The good news is the government wants to change the OBR controls. The bad news is they will probably put in new ones that are no better.
The OBR was set up in  May 2010. The underlying objective was to control the build up of state debt. There was no thought about how to promote growth or to control the tax level.
On its own terms  it has catastrophically failed. State debt has ballooned to 100% of GDP from 65% of GDP. The economic policy the OBR has required has also delivered high taxes and slow growth.
This is not surprising. The whole OBR construct was a Treasury officials structure to get the U.K. to meet its Maastricht Treaty debt and deficit requirements. Successive reformulations always kept the underlying EU control of wanting us to keep our annual deficit below 3% and our stock of debt below 60 % of  GDP. This bad framework failed in most EU countries with many running up even bigger debts than the U.K. and having  slower growth than we achieved.
I have long argued for the OBR to be truly independent, selling its forecasts to those who value them. I wanted a government twin aim economic policy based on a 2% inflation target and a 2% growth target. I have always proposed a lower level of total public spending setting out where I would reduce. Today the three big areas remain lower Bank of England losses, a strong policy to return to 2019 productivity levels in public services and a better back to work policy to reduce benefits and boost tax revenues.
OBR led controls have obviously failed yet the government remains wedded to them. Why does the OBR go on pretending this system can control debt and deficits when it has spectacularly failed and when their deficit forecasts are usually tens of billions out? .
October 11, 2024
The OBR are paid to keep pretending. All of these Quangos should be run by unpaid âvolunteersâ (for a start) who are financially liable for the repercussions of wrong advice.
We need to live in the present and budget from year to year. How else can we be free of the âmodellingâ and âworst caseâ forecast?
October 11, 2024
Any public body set up with specific objectives will bring to its deliberations a blinkered view that is defined by those objectives. The OBR is but one. The Climate Change Committee is another. The IPCC is a third. Even worse is the statutory reinforcement of such blinkered conclusions when what is required, when defining policy, is a rounded view not a blinkered opinion. That is why their abolition and the restoration to MPs in parliament of powers previously surrendered to statutory bodies is vital. Even a body set up to promote growth would fail if it ignored the impact of debt accumulated to promote that growth. Think tanks often suffer the same problem, confidently asserting that this tax or that tax be increased to reduce the deficit while ignoring or failing to understand the behavioural consequences of such taxes.
October 11, 2024
Agree
October 11, 2024
Plus the appalling proposed WHO Pandemic Treaty which doubtless Davos loving Starmer will sign us up to.
Reeves and Starmer still talking about growth being their top priority but almost every single thing they are doing will do the complete reverse. Slowly killing the tax base higher earners and the rich leaving and more low skilled net cost people arriving.
October 11, 2024
Yes, thatâs what they are paid to do. If they were not paid we might get their real opinion. They canât all be that stupid all the time – they would not get around a golf course at the weekend weâre they so.
October 11, 2024
First frosty day today and over 50% of our power coming from gas and nuclear. It appears there’s a shortage of excess in Europe so we’re exporting to Holland and only Importing 8%. We’re burning precious gas so Europe can conserve their stocks because they’re expecting a cold winter. The emperor milibrain certainly has no clothes.
October 11, 2024
We nearly had a blackout on Tuesday when an inter-connector failed. Shame we didn’t really ….. it would have been entertaining watching Keir-Ching! and Red Ed having to explain how their Net Zero Lunacy had failed so spectacularly just as we’re entering the cold weather season.
October 11, 2024
They were lucky this time for the 1.4GW loss. The North Sea Link had a similar failure (1.3GW) on 8th June last year. Grid frequency plunged in just seconds by 0.5 Hz. Both times it appears that batteries worked to inject replacement power with pumped storage providing the next level of backup. This time there was a but more CCGT online, which will have slowed the initial frequency slide. We will have to wait a couple of months tor a detailed evaluation.
