Thinking about the two recent reviews of The Deficit Myth, I am coming to the view that these rather lightweight critiques are simply designed to sow seeds of doubt in readers minds. But there is no very serious argument against the facts of the case. When Jessop says that if something seems too good to… Read more
Category:
Politics
Demolition by virus…
According to my favourite 🙂 newspaper… The Telegraph, councils will be allowed to demolish buildings that are ‘contaminated’ by Covid-19. This is pretty odd – as an airborne virus, I’m not entirely sure how buildings can become contaminated with Covid-19. I suggest that actually they cannot – for sure their air can be, but not… Read more
The Innocence Tax and how Democracy is undermined
There has been a series of articles on Channel Four News on the experiences of ‘The Secret Barrister’ – and of course there is a book of the same name. This illustrates the straight injustice for potentially any one of us when the state refuses to fund adequately our defence – not to mention the… Read more
The Deficit Myth criticism – second try
Julian Jessop was previously Chief Economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which he describes as “the [we ought to know – Koch Brothers funded] educational charity and free-market think tank” – and, remarkably, he is also of ‘Capital Economics’, one of whose members has already had a first try (commented on yesterday). He has… Read more
The Deficit Myth criticism – first go
There have been a couple of reviews in the Telegraph on Stephanie Kelton’s book ‘The Deficit Myth’ – this one is from June (yes, I really don’t read the Telegraph that frequently) from regular BBC and Telegraph commentator, Roger Bootle. What is probably most interesting of all is what he admits – and then especially… Read more
When comedy is prophesy
This is ten minutes of painful entertainment in a comedy programme of 24 years ago with Messrs John Bird and Fortune taking the mickey out of John Major’s Eurosceptic MP’s. As the general laughter suggests, the ideas of the Eurosceptics seemed ludicrous. Today it is unfortunately no more than the truth – if still equally… Read more
Sub-optimal nourishment shows
For once I have to stray from my usual criticism! Henry Dimbleby’s Part One of National Food Strategy, commissioned by Michael Gove when in charge of Agriculture, is good and very encouraging – let us hope that this government (which is in large part devoid of original ideas) takes them up! I think it is… Read more
Johnson’s new dietary advice
Might include this soup produced in honour of his recent visit to Baxter’s Scottish factory: The rest of the ‘Conservative’ range is, it is said, suitably rich, thick and tasteless… On a more serious note the details of the Johnson diet that have been trailed so far seem to revolve around bicycling on the NHS,… Read more
The only thing Johnson’s government manages to be world-beating at:
And it looks as though Johnson is still doing everything to keep the UK and England in particular, at the top of a table he should be ashamed of – with 444 deaths in the last week and 2,597 in the past month. Comparable figures for France were 40 and 461 – so Britain has… Read more
Masking deceit
Justin Madders MP@justinmadders who is Labour MP for Ellesmere Port & Neston – and, indeed, Shadow Health Minister, came up with this to provide a little levity for Saturday: “Has anyone yet faced the conundrum of needing to buy a mask but they can’t go into the shop to buy one because they don’t have… Read more