Yesterdayâs political cabinet was we were told a review of the growth strategy and where it has got to with its programme.
They had plenty to talk about. The latest polling shows Labour, Reform and Conservative all on around 170 seats, representing a huge defeat for the government. Any election is four years away, but  when polls show a significant number of cabinet ministers not just losing their government jobs but also their seats they get itchy about how bad things are.
It followed on the Bank of England revising its hopeless forecasts for 2025 by halving growth to 0.75% and seeing inflation may rise this year to 3.7%, almost twice target. The latest forecasts may be nearer the mark. Inflation is clearly going to rise, with 5% for Council tax, large double figure percentages for water, above inflation for energy and rail fares. National Insurance forcing up wage costs in April may lead  to more price rises.
The Chancellor killed growth stone dead. The economy grew 1.1% in the first half of the year (2.2% annualised) and zero for the second half. Inflation was at 2% by June and is now rising again. The budget is the main cause of the end of growth. Three months talking the economy down and threatening all manner of tax rises were followed by a tax laden budget which cut investment, led to falling vacancies and will lead to less business and higher unemployment.
The government now faces bad choices. Their own fiscal rules will require more tax rises and or spending cuts to get the deficit under control. The government talks about improving productivity  but has failed to say how. It wants to get more people back into work but dithers over what mix of support and benefit conditionality it will need. Like the previous government it refuses to tackle Bank of England losses. It stupidly overrides the Conservative decision not to give the Chagos away, incurring more spending.
Why did the Chancellor put up spending so much? Why offer big wage awards with no productivity deal?Why keep on recruiting more public sector workers  apart from front line medics and teachers? Why forecast 2% per annum productivity gains with no plans to deliver? Why fail to control costs on the railways? Why propose a big increase in borrowing, putting up interests costs?
February 8, 2025
You ask why many times, it is not complex, they are socialists from the very worst end of the socialist spectrum. They have a knack of combining very real ignorance with bitter social zealotry, a genetic hate and envy of success. They worship the lowest common denominator. If any of you harbour any doubt over what I say, just look back over their decisions of their first six months. All stupid, but driven by hate, envy and bile.
The emergency cabinet is the first awakening to the realisation that all is not well in the state of socialism. Not surprising when you look at the polls. The only question is how much longer can the addicted maintain the illusion before implosion.
February 8, 2025
The big reset, all is going to plan. Total destruction before building back better. WEF have spoken only Trump isn’t playing so we’ll have to be doubly stupid to make up.
February 8, 2025
See Putin and Trump – the Big Reset is definitely NOT going to plan. In fact DEMOCRACY has saved the world!
February 8, 2025
Leyton Orient (basically amateurs) is playing Man City. They are leading 1 – 0
Have faith in miracles!
February 8, 2025
Man City have been poor this season.
The Orient have spent big. Not such a surprise.
February 8, 2025
Agreed. It is obvious that, when it comes to printing growth and creating wealth, this government is utterly clueless. To borrow a vernacular expression, “they don’t know whether they are sitting on their *rse or their elbow”. And if forced to make a choice, it would be the wrong one.
February 8, 2025
@Agricola. Well put. They are realising something is wrong, that their perfect policies and massive majority aren’t having the effect they should, in that vile Britain lying beyond Westminster.
I’m concerned they may “double down”: blame everyone but themselves, lash out and dig deeper. This could involve more attacks on freedom of expression, on our democracy (breaking up England via local government reorganisation, countering public dissent through tame citizens’ assemblies), and a rapid servile subsumation into the EU.
Worrying times, they’ve barely been in power for 6 months..
February 8, 2025
Agricola
“….they are socialists from the very worst end of the socialist spectrum. They have a knack of combining very real ignorance with bitter social zealotry, a genetic hate and envy of success. They worship the lowest common denominator. If any of you harbour any doubt over what I say, just look back over their decisions of their first six months. All stupid, but driven by hate, envy and bile.”
Would certainly look that way!
Well put, Agricola!
February 8, 2025
a lot of truth being spoken to Day!
February 8, 2025
This government is in for a shock, come Autumn inflation will be nearer the 5% mark. You couldn’t make it up, BoE dropping rates and predicting inflation to rise. Its like taking a exam knowing all the correct answers and then writing the wrong answers down!
