Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th September 2022

[refitman]

Morning all.

[frog222]

Morning refit
Had to switch off Toady after the Martha Kearney v Angela Rayner 'interview' .
MK served , and AR returned service .
Forgettable .

[refitman]

Look, things are complicated and you can't expect journalists to lower themselves up investigate things

[refitman]

Nothing like a bit of centrist hand-wringing

[frog222]

Look, things are complicated and you can't expect journalists to lower themselves up investigate things

You just beat me to that one .

It must be interesting to be exposed to so much excoriation , tho none came from ARayner on R4 this morning . Perhaps she got into her stride on other outlets ?

[gilsey]

Morning.

That comment from the FT above, similar was often said in the Thatcher years after Lawson slashed top tax rates. Private affluence, public squalor.

[gilsey]

Nothing like a bit of centrist hand-wringing

There's been a lot of that lately.

[gilsey]

Commentary from a couple of economists.

Ann Pettifor covers the political aspect too

Truss's extreme right-wing putsch

The overthrow of the Johnson government was indeed a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to dislodge the electoral mandate (for “levelling up”) of a government and replace it with an undemocratic mandate to serve the interests of the very rich, while bearing (or “levelling”) down on the poor.

Stephanie Kelton, US MMT'er, reminds us of the evidence.

The Mini-Budget is a Maxi-Giveaway

In the five years following each tax cut—ample time for them to prove beneficial to all—the data showed no material difference in per-capita GDP or unemployment rates between countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn't. In fact, the study found that tax cuts have only consistently benefited one group—the rich.

[AnatolyKasparov]

No, just not buying the "overthrow of the Johnson government was plotted" line. He was almost entirely the architect of his own downfall.

[gilsey]

If you take a longer view and see Johnson as a step on the road, it's not entirely implausible.
Given his nature, It was inevitable that he would implode sooner rather than later. Part of the plan?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

The more you look the worse it gets.



Basically these new 'investment zones' (covering vast swathes of the country) will be able to ride roughshod over environmental and planning laws.

[RogerOThornhill]

Morning.

That comment from the FT above, similar was often said in the Thatcher years after Lawson slashed top tax rates. Private affluence, public squalor.

Noticeable that the scale of tax cuts put this government between Lawson (1988) and Barber (1972).

Not a good place to be...

[RogerOThornhill]

Meanwhile, apparently you can 'accidentally' acquire an Empire...

[Sky'sGoneOut]

The comments under Mail articles about the budget are a sight to behold. To say it's gone down badly is somewhat of an understatement.

As for the comment from the FT reader above, absolutely. Even at the most basic level what's the point of having a bit more money if it takes an ambulance hours to arrive if you have a heart attack?

Of course Truss' supporters are claiming public services won't be cut, but how are they going to pay for them? They admit themselves it could take years for their magic growth to arrive so what do they do in the meantime? All that's left is borrowing, at an ever more costly rate. Borrowing to invest you can understand, but as far as I'm aware borrowing to pay your bills is distinctly frowned upon.

Even the IEA's Kate Andrews was voicing her concerns on Newsnight last night that this would leave a gaping black hole in the public finances.

If we can see it, Mail readers can see it, and even Kate Andrews can see it it's little wonder so many Tory MPs are in despair. Not for us but for themselves of course.

[AnatolyKasparov]

The more you look the worse it gets.



Basically these new 'investment zones' (covering vast swathes of the country) will be able to ride roughshod over environmental and planning laws.

Isn't there some doubt whether that is an official RSPB account?

Though can certainly believe they are far from happy regardless.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Isn't there some doubt whether that is an official RSPB account?

No. None whatsoever. Why do you ask?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Because that's what some (not bad faith actors) were suggesting yesterday evening.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Because that's what some (not bad faith actors) were suggesting yesterday evening.

Then they're mistaken. There's the main RSPB account and subsidiary accounts for England, Scotland, and Wales. The tweet above came from the English account because for the moment these 'investment zones' only affect England. To remove any doubt the main RSPB account has retweeted it.

It's entirely unprecedented for the RSPB to come out and say something like this, which is perhaps why your 'good faith actors' had doubts, but I can assure you both the account and the anger are quite real.

[RogerOThornhill]

Well this is awkward...but I thought that Cameron was going to do something about lobbyists. Did he not?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

FFS. It just gets worse.

Government poised to scrap nature ‘Brexit bonus’ for farmers

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... d-to-scrap

The government is to scrap the “Brexit bonus” which would have paid farmers and landowners to enhance nature, in what wildlife groups are calling an “all-out attack” on the environment, the Observer can reveal.

