As Number 10 and Number 11 argue over taxes and how to get enough revenue to pay for an expanding low productivity public sector they should take advice on why they are presiding over a collapse of industry.
It is their actions that are running industry into the ground.
1 They ban all new oil and gas exploration and new wells and production. It is imports only with an accelerated run down of a once flourishing industry
2. They will ban all new petrol and diesel car manufacture here in 2030 leading to factory closures now. It will be imports of nearly new only soon.
3. They sacrificed the ethanol industry in their recent tariff deal with the USA likely to lead to closures
4 They have watched as their penal energy prices, carbon and emissions taxes close down two refineries and will close olefins production. Again they prefer we import all those.
5. They have kept quiet about the closure of a large fibreglass plant where dear energy was an important reason.
6. They back policies that mean the closure of our remaining blast furnaces at Scunthorpe to go over to steel recycling instead but now also say they will protect the jobs there for the time being with large subsidies. For how long?
7. They make pharmaceuticals an industry for growth. 3 of the largest companies have suspended or cancelled UK investment because the NHS will not buy sone new drugs and pays too little for others.
8. International Paper is closing plants here thanks to high energy costs and other considerations.
9.The ceramics industry has lost two factories recently owing to dear energy and tax rises.
10. The governments farmers tax and lack of support for growing food means we rely on increasing volumes of imports.
September 16, 2025
It’s simple logic.If you sell everything off you have lost future power But
If you sell and invest in something which is going to be in demand for a long time ,you should see growth.
If you get the balance right and make stuff that is in demand for many products, there’s a good chance those industries will grow without the hassle of importing.
If when the basics are improving there will be more scoptfir non essentials.
September 16, 2025
@MBJ – if you have the ability to earn, you have the ability to fund a future. There is something obscene in the route taken, by the so-called UK Political Class and its chosen Authorities. They have put destruction before our future. It begs the question, who were/are May, Johnson, Sunak and Starmer working for it was never the UK or its People.
I used to think the ‘ego’ of self as unbelievable until that shower turned up in abundance in the UK Parliament
September 16, 2025
Indeed and to do this competitively requires cheap reliable on demand energy, lower taxes, far less red tape, simpler employment laws, a mobile workforce… the complete reverse of the direction of two Tier and that of Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak.
Kier says Reform offer not fake solutions – not at all ditch net zero, ditch the ECHR, real deterrent low skilled immigration and return them, cut taxes and benefits to make work pay, cut red tape…
Kier has all the fake solutions – smash the gangs, Reeves budget for Growth (which was entirely anti-growth), the NI tax grab, the minimum wage increase, the worker rights bill, the VAT on school fees, the war on landlords and tenants, road blocking and the war on motorists, stamp duty and the war on job mobility and people who move home, Net Zero, Heat Pumps, Hotels, Lawyers medical care for illegal migrants, banning petrol and diesel cars…
September 16, 2025
One in one out is actually 20 in one out and the French get to choose the replacements so we are likely to get the very worse ones in exchange! Great fake plan/far solution Two Tier!
September 16, 2025
Fake plan fake solution rather! So even the one chap due out yesterday did not go. Circa 5600 in non out so far!
The recent Unherd podcast is good. Kulldorff is surely a bright, sensible and honest man:-
Freddie Sayers speaks with Dr. Martin Kulldorff — co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and newly appointed chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — to discuss his and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on vaccines, the recent turmoil at the CDC that has seen senior officials resign or be removed, and his reflections on the global pandemic response, from Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy to the United States’ vaccine mandates.
September 16, 2025
Those coming in will be allowed later to bring in their whole extended family
September 16, 2025
Indeed at vast net cost to UK tax payers or the (few UK tax payers that remain)!
September 16, 2025
@Lifelogic – worse than that none out the UK Taxpayer funded Legal Profession has blocked it happening.
It begs the question, that if you or I get in a mess in a foreign land, yes the local UK Embassy will find us representation but we will pay for all of it, not the local taxpayer. So why isn’t this the same with those illegal invading our shores. The even get to chose who they will use and who we will pay, not even a court appointed representative.
