I just posted this short thread on Twitter:
As I have said time and again here and on Twitter as well as to anyone else who will listen, there is much the government could be doing about this crisis, but it seems to want to do nothing at all about it.
Might it be that a drop of supply-side inflation suits this government's agenda very well?
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What is the agenda?
Looking at how crises are used to engineer change in the Tories real hinterland of high finance and extreme wealth rentierism, my only conclusion is that they are using inflation to say that we can’t afford anything and that we need to make labour cheaper (why – of course!!). So nothing has changed since David Cameron spoke of competing globally by offering cheap labour in 2011.
On NewsNight the other night Rent-an-Estuary Boy Chris Philp was interviewed by Kirsty Wark with the RMT’s Mick Lynch (Lynch repeated over and over again that Philp – a Tory Thatcher-bot if ever there was one – was a liar).
All Philp kept saying was that they wanted to see cost reductions in labour – he wanted to use drones to carry our track inspections etc.
How can you check the permanent way like that Richard? You have to be up close and personal really to see what is really going on in the ‘four-foot’.
And if you are chucking people out of work in the name of efficiency, then how are they going to live? None of it adds up.
This is a country which does not want to pay for anything it seems to me. It’s an economy that they seem to think needs less people.
The way the Tories are going about this is callous and brutal.
Indeed. Make labour cheaper in a direct way but also by reducing any responsibilities for and liabilities to workers. The things that they call red tape and we call employee rights. Sick pay, notice periods, realistic contracts and hours etc. Their ideal, I suspect, is a completely disposable workforce.
PSR, thank you for that comment. I am reading Richard’s 2015 book, ‘The Joy of Tax’ at the moment, and am reminded of his explanation (Ch4) of the effects of austerity cutting-expenditure policies. He points out that if a company decides to cut its outgoings to reduce debt, it can just shed workers, with no consequences to the company. If a UK Govt implements policies that result in job losses, however, those redudant people still need to be fed, watered, housed, given healthcare, etc, without now being able to benefit the economy. (Hope I’ve summarised it correctly!) So it is a fallacy that reduction of employment assists a Govt to “balance its books”, which is a nonsense anyway in a fiat-currency economy. I absolutely agree, “This is a country which does not want to pay for anything it seems to me. It’s an economy that they seem to think needs less people.
The way the Tories are going about this is callous and brutal.”
Thanks
Amal Rajan radio4 Today programme around 7am did ask an ONS person whether the BoE raising of interest rates was really the right mechanism to tackle inflation. I think the answer was ‘not really’. BBC usually avoids asking this – and am sure it won’t be asked again today.
Amazing it was asked
Not for the ONS to answer thought, I suspect