Cutting the winter fuel allowance was the start of their downfall. Massively dropping Businesses rates would likely give a bigger boost to the country than infrastructure projects like the 3rd runway at Heathrow.
February 8, 2025
There are two main differences in our economic condition between Bliar entering office and Starmer; first is the far higher national debt v GDP, and second, is the ‘belief’ in a false societal nightmare called Global Warming caused by CO2 and our consequent policy of Net Zero. Both cost the state a huge amount, are are mutually reinforcing. Starmer has behaved as though neither are a problem… so far. Reality is coming fast, ie running out of borrowing capacity. So it will be more taxation and/or cost cutting, decision time soon.
February 8, 2025
The 3rd runway will never happen. Neither will a host of other infrastructure projects they are talking about. Starmer will never override lengthy lawfare attacks on these projects because itâs his mates conducting them (see also Chagos Islands).
February 8, 2025
Correct.
February 8, 2025
Good morning.
Not much more can be added to that.
February 8, 2025
Have you noticed how the growth forecasts are continually revised downwards? How long before growth becomes shrink?
I’m fully expecting the chancellor’s fiscal rules to turn out to be not so much rules as guidelines. It won’t be her fault of course, once blaming the Tories wears thin it will all be the fault of Brexit.
February 8, 2025
It’s all ‘Soviet era’ tractor production figures – ie made up !
Never believe a damned word any of them say.
February 8, 2025
Billed as “.. a review of the growth strategy..” certainly but no-one will believe that, rather it was a panicked appraisal of how badly has the government fared in its first seven months.
Sunak’s government did well to disguise the extent of the poisonous legacy it bequeathed but Labour came to office materially ill-prepared and has revealed itself to be inept.
Has Chancellor Reeves presented her last budget? Many will hope so, probably now including Sir Starmer.
February 8, 2025
Meanwhile, the Defence Secretary is getting even more deeply involved in the Ukraine war:
Kyiv Independent(well,not actually independent at all-USAID funded!),6/2/25:
“The US will not be leading a session of the US-led Ukraine Contact Group meeting for the first time in its history.The UK has officially confirmed that it will host the 26th meeting of the Ramstein Group on 12th February at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.”
You want it,it’s all yours!
February 8, 2025
@Mitchell. We must look like complete suckers to the rest of the world, especially to the no-nonsense countries.
February 8, 2025
+1 we do.
February 8, 2025
Labour had 4 years in opposition under Starmerâs leadership to devise their economic growth strategy. That is plenty of time but all it amounted to was clobbering British businesses for extra money, increase public sector pay and intensify the Net Zero self-harm.
I donât expect much from Socialists but this was them at their most intellectually lazy. Now they are on the back foot scratching around for pet projects hoping these will solve the growth malaise.
They wonât work as these stunts are not addressing the two main issues which are over taxed consumers and businesses. Of course this was all proven and dealt with in the 1980âs but there is no hope of Labour replicating it.
Itâs going to be irritating listening to Rachel Reeves bang on about something she is clueless about for 4 years.
February 8, 2025
And yet, Wokingham Borough Council has got four adverts for director jobs on The MJ Jobs website, each paying between 89k and 109k plus benefits. Don’t they know we’re all having to cut back in our spending?
February 8, 2025
A Labour government trashing the economy, it’s what they do…………everytime.
February 8, 2025
And they managed to do it in one because Johnson-the-Destroyer did all the heavy work.
February 8, 2025
Pretty much as soon as Rachel-from-Accounts sat down with a smirk on her face, having delivered the worst budget for the last 45-odd years (since Healey), I thought the smirk would be wiped off her face within a few months. It was obvious to me that it was going to lead to 1970s-style Stagflation. If I could see that, why couldn’t the Chancellor who claims to be an economist or the assembled ranks of highly paid economists working in the Treasury and OBR?
And whilst Rachel-from-Accounts was driving the economy over a cliff, Two-Tier and the rest of his Student Union Government appear to be on a mission to alienate 80% of the population; basically anyone who doesn’t work in the Public Sector. Now, desperate to avoid electoral humiliation they have connived with the Not-a-Conservative-Party to cancel Local Elections in the areas where the Reform Party was likely to do very well.
