I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Rather like the joke about the lightbulb, the Labour leadership needs to want to change.
As we saw with Corbyn, the way the Labour Party is set up makes it pretty much impossible to depose a leader who doesn’t want to move on.
Starmer seems happy enough in the job, he does whatever the lawyers and courts tell him to do, and doesn’t care much for public opinion. Perhaps it will take a major financial crisis to wake him up?
Does 'major financial crisis' include the one we are in, where the only day to day solution is to place our grandchildren into bankruptcy instead of sorting stuff out ourselves and Labour MPs won't vote for tiny cuts?
That really is an excellent summary of our position and the challenges we face. Note debt interest's significant contribution to the increasing deficit.
Maybe Allister Heath is right - for once - and we will get a new election. If my friend is right and cutting spending is the only way, but Labour MPs refuse to do it, then either the government prints money and inflation explodes, then we go bust anyway (in the end), or we have an election to elect MPs who WILL cut spending
Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. There will be an election when the Labour Party see fit and not before.
When people say "cut spending" it always means "on other people". As service delivery is already at crisis point we can't actually cut spending at the front line - it will cost more in emergency spending to manage the crises created.
We need to change what we spend the money on.
PB Tories on here are forgetting that the doom loop we are on was designed and finessed by their party. All this talk of South American style economic collapse on a non-Consrrvative Government watch belies the fact that they laid the foundations for the fiasco they are now rooting for.
It's like Philp this week decrying the uncontrolled arrival of small boats, hinting that it never happened on his watch.
Well it’s fair to say that the free speech advocates in the US have picked up the Graham Linehan story - although many of them seem a little confused at the British use of the term “armed police”.
They've been told that Britain is a crime-ridden hellhole with an authoritarian government using the jackboots of its police force to enforce tyranny.
I can understand them finding it confusing that the vast majority of British police do not carry firearms.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
He was telling me “watch the gilts market”, and predicting a crisis thereby, many months ago. Now I see why
Ali, his new deputy leader, refused to sign a pledge supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ people during the election campaign, and he did not attend a hustings organised by the Greens’ LGBTQIA+ chapter. I wonder what his views are on Linehan.
I see the Starmer administration and consider a government utterly mired in the mundane. I have no doubt that ministers are in their departments beavering away being busy on policy initiatives, feeling like they are making a difference. The problem is that largely they are not - busy fools.
If Starmer is to break this current political zeitgeist then he needs to change plan and do so significantly. @Leon suggests he call an EU referendum - that would do it! Or something similarly bold. I'd even welcome him coming out and calling out the racist women-beating child-molesting scum at the heart of the protect our women / raise the colours movement.
He won't do anything. Because he's frit.
Zack Polanski probably will though.
His landslide victory in the leadership contest in a party that gets 8-10% of the vote is the political news of the week.
Gay, Vegan and Jewish it's enough to have the PB blimps clutching their smelling salts...
As noteworthy is that a semi respectable historian feels the urge to indulge in reactionary banalities on the the state of UK politics. To lower the tone, Zack's other deputy is kinda hot.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
You don't necessarily have to spend more mopping up knock-on crises if you are prepared to endure them. I don't buy the argument that it isn't possible. I hope that there's a better way that doesn't require it, but it can happen.
To give one example, when the Troika were in charge in Ireland public sector salaries were cut in nominal terms. Not frozen, actually cut. There wasn't a massive wave of strikes that crippled public services because people mostly understood that there wasn't a simple alternative, and they were glad to have job at all.
It would require strong and persuasive leadership to force such a thing through in Britain now, and the efforts of such a leadership might be better directed towards other policies, but it's not impossible.
Well it’s fair to say that the free speech advocates in the US have picked up the Graham Linehan story - although many of them seem a little confused at the British use of the term “armed police”.
They've been told that Britain is a crime-ridden hellhole with an authoritarian government using the jackboots of its police force to enforce tyranny.
I can understand them finding it confusing that the vast majority of British police do not carry firearms.
They're now convinced that British police only carry guns when arresting trans-obsessed comedians with unfeasibly large heads.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
When I was at school every local authority (normally the county council) had a team of a dozen, maybe two dozen managers. A 1000 pupil secondary school had a head, a couple of deputies, a Secretary and a caretaker. That was your "non productive" staff, and even then the deputies and even the head taught classes.
Now we have oversight by Ofsted, we have multi school academy management teams on astronomical salaries (and there are far, far more of them than there were County Council LEAs). Each school has around a dozen non teaching managers/ administrators . The education budget is syphoned off to these people before a student writes their first essay. Do we need all these leeches or can we return to the old model?
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
He’s been working in the US.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment? https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
So, several months old, made furth of our jurisdiction and @Foxy thinks Polanski saying he should be arrested is a clever response? Am I keeping up?
One hopes he was being sarcastic
No, I was not.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
As I understand it Linehan is a foreign national who was tweeting whilst outside the UK. I do not understand how the Public Order Act of 1986 is applicable to a non-British person using a non-British service whilst not in Britain. Regardless of what they said.
Start with the case of William Joyce and work outwards.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
The obvious answer is that the complaint is recent.
The second most obvious answer is that he has been out of the country for some time, which is disprovable and unlikely.
We also need to remember that elements in the Trans lobby have a long and nasty history of using fake and opportunistic complaints to police as a form of outsourced harassment. This could be one of those, whatever we think of Linehan.
Here for example was the experience of Caroline Farrow, who I have known on and off online since about 2007, when we were both interested in the "religion" sub-niche of the then new political blogging.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Maybe Foxy could explain the reasoning behind all the different NHS trusts as there might be a good reason - I understand that different areas of the UK have different demographics so different needs but I always wonder whether it would work more efficiently with one single management (the same with all the different police forces, would it be more efficient to just have a UK Police).
I think about the old story that the French Education minister could look at a piece of paper and know what every schoolchild in France was eating that day and wonder how many areas of the state in the UK could just be made identikit across the country rather than having individual fiefdoms and extra costs from not having the purchasing power of a larger institution (eg all police kit from cars to boots should be supplied from the same source to leverage the collective buying power - I can’t think of any reason why different police forces end up with different makes of car for the same roles).
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
When I was at school every local authority (normally the county council) had a team of a dozen, maybe two dozen managers. A 1000 pupil secondary school had a head, a couple of deputies, a Secretary and a caretaker. That was your "non productive" staff, and even then the deputies and even the head taught classes.
