She’s leaving the real problems untouched as a result. She isn’t taxing the excessive monopoly-driven or rentier-driven rent extraction monopoly profits, which are leaving households in debt and in poverty because they’re paying too much for their utilities. They’re paying too much for their phones. They’re paying too much for their train travel. They’re paying too much for so much, including everything that they buy from their supermarkets, because although people claim that these aren’t monopolists, of course, they are.
Tesco has more than a quarter of the UK retail food sales in this country. That means it and the other supermarkets become oligopolists and they make exceptional profits as a result, even if the margins are small.
“they make exceptional profits as a result, even if the margins are small.”
So small profit margins are now exceptional?
1 farthing in profit is excessive to people like Murphy.
Of course. Anything not at a loss is exceptional. Except if it’s the state running it.
It’s always fun watching socialists complain about the working classes having to pay too much of their income in food, or train travel (as if!). It’s especially fun when they go on about fuel poverty when people have to pay more than 10% of their income in utility bills.
But the real fun is when I extend their argument to “tax poverty”. The looks on their faces are priceless when I argue that no-one should pay more than 10% of their income on total taxation.
Fuel being expensive obviously has nothing to do with taxes
“They’re paying too much for their phones. They’re paying too much for their train travel.”
Is he pissy that he bought into the Apple ecosystem? Because you get a really good Moto phone (including waterproofing) for under £200.
Trains? We throw £12bn/year of taxpayers money at supporting trains. And they’re still shit and expensive.
Meanwhile National Express warned shareholders profits are going to be at the low end. “We are on track to deliver on our guidance for the year of adjusted operating profit in the range of £180m to £195m, albeit we expect this will be towards the lower end due to the competitive environment for UK Coach”. Huzzah for the free market! Not only are coaches reliable and punctual, but the competition in the market means the consumers win.
My phone cost £34, and the connection service costs £5 per month. I don’t consider that “too much”.
That’s too much. My phone cost £12. This month I will decide: let Tesco take £2.50 a month in return for more texts and calls than I will even use in a year, or stick with the old way of paying per use and top up maybe £15 in a whole year.
I use less than £5 of service each month, but I can’t set the direct debit any lower. Every few months I get a refund. I think I use around £15-£20 per year. The annoyance is insufficient to make me spend the time to do anything about it.
I only got the (smart) phone a couple of years ago because my service provider turned G3 off, and I could continue using my little Nokia. The phone itself is more annoying than the service as picking it up results in something on the touch screen being activated. When it rings I’ll grope for it in my pocket and find I’ve pressed Mute or Deny or Standy or something.
Madness. Buy an Android phone and most networks have a deal about £10 a month for calls and data. Utility bills are driven up by green crap that he fully supports. Trains, about to be bloody nationalised so we know what will happen there. Food prices up because of inflation, again caused by the policies he supports.
Rail nationalisation or privatisation never really made much difference because apart from lack of rail competition, the operation of trains was micromanaged by government. What routes to run, when, what trains they got, what staff they had to use, the way they could charge, maximum fares, down to whether they could have a buffet car or not. And of course, the TOCs never owned the franchise. So, why would you invest any money if the state could take it away from you in a few years? It was really best thought of as outsourcing. Like bringing in caterers for an event and you tell them what sort of food you want.
And railways, as a technology, are expensive to run. Everything is custom made, so it’s not like coaches where there are production lines (with custom fitting at the end). It costs £1.7m to buy a train carriage, compared to about £400K to buy a coach. That’s a dumb carriage vs a coach with all the stuff to drive it. Then you have a limited number of drivers, monopoly routes, with insane amounts of training, so there’s no market like PSV drivers for coaches. Trains are also fragile in terms of surface. Has to be flat, no damage to rails. So a huge amount of money is spent constantly checking and replacing it. And you need staff to do the steering (points) and collecting tickets, which coach drivers do both of.
About 75% of the UK rail network should be shut down. It loses money, it’s not even green as so few people use it. And it would save us over £10bn/year doing it.
“About 75% of the UK rail network should be shut down. It loses money, it’s not even green as so few people use it. And it would save us over £10bn/year doing it.” Yup.
And it would give us the great and glorious pleasure of seeing all those overpaid, unionised train drivers sacked. Get on with it!
