advertisement


The Premiership of Mary Elizabeth Truss.Sept 2022 - Oct 2022

Seanm said:
“To assume that a falling housing market would be a concern for the new Tory leadership is analogous to assuming that it should have opposed Brexit. It is to rely on outdated understandings about where the party’s main fealties lie. What if, in its pandering primarily to rentiers, it is shedding its loyalty not just to productive capital but to homeowners?”

https://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2022/09/uk-economic-crisis-decoding

Excellent article accounting for what seems like the most puzzling aspect of Truss’ approach, her shafting of the Tories’ key constituency, homeowners.
Click to expand...

As a rentier I hope so, but I don't think so, because it doesn't account for the increasingly difficult climate for generating income from properties. This includes legislation which has come into force over the past 10 years, and legislation which is due to come into force over the next five years. This legislation covers health and safety, energy performance, the landlord's ability to gain vacant possession, capital gains tax rates, allowable expenses for managing the business and the sort of reporting HMRC need every year.

So while it is not inconceivable that Truss's government will reverse this, and if she did I would be very happy with her because I would be better off, there is no reason to think that the ideas in the article hold water.
 
Tony L said:
The article is behind a paywall, so I can’t comment, but for as long as I can remember Tory loyalty and policy is defined behind closed doors at black tie donor events. Government policy has never not been for sale. These days the buyers are offshore oligarchs and multi-£bn hedge funds etc. As ever there are only two types of Tory voter; billionaire fraudsters and their marks.
Click to expand...
Do you use Pocket, the app? If you share to Pocket before the page fully loads it saves the full article. I’m not giving the Statesman a penny.

You’ve got the gist though :).
 
I don’t think I’ve seen a new PM monstered like this before by commentators, economists and institutions ( I’m not talking about the public on social media etc). The Guardian editorial was scathing and used language about her and her chancellor I’ve not seen in the paper before.
The fact that the only forces coming to her rescue are a couple of extremist think tanks and a few disaster capitalists and right wing MPs using bizarre language like the IMF is a socialist pressure group and that Remainers are to blame, does even further damage to her and Britain’s international reputation.
 
You saw it first on pfm, of course, now the Daily Mash has caught on ...

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news...ruggling-with-their-mortgage-2-20220929226283

'WORRIED about your mortgage costing a f**king fortune? Follow this invaluable financial advice which homeowners were all too keen to dish out to young people.

Cancel Netflix

Mortgages shooting up by hundreds of pounds is a daunting prospect. Cancelling the £6.99 payment you send to Netflix every month will barely make a dent in it and you’ll be without one of the few sources of joy in your otherwise shit life. But you told us to do this and it feels so good watching you realise how dumb it sounds.

[...]

Cut out avocados

How much does an avocado cost? By the media’s reckoning, somewhere in the region of £5,000 per gram. By cutting them out of your diet you’ll quickly save a fortune, unless the fruit is being used as a lazy scapegoat for deeper issues with the housing market. Which they are. You can buy two for £1.50 from Tesco. But don’t, you feckless spendthrifts!'
 
mandryka said:
As a rentier I hope so, but I don't think so, because it doesn't account for the increasingly difficult climate for generating income from properties. This includes legislation which has come into force over the past 10 years, and legislation which is due to come into force over the next five years. This legislation covers health and safety, energy performance, the landlord's ability to gain vacant possession, capital gains tax rates, allowable expenses for managing the business and the sort of reporting HMRC need every year.

So while it is not inconceivable that Truss's government will reverse this, and if she did I would be very happy with her because I would be better off, there is no reason to think that the ideas in the article hold water.
Click to expand...
Bit peremptory! You’re small fry, I assume: this kind of legislation, onerous as it might be, is more easily borne by large landlords, and so favours them in their competition with small landlords. Is one argument, I’d imagine. Another is that the author sees the state not simply as acting in the immediate interest of landlords but as mediating between rentiers and renters: you guys can’t have it all your own way because you’re stupid and selfish, no offence, and will exploit renters so severely that the whole racket will collapse - you need protecting from yourselves. Thirdly, the rentier category is being used quite broadly here, to refer to companies that make money from assets, including infrastructure and intellectual property.

I think it makes a lot of sense!
 
Joe Hutch said:
You saw it first on pfm, of course, now the Daily Mash has caught on ...

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news...ruggling-with-their-mortgage-2-20220929226283

'WORRIED about your mortgage costing a f**king fortune? Follow this invaluable financial advice which homeowners were all too keen to dish out to young people.

Cancel Netflix

Mortgages shooting up by hundreds of pounds is a daunting prospect. Cancelling the £6.99 payment you send to Netflix every month will barely make a dent in it and you’ll be without one of the few sources of joy in your otherwise shit life. But you told us to do this and it feels so good watching you realise how dumb it sounds.

[...]

Cut out avocados

How much does an avocado cost? By the media’s reckoning, somewhere in the region of £5,000 per gram. By cutting them out of your diet you’ll quickly save a fortune, unless the fruit is being used as a lazy scapegoat for deeper issues with the housing market. Which they are. You can buy two for £1.50 from Tesco. But don’t, you feckless spendthrifts!'
Click to expand...
What about Spotify premium and the vinyls ( at £30 a pop from record stores)?
 
