So we learn that UK state borrowing was £11.3 bn less in the first four months of this financial year than the OBR forecast.Spending was up so the main reason for a further large error once again was understating tax revenues. Income tax was up by a massive 13% . The OBR often understates revenue when the economy grows a little.
I renew my question to Ministers. Why do you make the OBR five year forecast of the deficit the key control on your economic choices? As the OBR cannot get within £10 bn for the immediate year why believe the 5 year forecast? If the OBR model regularly understates tax revenue why accept advice to hike tax rates?
The numbers were further distorted by the transfer of £14 bn to the Bank of England to pay losses, taking the total to an astonishing £24 bn in just four months. The Bank’s decision to sell bonds at the low prices it has driven them down to instead of holding them to repayment has added to the misery and inflated government ex Bank borrowing and spending.
Spending on benefits was up £11bn, on staff costs £8.2 bn and grants to Councils up £3 bn, making a total increase of £24 bn so far this year. If the government would introduce a freeze on public sector recruiting save for key personnel like medics and uniformed roles the government could start to control some of these outgoings.
Debt interest remains very elevated. More than half the stated costs do not entail any cash payments out or additional borrowing given the way the accounts treat indexation of some bonds.
The government needs to look through these confusing numbers and forecasts. The underlying reality is it could cut the rate of increase in spending, boost public sector productivity and cut some tax rates to grow the economy and revenues more. OBR forecasts are an ill fitting restraining jacket that falls apart every time it meets reality. Why keep stitching it up again when it delivers wrong forecasts and wrong policy responses?
August 23, 2023
Good morning.
Cutting spending is a politically sensitive issue given that we are so close to a General Election. The opposition would make great hay over this with any benefits not to be enjoyed until sometime after.
Alas, Sir John the boat on which you place so much on has long since sailed. The time to do much of what you suggest was years ago when your party enjoyed its best ever post 1997 election result. It could have done so much and laid the foundations for success. But your then leader, a financial incompetent, chose to squander it all on Green Nonsense and fake science. You party then compiled it all by stabbing in the back the only PM with an ounce of Conservatism, a rare creature indeed, and put into place what I can only describe as a, Corner Shop Mao Zedong, given his predilection for bold plans that come to nought.
14 Years – Wasted.
August 23, 2023
Only wasted if you’re a Conservative/conservative.
If you’re a closet Socialist and Authoritarian Green Nutter it’s been a resounding success.
August 23, 2023
Accepted Donna. JR must realise all his efforts a futile waste of time over 14 years. A lone voice in the worldliness of his own party who left him 33 years ago! JR living in the belief one day his party might return!
The only beneficiaries socialist Blairetes!! Unbelievable. Mass immigration brought to you by Blaire and Cameron through invasions of Iraq and Lybia. Much talk about NHS bosses being culpable over baby murders, why not ministers over Iraq and Lybia? After all is was all about regime change! We now have regime changes of Johnson and Truss! Any action over Sunak betraying nation to give away N.Ireland to EU? All PMs said no British PM would sanction border down Irish Sea, yet willingly did so with support of Uni party as a whole. They, parliament, betrayed the nation.
I am not sure why JR is surprised with forecasts and reckless borrowing and spending when Treasury and above happy to do so to get rid of elected PM!
August 23, 2023
He’s trying to explain to the PM why he’s going o be sacked. Do you want jim to stop explaining?
August 24, 2023
Lynne,
If that were true he had no success over 14 years and three PMs!
August 23, 2023
India lands space rocket on moon, after UK gives it £2.3 billion in overseas aid!! JR’s party and govt should be ashamed of itself while we have the highest taxation in 70 years!
August 23, 2023
Hope
Absolutely disgraceful, we also give aid to China and Ukraine to build nuclear reactors
Surely someone is having a laugh at our expense, talk about rubbing our noses in it
We have the highest taxes in 70 years and the worst ever services
August 24, 2023
Reparations for Empire.
August 23, 2023
I tend to agree Donna ….the last 14yrs has been what the ‘new-tories’ wanted …just another step to the left
August 23, 2023
True enough Mark.
It would also be a mistake to make a change in OBR methodology now to makes the Government spending position look better. Labour will be in power in 2024 and they’d take great delight in using this extra capacity to inflate state spending even further… Hard to criticise them when they would still claim to be better than the (old methodolgy) figures.
August 23, 2023
Mark B
Agreed, it is a tragedy and it is far too late for the non conservative party to save itself from anialation.
August 23, 2023
That should be ‘anihilation’.
August 23, 2023
They are going to get screwed either way.
August 23, 2023
Yesterday’s news told me all what is wrong with this country.
Homeless Brits families from London being relocated up north and our local council buying newbuiilds for refugees.