They get introduced to their legal council while in France through the UK taxpayer funded charities touting for business there.
September 16, 2025
@Lifelogic – well said thank-you….
September 16, 2025
I would like to see a balanced budget from Reform. At present, it appears to me that they are saying yes to child benefits, yes to Winter Fuel, yes to welfare spending. Where are the savings coming from to pay for tax reductions.
To win the Red Wall they are having to compromise on tax and spend.
September 16, 2025
This site has repeated many times the frivilous unjustified spending that leaves these shores for the benefit of others, often those who hate or dislike us, and whose government ignore its citizen’s needs. £billions are handed out regularly, including buying major items the UK is well able to manufacture ourselves, which would maintain employment and keep skills here. Politicians of all shades continue to ignore home industries.
September 16, 2025
@JayCee – I think the opposite. All the time they are not the others they will win regardless. As soon as they play the same game they join being the problem. Reflect, the last election Labour said nothing, the Conservatives fell into the trap of deserting thier traditional supporters by emulating what the thought appealed to the dyed hard Socialist
September 16, 2025
So we are to get a long-awaited “Hillsborough Law” bill to force public officials to tell the truth during investigations into major disasters (why only major ones?). Well we shall see if this works
So will this apply to the net harm lockdowns and net harm Covid vaccines a tradgedy of perhaps 10000 times worse that of Hillsborough (that just in the UK)? How is Sunak getting on with his unequivocal apology to the House? He seem to be very quiet even invisible currently! Was the the fact that he thought the UK government obtained a super-injunction, (enabling it to attempt to clear up the mess it had created behind a veil of impenetrable secrecy) was to be lifted the reason he threw the towel in 6 month early to make us suffer under Kier! Will the Hillesborough law apply to this too. Will MPs count as public officials will members of the MHRA?
September 16, 2025
I was unaware that they had been exempted from the laws and the oaths to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth that bind the rest of us.
September 16, 2025
The simple reason John is none of the cabinet have any real industrial or manufacturing experience.
Most of them appear to have been in previous jobs funded by either Government or Local Authorities, who all derive their income from taxation of one sort or another.
Thus they are clueless about what is required in the real world to promote real growth, that does nor rely upon the taxpayer for financial support.
They think more government is the answer, when it is less in reality..
September 16, 2025
I agree but what puzzles me is what actually are the civil service doing; surely they do not just agree with their ministers.
September 16, 2025
They care not what they do so long as they are paid and have a good pension a and work conditions. They are as happy blocking the roads, making environmental areas and installing speed humps as they are opening new ones, removing the speed humps and road blocks what do they care not their money!
September 16, 2025
Even those who claim to run their own business are contracted to the council or public sector for 100% of their work.
September 16, 2025
Often and often inefficiently contracted or to do stupid and pointless things!
September 16, 2025
Meanwhile, the Quangocracy is hiring (creates nothing); the Public Sector is hiring (creates nothing) and those providing services for the criminal migrants, including housing, are hiring … and they won’t create anything either.
We have a Government of Human Rights Lawyers and Public Sector or “Charity” workers who have never created or run a business and never got their hands dirty doing a manufacturing job. All they know is how to create more of the teat-suckers.
And they don’t understand why “the peasants” in their former industrial heartlands are watching their jobs and their children’s futures being deliberately destroyed … and will no longer vote for them.
September 16, 2025
Well said Donna
September 16, 2025
+1
September 16, 2025
When will the government understand that growth requires us to make things?
It also requires cheap reliable energy, to ditch net zero, the government to get out of the way, far lower taxes, far less red tape, easy hire and fire employment, free markets, to make work pay, to lower interest rates, to ditch marker rigging in education, energy, banking, healthcare, housing, transport… but the government has an agenda that is the complete reverse of this in all respects!
