Yesterday in the Commons I set out how we need to Ā have Ā a new economic strategy for the UK. The framework the government has developed since Brexit is a reheated version of Maastricht austerity, based on a 3% limit on the annual deficit and the need to cut debt as a percentage of GDP. Meanwhile we have an inflation surge thanks to the Bank of England printing extra money for too long a time period after the initial lockdown and a very weak balance of payments thanks to a range of policies designed to stop us making and growing things in the UK in ways which boost imports.Ā I reproduce below my speech:(to come)
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January 11, 2022
Good morning.
We cannot keep blaming the EU. Whether or not we follow their rules is immaterial, this government is continuing to pursue policies that are damaging the UK.
We the electorate cannot do much until 2024 so, if there needs to be a change of direction, then others who are better placed to do this must.
January 11, 2022
Youāve all spent nearly 50 years blaming the EU and its predecessors for all of our ills.
It has never mattered to any of you before whether or not the EU was actually at fault.
Why would any of you stop blaming it now?
January 11, 2022
Andy
Now we know who’s to blame. Not the EU as you say.
January 11, 2022
Some of us figured that out way before 2016.
January 11, 2022
Well put.Hopefully the continuing saga of Partygate will lead somewhere ?
I find it hard to credit the tin-earedness of the present government when every commentator is telling them the same thing
We cannot continue to have government policy determined by Mrs Johnson’s bucket list and green agenda
January 11, 2022
This is true – we also canāt have a country run from a place which (in my mind at least) resembles the craziest parts of Tiswas. Itās light years beyond a joke now.
January 11, 2022
You half expect the Benny Hill theme music to start up as soon as the door to no10 opens and our latterday Fred Scuttle leaves.
January 11, 2022
Bourbon Boris has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.
Bullingdon Club rules OK/KO.
January 11, 2022
Mark. Then others who are better placed to do this must.
Why am I concerned this won’t happen no matter which party gets in?
January 11, 2022
all Party Central Offices vet candidates put up for all seats.
Questions:- Does this one meet ratios – race/ gender, experience, presentation, sex orientation, skeletons in closet?, willing to tow leaders line/or has own brain (a disadvantage), useful chums, credentials to beat the other side?
January 11, 2022
Mark B
By the time 2024 gets here it will be too late, the rot will be well and truly set in.
January 11, 2022
“We cannot keep blaming the EU. Whether or not we follow their rules is immaterial”
Actually no, it is not immaterial. The reason we are still under Maastricht rules is that the Treasury is keeping us aligned and ready to go back in. The Chancellor is a hostage and only able to say what he thinks at the end of the budget speech. Starmer has a remainiac front bench now, the Blob is the same, and so are the Lords. The judges don’t change. Gina Miller has reared up again and the media push to topple the PM and hence the Government continues apace, to the exclusion of actual news. This Treasury policy will topple the Government all on its own.
January 11, 2022
+ 1
January 11, 2022
The Chancellor and the First Lord of the Treasury are amongst the most senior people in government. If they cannot do that which is necessary and issue strict orders to the effect, then what is the point of them having them where they are ?
January 11, 2022
What is necessary, Mark, is to reform Blair’s politicised civil service. HMG made a start in getting rid of the Cabinet Secretary and a handful of permanent secretaries, but haven’t gone anywhere near the powerful Treasury.
January 11, 2022
We had such hopes of Boris and he has turned out to be a huge disappointment. More than that, he is now acting as an enemy of the country and it’s citizens. Who is he working for? He certainly isn’t representing the best interests of the UK, and how long must we wait before his party stops being yes-men to this destructive PM? It is their jobs that will disappear, along with their party, if nothing changes.
January 11, 2022
Boris is working in the interests of the same person he always has – Boris.
January 11, 2022
+1
He is a ‘Weather vane politician.’ He points in whichever direction the political wind blows.
January 11, 2022
+1
January 11, 2022
Do you really believe this Peter? I think Boris is the type of person that likes to be liked and likes to spend, spend, spend! I think if he had a free reign we’d have some big spending project to cement his place in history, like his garden bridge when he was only Mayor, something grand – a Medici like plan. Something to create 1000s of jobs put somewhere or another on the map. I think his hands are tied by the treasury self-imposed rules. So I don’t think he works in his own interest, if he did it would be something big and flash for him to benefit from and an interior makeover for a flat he doesn’t own doesn’t make a dint to the sort of person you think he is.
January 11, 2022
a-tracy :
Boreas Johnson DOES have “a big spending project to cement his place in history”.
Not HS2 but the Net Zero Strategy which singlehandedly will save the planet.
It will destroy our economy but he will have his place in history alongside Ed Miliband and Mrs. May.
And a well-paid job at the UN or similar.
January 12, 2022
OR – HS2 was inherited from Labour it was simply a continuance of the EU integrated rail network so their rolling stock could speed through the UK without having to use our trains once people and goods arrived in the UK. Then the EU would control import freight movements and can cut them at will.
