Ironically him being confused and old will probably still do less damage to his country than ditzy lizzy to ours. I thought Corbyn and his magic money tree were bad.
NI rise reversal. Earn less than £20k? You get £93 back! Earn more than £100k - you get £1,093 back! And the zombie logic of supply side economics says that by some weird form of fiscal osmosis that grand will magically distribute itself to the rest of society. It seems at the moment that anyone with cash to spare is it getting out of the country as fast as possible given the continued collapse of the £ ($1.12!). Thank goodness J Rees Mogg has protected himself by getting his investment fund transferred to Dublin where it can invest in ‘emerging markets’ rather than the U.K. Of course the health and social care investments that the NI rise (Boris’ rise remember) was meant to help with will be funded by another slight of hand from the walking dead. Or probably not.
Ed Miliband made a good speech in Parliament today on fracking. I don't see how it will materially change the international price of gas and I don't think enough safety checks have been made to say it is safe.
I thought the point was to create security of supply of energy for the U.K. It’s easy to detach the price from international levels through licensing and regulation - permission to extract related to a fixed profit measured on the cost of extraction, not the market. Of course this government could never do that as free market ideologues. View the gas as a national resource, and the extractors as providing a fixed rate service to the nation. Of course it makes much more sense to invest in renewables which are currently much cheaper than gas generated energy. What would be preferable, the South Downs with a few wind farms or being pumped full of water to extract gas with huge pits, sludge and gas transportation (****ing pipelines!). So the question is, why would Jacob Rees Mogg be so keen on a long term (it will take a very long time to research, establish and extract shale gas in reasonable quantities) dirty energy choice, when clean (albeit not always beautiful) alternatives are available now, and battery technology is improving exponentially. Profit, I’m guessing, mates rates.
It's interesting that there is such a divide on the benefit. Kwarteng takes the Miliband line that it would be a few more drops in a large pond, and given that he's now Chancellor of the Exchequer, you'd think the govt would get him on side. I don't think fracking is regarded as a replacement to renewables. It's part of an all-hands-to-the-pump policy to make the UK independent on energy. Wind, tide, nuclear, solar etc will all play their part.
Men fleeing Russia to avoid getting called up as reservists, whilst there's rumours Putin is planning to introduce a draft to call up a million conscripts - desperate times....all not going to plan Vlad?
Cue Albanian men being joined by Russian men in the Channel dinghies. The Russians may have an unarguable claim for asylum.
Simon Clarke, Secretary of State for ‘Levelling Up’ (me neither), promises an instant benefit in terms of growth from todays tax cutting bonanza on the wireless just now. Of course it will be difficult to measure this when you don’t allow independent organisations set up by the government to analyse economic policy, ie the OBR, to do any analysis of the policies. Fun hearing him tell why a rise in NI was the right policy 3 months ago, but evil and anti conservative now. And that the election victory of a different leader with a radically different policy platform in 2019 equates to a strong mandate for Truss and her loyal band of walking dead. It’s all guess work anyway. If there is a cut to stamp duty I’ll benefit because I’m moving house soon. Frankly I’d prefer to be incentivised to put solar panels on the new place, which would be helped by banks and other financial institutions actually passing on interest rate rises to savers as well as instantly levying them on borrowers. ****ing crooks.
All currently moving to *****lia apparently. Who can blame them? Those that serve should be tattooed with "Cannon fodder".
Top tax rate abolished by Kwasi Kwarteng. Hooray! - can't wait for the all the extra cash going to those earning over £150k pa to trickle down to my family.
I'm just pleased that if the Tories are throwing bungs out (as is the way of all govts), they are finally throwing them out to earners rather than pensioners.
