax. Every pound extra taken in tax is another pound taken out of the economy which means more businesses closed and more job losses and less tax receipts.
We need to borrow. Invest. Gain a return on the investment. Imagine what Britain would have been like post war had todays “we can’t afford it” mentality prevailed…
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
One reform that is perhaps needed is to restrict the ability of non-UK citizens to claim the state pension.
If you’ve paid your taxes then you should be able to claim some pension . Many though wouldn’t qualify for the full pension as they wouldn’t have enough qualifying years .
They could pay the top up and then get the full amount.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
1. When Americas "litigation" culture caught on here.
2. Since the 00's, standards and politeness have been generally slipping.
I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago and I saw two burly security guards walking the corridor like nightclub bouncers.
I thought what a shame they are even needed in a place built for healing.
Yes, they ask about allergies everywhere - it's not just a British thing. The issue of abusive behaviour is more British - in Singapore, they don't have security in shops or in shopping malls and while I wouldn't pretend they don't have shop lifting it's not on the endemic scale it is in parts of Britain and there "seems" to be much more mutual respect and understanding.
I suspect a lot of the abusive/antisocial behaviour issues go back to drugs and alcohol?
Or social media.
People simply aren't equipped to deal with even the most minor conflict now.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
But it won’t be Starmer championing this - at least not yet. His focus is still on trying to mitigate the fallout and try and maintain good relations with Trump. In time, that may change. I understand why he’s doing it, but I think it increasingly looks like folly.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
As posted upthread, the "best" Trump can hope for is that he replaces lots of highly specialised, highly skilled, high value jobs with minimum wage jobs across the Country.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
1. When Americas "litigation" culture caught on here.
2. Since the 00's, standards and politeness have been generally slipping.
I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago and I saw two burly security guards walking the corridor like nightclub bouncers.
I thought what a shame they are even needed in a place built for healing.
Yes, they ask about allergies everywhere - it's not just a British thing. The issue of abusive behaviour is more British - in Singapore, they don't have security in shops or in shopping malls and while I wouldn't pretend they don't have shop lifting it's not on the endemic scale it is in parts of Britain and there "seems" to be much more mutual respect and understanding.
I suspect a lot of the abusive/antisocial behaviour issues go back to drugs and alcohol?
Or social media.
People simply aren't equipped to deal with even the most minor conflict now.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
As a nation we: Don’t save enough for retirement Don’t pay remotely adequate social security cover for illness and unemployment and maternity Don’t have sufficient cash to spend to keep the economy viable in many towns up and down the land Don’t receive fit for purpose services like health and education or infrastructure provision
I’m not sure that people can pay more tax. Every pound extra taken in tax is another pound taken out of the economy which means more businesses closed and more job losses and less tax receipts.
We need to borrow. Invest. Gain a return on the investment. Imagine what Britain would have been like post war had todays “we can’t afford it” mentality prevailed…
Returns can be negative on investment.
If people had better skillsets there would be more scope for all that extra saving, spending and taxing.
Target foot traffic falls for the eighth consecutive week after the retailer ended its DEI programs. Meanwhile at Costco, which kept its DEI programs, foot traffic has been up for 13th straight weeks.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
But it won’t be Starmer championing this - at least not yet. His focus is still on trying to mitigate the fallout and try and maintain good relations with Trump. In time, that may change. I understand why he’s doing it, but I think it increasingly looks like folly.
It's perfectly possible to be plotting 2 different things at once, planning how to deal with Trump while trying your hardest to be excluded from it.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has claimed that President Trump’s tariffs will restore a “golden age of America” during a news briefing today.
“We are focused on restoring the golden age of America, and making America a manufacturing superpower”
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
Didn't more latinos than ever vote Republican though?
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
But it won’t be Starmer championing this - at least not yet. His focus is still on trying to mitigate the fallout and try and maintain good relations with Trump. In time, that may change. I understand why he’s doing it, but I think it increasingly looks like folly.
It's perfectly possible to be plotting 2 different things at once, planning how to deal with Trump while trying your hardest to be excluded from it.
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies, as the Great Man said.
And for now, one of those lies is that we're not at (trade) war with Trumpite America.
