Comments by "" (@charliemoore2551) on "Richard J Murphy" channel.

  1. It's a bit like a spoiled 10-year-old taking the controls of a large articulated lorry on a busy motorway. He doesn't know where he's going, he doesn't know what he's carrying, he doesn't understand the controls and he doesn't care about anyone else on the road. The only thing predictable about the outcome is that it's not going to be good for anyone.
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  2. Yes. Friedman called it "creative chaos": shock doctrine. They tried it in Chile. It was the most prosperous state in Latin America. They had decent health and education provision, workers had good wages, good working conditions and pensions and they were effectively progressing in parallel with European states. That was all torn down and privatised with the promise that the market would provide all of that and more. It didn't. They got massive levels of unemployment, pensions were stolen and Chile saw terrible poverty and deprivation. All of this was enforced by a murderous military regime, of course. I suspect that Musk and the cabal of billionaires who own Trump are hoping for a similar breakdown so that they can enforce their own version of order from above.
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  3. The most important feature of all capitalism is that it is not the capitalist who creates the value. It is the worker. But the bulk of those billions that have gone into creating ChatGPT haven't gone to those workers. They have gone to those who owned the capital at all stages. No wonder the costs are so high when so many idle palms have to be filled along the way.
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  4. You're right about Streeting. The rise of mediocre technocrats set in with Blair and the disastrous Alan Millburn appears to be this fool's guide and mentor.
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  5. This is excellent. You list 3 problems farmers have but you missed out the fourth: The low real wages which the end customer, the consumer of the farm products, receives. This does not in any way detract from your other arguments but I think it should be mentioned as the overall prosperity of the population is bound to have an impact on farm gate prices. The point about the financialisation of farmland is the killer, though. The farmer is being robbed by parasitic financial capitalism just like everyone else.
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  6. The days when one country could march troops into another and take permanent possession of it are gone. The debacles of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US invasion of Iraq and Russia's attempt to take control of Western Ukraine provide lessons which should be learned. You can be massively superior in military terms but if the host population is determined not to be governed by you, it won't be.
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  7. I think he's neither bad nor mad. He is just morally vacuous and stupid. He has no emotional intelligence and simply doesn't comprehend the difference between right and wrong. In his consciousness, there is "that which benefits me and that which doesn't". Combined with a total lack of intellectual curiosity, emotional insecurity and inability to empathise, it makes him extremely dangerous.
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  8. The network of tax havens could be closed down very easily if the governments of the major economies agreed to do so. None of them want to because all of them serve the interest of the wealthy rather than their populations.
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  9. You left out an option, Richard: Undermining the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly.
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  10. We still have a workhouse mentality in the UK. The poor are to be blamed, shamed and shunned. When I point out the disparity between tax lost to evasion and avoidance next to the piffling amounts lost to benefit fraud or error, middle-class people always say "Ah, but tax is taking OUR money away from us, whereas these people are just getting handouts they haven't earned." It's a rather nasty side of British culture, I'm afraid. It will take a long time to turn this attitude around, but we should try.
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  11. The rot set in about 45 years ago with the notion that it was all about the individual making himself or herself marketable. The invisible hand of the market would do the rest. Government skill centres began closing and entrepreneurial training companies started cropping up. You'd get a few months sitting in front of a bored trainer who would get you to commit slogans and cliches to memory and give you a useless certificate at the end. The government skill centres used to churn out people with basic skills in construction, computing, catering etc. The private trainers showed you how to write a CV that no one was ever going to bother to read. We have to get away from this idea that young people should be moulded to fit the needs of the market. It should be the other way around. We need to create a society in which people CAN contribute according to their abilities and can develop those abilities knowing that they will be rewarded for doing so.
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  12. There are two "far-rights". The biggest threat to democracy is Neoliberalism. It's an ideology which believes that empathy is a dysfunctional quality which interferes with the proper exercise of self-interest which it considers to be the motor of all prosperity: In this cult, caring is literally bad but it is not intrinsically based on hatred. The dangerous thing going on at the moment is a melding of this far-right with the other one, the one based on racism, misogyny, homophobia, Antisemitism etc to create a very nasty mix indeed. We are seeing that in the rise of Trump, Modi, Orban, Putin and sadly, here in the UK with the likes of Farage and Tice.
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  13. It's basic Keynes/Galbraith economics. It does have flaws but its application in the 1950s and 1960s let to the biggest and fastest rise in living standards in human history - much of it reversed over the last 45 years by Thatcherism, of course. The beauty of it is that money paid out to the lower paid flows immediately back into the economy because they spend it immediately. Thatcherite trickle down does not do this. A lot of it will leave the country and go into tax havens. With the rest, the rich buy assets such as rental housing which forces up house prices and allows them to soak up even more of the economy. It's a no brainer really. Keeping the lid on wages has led to stagnation and decline. Pay increases for the public sector, especially the lower paid sector, are win-win for everyone except the clients of the Tufton Street trolls who pay so much attention to this site.
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  14. I remember working in Big 6 accountants when our excellent IT department was closed down and the whole operation taken over by Cap Gemini. They, in turn, contracted out the various bits of it to other companies and individuals. So you end up depending on people who know nothing about your business and aren't answerable to anyone in it. It's ideological engineering. The ideological fulcrum of Neoliberalism is that wealth is created by transactions and transactions are guided by the efficiency of market forces. Therefore, the more transactions you have, the more efficient and wealth generating you become! It's madness. But it's where we are.