It really is time to clear out the stables.
August 23, 2023
My wife and I saw the same report on ITV news and were disgusted that a working couple with a child were living in a tent and no accommodation, yet this Government escorts illegal immigrants from French waters and puts them in 4* hotels, all expenses, health education, dentistry and pocket money. Never deports them and looks for reasons to allow their stay. It’s a National emergency but we’re run by soft left fools who won’t challenge the French farce but gives them almost £50 million to sort it out. Send them back. Tell France, NOT ASK. End of.
August 23, 2023
+1 but Sunak is all hot air and zero delivery. Then again on Net Zero we do not want delivery as this is a totally insane agenda.
August 23, 2023
£500 million
August 23, 2023
@Mark B – But, cutting the size of the State to fit into with what we can afford, is needed and would work. With the Conservative Government cancelling the economy on the back personal self esteem and ego we no longer have the money or the means to create it
August 23, 2023
MarkB, I have my own problems and concerns about the government, but if everyone is upset at the moment that the government causes higher inflation, then surely the first twelve years were considered a great success in keeping inflation historically very low and mortgage rates the lowest they’ve been in 100 years for 12 years.
We seem to follow the USA on interest rates so there is another 0.25% to go.
August 23, 2023
a-tracy
The inflation figures are ‘cooked’. They do not take into account items that we have to pay such as the London Mayors Precipt which was well over inflation. Neither does it take into account insurance and a whole range of other costs. You mention historic low interest rates. Well great if you were borrowing large amounts and fuelling both an asset bubble and housing bubble. Pity those now who cannot afford a home, either to buy or to own, now people have over borrowed with rising interest rates. Do you think those properties that are going to be repossessed will go to homeless Brits ? I don’t. I think they will be sold to house illegals in.
August 24, 2023
I’m not confident in the inflation figures, Mark. I checked the basket of goods, and many of the products they use are branded, and their price rises very high just before the check is done and comes right down; there are also good, lower cost alternatives to those brands. I wasn’t aware it didn’t consider insurance a big cost for businesses and households now.
Londoners chose Khan; if they can’t be bothered to come out and vote for someone else offering better value, it is their own fault. That’s what I tell my kids.
Yes, I pitied all the pension savers who didn’t have a public sector pension and who were hoping their £100,000 in pension savings would buy them a better annuity than £4,500 at 65 years of age during the low-interest years, then were getting very low returns on their savings that they were hoping would top up their low annuity. It’s always swings and roundabouts.
I was amazed at the fixed-rate deals my kids got on mortgages; never in my life had I seen such good deals. I warned them all that at the end of the fixed term; it could double, triple or quadruple, so pay down the extra 10% per annum now while the rate is so low. I experienced two extremely high peaks of interest, 14% and 17%, during our mortgage. It nearly killed us financially as our home dropped £35,000 in value in six months, and we’d have ended up in negative equity. We both took on so much extra work ourselves, so we didn’t have to sell our home at least we didn’t have time to spend any money!
Now, the gig economy is coming under attack, and I know people taking on gig work at weekends to make ends meet, supporting their partners in part-time work whilst their children are little.
The way credit card debt is allowed to explode on an individual is one of the worst aspects of finance to me in the last twenty years, people living way beyond their means and capabilities, when the chickens come home to roost they claim insolvency and all cautious people have to pay their bills.
August 23, 2023
Whether any prediction is useful is known only after the event. OBR forecasters predict heat and snow arrives. They are upside down and backward. Holding an umbrella by its spike to capture snowflakes in its canopy would have more effect than their blizzard of uselessness. The most accurate prediction OBR forecasts is that they are wrong.
August 23, 2023
There’s nothing ‘funny’ about it, it’s deadly serious. It is evidence of the authorities descent into the world of the unreal whose only purpose is absolute and total deceit.
We need an absolute cut in total State spending not a cut in the rate of increase which of course simply adds to Labour’s undeclared policy of State dependency and an expansion of public sector, unionised power
August 23, 2023
In terms of “deceit” there is an article “Environmentalism: where democracy goes to die” – by Fraser Myers on ‘Spiked Online’ that is very well worth reading.
Ever wondered how we got all these ‘Green’ policies? Fraser describes the history of ‘Net Zero’ well – including the fact that no one is being honest about the real costs and impacts on voters lives….
“….So perhaps it’s little wonder, then, that politicians have failed to engage, let alone enthuse, the public with their grand ambitions for the climate. It’s why we’ve yet to see a party manifesto or major political speech spelling out in any serious detail the austerity and lifestyle restrictions to come. Because the reality of these policies is people being made poorer and colder.”
Which doesn’t sound like a vote winner to me.