Now we have oversight by Ofsted, we have multi school academy management teams on astronomical salaries (and there are far, far more of them than there were County Council LEAs). Each school has around a dozen non teaching managers/ administrators . The education budget is syphoned off to these people before a student writes their first essay. Do we need all these leeches or can we return to the old model?
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
Gosh those LAB and LD responses are very close. I pretty much agree with the odds. I'd normally be attracted to the 6/5 because punters generally overstate the chances of things happening but in this case, no.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
The obvious answer is that the complaint is recent.
The second most obvious answer is that he has been out of the country for some time, which is disprovable and unlikely.
We also need to remember that elements in the Trans lobby have a long and nasty history of using fake and opportunistic complaints to police as a form of outsourced harassment. This could be one of those, whatever we think of Linehan.
Here for example was the experience of Caroline Farrow, who I have known on and off online since about 2007, when we were both interested in the "religion" sub-niche of the then new political blogging.
Surrey Police later paid her legal fees, and afaik her legal action is still continuing.
Funnily enough, the only reason that Mr Linehan is in the UK this week is because he’s due at Westminster Magistrates’ Court tomorrow, charged with harrasment.
If it’s correct that his latest arrest was over comments made in the US, could that be seen as attempting to influence the court? Could he sue the police to find out from where the order came to arrest him?
In defence of PCCs they replaced police authorities.
Which were ineffective, remote and unresponsive to public priorities. And in some cases the police/police unions threatened difficult members to force them to resign from the authorities.
The PCCs are not perfect, but there is a need for civilian political oversight of police activities and some appointed committee somewhere in a smoke-filled room just doesn’t cut it
In Leics and Rutland our PCC recently defected to Reform.
That's worth a read for the guy talking about the difference that he thinks him joining RefUK will make. There's a lot of Farage talking points in it, and Leics will be a fascinating place to run the experiment.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
The obvious answer is that the complaint is recent.
The second most obvious answer is that he has been out of the country for some time, which is disprovable and unlikely.
We also need to remember that elements in the Trans lobby have a long and nasty history of using fake and opportunistic complaints to police as a form of outsourced harassment. This could be one of those, whatever we think of Linehan.
Here for example was the experience of Caroline Farrow, who I have known on and off online since about 2007, when we were both interested in the "religion" sub-niche of the then new political blogging.
Surrey Police later paid her legal fees, and afaik her legal action is still continuing.
Funnily enough, the only reason that Mr Linehan is in the UK this week is because he’s due at Westminster Magistrates’ Court tomorrow, charged with harrasment.
If it’s correct that his latest arrest was over comments made in the US, could that be seen as attempting to influence the court? Could he sue the police to find out from where the order came to arrest him?
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
When I was at school every local authority (normally the county council) had a team of a dozen, maybe two dozen managers. A 1000 pupil secondary school had a head, a couple of deputies, a Secretary and a caretaker. That was your "non productive" staff, and even then the deputies and even the head taught classes.
Now we have oversight by Ofsted, we have multi school academy management teams on astronomical salaries (and there are far, far more of them than there were County Council LEAs). Each school has around a dozen non teaching managers/ administrators . The education budget is syphoned off to these people before a student writes their first essay. Do we need all these leeches or can we return to the old model?
Good morning everybody. Although it doesn't seem to be, both weather-wise and in the world in general.
I was surprised when my primary schoolteacher grandson described the structure of the 'academy trust' which employs him. And it's not even as though the 'participating' schools are in the same geographical area.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
He’s been working in the US.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment? https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
So, several months old, made furth of our jurisdiction and @Foxy thinks Polanski saying he should be arrested is a clever response? Am I keeping up?
One hopes he was being sarcastic
No, I was not.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
As I understand it Linehan is a foreign national who was tweeting whilst outside the UK. I do not understand how the Public Order Act of 1986 is applicable to a non-British person using a non-British service whilst not in Britain. Regardless of what they said.
Start with the case of William Joyce and work outwards.
However, this is bonkers, insane, nuts.
Joyce had a British passport, albeit fraudulently obtained. Indeed, it was said he was hanged ultimately for making a false statement on a passport application, the usual penalty for which at the time was a small fine.
So a barrister a friend has been in contact re the Linehan story, this is from May, regarding harassment and criminal damage and suspects this could be the context of yesterday’s arrest.
’ [Linehan] is accused of harassment by posting abusive comments on social media between 11 and 27 of October, and of damage to a phone to the value of £369.
He was granted bail on condition he did not contact the complainant directly or indirectly. ‘
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
He’s been working in the US.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment? https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
So, several months old, made furth of our jurisdiction and @Foxy thinks Polanski saying he should be arrested is a clever response? Am I keeping up?
One hopes he was being sarcastic
No, I was not.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
As I understand it Linehan is a foreign national who was tweeting whilst outside the UK. I do not understand how the Public Order Act of 1986 is applicable to a non-British person using a non-British service whilst not in Britain. Regardless of what they said.
Start with the case of William Joyce and work outwards.
However, this is bonkers, insane, nuts.
Joyce had a British passport, albeit fraudulently obtained. Indeed, it was said he was hanged ultimately for making a false statement on a passport application, the usual penalty for which at the time was a small fine.
Hanged by a comma.
An early lesson for me that grammar and punctuation are important.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
He’s been working in the US.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment? https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
So, several months old, made furth of our jurisdiction and @Foxy thinks Polanski saying he should be arrested is a clever response? Am I keeping up?
One hopes he was being sarcastic
No, I was not.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
As I understand it Linehan is a foreign national who was tweeting whilst outside the UK. I do not understand how the Public Order Act of 1986 is applicable to a non-British person using a non-British service whilst not in Britain. Regardless of what they said.
Start with the case of William Joyce and work outwards.
However, this is bonkers, insane, nuts.
Joyce had a British passport, albeit fraudulently obtained. Indeed, it was said he was hanged ultimately for making a false statement on a passport application, the usual penalty for which at the time was a small fine.
The latest S and P composite came in above expectations at 53.5 v 53.0 expected .
The services sector came in at 54.2 v 53.6 expected .
While in the same report....
