Economics

[Craig380]

Brown selling off gold reserves at the price he did 'lost' the country around £7 billion at today's prices. That's loose change compared with the amounts that have spunked on doomed projects like HS2, dodgy PPE contracts, Test & Trace etc etc since 2010.

[Seeker]

It's all Putin's fault, says Truss on local radio. She was on several local radio stations this morning and got savaged.

Here's BBC Bristol with just over one minute of a painful interview:
https://tinyurl.com/5e84v4zy

Boris's award for being our worst PM didn't last long.

[Bibio]

dont blame current MP's for what their predecessors started. everyone seems to blame the "person in the chair" but not the system. one person does not make all the descensions of a party. we should start pointing the fingers at the advisors and civil servants. we dont get a vote for the head civil servants but they play a bigger role than the MP's.

as for putin, you have to wonder why he is doing what he is doing. after all he's not a stupid person. the UK would not think twice about invading a minor country if it needed its resources (middle east springs to mind). one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

back onto the economy. its feked worldwide and its going to take very very clever people to sort it out or everyone agrees to re-start the bean counter.

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by Bibio

dont blame current MP's for what their predecessors started

I'm sorry but when (non) budget details are announced and then the pound collapses, government borrowing interest rates skyrocket the blame is only on the shoulders of the people who put forward the legislation. Truss and our Quasi-Chancellor (sic) are responsible.

This non budget was purely an exercise in ideology because Tories think that tax cuts are the answer to everything usually followed by cuts to services to pay for them. Problem here is that there's little left to cut.

The only good thing about this debacle is it makes it more likely that we are coming to the end of Tory rule.

[daktulos]

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...nts-government

The prime minister’s peremptory sacking of the head of the Treasury, Tom Scholar, is ominous. It was one of her first decisions and cannot have been anything he said or did. She had already let it be known, through “allies”, that she also intended to sack the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, but apparently changed her mind. Scholar’s sin was that he supposedly embodied the “Treasury orthodoxy”, which Liz Truss had pledged to overturn. His ousting was clearly meant as a talisman of her new regime.

There's a reason why civil servants are supposed to be separate from politics.

[embee]

The relationship between politicians and civil servants is a bit like that between a house owner and a builder. The house owner wants an extension built, decides what it should look like etc, but if they tell the builder that they should start at the top of the wall and lay the bricks downwards it's not unreasonable for the builder to first point out that it is not the "normal" way to do things, to point out why it's usual to lay bricks from the bottom up and what could happen if you try to do it the other way round, and if the house owner insists then it's also not unreasonable for the builder to leave the job.
Sometimes it's wise to ask advice and listen to the experienced tradesperson you are employing. Learn from history. Experience is often gained just after you needed it.

[garynortheast]

This is a bit depressing when viewed this way.

https://kamikwasi.tax/

[embee]

[Bibio]

its about time somebody had the cinchonas to cut the stupid high earners tax. why should there be different rates of tax.. after all these "high earners" use the same services that all of us do well in fact most of them have private health care but do they get a rebate on their NI contributions or council tax... ermm no. some people i know have worked their butts off to get where they are but get robbed with the high earners tax. its not a fair taxation. lower taxation might just encourage foreign businesses to set up here and bring much needed income/jobs.

[redtrummy]

Yes, but a lot did not have to work their butts off, and does wheeling and dealing count as working their butts off? There's a lot of them.