Off Topic Starmer/ Reeves: last man standing

A new study this month from the highly respected US think tank, the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that the economic damage since the 2016 Leave vote had resulted in the UK’s GDP being between 6 per cent and 8 per cent smaller than it could have been.

New analysis by the House of Commons library estimates that Brexit is costing the Treasury up to £90bn a year in lost tax revenue, and the average Briton has seen a hit to GDP per head between £2,700 and £3,700.

 

The logic is absolute. Healthy things cheaper, expensive things dearer. It’s that simple. It doesn’t ban Irn Bru though I’d rather they banned that than ginger beer

 

Start with honesty.

When the chancellor said "everyone must pay" or whatever bland phrase she used, she obviously did not mean it. She meant the private sector, the wealth creating sector must pay. A few months ago she was asserting quite forcibly, that the welfare bill must be cut. Now, she says untold billions must be blasted into it. This, even to a child learning basic arithmetic, cannot last.

Over £400bn every year is spent by QUANGOs, almost all of which is given out on the nod, with no financial oversight. There are hundreds of them, (nearly four hundred, though the figure is opaque) and many of their functions overlap and repeat. Many have staggering power, many seek extra money and are always given it. Many should not exist at all. But, governments like them, and all governments do the same. They make a grandstanding announcement about abolishing one or two, then create more. Starmer has created thirty in less than eighteen months. They will all be there, along with others at the next GE.

Bureaucracies always expand of their own volition. They grow and seek out areas of influence to justify their existences and to keep the cash coming in. I have had some dealings with these, and it is staggering to see the way they deliberately waste time, delay things, use up resources and choke up useful activity.

If we say that we cannot for instance, tell these organisations that they must do with say 3% to 5% less each year over a parliament, and genuinely take out those which should not now exist, then we are probably in for debt default, which has never happened in hundreds of years. All bets are off then. Either that or lending on very heavy conditions and that won't be pretty either.

Roughly one more million people have signed up to UC in not much over a year. Clearly this is not tenable in any sense, and must be stopped and reversed. But nothing at all is being done, aside from mouthing words.

A lot is said in many quarters about the forthcoming affect of AI. And it will have an effect, but unless the country learns again how to be nimble and proactive, it will be a very bad effect, instead of a positive one. The business of government should be the first to be slimmed down by this tech of course, but it will be the most resistant to change; a lot of nicely paid non jobs rest on things stumbling on just as they are.

So in brief that is where I think it should start. The UK has become slow, tangled up in webs of contradictory dictats and competing bureaucracies. If we don't turn, then the decline will continue and then accelerate.

This is not political really, the Tories were similarly useless after 2010 and 2015, though the problems have now been jet boosted. It is just numbers. Numbers which have been ignored for a long time, ( roughly since the turn of this century when Brown exploded public spending) but numbers which are now looking to be counted.

 

Name the Quangos you’d get rid of

 

It's good to understand what how the government spends tax payers money, this lad explains it in a scientific way

 

Wealth taxes and windfall taxes would balance the books and therefore reassure lenders that we had enough money. We could then use government money to invest in things like owning our own energy and money going into the state like EDF.

 

Yes. That figure is near enough. A slightly moveable number mind.

But the more pertinent one is this. Last year's borrowing was around £150bn. Of that, £100bn+ was to pay interest on previous debts, which mature and roll over all the time. This percentage will increase next year.

That is why gilt yeilds jumping is very bad news. It costs billions. The crazy back and forth of statements and leaks and U turns affects market sentiment and costs an absurd fortune.