August 23, 2023
Indeed we do. Cut welfare with time limits, cost of living payments should go and the state reduced in all its forms. If they halved the number we wouldn’t notice, except the overall bill. They are not working anyway as no one answers the phone or responds to query’s.
August 23, 2023
They may talk ‘center right’ but walk ‘center left’
August 23, 2023
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Not-a-Conservative-Government, the Bank of England and the OBR are on a joint mission to compound the wreckage of the economy already caused by the Covid and Net Zero lunacies.
14 years ago taxpayers were forced to bail out the High St banks. Now we’re effectively being forced to bail out the Bank of England.
The WEF’s plan that “You will own nothing” is coming along at quite a pace under the two Puppets in Nos. 10 and 11.
August 23, 2023
@Donna – and the rest of the World is part of the bail out. The UK doesn’t figure
August 23, 2023
+many. Spot on. No accident or coincidence. All bodies in cahoots to achieve the aim. It cannot be collective stupidity.
August 23, 2023
Donna,
Agreed!
And all this fuss about the government not being able to stop the ULEZ in London is puzzling, it was Grant Shapps and the government who instructed TFL in the first place! If they started it, surely they can call a halt to it? Or perhaps they don’t want to?
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/extraordinary-funding-and-financing-agreement-may-2020.pdf
August 23, 2023
There is no higher legislative authority in the UK that is above the UK Parliament. Ultimate responsibility goes to them.
August 23, 2023
ULEZ is the government plan
August 23, 2023
+1
August 23, 2023
+1
August 23, 2023
That is often attributed to the WEF on here. Do you have a link?
August 23, 2023
Ah, I found this.
So, not policy but something to talk about re technology.
Personally I like the idea of whistling up a driverless car to take me shopping etc. – as long as, obviously, it’s affordable for a humble chap like me.
As for home ownership – for most people the bank owns it for most of their lives anyway.
August 23, 2023
Donna
You are right. But what a staggering thought, the tax payer, bailing out the BoE.
August 23, 2023
Well the answer is obvious. Sunak wants a 2% cut in income tax as a sweetener before he is forced to call the next election. Hey presto! The Treasury borrowing figures magically fall into line
Incidentally, we do live in a democracy. Sunak has now been Prime Minister for ten months. I don’t remember being given an opportunity to vote for him and neither has the country. He was elected unopposed as Conservative leader in October 2022 and was annointed prime minister by a narrow group of Conservative MP’s and party activists.
This undemocratic system must change. A new leader of the governing party should be forced to call a general election within one month of taking office.
August 23, 2023
@ Sakara Gold – and why not a general election after every cabinet reshuffle too, even where a minister has died in office?
August 23, 2023
Plus he (and Hunt) was rejected by party members for leadership but just as in Brexit, MPs didn’t like the result so thought they would overturn the democratic will of party members and thus a coup on Liz Truss, the only true Conservative Prime Minister in over 30 years, was performed. In doing so, the anything but Conservative Parliamentary Party have arranged their own political suicide and good riddance to them. I am filled with dread at the thought of a Starmer/Rayner Government but I detest the idea of a Sunak/Hunt one as well.
I despair for our country.
August 23, 2023
+1
Hear, hear.
August 23, 2023
Only the people of Richmond get to vote for Sunak – and NOT to be PM but to the their MP. Party members get a vote for the leader of their party, unless the Party Machine intervenes, but then the Party Members have to get control of that machine or bypass it. That goes for all political parties.
It’s staggering that after years on this blog many have no clue how British Democracy works.
August 23, 2023
We understand it but consider it outdated and in urgent need of REFORM so we can get rid of the legacies and have the ability to have a meaningful vote and referendums on the important issues like…………….NET ZERO. MASS IMMIGRATION.
August 23, 2023
Net zero, mass open door migration, the size (and usually total misdirection of government), the absurdly high tax levels, energy policy, the dire state monopoly NHS, the vast damage done by the net harm Covid Vaccines are surely the main important issues
Kahn with his bogus bought science want to link opponents of ULEZ with Covid Deniers and Vaccine Deniers. But clearly no one “denies” Vaccines or Covid. It is however very clear that the reaction to Covid with lockdowns did far more harm than good, that the Covid vaccines especially for the young did far more harm than good (the young never even needed them anyway). It almost certainly came from the lab after gain of function experiments too. But then the government bought and chose their “science” too and rubbished the rather better scientists.
August 23, 2023
You understand that those who pose the referendum question are in control? You think that the general population – which pays MP to spend time examining the detail (as John Redwood does) before voting should make a decision on the budget and vote on the way home?
There is NO improved system on the FPTP electoral system and the British public are RIGHT to want 2 parties rather than a plethora, it means they can appoint and dismiss a government, if you can’t do that you do not have Democracy no matter how often you vote.