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  15. The most visionary (and dangerous) video so far. Boiled down, you are saying "What if the fiscal rules were there to benefit the population rather than the ruling class?" This is stuff worth fighting for but you'd need to appreciate that the ruling class would fight back against such a manifesto with everything they've got. That would be up to and including lethal force - though I imagine that they would try smear and discredit tactics first.
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  16. Spot on. The healthiest UK generation ever were those who were children during the Second World War. They grew up when most of the harmful foods were either rationed or not available at all. Meat and fats were also rationed and the only way to get a full belly was to fill up with tatties, and cruciferous veggies. I read recently that longevity had peaked and is now falling again. I suspect that's because that war time generation has pretty much gone now. The reliance on wonder drugs is a symptom of society's sickness. It's certainly not a cure for it.
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  17. It's quite simple. Starmer is signalling to his buddies in the City that, where there are choices, he will choose to hammer the poor rather than do anything to interfere with their continuing pillaging of the economy. He wants to reassure them that this is a continuity Tory government. So keep the donations flowing, guys. Labour is your party now.
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  18. If we'd had PR it's unlikely we'd ever have had Thatcher's privatisations, the Falklands War, the disastrous deregulation of financial services, the Poll Tax, the collapse of Council House building, the "reforms" to the NHS, academy schools, the closure of libraries, public toilets etc, the Iraq War and (most disastrous of all, Brexit. Quite simply, the UK would have been a better place to live.
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  19. I suspect he thinks he's an agent but Mad Vlad is smart enough to appreciate that he's too stupid for that. He's an asset.
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  20. Billionnaire at the table gorging himself on the finest food and dropping crumbs on the floor to the unemployed below: Watch that immigrant. He's after your crumbs.
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  21. They'd be able to get rid of employment costs by expelling the unemployed. Rudy Giulliani did that with homeless people when he was Mayor of New York. He put them in a bus and dropped them off in the middle of nowhere. Nothing would stop a Charter City from doing that. The bonus would be that it would create an ultra-desperate reserve army of unemployed people to be exploited by other cities or by agribusiness.
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  22. Agreed. The directors should be facing jail time for that.
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  23. Aye. And Starmer is giving people precisely NO reason to vote Labour. They've got "nowhere else to go", you see.....
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  24. Richard is an honest and competent accountant. He's a very dangerous man indeed. No wonder the Tufton Street trolls like to attack him.
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  25. Especially when, as is very common in the NHS, the agency staff are exactly the same people that once worked for you. All you've done is insert an extra layer of costs.
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  26. Absolutely. And you put your finger on it straight away by referring to royalty and the tradition of top down authority. All organisations of size, both public and private, should be obliged to have mechanisms to facilitate employee exposure of wrongdoing and there should be full legal protection for any employee who uses it. Democracy is meaningless if it stops when we enter the workplace.
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  27. Indeed. More to the point, whatever they spend goes straight back into the economy.
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  28. The problem is that decisions like this are made by people who know very little about how to implement them - or whether indeed, as pointed out here, whether they actually CAN be implemented. Britain's boardrooms these days are stuffed with accountants, marketing experts, lawyers and bankers. There won't be an engineer - and especially not an environmental engineer in sight.
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  29. "Also, one should never confuse the health of financial markets with the health of a real economy. " Wisdom indeed. It's a betting shop and, while it's useful to know what people are betting on, it's only a part of the picture.
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  30.  @nickryder9669  You must be very young then. The most successful economic policy was the Keynesian programme which was put into place in 1945 and lasted until Thatcher came along and broke it. All Blair did was continue the disastrous Thatcher "miracle" until it reached its inevitable conclusion when everything fell to pieces in 2008. Since then, all governments, including this one, have tried to revive the disastrous economics of Thatcherism. By the way, Growth doesn't mean a thing if it's accompanied by high unemployment, falling living standards and increasing inequality. Pinocet's Chile had record growth!
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  31.  @gwynroberson198  You really need to ask that? It's because they'll get paid more by the agency than by the NHS. To spell it out: The NHS pays more NOT to give staff a decent pay rise.
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  32. Yes. The thing about stock markets is that those in the know and with the requisite controls get rich whichever way it moves.
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  33. Both Cameron and Osborne have effectively admitted that it was the latter. They called it shrinking the state, of course.
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  34. Beware of anyone wanting to protect your freedom of choice. They invariably end up making sure that you "choose" something which benefits them and and not you.
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  35.  @zetectic7968  Well spotted. Richard Murphy is attracting a large number of these trolls. Or possibly, one or two professional trolls (Tufton Street or similar) are processing a steady number of sock puppet accounts. You can tell because they all make the same or similar arguments in the same formulaic way that you would rarely find in a random cross section of the public. Kudos to Richard, really. They clearly consider him to be a threat
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  36.  @matthewshutt8108  When you take into account the poor take-up rate of means-tested benefits, the administrative cost of means-testing and the costs of people suffering from poor health as a result of turning off the heating or reducing food intake, it makes perfect sense. The net amount saved by means-testing is piffling and the potential damage is enormous.
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  37.  @andyinsuffolk  Yes. Local democracy is good. Most of continental Europe is far more devolved than the UK. But that's not what Charter Cities are about. Their principal aim is to undermine democracy at all levels.
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  38. The system is absolutely ridiculous. It's the equivalent of allowing schoolchildren to hire and fire their own exam invigilators and markers. In the 1990s I worked in the tax department of a big six accountancy firm. We, along with all other departments, were essentially subordinate to the audit function - which was huge. Audit managers were situated within the clients' premises and there was a revolving career door where they would often get progression by getting employed by the client. Certainly not in their interest to point out transgressions! At the very least, auditors have to be appointed by government and not allowed to undertake any other work for that company but, in my view, the function is ideally suited to being run as a civil service function with no wriggle room for the client to pick and choose at all.
