What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Truss is going to borrow the money Av. A whopping 150 billion for the energy cost handouts rising to 200 billion if you add in the cost of her tax reduction promises.

Of course the energy subsidy, not being targeted, will be of proportionately more value to those on higher incomes than those at the bottom end of the scale whose energy consumption tends to be less. The ostensible reason for this is the difficulty of targeting help as opposed to just making it a general payment. And the irony of the whole thing is that the money will actually be given to the energy companies whose windfalls have already put them quids in, through no actual work on their part. The European policy of saying that the energy companies should not profit as a result of war and levying a windfall tax on them seems more logical to me, but there you have it. I don't suppose that it has anything to do with the fact that they (the energy companies) tend to be big Tory Party donors though.

On the William accession thing, I think it's more than that Av. I genuinely think that the Queen and other members of the Royal family was/are aware that to start tampering with the line of accession would be to hasten the end of the whole institution. Charles might serve a five or so year stretch and then step aside for his son. This I think would be acceptable in the eyes of the public - but it would have to be done very formally and not as though it were on the whim of public taste. The line of accession and the rigidity it follows forms a large part of the certainty that the monarchy bestows upon our system: they would not tamper with it lightly.

Sticking with the royals for a moment, I went down for the service yesterday and was amazed at the turnout. In my local cathedral there was standing room only and people were subdued and very respectful. They followed the service in Westminster Cathedral to the letter, singing the hymns, standing and sitting with the attendees there, and saying the prayers etc. This scene will have been repeated the length and breadth of the country.

I took on board the Archbishop of Canterbury's swipe at political leaders in general (and one assumes our recent ones in particular), comparing the Queen's dignified reign of service with the grasping and clinging to power of the politicians, but have a certain.... reservation about this. In fairness to the politicians, they have to be re-elected every four or five years where the Queen never had to suffer that indignity. Had she had to do this, I'm thinking we'd have seen a lot more clinging done on her part as well. (In fact, they've clung on just as tenaciously, if in a softer, less visible way, themselves when you come to think about it.)

--------------------0------------------

But enough about that, I'd like briefly to talk about the ex-radio presenter turned YouTube blogger Alex Belfield, who was last week jailed for carrying out a campaign against three of his former colleagues including the well known radio and tv presenter Jeremy Vine. Vine described Belfield as the "Jimmy Savile of trolling" and the judge in the case clearly agreed. Belfield was handed down a five and a half year prison sentence, despite never having actually been near any of his victims or indeed made any physical threats against them.

Now I should say that I know nothing about this character, nor what he did that so distressed the individuals who he so ruthlessly pursued. To be honest he seemed like a right twat to me on the few times my YouTube algorithm threw up one of his posts, so I quickly stopped bothering to watch them. A few of my work colleagues however, did find him amusing and this was probably where I first heard of him.

But what I want to address here is the wider issue of how the sentence was passed on this nasty character. He was convicted on four counts, two of simple stalking, and a further two of stalking. I'm not sure what the distinction is between them, but do bear in mind that these offences were all committed online. At no point did Belfield approach his victims.

Now when the particular laws were passed under which Belfield was convicted, a case had to be proven that the complainant had suffered actual harm by virtue of the accused's actions. Some years after the law was originally introduced (2012 I believe) it was ammended to reduce the level of proof required to that of perceived harm. In other words, the accuser only had to say that they believed themselves to have been harmed, and if the judge agreed, then the case was considered proven. It introduced a subjective element of 'feeling' into the proceedings that could and can never be measured in any objective way.

In other words, if I say that I feel you to have done me harm and the judge agrees that this feeling is of itself a cause of harm, then the case is proven. And on the back of this type of judgement it appears that Belfield has been sent to prison without the right of appeal for five and a half years. The book, as they say, was well and truly thrown at him.

Now that's harsh by any standards. I don't think that anyone, Vine, his other accusers or indeed the prosecuting council can have seen that coming. Belfield himself clearly did not - he was apparently posting on YouTube the very morning of his trial, saying what his plans for the afternoon were - and it must have come like a bolt out of the blue.

Undoubtedly the man deserved to get punished if what he did was as severe as was claimed - but five and a half years with a minimum of two and a quarter to be served inside?

But the problem for me - and this is why I'm posting, because I've had some experience with this - is that there is another lesser thought about aspect to this that I find troubling. You see, Belfield took the unwise decision to defend himself. Not only that, he also did not enter a defence at all, clearly believing himself to be on such solid ground that it was unnecessary. In this last, he is now no-doubt disabused, and perhaps at last beginning to understand that because you are posting online, does not mean that the normal rules of slander and abuse etc do not apply.

But on the point of his defending himself, there is this to consider. He was entering a gladiatorial field where the professional practitioners jealousy hold on to their hegemony of the arena. The Law is not an area where the uninitiated are expected to dabble - and woe betide them if they have the temerity to do so. Just imagine what would happen if people in their thousands decided that employment of a barrister costing tens of thousands of pounds was not for them? Ir would be a virus that would spread like wildfire and pretty soon there would be no arena left for the professionals to practice in. Now the legal practitioners are well aware of this - but more to the point, so is the judge. A product of - indeed a member of - exactly the same club, he or she is going to look askance at the practice of self-representation in the Court just as much as the lawyers themselves - and is going to do everything in his or her power to discourage the practice. And what better opportunity to do so than on a stupid and unpopular YouTube troll who no-one from the establishment and only fools from the general public likes.

Oh certainly, of the judge's being able to justify the extremity of the sentence he handed down, there is no doubt; he will cross reference on this other case and modify on the basis of that other one, there will be extenuating circumstances here and precedents of case law there. But under it all will be the message. We are the legal profession; we are the Law. Do not fuck with us!

The reason I am pretty sure that this has played a part, that justice has been subverted in the interest of professional expediency: because I too once went into the gladiatorial arena like a lamb to the slaughter. On the advice of a solicitor, who said I didn't need a brief, I represented a business I was employed by, and was destroyed - eviscerated - by the opposing legal professional and the judge, who barely bothered to hide their contempt for me. And when I went back to the solicitor who had advised me, and holding a penalty of twenty times greater than he had predicted at worst if we lost the case, he was ashen faced. He had never seen the like, he said. He didn't know how it could have happened.

And I imagine that on that day, I probably felt pretty much like Belfield feels today. The difference is that I got over it in weeks (after some pretty vigorous raising of money and selling of stuff) - he will have the next five years to think on it.

[peter]

Okay - let's get this show on the road.

There is so much to talk about following the effective hot-dog stuffing fest of the royal coverage of recent days, that I barely know where to begin.

Let's start with the Liz Truss comments that she is "prepared to be an unpopular Prime Minister" made I believe, in interview from the top of the Empire State Building in New York. Not much need for preparation dear - you are already an unpopular Prime Minister with only twelve percent of the public believing you will do a good job and your party already plotting your downfall. And when your first policy was to remove the cap on bankers bonuses (put in place in order to try to prevent another economic meltdown ala 2008), helping the already richest members of our society and precisely no-one else (despite the fool Kwarteng claiming it will "grow the economy") is it any wonder.

The tax cutting agenda that Truss intends to unleash - stamp duty, national insurance, corporation tax, income tax.... you name it, it's coming down - is all going to mean that the monies flowing into the exchequer are going to be reduced to zilch - at a time that we are going to be servicing the biggest national debt since the term was invented. How is that going to work? There is only one way - cuts to expenditure. This means services like the NHS, social care, defence, education, the civil service and local services, all cut to the bone as we race helter skelter toward a third world level of existence and status within the world.

And quietly across the country, unreported and unremarked upon, the Muslim and Hindu communities seem to be preparing to go head to head. I've no idea what about (some speculation that social media has been fuelling allegations of abductions or something), but it has the potential to be really nasty. Trouble has been rumbling on nightly in Leicester for weeks apparently (not that you've heard anything about it on the news) and it is now spreading to Birmingham by all accounts. No doubt now that the period of mourning is over some coverage of other matters such as this will resume.

The Daily Mail tells us today that "Freedom Begins With Tax Cuts." Yeah? Don't know about that, but I'm pretty sure it ends with the new Police, Crime and Sentencing, and Public Order Act's that your lot have bullied through the House in recent times. Don't go out and protest is my advice - you're likely to finish up with a tag on your ankle, a boot on your neck or worse. If your PM is prepared to be unpopular she's also prepared to be feared.

