Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VII

[gavreid]

This “wealth fund” is not more than ring fencing public spending for private purposes. To try to claw some of that back by getting pension funds to invest is exactly the same as government issuing bonds.

Well in the case of USS for example, which was coerced into putting up 20% of Thames Water, it's private money that they want to spaff at the casino - my money! My own case has been with the pensions ombudsman for 5 years waiting for a decision.

 

[ks.234]

Well in the case of USS for example, which was cerced into putting up 20% of Thames Water, it's private money that they want to spaff at the casino - my money!

Yes, your money is private money. This is the major problem with neoliberal economics, it cuts government debt and borrowing, which is sustainable, by increasing private debt and borrowing, which isn’t.

 

[paulfromcamden]

This “wealth fund” is no than ring fencing public spending for private purposes. To try to claw some of that back by getting pension funds to invest is much the same as government issuing bonds.

This wealth fund is no more or less than an a counting trick to get “borrowing” of the books in much the same way as PFI was a device to get spending off the books.

It will end in the same way.

I don't think this is so much aimed at public sector pensions as private sector DC schemes - which represent the majority of schemes in the UK.

So it's not really about public spending - it's about forcing money from people's private pensions into risky UK start-ups that, presumably, are not seen as attractive investments (because they're high risk, are operating in a country with a clownshow government etc..)

If firms looks like a good investment - that will provide a good return for retirement savers - they should be able to attract investment already. If they don't the government has no business forcing schemes to put their money into them.

 

[ks.234]

I don't think this is so much aimed at public sector pensions as private sector DC schemes - which represent the majority of schemes in the UK.

So it's not really about public spending - it's about forcing money from people's private pensions into risky UK start-ups that, presumably, are not seen as attractive investments (because they're high risk, are operating in a country with a clownshow government etc..)

If firms looks like a good investment - that will provide a good return for retirement savers - they should be able to attract investment already. If they don't the government has no business forcing schemes to put their money into them.

Yes, my point though was that the wealth fund itself is government spending of the type that provides “borrowing” in the form of buying and selling bonds.

But yes, it is an attempt to disguise borrowing rather than spending.

AIUI, pension companies have to invest in government bonds as it is, so coercing pensions to invest in wealth fund is no different really.

Labour’s Wealth Fund is just creating another National Debt by a different name so it can claim to have got the ‘real’ National Debt down, but created different national Debt under a different name and current account number.

It’s just accounting. Not even double entry.

 

[notaclue]

A poll for the Daily Mail finds "Labour is more trusted on defence than the Tories".

That is an astonishing sentence that would have seemed like fantasy a few years ago under the leadership of Corbyn.

Sir Keir's Labour is now the sensible, mainstream, moderate party. The Tories are the cranks.

100+ majority, I reckon.

 

[ks.234]

Labour proposes greater worker protections one week, and dumps them the next.

What a surprise?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1773847013911589190

 

[ks.234]

Excellent rant about what’s wrong with our economy

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745749278163665116

 

[Somafunk]

Excellent rant about what’s wrong with our economy

Very good, its a shame the right wing are gaining a foothold in New Zealand though.

Meanwhile corporate profits rise to a new high since the start of covid, I wonder why?

https://x.com/KathyJones/status/1773340332983234998?s=20

 

[matt j]

Nothing is likely to change, there's too much money and grift involved for them to let the gravy train come to an end.

 

[ks.234]

Very good, its a shame the right wing are gaining a foothold in New Zealand though.

Meanwhile corporate profits rise to a new high since the start of covid, I wonder why?

https://x.com/KathyJones/status/1773340332983234998?s=20

That graph tells you all you need to know about where covid spending really went.

Yet we are told that it is ‘the taxpayer’ who has to pay it back

 

[matt j]

Covid was a great smoke screen for extracting a shit ton of money, in fact it wasn't even that much of a smoke screen as they did it in broad daylight.

 

[ks.234]

BILLIONAIRES MADE MORE IN THE 24 MONTHS OF THE PANDEMIC THAN THEY DID IN 23 YEARS.