So, they’ve got in a hole; jumped in it and are now digging it even deeper …. and Reform will be the beneficiaries. The entire Establishment is panicking, not just Labour.
February 8, 2025
+1
Both our kind host and myself are in agreement that, Employers National Insurance Contributions are a ‘tax on job’. Rachel from accounts seems determined to prove us both right.
February 8, 2025
When you are in the thick of it and things are not going well, it takes a lot of resolve to stay the course (no matter how mistaken it may be in this case). The Harmer may well have that resolve (he’s clearly a political zeolot) but I suspect many of his crew are seeing the rocks ahead and panicking. It’s going to be Mutiny Mr Bligh!
February 8, 2025
I think their decisions are being made through the prism of strong public sector equals growth, so pump that up using money stolen from the profligate private sector and what could go wrong?
How come the BoE reduces rates with inflation rising? Where’s the 2% inflation target gone?
February 8, 2025
“If Socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be Socialists.â
.Friedrich Von Hayek
February 8, 2025
The latest demonstration of either imbecility or mendaciousness is the suggestion that tax free Cash ISA’s should be scrapped because the un-taxed cash is sitting there and not benefiting the economy …. it should be invested.”
Obviously, the money was taxed before it was saved and it isn’t just sitting in the bank/building society gathering dust.
So they either believe the justification for the proposal, in which case they ARE complete imbeciles, or they think we’re stupid and won’t understand the lies they are spouting.
February 8, 2025
Sir John
You missed it, Councils increasing taxes by at least 5% as we are told about tax rises they donât increase inflation they are earning, the new wealth creation. đ
February 8, 2025
The UK has money to burn Chagos ÂŁ90+ Billion plus inflation. Then according to the Telegraph today “Officials from David Lammyâs department set to meet Caribbean delegation demanding trillions of pounds” Only! trillions of pounds
February 8, 2025
The UK retained Sovereignty over Akrotiri and Dhekelia and the local Government donât get paid for it
February 8, 2025
Ian
Knowing this lot they will get round to it in time. And they will probably throw in the Elgin Marbles to boot !
February 8, 2025
How much did the UK get paid for handing over the resources of the Caribbean Islands, how much did the UK get paid for stopping all perpetrators of the slave trade. How much did the African nations that rounded up their people to send them into slavery pay.
My understanding was those from the UK that participated in the trade of humans were all private companies, while at the same time back home in ‘Blighty’ the people were themselves slaves(they, the Government, changed the name to surfs, for a softer look) what reparations are these people due.
February 8, 2025
The government paid compensation to the owners of freed slaves(‘Slave Compensation Act,1837).A total of ÂŁ20m(cÂŁ16.6 bn in today’s money) in c40,000 awards in respect of slaves freed in the colonies of the Caribbean,Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope.The father of William Gladstone was the largest single recipient.
February 9, 2025
@Mitchel – on reading your response I read the Wiki offering for the trade and noted “enslaved Africans sent to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, with legal standing similar to that of contract-based workers coming from Britain and Ireland.”
Of course the British taxpayer was compensating the Private Companies, (there were no British Government Slaves) to force their release. The Taxpayer was the payee, not and never the beneficiary of the trade
February 8, 2025
Are we going to get reparations from the Romans?
February 8, 2025
And those ‘former’ surf, that is you and me, have been paying off the debt incurred by the British State to compensate former slave owners. And we, ‘I think’ only made the last payment in 2015.
February 9, 2025
@Mark B – gets more intriguing
âenslaved Africans sent to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, with legal standing similar to that of contract-based workers coming from Britain and Ireland.â So they were treated as the rest of us in that age.
Not forgetting after the Romans it was the Normans that stole our lands and enslaved us. By and large they are the ones lurking behind the slave trade and a lot of our society now
The British Taxpayer – the magic money tree when others are a bit short
February 8, 2025
A passage in Cobbett’s Rural Rides makes the very same point regarding slavery.
His travels through America witnessing first hand the conditions and then comparing them with conditions and treatment of our own rural labourers.
I think if Lammy and many more read his comparisons they’d go up in smoke.
February 8, 2025
And ÂŁ9 billion to Zelensky who has âlostâ USD 100 million, Starmer has also promised him ÂŁ2 billion a year for 100 years!