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  39. Better still. Let's have a democratically accountable publicly owned pension fund with its actions and behaviours subject to complete transparency and public debate.
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  40.  @richsidman8548  It came from JD Miller, the executive producer: "To sell the show, we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty. That was the conceit of the show,” Miller wrote. “At the very least, it was a substantial exaggeration; at worst, it created a false narrative by making him seem more successful than he was.” Just cut and paste the above into your search engine to get the many sources. Leader? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. The man's a complete moron. He's the only man in history who was stupid enough to bankrupt a casino! The only people more stupid than him are the idiots who believe him.
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  41.  @TheHesseJames  I think you might be confusing inequality which is a political concept with asymmetry which is mathematical. I doubt if anyone would disagree with the proposal that hard work, ingenuity and commitment should be rewarded. That's a good thing. But allowing people to use their political and economic power to grab all the resources is not only morally repugnant but gums up the whole economic machine which produces the wealth.
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  42. He is only failing in the eyes of those who were wide-eyed and optimistic about the "change" he and Reeves promised. The people who wanted him to replace Corbyn are quite happy. He is serving them as expected.
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  43. That depends upon whose taxes and which taxes you raise. Redistributive taxes will certainly result in growth. The poor spend money while the rich "save" it.
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  44. I agree with all this. Limited liability does have a use but it is too easily abused. It is too easy to use it as a vehicle for fraud and for abusing employees' rights. It should be much harder to set up an LLC and legislation is needed to make officers of the company and large shareholders responsible for crimes committed by companies as if they had committed them themselves.
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  45. This will never happen in the UK as it is currently constituted - nor indeed in most EU countries, which are equally obsessed with this nonsense about balancing the books. Perhaps we can make an example in an independent Scotland and demonstrate that there is a clear alternative? Just asking....
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  46. No. The Democrats lost because they offered the working class precisely nothing. As is usually the case, the Fascist Right has won because the only alternative was the soft Right.
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  47. Well said. Universities not only contribute to local economies but also local social and political life. If you are lucky enough to live close to one you will have access to the best bands, orchestras, plays etc. And discipline and organisation are important but so is subversion. Universities should be places where EVERYTHING is questioned and challenged. Universities are incredibly valuable and they should not be subject to the marketplace.
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  48. Looking forward to the series, Richard. I particularly liked your point about myth-busting. It makes absolute sense.
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  49. The money that banks rent out does not come from savers! FFS, are there people who still think this??? It is new money created with a button push.
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  50. @ "The Tories were pretty bad, but at least they kept the UK economy from completely collapsing" Um, were you sleeping when Liz Truss almost did exactly that? But I'm fascinated. What exactly were these "obvious" solutions?
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  51. The Labour Party once stood for the principles underpinning this. Alas, no longer. That ship has sailed and replacement is needed. Maybe we can aim for this when we get independence in Scotland.
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  52. This is all absolute heresy - which is exactly what is needed right now. Excellent video. One of the best so far.
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  53. I couldn't agree more. When my mother died, many years ago, her savings amounted to a few thousand pounds. The five siblings all agreed that my sister, who had nursed her through the last year or so of her life, should have this to pay for a holiday that she and her husband fully deserved. Apart from that, there was nothing but a few keepsakes, bits of furniture, books etc which we each took something of because they helped us remember her. Apart from that, there was nothing. No property, no stocks and shares, bank accounts etc. I was always glad about that. She left us far more than "stuff". it will last a lot longer and I seriously hope that I will leave the same to my children.
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  54.  @blue47er  No. Not at all. I'm appalled by Starmer. My point was that we didn't arrive here by random accident. The purging of Socialists from the Labour was the beginning of the Starmer project, not the end. Labour is no longer the UK's progressive party. It has been completely and systematically neutered. We need to build a new progressive force outside of Labour.
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  55. Wow. This one has really got the Tufton Street trolls buzzing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant - and don't they know it!
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  56. Thing is. He didn't run the TV show. The producers told him what projects to run and whom to "fire". He's a bit like the 6-year-old in a football class who thinks he really is Lionel Messi because he's got it written on the back of his shirt.
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  57. All agreed. "Wealth" comes from the Old English "weal" which means well being and was generally used in reference to the community rather than individuals. Financial concepts like profit and loss,etc are accountancy terms and are only peripheral to economics in so much as they show where wealth is being siphoned off. Wealth is produced by the community and rightly belongs to it.
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  58. Excellent. Tufton Street's version is that the big struggle is the one between what they call "liberty" and tyranny. In fact, their real enemy (and they know it) is democracy. Democracy and everything that enhances it (free speech and association, fair distribution of wealth, human rights, fairer elections, devolution etc) is the story which we need to tell to counter their "liberty".
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  59.  @adenwellsmith6908  Most of it does anyway.
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  60. It would be more sensible if the government gave mortgages themselves. Economies of scale would make it much cheaper. The current system is just a licence for top-heavy bureaucracies to print their own money.
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  61. Which is why Corbyn was ejected!
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  62.  @glynnwright1699  It was different for me. I was doing my schoolwork by candlelight because the government wanted to begin reversing the very working-class advances that allowed people like me to be doing that schoolwork in the first place.
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  63. What a silly comparison. NI is a tax on employment. Employment is good for the economy. Rent is a drain on the economy. Landlords are currently getting away with shoddy maintenance, delayed repairs and excessive rents. The growth of the rental sector is one of the things that has sent house prices through the roof and forced people INTO the rental sector where sky-high rents mean that they don't have a chance in hell of saving to get out of it: as bad a vicious circle as you can get.