Firms reported the biggest increase in costs in three months and continued to reduce staff numbers. Employment as measured by the PMI has fallen for 11 consecutive months - the longest continuous period since a run between 2008 and 2010 aside from the COVID-19 pandemic.
So a barrister a friend has been in contact re the Linehan story, this is from May, regarding harassment and criminal damage and suspects this could be the context of yesterday’s arrest.
’ [Linehan] is accused of harassment by posting abusive comments on social media between 11 and 27 of October, and of damage to a phone to the value of £369.
He was granted bail on condition he did not contact the complainant directly or indirectly. ‘
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Argentina has always been the unlikely but potentially realistic outcome of a Labour government.
So, we can expect a invasion of the Falklands in 2028 to distract from Starmer’s dire performance.
So a barrister a friend has been in contact re the Linehan story, this is from May, regarding harassment and criminal damage and suspects this could be the context of yesterday’s arrest.
’ [Linehan] is accused of harassment by posting abusive comments on social media between 11 and 27 of October, and of damage to a phone to the value of £369.
He was granted bail on condition he did not contact the complainant directly or indirectly. ‘
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Argentina has always been the unlikely but potentially realistic outcome of a Labour government.
So, we can expect a invasion of the Falklands in 2028 to distract from Starmer’s dire performance.
Nah, the Tories were leading the polls before the invasion of The Malvinas.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Argentina has always been the unlikely but potentially realistic outcome of a Labour government.
So, we can expect a invasion of the Falklands in 2028 to distract from Starmer’s dire performance.
Poundshop distraction is all we can afford, invasion of Falkland in Fife. HYUFD may consider supporting Sir Keir in that instance.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
The obvious answer is that the complaint is recent.
The second most obvious answer is that he has been out of the country for some time, which is disprovable and unlikely.
We also need to remember that elements in the Trans lobby have a long and nasty history of using fake and opportunistic complaints to police as a form of outsourced harassment. This could be one of those, whatever we think of Linehan.
Here for example was the experience of Caroline Farrow, who I have known on and off online since about 2007, when we were both interested in the "religion" sub-niche of the then new political blogging.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
He’s been working in the US.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment? https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
So, several months old, made furth of our jurisdiction and @Foxy thinks Polanski saying he should be arrested is a clever response? Am I keeping up?
One hopes he was being sarcastic
No, I was not.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
I'd agree with that and also that there are degrees of violence. Setting fire to homes is a higher degree than a "punch in the balls" and inciting arson when there are arsonists on the street is a higher degree.
I think as well as the expectation of violence, degree of violence, the time-course of violence should be considered too.
Standing in front of a picketing mob shouting "burn them out" is the sort of thing that should be prosecuted. The sorts of vile comments made by Linehan on Social Media should not.
I accept that the whole tone of discussion around issues such as migration, Trans-rights, Gaza does raise tensions that can easily spill over into violence, but those who do inflame that atmosphere are usually very careful with their language. Which is why Connelly and Linehan get arrested while Farage and Jenrick get broadcast.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Argentina has always been the unlikely but potentially realistic outcome of a Labour government.
So, we can expect a invasion of the Falklands in 2028 to distract from Starmer’s dire performance.
Poundshop distraction is all we can afford, invasion of Falkland in Fife. HYUFD may consider supporting Sir Keir in that instance.
The war in Canada might arrive before the GE though.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
As the tweets were from April, why has it taken so long?
He’s been working in the US.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment? https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
So, several months old, made furth of our jurisdiction and @Foxy thinks Polanski saying he should be arrested is a clever response? Am I keeping up?
One hopes he was being sarcastic
No, I was not.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
As I understand it Linehan is a foreign national who was tweeting whilst outside the UK. I do not understand how the Public Order Act of 1986 is applicable to a non-British person using a non-British service whilst not in Britain. Regardless of what they said.
How do you know he was outside the UK? Where does he live? If he is resident at least some time in the UK there could be a reasonable belief he was in the UK at the time. Surely that is for a jury to determine.
Also, how do you know he was arrested for the tweet he says he was? He may be lying. And I see TSE has posted some useful further information
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
You have to drill down a bit into the bonds market. The movement in the 30 year is much more alarming than the 10 year and shorter. A large part of the reason for that is the reducing demand for very long term debt from pension funds.
But, yes, we're still charting the wrong course as a nation.
In defence of PCCs they replaced police authorities.
Which were ineffective, remote and unresponsive to public priorities. And in some cases the police/police unions threatened difficult members to force them to resign from the authorities.
The PCCs are not perfect, but there is a need for civilian political oversight of police activities and some appointed committee somewhere in a smoke-filled room just doesn’t cut it
In Leics and Rutland our PCC recently defected to Reform.
That's worth a read for the guy talking about the difference that he thinks him joining RefUK will make. There's a lot of Farage talking points in it, and Leics will be a fascinating place to run the experiment.
I didn't vote for him when he was a Tory, and won't next time now that he is Reform. He won't by a very narrow margin over a split opposition last time.
I haven't noticed any change in policing, and don't anticipate any. Elected PCCs seem ideally suited to abolition as a cost cutting measure to my eyes.
USA now blowing up boats in international waters and killing ‘11 narco terrorists’. Even the IDF might hesitate over that.
Given Trumpania’s record on wrongfully arresting people on their own territory, I’m sure we can be confident that those summarily executed were in fact narco terrorists.
The crazy bit isnt the extra judicial killing in international waters, it is doing it in order that he could post it on Social Media.
Surely they were pirates (in the legal sense) and the USN was therefore doing exactly what international maritime law expects to be done to pirates
Totally unexpected that the hubby of the current home secretary would be echoing the memes of the diminishing number of Lab loyalist randoms on the internet.
Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth 2h Ed Balls: the Greens taking votes from Labour helps the Tories @ZackPolanski : "I want to see every Labour politician whose voted for a two child benefit cap, for disability cuts, for the ongoing genocide in Gaza to sell arms to them, I want to see them replaced" #GMB
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
When I was at school every local authority (normally the county council) had a team of a dozen, maybe two dozen managers. A 1000 pupil secondary school had a head, a couple of deputies, a Secretary and a caretaker. That was your "non productive" staff, and even then the deputies and even the head taught classes.
Now we have oversight by Ofsted, we have multi school academy management teams on astronomical salaries (and there are far, far more of them than there were County Council LEAs). Each school has around a dozen non teaching managers/ administrators . The education budget is syphoned off to these people before a student writes their first essay. Do we need all these leeches or can we return to the old model?