However, on December 22nd last year things didn’t work quite so well, with the initial trip of the IFA1 by 1GW was immediately followed by the loss of 0.4 GW at Cottam CCGT, and further generation losses that are evident from the extent of the frequency fall. That time batteries appeared not to have worked so well: there are suggestions they caused the temporary loss of some wind output. National Grid still haven’t published a proper analysis, despite the fact that frequency remained below 49.5Hz for 60 seconds, which is a breach of the SQSS standard that should have triggered a wider enquiry from OFGEM and the panel that assessed the August 2019 blackout.
It gas serious implications for attempts to run the grid without CCGT. The system is not yet robust enough to make that an acceptable risk.
October 11, 2024
Milibrain’s response to Richard Tice in commons was telling. His demeanour was unpleasant, he pivoted to a different issue and of course he didn’t even begin to answer the point because he couldn’t. This is a very dangerous individual, who has the power to do immense harm.
October 11, 2024
This whole thing needs a rethink …..we’re sitting on an island of cheap coal and cheap shale gas
October 11, 2024
Just a âthinkâ would be good – no thinking person would ever have got to this point.
October 11, 2024
And they want us all to more to Heat Pumps and EV. On some cold days this would mean electricity demand of as much at 10 times current and a vastly expensive new grid that could cope plus another circa 100% back up (Gas, Coal, young coal at Drax) for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. No much sunshine in Winter anyway day or night.
Good article by Matt Ridley on the insanity of Joker Ed. last week in the Spectator.
October 11, 2024
Unpaid but financially liable? You have to be starting today with a joke?
October 11, 2024
If there are no volunteers wouldnât that be terrible?
Iâm not having half as much of a joke as they currently areâŠ
October 11, 2024
That is not possible. We need infrastructure and that needs planning decades in advance. I am amazed when I look at our road network. How did we ever manage to build the vast numbers of roads covering the whole country. Roads need maintenance. Bridges donât last forever, road surfaces degrade and need replacing. Sewage systems, the national grid, gas distribution, hospitals, schools, all public buildings – all need maintaining and replacing. Then thereâs defence, who can predict what weâll need in the future. Government budgeting is not easy.
October 11, 2024
Don’t forget the cycle-lanes and carbon capture facilities
October 11, 2024
“The OBR are paid to keep pretending” , pretending that is that they are a responsible, professional, independent organisation. In the commercial world they wouldn’t stand any chance of survival beyond their first bad forecast and be sued for inaccuracy and incompetence.
OBR never get fired and have the same culture as the Bank of England.
In the words of MT known to French media “I want my money back!” is an understatement .
October 11, 2024
This is fantasy island,most if not all of the government bureaucracy is paid to pretend,to block out the truth.
October 11, 2024
+1. And not just the Govt bureaucracy, corporations charge the Govt a ton of money to tell the lies that they government have âpromisedâ.
E.g âwe can trace every pork chop back to the producerâ. That was a wopper and IMB did very nicely thank you.
October 11, 2024
Good morning.
It was another, ‘Jobs for the boys’ QUANGO. It was never really meant to work.
So why does a government need such a body when we employ politicians to do this ? And why cannot the State control its own spending much like we do ? And what sanctions can the OBR place upon the government ? I thought that was Parliaments job via the Budget ?
I do not need some external actor to manage my financial affairs, I can do that myself. However, and as our kind host aludes to regarding the OBR, if I did want to take financial advice I can always pay for it. Something the government could, and should have done.
October 11, 2024
As William Shakespeare could have said “Mrs Reeves hoist by her own OBR”
October 11, 2024
Spot On
October 11, 2024
Yet another disaster from George Osborne to add to his ratting on his ÂŁ1 IHT threshold promise, his mugging of the self employed, landlords, his vast tax rises, his endless waste on benefits, migrants, HS2, worthless degrees and general economic incompetence.
So JR and now Mogg back Jenrick but after the serial liars Cameron May, Boris⊠can we trust him. Neither is sound on the Net Zero con trick p, it need to be ditched in full now.