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  64. @Minimmalmythicist No. It will mean less trade barriers for Scotland. The big players in the EU have made it clear that they will fast-track a Scottish application for membership. England will gain because it will have the opportunity to re-make itself as a nation - with a democratic constitution and a more outgoing economic outlook.
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  65. Note that most of these "antis" seem to keep office hours. The fact that they make the same points using very similar wording is also a trolling red light. Their presence is a compliment to Richard Murphy. It tells us that Tufton Street (or similar) is concerned that he is making an impact.
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  66. On average, more equal countries are generally wealthier. Inequality leads to any number of social and economic dysfunctions which blight everyone's lives
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  67. "Most of the world's problems are down to large businesses wanting more." Absolutely! Big businesses have become so large and powerful that they are beyond democratic control. Far from it, it is often the other way around, with companies exerting more influence over governments than their populations do. This cannot be good. Small businesses, by contrast, are not only accountable to their customers but also, to the communities that they live in - BECAUSE they live in them.
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  68. I have to listen to Ms Swift every Monday morning when I take my grandchildren to school. They're not songs that get better the more you listen IMHO. Nonetheless, I agree that she should responsibly use her influence as her conscience leads her to. You have to be amused by the outraged bluster of those who seem to have no problem with the D-list celebs like Kid Rock and Roseanne Barr who congregate to kiss the ring at Mar a Lago.
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  69.  @MrSummerblade  . Possibly, according to Hannanh Arrendt amorality is the true evil. Whichever way you look at it, it's certainly bad for the rest of us.
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  70. I agree BUT it could be and likely will be a lot worse. Just watch the US over the next 4 years.
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  71. The point is that there is no new investment into the economy.
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  72. Yes. But most of them are trolls who work for lobbying companies.
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  73. Great video and some very inspired comments here. The use of analogies like Mary Poppins and Alice in Wonderland are helpful. I like the Wyle E Coyote comparison: We can all defy gravity until we look down and see the canyon yawning beneath us. Hence the collapse of Northern Rock, Bear Stearns etc. It all works as long as we believe it does - until we don't and then it doesn't! Keeping it mysterious and obscure allows those that understand it to hoodwink the rest of us and work what is essentially a system of flowing debt to their advantage. Explaining it in terms we can all understand, nibbles away at their power. Excellent start to the series.
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  74. "Remarkably small quantities of physical armaments available to us in the UK". I think it's the nature of the armaments which is the problem. For example, a Trident submarine is no use whatsoever in the defence of the UK. It is a part of the US's war fighting capability. We seem to have a preponderance of capability for mounting anti-"insurgent" operations in places like Afghanistan or providing Israel with the aerial intelligence to bomb civilians in Gaza. But none of these things have anything to do with defending the islands on which we live - nor even of defending Europe as part of an alliance. What we are really paying for is to be part of a force which tries to control resources elsewhere as an illusory imperial policy which really amounts to being no more than a proxy for the US. And I can't help thinking that we're drawing the wrong lessons from what has been happening in Ukraine. Russia put all its resources into attempting to invade one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe. It was mightily repulsed. It has managed to hold on to a chunk of territory on which it has some political support and which it can easily resupply because it adjacent to its border but by and large, its project to re-absorb Ukraine into a new Russian empire has failed and it's economy and politics have been severely damaged along the way. Even if had achieved military success, it might have got acquiescence in the East, but it would have needed to permanently station troops in Western Ukraine to hold off Banderite resistance. The notion that such a power could then go on to invade the rest of Europe is risible! But what it has made clear is that a strong and motivated conventional force can hold ground against an invader of vastly superior numbers and simply make invasion too costly in blood and treasure to contemplate. That is the direction in which any genuine defence policy should go.
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  75.  @Volkan-z2v  Your argument appears to assume that the people who are at the head of the "company" (as you call it) know what the people in the organisation do and how they use the technology. I've never worked in a large organisation where that was the case - and I've worked in several.
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  76. I'm enjoying this series. Make sure you share them folks!
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  77. I think it's more that they don't LIKE what a pension is. The idea of each succeeding generation funding those who have retired on the understanding that the next generation will fund them is WAY too collectivist for them.
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  78.  @frederickfred2714  Any chance you get that translated into English? I have no idea what you're saying.
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  79. Almost all of that is addressed in the video. RM is pointing out LL it is often abused and used inappropriately. Do you dispute that?
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  80. Starmer's Labour is a carbuncle. Streeting is the pus. I hate making ad hominem statements about anyone but he is so venal that I make an exception.
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  81.  @anuragchakraborty8766  In 1973?
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  82. Again, absolutely on the money. Minsky (not a socialist) said that the notion that capitalism has resulted in rising living standards for all is wrong: The majority does gain from it but only when they literally force the capitalists to hand over their share through political or industrial action. The unfettered grabbing of wealth which Liz Truss and Rachel Reeves (very little difference between them) believe in, results in impoverishment for most.
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  83. Absolutely spot on, Richard. It's leaving everything to the market that causes the problems. The market decides where the jobs will be, which dictates where people will have to live, which dictates where houses will be built. And at every stage, the people making the profits are able to externalise their costs with impunity. Better regulation and management of house building and communal property management will help a great deal, of course and in the short to medium term, your idea of taking more housing into public ownership is a sound one. But in the long term, we've got to start planning our economy so that people can live safely, comfortably and sustainably without foreseeable consequences and costs that get shunted onto others.
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  84.  @perkinscrane  It may well return a coalition tending toward the Centre-Right from time to time. Most of the above measures are extreme right and were opposed by the majority of the population. Thatcherism was extremely unpopular and was only possible because of FPTP.