Zelensky âearnsâ USD 11 million a month so thank goodness that at least has been secured.
February 8, 2025
Sorry – Zelensky has lost USD 100 BILLION. Itâs so unbelievable itâs almost impossible to comprehend. Anyway, that is what he has said on camera.
February 8, 2025
Early on in Solzhenitsyn’s extraordinary(ever more so in retrospect) June 1978 Harvard speech(‘A World Split Apart’),he says of the era of European colonization and insistence on western cultural unipolarity:
“We now see that the conquests proved to be short-lived and precarious and this in turn points to the defects of the western view of the world which led to these conquests.Relations with the former colonial world have now turned into their opposite and the western world often goes to the extremes of obsequiousness but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the west and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the west to foot the bill.
But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of the present western system…….”
Everyone should read that speech in its entirety.
February 8, 2025
Solzhenitsyn knew what he was talking about regarding Communism. No Russian (including Putin) knows anything about Africa. They think they know where we went wrong. They think they can do better. They will learn the hard way. This is a source of dismay to me.
They should be getting the picture because at the African conference in Moscow, African leaders wanted Putin to lead them. They viewed that as âfreedomâ. Perhaps they are worried that they have sucked the U.K. dry. They need a new host. They donât think Lammy can deliver no matter what he promises. They need a host run by competent people.
February 8, 2025
We need to are the border-force! we have to many incomers with no skills
February 8, 2025
Sorry! that was âarmâ the borderforce
February 9, 2025
I think Starmer is borderline insane in a political sense.
At least when Denis Healey squeezed the rich til the pips squeaked the money stayed in the UK.
But this deranged Robin Hood is planning to pour billions of British pounds somewhere into the Indian Ocean. It’s insane in itself as well as opening up a can of worms all over the place.
It’s like he has no vision whatsoever about what to do – except somehow give the rich / the ‘establishment’ a hard time.
February 9, 2025
Also, putting aside how the UK is in huge debt, it’s not just terrible in national interests but also demonstrates really poor political wisdom on Starmer’s part.
The job of every new government is to focus on the biggest issues of the day and sort those out: 1. The Economy (and debt) being number one. Then if you get a second term and the country doing well, then you can focus more on secondary issues (which Chagos is but not secondary if you botch it up like Starmer appears to be doing). Then whatever you decide to do with Chagos (a good or bad decision) at least it rests on 5 good years of good governance.
The guy is off his trolley when it comes to politics.
February 8, 2025
Apart from some Net Zero rubbish the BoE has a single target: to hold inflation at 2%. And yet they blithely put out a forecast saying inflation will be 3.7% this year and not fall back to 2% till 2027 ! They literally broadcast their own incompetence. It seems they are cutting interest rates only to help Reeves by generating a modicum of growth and to try to avoid a recession – that is a political decision not in their remit at all – time to scrap BoE âindependenceâ and fire the current incumbents.
February 8, 2025
Not only should the present incumbents at the BoE be fired, the people who hired them should also be fired from whatever they are currently doing.
February 8, 2025
Agreed. I think our kind host has pointed to this fact often ?
February 8, 2025
Net-zero, baby, net-zero
February 8, 2025
The longer this government exists, the more it brings to mind the details of the novel by George Orwell; 1984. The horrors portrayed are but a poor facsimile of what is being planned for us.
We already have excessive surveillance, two varieties of justice depending on whom you support, political prisoners, monitoring of bank accounts is coming very soon along with a myriad of control mechanisms designed to make us all poorer and our future more miserable than ever before.
Labour’s insistence that they really do want to increase productivity is a combination of political theatre and Double-speak That also applies to the idea that any more airport runways will be built – certainly not while red Ed is closing the country down.
When our very own ministry of truth comes out with quotes like; “Ignorance is strength” or “You will be poor but you will be happy”, then we will know what they are determined to do. Orwell said it all, HMG will make it true, worse even.
February 8, 2025
They want to monitor everyone’s bank accounts, yet they allow the money-laundering operations on the High Street (nail bars, “Turkish” barbers, fast food outlets, hand car washes etc) to proliferate unscathed.
I conclude that they don’t WANT to know how many illegal immigrants are in the country.