I take your point about Net Zero but he will be no hero if people suffer too much to achieve it. I can also see the temptation of a top role at the UN after all some ex PMs are multi-millionaires now.
January 12, 2022
The European integrated rail project is not a European Union-controlled affair.
It includes many non-member states to the East and elsewhere, and is entirely voluntary for members and for non-members alike.
January 12, 2022
A huge disappointment, or a Party and Country catastrophe?
January 11, 2022
+1 Mark.
January 11, 2022
We cannot do much at the next general election either as the only realistic alternative (with any chance of forming a government) is a Labour/SNP/Libdim/Plaid/Green coalition – and what sensible person would prefer that? Especially an English person.
January 11, 2022
One who wants rid of the Scots and the Welsh and have our own English Parliament š
January 11, 2022
A good start.
January 11, 2022
At the next election we can vote for a sensible party – Reform UK. If that leads to so-called Conservatives losing their seats and Labour getting in, then so what? Labour are no worse than the present government. Starmer will not go into any coalition of the sort you suggest. And a period in opposition may benefit the Conservatives as it will mean that Boris will go and they will have an opportunity to elect a patriotic leader instead of an EU-appeasing TRAITOR. The fact that Conservative MPs are too stupid to replace Boris NOW, and save themselves an election defeat, is their undoing, and they will only have themselves to blame. As you sow so shall you reap.
January 11, 2022
Correct, and I think that is what Sir John is trying to achieve.
Unfortunately insufficient Conservative MPs have reached the correct conclusion that achieving it will be impossible without ridding us of the hypocritical Jolly Green Giant (and his Mrs) as well as most of the rest of this Cabinet of the 2nd and 3rd division.
January 11, 2022
I think Partygate as it emerges will sink him. All those restriction’s on the plebs but not him and his 150 guests in No 10’s garden! How did he seriously imagine it wouldn’t get out. His arrogance knows no bounds, a serious case of God syndrome.
January 11, 2022
John wasn’t blaming the EU, he was complaining that this government was following EU rules when we should no longer have to.
January 11, 2022
The economy is not a machine with levers and buttons that can be pulled and pressed to achieve a certain outcome. That’s simply Keynesian nonsense. An economist who I believe should be relegated to the bottom of the academic cesspit from whence he came. This man’s ideology has caused great harm by giving politicians and bureaucrats the green-light to abuse the public purse for political gain
We need to reduce State directed politicised spending simply because most of it is wasted and that is a misallocation of resources that could be used to invest correctly by private companies who understand the true nature of what investment actually means
Cut State spending, reduce the public sector burden and direct this funding to reduce the burdens on private sector SME’s who are the beating heart of wealth creation and pay all the bills of the UK
And can we please stop using the term ‘austerity’. It is inapplicable in this day and age. This government cannot stop spending and is out of control using debt to conceal its splurges
The formula for economic growth is a simple one. It isn’t rocket science. We don’t need fancy models by idiot economists to point the way.
January 13, 2022
If there were such a formula, then it would be near-infinitely complex, like anything which attempts to describe the chaotic real world.
January 11, 2022
Who is responsible for the road map you tell us that we are following?
January 11, 2022
Bit late now.
January 11, 2022
The most recent, highly damaging, partygate revelations concerning Johnson, his constant and neverending lying and the pubic’s perception of “one rule for them and another for the plebs” is clearly having a damaging effect, with Labour’s poll lead now stable at ~8%
For the good of the country – and the party – it is time he resigned. Brexit – such as it is – is done. Let’s have a clean break and some proper leadership.
January 11, 2022
@SG; I’m not so sure, I would prefer a challenge to his leadership rather than a resignation, let the country see who might follow, allow Conservative MP’s consult their constituents as to who to vote for. As poorly judged as Boris is, as bad as the govt by pillow talk has become, perhaps better the devil we know!
January 11, 2022
+1
January 11, 2022
Who do you have in mind, Sakara, any of the current front bench? I wouldn’t trust them to run the country any more than Johnson. The Conservative party has a few senior figures with the right sort of experience and who aren’t compromised by complicity in the Covid horrorshow, but the problem is, would they really want to stand in a leadership election? Better stick with the Johnson we know, I’d say.
January 11, 2022
@Bill B. It is not a question of who wants to stand, but who will receive the backing of the majority, there are very few “senior figures” left who fit such job description post Brexit, post the inaction that has been and still is the Covid horror show, most left politics, or at least the HoC, at the last election, unwilling to sign away their (europhile) principles. The last thing the country need is for the Tory party diving down the same sort of rabbit hole as the opposition did in the early 1980s (at the hands of equally out-of-touch hardliners), leaving a new Labour govt to perhaps cozy up to, even rejoin, the EU or at least the EFTA or EEA.
January 11, 2022
@Bill B
Sir John Redwood. He is the best PM we never had. I do not agree with all of his views, but he is a man we could trust. And he has Cabinet experience.
January 11, 2022
So there really is a Zaphod Beeblebrox.
January 11, 2022
Proper leadership from whom all the alternatives are even worse!