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  85. The idea of an annual "spill-over" assessment is an excellent idea but first of all we need a major debate about what tax should do - providing money for spending is only part of the story - and how it should be done. There are people who have a vested interest in the anomalies and unfairness and it will be an uphill struggle to make meaningful corrections.
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  86. So well put! Absolutely right. Putting caring at the centre of policy (the opposite of what Tories, Lib-Dems and Labour stand for) would do it. Sadly, while Neoliberalism has reached a cul-de-sac, it is now behaving like a cornered wild animal and might be more dangerous in its death throes than it was in its prime. On that cheerful note, have a kind and happy Christmas.
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  87. Stoking inflation? Yes. That's what progressive taxation is all about. Progressive taxation would control inflation just as well but could also fund social spending, such as on schools, health care, libraries, swimming pools etc. It worked but had one wee drawback: The rich didn't like it. That's why, for more than 4 decades we have had a political economy which is destroying the planet, impeding technological progress and making everyone poorer except for the rich.
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  88. Utter nonsense! Just like previous "mis-selling" by banks and insurance companies this is pure fraud and the perpetrators should be treated as criminals. They should be forced to trace and compensate their victims. It is disgraceful that the onus is on the victim to seek compensation. And none of them should be allowed to continue working in the finance sector or anywhere else where trust is an issue.
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  89. ​ @gwynroberson198 utter nonsense. I doubt if many private sector managers could be as effective with such a starvation of resources. The expensive bit is the outsourcing.
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  90. Absolutely. Such transparency should also extend to lobby groups like the IEA and Taxpayers' Alliance.
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  91.  @Killergoat69  Um...Harold Wilson campaigned to stay in the EU. I remember getting the letter from him urging me to vote to stay in. It was the first time I voted. What on Earth is mass immigration?
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  92. ​ @loc4725  There's no reason why an independent Scotland would be "screwed". Quite the opposite. It definitely IS screwed if it remains in the wilfully failing UK.
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  93. The stock-market as it currently exists is completely unnecessary now. Its functions can be encapsulated in an app. Effectively, the City is a nothing more than a parasitic anachronism - and a damned expensive one, at that.
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  94.  @jim-es8qk  Utter rubbish. The housing stock is rapidly becoming dominated by private landlords with house prices moving out of the reach of ordinary people so those landlords are able to charge exorbitant rents. This leaves working class people with less disposable income. This, in turn, leads to depressed demand and lower wages.
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  95. He's trying to ape McKinley, who introduced tariffs in lieu of taxation but also initiated the US's colonial empire by taking the Philippines and starting the war over Cuba. He's clearly only half understood what he's learned. The vital differences are that the US was the up-and-coming new kid on the block and was dealing with the decaying Spanish Empire, whereas it's now the decaying empire which is unable to compete with the new guys; the tariffs were specifically aimed at certain industries he was attempting to strengthen and not at everything imported from specific countries; that McKinley was a successful businessman with some understanding of economic theory and not a failed property developer who probably got his qualifications by paying someone to take his exams. The result of his ignorance and idiocy will be a severe weakening of the US and possibly its unravelling as a single entity. MADA indeed!
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  96. It's really the other way around. Microeconomics SHOULD be based on macroeconomics. Not considering the externalities is dishonest. When businesses ignore the effects of their activities on the environment or communities, they are effectively passing on costs to others.
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  97. Agreed. But party lists are still better than FPTP. If we went that way, it would also be necessary to oblige the parties to observe internal democracy. For example, it shouldn't be possible for members of bodies like Labour's NEC to award themselves seats. It certainly shouldn't be possible for limited companies to be recognised as political parties.
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  98.  @ankhpom9296  Possibily. I'd agree that some of them are extremely stupid.
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  99. Agreed but the point is that there are people who can see ways out of it. It's just that they're not listened to.
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  100.  @glynnwright1699  No. I'm talking about the 1944 Education Act. I might add that had it not been for the NHS, I wouldn't have been there at all. I despair that my great grandchildren may not have such "privilege".
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  101. A financially illiterate population can be fleeced at will by the finance industry. The finance industry is one of the biggest donors to MPs and political parties. MPs and political parties show no interest at all in educating people about finance. There might be a connection there. Excellent video, Richard.
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  102. I agree about the SNP. There are some genuinely progressive MPs and MSPs but also many who would be quite comfortable in Starmer's Labour or the Lib Dems. But we're not getting a real alternative until we have independence with PR for all elections. So we have to vote SNP for now in order to get rid of them when independence comes!
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  103. Where did you get that figure from? The OBR and IFS report that the top 10% of earners paid 60% of all income tax. But that's the only vaguely progressive tax we have. Most other taxes are regressive, with the burden falling on lower earners.
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  104.  @perkinscrane  The Falklands war happened because Thatcher was hopelessly unpopular and headed for certain defeat. It could easily have been resolved by negotiation but she wanted a diversion. If Thatcher's privatisations were copied so faithfully, you'll have to explain why European state owned companies like EDF have taken over so many of our public utilities. 70% of the UK's private rail providers are owned by state-owned European companies! Both Blair and Brown are neoliberals. The Labour Party is a broad church dominated by the Centre Right and is rapidly become hard right as socialists and social democrats are expelled or leave. Most of my family lived in council housing in the Wilson era, much of it built during that time so I'm a little puzzled at your claim that the Wilson administration curtailed it. Brexit was a scam to enable the aims of the extreme right so that is also a rather strange claim.
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  105.  @xtc2v  Of course not. That's the point!