February 8, 2025
đđ»
February 8, 2025
Well said Donna. The proliferation in these shops is amazing. My small town has had 2 new Turkish Barbers this year already to add to the 4 existing ones (are the men in my area particularly hirsute that we need so many??)
Another Asian nail bar, and another Indian convenience store. None of these shops ever look particularly busy either, so I wonder how they make the rent & rates, when other long standing shops are closing down. Oh and they are not very ‘diverse’ in their staff either.
I suppose all the holier than thou smart set will use the ‘lazy Brits’ to dismiss the issue.
February 8, 2025
We are now experiencing âChinese supermarketsâ in numbers.
February 8, 2025
I noticed that Andrew Bailey correctly identified the most serious source of our present economic problems:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/07/bailey-lays-bare-reeves-will-continue-crush-private-sector/
âThe potential growth rate in the UK has been low since the financial crisis.”
If you look back far enough it becomes clear that the 2008 global financial crisis left the UK economy crippled and unable to grow at its previous trend rate, in fact struggling to achieve half of that rate, and I estimate that if we had recovered we would now have per capita GDP over 40% higher than it is:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/01/29/government-imposed-barriers-to-growth/#comment-1496260
But the present Labour government does not want to look that far back, to when a previous Labour government presided over an economic and fiscal crisis of such severity that it had to resort to rigging the market in its own bonds, it prefers to look back over the subsequent period of governments led by the Tories.
February 8, 2025
The joys of a highly financialised economy and so-called ‘efficient’ balance sheets(ie few assets,lots of debt).That model is bust and so is the country!
February 8, 2025
We need a DOGE. Stripping out the institutionalised fraud and waste would deliver the U.K. balanced books.
If we are released from the tax burden, we would fly.
Any other system would have long since collapsed under the burden of fraud, waste and incompetence. Even now, capitalism is feeding us all. Go to Africa and see what itâs like when not everybody is fed. Itâs a thing! No European knows this.
February 8, 2025
With respect, Sir John, I think youâre being far too harsh on the Chancellor. She and the Government are not actually in control are they?
Our finances are controlled by the OBR, the Treasury, the BoE, the Civil Service and the public sector unions. Our foreign affairs are in the hands of lawyers, foreign trumped up courts and the FCO. Our immigration policy is decided by an unelected activist group of civil servants working in the Home Office. Our energy policy is decided by arts graduate civil servants at DESNZ and the unelected CCC, climate activists partially funded by the tax-payer, and judges who admit they know nothing about energy or climate.
It was Carl Sagan, an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator who said that giving control of a country that is highly dependent upon science and technology to a group who have no understanding of science, technology or engineering is a certain recipe for disaster.
The Chief Scientific Adviser to The Treasury has a degree in foreign languages and literature.
February 8, 2025
And they’re all controlled by the UN/EU/IMF/WEF.
February 8, 2025
Who similarly have no science or technology ability. They donât even have the basic concepts.
February 8, 2025
They are the government and have a sizeable majority. They can legislate to do anything. If they want to take back control from the OBR, the BoE and CCC they can. There is nothing stopping them. The CS is a different kettle of fish.
February 8, 2025
Anyone with common sense especially in business know you don’t change more than one major or critical thing at the same time. In fact it’s second nature of all Engineers and Technical support professionals (STEM folk) .
Rachel Reeves not only has zero awareness of this golden rule:-
She has changed too many critical negative dials against both consumers and businesses, taxpayers and the government itself totally unaware of the consequences of her inevitable doomed legacy.
Add to that Angela’s angelic Minimum Wage rise there will be Red faces in government and will be interesting how the BBC present it.
Meanwhile all the previous global showboating will create scorn and ridicule.
February 8, 2025
April will be a fools paradise for Britain now Lammy has invited Caribbean countries to come for talks on Reparations for slavery.
No wonder local council elections for May are being postponed….
February 8, 2025
What about the French? Invaded and stole our land and gave it to ânoblesâ whose descendants still own vast tracts of this country.
And how about Germany? Any reparations for all the bomb damage?
February 8, 2025
All valid questions Sir John. Most of us know the answers of course. They are Labour politicians and that is the language of Labour politicians. False promises based on spending other peoples money.
The good news in your piece today is, Reform are heading for government.