September 16, 2025
Government policies or endless red tape and ever more taxes and market rigging mean far too many people in essentially unproductive jobs in law, HR, compliance, tax consultancy, net zero, building regs both in government and in the private sector … these costs are all a drain on the people who do actually do useful and productive work this drain is a tax on top of the already huge taxes.
September 16, 2025
“an expanding low productivity public sector” so much of what the state sector does is negative productivity as it does far more harm than good. Merely ditching these activities and releasing the state sector worker doing this negative activity would give a huge boost in productivity. Start with Net Zero, ditch the vast levels of pointless red tape, mad employment laws, ditch the net harm Covid Vaccines, the mad self defeating VAT on school fees agenda… anything that reduced work for essentially parasitic lawyers, HR advisors, tax consultants… is a very good thing!
September 16, 2025
All very true Sir John but you did fail to mention the growth this government is excelling at and that’s illegal immigration, we are being invaded and the MPs in Westminster think we the people aren’t noticing it what a bunch of idiots in the house of Parliament we have
September 16, 2025
Starmer does have a truely appalling pool or dim and deluded MPs to choose from.
Torsten Bell who seems to be on a rise (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions) another PPE Oxon Chap asked about the cost of living increases said “that is why we have increased the minimum wage!” Is he really so think that he does not realise that increasing the minimum wage, Net Zero and the employers NI tax grab is the main cause of the increasing costs of living and increasing of the tax grab. It is not remotely a solution. Where did he think the businesses would get the money to pay these increases from?
Posh school and Oxford PPE and yet he cannot even grasp the blindingly obvoious!
September 16, 2025
LL : Don’t forget that it is possible to read PPE at Oxford with just ABB A level grades.
September 16, 2025
Only if you have certain other characteristics it seems! But even the ones with good A level grades are dire:- Cameron, Heath, Handcock, Balls, the Eagle sisters, Huhne, Danny Alexander, Ed Balls, Ed Milband, Evette Cooper Balls, Hammond, Foot, Benn, Castle, Woy Jenkings, Mandelson, Torston Bell the list of dire people goes on and on.
September 16, 2025
And Sunak, Neil O’Brien, Siôn Simon, Jacqui Smith, Rory Stewart, Will Straw, Michael, Foot, Harold Wilson, William Hague…
September 16, 2025
LL During the battles for Monte Cassino in Italy in WW2 the German General der Panzertuppen Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, a devout Catholic, was the principal corps commander throughout the four battles at huge cost of loss of llfe to the Allies.
He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford which was interrupted after 2 years by the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 whilst reading History and PPE!
September 16, 2025
Though Harold Wilson did keep us out of Vietnam I suppose. He also told lies like Sir Two Tier. “This devaluation of the pound will not affect the pound in you pockets” though not almost every day like Kier!
The 1967 sterling devaluation (or 1967 sterling crisis) was a devaluation of sterling from $2.80 to $2.40 per pound on 18 November 1967. Now thanks to piss poor UK government Wilson through to Kier £1 is worth $1.35. Far worse still if compared to better references of value gold or Swiss francs? Devaluation is yet another tax, this in addition to red tape (compliance) costs and all the many others!
September 17, 2025
Lifelogic, yes that is the value in theory, but see what you get from the bank if you want to purchase dollars, and then when changing those dollars back again into Sterling.
The Bank takes about 15% minimum, same with any other currency.
They say exchange is not robbery, but money exchange gets close to it !
September 16, 2025
Not true, see ox.ac.uk ‘Admission requirements for 2026 entry’. AAA for PPE.
You must use the same source as for your wrong comment on the Royal Society: the RS do not endorse the ‘saturation effect’.
royalsociety.org ‘Evidence & causes of climate change’.
September 16, 2025
Tell us exactly how many students have been accepted into Oxford with similar lower grades hefner.
Normal grades of acceptance are at least 3 A grades if not 3 A☆ grades
Even then sn interview and/or exam is required.
Looking forward to your reply.
September 17, 2025
He is referring to the dire Oxford Union President Elec.