The BMA (effectively the doctors union) is pressing for consultants within the NHS to be paid 250 pounds per hour for overtime. Let's just see..... that means they would be able to make as much extra money in around 60 hours overtime as a person on minimum wage earns for forty hours work a week for a year. Glad to see that nothing has changed since Bevan decided to get the consultants on board for the NHS by "stuffing their mouths with gold."

Truss is dead keen to present herself as the new Margret Thatcher while Joe Biden pours scorn on the idea of 'trickle down economics' that her tax policies seem to be espousing. It's the first little sign of a distancing between their respective outlooks - a distance that I think is going to become much more apparent as the days go on. We'll see.

Fracking is to be brought back onto the table in the Truss program for our becoming more energy independent. I don't know much about it to be honest, but it's going to cause a bit of an outcry no doubt - as will her intention to pull back from many of our net zero commitments, which she seems to see as excessive. I've got a feeling that our Liz is a bit of a climate change denier at heart - time will tell on this, but expect her policies to receive a frosty reception from the tree-huggers and road-gluers in the coming months. Mind you, even the FT seems to be a bit climate sceptical, with a front page referral to an inside article with the words "No Magic Number - why climate change thresholds are counterproductive."

The lugubrious looking King Charles is set to slim down the monarchy and has the full support of the public in doing so says the Express. In a rare occasion of agreement with the Express, I'm on board with that. At a time when I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to heat my bedroom or my bathroom in the morning during the winter, I'm not sure that I want to be heating the Ninth earl of Nitwit's golf caddy at the same time.

And finally we have daytime TV stars Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield in schtuck over their queue jumping antics during the Queen's lying in state (when members of the public were facing waits of up to fourteen hours to do what the couple did in a couple of minutes). The TV couple's boss ITV, has been forced to issue a statement following the public outcry in which they are slated roundly for their actions - and according to this it is all okay, we needn't worry at all, because you see, this was a work event. Ah, okay......??.....but haven't I heard that before, somewhere......

[peter]

James O'Brien was on about the trickle down economics that Truss seems to want a return to earlier and he made the point about the inherent immorality of the idea. This being that you can improve the lot of the poorest people in the country by making the wealthiest wealthier. Not only is it arrant nonsense, but it is being sold to the public as the means by which the country will be rescued from the dire economic straits we now find ourselves in.

Not only has the policy been tried before and been seen not to work, but an economic treatise the size of the Bible has been written by one of the most respected economists in the world explaining why it can never work (as if it were needed by anyone with eyes to see), but the people have been so gaslit on the subject that still millions will buy into it who will never in a month of cold Sundays see any of the benefits of it.

It's not difficult to get. Give a poor man a quid and he spends it. Give a rich man a quid and he saves it. How hard can it be? That money never trickles down; it goes straight into banks, building societies and offshore accounts. The tiny proportion that is spent by the lower tax bracket earners is as nothing to the loss of revenue to the exchequer, and the people at the bottom who pay no tax anyway get no benefit whatsoever.

Now take Truss's plans for stamp duty. Those with property already benefit by the increase in value of their property brought about by increased demand for houses by the swelling of the market. Those with property portfolios benefit hugely. And those who are struggling to get a foothold onto the property market are squeezed even further away from their goal.

And lastly look at the banker's bonus issue. The idea is supposedly that it will attract more bankers to this country and make the City once again the financial hub of the world and the mainstay of our economy. But bankers are not stupid. They have simply been circumventing the bonus cap by paying the shortfall in higher wages anyway, so the whole thing is a white elephant. It's just a signaling device with no real effect, and will do zilch to actually produce any real growth in the economy.

I mean who the fuck is going to invest in our economy at the moment? You'd have to be nuts! We're doing worse than any other country but Russia in the G7, we're on the verge of a recession, there is no certainty for business beyond the six month support package that Truss has today announced with inflation sitting at its worst for four decades. And to boot, we're about to enter the worst period of industrial unrest since the winter of discontent when I was a teenager (and I'm mid sixties).

Growth? What planet are these people living on? Trickle down? As O'Brien said, filling the fat-man's corn sack even fuller in the hope that the odd few grains will fall down into the begging-bowls of the poor blighters under the floor-boards of the silo.

Still - at least we're beginning to get a handle on the direction of travel of our new Government.

[peter]

2 frikkin' weeks!

2 frikkin' weeks!

New Secretary of State for Health Therese Coffey has really cut through to the nub of her brief by giving a pledge that people in need of a doctor's appointment will be guaranteed one within 2 weeks.

If I ever needed an appointment - and I never go to the doctor's unless absolutely up against the wall in need of seeing one (I work on the old adage, "If long life you would have, stay away from the physic") - I'd be dead by then, but it's a pretty good trick on Coffey's part to guarantee a time stipulation that is worse than the already pertaining situation - gives her plenty of space for manoeuvre as it were. But actually, thinking about it, she might actually be telling the truth; What she might be doing is guaranteeing that the situation will be worse after she has had her completely incompetent hands in it, than it is now. That I can believe. But still, our cigar smoking, beer swilling Health Secretary probably knows her own talents (or lack of them) better than most. But being the PM's long standing mate has to have some perks now doesn't it?

--------------------0------------------

It should be a worry to all that Vlad the dictator is sufficiently rattled to start flinging around nuclear threats in respect of the situation he has got himself mired into in the Ukraine. Because I have little doubt that he is both mentally unstable enough, and desperate enough, to carry them out if push comes to shove. Because let's face it, this situation has developed into an existential one for him. If he doesn't come out of it as a winner - or at the bare minimum, in a situation that he can spin to his people as a winning one - then he is dead. He doesn't get to walk away into retirement like Gorbachev, to dissapear into the jungle like Pol Pot. He goes down on his knees with a gun against the back of his head, and you don't walk away from that in a hurry. This is the cost of failure for him and he knows it. Such a future is going to sharpen the mind and make one prepared to take all manner of risks that would otherwise be unthinkable. Because if you are going to survive or go down, then if the latter, you might as well take a few down with you. Shit or bust.

And let's face it. If he starts using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine - or even a big mother, come to that - what is the world going to do? Is Joe Biden going to initiate full nuclear war in retaliation - war that by his own admission has only one end - in support of Ukrainian independence? I think not. The US is the only country in the world that has ever used a nuclear weapon in a war situation and it was not even used tactically. It was used to simply obliterate the will to continue, of the population it was unleashed upon. It would be crazy not to think that Putin would not in the final instance, be prepared to make this calculation, as to whether he could achieve the same, and rely that the West would not destroy itself in retaliation?

No, we have reached the point now where Ukraine's - and indeed our - best hope, is that forces gathering inside Russia and indeed within the Kremlin itself, will unseat this desperate and unstable man. Unseat him before he decides that the final throw of his wartime gamble must be made. Does anybody doubt that he would be prepared to make that throw? When he said yesterday that he was not bluffing it had a ring of truth about it. I believe him.

-----------------0------------------

So much for taking back control. Such is our weakened state and the depressed valuation of our assets that French buyers were able to snap up three bargain knock-downs in one single day. Our oldest tech company Aveva, a large slice of our biggest telecommunications giant Vodafone and the waste-treatment business formerly owned by Suez, all fell to French ownership in a day of bargain-business hunting by corporate raiders out for a quick deal.

According to the FT this was made possible by our high inflation, low investment confidence and weak currency, all making it an opportune time for moving in to snap up the steals.

I'm doubtful that this will make much of a splash on tonight's main news, but make no mistake, despite what our politicians will tell us (and remember, Therese Coffey has already put out a memorandum to the effect that she only wants to hear good news, to hear positive things in her communications) this is where the real indicators of where we are as a country are to be seen.

As it says in the Bible, where the carcass is, there will the lions gather. In this instance I'm afraid we are not amongst the lions - alas we are the carcass.

[peter]

The other day from the top of the Empire State Building Liz Truss told us that she was prepared to be unpopular if that was what was called for in order to make the difficult decisions that would save the economy.

Today on the front of the FT Kwasi Kwarteng is going to be bold and unashamedly pursuing growth - even if it means taking difficult decisions.

The thing is that the only difficult thing about these decisions is that they involve shelling out wheelbarrows full of cash to individuals and companies who are already awash with wealth at the expense of everyone else. And given that many of the recipients of this Christmas come early bonus are donors to the Conservative Party it's not really difficult even in that way - it's just plain fucking embarrassing. Because it has to be sold to the public as in some way in their benefit and that's actually getting pretty difficult to do.

