If you were the PM what would you do to fix the mess we are in?

[HoppingKangaroo]

Just that really, if you were the prime minister what would you do to help fix the country and the cost of living crisis.

NotMeNoNo, How would a general election help right now? We would have less than a functioning government than we have now, it would take months before a new government would take over, we haven’t got a Tory leader yet to even call a general election and get it voted through Parliament

And yet it would cut out a middleman and the profits redirected or redistributed.

And the OP didn't ask for answers just from experts.

but its a shame that you feel the need to belittle peoples thoughts, maybe you should explain as you are such an expert?

Anyone who is thinking we should have more and more renewables, see this:

grid.iamkate.com/

At this moment in time 70% of the UK's electricity needs are from fossil fuels. The answer would have been to start maybe 40 new nuclear power stations 20 years ago, but to late now.

Without reliable, cost effective storage wind and solar is now the answer.

You can't be serious?

By leaving the single market we have created huge unnecessary red tape which has destroyed many businesses (reducing tax income to HMRC). Our balance if payments deficit has increased from 2% to 8% because of Brexit trade barriers, and foreign investment that propped up our economy has understandably fallen off a cliff.

So as a direct result of Brexit GBP has taken a hammering against USD and EUR and most of our essentials that are imported (a large proportion of food and fuel) are priced in USD. Effectively this has made such imported products around 20% more expensive than they would be were it not for Brexit.

It also led to a huge exodus of skilled workers so we now have labour shortages that are feeding inflation.

All of the things that Project Reality stated would happen. And for zero benefit.

Not to mention that to keep the lights on in Jan if there is a cold snap we may need urgent fuel imports from France. And our prospective PM is busy insulting them in interviews even when Macron offered an olive branch. That will help, I'm sure. Now we're a third country there will be no pressure on them to help us if they don't feel like it.

Aabsolutely not redirecting all funding to STEM. This is so unbalanced. We need more linguists. We need more diplomacy. We need, my God we need, more critical thinking. Humanities degrees serve a really important function. I am so sick of this drive to pish everyone to STEM.

*NOT the answer

End the NHS bed blocking by ‘social patients’ and elderly people who refuse to live in suitable accommodation. After the 2nd fall requiring hospital care, an order should be put in place to sell their home and the proceeds go into finding them a suitable care home. This would also help free up some stock for the housing market.

If this is designed to be a warm fuzzy thread, then sure let’s give out prizes and claps for every comment. But if it’s meant to be serious debate, then you can’t take this ‘Eat the Rich’, ‘Renationalize everything’ nonsense seriously.

There's nothing wrong with recycled water. Many countries do that with no issue. In fact, I was surprised it wasn't widespread here in any case. The water is eventually getting to you one way or another. The more kidneys its been through, the purer it is...

On the pound sterling, I think we're doing a tad better than the euros. They're at below parity with the dollar.

We have barely much worse inflation, and we're also not the worst in terms of energy prices given the contracts on the continent. Yes, the gov't hasn't held down prices like, say, France has, the favourite go to for people who believe Europe is doing better by some metric. Except, that cap comes undone in the New Year. And France has a huge swathe of their nuclear fleet out of action because of terrible (now nationalised) energy management by EdF, which has massive debt obligations.

The Germans are shutting down everything from glass to fertiliser manufacturing to try and save energy. In an economy that is primarily heavy industry exports that seems... unwise.

I’ll second that

sst1234, just a note on your suggestion to tie ECTs (newly qualified 'Early Career Teachers') into teaching for a set amount of time; given that the highest number of teachers exiting the profession do so within the first five years, I can't see it working.
Teaching is a profession which lots of people think they'd like to have a go at, and subsequently discover they are not able to sustain. The thing is, you really can't 'fake it' if you're not feeling it in teaching and to expect someone to stay teaching who had arrived at the end of their professional tether would be nothing short of monstrous. In my 25+ year teaching career, I have only seen colleagues leave the profession more or less broken, whether it was after their first year or their 41st.

TheSandwoman I am serious, Eu average inflation is running at 9.8%, not much difference to ours, we are exporting gas to the EU at present, the Euro has tanked against the Dollar, every country seems to have staff shortages at present, so I ask again, if we rejoined the EU tomorrow how would that help with the cost of living crisis?

In terms of the pound against the dollar, it should be noted that in times of economic uncertainty, the dollar tends to get stronger, as it's the safest currency in the world. The real key is how a country's doing against other major currencies.

The pound's actually doing okay against the Euro, believe it or not. I mean, much, much, much worse than before Brexit, but better than a lot of 2017/2018. Better against the yen than since before Brexit, too (down massively since Brexit, but still better than 2017/2018).