The problem lies in the perversion of the Party Machines which have become the gateway to a way of life that most on the lists could never achieve and should never achieve.
August 23, 2023
It is clearly is not remotely democratic they have not even delivered a proper Brexit yet and it looks like they never will. One vote every five years for the least bad of two of three options and people who never do what they promise anyway is not remotely democracy. We also in the UK seem to have rule of unelected judges and lawyers. Sunak will not even dare to have a net zero referendum as he would clearly lose by a huge majority.
The rise in tax levels in the UK over the past few decades is huge. CGT up to 28% no indexation & allowance now trivial, double taxation of landlord interest, stamp duty was 1% no up to 15%, IHT allowance just £325k now worth almost nothing, IPT insurance tax was 0% now 12%, council tax vast increases, no tax relief for medical insurance, vast increases in Corp. Tax, Carbon taxes, landfill taxes, large NI increases charging for many things that were free… then we have the back door taxes with the rigging of the energy, transport and banking market, the attack on older cars, the motorist muggings, landlord licencing… Yet public service get worse and worse by the day.
August 23, 2023
L L
That is why the CONS have not a prayer of getting back so we will have Starmer, with Blair in close proximity. But I will still not vote for Sunak/Hunt.
August 23, 2023
The politicians are too busy giving away our money to all countries in the world, LL. Take India as an example! Millionaires like Sunak keep their hands out of their pockets while galloping around the world throwing away our money. India has just been able to afford to land on the moon but we are expected to feed their poor!
We need Reform UK to clean out the pig house!
August 23, 2023
So SELECT the candidates that you want to represent you who will vote the way you want the, to vote instead of meekly surrendering that critical power to functionaries employed in the Parties.
August 23, 2023
Neither was Winston Churchill, James Callahan, John Major, Gordon Brown, Theresa May or Liz Truss. And I am sure there are a good few others.
It is how our system works. The issue I have, is the current usurper got the gig contrary to the rules of the game.
“He ain’t my PM bruv'”
August 23, 2023
The state apparatus and it’s apparatchiks are out of control and, it seems, beyond control.
August 23, 2023
Perhaps the government should look at the backgrounds of senior personnel at the OBR? And then review its hiring practises? But I suspect that our lazy government won’t.
August 23, 2023
@Sea_Warrior
Maybe we should hire a monkey and a dart board for our forecasts …… cheaper than the OBR.
August 23, 2023
This method (monkey or human dart thrower random choice) usually do better than 90%+ of investment advisors after their charges I understand!
August 23, 2023
And probably more accurate.
August 23, 2023
There’s no point in attempting to reform and improve an inefficient and incompetent organisation riddled with thinkers who thus mislead others and the country’s decision makers. Not enough change is ever achieved in such organisations and with most people remaining in place the failures return.
Abolish the OBR and do not replace it. The same ought to be applied to many other worthless and wasteful groups. We will never get improvements to our society and country until such courage is applied.
August 23, 2023
Far better to replace the OBR with a private sector think tank including people from industry as well as economists and bankers.
There would need to be a watertight restriction on recruitment to totally exclude any civil servants or former civil servants.
August 23, 2023
Sort of agree.
Just ask the likes of J P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, PWC and others to submit private forecasts. The government would soon know who was on track.
August 23, 2023
MarkB, These forecasts are known and collected by HM Treasury.
See gov.uk ‘Forecasts for the UK economy’. Last update is 16 August 2023, ie one week ago, No.433, 25 p.
So that information is known within the Treasury, the Government and any MP curious enough to look at them.
August 24, 2023
Cheers
August 23, 2023
Agreed. It’s the Treasury’s responsibility to forecast and control the economy, not its subordinates – the BOE or OBR. The Treasury and it’s boss, the First Lord of the Treasury, stand or fall on doing this job well.
August 23, 2023
The PW, ++++ Two brief paragraphs and five short sentences and unqualified sound sense throughout.
I’d also venture that remaining in a Party which has no ability or inclination to listen to such good advice is an act of utter futility.
August 23, 2023
As the OBR has made its name for being wrong. We must ask what value it brings to the decision making process of government?
Looking back over the years, only the IMF is worse that the OBR for a history of failure to accurately project future economics.
If any of us employed an accounting dept. that was as far out on projected year end financial results as the OBR consistently is, we would fire the lot of them!
August 23, 2023
Specialist knowledge as Lifelogic bores on about CO2 is beyond most/all politicians, even worse in their their ‘juvenile’ advisers and if you add a lack of intellectual rigour plus a herd mentality, this is what you get.
Always has been across the political spectrum, always will be. I cannot recall a politician like Jacqui Smith at the Home Office who gave up acknowledging she wasn’t up to it.
