I warned before the last Bank of England rate cut that inflation was going up this yea. The Bank should take its anti inflation duty more seriously. The CPI is up 3%, 50% over target. It will get close to 4% later this year.
The government is causing a lot of the inflation. Bus fares up from cancelling a subsidy. Rail fares to go up to help pay for a big inflation busting pay award by a nationalised industry. Managed energy prices up. Services going up thanks to big increase in employment costs from the jobs tax. Regulated Water bills up massively. VAT on school fees. Housing costs up 8% thanks to attacks on landlords and restricted supply. Food costs up as family farm businesses threatened with business killing tax rises.
Stagflation is well set in. Around Zero growth for the last half year and 3% inflation. Last summer we had topped the G 7 growth league for the first half of the year and inflation was 2%
February 20, 2025
Indeed Rachael has certainly added even more momentum to the doom loop with her endless attacks on the private sector, the wealthy, employers, private schools, Non Doms, no deterrent policing, two tier justice. vast government waste, the insanity of net zero…
So life expectancy has declined significantly in the UK since 2020 the ONS report. The government puts this down to Covid and people eating too much. The stats and timing suggest is is mainly due to the Covid Vaccines. But of course the government could easily publish the increases deaths of those vaccinated and those not vaccinated (how many times and with which vaccines). They have the figures (so I assume they have looked it would be negligent not to have down so). Yet they choose not to do so. They obviously must have their reasons?
Reply Reasons of earlier death include obesity/ diet/ exercise. Is an issue about whether covid impact on treating other conditions affected death rates.
February 20, 2025
If Geert vanden Bossche is right, highly jabbed nations aren’t going to see a reduction in excess deaths any time soon. But the Government and its “Experts” remain determined to ignore the elephant in the room.
February 20, 2025
Indeed. But doubtless Rachael Reeves and Starmer will be rushing to do the decent thing and reduce the state pension retirement date in line with the government cause life expectancy reduction. Be it caused by coercing duff “vaccines”, shutting down the NHS, shutting down the economy or just by gain or function lab experiments!
February 20, 2025
It seems very likely he is alas.
February 20, 2025
Indeed shutting down the NHS did not help but it seems very clear the Covid vaccines did much harm and still is doing. The huge excess death figures in the US of 25-45 year olds. There is a link to this on the Dr John Campbel Video.
The stats office could easily just publish the figures for those with and without Covid Vaccines and by type and number but they choose not to do so. I assume they want to hide the reality. But is will now come out in the US and elsewhere.
I assume the MHRA are still funded mainly by Big Pharma? Any criminal investigations in the UK yet?
February 20, 2025
And still being pushed at elderly people in the UK. Why was there any reason every to push these at young children and people who had had Covid already? Other than profit and regulators who were at nest grossly incompetent at worst totally compromised or corrupt. But as usual medical people often get struck off for having a fling with a patient but rarely for killing thousands through gross negligence.
February 20, 2025
‘ Bus fares up from cancelling a subsidy. ‘
Buses are stilled packed though. Parking space is removed or highly priced. So drivers look for other options.
https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/frustration-kingston-residents-constantly-stranded-28629803
This may surprise Lifelogic who likes to make sweeping generalisations from his ivory tower, rather than on the ground as the buses go by
I did find a pleasant little bus to Epsom yesterday. However, it only runs once an hour and the service ends around 6pm. Rather quaint for the metropolis.
February 20, 2025
I live in West Dorset. What is a bus?
February 21, 2025
Or a police officer!
February 20, 2025
The BoE reduced rates to appease the liebour government. It is basically a left wing Quango so it will do all it can to assist.
Thieves from accounts has no idea what she’s doing if she means to stimulate growth. Every act of herself has done the opposite. Accident, I don’t think so. Just another way of easing us back into the EU.
2TK looks a right pratt, mincing about ready to commit uk troops to Ukraine, no doubt as part of a French led, German armed EU army. No thanks.
February 20, 2025
And if you are a soldier sent over to Ukraine who has to fight, who is to say that on your return 2TK won’t hound you and then prosecute you – as he is doing to other soldiers.