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  106. Well said. I'm always amused when MPs defend their second jobs and directorships on the basis that it keeps them in touch with the real world. As if mahogany-panelled boardrooms and business lunches were a feature of most people's lives. I think 90K is reasonable - provided they are no allowed to do second jobs. It puts them on a par with many professionals and compensates them for extra hours worked compared to the rest of us and for being away from home for long periods but it does at least mean that they have to be aware of bills and expenses just like everyone else.
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  107. Well said. She hasn't got a plan because she is a doctrinaire Neoliberal. She doesn't think that governments should have a plan for the economy. That should be down to the markets - of which she considers herself to be a servant. The fact that this has been the motivation of every Chancellor since Geoffrey Howe and that it has failed for every single one of them, is beyond her very limited comprehension.
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  108. No. She learned less than nothing. Nothing would be harmless.
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  109.  @LowPlainsDrifter60  We know what it means: It's the replacement for "political correctness gone mad" which eventually became as comedic as it could get as Spitting Image gave it at least one skit on every show. There's always been a personal insult to dish out when you've no arguments. Is anyone here old enough to have been called a "trendy lefty" or a "bleeding heart liberal? No doubt, the Right Wing echo chamber will replace the equally vacuous and meaningless "woke" in due course.
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  110. 3 to 4 minute videos a few times per day suits my schedule. For me, the choice of topics are just right
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  111. It's a no brainer. Investing in HMRC staff will bring in more revenue. So why won't government do it?
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  112.  @2frogland  Then you'd have to explain why countries like France and Germany with much stronger trade unions and far more immigration didn't have that decline and explain why their economies overtook the UK's during the Thatcher years. The UK's current economic underperformance stems from the 2008 crash which was the Thatcher bubble bursting. Though, of course, Brexit has made things much, much worse.
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  113. It's not the name of the party that matters. It's the people behind it; the ones providing the seed money and profiting from the outcome. The Tories were originally the party of the landed whom they defended against the growing power of the industrial bourgeoisie who were championed by the Liberals. In the period between the 1880s and 1920s they gradually took over that mantel of being the champions of the capitalist class which subsumed the landed class through marriage and other means. In effect, they BECAME the UK's liberal party, leaving the party of Lloyd George to fester as the party of the rump middle class while Labour squeezed them the left. The Tories still retained an element of the patrician "one nation" Conservatism of Peel and Disraeli but that was effectively neutered by Thatcher and finally purged out of existence by Johnson. In so doing, he made the party utterly unelectable as its underlying corruption (always there but hidden) and incompetence has become too obvious to hide. So, enter the new party of the capitalists: Starmer's Labour. To make it acceptable to its new donors it had to be purged of everything progressive. After being weakened by Blair, the left of the party has now been completely destroyed by Starmer and it has become the same racket as the one that Stanley Baldwin snatched off the Liberals in the inter-war years. A different name over the door but, for all intents and purposes, the same enterprise with the same business plan: rob and exploit the poor on behalf of the rich. Richard Murphy is right in one way. The Conservative Party is probably dead now. But only in name. Starmer's Labour is every bit as corrupt and rotten and will carry on the tradition for a while before it's either overthrown by democracy or replaced with another placeholder.
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  114.  @kevinfoley8730  Anyone doing an economics degree these days is shepherded away from economics. They're still teaching Samuelson with his utterly discredited nonsense about the virtues of lightly regulated markets!
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  115. It's like one of those street corner cup-and-switch games. And it appears to be done with the same aim in mind - to cheat the punter!
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  116. Investment summit = potential donor summit. The politicians present will also have an eye to raising their profiles for future directorships.
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  117. "Wealth Taxation does seem like a punishment for success." No. It's merely a rebalancing of the distortion in reward created by the market place.
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  118. Banks are NOT "Savings and Loans" institutions.
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  119.  @andyinsuffolk  From one extreme to the other. Ask Chileans what they thought of such neoliberal nonsense.
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  120. You have to distinguish between two strands of the far right. On the one hand you have the comic-book Fascists who like Seig Heiling and bullying Muslim women in the street. They have had very little electoral impact in their own right but their posturing and bullying can intimidate people and prevent proper political discourse. Most importantly, they complement the other strand, the neoliberals. They are just as hostile to democracy but they are smart enough to use it and corrupt it rather than destroy it completely. They have been very good at it too. But, as Richard Murphy correctly points out, we've now entered a very dangerous phase where the violent and potentially violent strand is learning to make use of the system too. I don't think they'll have much electoral impact but if the so-called respectable right (Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems) keep triangulating to head them off, they will achieve a lot of their aims anyway.
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  121. RJM puts his finger on it once again. Corporate law in the UK is laughable and limited liability is little more than a licence to defraud the exchequer, the public, suppliers, shareholders and anyone else that gets in the way. Way past time that it was brought under control.
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  122. You think being in the top 4% of earners isn't? Really?
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  123. When the Right say that they hate "the state", they really mean that they hate democracy. There are plenty of "scholarly" articles published by organisations like the Mises Institute and the Cato Institute which argue that democracy is a barrier to "liberty". And when you come down to actual cases, neoliberal experiments like those in Chile, Iran and Argentina have depended on a brutally powerful state to ensure that those who have beneficially exercised their liberty do not have to fear the reaction to poverty and desperation of those they have exercised it against.
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  124. Labour's decision to raise employers' NI contributions is going to force a lot of small businesses to close. Who benefits from that? Big business. Who is Labour courting as donors? Yes. Big business. It doesn't take long to join the dots.