Jacob Rees-Mogg will for example be pretty happy with the policies. He's scheduled to make a 'windfall' mint over the sale of something or other by his co-owned company Somerset Capital Management. No idea what it is, but the takings are sufficiently big for it to be noted in passing on the front page of the pink periodical so you can bet it is pretty fucking huge.

Even the Bank of England is dubious about what Truss and Kwarteng are up to. The idea that borrowing hundreds of billions at the present moment to shell out to the elements of society that that are already minted is a difficult one to sell. It's going to put increased inflationary pressures on an economy already in recession and suffering from the worst inflationary spiral since the seventies. The only tool at the BofE's disposal to combat this is are interest rate rises, and it is warning the Government that it will not be backwards in coming forward to use them. Bad news for anyone with any kind of debt around their necks (and that's a large proportion of the country).

But it's okay, say's Kwarteng, you are having your own little handouts (oops - forgot we aren't supposed to use that word) in the form of your energy price subsidies - got to be even handed when it comes to dishing out the spoils. And today Kwarteng will nail his thirty-point thesis to the doors of Westminster (not twenty nine or thirty one - plain thirty) in order to boost growth and beat the stagflation that is killing our economy. He's going to "turn the vicious cycle of stagnation into a virtuous circle of growth." I bet he was pleased when he penned out that little ditty, but it's bullshit and he knows it. This country is shot - sucked out and drained dry by the policies of his forerunners for the last twelve years (no - make that fifty) - and all that remains is for him and his mates at the top to bundle what small change is left into their pockets before abandoning the sinking ship for the richer emerging fields elsewhere in the world - or for those brave enough to remain to secure themselves at the top of a pyramid and spend their time farming penny's from the sixty or so million people living in penury below them. Like any other good third world oligarchy the world over.

The one thing that this is most definitely not designed to do is to make the lot of the broad population of this country better. This is the greasy pole writ large and the order of the day is get rich, get successful by any means that you can - and if you can't, then fuck you!

-----------------------0------------------

There is a bit of a revolt brewing within the Tory backbenchers about the Government's intentions to lift the ban on fracking in the near future (if they have not already started - I believe some of the restrictions were actually lifted yesterday). This is hardly surprising given that many of the backbench Tory MPs represent the rural communities most likely to be affected by the lifting of the bans and subsequent development of the industry, but perhaps they need not actually be too concerned.

Certainly, fracking is a pretty dodgy idea. You blast shit-loads of water under massive pressure into the bedrock of the sub-surface geological layers, and thereby release pockets of gas and oil trapped therein which you then harvest for use in both domestic and chemical settings. The chief arguments that are raised against the development of this method of oil and gas production are apparently seismic in nature. The increased likelihood of inducing seismic events - earthquakes to you and me - as a result of blasting huge empty spaces into otherwise stable rock formations seems, well, pretty obvious really, but a quick look at Wikipedia shows that this is but one of the associated problems of the process. There are huge problems associated with the effluent water, high in pollutants and brine, that can cause major problems back on the surface in surrounding areas. There might be large amounts of methane released into the atmosphere as a byproduct of the process and a higher incidence of illness such as respiratory disease, migraine attacks and even birth defects have been noted.

But these things notwithstanding, the situation may actually turn out to be self-resolving. It was reported in one of the newspapers yesterday - the Guardian - that the top guy in the geological survey group dealing with the subject, had said that the process would never be viable for use in this country anyway. The shale beds here are, he said, of a completely different nature to those in the US from where the large deposits of gas and oils have been extracted. Where the American shale beds are extensive and uniform, allowing for high level production of the desired hydrocarbons, ours are fragmented and unevenly distributed. This would render the output from any site limited at best, as the shale pockets were simply not of a size to yeild good returns. In his opinion, no commercial enterprise worth its salt would invest in such a venture once the preliminary studies had come in.

Now had this story been in any other paper (except the Mirror) I'd have been dubious. I'd have thought, "this is a tactic to get the operations up and running with minimal fuss from the anti's, by which time, when they realise that they have been duped, it will be too late. But in the Guardian it can be seen in a different light. Perhaps it actually does represent a more serious flaw in the reasoning of those who would establish a fracking industry in this country: political rather than professional individuals, who perhaps look to the American model and how it has reduced the cost of their domestic energy supply, and say, "We'll have some of that!" So perhaps it really will turn out to be unviable as a means of upping our self-sufficiency in respect of our energy needs. But either ways it certainly looks like a pretty dodgy practice and I'm not sure I'd want it done on my doorstep. And if for no other reason, I'd have to be against it simply on the basis that it is supported by Jacob Rees-Mogg. That alone should tell you that there will be no consideration given to principle or morality when the decisions are made as to whether to proceed or otherwise. If Rees-Mogg is involved, the health and wellbeing of the people who live in the areas where it will be carried out will not be worth a spit. Mamon is a jealous master and has no better servant in the entire cabinet than the honourable Mr Mogg.

[peter]

Continued from my above post, and after some thinking, it doesn't seem to me to be a good thing, to have your treasury and your central bank working at odds with eachother, especially at this time with the economy in its currently parlous state.

The FT has noted this opposite pull this morning, saying that the Bank of England seems to be trying to shrink the economy in order to control inflation (presumably increasing interest rates slows down business borrowing and investment, and also consumer purchasing, thereby resulting in a shrinking of the economy and lower prices due to lower demand), while the Government wants to boost growth in order to give the failing economy a leg-up.

Kwarteng has apparently told the BoE to get a grip on inflation, but seemingly at the same time will pursue policies that will work against this most desired outcome. It's a difficult square to circle and I can't pretend I understand it. This notwithstanding, I'm prepared to bet that it will end in tears.

It seems to me that at a time such as this, it behoves all of the parties who have a capability of influencing how the situation pans out, to get round the table and work together. In an equally balanced tug of war between two opposing teams with neither giving an inch, you know what happens - nothing. And nothing is the same as everything in these circumstances, or perhaps better to say everything that is not good, because in the end both teams collapse in a heap.

[peter]

It's difficult to know quite what to say today. As one watched Liz Truss sitting in the House yesterday as her Chancellor delivered his seismic 'mini-budget', she gave all the impression of a cat who has got the cream. Certainly no-one was ever going to call her insignificant again - she'd even got her own name-punned economics term - trussonomics - based on her. She was here to stay and here with a bang.

But before we get into the meat of it, let's just get a few quotes from the pundits in this morning's press. Here's what former US treasury secretary Larry Summers had to say on Bloomberg TV.

The UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market. .... Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time.

Then we have Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies,

Today the Chancellor announced the biggest package of tax cuts in fifty years (forty five billion pounds worth, if you're interested) without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up. Instead the plan seems to be to borrow increasingly large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put Government debt on an unsustainable path, and hope that we get better growth. Mr Kwarteng is not just gambling on a new strategy, he is betting the house.

And finally Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor,

Casino Economics.

They have certainly put the cat among the pigeons with an unashamedly biased budget in favour of the wealthiest, of giveaway money paid for by humongous levels of borrowing. Shit or bust is not the word for it.

I'm not going to go into the details of it here, it would take me too long, but suffice to say that if you earn a million pounds a year then today you have had a wage rise of fifty five thousand pounds a year. If you are on minimum wage, about fifty pence (half a dollar) a week. Some Labour politicians have said that the Tories have waged a "class war" on the poor. Certainly the message is that if you are poor - fuck you! Kwarteng actually said in the House that he was fed up with all of this redistribution stuff and that it was time to get back to some good old wealth generation. The last budget that saw this level of tax giveaway was in 1972 by Tory chancellor Anthony Barber - and it was a disaster. Indeed yesterday, following the announcement, the markets reacted with extreme nervousness and the pound fell to its lowest level for thirty years.

But this is more than just a great big fuck-off giveaway to the rich. That, at least we could expect from the Tories. But this is an absolute volta-face on twelve years of Tory economic policy - that of supposed prudence and balancing the books (unless you count brexit) - as followed by every Chancellor since Phillip Hammond (and I'd love to hear what he'd have to say on it) onwards. It's like Truss is saying, "Okay - we've been in charge for twelve years, but we've got it all wrong. Everything we've done has been a screw-up. Now were going to turn on our heads and do exactly the opposite."

And the public are supposed to wear this?