Kemi is now very firm favourite in the betting odds. It seems Grant Shapps, another Net Zero loon, who was pushing no so Cleverly, denies mucking up his letâs stop Kemi spreadsheet. Then again perhaps he was placing bets on Kemi and did this on purpose? Who knows?
October 11, 2024
Police federation suspends Met chair after GB News interview about officers’ racism fears. Rick Prior is under investigation after he told this broadcaster that officers are ‘hesitating’ before engaging with ethnic minority Londoners.
Telling the truth is never very popular see the treatment of Andrew Bridgen for doing the same – by the vaccines and unequivocally safe Sunak (etc Ed). Perhaps why we seem to have no sensible letters from our 650 MPs to Starmer like the excellent one to the Australian MP from the sensible Russel Broadbent MP. See Dr John Campbell video.
October 11, 2024
Given various back stories on police engagement with ethnicity, no wonder police might ‘hesitate’ not avoid contact over racism accusation fears.
October 11, 2024
Indeed I have not doubt at all they do on this or on what gender they use to address people or on assuming their are two genders…
October 11, 2024
@Lifelogic – racism? the norm is to recognise the ‘human’ race, a chunk of beings that are all equal, yet those that are out side of that ‘race’ are unable to define the new ‘race’ they have invented.
Everyone is equal, or should be in they eyes of the Law, its things like the ECHR that haven’t grown up, moved with the times because it is a bureaucratic construct not a democratic construct. In a Democracy No Laws should come in to being that cant be created, amended or repealed by the representatives of the People(therefore the people) – to suggest otherwise is to enforce the notion we don’t live in a democracy
October 11, 2024
Indeed equality before the law is vital and we certainly do not have it.
October 11, 2024
The police would do far better to throw a lot of sunlight on policing problems, instead of trying to cover them up. They should effectively be asking Sadiq Khan whether he supports a descent into lawlessness in parts of London, and asking the public for their views.
October 11, 2024
âHesitateâ – look at the grooming gangs – they were facilitated by the police and politicians. They should be charged with that crime.
October 11, 2024
And of course Osborneâs appalling attempts to defeat the Brexit vote and then to thwart to outcome in which they partially succeeded and Starmer has not got going yet. Plus his mad financial support for the insane Nat Zero and UK energy agenda. It seems âThe U.K. only avoided a blackout on Tuesday because gas came to the rescue after a power line importing electricity from Norway failed. Under Net Zero we won’t have gas to save us, warns Paul Homewood.â
Also:-
In a 1.7 million child sample, not one MRNA unvaccinated child was found to have myocarditis or pericarditis. That is compelling evidence for suspending the jabs – unless those making the decision are compromised in some way. They are hugely compromised as we know.
Yet out and other Governments are still pushing these vast net harm MRNA âvaccinesâ
October 11, 2024
LL. If it’s a fact they let Grant Shapps loose with a spreadsheet then it’s no surprise at all it went wrong
October 11, 2024
@Lifelogic – my observation is that either one (or for that matter the whole of the original candidate list) is just there in a holding position until a real conservative emerges, and there is a new leadership contest. Then again a Faux Conservative Group that are inherently Liberal Democrat and should have just merged with Ed Davey, doesn’t suggest they have change in mind. They have yet to ‘own’ their failings, they have yet to acknowledge their collective shared responsibility they all had while in Cabinet for the dire appalling mess ‘they’ created.
October 11, 2024
I do not see a future for the divided party. They need to split into their real factions, which can genuinely unite behind some leadership. If some joined the Lib Dems they might form the official opposition, which would serve to highlight how ineffective they are. The substantive opposition will come from Reform, and perhaps the other split wing of the Tories, but they would need to sign up to ending net zero as well as being tough on immigration.