February 20, 2025
Talk of re-introducing national service. Presumably to prepare a credible force to create a new ‘expeditionary army’. The problem with this is who wants to fight for a nation run by Starmer and Co.?
We’re a better educated nation now, and we know when ‘excess youth’ are being culled for the benefit of the wealthy neo-aristocracy.
February 20, 2025
I saw a survey / poll of some sort the other day that said only 1 in 10 young people would ‘fight for their country’. Hallelujah. If politicians / leaders want to have a fight, get the boxing gloves out. Or, if they must have a war, get their boots on. If any of that conscription nonsense starts here, I will be buying my lads tickets to wherever they want to go.
February 20, 2025
Don’t worry, if you go you are never coming home.
February 20, 2025
Only in pieces.Like that 18 year lad who has killed a couple of weeks ago by a Russian drone “within minutes of arriving at the front line”.Apparently he thought it would be like one up from playing computer wargames.
Wasn’t it Truss who ,as the worst ever foreign secretary (up till then),encouraged people to go off and fight in Ukraine.To their credit the Generals slapped her down.
February 20, 2025
And does not know her Baltic from her Black Sea.
February 20, 2025
@Jazz – I would say that the new proven norm is he will. As the head of the UK Legislators, how the Law is interpreted is in his hands and his fellow we hate the UK and its People MP’s. They are the only ones that get to create and administer UK Laws, the only ones that get to choose how those Laws get used in UK Courts. The Courts do the bidding of those are democratically elected and empowered by us to look after our interest – are MP’s doing what we pay them to do?
February 20, 2025
+1 self-awareness isn’t one of Two-Tier’s strong points.
As for John Healey, Defence Minister, I’m sure his experience as a disability charity campaigner and campaign director with the TUC is invaluable at the MoD.
February 20, 2025
That will help him to campaign for a better deal for our soldiers who come back disabled.
And that will be useful as he campaigns for the money and resources to make sure none that served live on the streets.
February 20, 2025
@Ian
Agree 100%.
SJR warned the BOE of potential inflation in advance but they ignore his wise advice and do the opposite never learning…
Allister Heath is spot on that we have the worst govt at the worst time and are so threadbare economically, industrially and militarily etc. Etc.
February 20, 2025
The draft age was 27 in the Ukraine. They didn’t want to lose too many young men but in April 24 the Guardian said he was dropping that to 25 and reassessing people with disability waivers, RFERL.org claimeed “the Biden administration pushed Ukraine to lower the draft age again – this time to 18! Jan 25. The average age of a Ukranian soldier is around 40 years old, some recruits have health and substance abuse issues CRS reports – Congress.gov. In June 24 the BBC reported that every Ukrainian man age between 25-60 had to log their details on to an electronic database so they could be called up.
Are Brits supportive of this war and getting involved if they know who is expected to go to support?
February 20, 2025
NASA data released Tuesday says there is now a 3.1 percent chance that a “city-destroying” asteroid could smash into Earth in 2032 and a 96.7% it will miss. So how exactly does Zealot Ed Miliband’s climate modelling soothsayers predict it for 100 years given these unpredictable events? The are millions of unpredictable such event that will affect the weather for many years and unlike dice the weather today affects the weather tomorrow. Does he really think the UKs 1% of CO2 is more of a factor than such an impact!
The modellers like to say we can predict the climate in 100 years but not weather next week though climate is just average weather. This given the basic maths that says you can fairly accurately predict the average of many multiple throws of a fare dice (3.5) but not what the next few throws will be (a parallel argument). But not with events like this asteroid which could affect the climate, weather, the orbit, the earths rotations for ever more or might miss.
One especially huge impact, after all, formed the moon did it not? Which gave us the tides the earths rotation speeds and much else.
February 20, 2025
Keep calm, 2024-YR4 is at most 90m wide, the one that is thought to have wiped the dinosaurs was 10km wide.
For a U.Cam ‘scientist’ you do not seem to have much a grasp of orders of magnitude.
February 20, 2025
In your rush to comment hefner, you failed to understand that LL was comparing the expert’s predictions of the chances of the asteroid hitting with the certainty other experts have on the climate.
February 20, 2025
Indeed but still 500 Hiroshima bombs it is reported as.