Without a general election in which to get a mandate for doing this about face - and remember that this runs absolutely contrary to every manifesto economic pledge that the current Government were elected on - the public is supposed to swallow it? When people are down on their uppers and half the country can barely afford to put food on the table, they must swallow having the Chancellor throwing cash in bucket loads to the wealthiest people in the country, while at the same time telling them, the rest, that he's fed up with all of this redistribution of wealth stuff? At what point have we seen any redistribution of wealth from this fucking lot in the last twelve years? Tell me?

But anyway, in the banking offices and the hedge fund computer pools there'll be popping of champagne corks. We're back to Gordon Gekko's "Greed is good!" territory and they love it! Have this fucking lot, these Tory assholes learned nothing? Not content with fucking this country over repeatedly for the last three decades, they have to return like a dog to its vomit, to the place where they started the whole fucking mess off in the first place..... and do it again!

Do they really want a fucking revolution in this country? Are they that fucking stupid? How much, exactly, of this shit do they think that the people of this country are going to take? They have been battered with brexit, pummeled with Covid, hammered with the cost of living increases - and now they are expected to watch while the wealthiest one percent in the country go on a jolly that they (the people) will have to pay for when the shit inevitably hits the fan. They are giving their heads on a platter to Mick Lynch and the other trade union leaders who will be coordinating mass actions later in the year. Do they not get this?

Kwarteng, if you think that the people of this country are going to sit and watch you put two fingers up to them from the floor of the House, and there won't be a kick-back, then you ain't a grain as smart as everybody seems to think you are. And that's a fact!

[Forestal]

Kwarteng, if you think that the people of this country are going to sit and watch you put two fingers up to them from the floor of the House, and there won't be a kick-back, then you ain't a grain as smart as everybody seems to think you are. And that's a fact!

I agree with everything else, except this. The common person in this country is too busy working to put half the food on the table that they did last year to be out doing any sort of demonstration. Sure there will be general murmurs of discontent, even some loud shouts of it, but at the end of the day, the populace is either too busy or too meek to actually do anything about that. Kwarteng knows this, the Tories as a whole know this, in fact, they rely on this. Sadly, I believe they'll be proven correct.

[peter]

Alas, Forestal, I think you are probably right. When I'm writing this stuff, I can tend to run away with myself and think that everyone must feel the same as me about things. But having said that, I think that there is still an undercurrent of anger about the way that things are going down. The British have been, and to a degree remain, a people who like to see 'fair play'. They recognise the inherent unfairness of what is being done and could still suprise the Government in the vehemence of their reaction. Remember that this happened in the case of the attempted introduction of the poll tax. Against all odds the people just stood up and said enough is enough. I feel a stiring of a similar nature now. But whether it will be enough to morph into collective action.....yes, you are correct to have your doubts.

I saw a very interesting talk between Grace Blakeley and Owen Jones yesterday, in which Blakeley said that the key thing to realise here is that this is a leadership that has run itself into trouble and has absolutely no idea how to extricate itself from the mess it has placed itself in. It is casting around snatching at anything that might work the oracle, but not grasping the central truth that the situation is essentially unsolvable with the system that we currently operate under.

They have looked back (as I observed above) at the Thatcher years (when they did indeed achieve a period of growth and prosperity on the backdrop of a tax-cutting policy, and said, "I know - that's what we'll do! We'll go back and do that again and that will get us out of this!"

What they have forgotten, said Blakeley, and why this won't work this time around, is all the additional stuff that Thatcher was able to marshall behind her give away tax policies. The deregulation of the financial services industry, the selling of the family silver, the reining in of the trade unions to a much greater degree....... this stuff has already been done, it can't be done again. And on the back of this and against the backdrop of the particular circumstances of today, both worldwide and domestic, tax giveaways on their own simply aren't going to cut it. The markets know this, which is why you have seen the pound tumble and gilts go up. No-one wants to invest in a country that is going to struggle to meet its debt obligations, or lend to a Government that is likely to run into ever deeper trouble. Despite the chancellor not electing to release the OBR interim analysis, the markets have looked at the chancellor's policies and given them the thumbs down themselves. The OBR statement is now, to a degree, superfluous.

And more cynically thinking, it's entirely possible that large parts of the parliamentary Tory Party get this. They know that they are handing the next election to Stamer on a platter, and are comfortable with this. They have no fear of a bland interim of ineffective and lackluster government by Stamer: an interregnum where they get their ducks in a row, and wrest the control of the party away from the right and back toward the center ground that they have historically occupied. A four year election cycle of quasi Tory governance under Stamer's neutered Labour to let the public have a brief period of change (which they naturally seem to need every dozen years or so), and then back in for another three cycles of Conservative dominance of the British political scene.

Depressing, but in absence a real up-swelling of grassroots movement within the Labour movement for real radical change (and this is unlikely to be repeated in the manner we saw with the raising up of Corbyn - though not impossible), this is probably the most likely scenario we are facing for the next decade and a half.

------------------0----------------

In what I think is a slightly chilling story on the front of today's Sunday Telegraph, we learn that the new Home Secretary Suela Braverman, who is reportedly about as much further to the right from Priti Patel as Patel was from Jeremy Corbyn, is going to urgently overhaul the Prevent system, which she says has been too busy treating potential terrorists as victims.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the idea behind prevent to identify individuals at risk of being radicalised to the point where they could be manipulated into carrying out acts of harm against the nation, and to educate them away from such influence?

The whole idea seems fraught with risk in terms of its potential for interference with people not guilty of any crimes, in the pursuit of their lives in the manner of their choosing, but let that rest.

It is the shift of emphasis here that worries me. The turning of the idea of vulnerable people (in terms of how easily influenced they might be) into criminals in the eyes of the public. Because how criminals are treated, what can reasonably be done in terms of segregating them from the rest of society, is very difficult in the public's minds eye, than what can be done to a victim.

The key word here is 'potential'. The potential terrorist is not a terrorist, and might well never be one. There is not one of us who could fail to be classed as such, depending upon the criteria which was applied. But this does not mean it's okay to sweep us up and detain us, to re-educate us to a different way of thinking; that which Priti Patel or Suela Braverman might think is the correct one.

But of course, this is taking it too far, and I'm not suggesting that this is what is happening. But even if someone is at the risk of being radicalised into say, extremist Islamic thinking, they are not a criminal. And it is a very dangerous societal move if we start allowing them to be presented as such, to become comfortable with this kind of thinking. Bad enough in any old member of the general public. But to be the case in the Home Secretary of the country, and to be presented on the front page of a major Sunday newspaper for the relish of their particular readership who are themselves open to being influenced into thinking that this kind of thing is okay.......

Now that is worrying. That is very worrying indeed.

[peter]

Last week my wife went shopping and came back complaining about the rise in prices of the foodstuffs she was purchasing. A pack of butter, she told me, that last year had cost a pound in Aldi, was now two. Milk had gone up, not perhaps to quite the same extent, but significantly nevertheless. It was the same story whatever she had bought.

We all know about the rises in energy and petrol costs - despite the Truss subsidies to be given and the four hundred quid per household payment, the unit cost of electricity and gas is way higher than it was a year ago.

These two things alone, food and energy/petrol costs must take up a large proportion of the day to day living costs of most households: throw in their mortgage or rent payments and their council tax and you have most of the household outgoings in any given month pretty much tagged.

Now I suppose that if you add all of these things together, the increase in costs over a year ago, might (in percentage terms) be around ten percent...... but it sure feels like more. I struggle to see where they get this ten percent figure from to be honest. To me it would seem to be significantly higher and I can't help wondering if the way that inflation figures are calculated are not such as to disguise the true extent of the hit to household incomes.

Probably me being cynical, but just from going to work and seeing how much our prices are being pushed up, almost on a daily basis, it seems to me that the ten percent figure is a gross underestimation. Also, I can't help wondering how much gross profiteering is going on. Interesting to watch out for the Sainsbury's and Tesco's profit figures for the next quater.

------------------0---------------

Seems that a fair few Tory backbench MPs are less than happy with Kwasi Kwarteng's tax giving budget. In the face of the problems being experienced by myriad households up and down the country, to be seen to be feathering the nests of the highest income recipients in the country is not a good optic, and they know it.

Many of the hardest hit households in the country are in the so called 'red wall' seats of the North, and it was from among these that the bulk of Boris Johnson's eighty seat majority were borrowed. These are brexit leaning constituencies, but not naturally Tory supporting ones in anything like normal circumstances. New Tory MPs from these constituencies know that their seats aren't worth a plugged nickel in the face of policies such as Kwarteng is pursuing, but far from being concerned about this, the chancellor is doubling down on his position in this morning's papers, saying that he has more of the same to come in the months ahead. One Tory MP (nameless) said that the UK risked being treated like a "banana republic" as a result of our unsustainable borrowing.

