If the government wants to plunge us into more debt to support investments, it is vital those investments make profits and pay the interest on the debt.
The government needs strong guardrails to achieve this. In each case they need to ensure
1 Any private debt added to a partnership scheme is non recourse to the taxpayer
2. There is a clear stream of future revenue from the completed project that covers the interest on the debt more than twice
3. They should set a minimum target return of say 4% above inflation and explain how this can be reached in the Business case
4 Management should be on a low basic salary with substantial bonuses if profit and cash flow targets are hit
5. The interest on the extra state borrowing should be a charge on the project or company being financed.Dividends would only be paid to the state when appropriate.
6. The state would ensure all necessary permits and licences are available to the project, subject to them meeting the required standards.
October 27, 2024
Well yes but almost non of this will happen:- āAnd if I spend somebody elseās money on somebody else, Iām not concerned about how much it is, and Iām not concerned about what I get. And thatās government. And thatās close to 40% of our national incomeā Milton Friedman (but nearer to 50% in the UK now).
October 27, 2024
+1. Also there’s enormous opportunity to use the spending to help friends, associates and those who might reward you (or your relatives) whilst you are in politics or afterwards.
This seems to be much more blatant these days…look at the first 100 days sleeziness.
October 27, 2024
+1 so many projects HS2, Net Zero, the war on landlords, the vast sums spent on migrants legal aid, hotel bills and organisers of this, the soft loan for worthless degreesā¦ are very difficult to explain without assuming huge corruption or at least vast crony capitalism. To hose tax payers money in private pockets.
October 27, 2024
The Labour government will pay even less attention to this than the former Conservative one.
Meanwhile, I note large numbers attended a Tommy Robinson rally in London yesterday.
There were few arrests and one of them had to be āde arrestedā according to a newspaper report. People are regrouping and there will soon be more violence – but it will be much better organised than at Southport.
Reply Violence is rightly against the law and is condemned by this site.
October 27, 2024
‘Reply Violence is rightly against the law and is condemned by this site’
Noted. However protesters have no faith at all in any politicians, or police, or other authorities.
So protest will continue and escalate. When it gets impossible to ignore those in charge will have to account for why they failed to address the concerns of so many.
October 27, 2024
There were “thousands” at the rally supporting Britain. Four individuals were arrested (yes 4 from thousands) plus one individual from the Lefty opposition rally.
Later one individual was de-arrested. Though they were not attributed to either group !
October 27, 2024
Perhaps Sir John could start a petition (or direct us to an existing petition) demanding a re-run of the general election.
The country cannot take one year of this, let alone five.
October 27, 2024
When Thieves talks about investing she means in the public sector. What’s the betting there will be a hiring spree in all government departments. Plus some Quangos we haven’t been told about. GB energy and Great British Rail for starters.
Then of course we have Carbon capture which will increase energy bills and do nothing to mitigate theoretical climate change.
Talk about 4% above inflation profit, there’s more chance of finding Lord Lucan.
October 27, 2024
A good interview with Kemi (on Political Thinking BBC) she almost came out as a climate realist. āIs Net Zero a solution or a sloganā¦ should we adaptā she asked. Of course it is not a solution dear just another mad religion. Worryingly however it seems Mathew Parris thinks she is the right person for the job. Parris is a man who can be quite amusing sometimes but he is a LibDem who has been wrong on almost everything all his life.
Anyone who honestly thinks the best way to stop forest fires in say Greece or Australia or Floods in Carlyle or Gloucester is by cutting down out 1% of worldwide CO2 is clearly insane. Even more so as the many ways being pushed to save CO2 do not even do so in the main, they merely export it together with all the jobs and the profits.
The Earthshot Prize has rather an unimpressive council. Do any of them understand much science? Unless you count that elderly Zoologist with a pleasant narrating voice for nature programmes. Even ā Dame Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, is joining the Board of Trustees of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize. Is she not in jail yet along with Trudeau types and if not why not?
https://earthshotprize.org/people-partners/earthshot-prize-council/
Nearly all women though and with some nice hats and colourful head gear which perhaps makes up for general scientific ignorance.
October 27, 2024
The chair of the judges is Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – she read Social Anthropology at university.
October 27, 2024
“Worryingly however it seems Mathew Parris thinks she is the right person for the job.”