The light is just appearing at the end of the traditional dark political tunnel that we have been stumbling along in this past twenty five years.
The incompetence of the traditional Politicians with their blind adherence to ‘international’ laws, no matter how damaging to the UK’s interests they are, may finally be coming to an end.
February 8, 2025
Meanwhile Lammy is off to talk to carribean countries to discuss up to ÂŁ18 trillion in reparations for slavery! That is nearly a thousand times the black hole they claim they inherited from the Tories.
February 8, 2025
Reparations for slavery that has NOTHING to do with me. I didnât enslave anyone. But no Winter Fuel Allowance for me and millions of others that bear no responsibility for slavery. Why not trace the descendants of the people that were involved.
February 8, 2025
The Africans sold by their family into slavery should seek reparations from those tribes. Anyway, how much are the Caribbean islands worth? They have them now – more than ÂŁ18 trillion? Perhaps they owe us?
February 8, 2025
The contrast to what Trump is doing in the US is just extraordinary. Itâs both appalling to watch for us as U.K. citizens and taxpayers, but in a way heartening, as shows just what could be done if we had the right government and leadership.
In the Commons Starmer said the Conservatives had led the first 11 of 13 rounds of negotiations on the Chagos Islands, and that the legal position made it mandatory for the govt to come to an agreement with Mauritius. Arenât both of these statements untrue?
Reply It is true officials negotiated under a Conservative government. David Cameron closed that down saying no deal. There is no legal requirement to give anything to Mauritius.
February 8, 2025
You ask many questions but do not offer any answers at this moment.
Lord Frost’s Opinion in the Daily Telegraph suggests we are on a slippery slope on the doom loop towards bankruptcy .
He also points points out that the only short term options are higher taxes or reductions in public spending.
Given that higher taxes are responsible for the beheading of the growth trajectory only lower public spending can provide markets with any confidence that Reeves has any grip on the economy.
However, cutting public spending is for Labour the equivalent of Socrates imbibing his poison.
Divisions in the Labour Government would rise to melting point.
This would culminate in the correct economic solution to the problem which is the fall of the Labour Government.
Meanwhile, batten down the hatches! It will not be pleasant.
Reply I give plenty of answers. See my pieces on how to get growth and on how to cut spending.
February 8, 2025
Which is the ‘plan’.
February 8, 2025
Elon Musk has just posted a really good exhibit on X showing US federal expenditure by department for 2019 and 2024, showing the increase both in nominal and real terms and the multiple over increase in income. Transparency like that is exactly whatâs needed in the U.K.
February 8, 2025
đŻMusk is stopping a trillion in waste and fraud. He says when you are revealing fraud those who shout âstopâ are the fraudsters.
Our elitists shout stop even at the suggestion!
The U.K. like the USA is living within itâs means once the fraud and funding of unauthorised foreign bodies and people is stopped.
February 8, 2025
I was listening to a podcast about USAID. The level of fraud is staggering !!
February 8, 2025
Any chance we can invite Mr Musk & DOGE to add us to the list.
Public Sector Pensions need to be on the same basis as the private sector. This might alter the indifference of the public sector to destroying the private sector.
Net Zero needs to be ended.
Lawfare against the country and public needs to end.
February 8, 2025
Talking about spendingâŠ
According to NESO (National Energy System Operator) their suggested Pathways to clean power by 2030 (well, actually 95% clean power) âwill involve an investment programme averaging over ÂŁ40 billion annuallyâ. No maximum given and is likely to be an HS2 estimate.
At the Public Accounts Committee oral evidence session on 12/12/2024 on the ÂŁ22bn first stage of CCUS (Carbon Capture, Usage & Storage) program, where the technology does not yet exist, the Lib Dem MP for Tiverton & Minehead said:
âTo my mind, putting so much taxpayersâ money into this, when there are so many questions and nothing definitive, is bananas.â
February 8, 2025
Who would have suspected such good sense, from a CAN bill supporting Lib Dem?
February 8, 2025
Now we hear this Quisling PM (excellent analogy from Robert Jenrick) is to open discussions with the Caribbean countries for up to ÂŁ18 trillion (!) of âreparationsâ for the slave trade. Also I believe at the behest of the ICJ.
