Is the Chancellor about to crash the economy?

It started long before Thatcher! More coal mines had been closed before she was elected than during her tenure. Beeching ruined the train network back in the 60s mostly because of the reduction in transport needs of our declining manufacturing base. Package holidays to the med started before Thatcher. You really can't blame her for everything!

The closure of Customs , VAT , Inland Revenue and Telecoms regional HQs in said town probably had a greater effect than holidays to the Med.
That and outsourcing/ privatisation.

We lost most of our industrial base due to the Worldwide move away from fossil fuels and towards manufacturing in cheaper far eastern countries.

We lost it long before that. Thatcher’s policy was to make the UK economy service industry based.

And you think all that and the recent changes is all down to UK politics??

Seaside towns deteriorated because of cheap package holidays to the Med, not because of any government.

We lost most of our industrial base due to the Worldwide move away from fossil fuels and towards manufacturing in cheaper far eastern countries.

We don't live in a vacuum. What other countries do, and Worldwide technical developments have a much greater impact than our own politicians.

Wrong. I recall the 60s Labour government. Most ppl would swap in a heartbeat. The affluent seaside town I worked in back then is now unrecognisable. Streets full of alkies, druggies and mentally unwell and disabled people. Office blocks idle , shops boarded up etc....

Oh I agree, the mistakes should have been fixed. But they were at least understandable in the first place because of the immense time pressure. But that didn’t apply for the energy grants

They had 18 months to correct the initial faults and deal with the issues - rishi chose not to and instead he lied to try to cover up the mistakes.

Mistakes with the implementation of Covid grants are, to a certain extent, understandable. They had about 48 hours to formulate and communicate a plan for someth8ng that has never occurred before and for which they had no plan The energy grants should have been much better thought through from the start - there was no deadline other than a self imposed one.

There'll always be inconsistencies when you start the means testing. Just look at the fiasco that Rishi made with the Covid grants - 3 million excluded, many basically on the toss of a coin. Loads of people got grants they didn't need and loads were desperate but got nothing.

The energy grants should never have been non means tested! There are so many who didn’t need the grant, who had plenty of savings, who received it just because of their age.

At a time when others needed it more!

Im not convinced Labour will do a worse job than the Tory’s, sorry.

I think a lot pf regional offices went off-shore to Ireland and beyond. If we dropped our tax rates, sorted out GDPR to work for AI, and did a little “boostering”, we might get something going.

Try living further North than Yorks! We don't exist when it comes to funding or investment

Not even that far North. I'd say more like Birmingham. Manchester, Leeds etc have been starved of investment for decades. Just look at the poor state of the railway network - it's an absolute shambolic disgrace. Then you have a huge city like Leeds without a tram system.

Not surprising as London has sucked all the jobs out of the regions into London, with the closures of regional offices etc. If the statistics were changed to reflect customers, then London wouldn't look so good, as most of it's customers generating the business profits are outside London and the SE, but the statistics show London as that's where the head offices are located.

All the more reason to go ahead and do it.

Heathrow used to be the busiest airport in the world. Then then busiest in Europe. And now not even that

Depends what metric you use TBH, Heathrow has been pretty high in international passenger numbers per annum for a long time, not so much in terms of aircraft movements (which is where having more runways helps).

Heathrow was certainly well placed as a gateway into/out of Europe in the days when the bulk of trans Atlantic traffic went by wide body aircraft, major centre to major centre (e.g. New York- London) then dispersed to other countries or regions on shorthaul flights.

These days there’s an increasing fashion for some foreign carriers to feed the UK regions direct (e.g. Emirates) and an increasing amount of longhaul flying done regional centre to regional centre on smaller aircraft (lots of interest in aircraft like the extended range A320 series as a result)…..

It’ll need more than a new runway at LHR to stop any perceived decline.

The problem is that Westminster thinks The North ends at Manchester 🙄

AI won’t work without changing GDPR. Now that we are out if the EU. We could do that.

However, looking at the updated public procurement regulations after Brexit, I’m not sure we have the skills to do it.

The North needs to be raised up. What good is squashing the South.
Tax receipts from the South should be directed at building a high speed rail line to connect the major northern cities to get things moving. This infrastructure is needed to make enterprise zones, STEM investment in Northern research universities and start up capital stick.
Killing the golden goose, the city, makes it all so much harder.

@HellsBalls it's farcical isn't it, after all the kick back from Osborne austerity budget. The difference is you don't have the far right part kicking off outside downing Street like we had the far left doing.

Starmer didn't actually say this - he declined to say whether Reeves would remain chancellor for the whole of the Parliament. A spokesperson later said that:

When asked at a press conference earlier whether Reeves would remain chancellor for the whole of the Parliament, the prime minister declined to answer, but did then say she had his "full confidence" and was doing a "fantastic job".

Starmer confirming yesterday that the government will "absolutely" stick to its fiscal rules could be the final nail in her coffin - there's no way out of that without complete humiliation, which would no doubt force her resignation unless she can magically produce some seeds of growth. It looks like a demand for her resignation is gaining wider traction though, so possibly time has already run out.

What insults?

No one insulted you. Just pointing out that the limitations you have called out are very basic planning, architectural and engineering run the mill processes.

Your kind would be blown by the true feats of engineering happening around the world at the moment.

A third runway at Heathrow wouldn’t be mission to Mars.

Going back to Reeves the cycle of doom seems slow enough to keep her in post at this point, although maybe she’ll go idk

Like the economy is slow enough at bleeding out Starmer and Reeves will keep releasing ‘growth’ statements eg China and AI and ignore the massive problem they’ve created

Somehow we managed to build the super sewer under London
and the Elisabeth [sic] line in London
HS2. The London end; the northern bit got scrapped.

See what I mean about hoarding investment?

I am opposed to it.

I have also given my reasons.

You, on the other hand, seem to think that resorting to insults to people who disagree with you is going to shut a discussion.