It's not pretty, and Permanews makes it look even worse, but it's still sorta necessary.
Comments
Perps aren't working class white van man's kids. We're white. We're the victims. So of course it must have been manipulated by woke lefties.
And when you are as racist and dim as this, your obvious champion is [checks notes] Kemi Badenoch? A line from Lethal Weapon 2 springs to mind.
What is she thinking?
*I would apologise but this is the exact descriptor used by too many people to cover anyone of sub-continent extraction regardless of where they are from. Need to call it out
But here we are again, people telling us that Labour is finished. If Labour still leads most polls, how bad must the Tories be? And the Putin Party? They have peaked.
Labour has years for something to turn up.
What's worse still is that UPS are hopeless with pizza delivery.
Why didn't that cause a fuss?
Cotton buds perhaps.
(at this point, the line went muffled.)
But yes- ungumming planning in general is the main lever available. And the right thing to do. Trouble is, it's not quick, and the howls of protest will come quite a bit before the photo-ops of smiley people moving into new communities.
It will get worse before it gets better. Which is Reeves why might as well stay- there is still quite a bit of toxic waste to clear up. The only way a chancellor could be popular right now would be to be an utter charlatan.
When the line was cancelled to Manchester (but committed to Euston - is this still happening?) by Sunak, Andy Street was trying to get private finance to get it to Manchester. Shouldn't it have been the Euston bit that was given over to private financing, given that there are a lot more big business and financial backers in London? So spend public money getting it to Manchester, and let London pay for it to get to Euston. It's for London's benefit anyway.
No?
The economy is significantly better and NHS better in two years and Starmer retires, somebody else takes over and Labour wins again. That's still my central forecast.
Rail renationalisation: Train firms 'will be told to cut cancellations to 2%' to tackle dire performance
And then there is stuff like this.
When people feel the country is going forwards, Labour will do much better. Until then, buckle up.
It also didn’t help her that her party was largely composed of delusional fools who thought that austerity was a choice and all that was needed was a bit more spending.
But she has undoubtedly made things worse. The hole in the accounts was not £22bn, it was £120bn and the truth is that Labour knew all about it before they were elected.
We are, to use a technical term, fucked. We have exhausted all of the capital and investments we inherited to entitle one selfish generation to live a life way beyond what they earned.
The consequences for governments and the populace worldwide is impossible to predict but it is going to damage many economies including Trump's own
Whether this is due to the current government or was already in train I don't know. It still takes far to long to get allocated a planning officer. And it is a lottery who one gets, in general a senior one is better because they take a pragmatic view if the application is in line with policy whilst junior ones can be more pedantic about box ticking.
Obviously we have as a society in the longer term some difficult decisions to make about how much land we allocate to new housing. But so much of the low level of current housebuilding is actually due to the slowness and pedantry of the planning process, and the sheer number of hoops a development has to jump through ti get approved.
And of course its not just governments thst are making lives difficult for developers. The banks and providers of finance hsve increasingly made their due diligence processes painful and slow, really since 2008 it has been increasingly difficult to get mainstream finance for housing developers.
Yeah, but it might be a great big Trump style train hurtling down the line to flatten them! 😂
We don’t have these options because we have been running our economy on an unsustainable basis for several decades, running huge public sector deficits and trade deficits. We have no viable options left. We need to cut spending, increase taxes and increase investment. It’s really going to hurt. Blaming Reeves for this as if it were her fault is simply facile.
If America tumbles into recession, we all tumble into recession. I admire @BatteryCorrectHorse optimism but I'm really not seeing it.
Edit: Our recession will probably be worse than most nations for the reasons @DavidL outlines.
The builders wont build,
It is all poo.
@Peston
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
https://x.com/Peston/status/1907100050263560302
He also had the Omnishambles budget, amongst quite a few lows, and more than once his approval ratings dipped close to what Reeves' are now (and that at a time when approval ratings were a little kinder).
Reeves right now looks politically like a mess, but plenty of other long serving politicians have been written off and bounced back. Considering we've had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and the cost of living crisis in the last Parliament, a few years where the World doesn't fall apart might be all she needs to hang on.
We're already fat enough bastards as it is.
Weird.
When did this happen?