February 20, 2025
Those pesky experts. Who to believe? Highly qualified, highly experienced specialist scientists whose whole and only job is to study and model the climate – or some bloke who posts 10 times a day that those scientists are all wrong? It’s a conundrum.
February 20, 2025
Follow the money – I think you will find that the Net Zero Climate ‘scientists’ are more highly paid than anything else. And of course those at Cambridge have been exposed as fraudulently ‘developing’ evidence that supports the required conclusion … if they want to be paid.
February 21, 2025
Was in not UEA in Norwich, but Cambridge is probably at it too.
February 21, 2025
Experts with vested interests who mix a often with similar experts seeking jobs and research fund and know how to win these by following the political fashions of the day.
February 20, 2025
It appears that the Moon emerged from being forced out from inside the Earth, exiting at the Gulf of Mexico / America. Its surface has circular marks as if it had been bubbling boiling hot, eventually cooling down.
February 20, 2025
Difficult, and amazing to imagine. A big lump of Earth exiting, presumably at speed, then slowing down and when it is about 240,000 miles away going into an orbit which is just right to create the tides and, so I have read, life.
If it is thought that the moon contains plenty of minerals that we need, presumably, those minerals are also here on earth.
February 21, 2025
Whatever emerged must have been ‘just right’ to exist in the conditions.
Scientists claim the Universe is expanding ever-faster outwards, yet it is more likely that we are being pulled inwards at our tail end to have that view during life. It is the pulling force from the material Earth draws via our tail end that shapes and moves us.
Humans have drilled down only a tiny way down into the Earth’s crust. Possibly all the minerals the Moon has are miles deeper beneath our feet.
February 20, 2025
Elon will save us from the asteroid; Trump will save us from Net Zero.
February 20, 2025
More chance of that than his cars safe us from any climate emergency as A EVs almost invariably increase CO2 and B. There is no climate emergency anyway.
February 20, 2025
Or, Elon and Trump will be orbiting the planet in one of Elon’s spacecraft, watching earth turn into an inferno. They may well be laughing in the style of the villain in the Austin Powers films. Which of them will have a cat?
February 20, 2025
Someone tell Rachael and the Treasury that from the current position raising tax rates will reduce tax take and not increase it. This especially when the government spend it so poorly often on things that do net harm.
Two easy win/wins are for a bonfire of red tape and ditch net zero! But they are doing the reverse on these too.
February 20, 2025
Taxes are going to have to go through the roof – we are to replace the USA in funding Ukraine against Russia, and then rebuilding it.
February 20, 2025
Putting taxes “through the roof” will just send us further into the doom loop and raise no more tax in the long run.
February 20, 2025
As James Callaghan could have said, “You cannot tax your way out of a recession”.
Lest Ms. Reeves is amongst us, Callaghan’s 1976 speech to his party conference included the words:-
“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment.
That is the history of the last 20 years. Each time we did this the twin evils of unemployment and inflation have hit hardest those least able to stand them.”
February 20, 2025
The best,most succinct definition of inflation I can recall came from the late French economist,Jacques Rueff(‘L’Anti-Keynes’):
“Inflation consists of subsidizing expenditures that give no return with money that does not exist.”
February 20, 2025
That is a good quote to find.
February 20, 2025
@formula57
Excellent spot on.
And is remembered for trying to calm everyone down saying “What crisis?” whereas Reckless Rachel doesn’t realise this yet!
Ignore history and expect repeating mistakes.
February 20, 2025
Yes things are not looking good. The result of economic management based on envy and a complete lack of understanding of human nature. It is par for the course for Labour living in a fantasy world of their own making.
But then again, after yesterdays outburst from the Trump I question what is going on in his head. It does not bode well. Add to it the threatening rant of that independent MP in Birmjngham and we are heading for further instability nationally and internationally. Worrying times.
February 20, 2025
What’s going on in Trump’s head is the cold light of reality breaking through, Agricola. Zelensky was elected in 2019 with a big majority, then threw it away on policies that were the opposite of what he’d been elected on (now who does that remind us of, in the same year?). He was encouraged to wage a conflict he couldn’t win, and now he’s facing inevitable defeat. He knows his time in power is over once the voters can have a say, so he’s hoping that the war can be kept going with help from the EU and Britain. Trump is saying he’s deluded, and that seems right to me.