September 17, 2025
Sam, that’s exactly what I was saying but you didn’t understand …
Given the competition to Oxbridge, people actually going to Oxford have to go through LNAT, TSA, MAT or similar, then a two-day set of talks with tutor(s) and generally have at least what is required of them as A-level marks and more often than not have A* when only an A is required on the published requirements.
So we agree …
September 17, 2025
No we don’t agree hefner.
I know of students with 3 A stars and excellent CVs who were not even given a preliminary offer to Oxford whereas this person gets in with much reduced grades.
Perhaps they are so keen to achieve their positive discrimination targets they are ironically discriminating against other students who don’t meet their unsaid requirements.
PS
No actual reply to the points I raised as usual.
How many get in with lower than usual grades.
September 17, 2025
Fair enough, you don’t agree, we don’t agree, I will certainly not lose any sleep over this. In fact I have no actual reply to your points that I find rather childish and denoting some ‘jealousy’ vis-a-vis the students who were selected.
Maybe some Oxford tutors are getting fed up with pupils from private schools who arrive after multiple hours of tutoring and ‘Oxford training’ with over-prepared CVs, they might prefer not-so obviously trained comprehensive school pupils? Maybe? What d’you think? Are you against a bit of social mixing?
September 18, 2025
hefner
What about a gifted child from a poor background who gets a scholarship to a fee paying locsl public school, gets top grades but doesn’t get a preliminary offer due to strange quotas.
Do you consider that fair?
September 16, 2025
After the Unite the Kingdom march they most definitely DO know we’ve noticed …. and they’re desperately trying to think about how they will manage to retain their lucrative teat-sucking positions after the next election.
September 16, 2025
Good morning,
I’m sure they do. The story goes is that they think that we can be a completely ‘service economy’, no doubt because the front bench have never worked in industry. In particular, the state employment role has increase excessively.
The scale of the destruction suggests something deeper, it appears wanton elimination of manufacturing aimed at making the economy weaker and more reliant on imports, pushing up the trade deficit. see this chart:https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/balance-of-trade.
Manufacturing capacity cannot be recovered in short order.
September 16, 2025
“Manufacturing capacity cannot be recovered in short order.”
If it can be ever be recovered Peter. I’m afraid many of these industries once lost will be gone forever. You lose the site (probably gets “affordable” housing built on it), you lose the workforce & skills required, you lose the margin required to make new investment attractive and of course you lose the entrepreneurs willing to take the risk. You strengthen foreign competiton and give them dominant market share.
We are seeing the accelerating damage done by these dogma ridden clowns and (unfortunately) all we can do is stand by and watch. I’m afraid much of it will be irreversible. We have to endure four more years of this disaster, goodness knows what kind of state we will be in by then.
September 16, 2025
@IanT – especially when you ditch the tried and proven money earners before a viable, resilient alternative found let alone proven. What sort of lunatic would persue that?
September 17, 2025
The kind that places political belief & dogma ahead of common sense Ian….
September 16, 2025
I had to laugh at this country to become a ‘service industry’.
My experience in the last year….ordering goods comes with mistakes, delays, suddenly out of stock, surveys of service. Requiring a quote or estimate for a product/service often has no response, or delays to suit the provider. Then an outrageous bid hoping I’m that desperate. Once agreed the delivery date changes, further non-attendance follows, half day working, excuses as to why not finished…
Legitimate refunds are met with short staffing, manager approval, promises to make bank transfer, further excuses(lies).
NHS appointments, queues, cancels, wait queues, part procedure, follow up either doesn’t happen or can kicked down the road.
September 16, 2025
Yes that sums it up. How does anyone ever make a profit? Everything has to be done a number of times to recover from incompetence.
September 16, 2025
I don’t think Starmer understands anything except international law and WEF agenda. And , as one brilliant energy analyst said, Millipede doesn’t do detail. If CO2 production moves to India or China, it’s off his books and he’s happy.
September 16, 2025
He does not do logic, science or engineering and employs advisors with classics degree, half law degrees, PPE degrees…
I am perfectly happy to explain reality to the mad zealot Ed Miliband and his potty unqualified advisors for free. But it would be a bit like arguing with any other religious Zealot, logic and evidence would not cut it.