Billionaires made more in the 24 months of the pandemic than they did in 23 years. Oxfam on Davos - Views & Voices

For the first time in a very long time we are seeing a sharp spike in both extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Max Lawson on Oxfam’s latest Davos broadside – and his worries that his salary is about to get cut

views-voices.oxfam.org.uk

 

[notaclue]

The big one. As in it's a very big poll of 15,000. And it's by Survation, who have proved extremely accurate in recent elections.

A crushing, historic victory by Sir Keir.

And the Greens are nowhere. But that makes it an ever better choice for middle-class contrarians who like to be different...

 

[Seanm]

The big one. As in it's a very big poll of 15,000. And it's by Survation, who have proved extremely accurate in recent elections.

A crushing, historic victory by Sir Keir.

And the Greens are nowhere. But that makes it an ever better choice for middle-class contrarians who like to be different...

What’s your position?

 

[ks.234]

The big one. As in it's a very big poll of 15,000. And it's by Survation, who have proved extremely accurate in recent elections.

A crushing, historic victory by Sir Keir.

And the Greens are nowhere. But that makes it an ever better choice for middle-class contrarians who like to be different...

But nothing will change for the better. Labour will continue the decline by wading deeper and deeper into the politics of austerity.

If the current decline is the problem, solving it needs more than a change in the colour of the PM’s neck tie

 

[les24preludes]

And the Greens are nowhere. But that makes it an ever better choice for middle-class contrarians who like to be different...

That's pretty insulting to those who understand and value science to the point of actually campaigning for action on climate change while the other parties bury their heads in the sand and do **** all. Do you really believe that the Greens, who are risking a lot to bring the incompetence of our politicians before the public, are a bunch of bourgeois dilettantes? Would you have said the same about the suffragettes?

 

[Nick_G]

That's pretty insulting to those who understand and value science to the point of actually campaigning for action on climate change while the other parties bury their heads in the sand and do **** all. Do you really believe that the Greens, who are risking a lot to bring the incompetence of our politicians before the public, are a bunch of bourgeois dilettantes? Would you have said the same about the suffragettes?

@notaclue would appear to be our resident clickbaiter/doomscroller, always bringing us the most dramatic and pessimistic tidbits of speculation and rumour from the CHAOS engine that is social media.

 

[Nigel]

The Mail on Sunday aren't giving up on the Angela Raynor story.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

You can't take action on climate change without spending money. Private firms may scratch the surface but they will not put up the billions needed for wind farms or solar energy let alone any new nuclear. This is just pie in the sky thinking.

Slight quibble. Private ventures may well build wind farms *when* they are offerred a connection to the grid that is convenient and low cost from their POV. This is why 'on shore' has seen more such wind farms than offshore. But is still at present hampered by the National Grid being designed for a past era.

So a combination of a 'Government' willing to get things connected and some local 'co-op' farms, etc, could be a useful approach.

However the real challenge is to get built a larger National Grid so that wind farms offshore can easily be linked from. There are plans for this. The hold-up is the failure of NG/Government to invest in it with the new high-capacity (pun alert!) HVDC connections from the shore in Scotland down to the main 'market' down south.

The engineering is already possible. What we lack is the willingness to get on with it.

BTW periods of *negative* wholesale price for electric power are now becoming more common.

As per a BBC prog I recommended a while ago, we need to look at this in the same way as Norway did North Sea Oil/Gas.

 

[les24preludes]

However the real challenge is to get built a larger National Grid so that wind farms offshore can easily be linked from. There are plans for this. The hold-up is the failure of NG/Government to invest in it with the new high-capacity (pun alert!) HVDC connections from the shore in Scotland down to the main 'market' down south.

The engineering is already possible. What we lack is the willingness to get on with it.

Thanks for that. So where Labour needs to spend money in the first place is on the National Grid. That makes it clearer. Not that they will rush to pour money into it when the time comes to do it.

And clearly this is what the Tory government has failed to do. But they're not interested in climate action now Boris has gone.