End the war, end energy sanctions, and the price of energy will fall. That will have a downward impact on inflation, for a start, and help rebuild economic confidence and growth. If that happens, we’ll be heading *away* from instability nationally and internationally, contrary to what you claim.
February 20, 2025
Point being that the Ukrainian Constitution does not allow the President to extend his term even in war. The U.K. had a government of national unity during our war, so that’s why there were no elections – they were all in power. The USA held elections during WWII. Russia had elections – remember? Putin won – during the Ukraine War. Amazing seeing that the whole of the European Continent assert that he is losing badly and that Zelensky is winning –
and even Gerald Howarth who seems lost without direction from Mrs T.
You have to abide by your Constitution.
Zelensky signed a unilateral decree making it impossible for any Ukrainian to negotiate with Putin’s government. You think that maybe he refused the seat at the table in Saudi himself?
The RADA had a heated debate last week with a lot (a majority?) of Members calling on Zelensky to go! I see the Guardian missed that event. Also Pretti Patel, Badenoch, Starmer aka ‘the Brit’
Reply They declared a state of emergency allowing no elections.
February 20, 2025
Farage confirms that Zelensky is NOT a dictator! Man has no judgement – Zelensky has abolished 12 political parties in Ukraine, sounds dictatorial to me!
Even the Germans don’t quite have the idiocy to abolish the AFD – but you can see why they admire Zelensky.
February 21, 2025
Farage is being exposed as the charlatan that he is.The Russian victory in Ukraine(and elsewhere in the world) is an existential threat to the vested interests of the real British Establishment(ie the City-his mates,and our host’s)
February 20, 2025
I believe no elections to the RADA, but the President is excluded.
February 21, 2025
I know, I believe, I make it up, is that the three steps of LA’s ‘knowledge’?
And given she appears not to check anything, it is the BBC Media Action Charity that got USAid money, $3.2 m that were spent in about 30 countries.
February 20, 2025
More great analysis from Asia Times,20/2/25:”Donald Trump’s Multipolar Diplomacy-US President Seeks to Avert War and A US Debt Crisis”.
The US is in a weak position with little leverage against either Russia or China.Trump needs to cut military spending bigly and get Chinese and other(Arab?) inward investment going (hence his generous tariff treatment of China vs the US’s ‘allies’).
You don’t get analysis like this in the western media but as its editor proclaims-“unsubsidized,independent and farsighted,Asia Times never took a penny from USAID or any other government agency or foundation”-unlike Politico,”the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from USAID” which had denounced Trump for “echoing the Kremlin”.
February 20, 2025
The BBC also received USAID money.
February 20, 2025
‘The Trump’ is accepting the facts on the ground which some of us have been repeating on this blog for some time. Those who have swallowed the lies are now rudderless, they can’t find their feet.
If Trump is wrong and the European NATO member are right, and the Russian economy is in tatters, their backward army fighting with shovels and washing machine chips, what’s the problem? We can send a few troops and a bit more money and claim a famous victory!
Zelensky is however telling a different story, crying for US aid this morning – without it he will lose comprehensively on the battlefield – might be best so you lot can’t say it was Trump’s fault.
We don’t have 9 Billion for Zelensky now, and 100 billion in the next century, as JR states today.
February 20, 2025
Great comment I saw the other day:”The Chinese make great washing machines but no-one beats the Americans for laundering”.
February 20, 2025
See the Telegraph podcast on Reeves’s Doom Loop.
“In bad news for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, inflation shot back up in January, with prices rising by 3%. Who could have possibly seen this coming, after Labour doubled down on net zero, raised national insurance by £25 billion and hiked the minimum wage?”
They missed of the 20% VAT attacks on private school fees and the assaults on motorists, landlords & non doms plus their plans to largely piss any money they get down the drain doing little good & often active damage.
February 20, 2025
I think you missed the biggest disincentiviser, Lifelogic. Inheritance tax changes not only farms but also businesses.