No, we don't need them and the idiotic inefficiency. My old school now sits as the lead property of a trust running 9 schools. They spent £2.259m on management remuneration last year. They have a "Strategic Head of IT" who negotiates with the likes of Google.
That is tremendously late particularly with Labour having moved it to Oct 30th last year. Just gives more time for all sorts of confidence evaporating rumours to spread in the press tbh.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
When I was at school every local authority (normally the county council) had a team of a dozen, maybe two dozen managers. A 1000 pupil secondary school had a head, a couple of deputies, a Secretary and a caretaker. That was your "non productive" staff, and even then the deputies and even the head taught classes.
Now we have oversight by Ofsted, we have multi school academy management teams on astronomical salaries (and there are far, far more of them than there were County Council LEAs). Each school has around a dozen non teaching managers/ administrators . The education budget is syphoned off to these people before a student writes their first essay. Do we need all these leeches or can we return to the old model?
No, we don't need them and the idiotic inefficiency. My old school now sits as the lead property of a trust running 9 schools. They spent £2.259m on management remuneration last year. They have a "Strategic Head of IT" who negotiates with the likes of Google.
We can't afford this idiocy.
That is quite quite ridiculous. So much of this stuff could now be automated, with one guy on £30k pressing buttons
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
USA now blowing up boats in international waters and killing ‘11 narco terrorists’. Even the IDF might hesitate over that.
Given Trumpania’s record on wrongfully arresting people on their own territory, I’m sure we can be confident that those summarily executed were in fact narco terrorists.
The crazy bit isnt the extra judicial killing in international waters, it is doing it in order that he could post it on Social Media.
Surely they were pirates (in the legal sense) and the USN was therefore doing exactly what international maritime law expects to be done to pirates
They were allegedly smuggling drugs, though what evidence of that exists is unclear. That isn't normally a capital crime (apart from some bits of SE Asia).
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
& given that the US government has making noises about implementing capital controls on foreign lenders / investors (stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, but you can’t tell the Trump administration anything) it’s quite plausible that many of them will be looking to de-risk a bit & spread some of their money away from the US as well.
The UK still has much going for it, even given our troubles.
The latest Yougov Scottish and Welsh subsamples (please don’t ban me) are showing that Reform could be the official opposition in the Scottish Parliament and the Senydd next year. If so, their performance will no doubt influence how they are viewed before the next election. If they prove to be responsible, it will encourage voters to consider them as a viable option at the next GE. If they are shown to just be rabble rousers it will discourage many, who will revert to the traditional parties, or not vote at all. Although I could be wrong.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Add Anti-Money Laundering rules to your list.
As a Charitable Trustee they are the bane of my life. It makes opening and closing accounts and changing signatories a protracted pain in the arse.
It doesn't seem to touch the real money laundering industry, which goes from strength to strength on both High St and offshore financial world.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
He was telling me “watch the gilts market”, and predicting a crisis thereby, many months ago. Now I see why
I've been saying that Labour will get into trouble since before they were elected because they won't be able to cut spending. Anyone with a few braincells should have seen this coming, it's an indictment of our journalist class that so few of them caught on before this week.
Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election for Labour and seems likely to repeat this feat in 2029.
But (and there is always a but) at least Ed is doing something unlike several of his Cabinet colleagues and Prime Minister who seem content to be buffeted by events and blame the deep state blob for their own indolence.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Welfare reform still on the cards according to shabana Mahmood
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
Yes, Miliband‘s approach to net zero is a perfect example of the kind of bone-headed stupidity that the UK is suffering from.
Refusal to permit North Sea gas when we are clearly going to end up importing LNG instead, making blocking the development permits nothing but hypocritical grandstanding. Refusal to implement regional electricity pricing for fear of electricity in Scotland being cheaper than in England. Scotland could probably do with the support of cheaper prices to support local industry, but no - lets force the wind farms to burn their brake blocks up turning themselves off in times of high winds instead. The side effect of convincing yet more Scots that London cares more about English voters than it does about Scottish ones is an extra bonus! etc etc.
Net zero is a worthy goal! We should be going at it 100% - but we do that by being honest about what’s in front of us, not by lying to everyone about electricity prices & hoping nobody notices that it’s our fault because we refuse to build out nuclear at reasonable cost.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
I don't disagree - some of the provision isn't needed and we all can find edge cases to illustrate those. But for most? It's needed, its just administered in a hugely inefficient way.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Welcome to the process state that is run by unelected bureaucrats because the elected politicians are shit. I think we've been here for about 30 years.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Add Anti-Money Laundering rules to your list.
As a Charitable Trustee they are the bane of my life. It makes opening and closing accounts and changing signatories a protracted pain in the arse.
It doesn't seem to touch the real money laundering industry, which goes from strength to strength on both High St and offshore financial world.
Anti-Money laundering rules are vital but again get “gold plated”. I don’t know if the same in the UK but here if you get to the stage of putting an offer in to buy a house the Estate Agents are required to take your KYC info and get source of funds.
The fact that to buy a house your funds have to be sent from your lawyer to the vendor’s lawyer who have to do their dd/AML and have the facilities and teams to do this to a high level makes it utterly pointless.
unfortunately there are always jobsworths who, in order to look like they contribute something with their job, will look for pointless things to bring up in order to create work and “worth” regardless of the extra burden for no benefit it puts on business.
State pension, unfunded public sector pensions, followed I reckon by health care facilities for pensioners then defence are probably the least productive gov't spend. Infrastructure (The actual infrastructure bit - not the mahoosive legal/paperwork bits), education (In the long term), healthcare for people of working age maybe the most productive. Welfare a mix, the sort of welfare that allows people to earn more in tax for the treasury than they otherwise would is OK, but really how much welfare spend does actually do that ? Similarly healthcare - if you can replace the knee of an oil rig (Ha ha Ed Miliband) engineer then it's going to be net beneficial for the country, but the split of prescription drugs between payable and non payable (less productive) members of society shows the truth about how much health spending is truly truly productive.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
That's a very articulate and intelligent response.
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
I’m sure he’s shitting himself.
It may be an articulate response but it is far from intelligent.
Still, I guess it’s Glinner so nicking him is okay because he’s a bit of a berk.