More should but ambition, hubris, arrogance prevents it.
August 23, 2023
Totally agreed. Never an admission that they are wrong or change their minds when the facts or common sense emerge. HS2, net zero, mass immigration, high taxation, Windsor Agreement EU Trade Agreement. etc etc. Fools advised by fools.
August 23, 2023
What is it about institutions in this country that when serious allegations are made, the whistleblower still gets sacked and the perpetrator gets to cover it up?
The highly disturbing situation at the British Museum, where thousands of valuable historical items have been stolen and sold on Ebay, is a case in point. The Trustees of the museum were advised two years ago that the thefts were occuring. How many more priceless objects were lifted whilst the management were denying that anything untoward was going on?
August 23, 2023
Curious that the British Museum thought George Osborne was qualified to be their Chairman.
August 23, 2023
In the case of the BM, they said they had held a serious investigation and found nothing wrong. Obviously not everything is catalogued so they could not tell if things were missing or not. The usual incompetence led by another incompetent, one George Osborne, at whose feet can be laid a lot of our troubles with the fruitless austerity programme and the OBR. Politicians have too much unbridled power – that one man can wreak such havoc on our economy with no let or hindrance must be wrong and we are going to pay for his experimentation for decades to come.
August 23, 2023
@Graham1946
I am staggered to find that I am in agreement with you on these points. Don’t forget that Osborne also demanded that Dr Fox eviscerate the British Army in the disastrous and malign 2012 SDSR. Foxy, who knew nothing about defence whatsoever, to his eternal shame carried out this brief rather than resign.
August 23, 2023
Oh Portillo beat him to that achievement. But then Portillo famously said he feels ‘more than half Spanish’ (therefore less than half British).
August 23, 2023
Agreed, “The government needs to look through these confusing numbers and forecasts” but it does not want to, does it, or it would have done sometime in the last thirteen years.
Just as with the boats invasion, we must conclude the OBR’s antics suit this government very well.
August 23, 2023
All of these billions are only putting me to sleep – boring boring – if only the Treasury and the Bank ran their affairs the same as I run my household then there would be no problem with funny numbers – ‘don’t spend it if you don’t have it’
August 23, 2023
This joke certainly doesn’t get considered for Fringe ‘Joke of the Year.
August 23, 2023
I’d like to thank our host for being so consistently persuasive, hard hitting, accurate and correct, in pointing out the problems created by HMG and the likes of the OBR and the Bank.
No organisation should be so wrong footed, so inaccurate – their models don’t work, and the resulting policies quickly become shambolic.
If they are using computers to forecast then I would suggest that either they don’t understand the data going in or they are deliberately feeding in inaccurate data to come up with results to throw the economy to the wolves.
Where is all of this nonsense taking us, when HMG is doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons – and this goes way beyond mere incompetence – their intention, CLEARLY, is to destroy the British financial system.
August 23, 2023
B H
Yes, destruction of the British economy!
August 23, 2023
+1
August 23, 2023
Bryan Harris
You have an uncanny knack of hitting the nail on the head every time!
August 23, 2023
I cannot say definitively why the OBR get their forcasts so wrong. Is it down to incompetence or are they part of that parallel political movement that would govern outside the constraints of democracy. If you remember, the one that ended Liz Truss’s premiership.
We have had evidence of this same movement in the legal profession today telling government, the law makers, that they cannot prevent the expansion of London ULEZ. It indicates to me that not only do we need a new government , but we need a government that realises the dire need to put would be parallel government firmly back in its box and essentially rethink many aspects of devolution, which has proved not only to have desireable aspects, but contains many of the qualities of a Trojan horse at the same time.
August 23, 2023
Were all those increases in Benefits, staff wages etc., in the OBR predictions? If not, why not? You can’t put the NMW up 10% and not expect people to keep their differentials for their extra skills, training and experience. You can’t put Universal credit up 10% and not expect a big rise in benefits. To the asylum seekers count as benefits or foreign aid?
August 23, 2023
I can see no reason why the government would allow the discredited Andrew Bailey to lose £24bn in four months through selling bonds he did not need to dispose of.
Tax revenues since Liz Truss was ousted in that very civilised establishment coup, have more than justified her tax cutting, go-for growth agenda. But, instead, interest rates continue to rise and few can doubt that Bailey will carry on until eventually experts conclude he has overdone the pain and damaged the prospects for growth, at least as much as Sunak and Hunts have done by raising taxes, especially Corporation tax and failing to index income tax allowances.
Hopeless !