We have liars and cheats getting their Ministerial posts because they exaggerated their credentials to the boss and their electorate running the show. What a finale it will be if this does carry on for the entire four years.
February 21, 2025
Indeed 40% or 20% and harder to escape now. Why build up or keep assets in the UK? Especially if you are over say 50?
February 20, 2025
Good morning.
And all planned.
You will own nothing and be happy.
February 20, 2025
Given all the means testing going on (heating allowance today, pensions tomorrow) – what is much more likely is “If you own anything, you will be unhappy”
February 20, 2025
Either diliberate or they must be moronic idiots!
February 20, 2025
The Govt did not envisage it would own nothing either
February 20, 2025
Oh I think those in government will keep their gold plated pensions and benefits. All at a cost to you and I.
February 20, 2025
You don’t understand the concept of ‘bankruptcy’.
February 20, 2025
When they have a ‘gold plated pension’ they don’t need to worry about keeping savings to supplement their State pension. They have no idea about insecurity in retirement and often retire from age 57 to boot.
February 20, 2025
Not in Moscow!Bloomberg,3/2/25:”Moscow Property Rivals London as Rich Russians Bring Cash Home.”
“High end real estate in the city is seeing a surge in demand as rich Russians invest back home and turn away from overseas deals.”
February 20, 2025
Why did they take their cash out of Russia in the first place?
February 21, 2025
Their then corrupt,self-serving western ‘advisers'(post 1991) told them to.These people have long since been kicked out of Russia,a thriving home grown financial services industry developed and under the economic reforms instituted by Putin’s brilliant team of technocrats they are now presented with lots of opportunities for profitable investment across Russia’s vastness.
Even Chechnya’s capital,Grozny(flattened by war in the 1990s) is now being compared with glitzy Dubai.May be hard to believe but check out the youtube videos (like Tim Kirby’s Travels:”I went on vacation in Chechnya.Why not?”).
February 21, 2025
Putin today:
‘Nearly 170 billion rubles will be allocated from the budget for the national project on new materials and chemistry in 2025-2030, while corporate investments could reach around one trillion rubles
I have talked to the owners and leaders of the companies, and they have very ambitious plans. I like this sentiment. There is a spark in their eyes. We will support them in their strive.’
Forgive the translation irregularities. However, sounds like an economy in tatters to me.
February 21, 2025
Today change (xe.com) $1 = 89 RUB. So 170 bn RUB = $1.9 bn, not negligible but that’s only $200 m/year over 2025-2030.
For comparison the UKRI budget was about £8 bn/year (£25.1 bn over the years 2022/23 to 2024/25).
February 20, 2025
I’ve already been warned of price rises from a few small local services I use, citing the rise in NI costs to them.
I don’t doubt that at all.
These are small hardworking family businesses that have always kept their prices at a reasonable and steady rate, for much longer than I expected them to be able to.
Naturally they are concerned that some people will be looking to cut as much spending as possible and will do away with some of these smaller services.
Who didn’t think all these costs would be passed on to the consumer?
Who doesn’t realise that if people are put out of business, then people are put out of jobs?
A shrinking pool of jobs for an increasing population, what a benefits bill that will rack up.
February 20, 2025
I am no economist, but I see on Wikipedia that stagflation apparently results:
a) “when the economy faces a supply shock, such as a rapid increase in the price of oil [which] tends to raise prices at the same time as it slows economic growth by making production more costly and less profitable, and
(b) “the government…creates policies that harm industry while growing the money supply too quickly.”
Two conditions which i believe are met via Net Zero (energy price shock) plus Labour’s economic policies. Are they also “growing the money supply too quickly”?
Two questions for the economists/savants:
Is it likely we see interest rates rising to the 15% levels of the 1970s?
Might unemployment sharply rise due to the “supply shock” in a less industrialised Britain of 2025, or is government anti-business policy the main factor these days, so unemployment will affect the service sector too?
February 20, 2025
It was obvious that Rachel-from-Accounts Budget was going to lead to stagflation. Since it WAS so obvious, I suspect it was done deliberately to speed up delivery of other Globalist objectives which can be loosely described as the WEF’s “Great Reset.”
