These columns still feed the kiddies at the street kitchen.
Effectively, we have to remove politics from detailed control of the economy. Then those who would seek power or privilege through politics won’t even attempt to seek it because they’ll not be able to get it.
That is, a simple set of rules for the economy. Simple taxes, simple rules; taxes and rules that don’t vary. The other way of describing this is the rule of law. It’s the same for everyone no matter how many politicians you know.
To put it very cynically — why would anyone buy, bribe, or even befriend politicians if there was nothing that could be bought from politicians? So, the method to clean politics and a clean economy is not to allow politicians to have anything to sell.
True, it’s only about £80 a month but that’s something, right? Current costs seem to be about 20p for a gutbuster of boiled eggs, veggies and rice. Almost certainly the best paid job I’ve got in fact – when measured by meals that is.
As many people have remarked TTK seems to have attracted more sobriquets than many Prime Ministers in an incredibly short time. This seems to be a reflection of the number of deficiencies Starmer has. Yes, he is a most prolific liar, but then he is a lawyer. Yes, he is an amazing hypocrite, but then he is a politician which also accounts for his greed and corruption.
It’s a sobering thought that we probably know 1% of his deficiencies…
As I’ve asked myself countless times over the last 30 years about politicians, is he or she really extremely stupid or just an oaf?
Grist
A bit of both there it seems.
He’s not very good at this corruption lark, because keeps on getting caught.
He’s not very good at this politics lark,
because he keeps on getting…er… caught.
What he doesn”t realise is that his government was not elected on the basis of their policies ir personalities, but because they weren’t the Other Lot.
The result is More of the Same But Worse.
And people are not going to like it.
I’d recommend watching half a bald and bankrupt video on Bangladesh – kids banging away at the hulls of ships. And the street where someone selling bananas with the occasional customer, the next street vendor selling something green with occasional customers, just not a productive way to get stuff sold.
Contrast with greengrocers in UK where 3 staff sell up to a hundred items of produce, and even that is losing to the more productive sellers at the supermarkets.
@Grist & Otto
One has to agree. The UK is really scraping the barrel of Oxford university graduates now. It must be time to look somewhere else for your politicians. But FFS! That’s not Cambridge. Just try to think outside the box.
Not the reason I was going to comment here. Tim’s post really put inflation in reality terms. A soupkitchen meal for the streetkids of Bangladesh now costs the same as I was paying for lunch as a stock exchange floor trader in the City at the end of the sixties. And it wasn’t rice & eggs, either. Haven’t successive UK governments done well?
Boiled eggs, veggies and rice is close to the perfect dirt-cheap basic sustenance. Rice gives you yer basic carbos, veggies yer basic vitamins, eggs is the most expensive bit but you only need small quantities to get the proteins. A lot of my meals at university and after were like this. In a maritime culture you’d have fish instead of the eggs for the same result.
mmm… feeling peckish. Think I might chuck a few eggs and bread in a pan.
A lot of my meals at university and after were like this.
Yep. One sees where a university education gets you. Also perpetually unemployed, one gathers
Angela Rayner is on the left https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/PortalPictures/september-2024/395042018_Rayner-Landscape.jpg?imwidth=640
The column does have the feel of “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”. It’s not like this is novel.
But we still have people doing stupid things, so I guess we have to have other people saying “Don’t do stupid things; they’re stupid and will cause bad things to happen.”
Yes, BiS, working in Holborn in 1973 we got 35p* luncheon vouchers to feed ourselves each day – some of the local pubs took them, too.
* IIRC, john77, can you remember?
“The UK is really scraping the barrel of Oxford university graduates now.” He’s a Leeds graduate: he only went to Oxford as a postgraduate.
Or, put another way, he has twice graduated in Law. A worrying symptom, I’d say.
Somebody here may be able to tell me why he would do a second law degree and who would have paid for it. The taxpayer? Or was there a “Lord Alli” in his life even then? Seems unlikely unless it was the father whom he seems to scorn.
dearieme: «Or was there a “Lord Alli” in his life even then? »
Two peer Kier?
This arrangement raises one obvious question for me which I would like answered
Is this income being declared in Bangladesh and Portugal and is tax being paid on it?
Also, what might be considered a charitable endeavour is often undertaken for tax avoidance purposes, which deprives government of income which could be better spent by it in alleviating the poverty of its citizens.
A lot of my meals at university and after were like this.
Yep. One sees where a university education gets you. Also perpetually unemployed, one gathers
Nope, currently at 50% since uni. Not that anything I did at university was in any way a benefit to getting employment. Once I can afford it (once the mortgage is paid off) I’m aiming to drop that precipitously.
You do realise “100% employed for ever” is soooooo 19th century, don’t you? The modern economy is “we don’t need you, get off our damn payroll”.
Dammit. That’s what a university education gets you. I meant that once I’ve paid off my mortgage I’m aiming to *increase* my amount of unemployment. Jeez.
By the way, the fact that you care about kids in Bangladesh is one of the reasons I like you.
You’re a good man, Tim.
Good is stretching it. Not always wholly bad might be supportable.
I think the project Tim is talking about is this one, if anyone fancies donating:
https://www.bidyanondo.org/projects/1
Aye, that’s the lads. I have this awful feeling that I was one of their first donors. There’s a post back here about doing Ramadan lunches for poor kids or something. Which, no, I don’t know, really I don’t, but that might have been the start of this.
100% employed for ever” is soooooo 19th century, don’t you?
Must have been spending all that time in C18th coffee houses that did it.
Dearieme, an Oxford BCL is for seriously clever lawyers who are very serious about the Bar as a career. I did an LLM at Cambridge which was a tourist degree to pass the time – the BCL at Oxford was completely different. Lots wrong with him, but not his academic or legal brain.
His academic brain? He got a C in A-level physics.
What’s Keir Starmer got to do with children eating rice in Bangladesh?
A demonstration of what is possible without being a corrupt politician?