āOne rule for them and another for the plebsā twas always thus!
HMRC allowance for tax for working from home Ā£6 per week – worth just Ā£1.20 PA not even enough for the extra heating needed. Yet the Lords tax free āattendanceā allowance Ā£305 a day.
Climate hypocrite Prince Charles x months to save the World – personal annual travel bill Ā£1 million+ private jets, helecopters, Aston Martinsā¦ but no holiday in Spain for you mate. Then we have Emma Thompson, David Attenborough, many Cop26 attendersā¦ twas always thus!
January 11, 2022
Brexit is not done for part of the country, for Northern Ireland it is more like Brexit In Name Only.
A chap has a letter in the Belfast News Letter:
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/letters/jeffrey-donaldson-ignores-the-opinion-of-most-business-leaders-that-the-protocol-is-benefiting-our-economy-3520273
of which the penultimate paragraph reads:
“Jeffrey should know by now that the Conservatives are now English nationalists and care little for Northern Ireland and, more importantly, that Boris Johnson is capable of anything so long as it suits his political ambitions.”
To be clear, his vanity project, that “fantastic” Canada-style free trade with the EU, is worth somewhere between 0% and 2% of GDP – the EU Commission estimates 0.75%, so far the UK government has refused to say – and for that he has been prepared to abandon Northern Ireland to be left behind until swathes of EU Single Market laws, relegating it to a kind of condominium, or an EU protectorate.
January 11, 2022
A letter to the above newspaper and two others on the island:
“Given that goods crossing the land border into the Irish Republic make up only 0.2 percent of all the goods imported into the EU Single Market, and given that if those same goods were instead sent to the Republic by sea only 3% of the trucks would be inspected at the port, it seems unlikely that they could pose any significant risk to the integrity of the EU Single Market.
And given that only a minority of the goods brought into Northern Ireland are destined for onward carriage to the Republic it is obviously disproportionate to subject all of them to EU checks on entry.
However if the EU is genuinely concerned about the risk that their Single Market could be contaminated by unacceptable items in the trickle of goods coming in across the open land border then the UK government could easily seek to allay their fears by passing the export control laws foreshadowed in paragraphs 43 and 62 of the July Command Paper.
There would be no need to seek EU permission to pass and enforce those UK laws, it would be a unilateral step on the part of the UK; and in any case why should either Brussels or Dublin object to a helpful UK move to protect their market?”
January 13, 2022
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/letters/goods-crossing-from-northern-ireland-to-the-republic-are-low-risk-3524731
January 11, 2022
Denis Cooper :
Which items terrify the EU will be smuggled across the Irish border from N.I. in bulk quantities for transhipping to the rest of the EU?
January 11, 2022
Now, what was all that stuff that used to reach NI from the then Czechoslovakia?
Sem…Sem…Sem… hang on a minute, it’ll come to me…
January 11, 2022
put nicely in con text!
January 11, 2022
Semolina?
January 12, 2022
NLH :
Sorry, I should have written/meant to write :
Which items which are legal in the UK (sold for instance in UK high street shops) terrify the EU will be smuggled across the Irish border FROM N.I. TO Ireland in bulk quantities for transhipping to the rest of the EU?
January 12, 2022
Sausages, apparently. Although I haven’t seen anything in the media about the Irish government complaining to the UK that a black market in British sausages has now sprung up thanks to the UK’s indefinite extension of the grace period, with said sausages still free to enter Northern Ireland and then travel on into the Republic without any checks at the land border. Perhaps an interested MP could usefully put down a question to the government asking whether there have been any Irish or EU representations about that? I take it Ireland does have trading standards ofiicers.
January 11, 2022
The BOE only printed the extra money with the consent of the treasury and this government. The current situation regarding inflation lies with this government. The BOE left it too late to put interest rates up, an example of group think from the MPC, too worried about the their owm reputations.
The BOE thought that inflation wouldn’t go up because we say so, school boy mistake.
January 11, 2022
To be fair the FCA (under Andrew Bailey) put personal overdrafts up to circa 39% (one size for all regardless of credit risk) effectively banning them completely for sensible people.
Bailey is obviously a financial and banking genius!
January 11, 2022
The media’s manipulating and misleading behaviour continues: in telling us every other minute about the anonymous selective leaker of allegations from over a year ago (is it Gove, is it Cummings, is it someone from the Treasury?) they carefully conceal the fact that “up to a hundred people” work in Downing St and would have caught the Wuhan virus from each other indoors. They were in a work bubble and would not have “left home” to go in the garden.
January 11, 2022
@rose; Stop bleating. It is irrelevant who leaked, unless you are challenging the authenticity of the said email (& photos?), in fact your logic is akin to wanting the police to criminalise the informant who ‘grassed’, not those who robbed the bank by way of an inside job!