Upton Sinclair 1878–1968. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary (and his history and whole belief system) depends on his not understanding it.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard P. Feynman
September 16, 2025
You might well have entitled this journal as being “How to destroy a country without really trying to save it”.
September 16, 2025
Some say that our Labour Government understands exactly what it is doing.
September 16, 2025
Starmergeddon and Thieves talk about growth but are confident their policies are working.
Net stupid is number one priority and alk the closures you list are seen as positives especially by the brain dead Marxist Milibrain.
Absolutely nothing is going to change the trajectory of these evil people especially on immigrants and the economy.
Only when the bond vigilantes call a halt to this insane borrowing will things change and this will be a catalyst to join the euro. Mission complete.
September 16, 2025
All the actions you list in your article today Sir John, are driven by the madness that is the Net Zero policy and in particular the bizarre accounting rule that the CO2 created by us using imported energy and goods, is not added to our total, but added to the CO2 total of the importing country.
It reaffirms my experience in industry of how often targets can bring about many negative consequences.
September 16, 2025
It is clear this government and indeed the one before it was focused on shutting down UK manufacturing..
The reason for doing that is never explained ?
You missed a couple of important industrial sectors in your overview Sir John.
The cement manufacturing industry is now lower than it was in 1950 with much of our needs now imported, this is again due to the high cost of energy brought on by destruction of our domestic energy industry.
Electricity generation is lower today than at any time in the the last half century. We now import more energy that at any time since the national grid was established. This is again due to destruction of domestic production facilities the last government actually celebrated blowing up perfectly functioning coal fired power stations.
The construction industry is on its knees despite the government claiming it will empower more house building of 1.5 million homes by 2029. This calendar year will return the lowest house building activity in a generation. The lack of construction is a direct consequence of high material costs because now most of those materials are having to be imported.
The country is being driven headlong into debt and poverty by government policies that are internationally focused rather than national.
It can not continue on like this.
September 16, 2025
There will probably be more Unite the Kingdom marches if things don’t change.
I see that the leader of the Liberal party wants sanctions to be imposed on Elon Musk. USA should sanction the leader of the UK Liberal party.
The Liberal party leader should prepare for the Post Office 2nd report, which will apportion blame to the various people involved, including himself.
September 16, 2025
There needs to be a repeat series of discontented citizens in other major cities, now that the public ought to be aware of what just took place with as far as I am concerned very little prior communication.
September 16, 2025
As I keep saying. Net zero is a folly. It will reduce co2 in the atmosphere by <1%. Until China takes up that 1% .
Milliband is not listening. Starmer is not listening.
September 16, 2025
And CO2 plant tree and crop food is a net good anyway plus they things Ed Milibrain is pushing to now even reduce CO2 when fully considered! Plus for the UK slightly hotter and it would only be very slightly hotter if at all. World co-operation will clearly not happen anyway. So on all three grounds it is nonsense!
September 16, 2025
Very good points, but this Labour administration and these Labour MP’s are not listening to the people and those running businesses. It’s outrageous. On a separate tack why do you allow the same people to make multiple comments here?
September 16, 2025
“It is their actions that are running industry into the ground.”
Yes, and of course it is deliberate. The climate crisis activists in charge need industry and consumption (growth) to be reduced in order for us to meet our NDC 2035 and net zero 2050 targets, the latter having been set into law by PM May and enforced by the activists, the CCC and the courts. The fact that this may cause UK impoverishment is not considered a valid argument against these targets as it is more important to save the planet and anyway the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of a “just transition” to green energy and reduced consumption (see the Stern Review). According to the CCCs latest 7th Carbon Budget the cost of Net Zero 2050 is just 0.2% of GDP/year to 2050. Once you accept the socialists’ false science that CO2 controls temperature and will cause more frequent extreme weather, the planet to burn, the oceans to boil and not forgetting Greta’s “we are at the beginning of a mass extinction”, then de-industrialisation and impoverishment becomes absolutely necessary to save the planet and future generations.