I thought yesterday's reposted tweet summed it up best.
Musing on the issue...
If you're trans then trans rights affect your entire life If you're female then trans rights may impinge on your rights But if you're male? Why has Linehan become so obsessed with this?
And as already posted, the Police just seem to have wasted their time because it's an "easy win".
Well, it's not something Linehan is concerned about, but there are as many transmen as transwomen. If trans rights may impinge on women's rights, then they may also impinge on men's rights.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
I see the Starmer administration and consider a government utterly mired in the mundane. I have no doubt that ministers are in their departments beavering away being busy on policy initiatives, feeling like they are making a difference. The problem is that largely they are not - busy fools.
If Starmer is to break this current political zeitgeist then he needs to change plan and do so significantly. @Leon suggests he call an EU referendum - that would do it! Or something similarly bold. I'd even welcome him coming out and calling out the racist women-beating child-molesting scum at the heart of the protect our women / raise the colours movement.
He won't do anything. Because he's frit.
Zack Polanski probably will though.
His landslide victory in the leadership contest in a party that gets 8-10% of the vote is the political news of the week.
Gay, Vegan and Jewish it's enough to have the PB blimps clutching their smelling salts...
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
Another Brexit dividend.
There's advantages to having your own currency and interest rate in that you can set according to your own needs and won't in theory implicitly bail out weaker economies with it - but it does require a certain amount of discipline and spelling out of hard truths from your gov't and central bank.
Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election for Labour and seems likely to repeat this feat in 2029.
But (and there is always a but) at least Ed is doing something unlike several of his Cabinet colleagues and Prime Minister who seem content to be buffeted by events and blame the deep state blob for their own indolence.
Yes he’s just about the only one doing anything, the problem being that everything he’s doing makes the country’s problems worse.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
I don't disagree - some of the provision isn't needed and we all can find edge cases to illustrate those. But for most? It's needed, its just administered in a hugely inefficient way.
State pension, unfunded public sector pensions, followed I reckon by health care facilities for pensioners then defence are probably the least productive gov't spend. Infrastructure (The actual infrastructure bit - not the mahoosive legal/paperwork bits), education (In the long term), healthcare for people of working age maybe the most productive. Welfare a mix, the sort of welfare that allows people to earn more in tax for the treasury than they otherwise would is OK, but really how much welfare spend does actually do that ? Similarly healthcare - if you can replace the knee of an oil rig (Ha ha Ed Miliband) engineer then it's going to be net beneficial for the country, but the split of prescription drugs between payable and non payable (less productive) members of society shows the truth about how much health spending is truly truly productive.
We shouldn’t be looking to reduce the amount of money that pensioners have to spend. We should be looking to increase the amount of money that working people have to spend. If that means a number of bureaucrats will no longer be working people, unless they retrain and gain some useful skills, then that is a necessary compromise.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
State pension, unfunded public sector pensions, followed I reckon by health care facilities for pensioners then defence are probably the least productive gov't spend. Infrastructure (The actual infrastructure bit - not the mahoosive legal/paperwork bits), education (In the long term), healthcare for people of working age maybe the most productive. Welfare a mix, the sort of welfare that allows people to earn more in tax for the treasury than they otherwise would is OK, but really how much welfare spend does actually do that ? Similarly healthcare - if you can replace the knee of an oil rig (Ha ha Ed Miliband) engineer then it's going to be net beneficial for the country, but the split of prescription drugs between payable and non payable (less productive) members of society shows the truth about how much health spending is truly truly productive.
This seems a weird perspective. Surely the point of government spending is not merely productivity?
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
For those who haven't clicked, the top 5 countries by debt to GDP ratio are...
Sudan Japan Singapore Greece Bahrain
(Who's lending money to Sudan?!)
The UK is 15th.
Singapore always gets put on these lists, but its nonsense in their specific case. Its just accounting quirk of how they run their pension / healthcare funding. They don't owe other people money in the traditional sense of countries borrowing, rather they have taken their own citizen's money, put it in a massive wealth fund which is worth a lot more than the initial investment i.e. its a bit like saying a hedge fund is in debt to its investors, when the hedge fund it worth multiples of what all the depositors put in.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election for Labour and seems likely to repeat this feat in 2029.
But (and there is always a but) at least Ed is doing something unlike several of his Cabinet colleagues and Prime Minister who seem content to be buffeted by events and blame the deep state blob for their own indolence.
Even then Miliband had done hardly anything compared with the path the Conservatives* set us on, despite the histrionics here and in the Telegraph.
No energy market reform, no significant change to O&G sector taxation, no change to domestic/industrial gas and electricity taxation, no significant investment in EV charging infrastructure. His impact is imperceptible.
* who have now changed their tune and will extract 100% of all gas and oil out of the North Sea, even if this is economically perverse to do so.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Welcome to the process state that is run by unelected bureaucrats because the elected politicians are shit. I think we've been here for about 30 years.
You heard it here first. There were no unelected bureaucrats before 1997. "Yes, Minister" never existed.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
Another Brexit dividend.
We were never in the Eurozone and the price that Berlin will extract from France for the bailout will be just as high as the one the markets extract from the UK if not higher as the market will tolerate a higher level of inflation than EMU creditors will.
Sensible comments from Wes Streeting. I hope the Home Secretary is listening and has words with the Police. We may need to look at free speech laws, says Streeting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2922w73e1o
Well it’s fair to say that the free speech advocates in the US have picked up the Graham Linehan story - although many of them seem a little confused at the British use of the term “armed police”.
They've been told that Britain is a crime-ridden hellhole with an authoritarian government using the jackboots of its police force to enforce tyranny.
I can understand them finding it confusing that the vast majority of British police do not carry firearms.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
State pension, unfunded public sector pensions, followed I reckon by health care facilities for pensioners then defence are probably the least productive gov't spend. Infrastructure (The actual infrastructure bit - not the mahoosive legal/paperwork bits), education (In the long term), healthcare for people of working age maybe the most productive. Welfare a mix, the sort of welfare that allows people to earn more in tax for the treasury than they otherwise would is OK, but really how much welfare spend does actually do that ? Similarly healthcare - if you can replace the knee of an oil rig (Ha ha Ed Miliband) engineer then it's going to be net beneficial for the country, but the split of prescription drugs between payable and non payable (less productive) members of society shows the truth about how much health spending is truly truly productive.