As for your claims about those who work in Downing Street, again irrelevant, at the time only those doing essential work should have been at work [1], mixing together only for essential work related reasons (either socially distanced or wearing PPE), certainly not having a “bring your own” party, indoors or out, both were illegal at the time – nor could those invited have faked ignorance of the law, after all the laws were made in and announced from Downing Street, many of those hundred people you talk of would have been engaged in writing the laws…
[1] there being a ‘Work from home’ directive for all others, or Furlough etc.
January 11, 2022
@rose; “the Wuhan virus”
Might be time to lower the tone of such rhetoric…
There is increasing evidence [1] from the USA that a very similar virus was sent to China via official channels, quite possibly to a Lab in Wuhan, from the USA for research purposes (into future pandemic preparedness), if true this pandemic might actually have its roots in the USA!
[1] as is being reported by Newsmax
January 11, 2022
A bat flew 2,000 miles to Wuhan intending to bite the Bat Lady because she kept messing with its colony.
Much more believable.
January 11, 2022
A virus is named after the place in which it is first identified, not where it necessarily originated. E.g. Russian flu, Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, Kent Variant, South African Variant, Indian variant, Brazilian Variant, Danish Variant, etc.
The original Wuhan Virus or Wuhan Respiratory Virus was renamed by the Communist dominated WHO under duress from the Chinese.
January 12, 2022
@rose; “A virus is named after the place in which it is first identified”
Have it your way then, if the virus sent to China from the USA, for further research into possible future pandemics, and Covid-19 are two and the same it had already been identified in the USA as a SARS-COV-2 virus of concern. So how about using its correct name now, The ‘Atlanta (Georgia) virus’, after were the CDC is based, perhaps better still, how about we ignorantly call it after a recent POTUS (or at least his official residence) who must have surely signed-off on sending such a dangerous virus to the PRC. Nah, how about we cut the political bun fights, the conspiracy theories etc, just use the official WHO designated scientific names?…
January 12, 2022
… who have supported the Head of WHO.
January 12, 2022
@MT; As have many western govts too, the only excepting being the last POTUS, but then he seemed to take a dislike to anyone who would not do what he wanted, even turning on his own VP in the end.
That said, are you perhaps getting mixed up between the current head of WHO and his predecessor?
January 11, 2022
The Government should declare its Green programme a success.
Now they need to move on the energy crisis.
January 11, 2022
There is no clemency for the fact that most of us have done nothing for two years. Surely we are in credit and ahead in our carbon cutting.
Instead they have chosen to double down on green, woke, immigration, big state…
January 11, 2022
The Tories are the Big Estate party.
It’s an easy mistake to make.
January 11, 2022
Have you given up on ever balancing the budget, Sir John? I haven’t. I don’t trust this government – or a Labour one – to spend borrowed money wisely.
January 11, 2022
@ Sea_Warrior – whilst balancing the budget is a commendable and often enough essential aim for households, when you own the Mint and can procure demand for its issue the situation it much changed, such that achieving a balance may well be very sub-optimal.
January 11, 2022
We do indeed need a new economic policies that both promotes growth whilst limiting inflation, for the last 60 years the UK has had one or the other but never both simultaneously. As for the suggestion policies since Brexit have been a reheated version of “Maastricht austerity”, perhaps, but then Maastricht austerity its self was a reheat of post-Keynesian money control theories – at the time very popular here in the UK, strongly advocated by many a Tory advisor or MP….
January 11, 2022
I suggest that everyone at No 10 who organised lockdown-breaking parties should be prosecuted and everyone who attended without exception should resign. Then let’s see who’s left standing to form a new administration.
January 11, 2022
Works for me. The PM has lost – thrown away – the moral authority required to lead.
January 11, 2022
I have been saying for years that Boris was completely unfit to be PM, but even so I am shocked by the latest revelations. Your suggestion is the only way to clear things up. Although they may evade prosecution due to Crown Property being legally exempt from the rules itās clear that a fresh start is required.
They literally wrote one rule for them and one rule for us.
January 11, 2022
Hear, hear, Roy!
January 11, 2022
For the purpose of your comment, you have accepted the misleading picture painted for you by the media. Don’t be so easily manipulated. 100 people work in no 10 in very cramped conditions. The PM, his wife and two babies live in an attic flat above it all. They all work together day and night. It is not a normal situation. Why should these essential workers not be allowed in the garden? They will have caught the Wuhan virus from each other indoors. Do you really think 30 of them should resign?
January 11, 2022
The justification you have given ….. they work together, so they should be allowed a garden party together ….. did not apply to the rest of the population.
January 11, 2022
I have little sympathy for them. However much more importantly I don’t want Boris Johnson to go until he has sorted out the mess he has made in Northern Ireland, admittedly building on the mess made by Theresa May.
January 11, 2022
I don’t have sympathy either; I don’t know them. But I don’t like humbug and we have had bucketsful of it today. Like you, I don’t want the instability of changing administrations before we are properly out.