September 16, 2025
Above all, they ban for bans sake. No sane person would just ban the only means to earn and pay for the State, its Education, its Infrastructure without first building a self-reliant, viable, resilient alternative.
Relying on China as successive leaders have done is not a viable alternative, that is speeding up decline.
Unless of course in the UK’s case were totally dedicated to destroying the Nation and its People
September 16, 2025
I mentioned China, but they are not alone. Those profiting by the UK Authorities destruction of the Nation are the ones adding to the problem that is being spun as the reason for these aggressive bans and changes.
The override for me is the things we are importing at great cost to the nation, that are leading to the destruction of the UK’s ability to earn and pay its way, do those same Countries give the UK equal and reciprocal access to their markets? Of course not they are not that stupid. Its a one way street they dump on us and take our wealth then we have more black holes with no means to fill them – that is them weaponising trade.
September 16, 2025
We have to admire your perseverance in trying to penetrate the mystery of how our government refuses to listen to sense and basic logic.
It reminds me of how the unions behaved in the 1970s being just intransigent (and bloody minded as it was called then) leading them to disappear in places like Dockers, Motors, Printers etc.
Lessons will be learnt the hard way, sadly for us all.
September 16, 2025
The ignorance of the PM, Chancellor and Labour MPs is frightening. They have no clue how to get the economy growing, and it shows. The Treasury and No. 10 are now packed with people from the Resolution Foundation who only approach is to increase taxes. They literally want to tax everything, and if they could find a way to do it, they would tax the air we breathe.
As a nation, we are overtaxed, overregulated and carrying too high a burden of government spending. But the day of reckoning is coming, and real austerity will be tough.
Finally, the education standard and intelligence of Barristers must have been seriously downgraded in the last 30 years! What an utter shambles Labour is from the PM down!
September 16, 2025
Business people don’t make their decisions off the cuff without deep thought, as our current incumbents appear to do. They also don’t announce their ‘potential’ intentions months before, causing clients and staff to panic. I think too many small businesses aren’t aware of the full contents of the ‘workers’ rights bill’ written by the Unions. The costs are underestimated at £5bn. They will need to start laying off zero-hour workers soon, while they still can. It’s better to simply decline the peak period work than risk it.
It is said to be pro-growth (how is allowing all and any day off work to be on sick pay (they are pushing for at 80% of usual pay)? How do you do the work required to grow if people are frequently off on long weekends? Businesses are already getting a long weekend; for the past couple of months, they have been struggling to get sufficient work on Fridays and Mondays.
It certainly isn’t ‘pro-business’, it is government and union thinking they can run private businesses better than those that do. Well, if that is the case, why aren’t they? Why are their organisations never happy, always striking and not serving the paying customers (who can’t go elsewhere), why aren’t they bringing in a return for the exchequer, you know some of those ‘dirty disgusting profits’ they hate other than when they’re spending them!
I can see that some workers, especially the sick notes, the underperformers they’ll make impossible to dismiss, the guys who are self employed whose partner gets pregnant so they can join any small business and get protected rights from day 1 sick pay for mental health to help their partner, parental leave, will be much happier, but what about their colleagues who have to pick up the slack, the hard workers who get to carry the wasters.
September 16, 2025
Growth comes from the expenditure of human physical and intellectual energy and from the sweat of a man’s brow. Without physical graft there is no wealth. Remove humanity from the Earth and nature takes its place. Economic growth is a purely human phenomena. Socialist parasites either know this to be true and ignore it and simply fail to recognise it.
September 16, 2025
plagiarised from the MsM
TwoTierKier has full confidence in the PM!
September 16, 2025
That boat has sailed Sir John. Remember when you and all the financiers we telling us to offshore, that was the smart move then. The downside is visible now – we have no makers and the creatives don’t scale.