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  125. ​ @perkinscrane  The whole point of PR is that it makes government more representative. The population of the UK did not want its assets sold off at bargain basement prices, it did not want its schools taken out of democratic control, it didn't want its schools removed from democratic accountability, it didn't want its health system degraded by being made accountable to the market, it wanted to retain social housing, it wanted to retain control of its infrastructure and utilities and didn't want to give the crooks of the financial "industry" the facility to loot the real economy which they got from de-regulation. PR would mean that governments would have included elements which would have been unwilling to allow these disastrous policies to proceed. In European countries which had PR, left and moderate elements were able to avoid or at least mitigate most of the excesses of neoliberalism that have destroyed both our economy and democracy.
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  126.  @adenwellsmith6908  No. I think that enough money should be provided to staff hospitals properly instead of blaming over-worked staff.
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  127. I think that libelling or slandering someone in order to damage others' perception of them can be as hurtful and injurious as physical attack. It should be treated as a crime and prosecuted by the state. The current law means that, on the one hand, rich individuals can evade not only criticism but proper investigation for actual crimes: Think Savile, Maxwell, Archer. On the other hand, if ordinary people are lied about they are deterred from seeking redress by the deep pockets of the likes of the individuals above - as well as the rest of the press, of course. A law of criminal libel/slander would correct this imbalance.
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  128. Both Tories and Labour have been subject to entryism of the sort once advocated by the Trotskyists. The Tories have neoliberals. Labour has the Jewish Labour Movement. Neither have anything to do with the traditions of their respective parties and both have negated what they once stood for.
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  129. The trope that Scotland is a hand-out junkie is standard fayre from the right-wing media and never contradicted by the allegedly not-so-right-wing media. The remedy is simple. Let us handle our own taxation and spending. No? Why not? What are they afraid of? I think they fear Scotland might do it better and show that there are alternatives to the hash they are making of things in Westminster.
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  130. Quite right. But it's workers who produce the value which that money represents.
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  131.  @adenwellsmith6908  The opacity in the NHS comes from the Thatcher government's drive to make it work like a commercial organisation. What we need to do is get rid of the trusts and go back to good old fashioned democratic accountability.
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  132.  @markwelch3564  Spot on. You also have to take into account the money they then put back into the economy with their spending and the contribution they make by filling skill gaps. A proper and honest assessment would reveal that preventing immigration is utter madness.
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  133. You can "gin" up the economy just before elections in all sorts of ways. You can make a lot of tax cuts, increase pensions, create unproductive jobs to get unemployment figures down, change the way unemployment figures are calculated and reported etc etc. Politicians don't do them because they know full well that the electorate will see through them. Same goes for interest rates.
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  134.  @OB17358  He's a Trump supporter. He thinks that Communists and Fascists are the same thing and you're in serious danger of causing a brain haemorrhage with the word "oligarchic". That's 4 syllables and he probably needs a lie-down after using 3.
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  135.  @OB17358  I suspect that they've burned every dictionary they could find.
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  136.  @tlangdon12  I'm not suggesting for a minute that either Labour or the Conservatives would adopt such measures. They're the people who would oppose it!
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  137.  @refsOnReality  As if to prove my point....
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  138.  @billB101  Genuinely good people are always dangerous to those in positions of power. They can't be bought and they can't be intimidated.
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  139. They're getting more and more like the private sector....
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  140. Agree. Competence but also commitment. They should be legally obliged to give up all other employment and business interests and to actually work for their constituents - submitting evidence that they have done so (attendance in the house or a timesheet for constituency work) before they get paid.
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  141. The government should let it go bust then buy all the infrastructure and equipment from the receiver. Let the financiers sing for their money . They knew full well that they were financing fraud. That aside, the points you make here, both domestic and international, have to be addressed - and urgently.
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  142. It's the perfect vehicle for people who believe in Neoliberal dogma. They believe that wealth is created not by labour (their prime delusion is that they "debunked " the labour theory of value) but by "transactions". As private equity companies literally do nothing but transactions, then logically, they must create nothing but wealth. Unfortunately, the institution which once represented the political interests of labour has completely bought into this drivel and is hell-bent on putting it into practice. Brexit has severely damaged the UK as an entity but the ideology that inspired it, Neoliberalism, has nowhere near finished.
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  143.  @zetectic7968  You're absolutely right. I've worked in the IR twice. First of all in the 1970s when I left school. To be trained as an ordinary public facing Tax Officer took 12 months and you had to sit an exam at the end of it. I returned in 2003 to the same grade where training was done in weeks with no exam. It has been trimmed much further since then. The pay-off for the government is that they can announce a lower headcount. But as the average tax-take for each one of those heads is many times the salary it's paid, it makes no sense whatsoever. If little Miss Accounts-At-The-Kitchen-Table is serious about fiscal responsibility, she'll announce a massive increase in HMRC recruitment, along with a serious enhancement of their training. Dinnae hud yer breath!
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  144. Economic illiteracy. New investment doesn't come from savings. It comes from new money created by the Bank of England.
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  145.  @alanrumble7238  Agreed. It is also an insult to England itself. It should have its own government.
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  146.  @AlanRumble-sl8dn  Well, yes. But that's the point. Westminster is seen as England's parliament and therefore legislates for the whole of the UK based on the interests of England. That's why England should have its own parliament. It could be devolved within England as it decides but it should not be making decisions that bind the other nations of the so-called "union". UK wide decisions should be made by a body in which all the nations have equal representation.