October 11, 2024
In answer to your last paragraph, the OBR pretence of debt control is their purpose, and even catastrophic failure will not persuede bureaucrats to vote for their redundancy. In fairness to them, they have no control of debt. Politicians create debt, it is in their DNA. Politicians tax, print money, create bonds and private financs initiatives all so they can spend money they do not have. They all do it to create their vision of society. It fails because politicians, beyond feathering their own nests, have little idea of how to create wealth. The exceptions are in the minority. The state has become the greatest drag on wealth creation. I see nobody short of Reform prepared to take a knife to it. Starmer is correct in stating that it will get worse in Labour hands. It getting better, as a result is a self inflicted delusion, wil not happen on their watch.
October 11, 2024
Reform have no power and even if they gained power in 5,10, or 15 years are we sure they would even try to deliver or be able to deliver if they did. We say what 14 years of the Tories delivered after all the empty promises. âWhomever you vote for the blob winsâ as the sensible Matt Ridley put it.
October 11, 2024
Matt also says in his Spectator article before the election:-.
MPs are little more than human shields whose job is to take the blame for decisions made by bureaucrats
The toolmakerâs son heading for No. 10 is not just the bureaucratâs friend, but a knighted quangocrat
He is spot on in the energy article last week too.:- âHow Ed Miliband plans to conjure electricity out of nothingâ
October 11, 2024
The logic of your thinking is that we take to the lifeboats and watch the UK sink. You might be right, but an untainted Reform deserve one shot at resolution where all others have failed.
October 11, 2024
Indeed we can but vote for the best option offered. Although with first past the post even that means you know you are wasting your vote in many constituencies so are often note even able to do that. Reduced to voting for the candidate who is most likely to stop the Labour, SNP or Libdem candidate from winning. It certainly is not even close to a real democracy – the vote is FPTP unfair and distorts voting, you vote on a basket of mixed issues only every five years or so and those elected do not even try to do what was promised in the main they do the complete reverse certainly on taxes up, public services down, crime up, low skilled immigration hugely up, housing shortages, NHS hugely rationed, energy costs virtually the highest in the World due to a mad religion…
October 11, 2024
How can you speculate a Party’s policy 5, 10, 15 years away?
The last few years demonstrate a week in politics is a long time.
October 11, 2024
All you can do is put sensible people in parliament. I think we have about 20 tops there out of 650 currently.
October 11, 2024
Blob delenda est, as Cicero might have said.
October 11, 2024
I don’t see the point of condemning the OBR if you’re not going to demand its abolition.
reply I see no point in you coming on this site every day to use usually extreme language to complain about what I say and do. I have made clear I want to see the OBR privatised and taken out of the budget process!
October 11, 2024
John IS effectively calling for the abolition of the OBR but in a rather amusing way …. “I have long argued for the OBR to be truly independent, selling its forecasts to those who value them”.
October 11, 2024
So, who values them?
October 11, 2024
The EU, IMF and WEF I expect. It’s all about control.
October 11, 2024
Reply to reply,
Were the OBR to be privatised, who would be its paying customers, beyond a financially incompetent government. It would be cheaper to use Mystic Meg and possibly no less accurate.
I see we enjoyed a 0.2% growth to the economy last August. Was it down to Miracle Grow dumped in the Black Hole of Labour invention. My considered judgement is that Rishi should have hung on a bit longer and benefitted from this unexpected fertilizer.
Unless something unknown has occured off piste, I can see nothing extreme in DOM’s two line contribution , what is all the excitement about.
Reply It would be up to them to find customers who thought they were good at forecasting. I did not say government would be a customer.
October 11, 2024
Agree – It needs to be abolished ….but which MP has the bottle to say so
October 11, 2024
Good news would be the abolition of the OBR.
Anything else is bad news.
October 11, 2024
+1
October 11, 2024
State sector spending under the Conservatives ballooned out of control. Whether the OBR did its job or not is secondary. Yes, it would be good if it had stopped the government spending money it doesn’t have. From that point of view the EU constraint on state spending was a good idea. But that is to reckon without unforeseen crises. First came the Covid crisis, which justified ÂŁ70 billion spent on furlough, plus over ÂŁ11bn on vaccines, then came the Ukraine crisis, which allowed the government to spend several more billion ÂŁ on aid to Kiev. Was the OBR supposed to strike down those hugely expensive government policy decisions? Is it empowered to? I doubt it.