And so does every other LibCON, starting with Michael Gove, Damian Green, Dominic Grieve and David Gauke. Still think she’s the answer, Lifelogic?
She’s copied Keir-Chings! strategy of not telling us any policies …. big policy review needed first apparently ….. and asking you to vote for her for the “change” she’s not prepared to tell you about.
October 27, 2024
She canāt tell you, to be fair, because she has not yet been briefed by the Civil Service.
āShe so reminds me of Mrs Tā, I think the key thing is that they both wear blue suits with skirts. So if you fall for that one you deserve all that is coming to you.
October 27, 2024
Oh, I think the WEF has made it perfectly clear what “her policies” will be.
October 27, 2024
I do not trust either of them and your list of Kemi supporters above is indeed rather damning. But Kemi looks home and dry anyway – looking at the betting.
October 27, 2024
Donna :
Agreed.
Kemi Badenoch is definitely a supporter of Net Zero, as is a majority of the Conservative Parliamentary Party (Commons and Lords).
I cannot understand how anyone can be so deluded as to believe here was no climate change until the Industrial Revolution and anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
The changing of history is a common Communist tactic and now clearly includes climate history. So we are now told by the UN/WEF/BBC that there were no ice ages and no warmer periods in the past. Just the same climate throughout the whole of the planetās existence right up until the Industrial Revolution.
October 27, 2024
Donna,
Don’t worry about Mathew Parris. He was a Radio 4
constant. All those pointless programmes ‘Stop the week’, ‘Start the week’ etc. Middle class trivia with sociologist Laurie Taylor, ‘Daily Mail’ harpie Ann Leslie and assorted homosexuals from the arts and entertainment worlds. Robert Robinson in the chair – ‘Smuggins’ as ‘Private Eye’ described him.
October 27, 2024
And now, today, we are told that up to $41 billion has āgone missingā from the World Bank climate finance funds – nearly 40% of all disbursements – and no-one has any idea where to look for it!
October 28, 2024
Switzerland?
October 27, 2024
āManagement should be on a low basic salary with substantial bonuses if profit and cash flow targets are hit.ā
What capable person would take such a job when the chance of hitting sensible targets would be about zero. Not that they would even have sensible targets.
I assume they will count cutting down on CO2 (or just exporting its production) will count as an investment. CO2 being beneficial tree, plant, crop, seaweed food and the gas of life.
October 27, 2024
1 Any private debt added to a partnership scheme is non recourse to the taxpayer.
Well that should kill nearly all private investment given the lunacy of most of the things likely from this Cabinet of crooks and misguided idiots – Two Tier Kier, Cooper-Ball, Lammy, Ed Zealot Miliband, PPE dope Reeves and Tory Scum, Scum, Scum Raynor.
October 27, 2024
The Socialist Worker paper has the headline āSmash Fascists off our streetsā, so how many senior staff there will be getting 31 month sentences for this rather more serious incitement to violence I wonder, Mr Two Tier Kier? I assume none.
October 27, 2024
Desirable, even necessary, though your sensible guard rails are the chances of them being put in place are near to zero. Some of the investments will be doctrinaire driven for which financial discipline and accountability are alien concepts. For the rest it is not obvious that government ministers have much, if any, business experience to apply to controlling them. Many will share the former chair of Google’s incredulity (expressed at Labour’s recent “growth” investment summit) that the government actually believed in or understood the idea of investing for growth. The talk of more taxes to be levied on businesses and on the savers who provide the finance needed to finance business growth in the forthcoming budget reveals he was right to be incredulous.
October 27, 2024
Tax people who are good at making and investing money and give it to governments who are brilliant at wasting it. Sounds like a great way to kill any economic growth.
Another tax on working people the Ā£2 bus fare cap/subsidy is to go. Even Ā£2 is about Ā£500PA from your take home pay (and not even tax deductible). So working is even less likely to pay more than benefits.
Ā£41k for hotels rooms on average for each boat person. Nearly twice what some junior doctors take home as pay after commuting costs etc.. Or to put it another way four average workers are needed to pay enough taxes just to cover one of their hotel bills. Even more to cover the services they use police, social services, legal aid, defence, prisons, schools, universities, roads, public transportā¦
October 27, 2024
Good Morning to UK GMT.