August 23, 2023
Sunak, Hunt, Bailey – totally out of touch millionaires who will never feel the pain they are inflicting on the rest of us. Sunak when Chancellor was happy for his wife to be a non dom to escape the tax burdens he imposed on the rest of us, only surprised he didn’t make himself a non dom too.. Only the little people pay tax. Hypocrites the lot of them.
August 24, 2023
the ‘little people’ being the ones who make the economy !
August 23, 2023
Isn’t the problem that we have a Conservative Government, frightened of its own shadow and is refusing to ‘manage’
Tax cuts would be lovely, but this Conservative Government has created a borrowing explosion, it is expected to rise to 103% of GDP by the end of the year. Up from 40% when the Tories took power. Who pays, we do and that before the horrendous cost of the get alone NetZero doctrine nonsense. They keep adding to the bill without managing the result, in fact they seem to suggest its no ones responsibility. They keep building the empire, throwing money anywhere that will take but never achieve a result.
This Conservative Government needs to get a grip, it has been put in charge. Public expenditure is 100% a reflection on their capabilities, the OBR, the BoE is 100% their abilities on show, the growth of the State machinery is 100% the result of their direction. This list of this Conservative Governments failures is ridiculous.
If only they had allowed an economy to grow and flourish they would have created the wealth for the UK to tackle what ever is thrown at it – this Conservative Government has sort to destroy the UK.
August 23, 2023
The ultimate solution of course is for the government to just stop doing things we could do better for ourselves.
August 23, 2023
Exactly! Ie almost everything apart from Justice and Defence.
The State should be banned from engaging in business and should own nothing.
August 23, 2023
These models need to be made public.
If they are good then the City will be able to use them to predict future events and avoid any surprises. Why would the BofE want to keep surprises from the City unless they were effectively prop trading with the economy.
If it is the models themselves that cause the shocks then they will need to be changed.
I can see no reason – other than embarrassment – why they would not be published.
August 23, 2023
“Why do you [the Ministers] make the OBR five year forecast of the deficit the key control on your economic choices….even when it delivers wrong forecasts.?”
Because the OBR was created to produce the “independent” forecasts to match the policies that the Chancellor wishes to pursue.
They continue to do this of course because they want to keep their jobs.
The same system exists with the totally false CAGW (now CAGB) narrative necessary to enforce the economy destroying Net Zero Strategy – Build back Greener – where we told that renewable energy would be cheap, abundant and always available at the flick of a switch (P19) but we now we find that renewable energy costs are increasing rapidly and energy will need to be reduced and rationed to cope with intermittency.
The so-called “climate scientists” to keep their funding and jobs just continue to produce models of climate catastrophe to keep their funders happy. This is why the UN press release comes out first, followed by the Summary for Policymakers and then the “data” is finally published months later.
August 23, 2023
Your last three lines are ‘bonkers’. Admit simply you do not have a clue where to find the timetable of the various meetings leading to the writing of the full reports (by scientists having written on the topics since the previous official IPCC release), nor where to look for the original full reports of groups 1, 2, 3 of the IPCC when they have successively been written and put on the web.
It is rather difficult to take you seriously when you appear so clueless.
The individual reports are published over 12 to 18 months, during which the Summary for Policymakers is prepared by the Lead author scientists with a lot of pressure from politicians, NGOs and industry groups.
When the SfP is finally published and advertised by the MSM, including the official UN press release, it is only then that the majority of people (like OR) becomes aware of the IPCC work.
It has been like that since IPCC was created and started in 1988 (first published reports in 1990).
It is incredible that people pretending to follow the topic of CAGW still appear not to know how the whole thing work.
Fortunately people like GWPF, WUWT, J.Curry, etc are somewhat more aware of the processus.
August 23, 2023
Most journalists only read the summary hefner.
They use that to form their headlines and their articles.
Few of them are interested to go beyond those first few pages.
August 24, 2023
Sorry, I don’t care about journalists EUfan, I’m just debunking OR’s comment. If he were so interested in Climate Change related matters he would have realised that the information is made available at least six months before the publication of the SfP.
(See ipcc.ch for the timeline of their activities, including the preparation of the Working Groups 1, 2 and 3 reports, Task Force on National Greenhouse Inventories, and Synthesis Report).
August 23, 2023
So you can stop the ULEZ expansion …but you choice not too !!!! woke spineless tory government
You don’t have the moral courage to be in government
August 23, 2023
From today’s Media “Bank of England sounds alarm on company debt burden”
Who is directly responsible for the rise in debt costs therefore the burden, oh the BoE. Who is ultimately responsible for managing the BoE, our 2 Chancellors. What happens, they all look at one and other shrug their shoulders and stay frozen. They might be the ‘management’, but their agenda is different to what is needed to get the UK moving
They(this Conservative Government) are maliciously ripping the sole out of the UK.