Seanm said:
“To assume that a falling housing market would be a concern for the new Tory leadership is analogous to assuming that it should have opposed Brexit. It is to rely on outdated understandings about where the party’s main fealties lie. What if, in its pandering primarily to rentiers, it is shedding its loyalty not just to productive capital but to homeowners?”

https://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2022/09/uk-economic-crisis-decoding

Excellent article accounting for what seems like the most puzzling aspect of Truss’ approach, her shafting of the Tories’ key constituency, homeowners.
Click to expand...
What about homeowners that are rentiers (e.g. because they dabble in BTL, or because they have other investments), or those that are wannabe rentiers? Seems to me these are core constituencies for the Tories at any general election, and getting them upset is a high-risk strategy for the CP.
 
PsB said:
What about homeowners that are rentiers (e.g. because they dabble in BTL, or because they have other investments), or those that are wannabe rentiers? Seems to me these are core constituencies for the Tories at any general election, and getting them upset is a high-risk strategy for the CP.
Click to expand...
Sure is. I think they’re gambling on being so well insulated from democracy that they can get by with just the support of their clients. Wouldn’t necessarily bet against them on that.
 
Seanm said:
Sure is. I think they’re gambling on being so well insulated from democracy that they can get by with just the support of their clients. Wouldn’t necessarily bet against them on that.
Click to expand...
I'm tempted to view it more as one last smash-and-grab raid before they get kicked out at the next GE, leaving the whole shebang to someone else to try to sort out. That would at least have some sort of cynical rationality to it.
 
PsB said:
I'm tempted to view it more as one last smash-and-grab raid before they get kicked out at the next GE, leaving the whole shebang to someone else to try to sort out. That would at least have some sort of cynical rationality to it.
Click to expand...
Yes, that’s always a possibility with these guys, as is sheer idiocy. I just think it’s interesting and possibly useful to put those options (temporarily) to one side and ask, what’s the thinking here, whose interests are being served, how might all of this eventually result in some kind of settlement between different interest groups?

None of this requires any of the players to have a very clear idea of what they’re doing, I’d imagine it’s more a question of who’s in the best position to exploit the situation, who can best read the lie of the land, who understands what their clients really need, who can recognise opportunities etc.

All that will be going on even if the instigating force here is looting or insanity. Things will settle down in some kind of shape and in somebody’s interests and it won’t be quite the same as before: too many pigeons coming home to roost here, the old gig is up.
 
PsB said:
I'm tempted to view it more as one last smash-and-grab raid before they get kicked out at the next GE, leaving the whole shebang to someone else to try to sort out. That would at least have some sort of cynical rationality to it.
Click to expand...

I’m finding it very hard not to. The last ditch grift of a fundamentally corrupt party that knows it is finished for a couple of political terms if not entirely. The end game of a gangster kleptocracy.

We all know the Conservative Party is mostly funded by dark-money, hedge-funds, oligarchs, vast swathes of inherited wealth etc, much of which being safely offshore and currency independent. This is all very well established and documented. These are the only people/entities able to seriously exploit and profit from the kind of economic death-spiral we are witnessing, and we know they are (Kwateng and Rees Mogg partner Crispin Odey for a start, but many, many more too). A lot of Tory party funders are becoming hugely wealthy from this current Stirling situation, as they have from this whole disastrous twelve year term. As ever when trying to explain the apparently irrational first follow the money.

Another angle, assuming for some reason these criminals do survive at the heart of government, is this economic catastrophe will enable them to double-down on stripping-out the state (austerity v2.0). Handing the NHS fully to the private healthcare market would likely be the next step. An end goal the Conservative Party have always held.

It all makes sense if one starts from the premise that the Conservative Party is an entirely criminal entity and is actively working against the national interest to line the pockets of its financial backers. I see no concrete evidence to counter this and haven't for many years now. This is exactly what large scale criminal corruption at the heart of government looks like and there is just mountains of supporting evidence.
 
TheDecameron said:
I don’t think I’ve seen a new PM monstered like this before by commentators, economists and institutions ( I’m not talking about the public on social media etc). The Guardian editorial was scathing and used language about her and her chancellor I’ve not seen in the paper before.
The fact that the only forces coming to her rescue are a couple of extremist think tanks and a few disaster capitalists and right wing MPs using bizarre language like the IMF is a socialist pressure group and that Remainers are to blame, does even further damage to her and Britain’s international reputation.
Click to expand...

No wonder she was congratulating the new Italian PM the other day, we've become them, pinballing from one batshit leader to another what seems like every 5 minutes these days.

PM used to seem like a massive job, now it is just whoever is next in the line of ever more swivel-eyed, incompetent muppets. It honestly feels like anyone could have a go at it now.

How do life long Tory voters walk around and look people in the eye without dying of complete embarrassment? Takes some brass neck that.
 
Seanm said:
Yes, that’s always a possibility with these guys, as is sheer idiocy.
Click to expand...

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Robert J. Hanlon

Or if you're more interleckchul like I is:

"misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At least the latter two are certainly rarer" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
 
Tony L said:
...We know the Conservative Party is largely funded by dark-money, hedge-funds, oligarchs, vast swathes of inherited wealth etc...
Click to expand...
The thing is, do any of those people seem to be in retreat to you? Or do they seem to be getting stronger? No one in this country is (any longer) seriously up for fighting them, so the only game in town is who can best serve their interests. Again, I wouldn't bet against that being the Tories, still. At the same time I wouldn't bet against it being Labour either. There's a reason Mandelson's still around.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top