Thanks for the sarcastic laugh today Sir J. Do you really think Starmer, Milibrain and pals are investing to make a return for taxpayers! Tories never could and this current lot have no intention of even trying. Have they ever spoken of ways to get better value for government spending? No; the new money they will find will go on their increasing number of apparatchiks who newly profess allegiance to THE PARTY, to foster the dear leader’s cult of socialism.
October 27, 2024
+1
October 27, 2024
I would love to live in a country where the government took your advice, Sir John. Obviously this one won’t, so the questions that matter now are how to get rid of it, and what alternative to replace it with. Granting what you say, that you are not running a Conservative website, the fact is that at the moment the shape of that alternative is being determined by the Conservative leadership election. That is the decision that matters. Will the Tories get a leader that will break with the party’s compromised past, as they did in 1975? If they are genuinely ready to let the wishes of the electorate prevail over politicised judges and civil servants, good. If they aren’t, and the Westminster party remains part of the globalist-progressive Establishment, we must look elsewhere.
Reply Good questions. We will soon find out. Conservative members have had plenty of chance to meet and hear the candidates. Nigel Farage now has his Parliamentary platform and plenty of opportunity to talk to the Conservatives as Leaders of the Parliamentary opposition on how to be an effective opposition . Time will tell who emerges with the votes and plans to be the next government.
October 27, 2024
I had an opportunity to put to Kemi Badenoch her failure to implement or address the business deregulation you and others proposed. She responded that she did do some deregulation, such as removing the oversight of the ECJ. She said that the ERG proposals had no chance of getting through Parliament in the time available and so (in effect) would have been a waste of time.
Reply They had passed the Commons!
October 27, 2024
Vetoed by Sunak and Hunt I suspect
October 28, 2024
She abandoned the plans immediately after her return from Davos. I think that indicates where the veto came from.
October 27, 2024
So she is ātruthfulā too. Great!
October 27, 2024
Pure pie in the sky. Such restraints have never applied to state projects , nor ever will. If looking for restraining influences, explore those the blob applied to Liz Truss. They arranged an undemocratic coupe. The only restraint I can see is the reaction of the City of London if they do not like the budget. Their reaction will be financial, using the cost of government borrowing as a tool.
October 27, 2024
Yes, agreed AG but at least this mob seem to have the BoEs support, where Truss clearly didn’t. I imagine the Bond Vigilantes are watching closely though, fingers hovering over keyboards….
October 27, 2024
This is all very well, but while we’re discussing investment policy points that Labour will never listen to, reality is not going away. The Energy Networks Association is advising households with young children, older adults, those with medical conditions, to sign up for the Priority Services Register. This service is intended for people likely to be more affected by the power cuts the energy providers can see coming this winter. All it seems to offer is forewarning of ‘planned’ power cuts, but I expect these to become more and more common as energy companies ‘plan’ for outages. This will be either because they’re carrying out maintenance, or because they can see in advance that they can’t provide enough energy, e.g. in a cold windless period.
October 27, 2024
While one can understand that selective switch-off via ‘smart’ meters could be done, with the opt-out via this Register, how do they propose to control supply to those who do not/will not have such a device? Or will it be compulsory to have such installed, despite the record of failure, unreliability and random readings etc. Is this even possible at such short notice for this Winter?
October 27, 2024
Many will then buy back back up generators or battery back up systems.
October 27, 2024
I don’t think it’s an opt-out, Gregory. The only difference will be that I’ll be informed in advance when I need to wear a blanket!
October 27, 2024
Wasteful spending eh! How long before Two-tier Keir agrees reperations to former slave countries. Yup, people who are not and have never been slaves, demanding reperations from people who are not and have never been slave owners.
October 27, 2024
The British people as were have already paid when they shelled out to buy the freedom of the slaves. They shelled out again to finance our global campaign to abolish slavery elsewhere. The current British people are composed not only of indigenous people most of whose ancestors didn’t benefit from slavery but a burgeoning number of people whose ancestors weren’t even in the country during the short period in question! I would support future retrospective legislation to prosecute and surcharge any senior politician who facilitates transfer of our money to freeloaders.