This seems a weird perspective. Surely the point of government spending is not merely productivity?
Well if everything was sweetness and light and we had a 3.2* GDP multiple sovereign wealth fund financed by oil and gas it wouldn't be, but it is by force if you're in a massive financial black hole.
Labour weren't even able to bin the winter fuel allowance properly so no hope of getting into the meat of spending cuts I think. Further tax rises will just throttle growth.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Welcome to the process state that is run by unelected bureaucrats because the elected politicians are shit. I think we've been here for about 30 years.
You heard it here first. There were no unelected bureaucrats before 1997. "Yes, Minister" never existed.
Please point out where I said there were no unelected bureaucrats before 1997?
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Maybe Foxy could explain the reasoning behind all the different NHS trusts as there might be a good reason - I understand that different areas of the UK have different demographics so different needs but I always wonder whether it would work more efficiently with one single management (the same with all the different police forces, would it be more efficient to just have a UK Police).
I think about the old story that the French Education minister could look at a piece of paper and know what every schoolchild in France was eating that day and wonder how many areas of the state in the UK could just be made identikit across the country rather than having individual fiefdoms and extra costs from not having the purchasing power of a larger institution (eg all police kit from cars to boots should be supplied from the same source to leverage the collective buying power - I can’t think of any reason why different police forces end up with different makes of car for the same roles).
The fragmentation of the NHS was largely a creation of an "internal market" by the Conservatives, I suggest. It does create many problems.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Maybe Foxy could explain the reasoning behind all the different NHS trusts as there might be a good reason - I understand that different areas of the UK have different demographics so different needs but I always wonder whether it would work more efficiently with one single management (the same with all the different police forces, would it be more efficient to just have a UK Police).
I think about the old story that the French Education minister could look at a piece of paper and know what every schoolchild in France was eating that day and wonder how many areas of the state in the UK could just be made identikit across the country rather than having individual fiefdoms and extra costs from not having the purchasing power of a larger institution (eg all police kit from cars to boots should be supplied from the same source to leverage the collective buying power - I can’t think of any reason why different police forces end up with different makes of car for the same roles).
The fragmentation of the NHS was largely a creation of an "internal market" by the Conservatives, I suggest. It does create many problems.
Even as a conservative I cannot see any value in an internal market for the NHS, it’s not like they need competition where people from Newcastle are looking at where to get their hip done and find they can get a two for the price of one in Plymouth if they can get there tomorrow.
Sensible comments from Wes Streeting. I hope the Home Secretary is listening and has words with the Police. We may need to look at free speech laws, says Streeting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2922w73e1o
“So if over the years, with good intentions, Parliament has layered more and more expectation on police, and diluted the focus and priorities of the public, that's obviously something we need to look at."
Finally, someone gets it. Though could just be lip service. I always suspect Streeting is the sensible one in the room who everyone looks at a bit funnily when they say something reasonable.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
For those who haven't clicked, the top 5 countries by debt to GDP ratio are...
Sudan Japan Singapore Greece Bahrain
(Who's lending money to Sudan?!)
The UK is 15th.
Singapore always gets put on these lists, but its nonsense in their specific case. Its just accounting quirk of how they run their pension / healthcare funding. They don't owe other people money in the traditional sense of countries borrowing, rather they have taken their own citizen's money, put it in a massive wealth fund which is worth a lot more than the initial investment i.e. its a bit like saying a hedge fund is in debt to its investors, when the hedge fund it worth multiples of what all the depositors put in.
All economic statistics are rubbish. You could just as easily (and some do) argue that we should stop counting money "owed" between the Treasury and Bank of England.
Via @Moreincommon_ , 29 Aug - 1 Sep. Changes w/ 22-26 Aug.
These double digit Reform leads are becoming more frequent
They also show that voters did NOT recoil from Farage's "deport 600,000" speech. If voters even noticed, they seem to like it
Which means Farage has calm, clear blue water to his right. He can probably go further
Lol the pearl clutching on here afterwards and predictions of doom for Reform because of the deportation pledge was brilliant. Again it shows how out of touch with the Reform voting public that PB has become.
I think it's going to get worse for Labour too, all of the big YouTube and other social media commentators are absolutely rinsing the UK on freedom of speech, immigrant crime and illegal immigrant hotels. I expect that over the next year or so younger voters will shift much further to Reform and the right than anyone on PB realises. A YouTube commentator who gets 5m views per 10 minute video has much, much more power to shift votes among the young than a journalist writing in the guardian. It's not even close and the big YT and other social media accounts are absolutely scathing about the state of the UK, the 5 armed police officers for mean tweets being the latest example of how ridiculous it has become.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Add Anti-Money Laundering rules to your list.
As a Charitable Trustee they are the bane of my life. It makes opening and closing accounts and changing signatories a protracted pain in the arse.
It doesn't seem to touch the real money laundering industry, which goes from strength to strength on both High St and offshore financial world.
Anti-Money laundering rules are vital but again get “gold plated”. I don’t know if the same in the UK but here if you get to the stage of putting an offer in to buy a house the Estate Agents are required to take your KYC info and get source of funds.
The fact that to buy a house your funds have to be sent from your lawyer to the vendor’s lawyer who have to do their dd/AML and have the facilities and teams to do this to a high level makes it utterly pointless.
unfortunately there are always jobsworths who, in order to look like they contribute something with their job, will look for pointless things to bring up in order to create work and “worth” regardless of the extra burden for no benefit it puts on business.
The gold plating has been a big problem for a long time, most famously when EU law was translated into British law. The bureaucracy loves it, as it generates more bureaucracy, but to the rest of us it’s doing little but adding grit into the wheels of the economy.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
Tell your squillionaire mate that gilt auctions are oversubscribed. Now, in large part that is because of high (or higher than needed) interest rates but it does mean there is no imminent crisis or investor strike.
Actually, he’s not predicting a gilts “crisis” this week. He describes the present surge as a “tantrum” in the market, following Starmer’s inadequate phase 2 speech. I would add that the delay of the budget must also be a factor
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
There is, to quote Adam Smith, ”a great deal of ruin in a nation”.
Plus, France will hit the wall before we do.
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
France will get an internal bailout from the other Eurozone nations. I expect they won't get close to an external default and they can't devalue/inflate their debt away for an effective default.
