Purely by chance as I was beginning to moderate comments this morning I noticed that I had published 19,999 posts on this blog to date.
So, for the record, this is the 20,000th.
I guess that is some measure of commitment since June 2006.
I make no pretence that all of them have changed the world. Some, though, might have helped make a difference.
It's that belief that makes me keep going,
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Well done Richard. Please keep up the good work. You have educated an economic novice to a much better understanding of monetary policies.
I reckon I’ve read about 20,000 of them! Thanks for all your hard work.
🙂
A truly outstanding achievement. I’ve learnt ridiculous amounts over the years following this blog, and watched in awe at the change ushered in from your ideas and collaborations. Thank you for all that you do. You’ve definitely contribute to reducing the ignorance of this civil society participant.
Thanks
I have no idea how you do it. Hat tip.
Sometimes you do seem to me to become over irritated by problematic commenters; but I remind myself that I couldn’t do it; put up with the guff calculated or just dim, without exploding, or packing it in at a sudden drop of the hat. Social media is a madhouse that is paradise only for anonymous trolls; sometimes, I suspect organised in systematic boilerhouses – but that is the problem, social media induces everyone to conspiracy obsess. I do not know why you don’t flee for the hills (well, maybe not – you would have to move location!). We have losts of hills in Scoltand, Richard!
I assure you John, my wife asks me why I put up with it
Being grumpy here gets it over and dine with us the answer, otherwise I think it could get me down
Thankfully as a result it does not
And I need to be in this hills again. None at all here…..
Hearty congratulations, Richard.
You educate, inspire, and provide the arguments we need to make sense of this currently mad, mad world.
Keep up the good work, but please do observe the bounds of good health!
I will: both of them, that is
Richard, you have definitely earned your gold watch. I have learned a great deal from you and I do my best to spread your words of economic enlightenment. But please don’t retire for many years yet, as time and time again, you confound Thatcher’s claim that “there is no alternative” to neoliberalism.
I have always sid I won’t retire until I am 83, and will only slow down then
My Dad quit too early at 83
This is my first comment on your blog, as usually more intelligent people than me say what needs to be said, and I learn just as much from the comments and your replies as I do from your posts. That says a lot about the calibre of the blog and also the following you’ve built up. I’ve been following you for a while and recommend your thoughts to everyone I think will appreciate them. I’ll admit to having a bit of an intellectual man-crush. Keep up the great work!
Thank you
Thank you so much for the thoughtful and realistic analysis and ideas. I have learned so much.
Thank you Richard. I started with your “Joy” book. Fantastic and it confirmed many of my own beliefs about wealth, income and tax. This blog is fantastic in how you apply your knowledge and insights to daily events, with both a short term and longer term perspective. You inspire and inform many people.
Thank you
thanks a whole lot Richard
You & heterodox economic truths seem to be getting more media attention since I first came across this blog
keep up the important work as long as you feel up to it !
I will
Here’s to the next 20,000 I say.
I think you have changed the world for many people, actually, Richard. Hope is a precious thing. Keep going …
Wow, that’s a big suggestion
I’m happy if it’s a bit for some
Thanks
Sorry to go ‘off thread’, but a Daily Telegraph headline just caught my eye: “Could this corruption scandal signal the end of the EU?”.
Is the the neoliberal right in Britain literally insane? The Telegraph is not just reporting a scandal, but uses a wording that drops a little added poison in the right-wing media’s speculative petri dish; the EU itself could fall apart. Russia has invaded Ukraine. EU countries border Ukraine, and most continental European states have good reason, drawn from a long history to dread war in Europe. The EU needs to cohere and come together. But the British Right cannot help itself. It has to divide. I have always said (and repeatedly here), that British opposition to the EU and Brexit itself was actually part of the British Right’s desire, not just to leave the EU (the story they sold the ill-informed British, who didn’t even understand that Brexit would undermine what austerity had left them of their prosperity, still less the security implications); but break it. Brexit was just another proof to Putin that Europe and the EU was so weak, and Britain both so waek and stupid, that invading Ukraine was a risk worth taking.
This is utterly, unforgivably shameful.
I share your anger
All over Twitter their are Russian trolls demanding Remainers apologise for corruption in the EU as if we never had a PPE scandal
I am sickened by them
But what about the corruption in the EU? And that the governing council is non elected. It is therefore fundamentally a non democratic and corrupt institution. Why would you endorse that?
You do realise the commission is elected by democratically elected governments?
Or are you stupid enough to not realise that?
Awful.
But all you have to do is look at the many scandals that have bedevilled this vile government to know that we seem to be in a value-free zone.
That truth and reconciliation council that I have suggested for this country is desperately needed.
It is not just Russia that will be benefit from the fall of the EU either. The long tentacles of U.S based, Ayn Rand-driven surveillance capitalists I bet are also happy to see this happen too and are happy to facilitate it.
Yep – there is a lot at stake here.
Mr Ayala,
The EU has been Europe’s hard won, painful, difficult determination, after the destruction of two world wars within twenty years that reduced the continent to rubble and cost tens of millions of lives, to ensure that it would never happen again; that there would not be another war in Europe. For the first time in almost eighty years of peace and security, most of it built out of the EU’s success in bringing a high degree of cooperation and stability; Europe is confronted with a very dangerous war in Europe. The EU is an institution that, for all its faults, still has the power to command the faith of Europeans who have hope in the future, that it is all we have. Why do I say that? The Ukraine is very, very anxious to join. I leave you to explain to Zelensky why that is a bad idea; good luck with that. What does actually Britain now offer Europe? Nothing. Save division.
During Brexit it was quite evident that Britain tried very hard to sow division and dissension to break the unity of the EU’s resistance in order for Britain to write its own exit ticket from the EU that nobody else could ever dream of obtaining. That kind of Europe? The kind of Europe that allowed Britain to play one side against the other through ‘balance of power’ politics that worked so well for us in the late 18th-early 20th century, and ended so well; in two world wars. You mean that kind of British high-minded arbitration of standards? The kind that eventually earned Britain the European sobriquet, ‘Perfidious Albion’. At least Churchill had a damascene conversion in 1940; he sought Union with France.
Almost half the EU consists of countries that joined the EU as soon as they possibly could after freeing themselves from the grip of Russia, following the fall of the Soviet Union. For Europeans these are matters of life; and death.
I have given my reasons why the EU is important for peace and security. What makes you think Britain, which has a recent tawdry history of welcoming Russian oligarchs to takeover large parts of the London property market, buy chunks of the national press (promoting the guff you are repeating), fund the Conservative Party lavishly; and even enter the House of Lords – is in any position to lecture the EU on standards in public life?
In fact, to be frank, was this a spoof comment?
John
The Telegraph has been forecasting the end of the EU for years.
I don’t think it is much to do with the Empire. It’s more about a sense of superiority. “We won the war-they all got occupied or were enemies. We may be poor but we are superior to you and the Americans have a special relationship with us, not you.” It makes Telegraph readers feel better.
( reminds me of the John Cleese and two Ronnies sketch on class )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDIHrX-Jp2E
Richard
Your writing and that of several of your BTL commentators give me hope that some things may get better. Thank you. Bless you. I heard Danny Blanchflower on R4 Today a few days ago talking sense but it is a whirlwind you/he/they/we are speaking into. The people of this country need you.