October 27, 2024
And watch out for Keir Stalin’s disguising the reparations payments, which should not under any circumstances be considered of course, but will under headings such as ‘climate change’. We will continue to be impoverished and demoralised which he intends, so he can control our thoughts and wishes even more under his marxist ideology.
October 27, 2024
A Caucasian member of my family died in South Africa. His 3 funeral services were televised (a āComfort Serviceā; an āHonouring Serviceā and a 3 hour āFuneral Serviceā) – 7,500 in attendance each time, the Church was full, all seats taken. I watched the broadcasts on YouTube.
One of the Church elders, an ex Miss South Africa, attended all 3 services. Different jewellery for each. One was a solitaire emerald cut (oblong) diamond as long as her first knuckle. The sort of thing Mrs Oppenheimer might have had and only worn on special occasions.
Iām so relieved that we will be paying ex-Miss South Africa reparations. She is a āpreviously disadvantaged personā – well, in a different life.
October 27, 2024
Well they aren’t going to do that because it would immediately eliminate all the loony, Net-Zero projects they want to fund/partially fund by loading even more debt onto this and future generations.
These won’t be investments in the traditional sense. They will be political-engineering projects intended to deliver the WEF’s Agenda for the destruction of our society and economy, in favour of the one the UN and the WEF Oligarchs would prefer.
And I predict that in the unlikely event there are any future profits, they will be capitalised. And any future losses will be socialised, just like they did with the banks.
October 27, 2024
Donna… I believe the society and the economy the government and leaders are trying to emulate, is the Chinese one!
October 27, 2024
Yes, they’re working on a CBDC and they aim to control “the peasants” by a Chinese-style Social Credit System. That’s what all the CCTV and other surveillance is about. Don’t use biometric security on your devices.
October 27, 2024
Meanwhile because of the huge delay between announcing the budget and actually holding one, apparently thousands of businesses have thrown in the towel. So much doom and gloom and frankly āausterityā( denied by Chancellor) has been trailed.
Thanks to the tories we have a govt. with a huge majority yet a very small share of the vote. How on earth can a truly punitive budget square with such a vastly unpopular govt.? Consider what happened to poor Truss.
And moreoverā¦who HONESTLY could not have seen all this coming?
Really. It all seems extremely planned to me.
October 27, 2024
Good morning
Why oh why do people, including our kind, host feel that governments need to be in the business and charity games ? They are neither have the ability or knowhow are are more used as rewards for friends who equally lack the necessary talents and skills.
Governments should stick to what they should be doing, making laws.
October 27, 2024
No — Please don’t encourage them. Hmg makes an excessive number of laws – we do not need any more!
Just look at the volume of oppressive legislation since labour got in – Give them something else to do but FGS stop them making new laws to penalise us at every corner!
October 27, 2024
And repealing laws – ask Kemi about that!
October 27, 2024
The last thing we need is more laws and regulation and more lawyers. They should be getting rid of so many mad laws we have. We have laws against theft, burglary, mugging, abh, gbh, shop lifting but the police invariable do almost nothing even when the evidence is presented to them on a plate.
October 27, 2024
One of their āinvestmentsā is Ā£20bn on carbon capture which has literally no revenue stream or profits at all, it just has future operating costs which the taxpayer will have to fund. Just throwing money away.
October 27, 2024
+1
Pure cost, loaded onto anyone who uses energy (ie everyone) …. deliberately making their bills more expensive.
I doubt if the just-about-managing pensioners, who have had their household budgets wrecked by the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance and accompanying increase in the cost of energy, will cheer as they watch Keir-Ching! and Red-Ed squander Ā£billions on the ludicrous carbon capture scheme.
October 27, 2024
It is huge capital expenditure and investment to waste about 30% of the energy output and to reduce CO2 tree food which is another negative. So which moron is pushing this lunacy one Ed Tomb Stone Miliband.
October 27, 2024
Isn’t carbon capture meant to be very dangerous? I can’t remember the details, but there was a natural build up of CO2 in a mountain that blew up? CO2 in limited spaces is quite volatile.
October 27, 2024
There is an alternative to milibands carbon capture …its called planting trees
October 27, 2024
The Labour government are waking up to the extent of the damage socialist policies they have championed and advanced, have caused.
They have finally looked at the scale of councils’ and town hall debts which is a result of endless pay rises, pension privileges and reductions in working hours unions demanded Labour wanted and advocated.