And it has to be remembered, all of this turning us into the biggest economic laboratory experiment in the world, this huge volta-face of every policy and principle that the party has been elected on for the past three elections, is being done without the mandate of the people. We could be driven into the dirt by this without so much as having been asked for a buy your leave from the Government. This is not how politics is supposed to be done. Not politics on this scale.

And this is what you have to bear in mind. This is politics - all politics and nothing else. Kwarteng's budget was not an economics based budget - it was a politics based one. Designed to appeal to a particular demographic, a particular slice of the voting public - to curry favour with that part of the electorate in the hope that with a little bit of growth generated in the economy it might just be enough to push them over the line in the next election, if they can time the thing just right (ie, before the shit hits the fan).

And the crazy thing is that there will be a small but not insignificant number of working class people who will buy it. There always is. It is one of the perennial puzzles of our society as to why this hard core of Tory support within that section of the populace that they never - never - do anything to help, persist in voting for them. James O'Brien thinks it's because they always have it in the back of their minds that, choose how badly they are doing today (and always will be tomorrow in actuality), they just think that one day they might be up there - it might be them that is benefitting from having the top rate of tax abolished, from being able to avoid paying tax on their unearned income or stash their wealth away from prying eyes in overseas tax-havens.

Well, maybe. But this time, I think that those Tory MPs from up north are worrying with good reason. Their constituents never voted for them - they voted for Boris Johnson. They voted to 'get brexit done'. Well, that turned out to be a white elephant, but they sure as hell aren't going to vote for the Truss/Kwarteng Laurel and Hardy double-act so those MPs are going straight back to the drawing board and seeing their hard worked for and long awaited political breaks spaffed up against the wall by a PM and chancellor who clearly don't give a flying fuck about them in the next election. And this ain't going to make for a particularly compliant House of backbenchers on the Tory side in the weeks ahead. Truss and Kwarteng might find that they are riding a bull that won't play ball in the weeks and months ahead when they have to go to their MPs and ask them to actually vote in support of some of this stuff.

But anyway, it's conference season coming up, so expect lots of jingoistic tub-thumping from all sides in the next few weeks - except for the Liberal Democrats that is. We won't actually be told about anything they have to say because the media won't be interested and neither will anybody else. Who'd be Ed Davie.....Ed Davey?...... You might as well be Eddie the fucking Eagle! Shame really, because sometimes they actually have something decent to say.

----------------0----------------

Bit of a cabinet split developing over immigration already. Truss and Kwarteng want to ease visa restrictions and allow some slack into the system in order to meet their growth agenda. This is hitting a sour note with the arch-brexiteers in the cabinet (Suela Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Jacob Rees-Mogg) and they are letting it be known. Braverman says that you can get growth without a general opening up of the borders to an influx of workers, by targeting the visa relaxations to those specifically suited to the rolls you want them to fill. This allows them to meet their brexit promise to reduce immigration and simultaneously provides workers with the skill sets to bring about the much needed growth.

I don't know what Badenoch's long term goals are? Perhaps she scents blood on the road ahead as the vapid appearing Truss inevitably gets into the clag with her backbenchers? Perhaps she is laying down the early work for a pitch at the top job? Who knows, but either ways, it isn't going to make Truss's ride any the easier having a fracture in her cabinet almost from day one.

[Forestal]

I'll chime in here with a tangentially related note on the economy. My fianceé was talking with her father the other day on the phone, thus I by proxy was also, because speaker phones are a thing. We proposed the idea that this budget seemed similar to that in 1972 as said in one of your previous posts, Peter. He said that actually it looked a lot more like that of c.1980, he also was not in any way approving of it and thought it was a very bad idea.

This is the point where I reveal that my fianceé's father is not just some guy with an opinion; he recieved a first in economics from Oxford in the 1950's, at a time when Oxford basically didn't give out firsts. He served as an economics advisor in No.10 during the 1970's and is a former (retired) Professor of economics and international banking. Side note that Boris Johnson knew him by name when they passed in the street a few years ago and he went to school with Tony Blair's brother, but that's unrelated.

So when he says that this financial course is a bad one, I tend to believe him.

[Avatar]

Well, I see the market's lack of confidence in the mini-budget has been both unequivocal and remarked on here.

A pack of butter, she told me, that last year had cost a pound in Aldi, was now two.

Also, I pay the equivalent of around 4 quid for 500g salted butter.

--A

[peter]

Another day of market chaos in the UK as Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey promised to do everything in his power to get inflation back on his two percent track and to support the tanking pound - and then promptly did nothing.

His statement (a rare event in itself) was timed to coincide with a treasury one from the chancellor in which he brought forward his promise to carry out an assessment of where the new Government fiscal policy was headed and also to put forward a plan to get borrowing back under control for the medium term.

Both statements failed to calm the markets and the day saw the pound fall to its lowest ever value against the dollar befor rising ever so slightly before the days end.

Now let me just repeat that.

The pound fell to its lowest level ever against the dollar. Not the lowest since the financial crash, or since the great depression, or in the last hundred years. Ever.

Such was the turmoil that a number of key mortgage lenders have withdrawn their services and will no longer be offering mortgages to new customers until the markets stabilise. This has something to do with so called 'swap loans' - an instrument they use to protect themselves against swings in the gilt market which can apparently cause them major problems in terms of the loans they are making. I'm not going to pretend to understand how this works, but suffice to say that for companies as big as the Halifax and Virgin Money not to be offering mortgages is big stuff. If any indicator that things are going badly adrift was needed this is it. The commentary on the Government's fiscal irresponsibility is scathing from pundits the world over - and we are not talking small people; this is from some of the leading financial/economics advisors of the biggest organisations going. There is even the suggestion that what is going on here could hasten the world's slide into recession.

All of which is serving to make the backbench Tory MPs very nervous: very nervous indeed! Word is that they fear not only for the next election, but also for the continued existence of the party full stop. On the back of this it seems that the letters of no confidence in the prime minister are going in already.

And meanwhile, Labour, enjoying the Government disarray while it proceeds with its annual conference in Liverpool, is presenting itself as the party of fiscal and economic responsibility. And let's face it, against this backdrop, a McDonald's school kids party could present itself as the party of fiscal and economic responsibility......and they'd be right!

But on the Labour conference one really interesting thing did emerge. While Kier Stamer is doing everything to present himself as the Blair continuity candidate (following the nasty little interim of Corbyn) and even today making the point that they (Labour) have "recaptured the centre ground of British politics", underneath the surface there is movement.

That Stamer is effectively having his cake and eating it seems, against the Government's travails, to have gotten by the media this morning. While the press are presenting the image that Stamer himself is working so hard to project - that of the stable trustworthy leader in waiting (he even referred to the Labour Party as "the political wing of the British people") - they have failed to report that other thing that was announced at the conference yesterday - that Labour intends to re-nationalise the railways.

Now ordinarily this would in itself be huge front page news. As it is, against the current economic mayhem, it isn't even getting a mention. And it is, for all its not being talked about, a seismic event. Not so much for what it is in itself, but for what it represents. Because it has been part of the new Labour (small n) policy to stay away from the original clause 4 commitment to bring as many industries and utilities under state ownership as possible, with the same level of attention that a sheep puts into staying away from a wolf. And suddenly (and tentatively) it's just creeping in there again.

This is a toe-dipping exercise on the part of the Labour leadership that has a very interesting backdrop. Because what it reflects, is an awareness on the part of said leadership that they are simply not cutting the mustard with their own voter base. Yes, the annihilation of the left from the parliamentary party might have been ticking all the establishment and media boxes. Certainly Dame Margret Hodge and her Corbyn hating cohort may have been assuaged, and Stamer able to make his centrist claims with a degree of verity - and yes, the establishment have been brought on-side......but somehow when it comes to the people, the ones that will actually put the Labour Party into power, then Stamer's Labour Party just isn't getting any purchase.

For sure, they are riding high in the polls - but against the shambles that is the Tory Party they would be in dire trouble if they weren't. Like existential trouble. No, they realise that the only reason for their half decent poll showing is because of the atrociously bad opposition they have in the current Tory Party. Any remedial action on the part of the Tories and this poll lead would evaporate like steam from a whistling kettle.

