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

[droodzilla]

Austerity is cool again.

Wonder how many hundreds of thousands of poor people will die this time?

 

[ks.234]

Austerity is cool again.

Wonder how many hundreds of thousands of poor people will die this time?

Yes, so long as the markets are calm, what happens to people is irrelevant.

 

[Cheese]

I am sure thus has been said before, but there should be a ban on people educated at Eton entering politics.

France is doing just this, the ENA ( Ecole Nationale d‘Administration) is in the process if being closed, as ordered by Sa Majesté Emmanuel Macron. But seriously, do you think this will change anything at all ? The privileged have never failed to preserve their advantages. The sooner we accept to live with this, the less energy we will waste.

 

[TheDecameron]

But wait ... didn't Liz Truss go to a comprehensive?

Yes, in Paisley. I blame Nicola Sturegeon for notgettingonwiththedayjob™.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Austerity is cool again.

Wonder how many hundreds of thousands of poor people will die this time?

Some of the other replies are quite good...

 

[matthewr]

They are making political judgements about stability and in that context raising taxes and making cuts are not interchangeable, there’s a bit more to it. Unless we’ve been misinformed about what they’re actually looking for. I don’t believe bond traders are making these kinds of decontextualised calculations. I think that’s part of the myth that’s grown up around the markets, which people who work in them tend to believe themselves.

I think a lot of that impression comes from the way our view of financial markets is shaped by city analysts and economists who absolutely are making those political calculations and come from a very particular and partial POV and the subsequent media reporting of those views reflects that. I think you also need to make a distinction between the underlying and the derivative, the front end and the back end of the curves, the buy side and the sell side and those who sit in the middle of the two and so on. Because some of those markets behave like you see on the news and some of those markets a) behave very differently and b) actually matter.

One of the interesting things about all this is that Labour understand this well and have done basically since Healy. Which is why it's been baked into Labour's approach since then and why McDonnell, for example, spoke a lot about the how to make progress and more radical progress without screwing yourself and the country before you even get started. It's always been massively annoying and unfair that in contrast the Tories get a free pass on this stuff and what Truss has just discovered is this institutional bias in their favour does, when we get down to the actual metal, actually have limits.

 

[Tony L]

Austerity is cool again.


Wonder how many hundreds of thousands of poor people will die this time?

Austerity v1.0 was the political right convincing the poorest in society to pay for astonishing amounts of cocaine-driven corruption, fraud and incompetence in the global financial services industry. V2.0 is the same again, but to pay for astonishing amounts of cocaine-driven corruption, fraud and incompetence in the UK Conservative Party. As ever the power of gaslighting is astonishing.

 

[droodzilla]

Austerity v1.0 was the political right convincing the poorest in society to pay for astonishing amounts of cocaine-driven corruption, fraud and incompetence in the global financial services industry. V2.0 is the same again, but to pay for astonishing amounts of cocaine-driven corruption, fraud and incompetence in the UK Conservative Party. As ever the power of gaslighting is astonishing.

It's not just the polticial right though. Jane Merrick is a "sensible" liberal pundit. Yet here she is selling the same lie that killed hundreds of thousands of people, first time round.

 

[droodzilla]

I think a lot of that impression comes from the way our view of financial markets is shaped by city analysts and economists who absolutely are making those political calculations and come from a very particular and partial POV and the subsequent media reporting of those views reflects that. I think you also need to make a distinction between the underlying and the derivative, the front end and the back end of the curves, the buy side and the sell side and those who sit in the middle of the two and so on. Because some of those markets behave like you see on the news and some of those markets a) behave very differently and b) actually matter.

One of the interesting things about all this is that Labour understand this well and have done basically since Healy. Which is why it's been baked into Labour's approach since then and why McDonnell, for example, spoke a lot about the how to make progress and more radical progress without screwing yourself and the country before you even get started. It's always been massively annoying and unfair that in contrast the Tories get a free pass on this stuff and what Truss has just discovered is this institutional bias in their favour does, when we get down to the actual metal, actually have limits.

Matthew, I'm currently watching season 1 of Industry on iPlayer.