They are waking up to the scale of the public utilities debt particularly water companies debt.
They are waking up to the scale of the lost infrastructure, the failure to repair our roads and railways.
They are waking up to the scale of our lost energy industries and the secure power they once provided.
All of that along with ‘workers rights’ (who ever they are, the question is still out on that) plus the ongoing state funding of open ended migration both legal and illegal. The costs keep rising. These are all areas where Labour has championed socialist ideology the results are now in.
The country is in deep trouble.
Trouble economically, culturally and yes socially that is something Labour can not avoid. Chancellor R. Reeves has decided the best option is to increase spending more and increase taxes by much more. The Labour lot are nothing if not predictable.
Wealth flight has begun. It will only increase as the madness of taking the nation down. Each oppressive rule after oppressive rule they enact more wealth will leave or fail to be created.. The national debt now stands at Ā£3trillion. It will get higher just so long as the world is prepared to lend to us. That safe to lend to condition is coming under scrutiny as our last meaningful industries close down, our last energy generators are closed down and blown up blown u with celebratory zeal by the Ed Milibands of the world.
With all that background the City remains an important feature in the nations international standing. Sadly Khan and Labour in their control of our capital generally are determined to shut that down too.
Where Reeves thinks the money is going to come from to unwind the debts, I have no idea. Unfortunately I don’t think she has any idea either.
October 27, 2024
The late tories & labour have no real ideas …thats why they turn to the policies of the UN & EU
October 27, 2024
What an excellent and very helpful list. The government needs to be held account to this criteria. I hope the Opposition has this criteria at the forefront of their minds when they are assessing and challenging the government over its projects. I hope they also reference this criteria when they are discussing them with the media.
When it comes to government projects, the primary goal should be maximising taxpayer value. If it does not do that it should be amended until it does or be abandoned altogether.
October 27, 2024
But those are good economic principles – something labour have no time for.
Next we’ll be expecting them to be accountable for all of their excessive debt and mismanagement of taxpayer’s money.
If we had a government that cared, we wouldn’t now be having an energy emergency because if it were obvious, and it is obvious, that people will die this winter without adequate unexpensive energy, then HMG would have contingency plans to target those at risk and make sure they survived the cold.
With no such plans we can rightly assume that HMG doesn’t care!
All heil netzero.
October 27, 2024
Even if the Chancellor wanted to exercise financial prudence, the rows of Labour MPs behind her wouldn’t allow it. The reality is she and all the government haven’t a Scoobie as to how to run the country’s finances. All we can hope for is that UK business deny the government the tax receipts she’s looking for, and the markets are spooked at all the borrowing that’s needed to make up the shortfall. Only then can we hope the government will slash the bloated state. Even then, I wouldn’t put it past these socialists to resort to printing money.
We don’t need more borrowing for investment. If investment is needed, stop hammering UK business and let them grow the economy.
October 27, 2024
The big problem will be point 3, where a govt body which has no accountability to markets nor the test of market pricing, has unlimited wriggle room to back-solve into a business case. as for example happened on multiple occasions with the various āeconomicā justifications for HS2. We should expect to see all sorts of spurious claims eg of āsavingsā of CO2 emissions for green schemes which would otherwise have no hope of funding.
October 27, 2024
Recall we have the maladroit ex-Chancellor Gordon Brown to thank for changing the meaning of the words “squandering tax receipts on consumption” to “investment”. When he did manage a form of investment in the guise of public-private partnerships (for the purpose of disguising government liabilities) the outcomes were often unfavourable for the taxpayers.
I doubt the investment this government has in mind is of a form capable of adopting your highly approporiate proposals. Those proposals all seem to reflect hard commercial reality which I doubt this government would appreciate.
We will know very soon whether Starmer like Blair is to have his premiership spoiled by his Chancellor.
October 27, 2024
Sir John,
There is so much waste at local level too.
WBC have just announced their Community Vision For 2035…This includes some woolly ambitions such as living happy, healthy, and independent lives, protecting and improving places, ensuring economic success for all, making it easy for people to access what they need, building and maintaining great communities, and providing fair opportunities for everyone.