So against this backdrop of failure to find purchase amongst their own natural voting base, the heady years of the Corbyn optimism - that upsurge of love and passion for the cause - must seem like a glorious oasis glimpsed over the yellowed sands of the dessert. So how to get there? Well, the clues are out there. The crisis in the energy markets has brought something unexpected back into the Overton window of politics. Suddenly the idea of re-nationalising is no longer taboo. There were signs that the public were actually quite keen on the return to state ownership of the railways in the form of positive feedback from surveys before the energy crisis, and so this might be a good place to start. (Suggesting re-nationalising the energy industries as Mick Lynch and his cohort want might be too big a bite to take at this early stage.)

Now Stamer's main fear would be of squandering his new-found image of respectable moderateness. The last thing he wants to do is to alienate the press, give off any signals of being a 'red'. This would be political suicide for a Labour leader (see what happened to Corbyn). No - if he's to capture some of that 'Corbyn magic' - that 'whatever it was' that made the people love him (or a significant section of the Labour voter base at least) - but still keep the media and the establishment on-side, then it is going to have to be managed carefully. He must get the purchase that he needs with the voters, but without bringing down the wrath of the same establishment that destroyed Corbyn.

And the announcement of an intention to re-nationalise the railways is just the toe-dipping exercise that is needed. If it can be pulled off without a sharp backlash in the polls or the media, then this re-nationalising thing might just be a chicken that will fight.

So will be the thinking in the Labour leadership as we speak, and this is the background behind the announcement that was made yesterday. It's a clever one, and it was cleverly done. It came with an assurance that "this is a practical decision, not an ideological one." (No hint of clause 4 thinking there then - purely pragmatic you understand!) With the public already half on-side for the move it isn't going to be a hard sell, especially since in the case of the railways 'nationalisation' can mean any number of things. There are so many subsidiary aspects to it, that how much or little it means is almost as long or short as a piece of string. And there was no suggestion of a mass purchase. No: this would just be a 'return to public ownership' that would naturally occur when the various contracts came up for renewal (they simply wouldn't be renewed). No jarring shaking up movement of a mass buyback there then. And if it works - if this sudden announcement of what looks suspiciously like a socialist policy (the first real one that Stamer has ever spoken of) works the oracle - if there is a sudden frisson of optimism in the air - then who knows..... perhaps a few more of those Corbyn policies might be worth looking at?

But why, I ask myself, be so shy when it comes to anything that approaches ideology?

To be honest, I want my Labour leader to be driven by ideology. I want him to believe that it is the right of the public to have and to own their own utilities. The things upon which their lives depend. To me, Stamer's 'practical reasons', his 'pragmatism', means that it could be turned off, turned over, at any time for the same pragmatic reasons. I don't want that. I want it signed, sealed and delivered: the people have the right to ownership of the utilities upon which their lives depend. No longer can it be said that "the private sector can run these companies in the better public interest". That's bollocks and it always was. It was about milking the monopolies that the nationalised industries naturally were, for profit. Nothing more. You can either run these companies for public interest, or private interest - not both. That is now proven. So if Stamer wants me onboard, then he has to man-up and come out and say it. He's done nothing to date to demonstrate that he's a Labour leader worthy of the name and he's got a lot of ground to cover if he's going to convince me to support his cause. But I can at least see what he is doing and understand why he is doing it. It's cynical and calculating - but fair play, this is politics and when isn't it - and the railways announcement is a good sign, a harbinger perhaps, of better things to come. And I like it.

[Forestal]

His statement (a rare event in itself) was timed to coincide with a treasury one from the chancellor in which he brought forward his promise to carry out an assessment of where the new Government fiscal policy was headed and also to put forward a plan to get borrowing back under control for the medium term.

I feel like this is a point that everyone is missing. This is a quote from the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey. These three words tell us everything that we need to know about this chancellor and his 'mini' budget. It requires getting "back under control", meaning, it is currently out of control. It is careening, unguided towards certain disaster and the muppets in the cabinet are flailing and tripping over themselves to catch it before it plummets over the edge. This edge is probably best realised as the Dollar:Sterling ratio, which Sterling is dangerously close to right now. Once we go over that cliff, we are fucked and the BoE knows it.

We currently live in a country where the man who held wine scoffing, childrens playset breaking parties in one of our most secure and revered buildings while thousands of people died every day without support of their families or their religious representatives looks to be a more responcible choice of leader than what we replaced him with (after 8 weeks of delaying because every choice available was so god-awful that it needed that amount of time to actually get a 12% approval rating for the eventual successor).

I don't want to live in this country anymore, the state that we are being driven into in order for the next Labour government to be ousted after a single term because "They couldn't fix anything!" is so horrific that it brings about an existential crisis.

[peter]

Absolutely Forestal.

If I understand it, you are a relatively young chap and I can absolutely get why you might be having doubts about the advisability of staying with this basket-case of a country.

If I were of an age to consider a move elsewhere it would definitely be in the running.

By the way, I only saw your earlier post after I'd already posted, but it very much sounds like this is a fellow whose opinion is worth listening to.

On the news earlier it was explained that for a current mortgage holder paying 850 quid a month at the 2.5 percent rate, if the rate goes up to 4.5 percent the payment increases to eleven hundred pounds. 5.75 percent (which I reckon will be more likely) and we're talking twelve hundred and seventy five.

And this on top of all the other price rises that such families are having to soak up. For huge numbers of households, these figures are simply not sustainable. Yet the BoE are going to have little choice but to inflict them if they are to stand any chance of reining in inflation.

I saw Kier Stamer's speech earlier and I have to say, I was not massively 'got' by it. He was making the right noises in front of conference - but let's face it, he'd have been hard pressed not to. I'd like to have seen a bit more radicalism and a bit less of trying to ape Blair, but that's just me. Maybe he pitched it right.

[peter]

There's not really much to add to the post I made last night except to say that the cost of interest rate rises to homebuyers is likely to be even more than I reported. The figures in today's papers report of an interest rate rise up to as high as 6.25 percent, raising the monthly cost of a household currently paying 500 pounds by a further 880 pounds to a whopping 1380 pounds per month.

Needless to say this is ruinous for most people to consider, but it seems inevitable that it will have to be done if the Government's inflationary economic tactics are to continue.

Kwarteng for his part is unrepentant, saying that the market reaction is overblown and that it is settling. He was, nevertheless, sufficiently perturbed by it to push his boss to allow for the treasury statement on Monday, which it is reported in today's papers that she was opposed to.

Reports of raised voices in that meeting are fueling speculation of an earlier than usual rift between No's 10 and 11 Downing Street in this morning's press and there is, it is said, tension in the air.

None of which is going to be helped by the IMF having made a rare intervention and telling Truss she must reverse the abolition of the top rate tax band announced in the 'fiscal event' of last Friday. I'm not sure exactly what they expect such a reversal would achieve, since if I have it right this only accounts for around 2 billion of the 45 billion overall cost to the exchequer of the announced tax cuts - perhaps it is the optics that concern them (though I can't see why they would). They are urging him to use his planned fiscal statement for November to change course (the fiscal statement that he has already, if I'm correct, been forced to bring forward from next year) but I somehow can't see this happening. Kwarteng is a man notoriously sure of his own correctness - his self-confidence is legendary - and will not take well to being told that he has made a dogs-ear of things. And there would be little to recommend to Truss such a damaging volta-face - a U-turn that would most assuredly bring about the end of her (already predicted to be) short tenure in office. No, this will be an all or nothing policy on the part of the Truss administration now and nothing that the IMF can say is going to change this. She'd rather see the whole country crash and burn than suffer the loss of face that such a reversal of policy would entail.

Meanwhile, as I said last night, Stamer has made his conference speech, and is today predictably riding on the crest of the resultant wave into the headlines of that part of the press sympathetic to his cause.