Instead, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) sources disclosed, they are considering paying landowners a yearly set sum for each acre of land they own, which would be similar to the much-maligned EU basic payments scheme of the common agricultural policy.

Wildlife groups are set to revolt over the move. Craig Bennett, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts, which has 860,000 members, said: “They have no democratic mandate to do this, it was in the election manifesto. What you’ve seen in the space of the last week is Liz Truss’s government basically trashing all the environmental commitments that were in the 2019 manifesto.

“If now, this government is going back to area-based payments, then it will have dumped the one silver lining around Brexit that perhaps might have been good for the environment. It seems there is an all-out attack on the environment under Liz Truss’s government.”

Shaun Spiers, executive director of Green Alliance, said: “I cannot believe a government committed to ‘the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth’ would do anything as reckless with taxpayers’ money. It would make the budget look like a model of caution and prudence.”

[frog222]

Well this is awkward...but I thought that Cameron was going to do something about lobbyists. Did he not?

Mark Fullbrook insists he is not being paid through his company for tax reasons and has obtained no tax benefit from the arrangement. However, he is refusing to explain the agreement that lets him direct government strategy without being directly employed by the government.

Previous holders of the role have been treated like any other special adviser (Spad), appointed on a temporary civil service contract and paid a salary that is made public. Fullbrook is instead a contractor and will receive any payment through Fullbrook Strategies, a private lobbying company he created in April but which he says has suspended commercial activities.

One Whitehall source said it was “unheard of” for a No 10 official of his seniority to be employed in this way although Fullbrook disputed this. It is unclear what the implications of the arrangement are from a financial and transparency perspective.

Between April and June, according to the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists, Fullbrook’s company contacted the government on behalf of clients including the Libyan House of Representatives, which is opposed by the West and the UN, an energy provider and a PPE firm linked to a fundamentalist Christian sect.

It announced it had “suspended” its commercial activities earlier this month after Fullbrook was appointed by Liz Truss to be her top aide.

However he is continuing to use it as a vehicle to receive his publicly funded salary. The equivalent post under Boris Johnson carried a salary of £140,000.

The arrangement will lead to questions days after No 10 scrapped the so-called IR35 reforms of previous Conservative governments that were designed to stop people paying themselves via a company to avoid tax.

We'll see if he has something £wise to gain from this (probably) , but even if he doesn't it follows the Pattern of Disruption which is already the hallmark of this Revolutionary administration .

Chuck all the cards up in the air and while people are wondering what the hell is is going on continue with dismantling all checks on the new Enterprise Zones .

[AnatolyKasparov]

Happy to be updated on this Sky, as I said the RSPB's unhappiness was never really in doubt.

[refitman]

It's good to see Labour tackling the important matters

[frog222]

Mick Lynch Zarah Sultana John McTiernan (sp)

[refitman]

Top tweeting

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Keir Starmer defies call for changes to first past the post voting system

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ing-system

The Labour leader said in an interview with the Observer there would be no deal – before or after the election – that would see him back a change. Asked if Labour’s manifesto would include pledges on electoral reform, he said: “No, it’s not a priority for me.”

What a clown.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I mean honest to god is he trying to lose the next election? Because if they go into the next GE without anything on voting reform in their manifesto I simply won't vote Labour, and I doubt I'm alone in that.

Read the room Starmer you dick.

Your membership wants it, most of the unions want it, millions of voters want it, and the Tories are absolutely terrified of it.

There's a genuine prospect this could lose Labour marginal seats they could have won. There's a huge appetite out there for progressive change in politics and Starmer is effectively telling people that if that's what they want then the Labour party isn't for them.

What a staggering act of stupidity.

[refitman]

I mean honest to god is he trying to lose the next election? Because if they go into the next GE without anything on voting reform in their manifesto I simply won't vote Labour, and I doubt I'm alone in that.

Read the room Starmer you dick.

Your membership wants it, most of the unions want it, millions of voters want it, and the Tories are absolutely terrified of it.

There's a genuine prospect this could lose Labour marginal seats they could have won. There's a huge appetite out there for progressive change in politics and Starmer is effectively telling people that if that's what they want then the Labour party isn't for them.

What a staggering act of stupidity.

It's the centrist mindset - that there's nothing actually wrong with the systems that are currently in place, it's just that they're not being run properly. All anything needs is a bit of a tweak, but don't make any fundamental changes.

[refitman]

Shaun nicely sums up neo-liberal centrism and it's fault, in his video on Harry Potter (from 59mins):



(The rest of the video is very good too.)