January 11, 2022
Too many people wanted lockdown, they didn’t want to go out to work in May last year, they wanted full furlough to continue for much longer than it did, heck there are still people who want lockdown now. School teachers didn’t want to teach, hospitals didn’t want people to visit their sick and dying in hospitals, my goodness nurses didn’t even want people to sit near to each other in a park and were on social media all the time telling everyone to stay in. Nurses were roundly criticised for organising Tik Tok group dances after work and filming them on the wards before this Downing St Party so these people knew the public reaction to these ‘cheer ourselves up whilst working’ ideas.
Either these people in Downing Street didn’t think Covid was as serious as we were being told and they weren’t at risk? Were they vaccinated long before the rest of us? How many of them caught covid in May 2020? Pubs were closed, why is drinking such a thing in parliament it should all be stopped, no parliamentary bars, no drinking at work.
January 11, 2022
A quite sensible suggestion.
+1
January 11, 2022
Roy
Not in any way defending Boris or his staff, as it was very poor judgement at the time no matter what the thinking.
But was it really a Party ?
Was he there?
He was probably somewhere about, given it is both his home and his office.
Were people from outside invited, or was it limited to those who worked in the office, who were already mixing freely with each other inside whilst at work.
Certainly we do not want one rule for them and another for us, but surely we have many more important things to resolve do we not.
January 11, 2022
I wonder alan if one person, just one questioned in writing to the boss whether this after work soiree was a good idea or not? Or did they all think they were immune from the rules set for the rest of us?
Was this all an elaborate set-up to be used at a later time to attempt to get rid of the PM, history is littered with people with big information that they sit on.
January 12, 2022
a-tracy
All speculation at the moment but:
One report suggests/alleges that one of those invited actually replied by e mail “Is this for real”
Given it is reported 100 staff were invited, and between 30 and 40 turned up, perhaps the majority thought it was not a good idea, and had more common sense than the person who initiated the idea.
Could and should Boris have stopped it, unquestionably yes, if he actually knew about it in advance.
January 12, 2022
Boris should have stopped it BUT and it’s a big BUT – one has to delegate. Directors/Senior execs and even Ministers who fail to delegate do not have sufficient time to devote to their primary responsibilities. The Heads of Social Services such as the chap in Bradford gets clean away from trouble on Ā£120,000 per annum – no responsibility. It will be very interesting to see what KPMG do with the head of the auditing team.
People often think Managers don’t delegate because they’re worried someone else will do a better job. I don’t believe that, when a manager screws up it falls back on the Boss that chose that Manager. He obviously chose the wrong man to run this department to consider and invite so many people to this rather large outdoor meeting whilst telling everyone else only two households to meet outside.
When you worked throughout covid even in the first lockdown, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, etc. I feel you were more relaxed because you were spending time with different households all day long, taking risks for just 20% more pay than furloughed people that we’ll all have to pay more taxes to pay that ‘loan’ back now. So I actually do understand the mentality of well we’re all working together, we’re distanced outside therefore it is safer outside. But Tik Tok nurses were getting a pasting at the time for learning routines on the ward and dancing in groups of just ten or twenty so what the heck did this Manager think would happen if that got out – he knew – yet he still organised it. They need a JR in the PM’s office someone that has been around the block and could see that this was a headline waiting to happen.
January 11, 2022
Net Zero.
Stop growth.
Rey on imports.
Price gas boilers off the road.
Build more useless windmills.
Price motorists off the road.
Put the clock back 200 years.
We urgently need a new centre right party.
January 11, 2022
+1 – but the Tories have never been a party of small government, low taxes and far less red tape – they just claim to be before elections. They are well to the left of centre now.
Thatcher a partial exception but even she failed in many ways. Income tax top rate was 60% under Thatcher most of the time. At a higher threshold though in real terms.
January 11, 2022
Let’s discuss real inflation then, and not the figure kept artificially low by consisting mainly of consumer products made ever cheaper by automation, and by production in low-wage economies etc.
That is, the cost of things that are actually worth having, such as somewhere reasonable to live and free time, yes, free time. Many employees are seldom free of their work because they are expected to be within contact at all times, and yet they are not paid for this. If they were to demand it, then it would likely cost them their job.
I won’t recite yet again the disastrous effects of lax credit requirements and low interest rates on the first.
We see them all around us, and yet hear no proposals to address this from the Tories.
January 11, 2022
Also shrinkflation and declining quality.
I have refitted bathroom and kitchen items with high quality furniture but the fittings that came with them (cistern internals, drainage parts, plugs etc) were in no way top drawer. I’ve had to adapt and bodge in all of them – yet another repair yesterday morning… my local plumbing merchant has asked me if I want to take out an account with them ! Friends in trade are reporting the same. “We are paying top prices but not getting top quality.” Pre Brexit, pre pandemic.
Real inflation has been with us for a long while. The things that really count – shelter and transport – are rampant.
I also caught one famous clothing shop mid change – to resize a shirt and found that the one they replaced it with was nothing like the one I’d bought “Oh. This is the new supply of the same product number.”
January 11, 2022
so who is making, shipping in these low standard parts?
Let me guess – a slow boat from…
January 11, 2022
I sympathise.