For me, he spent to much time trying to distance himself from his predecessor (and trash his legacy, to boot). Yes we know he wants to occupy the center ground recently departed by the Tory Party and yes, it is clear that in a reversal of the usual situation, suddenly it is the Tory's who can be accused of economic irresponsibility, sending borrowing through the roof and whatnot, but still.....is he a Labour Prime Minister in waiting or just a Tory-lite version as is always claimed? From yesterday's speech it would seem that the latter is the case and that he is entirely comfortable with this. He made much effort to link himself to the Blair end of the stick, but did at least conceed that the situation that he would be left by the Tories would be sufficiently dire that certain "more Labour like policies" would "have to wait". Quite what this enigmatic comment meant (which I may not have quoted exactly, but have certainly got the gist of correct) we can only guess. Perhaps it was a sop being thrown to those of us who actually believe that the Labour Party should do what it says on the tin - represent the working people of this country - but it is difficult to tell at this point. Stamer is (like Truss herself) so focused on winning power that it is almost impossible to tell what he really believes, to separate out what he really intends to do as PM as opposed to what he is just saying in order to get there. This is where we have arrived at in politics in this country - that the getting of power by any means, good or bad, has trumped the policy of laying out a platform and then standing on it in order to win support. In respect of Stamer's veracity as an individual - it has been called into question not only by the left of the labour movement (Novara Media are scathing of his reneging on his ten leadership pledges upon which he secured his leadership bid) but also by the right wing media. Peter Hitchens, author and Sunday Mail columnist claims that Stamer is a seriously radical left-winger that has not begun to show his true colours yet. With all of these conflicting views and the evidence of Stamer's words themselves, the jury has to be out on who this man actually is.

But that's about where we are today. Not much further forward really and alas to say, it doesn't look like things are going to be much different for the near future. I'm never keen on these periods of 'one topic dominance', but it seems that it has been this way forever now as we lurch from one catastrophe to the next.

I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the Boris Johnson household at the moment, and I'd very much like to hear what the defeated Sunak would have to say about all of this. But alas, these guys are keeping schtum at the moment so we will have to wait for them to come out of the woodwork to make comment. But one thing I am betting is that the 160,000 Tory Party membership who foisted this wrecking-ball PM on our country are having some serious buyers remorse over their purchase. Oh yes - there will be some tears being spilt in the blue corner of the country as we speak, and ain't that a fact!

[peter]

Ahhh......! Got it!

I said above I couldn't quite understand why the IMF would be interested in reversing only the top rate tax abolition (since it was only a small part of the cost of the Truss tax cuts) - and of course it's not.

It's just that that headline was drawn from the Daily Telegraph who of course want to spin the IMF in as bad a light as possible, since they (the IMF) are highly critical of what the Truss administration is doing.

Reading further on you find that the IMF is in fact critical of the whole lot - that there is nothing that they approve of in the entire budget.

This has naturally evoked a furious backlash from the Government supporters led by (who else) Lord Frost - he of the brexit fuck-up fame - who says that the IMF are stuck in the "Gordon Brown" style of timid thinking that has stymied world economic growth for a decade.

The IMF intervention is highly unusual, since it rarely ever comments on the specific policies of this G7 leading economies, but in this case they have made an exception. Their comments follow hard on the heels of ex US treasury secretary Larry Summers saying that there is a significant risk of the turmoil occuring in the UK markets spilling over into the world economy. This makes sense given the high level of interlock between the various markets of the world - and the more so (and more dangerous) given the still pretty fragile state of the Western world economy post 2008.

So yes, now we see the Telegraph running true to form, skewing the news to suit its own agenda via the manipulation of the thinking of its readership.

And if you want more proof, look at one of those little boxed stories at the bottom of the front page. There is one today entitled "Run On the Pound Blamed On City Remainers."

How long was it going to be before they got round to planting the idea that this is all the fault of remainers? It was always going to happen. The idea is so ridiculous that they don't even take credit for it themselves, blaming it rather on a hedge fund manager in the City (quick - give that man a knighthood!), but they know full well it will be seized upon by their readership, desperate to find someone else to take the blame other than their beloved Tory Government, for what is happening.

Sorry for being so slow to get this IMF stuff, but hey, the old grey cells need a bit of coffee in the morning in order to fire up!

[peter]

The true scale of the ineptness of Kwasi Kwarteng's budget became apparent yesterday when the Bank of England were forced to intervene, not with raising interest rates to curb inflation (in accordance with their plan for getting the latter back to around two percent), but in direct opposition to this by the printing of 65 billion pounds of extra money (a highly inflationary act in itself) in order to guarantee the purchase of long term (30 year) gilts that no-one else could be found willing to buy.

The gilt market had literally ground to a halt which in turn threatened to wipe off a trillion pounds worth of value from UK pension funds, driving them into insolvency. Literally, the final-salery pension schemes of countless thousands of individuals were on the verge of being wiped out. One commentator from the City said "It wasn't quite a Lehman Brothers moment - but it was close."

Now I'm not going to pretend to understand all of this, but suffice to say that the one thing I do understand is that it is not the job of Government to bring the financial system of the country crashing to its knees. But of the two individuals who sit at the centre of this chaos we have heard nothing. Truss herself is apparently adamant that she will see this thing through (the mood in Downing Street yesterday was reported as being that of a belief that this will all settle down if they just sit it out), while Kwarteng has been more visible in meetings with bankers and the treasury.

Today however there has been an announcement that we will be hearing statements from the PM and chancellor at some point - clearly at last it has penetrated through to them that some kind of public response is demanded. And I should say so! In parliament her MPs are getting increasingly nervous and grumblings of a full scale rebellion are starting to circulate. Calls for Kwarteng to go are being for the time being resisted, and yesterday a weak attempt was made to suggest that the turmoil was not related to the budget, but was due to external factors (not specified) to which the UK markets were vulnerable. As demonstrated by a series of graphs showing the behaviour of our gilts markets (and their hugely fluctuating values at the time of the budget - upwards - and the time of the BoE intervention - back down) in comparison to that of other European countries, this was clearly nonsense.

So in short, in her determination to meet the pledges she made in order to win the tory leadership election, Liz Truss has with a month of taking office (and with the death and interment of the Queen intervening) managed to near about destroy the UK gilts market, wipe out the retirement incomes of countless thousands of people, bring the purchasing of houses via mortgages to a standstill, push the borrowing of the UK to levels that would have made Jeremy Corbyn's face go grey, reduce the value of the pound to its lowest value ever, drive the Bank of England to about-turn with an inflationary act in total opposition to everything it has been attempting to do for the past twelve months since inflation started to rise, caused the leading economic professionals the world over to raise their hands to their mouths in horror and the IMF to break its rule never to comment on the specific policies of individual countries in the G7......

And this in her 100 day honeymoon period.

You have to wonder just how much of this her own Cabinet are going to take? Could we see her unseated by a mass resignation of the bulk of her cabinet? Where would we be then? Surely not into another leadership election, for the choosing of yet another unelected PM (by the general public that is)? I don't think that this would cut it. Surely there would have to be a general election, which the deputy PM would have to call? Certainly Kwarteng will be sacrificed before Truss herself goes (if it comes to this) - but the loss of her chancellor and the U-turning on her election promises and reversal of her economic policy would surely leave her fatally wounded.

Kier Stamer is calling for Parliament to be recalled early - it's a week or two before this is due to occur - and if this turmoil continues it is difficult to imagine that it would not be. Such an act would be an admission that the situation had reached the level of a national emergency (as if it is not already obvious) and Truss will resist this to the last. She will be desperately hoping that the Bank of England intervention will act to permanently stabilise the gilt market, but while for the moment things seem to have settled (or at least the price of gilts is falling to more sustainable levels) there is widespread belief that more interventions of different kinds are yet going to be needed just to bring the markets under control.

And once this is done, we have sit back and survey the long term wreckage that this has done to the economy. And it will not be a happy picture. Kwarteng is already sending out letters to all Government departments saying that they must rein in spending and stick within their budgets, so we are in for another period of austerity in consequence of the fiscal irresponsibility of his budget (in all but name at least). At this point the frisson of optimism with which the Labour Party Conference ended, the feeling that they might actually be on the verge of coming to power, could seem suddenly to have actual legs. Scanning this morning's press it is apparent that even the Tory leaning media are not able to find much to say in support of Truss and Kwarteng. And once they loose the support of the right wing media then they really are done for. It really is looking like Stamer could have his day and the twelve year Tory run could be at an end.

Oh, and ex leadership candidate Rishi Sunak has finally emerged from hiding. Questioned on his decision not to attend the forthcoming Conservative Party Annual Conference he said that he wanted Liz Truss to "own her moment".......

Ye-es........

[peter]

Liz Truss said in a recent interview that she was perfectly comfortable with being unpopular if that was what it took to get Britain on the road to recovery.

Well it looks as if her wishes might be coming true - at least the part about being uncomfortable. Polls released yesterday showed that just about everybody from her own backbenchers to the public down to the Downing Street cat wishes she had not risen to the office of PM.