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
For those who haven't clicked, the top 5 countries by debt to GDP ratio are...
Sudan Japan Singapore Greece Bahrain
(Who's lending money to Sudan?!)
The UK is 15th.
Singapore always gets put on these lists, but its nonsense in their specific case. Its just accounting quirk of how they run their pension / healthcare funding. They don't owe other people money in the traditional sense of countries borrowing, rather they have taken their own citizen's money, put it in a massive wealth fund which is worth a lot more than the initial investment i.e. its a bit like saying a hedge fund is in debt to its investors, when the hedge fund it worth multiples of what all the depositors put in.
All economic statistics are rubbish. You could just as easily (and some do) argue that we should stop counting money "owed" between the Treasury and Bank of England.
Yes and no. Singapore run a budget surplus most years. Very few countries do. This number is massively "out". The debt to GDP and other stats can differ slightly because of certain factors, but Singapore is extreme in that they aren't in really debt, they have money left over most years, it isn't about well if we included / excluded this it moves the needle a few % points.
A more reasonable "government stats are rubbish" is productivity comparisons say between UK and France. That is where how you country is setup in terms of what the public and private sector provide, how you count that, that all moves the needle a bit and made France appear for many years more productive than the UK when it wasn't. Now is a different matter.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .
Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.
Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
Maybe Foxy could explain the reasoning behind all the different NHS trusts as there might be a good reason - I understand that different areas of the UK have different demographics so different needs but I always wonder whether it would work more efficiently with one single management (the same with all the different police forces, would it be more efficient to just have a UK Police).
I think about the old story that the French Education minister could look at a piece of paper and know what every schoolchild in France was eating that day and wonder how many areas of the state in the UK could just be made identikit across the country rather than having individual fiefdoms and extra costs from not having the purchasing power of a larger institution (eg all police kit from cars to boots should be supplied from the same source to leverage the collective buying power - I can’t think of any reason why different police forces end up with different makes of car for the same roles).
The fragmentation of the NHS was largely a creation of an "internal market" by the Conservatives, I suggest. It does create many problems.
Even as a conservative I cannot see any value in an internal market for the NHS, it’s not like they need competition where people from Newcastle are looking at where to get their hip done and find they can get a two for the price of one in Plymouth if they can get there tomorrow.
Same [edit] sort of geographical problem with railway privatization (specifically the splitting up bit - no wonder that is being rectified now). And schools, as discussed also today here, in some of the UK.
But it does happen, for sausage machine stuff - plus you've got the private hospitals, lots of simple sausage machine stuff like varicose veins and cataracts.
Yet the other problem is that the consumers aren't informed consumers. And what happens to the hospitals that are supposed to lose out and go bust?
Comments
It's like Philp this week decrying the uncontrolled arrival of small boats, hinting that it never happened on his watch.
I can understand them finding it confusing that the vast majority of British police do not carry firearms.
So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.
We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.
I wonder what his views are on Linehan.
To lower the tone, Zack's other deputy is kinda hot.
https://oneworldaction.wordpress.com/100-unseen-powerful-women/arts-and-media/rachel-millward/
To give one example, when the Troika were in charge in Ireland public sector salaries were cut in nominal terms. Not frozen, actually cut. There wasn't a massive wave of strikes that crippled public services because people mostly understood that there wasn't a simple alternative, and they were glad to have job at all.
It would require strong and persuasive leadership to force such a thing through in Britain now, and the efforts of such a leadership might be better directed towards other policies, but it's not impossible.
Now we have oversight by Ofsted, we have multi school academy management teams on astronomical salaries (and there are far, far more of them than there were County Council LEAs). Each school has around a dozen non teaching managers/ administrators . The education budget is syphoned off to these people before a student writes their first essay. Do we need all these leeches or can we return to the old model?
However, this is bonkers, insane, nuts.
The second most obvious answer is that he has been out of the country for some time, which is disprovable and unlikely.
We also need to remember that elements in the Trans lobby have a long and nasty history of using fake and opportunistic complaints to police as a form of outsourced harassment. This could be one of those, whatever we think of Linehan.
Here for example was the experience of Caroline Farrow, who I have known on and off online since about 2007, when we were both interested in the "religion" sub-niche of the then new political blogging.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/10/13/uk-social-media-arrest-one-minute-catholic-mom-was-roasting-chicken-the-next-she-was-off-to-jail/
Surrey Police later paid her legal fees, and afaik her legal action is still continuing.
I think about the old story that the French Education minister could look at a piece of paper and know what every schoolchild in France was eating that day and wonder how many areas of the state in the UK could just be made identikit across the country rather than having individual fiefdoms and extra costs from not having the purchasing power of a larger institution (eg all police kit from cars to boots should be supplied from the same source to leverage the collective buying power - I can’t think of any reason why different police forces end up with different makes of car for the same roles).
But he’s been consistently saying a terrible reckoning is headed our way and we can’t avoid it with politics as they are. We WILL hit a wall in the coming months (next few years at most)
Loads of lovely tax rise announcements just as we hit Christmas season.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7879vg96y6o
If it’s correct that his latest arrest was over comments made in the US, could that be seen as attempting to influence the court? Could he sue the police to find out from where the order came to arrest him?
What do you think, @Foxy ?
I was surprised when my primary schoolteacher grandson described the structure of the 'academy trust' which employs him. And it's not even as though the 'participating' schools are in the same geographical area.
The latest S and P composite came in above expectations at 53.5 v 53.0 expected .
The services sector came in at 54.2 v 53.6 expected .
’ [Linehan] is accused of harassment by posting abusive comments on social media between 11 and 27 of October, and of damage to a phone to the value of £369.
He was granted bail on condition he did not contact the complainant directly or indirectly. ‘
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7879vg96y6o
An early lesson for me that grammar and punctuation are important.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Us5dHnonZ1U
Firms reported the biggest increase in costs in three months and continued to reduce staff numbers. Employment as measured by the PMI has fallen for 11 consecutive months - the longest continuous period since a run between 2008 and 2010 aside from the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1963152203507499039
Hoping something turns up?
And then maybe we'll be transformed into a safe haven.
Bond buyers have to park their money somewhere.
Standing in front of a picketing mob shouting "burn them out" is the sort of thing that should be prosecuted. The sorts of vile comments made by Linehan on Social Media should not.