“Like bringing in caterers for an event and you tell them what sort of food you want.”
But you also get to look at what they charge and dictate a maximum margin, what vehicles they use to deliver it, how many of their staff must be minorities, and on and on.
What sort of food will you get, for the caterers willing to go through that?
Rail nationalisation or privatisation never really made much difference…
It made a huge difference to me when I was commuting into London because BR was so incompetent!
That reminds me – there was one week pre-privatisation when my fastest journey home was when I changed in the office took a tube to Oakwood and ran the last 18 miles (the other four days must have been two trains cancelled or one cancelled and the next so late I missed the connection after the one I normally caught).
Yes, but buying Android a) for the poors and b) he would have to adjust to slightly different ways of doing some things.
I have an Android and my relatives have iPhone. Sharing pictures is annoying because we have to send them as opposed to having a folder in the Apple Gallery (or whatever it’s called), that only Apple devices can access.
Does he seem like the type who adjusts, or the type who shouts about the injustice instead?
Entrust my photos to an operating system & phone supplier? You can fuck right off with that idea
What would have been the margins when he owned Murphy Deeks? What would have been typical for a suburban accounting firm in the 90s?
“I woke late this morning. I can’t recall the last time I woke after 8.00. Jacqueline decided I needed to sleep and let me lie in. I think she was probably right.
What is more, nothing I worked on yesterday is ready for publication as yet.
And, if I am honest, I feel the need for coffee and a walk, despite the weather, this morning.”
We should I suppose be grateful we were spared the detail about his stool movement.
Gosh, he really is channeling Pooter!
I’m guessing autocorrect changed the spelling of the activity accompanying his coffee.
Evil.
The people give government the authority to tax to raise revenue to pay for their operations. Evil commie dick Murphy wants government to use its legitimate taxing authority to manipulate people’s behavior. Transitioning from legitimate government to totalitarianism.
So, if they increase taxes on Tesco, the prices will be lowered? Wait, I’ve seen this kind of thing before:
1 – Steal underpants
2 – ?????
3 – Profit
“ Tesco has more than a quarter of the UK retail food sales in this country. That means it and the other supermarkets become oligopolists and they make exceptional profits as a result, even if the margins are small.”
They sell what the public wants, at the price they want to pay. The sneaky bastards!
That must stop!
Government food stores urgently needed! No food on shelves will fix it.
They’re paying too much for their gas and electricity because of Weird Ed; I am paying too much to subsidise Their train travel.
As for supermarkets making exceptional profits on small margins: he’s left the world of rationality far behind. Man’s bonkers, not just stupid, ignorant, and nasty.
Tesco has more than a quarter of the UK retail food sales in this country. That means it and the other supermarkets become oligopolists and they make exceptional profits as a result, even if the margins are small.
Candidly, we must have more supermarket chains earning lower revenues and charging higher margins, for social justice.
Jeeze, make up your mind, dick.
Spud has just two settings: pompous ranting or pompous pontification.
“That means it and the other supermarkets become oligopolists”
TBF that was once true. Pre Aldi/Lidl there was a nice little earner going on in food retailing, with everyone going through the motions of competing, when in reality it was all a bit of a stitch-up.
But post GFC, once Aldi and Lidl entered the market as serious national players that cosy little world got blown apart. Tesco are now more 1 in 4 pounds spent rather than the 1 in 3 they once had. Asda are bleeding on the floor, Morrisons not much better. The Co-op survive by selling poor quality but overpriced goods to terminal Leftists and the elderly who can’t get to another store. Only Sainsburys have largely maintained their market share over the last 20 years.
Jim, absolutely right on the co-op. Good for status-signalling by well-paid public-sector types who want to display a social conscience. Over-priced for the rest of us.
And appalling, dysfunctional care-in-the-community staff. They can fuck right off. I’d rather starve, or buy from the muslim corner shop.
Of our local supermarkets the Co-op sells the best bread and the best bananas. It has recently sold the best green grapes too. It used to sell a wonderful ham – Speck – from the South Tyrol but the buggers have stopped that. It saved one Xmas for us by being the only supermarket that still had a stock of smoked salmon on the 23rd.
The Aldi smoked salmon is much better value but not if the shelves are bare.