Looking on the positive side, the next Government is being given all the justification it needs to:
1. scrap the OBR which has never got a prediction even remotely right;
2. to clear out the Treasury of Gordon Brown’s lefty economists who have driven the economy into the ground;
3. to change the Governor of the Bank of England and the make-up of the Monetary Policy Committee
4. to revise the Bank of England’s objectives and to put in place individual penalties for failure
5. to massively simplify and reduce the Tax Code and reduce the number of Civil Servants at HMRC
February 20, 2025
Private sector production has reduced, public sector has increased and this has been engineered by government policy.
I do wonder what the more left wing economists and other cheerleaders thought might happen other than inflation up and supply down?
February 20, 2025
Sir John
This Labour Governments policies, are just that ideological socialists verging on a Marxist doctrine. Where the logic, pragmatism and good management take second place.
If you remove money from the economy by raising taxes, therefore costs you get inflation followed by high interest rates.
But political ideology trumps ‘common sense’. That is not to let the other section of the Uniparty off the hook, they started this mess this weird anti UK and its people doctrine – just opening the door for others to walk in. Then again what is labelled the official opposition have their hands tied as the continuity team had full 100% collective ownership of these policies.
February 20, 2025
The bit I am amazed at that anyone gives the thoughts of the BoE, the OBR and even the ONS even a mention when they are consistently wrong on all their pronouncements.
The best way to measure inflation, costs etc is not these can’t get a real job bodies but ask the man(or woman, if you don’t understand what ‘man’ is) in the street – are they better off and flourishing
February 20, 2025
We really do not need doctored inflation figures to see that basic living – survival, is far more expensive than it should be….and all due to government policies and actions.
Yes, so called NGO’s and quangos have added to the pain, but the direction was set by the last government and well exceeded by this one who are determined to impoverish us, with their constant drip drip of new ways to tax us.
With the first ever city-wide live facial recognition network being installed in Cardiff this weekend, we cannot expect anything but more control of our lives and ever more aggressive oppression to keep us in our place while they seek to monitor what we spend and where so that they can siphon off some of our spare cash when the banks need it again. We surely must be due for another banking crash!
We have gone beyond worrying about stagflation, now too busy looking over our backs for the next series of attacks on us by HMG.
February 20, 2025
Sir John
To suggest or even dream anything will change when we have an absentee Government and PM. Their ego and self-esteem is focused on rubbing shoulders, empathising with the Socialist/Marxist failures in other domains.
All a bunch or wannabees that will avoid doing anything beyond nothing in case they get the blame
The UK is going backwards fast because Parliament its MP’s are refusing to step up and do their job lead by a PM and Government that doesn’t know what the job is.
February 20, 2025
Another for instance – a couple of wannabee’s recently blamed judges and the courts when the decisions they made didn’t lay well with the general public.
Parliament is the only sovereign, supreme if you like, facility to make Laws on behalf of the UK and its People.
No one else anywhere has a legitimate democratic jurisdiction over our courts that is why we have democratically elected legislators. So if fully paid up and empowered legislators don’t like the result they are the ones that framed the laws, they are the ones that can amend and repeal them, they are also the ones that oversee the appointment of judges, the management – so blaming others is childish, deflection from their basic duty.
February 20, 2025
We’re still in trouble after the 2008 global financial crisis.
From 1948 to 2008 we averaged 2.73% a year growth, since then only 1.13% a year; if we had carried on with the previous 2.73% our GDP would now be 28% higher than it is and we would not be in such difficulties.
Instead of blaming Brexit and wasting energy on a low value “reset” of our economic elations with the EU the government should draw upon the best economists around the world to investigate exactly what happened in 2008 which has left our economy crippled for the past 16 years and draw up a strategy for recovery.
February 20, 2025
The chart here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIzAQ62DU6o&t=251s
gives some idea of how our economy should have grown, but unfortunately the top line is for Ireland not us.
There are two other charts here showing the growth of Irish exports since 1972:
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/IRL/ireland/exports
and the bottom one is particularly interesting because it shows that in 2023 they had reached 134% of GDP.
