Oooooh, great!

I am so bored of hearing politicians saying that the country is being held to ransom by trade unions whose pay demands cannot be afforded when that is not true.

Well God forbid he should be bored – may be he needs to find a new hobby or avoid getting banned from pubs

What we have had in the UK are two overlapping inflationary shocks. One resulted from the reopening from Covid. The other was caused by the war in Ukraine. The Bank of England agree that these were the causes of inflation. Let’s not look further then when we don’t need to do so.

I don’t think the Bank of England has any opinion beyond personal about unlimited migration, and I’ll presume they’re in favour of ‘Net Zero’ like anyone else in the public sector seeing in it a mechanism to solidify their own power so of course they don’t mention either of those drivers. For the fifth key driver – 15 years of loose monetary policy and QE being monetized, ‘mea culpas’ -admitting your own culpability are deeply unfashionable these days so I hardly expect the BOE to admit those errors. I’d also point out to the cretin that reopening wasn’t the issue – it was locking down in the first place and ideal as someone who backed the policy he should be looking at a capital sentence if there were any justice. 1 out of 5 – must do better.

As we get past the anniversary of the war in Ukraine this will become much more marked. Inflation will tumble in 2023 unless there is another, as yet unknown, inflationary shock about to beset us. I think that unlikely.
A lot of Market analysts are baking in continued inflation of above 5%, and I think as the causes of inflation are realized to be longer term and structural then inflation is baked in well into 2024. I can’t see the Russia conflict ending any time soon, which given the impact on the 2022 harvest globally will see a huge spike in food prices in 2023. Other drivers are disinflationary I admit but its by no means a sure thing that inflation isn’t here to stay.

Second, the current pay disputes that the government is pursuing with such vigour make no sense at all. Not only is it totally normal for pay to catch up with inflation in situations like the one we are in, as the IMF has shown in recent research, but the quicker it does so the better.

So the IMF is a neoliberal body normally but not when it suits? It’s partly true that pay will eventually catch up with inflation but the residual costs, as viewed in the 70s or in 30s Germany are potentially catastrophic – best tackle the root cause of the problem, unless you have a vested interest in not doing so.

Refusing to give inflation-matching pay rises does in that case mean that we go into recession. Giving inflation-matching pay rises prevents that, and does not create inflation. That’s a pretty big thing to achieve.

Again, it’s conceivable that like a stopped clock he could be right – it’s the same approach as was tried in COVID – pump in money and in the short term you can kick the can down the road. Longer term, you run out of road and I think we are at that point now. Asset prices for both Equities and bonds show a sustained downward price trend (albeit its not linear), and I’d imagine many other assets are as well. Every piece of research I read in my day job now predicts a recession and I think it’s hard to avoid the consequences of 15 years of vainglorious attempts to postpone a day of reckoning

Third, this is completely affordable. The reason is staring us in the face. Inflation does, by itself, pay for these pay rises. The simple fact is that if there is 10% price inflation and 10% wage inflation then the revenues from the three big taxes go up by at least 10% as well.

Am I misreading this – could he be unaware of the difference between real terms and nominal? And people still contend he didn’t pass his accountancy exams fraudulently?

In other words, inflation-matching pay rises in the public sector are totally affordable unless the government has some other goals in mind. What might they be?

Well, they could be trying to crush public services as a matter of policy. After a decade or more of austerity that is hard to rule out.

They could also want a recession to provide cover for increasing returns to capital by trying to create a long-term fall in real wages. Again, that can’t ruled out

After all those who have waited 10 to 12 hours in A&E to not be seen, who find that an ambulance is not available when they need it, who had to home school for two years because teachers couldn’t do their jobs, who see police ‘taking the knee’ when burglary clear up rates are at absolute zero, who see councillors looking to prevent them using their cars on spurious grounds, who see people coming over on boats illegally and being put up in hotels at their expense, are of course likely to be extremely sympathetic to the people overseeing such decisions.

