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Are Ritchie and Colin Hines still speaking to each other?

As the dark, deflationary clouds from China and elsewhere gather, and as unemployment and underemployment are still to be found in great swaths of the country, Adonis could propose an infrastructure programme that can help deal with these threats. This would involve using QE to fund increased economic activity that protects the environment through a programme to make all the UK’s 30m homes, offices and factories energy efficient.

This decades-long energy infrastructure project

But, but, GQE and PQE are to be used only in times of utter economic distress, not over decades!

Or has Ritchie not been able to get Hines up to date with the new version?

11 thoughts on “Are Ritchie and Colin Hines still speaking to each other?”

  1. The letter below Colin Hines’s is a corker:

    So Adonis resigns from Labour to manage grandiose megaprojects but notably does not resign his position on the HS2 Ltd board. Is this the moment that the Labour party will re-find Labour values and priorities in transport and confront its support for the elitist and hugely expensive HS2 proposal? Contrary to what Frank Field (Tax credits and trains can help Jeremy Corbyn outflank Tories, 4 October) says, HS2 is not a done deal. It has always been said that it requires cross-party support, and Labour opposition at the bill’s third reading would very likely derail it. This would enable Labour to redeploy the huge expenditure to implement the many higher priority improvements to commuter services and regional links, which are what ordinary people use and which offer so much better value for money.
    Madeleine Wahlberg and Mike Geddes
    Offchurch, Warwickshire

    A little googling tells me that the writers are both academics at Warwick University. In particular Mike Geddes

    Background
    My academic background is in history and geography (BA Southampton) and urban and regional studies (PhD Sussex). From 1989 to 2008 I was Senior Research Fellow, Reader and Professorial Fellow in the Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School. My research spanned a range of issues in local politics and public policy, with particular interests in theories of the state and cross-national comparative analysis of patterns of local governance under neoliberalism.
    Current Research
    My interest in cross-national comparative analysis led to my current research focus on aspects of contemporary politics and policy in Latin America, especially those countries with more progressive political regimes. Specific research topics include radical initiatives in local politics and governance; political and policy programmes which claim to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism; and projects to ‘refound’ the neo-colonialist and neoliberal state. I am particularly interested in contemporary politics and policy in Bolivia.

    So in short, a Juanquerista. It’s Bolivia I feel sorry for . . .

  2. “This would involve using QE to fund increased economic activity that protects the environment through a programme to make all the UK’s 30m homes, offices and factories energy efficient.”

    Didn’t the Labor party try this in Oz? I seem to remember it was a disaster.

  3. If local authorities are going to be pushed into investing their pension funds in propositions such as this, I can predict a crisis in 10 to 15 years…..

  4. He hasn’t resigned from Labour, he’s still a Labour Party member, he has just taken a chairmanship of government-nominated body, and so has resigned the Party Whip and sits as a cross-bencher (independent). Just like the Mayor of a local council nominally sits as an independent while they are Mayor as they are the chair of the council. Blair’s (Lab) government appointed David Mellor (Con) to chair a Football thing. David Steel (LD) sat as an independent while he was presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament (Lab) without resigning from his party.

  5. Bloke in North Dorset

    Jgh,

    Yes but that’s all based on the idea that politics can be consensual at some level and that politicians can act in a disinterested way.

    This is the left we are talking about and the only consensus there is how much they hate the Tories, and even then they can fall out over who hates them the most.

  6. Bloke in Lower Hutt

    Jonathan – Not quite the Oz experience I don’t think. I believe they took the approach of using funds raised by general taxation to subsidize the eco-improvements to homes rather than using QE.

    The completely unforeseen (by Govt policy wonks at least) consequence was that it lead to revenue raised by taxing the poorer people in society being redistributed to middle class folks to subsidize the installation of solar panels on the roofs of their homes which were already meeting the environmental standards the scheme was set up to help achieve.

    The Govt then quietly dropped the scheme.

    At least that’s how I recall it playing out.

  7. Tim…just ignore Ritchie for a while. Let him disappear beneath the weight of his excrement.

    Ignore him for a week.

    He needs you more than you need him.

    Without you, his followers are members of the BUF or CP.

    Just wait until Zoe realises who she is rubbing shoulders with. people called Matt who have never been outside their mother’s bedsit

  8. “Ignore him for a week.

    He needs you more than you need him.”

    I’ve often wondered how much exposure Tim gives Murph!

    You are right, a week is a holiday. And yet, on the other side of the coin, imagine if the views of people like the Murph increasingly went unchallenged – and that they sounded rational or mainstream?

    All around us, stupidity and lunacy continue their ugly march. I am misquoting you, and you are right in this context, but turning up at weekends doesn’t even win battles…

  9. As Tim himself once said:

    ‘All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’

    When face with someone as deadly as Murphy would be to the country – can we rest even a day, nary even an hour? – No – we must constantly promulgate evidence of his delusions and the stupidity of his ideology. As PF says, Lord knows there are enough stupid people out there who whether through malice or genuine ignorance might think his ideology ‘sounds like a good idea’…

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