Reply Not what the Bank said if you read their site.
August 23, 2023
I’m sure its not what the Bank said Sir! But they are not to be trusted are they. My wife could do a better joob than them.
August 23, 2023
@MFD On the banks website
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/bank-overground/2023/how-vulnerable-are-uk-companies-to-higher-interest-rates
“Higher interest rates are putting pressure on indebted corporates through higher debt servicing costs. Such pressure increases the likelihood of defaults on corporates’ debt and may lead some firms to reduce investment and employment sharply.”
Reply Yes and they point out levels of stress below past crisis points and comment on how they have not included interest rate hedges or more recent balance sheet improvement.
August 23, 2023
Sadly, I doubt whether renewing your questions to ministers will produce either useful responses or a change of direction.
How far back must one cast one’s mind to recall a chancellor who was not simply the creature of the Treasury?
Ever since Alistair Darling mismanaged the 2008 financial crisis his successors: Hunt, Sunak, Javid, Hammond, Osborne and a couple of short-lived place-holders have lacked the intellectual heft or the strength of personality to manage the economy and their civil servants. Some have lacked both qualities.
August 23, 2023
Outside bodies should not influence or in any way control our economic decisions . They do have a role to play in telling the public what they think but that is all . The Government has to be held to account for what it decides and the many blunders it has allowed to be made is indication enough that immediate change must be on the cards . Sunak is too divorced from the normal family and Hunt is wrong as Chancellor . Experience and wisdom of the kind Sir John has shown over many years should be involved in 10 Downing Street plus the feet on the ground approach of certain other Conservative Back Benchers . Another disgrace is the way we continue to have with illegal migration ; it is another disclosure of the indecision and weakness that exists at the top .
August 23, 2023
So … in the first four months of 2023 the state borrowed £11.3 bn less than the OBR forecast, but it still borrowed £56.6 bn, ie £13.7 bn more than in the equivalent four months of 2022. Obviously it doesn’t look good for the OBR (a 16% forecast error) but is the OBR existence really the essential/existential question?
Or should it be why the Government still needs to increase the UK deficit and potentially the UK debt (standing at £2.6 tn at the end of May 2023, with cost of servicing debt £12.8 bn in June and £7.7 bn in July 2033)? In 2022 the cost of servicing the debt was around 1.7% of GDP and 3.6% of the annual tax take.
(neweconomics.org).
A very naive question: Why such an emphasis on the OBR, when the levels of the deficit, debt and what they reveal about the overall state of the UK economy looks, to me at least, like much more pressing questions?
Reply Because OBR forecasts limit tax and spend options. I have been urging better spending control for a long time.
August 23, 2023
“I have been urging better spending control for a long time.”
Indeed JR but no one is listening, they just spend more and more and deliver less and less of any positive value at all. Much of their spending delivers huge inconvenience & negative value to the public much is spent on lies, propaganda and actively conning the public.
August 23, 2023
An article by Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph today said, “Ministers virtually bankrupted the country protecting people first from the ravages of the pandemic and then the punishment of sky-high energy prices.”
The chart in the article shows public spending as a % of GDP coming down from 2010 to 2020 (from around 47% to 40%). It shot up due to COVID-19, the Ukraine war, and the energy crisis, and I’m sure all of the illegal immigrants arriving without passports and identities and causing many delays to processing because of that is adding to the burden. As much as people want tax cuts, this debt hanging around our necks and our children’s necks has to come back down to more manageable levels.
August 24, 2023
reply to reply…not just better controls, we need LESS spending.
August 23, 2023
“Destruction of the west is the only agenda going on here.”
August 23, 2023
Funny numbers?
BBC website.
The former boss of NatWest is set to receive a £2.4m pay package this year, despite having quit in disgrace over her handling of the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank account. Dame Alison resigned from the bank last month after admitting to being the source of an inaccurate news story about Mr Farage’s finances. She is currently working out her 12-month notice period at the group.
NatWest said her pay will remain under review as it investigates the scandal.
A spokesman said: “Like other employees where an investigation outcome is pending, Alison is currently receiving her fixed pay. “This in line with her contractual notice period and remains under continual review, as the independent investigation continues. As previously confirmed, no decision on her remuneration will be taken until the relevant investigations are complete.”
The scandal emerged after Mr Farage, a prominent Brexiteer, claimed in early July that his Coutts account had been shut because of his political views.
A BBC report, citing a source familiar with the matter, then disputed this, saying the account was closed because he no longer met the wealth threshold for Coutts.