As for the rest of it, seems to me to be not dissimilar to David Icke or Alex Jones only rather more pompously and obnxiously delivered.

And they could also just be utterly incompetent. The possibility has to be taken seriously.

I think if the last four years prove anything that is baked in and yet the opposition were still utterly obliterated at the last election. Perhaps giving that state and those politicians more money and responsibility might not be such a good idea?

The man is beyond deranged – ideally I hope Musk kicks him off Twitter and on to Mastodon where he can find people of like mind

I’m not sure if the idea of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt winning a campaign decisively is hilarious or terrifying.

Van_Patten,

“After all those who have waited 10 to 12 hours in A&E to not be seen, who find that an ambulance is not available when they need it, who had to home school for two years because teachers couldn’t do their jobs, who see police ‘taking the knee’ when burglary clear up rates are at absolute zero, who see councillors looking to prevent them using their cars on spurious grounds, who see people coming over on boats illegally and being put up in hotels at their expense, are of course likely to be extremely sympathetic to the people overseeing such decisions.”

I looked at some polls on the level of support for the strikes and I was really surprised at how low the support was for nurses. Like, still a majority, but barely.

I think Covid has absolutely burned down the reputation of the public sector. What I’ve been saying for years from being an insider, the taxpayers are starting to grasp. When adversity strikes, the public sector will use any excuse to not deliver. The private sector will try to find a way.

You can see it when the snow falls. I remember having to pay a ton of money for a taxi because rail just cancelled running trains. So, an Uber ran. And then, a Stagecoach bus ran. And OK, the bus had to divert around one road on the route because it was just too deep and I had to walk the last quarter of a mile. Sometimes, people really just can’t do all of their job. But there was at least a sense of doing the best that they could.

Like they just cancelled all driving tests. I’m pretty damn sure that we could have put driving examiners in hazmat suits. Or created some sort of plastic barrier between driver and examiner. Supermarkets, buses and factories managed it.

V_P: Well God forbid he should be bored – may be he needs to find a new hobby

Oh dear, has Mick Lynch shut down his train set then?

Van_Patten,

“A doctor on a geriatric ward she couldn’t empathise at all with my opinion that the lockdown had been completely unnecessary and the long term cost would outweigh, by a massive margin any ‘benefits’ from doing it, and considered anyone wanting to go to a pub or indeed any other type of social gathering as being ‘selfish’.”

You should have asked her about the old people who keep voting for more pensions, for no houses to be built so their house value stays high, and use about 50% of all NHS spending. How fucking selfish are they instead of making sure they had a good pension?

I was clear about this: you’ve all had your best years. When you had a hard nubile body and brown hair, or were shagging girls with hard nubile bodies and brown hair, of discovering rock and roll, of partying until 2am, falling in love, raising a family, being creative and productive. And we shouldn’t deny that to people just to save a bunch of people who aren’t doing much but waiting to expire.

But we could have had a practical solution: lock yourself in your home, someone delivers your food in boxes to your front door. We could have done this with volunteers, or maybe a bit of government spending. Rona was mostly like a heavy cold to most people. People who died of it were the same people who died from flu. A few young people would have died from it, but the odd few people young die from colds and flu and no-one bats an eyelid.

Andrew M

There’s no f()£ing way food distribution could have been taken over by the state and run as effectively as the Supermarkets and grocery stores do it – absolutely zero chance. It would have collapsed within a month, along with lockdown (another reason I’m gutted it didn’t happen)

I’d agree with your maxim in general but on this occasion I think the cracks would have shown a lot sooner

“Sadly measures like a ‘socialist tax’ on Murphy plus the seizure of all his assets and his being incarcerated in a workhouse seem unlikely to occur but one can only dream.”

I have often said that a true Right wing government would create a parallel tax system with far higher rates across the board. Very easy to do in this era of IT. One phone call to HMRC ‘I want to pay the Socialism Tax please!’ and you would be paying extra tax, just like you say you want everyone too. And make the register of who is doing so public. Make the socialists live up to their own rhetoric.