Smoked salmon? Very much the store for the Workers, I’m sure.
Supermarket smoked salmon isn’t that expensive, not much more than ham nowadays. (£2.49 vs £1.30 for 100g).
I suppose – if you call 1.9x “not much more”
The point is, smoked salmon used to be a real luxury thing, not a bit more expensive than ham. And you can still get that from the likes of Forman’s. Line caught wild salmon, with a long slow hot smoke.
It’s acquiring the taste for smoked salmon I was thinking about.
Yeah, I s’pose it is cheaper now. For a given level of cheap. But it’s exactly mousetrap & tinned ham.
Like Jim says the Coop’s gone from being community grocer* to Woke favouite. Not saying I ever shopped at the Coop. One has standards.
*Anyone else remember Coop numbers?
I still remember my grannie’s divvy number at the Hartlepool Co-op: 21588. Every purchase was written into a massive ledger, with a carbon copy ‘ticket’ I had to take home, and totted up at year end.
I’m a fan of the Co-op, they’re the only ‘minimart’ in my village, the quality is good, and the prices are reasonable (often matched to Lidl), and the staff are lovely (including a Brasileira I can practise my Portuguese on).
Only the best is good enough for The Workers.
Lidl and Tesco for convenience as both in Blandford with easy parking, but we make a special effort to get to Sainsbury’s in Weymouth as they do the best fish so we stock up the freeze and they’re the only supermarket around that sells the small cans of Moretti. I find nowadays the large cans a bit too much, especially of if I fancy a beer with a meal, oh the joys of growing old. (Moretti is OK, I just go for the can size).
Agree on Coop and quality, on the odd occasion we’ve been stuck and had to buy something for dinner it’s been tasteless.
Some Morrisons stores do a very good salad counter, we use the one in Hunslet, Leeds, when we’re up there in the motorhome and it’s very good but the rest of it is uninspiring.
“on the odd occasion we’ve been stuck and had to buy something for dinner it’s been tasteless.”
Probably not nearly enough salt. It’s like hospitals, you can’t take salt out so it’s salted for the one who can tolerate it least.
This is priceless but more to follow later on –
‘This was a hollow budget, a budget that really delivered austerity; a budget in which the City won because nothing was done to harm it, and she should have done things to tackle wealth and the abuses that go on there, and as a consequence, people lost‘
Those Goddamn Jewish bankers – at it again….
I don’t know anyone in the City who thought this was a budget for it. I think there was relief it was not as terrible as I thought it might be but it’s akin to saying I had a bowel movement that wasn’t diarrhoea – it’s still shit at the end of the day.
‘People want decisions that are based upon the fact that the wealthy should pay more. They know that that is where the capacity to pay tax exists in the UK, and they know they don’t have it.’
So she did one thing correct and treated the ‘Taxing Wealth’ Report as it should have been treated – totally worthless.
TTFN…
At least he’s outright admitting he doesn’t want fair tax, he wants MOAR tax.
The capacity to pay tax out of income is limited to the total of that income … so Murphy wants to tax wealth, thereby reducing the net income of the wealthy to less than zero.
So: I was forced to leave the North-East when I graduated because there weren’t any jobs for guys with my qualifications in the North-East under Harold Wilson (*far* worse than Starmer vP!) and I now own (jointly with my wife) a house in the South-East (and I have a DC Pension Fund because I saved up out of my income to provide for our old age) which means that I am described as wealthy – but as soon as I draw any more [drew some already to pay for house repairs] money from the pension fund I have to pay tax on it so the available wealth to pay tax is less than a quarter of the nominal amount. Other owner-occupiers with only an employer-funded pension will have less stated wealth (although their pension is worth more than mine) so less tax to pay but no way at all to pay Murphy’s wealth tax.
“… in which the City won because nothing was done to harm it …”
I quoted the figures for contribution to GDP from financial services last time. Not making ourselves poorer is bad now. Mental.
I’ve come to think of his bilge as what spiritualists used to claim was “automatic writing”. He’s a conduit. There’s a babble of voices vying to get control of the pen. Today it’s the one that hates the City. Tomorrow it could be the boat hater or the ISA thief.
‘She did nothing to add value to our economy.’
Well I can’t argue with that but this is a Labour government – the incompetence is baked in!!!