August 23, 2023
So essentially, we can see in retrospect that all the blown-up ‘concerns’ about the Truss/Kwarteng plans to aim for growth were a complete illusion. If the OBR, IMF, UN and Treasury civil servants (and the Tory MPs who plotted to install Sunak) were fervent marxists trying to kill off capitalism, they could not have so fervently hobbled the Truss/ Kwarteng strategy which, if carried through with vigour and balanced cuts – not *by* government this time, but cuts *of* government – would have met with the same signal success as the Thatcher/Howe budget that aroused the same venomous opposition among academic economists.
(Ah, but it was the threatened cuts to government and to idleness that so affrighted them, was it not.)
Well, now they have what they want – a subjugated nation paying more and more for the illusion of ‘being nice’. A lamedog, unelected Prime Minister throwing away a majority won by policies 180 degrees opposite to his, and a looming election which will put academia back into power.
August 23, 2023
Mr. Redwood – you say the BOE should not sell bonds at a loss – but should wait until maturity. I am a bit puzzled by all this. My understanding is that if I buy a bond I pay £100 for it and the government (Treasury?) pays me interest at whatever the coupon is for however long the term of the bond is. At the end of the term I get my £100 back. During my ownership of the bond, if interest rates generally rise above the interest I am receiving, the value of the bond (if I want to sell it) goes down. If interest rates went up to, say, twice the interest the bond pays, the only way it would make sense for me to sell my bond for, say, £50 – of hanging on until redemption and getting my £100 back) – would be if I could invest the £50 and get enough extra interest to cover my capital loss + the interest I forgo between ‘now’ and the redemption date.
So, why, unless drunk – would I do that? Or, more to the point, why are the BOE doing what no one in their right mind would do? They must have a reason. Do you know what it is?
August 23, 2023
‘They’ keep the OBR – when it is an obvious and expensive failure – to hide behind. We elect a government to manage the economy and they hide behind a discredited, useless organisation.
August 23, 2023
It’s a lovely day for a boat trip.
August 23, 2023
correction: *could not have more fervently hobbled’
August 23, 2023
John, you’ve alarmed Labour’s Pat McFadden, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, hit back. In an interview with Sky News, he said that last year’s “disastrous mini-budget”, which included unfunded tax cuts, should serve as a warning about the dangers of taking an irresponsible approach to the public finances, and he said the borrowing figures for July published yesterday did not change that. He went on: [The mini-budget] is not an experiment we want to repeat. I was a bit alarmed at hearing Tory calls to repeat it yesterday. I think that’s a big risk for the country – certainly not one that we would adopt.,”
August 23, 2023
India sends a rocket to the moon – India has nuclear weapons and a nuclear industry and we send India hundreds if millions in aid each year – are we mad? and what is the point in discussing anything? – funny numbers indeed
August 23, 2023
ULEZ is just another tax
‘Drivers have been slapped with more than £418million in fees and penalty charges from emissions zones between March 2021 and April 2023, new data has shown’ GB News
August 23, 2023
So Sir John. When I ask you to look at the non jobs being advertised within Wokingham council and the non jobs already being paid for by the council tax payer, plus their expenses and pensions. I am cancelled.
Head of Children’s Mental Heath assessor springs to mind. And on how much.!!!
Yes I know you will blame the liberals. However these non jobs have been going on throughout the Tory dominance.
I refuse to accept, but am forced to accept, paying for school meals during the holidays. There are not, if any kids out there that do not have a better mobile phone than I have. Still as long as the parents can have their sky packages, phone packages and their booze and fags. Give the bill to the council tax payer.
August 23, 2023
Is it not time was called on the wretched OBR? What purpose do they have? To monitor and check the Government’s own budgets are conforming to their own predictions? Hmm.
However, I have a strong suspicion that the OBR jobs are secure although their forecasts have been proven to be too far out to be meaningful (and are therefore, useless) because they actually make the Government look good by overloading their stats. Why hasn’t their computer model been scientifically investigated? It’s clear something is not working there. Is it too embarrassing for them?
As Abe Lincoln once said, ‘you can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time’. Speaking time – theirs’s is up.
August 24, 2023
The last 3 year on year inflation figures have been 8.7%, 7.9% and 6.8%. So for two months, month on month inflation has been negative. The latest increase in Base Rate, from 5% to 5.25% was overkill. The BoE Governor and his MPC are busy creating a wholly unnecessary recession, for which the Conservative Party will be blamed by the voters. If the Conservative Party has any sense of self preservation, Andrew Bailey will be sacked, the Treasury will take back control of Base Rate, which will be reduced to 5%, with further reductions likely to follow.
It’s fiscal policy that is too loose. A non-inflationary annual borrowing requirement would be £50 billion. The current OBR forecast for FYR 2023/24 borrowing is £132 billion. The actual borrowing for the first 4 months, when extrapolated to a full year, is £170 billion. Tax cuts, yes, but public expenditure cuts too.