I now buy sanitary ware etc. from only European Union suppliers, but have had no reason to try since brexit.
The stuff that I got from Spain and from Germany was tip-top. On the other hand, I had earlier to change a cistern made in China three times before I got one that did not leak through porous ceramic.
January 11, 2022
I sympathise, more and more people are realising how cheap (dumping) and nasty these Chinese goods are.
Unchecked capitalism, with sheer mass produced – they are encouraged to flood markets with the second rate goods.
January 12, 2022
Yep, look for the CE mark.
January 11, 2022
Difficult ask Sir John as the government’s tools to promote growth (quantitative easing and immigration) fuel inflation in the housing and market and create demand in day to day costs of living which brings inflation.
Time to stop printing and properly restrict benefits to immigrants so only those who can afford to move can come.
January 11, 2022
I am shocked at the way the BoD has behaved in printing money, obviously in collaboration with the Chancellor and PM. I can remember our host’s reassurances that the vast money printing and borrowing, largely from ourselves, should not present too much of a problem. But I just do not believe it.
We are already experiencing some nasty inflation plus the self inflicted energy price rises. I believe these will continue without a radical change of direction by Government which looks highly unlikely under our present very socialist leadership dressed up as conservative.
January 11, 2022
Not everyone wants growth. Many people just want to earn a decent living, have some money left over for holidays and to treat themselves now and again.
It’s government that wants growth, so they can expand the state even more and massage their dire spending incontinence.
January 11, 2022
+1
Growth = perpetual rapid change = NOT conservatism.
January 11, 2022
Indeed.Planned growth….isn’t that just a little bit Bolshevik?!
January 11, 2022
Well for now they’re running round like headless chickens wondering why we were taking any notice of their Covid rules. Clearly they knew the risk was low to them, we knew the risk was low to us, so an explanation please for their silly rules.
Then we can get on with more serious stuff like this.
January 11, 2022
+1 and yet they are still appallingly demanding school kids wear masks all day at school!
January 11, 2022
S J S. I listened to the Joe Rogan interview with Dr Robert Malone this w/e and he is surely right that the intention was and is to impose Covid passports on us. They must not win.
January 11, 2022
I agree, BOF. Blair tried digital ID cards when he was PM. Now he and his friends are trying again. Covid was an opportunity for the WEF’s Great Reset, according to Klaus Schwab. I see no reason to disbelieve that. In November 2020 he told told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs it will ‘lead to a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity’. We have been warned.
January 11, 2022
“We need an economic policy based on promoting growth and limiting inflation” to replace the current agenda of stifling growth and stoking inflation.
Simple abolish net zero, renewable subsidies, the climate change act, HS2, soft loans for worthless degrees, halve the size of the state, cut & simplify taxes, freedom of choice and fair level playing field competition in health care and education, a bonfire of red tap, cull test and trace and demand the money back… just get the mainly parasitic state out of the damn way.
January 11, 2022
Sadly, and whilst these suggestions are first class I doubt very much if there is the guts or abilities within the Government to implement.
January 11, 2022
To sum up, “give up investigating and prosecuting fly-tipping” and all analogous practices.
We’ve seen the results of exactly that, from Southern Water’s abuses to the cladding outrage.
January 11, 2022
The need to deal with fly tipping is mainly the result of excessive charges (effectively another tax) for legal tipping.
January 12, 2022
Do you think that CT payers should subsidise the trades, then?
January 11, 2022
Your example is poor
Southern Water were prosecuted and fined Ā£90 million.
Hardly left to carry on without investigation or prosecution is it NHL?
January 11, 2022
The inhabitants of the SE will pay that fine.
On the other hand, the CE of Southern Water recently picked up his customary bonus of nearly Ā£600,000.
My understanding is that the restrictions have since been waived anyway – albeit nominally “temporarily”.
January 11, 2022
*let alone even being sacked.
January 11, 2022
And they have been required to improve their future performance.
Isn’t that what you demand NHL?
January 12, 2022
For such egregious damage to the environment and for wrecking industries such as the Whitstable oyster export, in many countries the responsible person would go to prison.
The material harm is immeasurably greater than the removal of a statue, for instance.
January 12, 2022
The alternative to discharge into the sea during times of high sudden rainfall would be flooded streets.
Billions have been and are being invested in the infrastructure to increase capacity.
What would your decision be if your were Southern Water’s managing director ?
January 18, 2022
P2, you appear to know that Ā£3.2bn were spent by Southern Water on its network and infrastructure between 2015 and 2020, and Ā£4bn are to be similarly spent between 2020 and 2025.
But ā¦ a look at the Annual Reports between 2015 and 2020 shows that on average the money inputs are around Ā£800-850m/year from customers (82%) and the remaining 18% from ānew financesā. As for the outputs, the day-to-day running of the network takes 24%, its maintenance 23% and the building of new assets (investment) 11%, the rest being covered by maturing debt (13%), interests of debt (17%) and 12% on tax, licences and profit (only 3% likely to be distributed to shareholders).
