I think this is a regrouping day after a long week.
Some warblers should be around in their familiar haunts by now. We're going looking for them.
And I have a horrible feeling that the outline of a book is forming in my head. I need to go out and get rid of that idea. One is not scheduled right now, and they are horribly hard work. A long walk is needed to test the idea to hoped for destruction, or to work out other ways to do it.
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Same here – met some deadlines for some affordable housing at the end of the week right at the death, but left me exhausted. All because my council employee is so short of capacity.
I hope you get a rest
Hi, I’m a retired engineer and a latecomer to your channel. My final years of work involved understanding process control and I believe there are 3 areas of human activity where we we would do well to better understand the processes that are in play. It would also seem to be the case that those who are profiting from current human activity go to a great deal of trouble to prevent us from understanding these processes.
The areas I refer to are:
The true cause of Global Warming and the effectiveness of human intervention
The operation of National and Global Economic Systems
The Factors and Mitigations that contribute to the Physical and Mental well-being of Mankind.
I’m sure you will agree all of the above are inter-related. Your interest in all of the above is clear and your speciality is in Economics.
I am very encouraged by the way you view Economics and I think I’m slowly getting this. It is beginning to seem that our politicians are unaware of what they are capable of doing. Perhaps it is more likely that they lack the talent or confidence to fully utilise the economic levers they hold to adjust the direction of the UK. I suspect the fear of a media owned by those doing quite well out of our current free market “free-for all” has a lot to do with this. Currently a media owned by the super rich can virtually guarantee any government acting in the interest of anyone other than themselves will be demonised and restricted to a single term in office. Am I getting close to the big message here??
I believe the fact that I am very interested in this subject, have had a reasonable level of professional success gaining an understanding and improving processes and have spent several hours watching your videos, yet I am still asking this question might be of some concern to you?
I also never make statements like my last one unless I think I can improve the situation. So here goes with my first suggestion. We engineers use graphical representations of processes to educate non-engineers ( usually accountants ) how our proposals will improve any given situation. Animated versions of these graphical images also allow those in control of the process to understand its current status. I believe some of your messages would be better understood by a wider audience if you were to produce graphical representations of your economic models. In a democracy the changes you hope for will only come about by wider communication, engagement and understanding by the electorate of your messages and it is a given that a “picture paints a thousand words”.
Also if I am right a political workplace with relatively low salaries based on a popularity contest no longer attracts the finest minds. I believe both static and animated representations of your economic models might help those in power to understand the possibilities you appear to be offering.
One final thought. From where I am sitting you and Gary Stevenson seem to be running a parallel race and have arrived at a common theme – inequality. You also seem to compliment each other from a process control point of view.
Gary has made the measurements and has effectively identified and clearly presents a process I can recognise. Un-regulated capitalism will continue to funnel money Government creates into the offshore bank accounts of the “Super Rich” many of whom end up no happier than those who have to put up with poverty and poor services as a consequence.
So from a process control point of view Gary is doing a great job of taking the measurements and presenting the information to those in charge of the process ( That’s US, assuming democracy still works ). But that’s where the process stops with Gary. He can only acknowledge that it will be difficult to identify the corrective actions necessary to swing this process back in favour of an ever-growing constituency of impoverished. I believe that this is because his background and experience does not give him a full understanding of the process he is trying to correct or the tools available to achieve this. And that is where I believe your ways of looking a the Money-Supply system offer a model that would allow access to the solutions that are needed.
It begs the question. Have you and Gary ever compared notes? Also Oh if you want some help with graphical representations I was present at the birth of process control and only saw that child reach it’s full potential when we introduced animated graphics so I have been on a similar journey.
I like your messages. I believe you offer hope in a sea of despair, I believe communication is the key to conversion and conversion is required to win over politicians and if necessary an electorate.
I wish you luck and hope you do not think my words presumptuous.
All The Best
Ken Wharton
I am contacting Gary again this week
And Gary is wrong re tax havens. There is no money in them. But that might take more time than I have got to explain this afternoon.
I am getting excited at developments here.
Achievements?
LINO credibility tanking fast.
Austerity being exposed and ridiculed.
MMT getting a little bit more of a mainstream airing.
Fiscal rules being challenged in mainstream and in public.
Evidence of panic in Starmer’s backers and PR people. (I can see the panic in the eyes of Jonathan Freedland, Heather Stewart, and Polly Toynbee – but of course they are not our allies!)
A coalescing of opposition to neoliberalism with a focus on credible macro-ecomic alternatives.
KUTGW!
BUT!
Speaking from the omnibus, Reform UK are adept at exploiting ANY popular idea and gaining electoral advantage with it (eg: money creation, differential interest rates charged by BoE) then abandoning it once in power (they learned that from Starmer’s LINO, or was it the other way round? As soon as we supply ideas and programmes, Fa***e will mix them with a pint of beer and his flat ‘at, and go lie to voters.
We must also destroy Reform UK’s popular appeal to my fellow omnibus passengers and that is a challenging time-consuming task. LINO is already sunk but Reform UK are riding high on his failures.
Any “ideas/programmes” that emerge as an alternative to neoliberal mal-orthodoxy have to be framed for use in omnibus conversations (and I don’t mean dumbed down, I mean contextualised to be relevant to my neighbours).
I was v struck by one contributor here, a newly qualified UK trained midwife (with a hefty student debt) who could not get an NHS job at her training hospital because overseas applicants were filling the vacancies and this was NHS policy (probably because someone in the bureacracy signed a contract with a supplier of midwives for 999 years and they signed a contract with some overseas labour contractor and no one can undo the contracts).
This sort of thing is manna from heaven for Reform UK and its no answer to call my neighbours racists for crying “foul”! (Which they do)
Taking Reform UK down at the level of ideas is not as easy as you might think. Destroy one of their ideas and they nick one of yours, they are doing that as we speak. Just like LINO did with Corbyn’s mild social democracy (until they didn’t need it any more and swivelled back to neoliberalism and getting into bed with foreign fascists).
Reform UK have to be destroyed structurally, legally, AND ideologically (Good Law Project are suing them and they need cash) ridiculed as hypocrites, charlatans and snake oil salesmen but with hard evidence not smears or intellectual snobbery, and that destruction has to come from below, not above – happening on the omnibus not in the university or middle class podcast.
Everything that is happening here is brilliant, but it is only just penetrating slowly to the omnibus level, which is where I am doing my political economy evangelism and where millions of voters are, but not all on my particular omnibus unfortunately 🙁
You are a talented political thinker RJ
Thank you to all of you who illumine and explain so others like me have better understanding. After decades of having no words to push back at neoliberalism, now I have some.
Yes please, more pictures and graphs as requested by Mr Wharton. Your video on the spring statement was great, I read the transcript afterwards to help it sink in.
Very glad you are trying to talk to Gary Stevenson. I keep mentioning your name and tax report when I comment on his videos.
Noted