February 8, 2025
At the âemergency political cabinetâ meeting there will at least be agreement that their sabotaging of our energy is proceeding according to plan.
NESO (National Energy System Operator) write on P14 of Annex 1 (Electricity demand and supply analysis) of their Clean Power 2030 report:
âConsumer engagement is a vital part of efficient and low-cost use of clean power and, in the first instance, regular demand side flexibility responsive to TOUTs would typically be used to reduce peak demand.â
âConsumer engagementâ is code for âincreasing the prices to curb demand followed by rolling blackoutsâ.
This will be the result of spending âover ÂŁ40 billion annuallyâ (NESOâs estimate) on SoS for DESNZ Ed Milibandâs Clean Power 2030 project.
So no longer electricity âat the flick of a switch from abundant, cheap British renewablesâŠ.â as promised by PM Johnson in his âNet Zero Strategy – Build Back Greenerâ document….
February 8, 2025
PS:
The reason why Ed Miliband says that our electricity bills will decrease by ÂŁ300/year is because we will be using less electricity because of high pricing and rolling blackouts.
February 8, 2025
Those of us who do not have a vested interest in growth accept that the economy is now shrinking. Although it is made to look like it is growing by borrowing more and more.
We are not left or right-wingers. Just realists.
To find out how we are thinking, go to Dr Tim Morgan’s blog on Surplus Energy Economics.
We are transitioning into a post-growth economy. A natural evolutionary process. Not at all politically inspired.
February 8, 2025
So without the net Zero policies you still think the U.K. would ânaturally transitionâ – sounds like Pelosi explaining that âinflation was a world wide phenomenonâ đ to be fair to her and Rachel-from-Accounts it may well be!
February 8, 2025
Labour is doing what Labour always does, spending borrowed money in the wrong places, until they have created a crisis.
Trump has come into office after 4 years with a clear plan and is doing what most ordinary people in the USA want him to do. Labour had fourteen years to prepare and came into office with no plan, no vision, and we see the result. Added to that is that they are doing exactly what most ordinary people don’t want them to do!
It is a shambles and will get worse because people who don’t know what they don’t know, don’t know how to change. They stumble along thinking they know what they are doing, because they lack basic common sense and are locked in their own self-righteous bubble.
February 8, 2025
I would say it’s a political cabinet in an emergency situation trying to manage what was handed to them and not making the best of it but that is what the people voted for same as they voted for brexit a few years ago – a big mistake because it all went bad – they allowed the pendulum to swing too far – also without able negotiators we can see now where the failings are. My opinion cabinet politics have been badly served for a long time – can’t remember when we last had able people.
February 8, 2025
Yes! He is having to do everything at once because the whole state is collapsing. So give him a break for the odd mistake. He rectifies mistakes when they become apparent, the sign of a substantial, thinking man – Kellog has been sidelined. The rare earths in Ukraine are located in the Donbass – which Zelenski would have retained in the two Peace Treaties proposed and rejected by the Ukrainians depending, as they did, on Johnson for advice. Ukrainians are dying at a rate of 1,600 a day, down from the high of last year. Ukrainian Army personnel are complaining of old, sick and disabled recruits.
Russia is winning and will not accept a cease-fire – unlike Israel it can push on until the win is impossible to deny.
Trump should walk away and leave the mess on Rutte, van der Leyen and Bidenâs door.
He will have a triumph in the Middle East. None of us considered this monumental and brilliant strategy. Itâs truly magnificent. The USA is proving itself worthy to lead the western world.
February 10, 2025
I think some people are confusing ‘rare earths’ with ‘critical minerals’-it is the latter which Ukraine possesses.
February 8, 2025
The UK needs lower taxes, less Government, incentives to increase employment and reduce unemployment, real investment incentives AND lower interest rates. With these inter alia I suspect actual taxes will increase due to higher profits and more investment including from overseas. But this government is doing the opposite i.e. suicidal. The problem is that we cannot find a way of accelerating the process.
February 9, 2025
The real question here is why did Rishi call the election when he did? The economy was on the turn up and if he had left it until the autumn I do think he would not have lost so badly. Why? Will you answer this please? Did he know something we did not but on what we have seen it could not have been so bad as what we have experienced with this chancers now in government.