This works extremely well
https://www.topsknives.com/frog-market-special
Sure, they'll pay for development, and be willing to accept a tax for the land value uplift and profit that results, but it'll be in the hundreds of millions and not the tens of billions that's needed.
2. Since the 00's, standards and politeness have been generally slipping.
I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago and I saw two burly security guards walking the corridor like nightclub bouncers.
I thought what a shame they are even needed in a place built for healing.
At least, excluding AONBs, National Parks and so on.
A man should be allowed to build a house on his own land, if it meets the building regulations. And it should be the private sector, not a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats, that decides where towns spring up or die.
The Town and County Planning Act has been the most disastrous of Labour's post-war legislations, worse even than the various nationalisations of everything, or the crippling level of peacetime taxation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvxa18q2cbU
Naah, bugger that. Imagine the collective power of the free world if it opens up trade *without* Murica? Add China to the list - they just did the Asian deal with South Korea and Japan.
Come on Donald, make our day. And of course when he changes his mind and tries to claim victory, the free world should continue on the new path.
Trade without Frontiers, to misquote Peter Gabriel
It was legislation of its time - the desire of people to live with a bit of countryside and cleaner air not too far away. The densely-packed polluted industrial cities of the first half of the 20th century were not the living to which the post war generation aspired.
I do agree it's law which needs updating to reflect the very different time in which we now live.
Not to mention people who whine every time something increases in price.
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
They bring the flowers that bloom in May.
Of course, in this case they are more likely to be knotweed but, hey.
https://x.com/MattZeitlin/status/1906729929431024005
How exactly do you cut Chicago style deep pan with scissors?
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
Let’s do the basics. We are desperately short of teaching and medical staff. There are trained people who aren’t working in the sector who need to be lured back in for ££££. And we need to invest strongly to train the next generation which will cost £££. We can’t divert cash from the existing budgets as that causes an even bigger collapse and an even bigger bill.
So spend more for a few years where the overspend is invested rather than burnt. At the same time we bonfire all the PFI deals. In the private sector contracts get renegotiated. The power gauge sits with the government - unless the foreign investment bank owner proposes an alternative use for the school building?
This can be done. Cut the waste, not services. The waste is in contracts and structures, not in the bank accounts of the disabled and poor.
Deery, deery me
Don’t save enough for retirement
Don’t pay remotely adequate social security cover for illness and unemployment and maternity
Don’t have sufficient cash to spend to keep the economy viable in many towns up and down the land
Don’t receive fit for purpose services like health and education or infrastructure provision
I’m not sure that people can pay more tax. Every pound extra taken in tax is another pound taken out of the economy which means more businesses closed and more job losses and less tax receipts.
We need to borrow. Invest. Gain a return on the investment. Imagine what Britain would have been like post war had todays “we can’t afford it” mentality prevailed…
Kent Brockman, reporting to you on a crisis so serious it already has its own name and theme music.
People simply aren't equipped to deal with even the most minor conflict now.
But it won’t be Starmer championing this - at least not yet. His focus is still on trying to mitigate the fallout and try and maintain good relations with Trump. In time, that may change. I understand why he’s doing it, but I think it increasingly looks like folly.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Even if it works, it's fucking stoopid...
If people had better skillsets there would be more scope for all that extra saving, spending and taxing.
@keithboykin.bsky.social
Target foot traffic falls for the eighth consecutive week after the retailer ended its DEI programs. Meanwhile at Costco, which kept its DEI programs, foot traffic has been up for 13th straight weeks.
https://bsky.app/profile/keithboykin.bsky.social/post/3llr6m3yjkk2v
looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
I thought it seemed a bit strange that someone with four days to live would be posting selfies on Instagram 😂
@thetimes
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has claimed that President Trump’s tariffs will restore a “golden age of America” during a news briefing today.
“We are focused on restoring the golden age of America, and making America a manufacturing superpower”
https://x.com/thetimes/status/1907113007378764097
Meanwhile this remains the best explanation for what is happening in Trumpski's Whitehouse
And for now, one of those lies is that we're not at (trade) war with Trumpite America.
It's not pretty, and Permanews makes it look even worse, but it's still sorta necessary.