[Sky'sGoneOut]

It's the centrist mindset - that there's nothing actually wrong with the systems that are currently in place, it's just that they're not being run properly. All anything needs is a bit of a tweak, but don't make any fundamental changes.

I don't recall Corbyn offering voting reform. McDonnell was all for it but Corbyn and the Unions weren't having it and as far as I remember Momentum were mostly against it as well. They've changed their tune now though. Labour's antipathy towards PR is as strong on the left as it is in the centre. Or at least it used to be.

[frog222]

There are numerous sources of info/disinfo on the Russo/Ukrainian War .

[frog222]

It's the centrist mindset - that there's nothing actually wrong with the systems that are currently in place, it's just that they're not being run properly. All anything needs is a bit of a tweak, but don't make any fundamental changes.

I don't recall Corbyn offering voting reform. McDonnell was all for it but Corbyn and the Unions weren't having it and as far as I remember Momentum were mostly against it as well. They've changed their tune now though. Labour's antipathy towards PR is as strong on the left as it is in the centre. Or at least it used to be.

I think you are right about PR . But as with any seemingly-logical solution there might well be hidden traps in the specific case of UK PLC ?.

Somehow reform or revolutionise just the monarchy , and then what do you have ?

The whole wicked structure of private schooling and all the rest of the English class system remains .

[frog222]

The idea of sending politicians to fight in wars iz cool, no ?

[refitman]

It's the centrist mindset - that there's nothing actually wrong with the systems that are currently in place, it's just that they're not being run properly. All anything needs is a bit of a tweak, but don't make any fundamental changes.

I don't recall Corbyn offering voting reform. McDonnell was all for it but Corbyn and the Unions weren't having it and as far as I remember Momentum were mostly against it as well. They've changed their tune now though. Labour's antipathy towards PR is as strong on the left as it is in the centre. Or at least it used to be.

To be fair to Corbyn, we'd just come off the AV vote and Labour were talking about HoL reform at the time.

And Labour had actual policies and ideas then. Personally, I can't think of a single policy position that Starmer has advocated for.

[frog222]

It's the centrist mindset - that there's nothing actually wrong with the systems that are currently in place, it's just that they're not being run properly. All anything needs is a bit of a tweak, but don't make any fundamental changes.

I don't recall Corbyn offering voting reform. McDonnell was all for it but Corbyn and the Unions weren't having it and as far as I remember Momentum were mostly against it as well. They've changed their tune now though. Labour's antipathy towards PR is as strong on the left as it is in the centre. Or at least it used to be.

To be fair to Corbyn, we'd just come off the AV vote and Labour were talking about HoL reform at the time.
And Labour had actual policies and ideas then. Personally, I can't think of a single policy position that Starmer has advocated for.

Everything Starmer has worked for and anything which might be considered radical is beyond the pale , he has voted agaist

[tinyclanger2]

At this point in our social evolution if Labour don't go for PR i literally see no point in them.
The relative stability of EU countries with PR (although Belgium???) must provide reasonable case studies/scenarios.
I guess one of Belgium's special contributory factors (to its mystifying condition) is it's linguistic division.

[gilsey]

At this point in our social evolution if Labour don't go for PR i literally see no point in them.

Hear hear.

[AnatolyKasparov]

It's the centrist mindset - that there's nothing actually wrong with the systems that are currently in place, it's just that they're not being run properly. All anything needs is a bit of a tweak, but don't make any fundamental changes.

I don't recall Corbyn offering voting reform. McDonnell was all for it but Corbyn and the Unions weren't having it and as far as I remember Momentum were mostly against it as well. They've changed their tune now though. Labour's antipathy towards PR is as strong on the left as it is in the centre. Or at least it used to be.

To be fair to Corbyn, we'd just come off the AV vote and Labour were talking about HoL reform at the time.

And Labour had actual policies and ideas then. Personally, I can't think of a single policy position that Starmer has advocated for.

Corbyn was of course a key former member of Tony Benn's inner circle - and Benn was very reactionary on a lot of constitutional questions.

[frog222]

Worrying about the odd £200 is for the little people .

" While the tax-cutting package brought forward a promised reduction in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19%, that cut will be more than offset by a decision to freeze the point at which people start paying tax. It means that some key workers will be paying more income tax next year.

A teacher on a starting salary of £25,700 will see their income tax rise by £121 in 2023-24 once the threshold freeze is taken into account, according to research by the Liberal Democrats. An NHS nurse will also face a £107 rise. Meanwhile, a top banker earning £2.5m will enjoy a tax cut of more than £117,000."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... to-bankers

[frog222]

” A No 10 aide said the problems caused by the Brexit deal were “barely discussed” with Biden. In fact, the Americans opened the meeting with the subject.

