I will be giving a lecture at 11 am at All Souls College, High Street Oxford on Friday 21 February. It will set out how to reduce waste and bad spending in UK budgets. It will not propose any cuts to benefits or to main public services. There will be an on line facility to see it live as well. See www.asc.ox.ac.uk/events for details
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February 16, 2025
Thanks, will be watching.
February 16, 2025
Just Ed Miliband’s net zero lunacy, if he really means it and is not removed, will cost £5-10 trillion and this with negative impacts for real living standard AND THE economy too on top of this entirely pointless expense.
February 16, 2025
I think benefits are an open goal john. Everyone knows someone who is milking the system. I see them daily in designer gear with hoards of kids and as a pensioner I’m still paying towards it.
February 16, 2025
Well the estimate for the Covid vaccines programme was £11.7 billion which includes the costs of purchasing/manufacturing vaccines for the UK, deploying them in England and investing in global efforts to purchase vaccines. You can double this with the huge net harm done by these vaccines. This could have all been avoided by having competent regulators and honest vaccines. Regulator not mainly funded by companies who benefit from dubious & crooked regulators. Has this been changes yet? Have they stopped gain of function bat vaccines lab experiments yet? How is Fauchi getting on?
Then we had the lockdowns when the sensible experts were on the Barrington declaration side money were even spend by government trying to shut these sensible people up by MPs with PPE degrees.
Then we have Chagos, Net. Zero, burning wood at Drax. 75% of UK degrees are basically almost worthless… so much fat that could so very easily be cut but no political will to do so. We could for example actually deter crime and illegal immigration rather than augmenting and encouraging it at every step by the uni-parties.
It ia
February 16, 2025
The diversity agenda costs billions just the NHS pay many diversity officers double what many junior doctors get this to make the workforce quality far worse and inconvenience the productive & medical staff. What does this cost. How many extra deaths result? What does the Equality Act cost government and the employers… What do all the many government incentives to be feckless or pretend to be unable to work cost?
Halving the net cost of the state would be quite easy! instead of puting VAT on school fees give 20% tax for not using the state, same with the NHS…
February 16, 2025
Link invalid
February 17, 2025
RN
The event is not until 21st February. So it is rather early to get the Zoom link.
February 16, 2025
Link non-functional
February 16, 2025
Cancel trident, stop all foreign aid, cancel net-zero and stop all renewable subsidies ….instantly save £100billion
February 16, 2025
Tell them to aim the camera better this time. Your head was cut off for the last lecture I watched.
February 16, 2025
£50 billing is a start, no doubt bank of England losses will form part of that.
You will also talk about productivity in the civil service. I would talk about cuts to the numbers rather than productivity gains. That is money in the bank rather than theoretical.
I would also like to hear you talk about benefit cuts and time limitations.
But good on you Sir John for not just seeking to spend more like others
February 16, 2025
£50 billion not billing
February 16, 2025
Couldn’t get into link
Can we assume we are talking about UK-Aid?
There has to be a wealth of opportunity in saving wasted money if it is anything like that in USAID
February 17, 2025
It says it is about UK public sector savings.
February 16, 2025
Britain and the wider Europe is now in a civil war.
Economics. Really ?
We warned you time and time again !
February 17, 2025
Trump may be about to impose a tariff on imports of commodities. The gold market is concerned that gold is going to be considered a monetary metal rather than a commodity – and thus be exempt.
The gold market is made up of two interrelated but separate markets – the paper market in gold futures run my COMEX in New York and the physical gold bullion market run by the London Bullion Market Association (LMBA) in London, where gold metal is stored in Bank of England vaults.
The system works because it is understood by market participants that COMEX gold future positions can be exchanged for LBMA good delivery bars when a futures contract expires. The accepted rate is ~125 futures contracts to each 1000g bar of fine gold.
The fear that Trump may place a tariff on the importation of physical gold metal has caused something akin to panic in the gold market and has resulted in large amounts – tons – of gold being withdrawn from BoE vaults and transported to New York.
The big beneficiaries of this are the bullion banks, who can arbitrage the price difference between a gold futures contract and the spot price for the gold, currently about $47/kg.
Those holding physical gold bullion should be aware that should Trump impose a tariff on the import of gold, it will have a dramatic effect on price.
February 17, 2025
Will a recording be available after?
Reply. No
February 17, 2025
Does the 2010 law passed by labour and introduced by Brown shield the UK civil service from Doge accountability?
CRAG is said by people on twitter to block elected governments from real reform.
February 17, 2025
£50 billion is about 4% of total UK spending in one year.
If Rachel from accounts were better qualified, she should be able to save far more than that, as well as spending much more efficiently on most of the other 96%.
She managed to save 40% of the ten years she claimed to spend at the Bank of England.