Reply I am making the point we should not claim the OBR can restrain public spending because it never has and doesnât want to. It always favours tax rises.
October 11, 2024
To reply indeed, rather like all the government from John ERF fiasco Major onwards. Even Thatcher did not cut the state back very much – it is at least double what is needed.
October 11, 2024
For those of us on the outside, the OBR appears to be a construction put in place to talk but not impact on anything.
It claims to be ‘independent’?
That begs the question, from what is it independent? It is made up of 52 civil servants so not that independent, of civil servant culture or influence. Further, what is the need for such an organisation whose legal enforcement is zero and who have been wrong as often as they have been right?
If the Treasury wanted a forecasting department or a debating department that was accurate as often as a random choice can be, then I could have provided them with a dice. It would have been far cheaper and just as successful at forecasting.
The Treasury has thousands of civil servants working directly, all paid to study the Chancellors decisions on taxation or state funding and social impacts of state decision making.
What is the point of the 52 members of the OBR on top of that already huge block of advisors and analysts permanently in place at the Treasury?
Finally it is important to remember, there is no such thing as an ‘independent’ body anywhere.
All decisions are part of the global market. Fiscal choices will be punished or rewarded by that market. The idea any individual piece or state within that integrated market, can stand firm against the market and its influence is pure hubris.
October 11, 2024
The OBR has recruited mainly from a handful of left leaning think tanks since Robert Chote stepped down. It is now incapable of rational thought in consequence, as Luz Truss documented.
October 11, 2024
It claims to be âindependentâ?
A good rule of thumb is anything that needs to claim is is “independent” is almost certainly not.
Also anything that feels the need to claim to be a science in the title usually isn’t either.
October 11, 2024
Today the three big areas remain lower Bank of England losses, a strong policy to return to 2019 productivity levels in public services and a better back to work policy to reduce benefits and boost tax revenues.
I would add to this freeze spending levels in all departments (especially health and the weather) and keep benefits at 1% below inflation until the deficit is zero.
October 11, 2024
The government’s approach to back to work policy is to make employment more toxic than it already is. If you want easy hire, you need easy fire to go with it.
October 11, 2024
@Narrow Shoulders – all those we empower and pay refuse their responsibility, they appear to see the HoC as a ‘free-loading’ fun palace for ego
October 11, 2024
If the state sector just stopped doing all the things that do no good or net harm and fired all involved to get a real job. Productivity would surely be at least double overall, and private sector productively hugely improved too as fewer people hassling and inconveniencing them. If they deregulated even more huge savings.
October 11, 2024
Off topic:
We almost had the first blackout on Tuesday, when an inter-connector to Norway failed. The power was kept on by gas.
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/10/gas-power-prevented-blackout-on-tuesday/
This is what relying on so-called “renewable energy” and energy imports means: unreliable, unstable provision of power with blackouts increasingly likely as the reliable sources are closed down (coal) or not opened in the first place (fracked gas).
The Blue-Green, Red-Green (and every other shade of colour-Green) Establishment Parties in Westminster are ALL culpable for this madness.
None of them deserve a vote.
October 11, 2024
‘renewable’ ? – or just expecting some other nation to be willing to sell us essential electrical energy!
As a national policy it is the biggest white flag waving imaginable, but perhaps inviting Putin to annex GB might Trump it? …sorry.
October 11, 2024
Reminds me of Miliband and his theories of magic energy from flywheels
October 11, 2024
“Renewable” is the Eco propagandists’ preferred euphemism for “Intermittent.” Rather like “economic with the actualite” is the preferred euphemism for fabricating the facts (or, if you prefer and Sir John permits …. outright lies).