How realistic is it?

Was your job really one long alcohol and cocaine-fuelled orgy?

Just curious!

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

Being a fan of Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker, I've just ordered a copy of this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09TWZCBKD/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

But it's not just the USA - there seems to be a predilection for electing total incompetents everywhere, as the disUK is proving. Why is that?

Simples:

The ultra-wealthy and powerful hide their power and the way the exploit the rest of us via using their ownership of a lot of the media people see. They then campaign - hiding in plain sight - via the 'think tanks' and other 'experts' who refuse to disclose who pays them as well as their conventional media (Daily Fail, et al) and modern media which they can also use to gain more wealth and power.

Add in degrading the education people get along, with degrading health provision, housing *blaming this all on a need to 'let the market do better', etc*.

Hence we get a mix of cash cows for the '0%' who don't seem to get any income, own anything, or pay tax here - yet live her in properties owned by some overseas arrangement, etc. All covered up using mechanisms that the politicians provide. e.g. LLPs and adding mindless complications to the tax system whilst cutting the staff who might then be able to make sense of it and actually investigate.

Plus having all this repeatedly reshuffled via paying big 'accountanty' companies, partnerships, etc, to keep on disrupting and shuffling things.

The quickness of the hand...

Now add... Freeports! Their new favourite.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

eh sorry mate you left out a very important piece of the puzzle, namely CORRUPTION in all it's forms.
The Tories were caught with their trousers round their ankles when Uncle Putin decided to annexe Ukraine.
All that luvverly Russian lucre sloshing about,Oligarchs and their City friends scuttling around like so many cockroaches.

Indeed. No surprise that Turss wants us all to be in debt and struggle rather than windfall tax or add state control of some kind... or even go for more UK sourced non fossil energy.

 

[nicetone]

Thing is though and leaving politics aside does anyone really think the NHS couldn’t be run a heck of a lot better? It’s the world’s fifth largest employer and that alone seems a bit crazy. Or to put it another way the NHS employs nearly 6% of the UK’s working population. Yes it needs proper funding but it also needs running better. As an example my job brings me into occasional contact with the facilities management side of hospitals and most are utterly clueless and extremely wasteful as a result.

NHS hospitals facilities management is outsourced to private sector companies which make money from the operation. As long as it’s outsourced it’s good.

Nothing which hasn’t been said before, and likely the bleedin obvious -

UK per capita expenditure on health is lower than many other countries, but NHS performance and outcomes are always high in international league tables, better than many countries where more is spent.

Private health in countries like US is hugely big business, main purpose to make high profits (and much of the population is said to be only one serious illness away from financial ruin). Just because NHS can be viewed as one umbrella organisation (albeit workers are employed by individual trusts, not one single national employer), it doesn’t mean that other countries don’t have similar proportions of their population employed in health. That fifth largest employer stat is often used to make easy political points to audiences that don’t want to or can’t see further.

Examples of cluelessness will be found in all organisations, no matter how money making, efficient/profitable, or excellent, if there is a will to look for and expose them. All organisations can continuously improve and run better; most will already be doing that (is the incentive for it as strong in those already making loadsamoney I wonder).

“Efficiencies” here just means cuts. It’s hard to run an organisation in a genuinely efficient manner when it’s in a state of perpetual crisis due to chronic underfunding, partly under The ****’s stewardship. If clueless management at an operational level really is the issue you think it is this, will make things worse.

Agreed, ‘efficiencies’ and ‘savings’ are always euphemisms for cuts. Tory policies have been filling NHS management with bods and techniques from the private sector for decades. NHS excellence would be even better if properly funded and without the privatisation agenda.

 

[palindrome]

I just hope this Truss malarkey is the zenith of our politics playing with ideological stuff. We have wasted years on swinging left and then right. Labour has wasted years recovering from that stupid man Corbyn and the right have delivered the pile of shite called Brexit. Dig out Ken Clarke says I !