A US diplomat told an MP last week that a report in The Sunday Times that blamed Biden’s aides rather than the president for US angst over the peace process “went down like a lead balloon”. The MP said: “It was picked up instantly both in Washington and in the delegation that accompanied the president. Firstly they said it was just plain categorically wrong. Secondly, Biden came to the UK out of respect to the Queen and was irritated to read that he was doing deals in the sidelines. There were no conversations as a result.”

A senior western diplomat in London said that the Americans want to see a deal in time for next year’s 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, when Biden could endorse any compromise on goods checks agreed by the UK, the EU and the Irish government. However, he added: “The problem is [Truss’s] brand is conflict, and what we need is a solution.” ”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bisc ... -j2mj5zncs

Another real nugget further up the article —

” Senior government officials insist there is method in this madness and argue that it represents the only possible path to a Conservative election victory in 2024. This was a message Truss delivered in daily meetings with her economic “quad”: the chancellor, Chris Philp, his deputy, and Simon Clarke, the levelling-up secretary (Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, is said to have turned up once and been told he was not welcome again).

Oh this made me cackle too —

By then Kwarteng probably needed a stiff drink. The pound had slumped to $1.09, its lowest for decades. “The gulf between the free-marketeers and what the free market actually thinks of the free-marketeers is hilarious,” said a former Downing Street aide who now advises City bosses. “The City boys don’t have any confidence they know what they are doing in Downing Street.”

Join the club

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[Sky'sGoneOut]

So now the National Trust have added their voice to the Wildlife Trust and the RSPB, all condemning the government.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/press- ... proposals-

Rather than ramp up action to support our environment, this Government appears however to be heading in the opposite direction. Environmental protections are dismissed as 'burdens', whilst investment and growth are pitted against nature and climate action.

The new Investment Zones represent a free-for-all for nature and heritage, yet we know that green spaces and beauty are vital to attract investment and for a good quality of life. Likewise a rumoured return to EU-style land subsidies will squander one of the biggest Brexit opportunities for nature, fatally undermining improvements to the nature, soil and water upon which sustainable food production depends.

Given they're all charities and therefore severely restricted in what they can say politically this is extraordinary stuff.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Indeed, we shouldn't forget Cameron's pernicious "Gaggng Bill".

[Sky'sGoneOut]

At this point in our social evolution if Labour don't go for PR i literally see no point in them.

Indeed, they're making themselves a hindrance to genuine political change in this country.

[AnatolyKasparov]

I really wouldn't view Starmer's current positioning (which is almost certainly most about nipping any Tory repeat of 2015's "CoAlItiOn Of ChAoS" campaign in the bud, rather than a serious statement of what he will do after any inconclusive election or maybe elections) as the be all and end all.

Support for electoral reform in Labour as a whole is higher than it has ever been, and its diehard opponents look ever more anachronistic.

[frog222]

[AnatolyKasparov]

Michael Crick now saying the programme in question left a bit to be desired, I see.

[frog222]

Michael Crick now saying the programme in question left a bit to be desired, I see.

Strange indeed AK, late of course but very welcome indeed

Here J-l Mélenchon didn't hang around after similar attacks by the Right . He took three of the buggers to court, and won ! But then he's naturally pugnacious, a little too much sometimes for me, and has been in senior level politics for ages, definitely not a pacific backbencher.

I don't know if any of the LP crew tried to get JC to be more forceful in defending himself , especially as he would also have been defending the good name of the whole LP ...

Wonderful scenery in my local Channel Isles --



When I worked in Paris would spend weekends out there beginning on Friday night after 3h train and a day's work in the office .

[AnatolyKasparov]

Even a *relative* Jezza-sceptic like myself is genuinely puzzled why he didn't sue Simon Heffer for the "reopen Auchwitz" comment.

[frog222]

I'm getting around to this, at long last !

THREE instalments, ffs.

[frog222]

Even a *relative* Jezza-sceptic like myself is genuinely puzzled why he didn't sue Simon Heffer for the "reopen Auchwitz" comment.

Years back I asked an Englishwomen in my pub about JC .
She whispered "He's a wanker."

My own description would be ' a superannuated student politician, well-meaning but not the brightest', and certainly not cut out for an executive role . Well he got lumbered with it, almost by accident, and that's history . Along with huge swathes of the UK population I thought the policies were great, with some reservations on detail/timing.

Even so I very early considered the attacks on him to be disgraceful , and am glad to see some people getting their comeuppance !

Back to watching the youtube ...

EDIT it's a v powerful vid, and

PTO !