Of course, if they called it Intermittent Energy the sheeple would wake up and wonder what happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow and the BBC would have some explaining to do ….. as would the Government.
October 11, 2024
Thanks Donna, I would have commented but I think I am on the naughty step again, as my contributions seem to be held in moderation these days.
October 11, 2024
I have long ago lost faith in any figures from Government Departments and their Quango’s.
I just look at my own bills and spending.
House insurance up 18% this year, car insurance up 30% this year, yet inflation supposed to be 2%.
State pension up this year, but now I am taxed on it so take 20% off of that increase.
After 10 years of virtually nothing, Savings interest now pay’s 3-4% on average, but that is also taxed at 20% after the meagre personal allowance made.
My Council tax amounts to 25% of my State Pension. (for which I made 49 years of contributions)
Unfortunately I do not get any Benefits, clothes purchased for me, free entry to sporting events or concerts, neither do I have an employers or taxpayers funded expense account, but I do have a bus pass !
October 11, 2024
If you decided to find a job to ease the pressure, that bus pass wouldn’t be valid when you were likely to travel to work!
October 11, 2024
You have a bus pass at the moment. It appears from the pre-Budget briefings that Keir-Ching! may be about to remove it from you. I heard this on TalkRadio this morning, a contribution from a listener:
Keir-Ching! A Few of My Favourite Things
You sit for me and I won’t stand for shaming
Free football tickets and yes, they all came in
Brown paper packages tied up with string
These are a few of my favourite things
My wife had dresses and I got free glasses
In return, Alli got Downing Street passes
Taylor Swift “freebies” so we heard her sing
These are a few of my favourite things
When people are openly mocking him like this it can only be a matter of time ……
October 11, 2024
BA,
I do wonder for how much longer we’ll have our bus passes.
Thinking about the winter fuel allowance, I wonder if we will have so many blackouts, that we will in fact save the ÂŁ300pa with non use of power during the blackout periods. Thank goodness for the helpful advice leaflet to put on warm clothing and to know where my torch and batteries are, how have we managed to survive for so long without such helpful advice, if only I’d thought of it myself. .. I feel I have gone back in time.
It seems that all the media are reporting ideas from our government and their think tanks, about ways to make life even worse for people.
Depressing isn’t it?
October 11, 2024
What value does the OBR give (1) the UK, (2) the people & (3) the government
Like net-zero, we need to ask ‘what’s it for’, ‘Doesn’t it just duplicate current functions of government /committee’s’
Treasury Committee
Treasury Sub-Committee on Financial Services Regulations
Finance Committee (Commons)
Finance Committee (Lords)
Finance Bill Sub Committee
….so why do we need an OBR ?
October 11, 2024
Objectives of the OBR are to save MPs from thinking and to provided them with a buck to pass to.
October 11, 2024
Osborne’s office for tax simplification doubles at least tax code complexity over about 12 years.
October 11, 2024
Two reasons:
1 – Starmer has made it clear by his interactions with the EUC that he intends to get get us back into the EU in some fashion – remaining close to standards set by the EU will make this easier.
2 – Like true socialists who believe in debt for its own sake, this labour government has no intention to balance the books, but they will spend, spend, spend. Aside from that they are following the de-industrialisation script of netzero
The OBR is another worthless quango that becomes the excuse when ministers fail — when will we be getting that bonfire?
October 11, 2024
All these quangos etc are paying lip service to unneeded/useless targets. Uncomfortably for Government and voters the only way debt comes “under control” is with very high inflation and very low interest rates. This is not a vote winner!!
October 11, 2024
Any Chancellor justifying policy by citing a need to comply with OBR demands stands accused of disingenuity. The OBRâs methodology is seriously deficient, its record abysmal and its reputation increasingly sullied. One wonders how and from whence it recruits its staff for who sensible would wish to invest themselves in such a muddled mess?
October 11, 2024
My understanding is/was that the OBR was set up by a Chancellor that was incapable of managing his department, the Treasury, because they didnât have the capability or the right background for the job. It was the lazy way out; âI donât know how to do the job I am handed neither do my staffâ. Thatâs not management.