Of the conservative party in general, they fell to a level of popularity not seen since the days of Caligula with one MP commenting that if the poll results were replicated in a general election it would be the end of the party. They fell to thirty points behind labour, a result that would give them about fifty three seats to labour's four hundred and eighty (give or take).

Of course this is bollocks - all poll results usually are. People don't vote in general elections in the same way that they answer polls,but it is sufficient indication that the public are not buying the PM's excuses for what is happening in the markets (everything from remainers to Putin copping the blame - anything but the budget) and are very pissed off at the chaos that the new administration have unleashed.

A few tricks are being pulled by the right wing press this morning (a couple in which it is claimed that benefits cutbacks will be used to rake back the money we need to turn the tables on this thing) in order to mitigate some of the worst of the backlash. The use of Thatcher's "the lady's not for turning" line is being employed in order to make Truss's insistence that she will not reverse her tax-cutting policies sound a little better, and today she is going to meet with the nobs of the OBR, the independent financial watchdog that produces forecasts on the effects of Government fiscal policy for the weeks and months ahead. Quite what she hopes to gain by this remains to be seen - presumably she would like them to 'understand' better what it is that she is trying to achieve, in order that they will temper any statements or forecasts they produce around these hopes.

But nothing spooks MPs like bad polling. Despite the fact that the economy is going to hell in a handcart and by the Bank of England's own assesment they have had to step in to prevent significant damage to the country's financial stability (that's double speak for meltdown of the markets) it is the poll results to which they will be looking and which will be galvanising them to speak out against their leader and her chancellor. Some are indeed predicting that she will be gone by Christmas and the demands for a change of direction are widespread through the ranks.

But billions of pounds of value having been wiped off the markets and an intervention of unprecedented scale by the BoE notwithstanding, the situation does at least have the feel of one that is stabilising. The pound has risen slightly and the sense of panic does seem to be easing. That this is down to the Bank's intervention rather than anything that has been done by the administration goes without saying, but the Bank has certainly earned its crust this week. That we had a very near brush with disaster is a given; what remains to be seen is to what extent Truss and Kwarteng can recover their positions in the eyes of their backbench MPs. The poll results are reactive and will swing this way or that with the wind. There is time for them to come right. But if the damage to the Tory backbencher confidence is permanent then the pair are in trouble. Truss has proven that she can be a disruptor, she must now prove that she can be the opposite which will be a whole lot harder.

[peter]

It's hard to see the situation in Europe getting any better vis-a-vis the Russian invasion of Ukraine, following Putin's showy document signing ceremony yesterday in which he appeared to cement his drawing of the four disputed regions in the east and south of the country, under the Russian umbrella of control.

Surrounded by all of the pomp and ceremony that the Russian state could muster, he gave a forty-five minute harangue against the West followed by a precision choreographed signing in which the four political leaders of the territories in question (at least that's who I assume they were) handed over their regions to union with the greater Russian Federation.

But for all its attempted display of legitimacy, it wasn't really worth the paper (or four pieces to be more correct) it was written on. The areas in question are in a state of conflict and by no means under Russian control. They are held as part of the sovereign territory of Ukraine and cannot be simply grabbed by Russia just because it chooses to do so, or indeed just because a majority of the inhabitants of those regions would choose to be a part of the Russian Federation, if indeed that were the case. That Putin could hold referendums in these regions to determine the wishes of the people is no more legal than if France were to decide to hold referendums in Wales and Scotland on the wishes of the inhabitants of those regions to determine the same, without any inclusion of the Westminster Parliament in the process.

Similarly, the signing ceremony held yesterday would be the equivalent of Mark Drayford and Nicola Sturgeon sitting down with Emanuel Macron and signing Wales and Scotland over to France without the say-so of The UK Government.

As such, this has to be a fucking big deal - as big in terms of geopolitical consequentiality as the actual invasion itself. In all likelihood it is the point of no return at which this moves into a conflict in which the wider West will have no choice but to become embroiled. And not just in terms of feeding weapons and technology into the arms of the Ukrainian forces - with actual boots on the ground. If you were to compare it to a comparable point in the development of the Second World War it would have to be (I suppose) something like that of Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, prior to his sweeping into the whole of Czechoslovakia (not that I suggest that Putin is in a position to do this in respect of Ukraine - he clearly does not have the military capacity/advantage that the armies of the Third Reich had in that confrontation).

But like it or not a glove has been thrown down. Putin must now defend these territories as if they were his own, which he will now be presenting them to the Russian people as. For him not to bring them in totality under Russian domination would be to loose face with his people and hasten his already pretty much assured downfall. And where this all goes now is anybody's guess. The situation is already showing perturbing little signs of spreading out into the wider European area - the probably Russian instigated attack on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline (or was it a Western false flag operation?; unlikely but not impossible) occured in the Baltic Sea well away from the Ukrainian theatre - and in the light of this latest escalation (yesterday's signing that is) the risk of this has to have grown proportionately.

President Zelensky has asked that the joining of Ukraine into NATO be expedited in the face of yesterday's development, but in reality this is unlikely to happen. NATO and the wider West will continue to voice their support for Ukraine, but will not go so far as to offer membership to a country that is already in conflict with a third party, since this would by the terms of the NATO agreement (is it Article 5?) demand that they become militarily involved in the conflict. The principal tenet of collective defence - that an attack on one country is an attack on all - is absolutely central to the NATO raison-d'etra. For them to admit Ukraine to membership under the current circumstances would make the escalation of the conflict into broader European one inevitable (if it is not already so).

But reportage suggests that the reception of the war, with its increasing cost in terms of life and money, is not going down with universal approval in Russia itself. By accounts, large numbers of the recently recalled reservists are fleeing across the borders into neighboring countries (presumably hoping to sit the thing out until the war is won or Putin falls) and others are protesting loudly at their unwillingness to go. Hardly any suprise there I'd think. I suspect if (or is it when) the same was pulled in the UK, it would meet with much the same response. People just aren't that keen to go and die in other people's wars which they don't understand, at the behest of politicians in which they have little trust. Sure, Putin is selling his invasion and the acts of yesterday as the building back of power of the greater Russian State in the world, and this is okay as far as it goes. But hiking off to die in a foreign country on the back of it? Fuck that?

But I think that the whole thing was best summed up by an old lady who the BBC interviewed in one of the disputed regions just claimed by Russia. She told the interviewer tersely, "I couldn't care less whose in control - I just want to be allowed to live in peace. For them to stop blowing up my home!" And this is the bottom line. For most people - and this applies to us just as well as the Ukrainian people or indeed the Russian as well, what does it matter who's in charge as long as we are left in peace to do our own thing in our own chosen way? They are going to take taxes the same, they are going to feather their own nests just the same, and as a sideline they might even attempt to operate some kind of a functional state as well. But at the end of the day, the people just have to get on with their lives and the Putin's and the Zelensky's, the Truss's and the Biden's are something to be tolerated as they try to achieve this. As for going off to fight their wars for them, just so they can say "I've done this!", or "Now we own that!".......screw that. That's for the birds.

So let's get some realpolitik into this situation. Yesterday's events put the situation onto a whole new level whereby the outcomes of this are much more circumscribed than they were before. Now we effectively have to enter a period of European conflict in which the armies of the West are mobilised for a full scale conflict out of which can emerge only one victor. How can it be otherwise? Putin must defend these new territories as if they were Russia proper. He must view any Western supply of ammunition or weaponry as an act of aggression against Russia, he must regard the West and NATO as his enemy on the basis of the friend of my enemy is my enemy. He must, as he has said, defend Russian territory with all and every means at his disposal. Absent the Russian people rising up and deposing him, or a coup with the Kremlin itself, this is going to mean an escalation of the offensive is inevitable. He will pour his armies into the region, conscription will be initiated, the battle lines will be drawn and protected with a ferocity that we have not seen to date (as if what has happened is not bad enough already). The West will, I think, have little option but to join the fight, and once this happens it will speed up and spread apace. At the end, the whole of Russia must fall, as in an end of WWII style occupation (not going to happen), or their will be nuclear Armageddon (again, one hopes not going to happen), or there will be a negotiated settlement. And if this is the likely end point, then surely the sooner we get going down this track the better - before, if possible, the fields of the Central European Plain are littered with the corpses of millions of dead soldiers and civilians.

Or I suppose we might just go back to business as usual. With the poor people of Ukraine carrying all the brunt of this, the thing just grumbling away in the background like a running sore, stacking up the dead and dispossessed at a smaller but nevertheless incremental rate, and destabilising the world for decades to come as we all get used to this new era of perpetual war.