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The Emperor has no clothes!
None of his own, anyway. It’s disconcerting to imagine a world where the wealthy, waking up in the morning, after stretching and yawning, ask themselves how they’ll be dressing their Prime Minster that day. It’s positively alarming to find it’s real and we’re in it.
I find it weird and somehow tacky. The PM can’t buy his own clothes? Really?
@Martin
The emperor may have no clothes (metaphorically), but at least, unlike his predecessor at No.10 his trousers seem to fit him.
In terms of political orientation a cigarette paper would not easily fit.
Thanks Andy. Yes I think Starmer and many others, simply tailor their political designs as best suits them.
Us ordinary people, when we want to posh up our wardrobe for some reason or other, go to a charity shop in a wealthier part of the country. Surprisingly good bargains can be had.
I am married to someone who has done that.
The problem is, the prices in those “wealthier” charity shops are off the scale too. I’ve been in a few, in some posh places, and the prices are unaffordable to the average man in the street (me). Would you pay £500 for a coat, for instance, from a charity shop?
No
Would I pay £500 pounds for a coat? No. Doesn’t matter where it was coming from: charity shop or Saville Row it’s out of my price bracket. I can buy a waterproof, windproof long jacket from Lidl at £6.99. But I don’t need one. I bought one a little while ago for not much more.
But if you ‘need’ (for reasons of vanity perhaps, a thousand pound designer (whatever the hell that means) coat at half price…..? Well why wouldn’t you? Labels are expensive. Garments are dirt cheap.
Would you go to a charity shop and haggle-down the price? I don’t, but I’ve seen it done for goods of piffling value.
If it’s marked at £500 it’s there for a market. That’s a price point. It’s not there for you; it’s there for someone else with more money who needs to be relieved of it. (For the good of their soul)
If you can’t hack the prices don’t shop there.
I just wish the people running charity shops weren’t being ripped-off by their CEOs et alia whilst working for a pittance or less. And that I believed the charities they purport to support are actually getting a good return.
We have a government of hypocrites, supported by a crew sailing under false colours.
I don’t know about that…
Could it not be a government sailing under false colours supported by a crew of hypocrites?
Securing an anomalistic election result, after promising very little in a threadbare manifesto, but relying on the fact that Labour was not the Tories, was fortunate but unplanned. Since then it has been mostly downhill.
Then announcing that Tory macroeconomic policy would still be followed, so ‘Change’ only meant underpants, and not a new hopeful direction in improving public services, was not only terrible PR, but wiped out any honeymoon effect.
Selecting old age pensioners as the first target for nu-austerity was then an unnecessary own goal.
Using the Thatcherite phraseology of ‘There is No Alternative” and “Tough Choices” to excuse punitive and divisive policies against one of the weaker cohorts in society, when we all know there are alternative options is worse than clumsy leadership.
To do that without even commissioning an impact study was plainly incompetent.
Telling the nation we are due for a hard time, a very hard time, but luckily it was someone else’s fault, is inept messaging.
Doomsaying just does not help arguing the case.
Unredeemed pessimism is incredibly poor psychology.
Arranging a trip to Dublin on the day of an Ireland vs England football match looks opportunistic, and not in a public spirited way.
Publicly challenging one of the planet’s worst tyrants with escalation of an already delicately balanced war is worse than clumsy diplomacy.
Then… accepting specific image creating donations from a very wealthy supporter, who also receive preferential security passes, allows even the grubbiest and most dissolute Tories to claim cronyism, and rubs the noses of the poorest in it. Another own goal.
“Buy yer own f*cking clothes and specs, you privileged *rsehole” is one of the kinder social media comments I have seen.
Basically a fairly mediocre and uninspiring technocrat, who has to fall back on the authority of procedure in leadership, because of a very low charisma quotient, SKS is proving prone to making missteps with almost his every move.
Not once, not twice, but almost every government action he has announced has had a dodgy sub-text, easily visible and then exposed as incompetence.
It’s going to be a very long 5 years.
@ Tony
“….It’s going to be a very long 5 years.”
No way can Starmer survive for five years as PM.
No way!
Many people have likened a country’s economy to that of a household: you can spend only what you have saved or borrowed.
While it is an analogy we can all understand and appreciate, when it comes to a country’s economy, it is wrong. It is an example of a logical fallacy, or flawed argument: the fallacy of composition, specifically, paradox of thrift (Barnes 2021, Farmer 2018, Lavern 2018).
Source
“Are Policy Analogies Persuasive? The Household Budget Analogy and Public Support for Austerity“, Lucy Barnes and Timothy Hicks, British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 1296 – 1314
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123421000119
“The household fallacy“, Roger Farmer and Pawel Zabczyk, Economics Letters, 2018, vol. 169, issue C, 83-86
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2018.05.018 Full text: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/102451/7/WRAP-household-fallacy-Farmer-2018.pdf
“A government is not a household“, Frank van Lerven, Andrew Jackson, New Economics Foundation, 26 October 2018
https://neweconomics.org/2018/10/a-government-is-not-a-household
Thanks
Excellent links Ian!
Mazzucato is an economist who has much in common with Richard. She says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muS7dKO4JEc&t=80s
Which is supported by the Collins paper – which does not have interest on reserves
https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_848.pdf
The great Fed Chair Eccles did a great radio speech on this issue in 1939 addressing a leader of that era’s ‘debt ceiling’ crowd.
Download here …
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/statements-speeches-marriner-s-eccles-446/radio-address-7658
Thanks
Each post or tweet is depressing they need to get their flipping acts together what’s miliband doing he’s gone quiet surely he’s pushing for something behind the scenes
We need nationalised water and rail a land ownership register revamped planning local housing and investment in core services and to prime the pumps so that we provide good jobs for our own people . Not that hard one would have thought . We also need to control private recruitment companies in the broader gig economy . Come onmlabour, wake up
I’m so sick of this household balancing the budget bollocks and maxing out the country’s credit card crap. Do they really think we think that they have a Treasury App that they log in to to check whether enough taxes have come in to pay the bills and then say oh bugger, bit short, can’t borrow any more, better cut back a bit
It’s for the hard of thinking, which seems to be a lot of the UK.
Rather disconcerting to find oneself looking up the term “banana republic” – and not being disappointed.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/banana-republic
We should be using the term “Sugar-Daddy Democracy” such is the level of corruption now in UK politics!