So it is not true that ābillions have been invested in the infrastructure to increase capacityā as as shown in the Annual Reports, over five years 11% of about Ā£4bn (5*Ā£800m) is just Ā£400-450m.
Interestingly Southern Water (Annual Report 2020-21, p.10) is planning to spend Ā£122.5 million over five years (2020-2025) for dealing with wastewater spillage following the Ofwat investigation (southernwater.co.uk/ofwat-investigation) for spills occurred between 2015 and 2020.
These potentially include āCustomer Redress Measuresā, which means that obviously all this money will not go to improving the infrastructure.
As interestingly this same report accepts the conclusions of the Drinking Water Inspectorate showing that the Event Risk Index Metric related to drinking water quality deteriorated and was only 92% of what it should have been.
So your comment, as so often with all you are posting, is a meaningless poorly-informed one. But keep up posting, it is so entertaining proving you wrong.
January 12, 2022
Is this a New Year resolution, Martin? Sticking to real issues instead of irrational wild nonsense?
Good you finally join in things that are not fantasy accusations.
January 11, 2022
I see that US inflation is now around 7%.
January 11, 2022
A lot of that is down the US President and his anti shale gas executive orders.
January 11, 2022
As you imply, an opportunity missed. Not at all Conservative. Una disastre.
January 11, 2022
Do politicians read blogs? Or just notice the Daily Mail and the BBC?
A quick surf of the net will show how much everybody detests this government and its insane policies.
A change of leadership now is essential.
January 11, 2022
We’ve been changing Leaders / PM’s since Blair left office. It hasn’t worked much. Three Tory Leaders since 2016. Not a good look.
January 11, 2022
Yeah, but there’s a sullen truth hidden there.
The two halves of those who detest this government probably hate each other even more.
They are, those who are enraged at its failure to deliver a right wing thug state, and those who see it as already too far down that road.
January 11, 2022
Give us proof and data and facts for your outrageous claim NHL
January 12, 2022
Peter 2
You never provide facts
January 12, 2022
Try thinking about how debating works Billy.
First one person makes an outrageous claim and says its true.
Then someone says, what facts, date or proof do you have to back up that assertion.
In this example NHL made some vague claims so I asked him for evidence to support his views.
See how it works?
January 13, 2022
It’s a hypothesis.
If people wish to attack it, then they can provide evidence to do so.
Or they can use the occasion to display their own ridiculous double standards.
January 11, 2022
As each day passes the announcements on the direction this government is taking this country get worse and worse. We are now completely off track and it appears that those in charge are doing absolutely nothing about it.
Bribing farmers to reduce food producing land, letting huge trawlers destroy our fishing grounds, doing nothing about the energy crisis, putting up taxes and heading head long into a period of unnecessary inflation. Not to mention filling up our hotels with long-stay illegal immigrants.
The only conclusion can be that we have a bunch of lunatics in charge led by a PM that has come completely off his trolley.
January 11, 2022
+100
January 11, 2022
To repeat what I said a little while ago.
“Those the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
January 11, 2022
Sir John’s area of expertise is the economy – so he should be listened to.
He is less expert on the subject of arrogance and hypocrisy, something Johnson is very experienced in demonstrating.
The revelations that his Principal Private Secretary organised and invited 100 people to a BYOB Garden Party held on 20 May 2020, when the rest of the country was effectively placed in an Open Prison, should lead to his (Johnson’s) resignation. Johnson attended this party. The PPS, and everyone else who attended this ILLEGAL EVENT, should be sacked – IF they don’t do the decent thing and resign first.
What this demonstrates is that Johnson and his Government KNEW that the virus was not dangerous for the vast majority. If they had believed their own propaganda, they would not have “risked their own lives” to attend a garden party.
I am sickened by what these arrogant, hypocritical, entitled people have done to the country.
January 11, 2022
After 22 months of the authorities blurring ‘the law’ and ‘guidance’, Donna, I’m not sure I would know any more what was legal or not in May 2020.
Maybe it depends on the invitee list. Were they all working in the same ‘bubble’ at 10 Downing St.? If so, I might grudgingly let them off.
January 11, 2022
Donna :
āWhat this demonstrates is that Johnson and his Government KNEW that the virus was not dangerous for the vast majority. If they had believed their own propaganda, they would not have ārisked their own livesā to attend a garden party.ā
Completely correct.
But having locked everyone down for a disease which was only fatal to the elderly and those with existing health issues, they decided they had to carry on with the policy rather than admit the mistake.
January 11, 2022
@ Original Richard
“only fatal to the elderly and those with existing health issues”
What a really stupid and ill-informed comment, which insults the memory of the deceased. The Chinese plague virus has taken 175,000 souls here, many people who have lost their lives were young, fit and healthy. The worst fatalities total in Europe and the sixth worst in the world. The ignorance of that comment is breathtaking
January 11, 2022
Wrong SG
Look at the data.