I accept that the whole tone of discussion around issues such as migration, Trans-rights, Gaza does raise tensions that can easily spill over into violence, but those who do inflame that atmosphere are usually very careful with their language. Which is why Connelly and Linehan get arrested while Farage and Jenrick get broadcast.
Also, how do you know he was arrested for the tweet he says he was? He may be lying. And I see TSE has posted some useful further information
But, yes, we're still charting the wrong course as a nation.
I haven't noticed any change in policing, and don't anticipate any. Elected PCCs seem ideally suited to abolition as a cost cutting measure to my eyes.
Saul Staniforth
@SaulStaniforth
2h
Ed Balls: the Greens taking votes from Labour helps the Tories
@ZackPolanski
: "I want to see every Labour politician whose voted for a two child benefit cap, for disability cuts, for the ongoing genocide in Gaza to sell arms to them, I want to see them replaced" #GMB
https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1963123774233927904
Very late.
We can't afford this idiocy.
“Reeves faces £11bn bill over Miliband’s North Sea shutdown”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/03/reeves-faces-11bn-bill-over-milibands-north-sea-shutdown/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgjgyyqgvyo
PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,
The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.
We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?
The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.
We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.
I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.
Why do you say piracy?
The UK still has much going for it, even given our troubles.
As a Charitable Trustee they are the bane of my life. It makes opening and closing accounts and changing signatories a protracted pain in the arse.
It doesn't seem to touch the real money laundering industry, which goes from strength to strength on both High St and offshore financial world.
But (and there is always a but) at least Ed is doing something unlike several of his Cabinet colleagues and Prime Minister who seem content to be buffeted by events and blame the deep state blob for their own indolence.
Labour getting on top of the fiscal crisis
https://x.com/johnrentoul/status/1962085997908246954?s=46&t=d8CnRhyZJ-m4vy0k55W8XQ
No, we are very much out on our own with this one. The government must bring spending under control and show intent to cut a minimum of £40-60bn from state expenditure and raise £20-30bn over the next cycle in the next budget with the cuts front loaded.
Refusal to permit North Sea gas when we are clearly going to end up importing LNG instead, making blocking the development permits nothing but hypocritical grandstanding. Refusal to implement regional electricity pricing for fear of electricity in Scotland being cheaper than in England. Scotland could probably do with the support of cheaper prices to support local industry, but no - lets force the wind farms to burn their brake blocks up turning themselves off in times of high winds instead. The side effect of convincing yet more Scots that London cares more about English voters than it does about Scottish ones is an extra bonus! etc etc.
Net zero is a worthy goal! We should be going at it 100% - but we do that by being honest about what’s in front of us, not by lying to everyone about electricity prices & hoping nobody notices that it’s our fault because we refuse to build out nuclear at reasonable cost.
A Big Pair of scissors is needed.
The fact that to buy a house your funds have to be sent from your lawyer to the vendor’s lawyer who have to do their dd/AML and have the facilities and teams to do this to a high level makes it utterly pointless.
unfortunately there are always jobsworths who, in order to look like they contribute something with their job, will look for pointless things to bring up in order to create work and “worth” regardless of the extra burden for no benefit it puts on business.
Infrastructure (The actual infrastructure bit - not the mahoosive legal/paperwork bits), education (In the long term), healthcare for people of working age maybe the most productive.
Welfare a mix, the sort of welfare that allows people to earn more in tax for the treasury than they otherwise would is OK, but really how much welfare spend does actually do that ? Similarly healthcare - if you can replace the knee of an oil rig (Ha ha Ed Miliband) engineer then it's going to be net beneficial for the country, but the split of prescription drugs between payable and non payable (less productive) members of society shows the truth about how much health spending is truly truly productive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_debt
Sudan
Japan
Singapore
Greece
Bahrain
(Who's lending money to Sudan?!)
The UK is 15th.
RFM: 31% (+1)
LAB: 21% (-1)
CON: 18% (=)
LDM: 13% (-1)
GRN: 8% (+1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via
@Moreincommon_
, 29 Aug - 1 Sep.
Changes w/ 22-26 Aug.
We need a bonfire of regulations.
No energy market reform, no significant change to O&G sector taxation, no change to domestic/industrial gas and electricity taxation, no significant investment in EV charging infrastructure. His impact is imperceptible.
* who have now changed their tune and will extract 100% of all gas and oil out of the North Sea, even if this is economically perverse to do so.
They also show that voters did NOT recoil from Farage's "deport 600,000" speech. If voters even noticed, they seem to like it
Which means Farage has calm, clear blue water to his right. He can probably go further
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2922w73e1o
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/london-records-fewest-homicides-summer-051630688.html
Should we congratulate Sadiq or Keir?
Labour weren't even able to bin the winter fuel allowance properly so no hope of getting into the meat of spending cuts I think.
Further tax rises will just throttle growth.
If you were thinking of voting Reform, I don’t think you were really going to baulk at an announcement that they’d be looking at mass deportations.
Finally, someone gets it. Though could just be lip service. I always suspect Streeting is the sensible one in the room who everyone looks at a bit funnily when they say something reasonable.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwyvyqkx9yo
But alas not nearly as intact as Erebus and Terror.
I think it's going to get worse for Labour too, all of the big YouTube and other social media commentators are absolutely rinsing the UK on freedom of speech, immigrant crime and illegal immigrant hotels. I expect that over the next year or so younger voters will shift much further to Reform and the right than anyone on PB realises. A YouTube commentator who gets 5m views per 10 minute video has much, much more power to shift votes among the young than a journalist writing in the guardian. It's not even close and the big YT and other social media accounts are absolutely scathing about the state of the UK, the 5 armed police officers for mean tweets being the latest example of how ridiculous it has become.
Looks like the Modi Xi love in lasted all of a few days
A more reasonable "government stats are rubbish" is productivity comparisons say between UK and France. That is where how you country is setup in terms of what the public and private sector provide, how you count that, that all moves the needle a bit and made France appear for many years more productive than the UK when it wasn't. Now is a different matter.
But it does happen, for sausage machine stuff - plus you've got the private hospitals, lots of simple sausage machine stuff like varicose veins and cataracts.
Yet the other problem is that the consumers aren't informed consumers. And what happens to the hospitals that are supposed to lose out and go bust?