Wednesday 5th March 2025

[refitman]

Morning all.

[Frog222]

Morning refit

News at Ten lasted till 10.16 when they had on a Trumpist Congressthing

" We're in there for two hundred and fifty billion and now Zelenskyy " ...

Perhaps I should have stayed around to see if the BBC pulled him up on that rubbish but life is too short .

Been scanning local shop shelves to find the nice Ethiopian coffee , until I finally noticed it's on the packet -- LIDL !

[Frog222]

Zoe Williams on the upper reaches of the beeb and the culture media and sport committee , ex -

"It would take extraordinarily subtle minds, then, to satisfy this committee, which on the one hand wants the BBC, as the world’s leading public service broadcaster, to cover Gaza, yet on the other believes that any access to the strip must have come at the price of treating with terrorists. Those weren’t the minds we had, unfortunately. Davie was flustered by the question of which complaints he’d had from whom, repeating terms so broad – “different people”, “various organisations” – as to be meaningless.

The obvious answers include the Israeli Embassy, the BoD and and the JC , no wonder the wanker was flustered ?

" The highest paid executive in 2023-24 was Tim Davie, the director general, who received total remuneration of £527,000, including salary and benefits. "

Rachel Reeves wants to cut 'benefits' so there is one example of half a million smackers down the drain .

PS " Labour’s Rupa Huq likened the situation to Iraq where you had to be a member of the Ba’ath party even to be a doctor. So maybe the father is not a terrorist but a functionary, was her inference, " Similarly being a doctor in Gaza is apparently seen by Israel in the same way .

[Frog222]

Just like in Hungary --

[Frog222]

First youtube on my feed, Rachel fact-checking the Orange monster --

[AnatolyKasparov]

Badenoch still wants a YUGE trade deal with Trump, it appears. Good luck with that one.

[gilsey]

Rachel Reeves wants to cut 'benefits' so there is one example of half a million smackers down the drain .

Indeed.

I suppose when we see the employment rights bill we'll be able to see how Labour differs from the tories, increasingly difficult in other areas.

[AnatolyKasparov]

I really wouldn't believe spin from "Treasury sources", not at any time in truth but *especially* not now. The past few months have changed the rules of the game in ways that can only dimly be ascertained at present, but change they most certainly have.

[refitman]

At what point, since they've been elected, have Labour given the impression they want to do anything other than cut benefits?

[refitman]

I'm sure this will work wonders, after all it has ALWAYS worked in the past, to cut your way to growth

[Frog222]

That was the BBC at lunchtime , it's still Wednesday I believe ?

" The chancellor has earmarked several billion pounds in draft spending cuts to welfare and other government departments ahead of the Spring Statement.

The Treasury will put the proposed cuts to the government's official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), on Wednesday amid expectations the chancellor's financial buffer has been wiped out."

"The Treasury will on Wednesday inform the OBR of its "major measures" -essentially changes to tax and spending in order to meet the chancellor's self-imposed rules on borrowing money."

[AnatolyKasparov]

Reeves has already majorly tweaked her supposedly "unchangable fiscal rules" once, to leave more room for investment and infrastructure spending.

No reason why she can't again.

[Frog222]

Vote in the Bundestag next week, if passed forecasts of economic growth double ... and the phrase I was looking for right at the end of the article --

" Its probable new conservative-led government has now embraced military Keynesianism to a degree that few observers expected. “It is a shock and awe fiscal stimulus,” said Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank. "

https://archive.ph/1BmHZ