This doesn't mean the energy situation isn't fucked. It is. Really fucked, and it's problematic because UK salaries are relatively low for the average worker and there's very little leeway.

But the pound's doing not as bad as it could be. If only the UK actually produced any meaningful non-service based exports--we could take real advantage of the low pound. Unfortunately, partly due to Brexit and partly due to supply chain, the UK's number one material export, cars, are at pretty much their lowest point of production in over 25 years.

But yeah, let's keep nattering on about 'cheap labour' and the 'upsides of Brexit.'

The last thing the NHS needs is more money.

and we probably shouldn't but if its a serious debate then posters should explain there points before belittling others.

Why?

sst1234

If we are going for completely serious, how about fast tracking the Saltfleetby gas field refinery build and their connection to the national gas system?

Closing all tax loopholes that businesses and wealthy individuals use to avoid paying tax.

Getting rid of non Dom status

Make anti vaxxers take out private health insurance so if they catch covid, they're not using NHS funds. Same for alcoholics & druggies & those with illnesses caused by lifestyle choices. This will free up some NHS funds for more patients as the health system is on its knees

So DH & I would each pay less tax if we split up?

Independent taxation was brought in in 1990 and was seen as a huge advance in equality - before this, a married woman’s income was simply part of her husband’s income and taxed as such.

What if DH was a 40% tax payer and I wanted to return to work part time? If we were taxed as a family unit, my £10k pa earnings would be taxed at 40% too

-We should renationalise energy, it is madness not to have as much control over your natural resources/natural monopolies as possible. Forcing them to take a short term hit would would produce some relief for consumers. Public companies are more interested in their shareholders than their customers.
-We do need to do something around tax but it is not straightforward. It's all very well trying to tax wealth but the wealthy will make use of the best tax advice and financial planning to legally avoid paying tax. It would be far better to close the loopholes. Tax individuals too much and they too will move of find ways to avoid paying tax meaning that tax revenue will actually fall.
-I didn't want Brexit but I believe we would have to make too many concessions to re-join.

What does that mean? How would that work? Would you tax pension funds, homes,shares,ISAs?

TheSandwoman

Do you mean the EU or the single market, as they are not the same.

The point about the dollar is true. Since the US abandoned the gold standard, is the primary currency to be pegged against and therefore the safest bet. Also it’s true that wages in the UK have are lower. Artificially depressed by bad policy making by nu Labour (a while other thread).

Brexit, bad as it was, is done. There is simply no going back on it. Even if we wanted to. We have to liberalize our economy in other ways.

TheSandwoman I am serious, Eu average inflation is running at 9.8%, not much difference to ours, we are exporting gas to the EU at present, the Euro has tanked against the Dollar, every country seems to have staff shortages at present, so I ask again, if we rejoined the EU tomorrow how would that help with the cost of living crisis?

That is the EU average inflation rate. It's far less in many of the EU countries comparable to ours. Many countries in the EU have specific problems like Germany with their reliance on Russian gas. This has led to a recent drop in the Euro. However, not being part of the single currency, this would not have affected us if we had stayed in the EU so it is not relevant to our own predicament.

As I explained to you already, a 20% decline in GBP:USD is attributable to Brexit. We buy many of our essential goods like petrol, gas and food on international markets and they are priced in dollars. We are therefore literally importing inflation to add to the existing inflationary problems which we could not control. Brexit has added to this inflation hugely, for no benefit. It has, as predicted, made us all significantly poorer.

Erecting trade barriers obviously increases the price of goods. How does this need explaining? Firstly the cost of all of the additional administration (200 page customs form to fill out, anyone?) obviously gets rolled into the cost of the product and passed on to the consumer. Delays at borders, additional border procedures, import taxes, veterinary checks... the list goes on and on. How could it possible do anything other than make everything more expensive when we have a huge balance of payments deficit and import so much of what we need?

Many companies have simply decided not to export to the UK anymore. This drives shortages of products which is again inflationary.

In addition many UK companies now find it unviable to import the products they require, or to export their own products. Therefore lower tax revenues for the UK.

The list of how Brexit has made us all poorer goes on and on. It's all well substantiated if you care to look up the economic analyses. Latest estimates are that it will mean a 5% reduction in GNP in perpetuity, which with compounding... well. It's not good news, is it?

Care to tell us how Brexit has improved the economy, to offset any of the above? We've been waiting 6 years to hear about it.

Where is my unicorn?

We always export gas to the EU in summer and import it from EU/ EEA in winter (at higher prices) because we have insufficient storage facilities (more Government failure). So that is not news and not sure why you mentioned it.

In what context? I am aware they are not the same thank you. 🙄😆 I've referred to both in my posts.