This, I suspect, has already cost a fortune at a time when local authorities are all pleading poverty and wanting to increase local rip of tax more and more. One advantage of living in Wokingham, is that you always know how much your Council Tax will increase each year because, it is always the maximum amount the law will allow without a referendum to get the electorate’s approval.
October 27, 2024
It seems quite obvious to me that – some while ago – it was decided by huge forces beyond our shores that we would be required to redistribute our wealth and power while bringing in the world’s poor in order to equalise our populations.
It would not surprise me that the Presidents of India and China and demanded, via some forum, that a transition of wealth and power would take place peacefully in an unofficial surrender in order to avert an otherwise inevitable global war.
This would at least explain why the Chinese have been gifted all of our intellectual and technological secrets and even have ex RAF fighter pilots training theirs, with the tacit approval of our authorities. The hand over of so much of our strategic capability seems deliberate.
Starmer seems hell bent on destroying what’s left of the UK and this is based on the core ideological belief that Britain must atone for her sins.
October 27, 2024
This was mentioned in an interview by James Delingpole of an Australian (Lefty) Professor. In the interview he said something along the lines that, “No transfer of power between one nation and another has ever been done peacefully.”
I suppose the transfer between the UK (Empire) and the USA was one but, we were then, as now, in a weak position to resist.
October 27, 2024
Shouldn’t the subject/headline read :
The country needs strong guard rails against wasteful government spending?
October 27, 2024
The Chancellor says the ābudget will match the greatest economic moments in Labour history.ā The PM canāt/wonāt define a āworking personā. Are we about to see the introduction of wealth taxes?
October 27, 2024
Did they really say “match the greatest economic moments in Labour history”!
The greatest, in terms of scale and impact, was of course the Sterling crisis that ended Jim Callaghan’s Chancellorship during which Prime Minister Wilson said the devaluation of the fixed exchange rate for Sterliing on international exchanges “will not affect the pound in your pocket”.
Then we had Denis Healey’s IMF loans during the 1976 Sertling crisis.
(I do not overlook poor economic management by previous Conservative governments did not help in either case and is seen as a direct cause of the 1976 crisis. The more things change…!)
October 27, 2024
64 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday from the safe country of France …..border force is a waste of money
October 27, 2024
To be fair, they run a better service than Sealink š
/sarc
PS Keep up the good work.
October 27, 2024
One of the ‘state investments’ is to be in paying for CO2 to be transported and buried. I honestly can’t see that as a profitable business. No accountancy skills are needed to note that It looks very much like a cost. (About its necessity opinions may certainly vary.)
October 27, 2024
mancunius :
I cannot see how burying CO2 can be considered to be “sustainable”.
And what if large quantities in the future leak – it’s a gas?
October 27, 2024
Sir John, you have set down a theoretical framework for yet more government borrowing but how do you propose to ensure that it doesn’t (as generally happens with government) all go wrong in practice because neither politicians nor civil servants generally (and they are not subject to your Condition 4) have either the ability or the incentive to realistically conceive a project and then project manage it effectively so as to put this theory into practice?
Reply I cannot guarantee that. I am responding to the clear choice of this government to undertake more āinvestmentā by reminding them that good investments need financial discipline and need to generate enough revenue to reward and repay the capital.
October 27, 2024
Reply to reply.
A good way to get good investment is to allow those who take on the risk to keep more of their rewards. Rewards that Socialists see as ‘theft’.
October 27, 2024
It’s no good advising Labour. They won’t listen. They are ignorant about economic reality but they (especially Reeves, an Oxford University graduate and a former Bank of England ‘economist’) don’t know they are ignorant. If they really want economic growth they would abolish Corporation Tax (though in a phased way to allow adjustment to enormous growth!). Donald Trump who (unlike them) understands business and economics has promised to cut American Corporation Tax to 15% but living in their own fantasy world that is damaging Britain they won’t admit that Donald Trump is correct either!
October 27, 2024
GB :
Wouldn’t it be easier, more logical and a better explanation if it is assumed they don’t want economic growth?
Except of course the growth of government, laws, the Civil Service, quangos, regulators, institutions, “charities”, far left think tanks, lawyers, czars, diversity officers and the judiciary.
October 28, 2024
They are dreamers living in a fantasy world!
October 27, 2024
They won’t, they are amateurs.
Our money will mostly be wasted just as HS2 has been.