‘She did not announce any new investment that will make a significant change on this country.’
Because £1.4 trillion per annum is insufficient…
‘She did impose austerity by stealth, but she denies it.’
As per above – what f£&king austerity – it’s one of the biggest lies there is. And again nothing about immigration
‘We do know there will actually be cuts in government spending in some areas, like education and justice, and in local authorities with massive impacts for some groups in society. For example, everybody around special educational needs now knows that it will be in even deeper crisis in the years to come than it is already.’
Yes – a relative of mine was on about this – apparently despite China and South Korea having special education needs populations near zero the U.K. has the largest population in the known world.
And every case is 100% genuine needing free transport and subsidy for 13 years…
‘And this is the real sting in the tail: she raised taxes to pay for her own failure. And people are really angry about that. People are counting this all up and saying, “If I’m paying more, what am I getting?” And the answer is, nothing. And you can’t blame them for actually saying, “In that case, why are we going to put up with more of this?” Because why would you? Why would you pay so much for an empty vision? And it’s a reasonable question that people are asking.’
I have been asking that for years – I receive zero services for yielding nearly 50% of my income to the state – absolutely nothing. Refuse collection is now three weekly. The police treat me as a potential criminal and will not attend any crime I report. The local doctors surgery is committed to getting through all the asylum seekers in the two hotels in towns before me. So in fairness there’s some validity to that last point
‘They know that the government needs to do more, and they want it to do more, and they know that Britain is stuck in decline.’
So the state is failing and the idea is we need it to do even more? The Blackadder goes forth tactic of trying the same tactic 47 times
‘
But as a consequence, they also know something else, which is that Britain has no economic plan and Rachel Reeves clearly hasn’t got one, and they can even rumble why.’
And of course there is a retired accountant in Ely short on cash who just happens to be in possession of one – at a very reasonable rate.
‘They realise that she has no plan because she’s living in fear of finance. And why is she doing that? Well, she’s accepting the antisocial neoliberal claim that taxes fund spending and that borrowing must be undertaken to balance the budget. She’s doing that even though she must know better. I give her credit for the fact that she must know better and that she’s doing it nonetheless. ‘
Taxes do contribute to funding spending- it’s not a 1 for 1 ratio of course but as your prior post on MMT proves you don’t really have any economic understanding. Scores of left wing commentators have rubbished its claims – so rather than reconsider you are doubling down.
‘She’s deliberately cutting jobs, she’s cutting incomes, and she’s cutting economic capacity because, although she knows the truth, she’s succumbing to the lie.’
Rather than sticking with the Big Lie a la Goebbels?
‘She’s promoting the household analogy that says that the government must be run like her mother ran her household budget, even though if she has any sense at all and has acquired any knowledge as a consequence of her past career in banking, which she likes to talk about, then she must know that this is wrong.’
The household budget analogy is used because most ordinary people (and indeed many academics) have a dismal grasp of basic mathematics let alone economics.
‘She must also know, as a result, that she does not need to borrow. She must know that the full funding rule that says, “We must borrow if there is a deficit,” is just something made up in 1998. It’s not real. ‘
You’re in part correct – we can of course simply print more money but the inflationary impacts of such a policy (as seen in the wake of the COVID response) can take years to wind their way through.
‘There is no such rule. It is no more a rule than her fiscal rule is a rule. It’s just made up. She must know that government can always fund itself. She must know it has. After all, how else does she think that the government funded itself after the 2008 financial crisis and during the COVID crisis? So she must know that her choice of austerity is ideological and not required.’
And yet in the same paragraph you fail to see the causal link. As so many legends here point out every single day – increasing the money supply without increasing the goods and services produced will be inflationary. Fascinatingly Reeves is arguably doing what the MMT people want by raising taxes to choke out inflation but they don’t want that part of the theory- which is why the theory itself is such crap.
We do know there will actually be cuts in government spending in some areas, like education
Hmm, I wonder why a Labour government would cut the education budget when they’re in hock to the teaching unions:
Ooh look, the government is profiting large falls in the number of pupils is falling significantly:
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/national-pupil-projections/2025
They’re monopolists because they’re oligopolists?
Motherfucker thinks he is Humpty Dumpty.