Not Johnson, nor Truss, nor Kwarteng, but Hunt may well prove to be the 'nadir' of this Tory shitberg with his intent to introduce swingeing cuts to public services. Merciless and blinded by idealogy/greed is the man who is hell bent on demolishing the 'free to access' NHS to justify bringing in an insurance based system. A phoenix rising from the ashes . . . but only if you're big pharma/insurance/Tory spiv.

The mood of the nation has most emphatically shifted; Tory tolerance is now in short supply, and Hunts wrecking ball will not win him/then any new friends. Stabilising the economy/nervous markets is one thing, 'stabilising' a severely pissed off electorate is something else entirely.

John

 

[tiggers]

“Efficiencies” here just means cuts. It’s hard to run an organisation in a genuinely efficient manner when it’s in a state of perpetual crisis due to chronic underfunding, partly under The ****’s stewardship. If clueless management at an operational level really is the issue you think it is this, will make things worse.

You see this is the problem. The NHS is like a sacred cow and no one can say anything negative about it without being thought of at around the same level as a baby murderer. Thing is governments either starve it of funds or chuck untargeted money at it. In many parts it isn’t terribly well run and could do with a proper root and branch overhaul, but no government is ever brave enough to say and do so properly. It is an amazing service for sure and we are rightfully proud of it but it could be so much better.

 

[matthewr]

Matthew, I'm currently watching season 1 of Industry on iPlayer.

How realistic is it?

Was your job really one long alcohol and cocaine-fuelled orgy?

Just curious!

There is obviously more money around as there are a lot of cash rich people. But mostly the drinking and partying was very similar to what I experienced working in IT -- the people in their 20s do a lot, the people in their 30s do it but with more regret and the people in the 40s are more preoccupied with their mortgage, divorce payments and school fees.

I don't think I will be in breach of my NDA my noting that I have never been to an orgy

 

[matthewr]

You see this is the problem. The NHS is like a sacred cow and no one can say anything negative about it without being thought of at around the same level as a baby murderer. Thing is governments either starve it of funds or chuck untargeted money at it. In many parts it isn’t terribly well run and could do with a proper root and branch overhaul, but no government is ever brave enough to say and do so properly. It is an amazing service for sure and we are rightfully proud of it but it could be so much better.

The main problem over my lifetime has been too many attempts at "reform" not too few.

 

[TheDecameron]

Grow the pie FFS!

From magic beans apparently. Kwasi traded the cow in at the market for them

 

[Tony L]

It's not just the polticial right though. Jane Merrick is a "sensible" liberal pundit. Yet here she is selling the same lie that killed hundreds of thousands of people, first time round.

Surely no “sensible liberal” would consider Jeremy Hunt to be anything but the most shifty and discredited spiv austerity salesman? He was Health Secretary FFS, we know *exactly* what he is.

PS Just googled Jane Merrick as I had no idea who she was. Sounds like Labour gammon-right to me, and there is nothing ‘liberal’ about that. By saying that being “lunged at” by Michael Fabricant would damage anyone.

 

[Seanm]

I think a lot of that impression comes from the way our view of financial markets is shaped by city analysts and economists who absolutely are making those political calculations and come from a very particular and partial POV and the subsequent media reporting of those views reflects that. I think you also need to make a distinction between the underlying and the derivative, the front end and the back end of the curves, the buy side and the sell side and those who sit in the middle of the two and so on. Because some of those markets behave like you see on the news and some of those markets a) behave very differently and b) actually matter.

One of the interesting things about all this is that Labour understand this well and have done basically since Healy. Which is why it's been baked into Labour's approach since then and why McDonnell, for example, spoke a lot about the how to make progress and more radical progress without screwing yourself and the country before you even get started. It's always been massively annoying and unfair that in contrast the Tories get a free pass on this stuff and what Truss has just discovered is this institutional bias in their favour does, when we get down to the actual metal, actually have limits.

I can certainly see the need for a more finely-grained account of the processes involved here. But the kind of people and institutions you describe don’t seem incidental to the whole process, at least not to the way it impacts on the rest of the economy and on politics.

I agree all of this looks like a bit of a vindication of McDonnell’s approach.

 

[Nick_G]

Yes, so long as the pork markets are calm, what happens to people is irrelevant.

FIFY