The majority are over 80
January 13, 2022
Peter 2,
Look at the data, you never provide data and when you comment on it , it is usually wrong as well. Hilarious
January 18, 2022
What a cop out, P2, a majority: what does it say exactly, 90%? 80%? 70%? Or have you heard this on the grapevine and have no idea what the actual number might be.
As I am a good guy and always keen on helping improving the āmassesā, Iāll tell you: According to ons.gov.uk āDeaths from Covid-19 by age bandsā, at the end of 2020, for England and Wales, 80,830 people had been registered dead from Covid of which 49,325 were over 80.
So be happy, it is indeed a majority as 49,325 is bigger than 40,416. Well done!
January 12, 2022
How you can accuse another person of ignorance while so brazenly showing yourself up is no less breathtaking, Sakara. Even Worldometer says there were 150,000 Covid deaths, not 175,000. It lists no fewer than 26 countries with a higher death rate per million – the statistic that matters – than Britain’s. (Total deaths from anything will depend on population size.) And of course Original Richard is entirely right about the mortality profile of/with Covid, as you would know if you ever troubled to check what you’re saying.
January 12, 2022
define many from the 151k ‘deaths’ which are mainly people who had severe health problems already.
January 12, 2022
MT, I read yesterday 75% of the people that died had four other co-morbidities.
What I find really surprising is that a friend of mine, with type 2 diabetes, slightly obese, caught covid he has 8 of 9 common symptoms and has been testing positive for ten days now, he has not received one treatment, not one, no therapeutic drugs at all? He is quite poorly still with a bad cough. I donāt understand why this guy wasnāt given treatment immediately, he has been tested regularly throughout the past two years by a nurse that goes to his home. The minute he reported his covid + status his record should have flared up for early treatment to stop long covid.
January 11, 2022
Lets be open to follow good ideas from the EU when they have them. Recently the EU has come up with an excellent policy – not before time. Nuclear and natural gas are to be defined as ‘green’. the UK should of course match this and accelerate it. By all means let wind and solar companies continue, but lets stop disadvantaging these obvious, EU-approved, technologies which would enable cheap and abundant energy and reliable supply.
January 11, 2022
Richard1 :
Agreed.
January 11, 2022
I wonder what VAT gains the UK has made by stopping third-party importing of items from elsewhere in the world into the UK without having to go through the EU?
January 11, 2022
D’you know Tracy, that thought sprang into my mind too, just as I was swerving to avoid a sudden rockfall.
January 11, 2022
You might think seeking growth is taken as a given, but considering the climate change zealotry that has taken hold of the Conservative party leadership, the Government and the British establishment , you cannot be too sure that they do. Most of the policies most critical to growth , like competitively priced energy , they are pursuing the opposite to generate growth , and you could add to that the restrictive business environment, the costs they happily pile on business, their high tax policies, and so on. So as bizarre as a question it might seem to ask of a supposedly Conservative Government , does the Government actually want growth? For they sure as heck are going in an odd direction to get it.
January 11, 2022
The government (Boris) seems very keen on population growth.
Anyone will do, criminals and jihadists all welcome and we will offer sanctuary to every Afghan, Hong Konger, and anyone else we can welcome to our country. We will leave our own homeless and put you at the top of the years long housing waiting list.
Red carpet treatment ready and waiting for all who are willing to queue jump the asylum process and enter our country illegally.
January 11, 2022
And day in day out we do indeed read some very disturbing reports in the media. Any information that concerned citizens try to seek out is kept under cover and Freedom of Information requests often denied. Questioners in the House fobbed off with inadequate, meaningless or patronising responses. Two recently come to mind, costs & the like relating to migrant accommodations & provision. Perfectly reasonable & important questions raised concerning accommodation for foreign nationals in a local hotel by a councillor in N. Ireland being met with “a wall of silence” ( article on newsletter website ) People are increasingly aware, concerned and very restless on these & all related issues and are sick of the ‘What the eye doesn’t see ……’ none of your business attitude. Well it is our business. People are not going to let all this go, no matter how hard the government tries to sweep things under the carpet and obfuscate. They want answers and action as it affects us all in the end one way or another.
January 11, 2022
I feel sorry for Sir John that he is a member of a party that is headed by Johnson et al who have clearly lied, terrorised and even caused serious illness and the deaths of many. They have also incurred massive debt to the country and bankrupted many businesses while managing to amass great fortunes for themselves.
They and their advisors need to be thoroughly investigated and face justice for their crimes.
January 12, 2022
I think that is complete and utter nonsense Maylor.
If you want a Labour government then that’s fine.
But your statement is ridiculous.
Our PM and Cabinet has followed the advice of Sage throughout.
The UK locked down at around the same time as our neighbouring European nations.
Our scientists and pharmaceutical companies were the ones who developed vaccines in record times.
Crimes…hysterical nonsense.
January 13, 2022
Peter 2
Wrong we locked down later which is why we are high up in terms of death per 100.000.
You are not on top of the facts again
January 13, 2022
Peter 2
We closed down later and therefore we have one of the highest deaths in Western Europe
reply Italy and Belgium closed down early and longer and have a higher death rate.