There is an interesting article here on how Trump is effectively bound to be outsmarted in his trade war with China. America suffers from the same problem as Britain – it doesn’t make much anymore. So if the currency reduces in value there is no opportunity to increase exports because it there is nothing much… Read more
Category:
Politics
‘Prime Ministerial’ language is helping to frame the argument
I am appalled that our own British Prime Minister speaks of collaberation with Brussels. And he said this of someone in his very own austerity driven Conservative and Unionist Party. He well knows that this is wartime language. It shows him up for the valueless, lying journalist insinuator that he is. He’d doubtless deny it… Read more
Post Brexit possibilty?
For people like the Labour supporting businessman John Mills, Brexit was mostly about getting the value of the pound down in order to increase exports. ‘This is Money’ reports that His Brexit beliefs stem from his economic outlook. For Mills, Britain has thrown away its industrial manufacturing past and needs to rebuild its status as… Read more
Tax and spend? Not with Johnson…
BBC Radio Four news has tonight reported that we will be told how Johnson’s spending commitments will be paid for in due course. Isn’t this ‘real’ evidence of spend, and tax? And, if so it’s most unfortunate that Johnson got there before Labour……. Read more
The dilemma of neoliberal capitalism: whose efficiency and whose resilience?
National Grid claimed, after the recent power cut that they had been efficiently supplying electricity without fault since the last time the same thing happened eleven years ago in 2008. Now, I’m paraphrasing slightly and the chap was rather less smug than this suggests but it still poses the question: whose efficiency and what about… Read more
Dominic Raab – still working for the away advantage
These are a couple of comments on a piece written by Dominic Raab (him again) in Canada’s The Globe and Mail: “We realize you are desperately seeking new friends after the Brexit debacle. May we suggest that a chaotic exit from the EU, due entirely to Tory incompetence and greed, may put off rather a… Read more
A ‘Germany Plus’ Brexit
The Guardian has reported that Dominic Raab, who, let us remember, is our Foreign Secretary, is of the opinion that Brexit will bring a huge series of upsides for UK trade. Of all the lies he could tell this has to be the most blatant. For what we do know is that if Brexit has… Read more
Control by Licensing
Having spent most of my life near alcohol, I’m very conscious that the state both licences me to supply it – and also licences the premises that I supply it from. Thus I require both a personal licence, for which you need to pass an exam, undergo a Criminal Record Check (and yes I have… Read more
Where’s the rest?
I spotted this lovely Twitter post from David Lammy MP in reply to Prime Minister Johnson: You promised the NHS £350 million extra per week. £1.8 billion will only cover about 5 weeks. Where’s the rest? Where indeed? More especially as spending commitments seem to have been coming thick and fast……. Read more
Understanding monetary ‘plumbing’ and where it gets us
There is an interesting podcast from the American site Macro’n Cheese with the Scottish Professor Mark Blyth, who, though he long ago emigrated and has become Eastman Professor of Political Economy at Brown University in the US, he has certainly managed to hang to most of his Dundonian dialect! I have to say I usually… Read more