Trump is banging the reshoring drum but few are actually reshoring, moving to Vietnam yes, Vermont no. A similar result will result with Europe – not much reshoring. But never mind, the lawyers and accountants are getting rich and soon a few welders too – if they move to Scotland.
Offshoring is the natural and proper result of capitalism. Only to be reversed when an Englishman will work for the same wage as a Chinaperson in a super modern factory equipped with the latest machinery. Had you buit cheap public housing ooop north after taming the miners and laid the groundwork you could have had a successful low wage low skill economy ooop north. The high wage high skill economy was just flim flam from Johnson et al. Business goes where cheap labour is, high skill is just on the end of an internet line.
Anyway, all this is Starmer’s problem for now and he has no clue or options. The same applies to Badenoch and Farage, not a clue or usable step among them. So we go on.
Trump has got the right idea – tariffs. Slap on a mighty tariff. Of course no one will actually build new factories behind the tariff barriers but the government will rake in $$$ in order to pay (some) benefits and rather more subsidies to local corporates. So we go on.
September 16, 2025
Picking up on someone else’s comment “wilting under the weight of a stagnating economy”.
That’s what happens when you remove money from the economy while at the same time offshoring all means to reverse the trend.
If we had seen an honest Government in the last 25years, you would have seen a Government ensuring a vibrant earning economy so they had the money to spend on their aspirations. Getting rid of the ability to respond without having a resilient alternative in place, is both lunacy and stupid. Some don’t like to hear this but we already high of squeezing the life out of the economy with the high tax and borrowing – at a 70 year high. The Girl from complainants is just pursuing what predecessors and their predecessors were doing, with a bit more zeal perhaps but the same down the drain spiral.
A bit like the BoE dumping on the taxpayer for no reason we have had a Parliament celebrating their money extraction that they have no idea how to replace. This time there is no industry, no income generators nothing to help re-build, just massive cash call commitments to others. Successive governments with support of parliament have prioritised destruction.
September 16, 2025
Sadly Robert Redford passed away today aged 89, RIP.
Whilst most will remember him for the film Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid I always remember him in “All The President’s Men” where he finally says after getting elected “What do we do now?”. Starmer …
September 16, 2025
Answer today for the UK would be read your daily wise advice.
September 16, 2025
@Ukret123 – thank you, agreed
September 16, 2025
And on top of all that we had to go and invite that buffoon over here causing massive inconvenience for everyone – Britain is not Britain anymore – certainly not the Britain I remember from the 1950’s and ’60’s –
September 16, 2025
50s not such a success? 60s brilliant.
September 16, 2025
‘Ford said it would be slashing up to 1,000 jobs in its electric vehicle division at its Cologne factory, which currently has around 4,090 employees’
https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/ford-cut-jobs-electric-car-factory-cologne-germany
September 17, 2025
Dear Sir John,
We have been living an economic fantasy for a long time. We have not paid our way in the world for 40 years. As of the 2024 Pink Book, our overall current account deficit is second only to the USA among the G7. And economically the trade deficit is closely linked to the overall Government deficit.
For decades, we relied on the overseas profits of our many multinationals in unglamorous things like industrial gases and cement to subsidize living standards . But as trade deficits multiplied and governments took no interest in so many of these multinationals being sold abroad all this has changed. By the end of 2023, our liabiilties to people abroad had overtaken our foreign assets by more than £650 billion.
At home, business investment has for many years been lower than all our closest competitors. No wonder output per head has stagnated. As you say, our current government seems to believe state spending can grow while the economy does not, that living standards can be boosted by raising the legal minimum wage and that the rate of economic growth will be stimulated by non-commercial government capital spending while the private sector suffers.
As you say, we do not have a demand problem, we have an output problem. That is why the national debt has virtually trebled in the past seventeen years. Lord Keynes would turn in his grave. Yet no political party dare tell us that the financial crash and the Covid lockdown have lost output that we have already spent and lost business capital that we would have to work hard to replace.
The reality, we read, is that the OBR is cutting its projections for productivity growth, no doubt principally for the reasons you enumerate above.