Hang on, you may say, how can a country export more than it produces? Perhaps a clue is slipped in here:
https://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/statisticsexplained/nationalaccountsexplained/exportsandimports/
“When foreign visitors come to Ireland and spend money here, that counts as Irish exports.”
and presumably that also applies to all the money put into the Irish Republic by the global companies, many of which are American, attracted there by its low corporation tax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIzAQ62DU6o&t=286
12.5%, half of the 25% in the UK, just raised from 19% .
Could one ask why this exceedingly prosperous Ireland is not contributing to European defence?
It’s worth watching that 17 minute video.
February 20, 2025
I find that rise in corporation tax had previously been decided but was implemented under Liz Truss:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-update-on-corporation-tax
It was expected to raise about £18 billion a year.
Apparently the government had “a mission to achieve a low tax, high wage, high growth economy”.
February 20, 2025
@Denis Cooper – yes and still paying as our children will be for the previous Labour Governments mistakes. The follow up crowd, the faux-Conservatives were so embedded with the same Socialist thinking they did nothing to rebalance and reassert Conservative values – they became Liberal Socialists. They just compounded the issues, ripped the Country apart and set the scene for this new faction to continue the job
February 20, 2025
What were some of the repercussions after 2008.
Savings interest decreased to almost 0, affecting investors, pensioners and growth.
However, home buyers had their mortgage repayment rates under 2% for 13 years.
Austerity meant big cuts in local council spending which increased local taxes.
The minimum wage in 2008 was £5.73 per hour, in 2025 £12.21 per hour.
The personal tax free allowance was £6,035 in 2008/09, in 2025/26 £12,570.
The age-related personal allowances in 2008 were £9030 for 65-74 year olds and £9180 for 75 and older, these were frozen and are now £12,570.
The 10% income tax rate up to £2,320 was abolished. With the 22% tax rate reduced to 20%.
February 20, 2025
But we were told that all this was done with ‘Growth’ as the priority; perhaps it would be better if they actually tried to drive us into the ground?
February 20, 2025
What you or I might think is growth (the economy) is not the same as what they think growth is, which is the size of the State.
February 20, 2025
Its no good blaming the BoE, as they’re busy with environmental, social & governance (ESG) and diversity
February 20, 2025
The climate activists’ are implementing NESO’s (National Energy System Operator’s) plan for “clean power” by 2030 (well, 95%) which NESO say “will involve an investment programme averaging over £40 billion annually” (main report P11). No maximum given and is likely to be an HS2 estimate. This is £10,000 per household. Furthermore the result will be an insecure energy system that will require, again according to NESO (Annex 1 P14), “customer engagement” (aka rolling blackouts) and insecure interconnector imports making up to 30% of peak demand in order to prevent a complete collapse of the grid, despite at the same time maintaining an entire unabated gas generation system of up to 35 GW.
This is in addition to the OBR’s figure that green energy subsidies are already costing £12bn/year.
How will this cure inflation and promote growth?
Well it won’t and they know it. Socialism depends upon people remaining poor.
February 20, 2025
PS:
Has the Treasury costed electricity intermittency? Do they even know what it means as their Chief Scientific Adviser has a degree in foreign languages and literature? Probably why they got the job.
February 20, 2025
When discussing the UK economy I find it more useful to think North Africa rather than a first world country.
It’s the way the culture and thinking is going now.
Don’t plan, don’t save, don’t invest. Pay bribes, see state funding stolen. That’s the UK today. Not the fantasy Redwood stuff we read here.
February 20, 2025
Elon Musk’s son could probably write a better Treasury Red Book than the muddled mess Rachel from Accounts generates. Even her CV doesn’t add up.
February 20, 2025
Following a suggestion from Musk earlier this week,Trump puts out:”We are going to Fort Knox to make sure the gold is still there.If the gold isn’t there,we’re going to be very upset.”
Interesting in the light of The Sirius Report commenting yesterday:
“Imagine having to ‘lease’ gold at record high rates in markets which clearly have acute gold shortages.Then use that gold to satisfy contractual obligations;then having to replace that gold ‘leased’ by acquiring what you sold in the market.Do you think significant losses might be accrued each time such a transaction is conducted?Three questions:
~Who is seeking delivery in the US and why?
~What is going on in the opaque markets where the real tonnage changes hands?
~Who actually knows what goes on in these opaque markets?
