Big Dog - Going, going, not quite gone. Thread 14.

[Notonthestairs]

Will it be Continuity Truss or "Socialist" Sunak in charge?

Sterling ending day at $1.084 not just a new 37 year low, it’s only ever been weaker on 11 days in history in late February and early March 1985, after Mrs Thatchers press Sec Bernard Ingham inadvertently briefed that she was relaxed about the fall in the value of the pound

Faisal Islam

If I jump in the air, believe and flap my arms enough times, will I be able to fly?

Yes, all the way to the sunlit uplands

Wave to the unicorns

But everyone already knows this crazy budget won’t work. Trickle down economics is disproven already. And Brexit has seen the UK off as a serious international player or a safe place to invest. It feels like Tories killed the horse and are madly spending more and more of our borrowed money to carry on flogging it.

1963 Teginald Maulding
1972 Anthony Barber
2022 Kwasi Kwarteng
3 Conservative Chancellors with budgets sized to drive growth. The 1st 2 proved to be disastrous. It's not like it's a new phenomenon.

It seems my area (swing seat), is being put forward as an investment zone. While that might help me to get a small business off the ground, I want to know what the catch is. I wouldn't trust them not to change the rules.
They can still fuck off with this shit budget.

I’m concerned an ex-Tory minister seems to be in denial about the fact they’re already in deep trouble.

I'm concerned that an ex-Tory Minister seems to be worried about the party being in deep trouble, and not the country..

Good point @jgw1.

How can the government justify the extra borrowing though ?
Or letting the rail companies hoard their profits and not pass it on to the workers ?
The magic money trees have been growing and now being cut down. Not to benefit the majority but only the minorities.
Yet everyone will have to pay this back.

Ours is also kind yuppies. Interestingly, the prediction for the next election is for the Tories to come third. It's not that long since we had a Tory MP, though that was in part due to disaffected Lib Dems after the coalition.

Do they have a category for nasty yuppies, probably headed by Rees-Mogg?

I wonder whether somewhere the thinking is that this will inevitably provoke strikes which they will use to demonise the left and the Labour Party and desperately hope to profit from that?

That’s a risky strategy @novum. Particularly when they’ve spent decades demonising labour for producing similar conditions in the 70’s. But then this cohort seem less concerned about the long term future of their party.

Good thread linked below from Tony Yates on investment zones. Worth a read if it's coming to your area (or indeed if not!)

"These zones are very bad news. Even if done well they will probably just displace activity from one location to another. Is that displacement worth the cost or even desirable? If done badly they will create regulatory and tax disharmony, undoing the UK single market."

twitter.com/t0nyyates/status/1573596013297803265?s=46&t=Z6WabZrAdUrqYjZH4vbQVA

If even the Institute for Government are saying Truss and her complete chancer friends are departing from the normal principles of good government then we know that we are in properly scary uncharted waters. We urgently need a general election.
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/liz-truss-breaking-more-economic-orthodoxy

www.reuters.com/business/finance/odeys-hedge-fund-soars-145-bets-against-uk-bonds-sources-2022-09-22/

link about KK’s previous employer pinched from another thread.

NEW Blowing the budget - the RF overnight analysis of the Chancellor's September Fiscal Statement. Here's a short thread of the key highlights ahead of you reading the full 31 page report.... 🧵

twitter.com/resfoundation/status/1573570472113061889?t=Q9Sx6UtIW6P_IXI6_WGWIg&s=19

Middle income Britain stands to lose most from the overall impact of all tax and benefit policies announced over the parliament. The poorest fifth of households gain £90 on average, with the middle fifth losing £780, and only the top five per cent gaining significantly (£2,520).

Very interesting analysis from that thread.

"Rising incomes at the very top. The scale of tax cuts for the richest five per cent is enough for their incomes to grow by two per cent next year (2023-24). However, the other 95 per cent of the population will get poorer as the cost-of-living crisis continues."

I suppose the Conservatives hope that people will credit them for putting more money in to their pockets but that external forces are entirely responsible for CoL increases.

Thanks Cornetto.

"Odey, whose eponymous firm Odey Asset Management manages 4 billion pounds ($4.52 billion) in assets, believes higher inflation is here to stay and central banks will need to raise rates faster, according to one of the sources, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter."

They aren't wrong.

Thank you for the link @Notonthestairs. It reflects my gut feeling that it's an excuse to reduce employment rights by the back door, similar to freeports.

Certainly if they flourish (at the expense of other areas & by sucking up investment and public services) then we will be presented with the argument that we need to ditch employment/environmental protections nationally. Britannia Unchained.

Hmm I think farther afield than London and the shires. Farther afield physically and mentally.

"New home secretary Suella Braverman has told police leaders she “expects” them to cut crimes including murder by 20 per cent

A letter yesterday confirmed Liz Truss is pursuing targets that were branded "incoherent" when proposed during her leadership bid"

twitter.com/lizziedearden/status/1573579347558006784?s=46&t=qoYpK7x4PjhWZmdN20SY1w

You could almost laugh.

The latest data released by the Home Office showed there were 142,759 police officers in England and Wales in June 2022 compared with 143,734 in March 2011. During this period, the population in England and Wales increased by 3.5 million people.
There are now 235 police officers per 100,000 people compared with 264 in 2011, a real-terms reduction in the number of officers over the decade of 11%.

amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/31/police-chiefs-blame-tory-cuts-for-fall-in-detection-and-charge-rates

Good detailed review of what has been happening -

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/performance-tracker-2019/police

Oh Suella. Expectations may vary.

I don't think they're doing this because of incompetence either. Some of those that stick their heads above the parapet maybe. But those, to mix metaphors, pulling the strings are doing exactly what they intend.

Kwarteng is not stupid. His motives are not to be a "good chancellor", to benefit everyone in the country. From what I know of him his motive is to benefit Kwarteng. Just like, hmmm, which other Tory politician can I think of? No, not just him. Nearly all of them.

As "kindly yuppies" we are hamstrung by not being able to fully imagine the depravity. I'm not sure that's too strong a word.