In any other management sphere, you would create sections and people fit for purpose, not create a tandem entity and release it from management control. The Chancellor didnât even sack those in the Treasury that were not up to purpose but instead chose to burden the Taxpayer with even more costs with no return.
The OBR like many other acronyms from the Quango World are jobs for the boys, without the Political Control that should be expected from those feeding off the Taxpayer. Simply, Tax should not go anywhere that there isnât a corresponding elected representative shouldering and taking on the responsibility on behalf of the taxpayer.
There is to much âfree-loadingâ from those we empower and pay, to much shirking of responsibility.
October 11, 2024
Good idea to let the OBR go independant and try to sell its reports.
It’s a bit like the BBC becoming a subscription service: let the market decide if they are any good.
October 11, 2024
Off Topic. – from BBC website.
A Sunak action starting to pay off! The number of international students applying for visas to study in the UK has fallen ahead of the start of the new academic year.
Home Office figures showed 16% fewer visa applications were made between July and September than in the same period in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of visa applications for family members of students dropped by 89%, after a rule change introduced by the previous government came into effect in January.
The figures have prompted further concern within the sector over the financial health of UK universities, many of which depend heavily on international student fees.
The Home Office said, external 263,400 sponsored study visa applications were made between July and September, down from 312,500 in the summer of 2023. In the same period, only 6,700 applications were made by dependants of foreign students, down from 59,900 last year.
Since January, international students have been banned from bringing family members to live with them in the UK, apart from some who are on research-based courses or government-backed scholarships.
The rule was introduced last year by Rishi Sunak’s government, which had committed to bringing immigration numbers down.
October 11, 2024
As with the current government, for the OBR, it’s time to go.
As Oliver Cromwell once told Parliament, “You have sat here for too long for any good you have been doing lately, in God’s name, go now” and save the country!
October 11, 2024
As Sir John points out in this excellent piece, the real problem is the humungous level of the national debt. About 40% of this debt was built up since the bankster crisis of 2008 when interest rates were effectively zero. Now interest rates have risen to 5%, the interest on this debt is approaching ÂŁ140bn pa and is crippling us and our ability to borrow more
The twin deficits and government borrowing add to the national debt each month; we routinely import more than we export, having sold off all our exporting industries, and the government routinely spends more than it gets in tax each year.
You can add to this the 25% of taxpayers money routinely spent by the bloated QUANGO sector. which generates no exports but provides well paid jobs for the old boys and girls. And the 25% of taxpayers money spent on civil service, senior military and NHS non-contributory, index linked final salary pensions – with the triple lock for us mere mortals
A private household carrying this proportion of debt in relation to it’s income would be forced into a bankruptcy agreement with its lenders. Something similar (via intervention by the IMF) will happen shortly for the UK unless Reeves is very careful; we are bankrupt as a nation and we need to cut our cloth accordingly.
October 11, 2024
To understand the OBR and many, if not all the quangos, regulators and institutions it is necessary to remember Robert Conquestâs 2nd and 3rd laws of politics :
– âAny organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.â
– âThe simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it led by a cabal of its enemies.â
Another very good example is Ofgem which started life as an organisation to protect the consumer but now its remit is to deliver Net Zero to the detriment of not only the consumer but the wealth and prosperity of the country.
October 11, 2024
Headline in the Telegraph
“Ed Miliband unlocks billions to build giant dams across Britain”
Then it states ‘cost of supporting such projects will be added to consumer bills, with Mr Miliband introducing the backstop to help developers make a profit’ Bills that are already 10 times that of our competitors will be increased further. Or how to crucify the UK on 100% personal ego.
Good management requires the earning of money to fund the ‘future’, high and punishment costs equals cancelling the future.
While that highlights the Lunacy of Red Ed, it exposes the along for the ride attitude and lack of responsibility shown by the whole HoC