February 20, 2025
By ‘opaque markets’ do you mean the black market and ‘stealing’. I believe a load of bricks and tons of gold spray paint have been delivered to Fort Knox and the staff are on overtime.
The USD is actually backed by the productivity of the American people. You don’t want yo downgrade those people or you go bankrupt.
Same goes for the U.K.
February 20, 2025
Smart cities and 15-minute cities are once again being openly discussed thanks to input from Sandi Adams.
This is what our future looks like:
There is so much more to it:
This is why local councils have been so busy in defining boundaries!
They think it is all unstoppable – is it?
February 20, 2025
@Bryan Harris – this thinking needs turning on its head. If democracy is Government by the People for the People that means it cant be ‘top down’ it has to be ‘bottom up’. Labours effort to devolve failed last time as it will this time around because while they said that was the aim and they then fought it – all they did was create more dysfunctional tiers with delusional ego trips of power that fought every one. What happened nothing was devolved and once more the people that count, the people that do, the people that pay where disenfranchised
February 21, 2025
The trouble is that this time they are not consulting, nor informing, they are just pushing ahead with EU style plans.
February 20, 2025
Yes. Musk has found that one US Department spent USD billions on a new computer system in 2015. He asked how they were fareing – they said ‘B’ .
He asked if that was how they were rating themselves, they said ‘No – they had got from A to B – Z (implementation) remained out of sight.
Clever people never work for the authoritarians. Clever people work against them.
The Bureaucracy will never achieve its goals.
February 20, 2025
Yes, it’s in action; seven UK regions were designed within the EU years ago.
February 20, 2025
Hi sir John
The bus fare subsidy was the savings
from the cancellation of HS2
The money Would have been better spent on our futcher railway in years to come people will say what a short sited conservatory government we had in the 20s where has all the billions gone from HS2 savings
Especially as there was left a 22 billion black hole
February 20, 2025
It would be funny if it were not so serious! Starmer and Reeves talk about growth but have no clue how to make it happen. Is this plain ignorance, stupidity, or blind adherence to socialism?
We need a DOGE here in the UK, because we have had 24 years of government overspending and, with the exception of our host, MPs who drift along with no deep convictions, no basic understanding of the economy,
and are like nodding donkeys who pass legislation which damages the UK without a qualm.
What does it say about our education system that we have such a low calibre Government and MPs?
February 20, 2025
@Keith from Leeds – they haven’t a clue how to or even what management is. As you sugget ‘plain ignorance, stupidity, and blind adherence to socialism’
February 20, 2025
There ought to be a one line law passed. It would read something like:
I suppose, to be fair, there would have to be some definitions. Taking 470 people to a COP conference would definitely qualify.
February 20, 2025
In amongst all the other price rises you mentioned you omitted council tax which will be increased by 4.99% for most people and considerably more for those unlucky enough to have a particularly incompetent council and those of us in London where the Mayor’s part of the tax isn’t capped and always rises by more than the capped part and by more than inflation.
Also you say inflation will get “close to 4%” this year but isn’t that based on the BoE prediction of 3.75% ? History suggests that will be a big under estimate, but I suppose you could argue that 4.5% is close to 4% !
February 20, 2025
In all honesty Britain needs to get itself back under the EU umbrella starting with the customs union – also there would be no harm either in having budgetary oversight from a third party. The outside world has gone pear shaped and for many reasons we need better collaboration with our nearest neighbours.
February 20, 2025
Ah – Ireland feeling the pinch Murphy? Well you will not have your hand in our pockets again. You stay in the tarriffs union and pay huge prices for everything and let us know how you get on.
February 21, 2025
No need to be concerned Ireland is doing very well they just tidied away another excess fifty billion into special savings funds last week and that was before the Chinese foreign minister arrived with delegation looking to expand trade – this time looks like they want to take more beef
February 21, 2025
@murphy – back under the yoke of the unelected unaccountable you mean. Obviously you don’t like democracy, personal responsibility and freedoms. A customs union would mean having to dis-guard ou major trading market – the World and replace it with being part of a protectionist racket that strips our resources away for there own personal benefit.
The outside world as you call it for all its faults still allows freedoms