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  147. Absolutely spot on! The efficiency of the old Inland Revenue should never have really been a concern. Every Inland Revenue employee from Tax Officer and Collector to District Inspector employed produced many times their salary in tax collected. Computerisation should have been used to boost their effectiveness and make their jobs less tedious. Instead, it was used to close down facilities and reduce an already very efficient and productive payroll in order to create an utterly cosmetic and fake efficiency. As Richard says, the real winners from this were the crooks and tax dodgers who have been able to exploit the weaknesses of an over-centralised, unwieldy and locally insensitive bureaucracy. The losers, of course, are the taxpayers and the HMRC employees who have been reduced to being underpaid and overworked and unable to employ their considerable skills and talents to do a more effective job.
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  148. This is the best and most important video so far. We're at a fork in the road. In one direction, there's reduced inequality. This would be a two-way street: All to benefit from the wealth we create with our labour but also less alienation as we would all be better able to contribute. The alternative is to keep increasing poverty at one end of the scale while allowing the likes of Musk and Bezos to trouser an increasing proportion of the "wealth" created. The ultimate conclusion of this choice would be to deplete the planet's resources until it can no longer sustain us.
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  149.  @nicholaspostlethwaite9554  No. It's those living from extractive capitalism who are over-remunerated. Workers, the people who actually create the wealth, are farcically underpaid.
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  150. The reason for that is that less and less of that cash is going to the NHS. It's being skimmed off by the private sector buddies of the Tories and New Labour. We just need to stop privatising.
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  151.  @suburbanyobbo9412  "Experts" decide who is Fascist? No, pal. Ye cannae hide behind that one!
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  152. Yes. Why can't we have pie In the sky like they used to have in the 1950s when everybody was poor and happy. I've seen a Peter and Jane book so I know it's true.
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  153.  @petermach8635  Funny - cos I remember it as a time of poverty, racism and rising debt. We didn't get our first family holiday until well into the 1960s. Our first refrigerator in 1967, telly in 68. What were your experiences of it, then?
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  154.  @petermach8635  It happened because both political parties were influenced by Keynes and Galbraith in preference to Hayek and Von Mises. Had the "wisdom" of the Mont Pelerin crew been followed, the 50s and 60s would not have very different to the 20s and 30s. It remains the case, that I wouldn't wish the period on my children or grandchildren.
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  155. It's quite simple: There is a spectrum which runs from Anarchists, Trotskyites etc on the far-left through to neoliberals and Fascists on the far right. The vast majority of us are somewhere in between those two. What's so difficult?
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  156. If you are spending then you are not economically inactive. Remember, a pension is earned income.
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  157. You've put your finger on the main reason Corbyn had to be replaced by Starmer. There's not a chance in Hell that this corrupt and degraded Labour government will interfere with this most sacred of the privileges of the ruling class.
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  158.  @Luckiestmanalive-bb1mi  He is actually saying what generations of smart economists (Smith, Marx, JS Mill, Keynes, Galbraith) have been saying for the last 200 years or so. Keynes (the man whose advice to governments led to the fastest and biggest ever rise in living standards) famously said that putting your savings in a jar and burying it in the garden is better for the economy than buying shares or putting it in the bank. The "smart" economists you're talking about are the ones who've graduated since economics departments have been taken over by neoliberals and know less than nothing about economics. They're the ones whose ideas have led to the fastest and deepest fall in living standards in history!
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  159.  @Luckiestmanalive-bb1mi  Nice try, but no coconut. Keynes's policies were successful and led to unprecedented increases in standards of living for working people. Friedman's have been utter failures and generally only possible to administer at gunpoint (Chile, Iran, Russia, Argentina), resulting in unprecedented falls in living standards for working people. So no, there aren't arguments on both sides. One was a success. The other was an outright failure with nightmarish consequences. Period.
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  160.  @Foxtrottangoabc  " But council houses were sold off because the govt had no money to maintain them ." 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. They sold them off because the government forced them to. And it prevented them from spending the proceeds on new ones. The reason was ideological, not economic. The net result has been an increase in private landlords and a reduction in disposable income (which powers the economy)because people are spending all their money on rent (which bleeds the economy).
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  161.  @jeremykille4689  It's the opposite. It is Thatcherism that has proved to be the slippery slope.
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  162.  @jeremykille4689 Not true. The wealthiest European countries also have the highest taxes. The countries declining the most quickly (eg, the UK) are those with the lowest taxes.
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  163.  @jeremykille4689  Look at Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway. They all have higher and, more importantly, more progressive taxes. Rich people aren't fleeing them. They've got the good sense to understand that less inequality means more wealth.
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  164.  @kevinsyd2012  The UK has one of the most regressive tax systems in the world. Work and pensions are taxed at a higher rate than rent and arbitrage which is economically ruinous as well as being unfair. The poorest pay a much higher proportion of their income in tax than the freeloading rich who evade tax by hiding their money offshore or who avoid it with a myriad of dodgy tricks and schemes. In any case, their wealth was created by the working class and a progressive tax system is a fair way of re-distributing it.
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  165. Crypto is a scam: A cruel ponzi scheme which can leave people holding nothing with no recourse to law. It is beloved by libertarians because it undermines democracy.
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  166. PR is even more beneficial at local level. Why do English people have a problem with it?
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  167. He's not a "master" of anything. He's an awful businessman who was saved from ruin by a TV company.
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  168. I've recently noticed the trolls here suggesting that you are on the far left, Richard. Two things to notice: Firstly, he vast majority of such comments are posted in office hours. Secondly, the wording is very similar - suggesting one person with sock puppet IDs pretending to be several. Tufton Street houses the nastiest examples of the Far Right. Indeed, it's very existence is part of a project to make the lack of humanity and decency inherent in classic liberalism normal. You should consider it a badge of honour to be targeted by them. They clearly think you're a danger.
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  169. They didn't cause inflation. "As we have already seen" my eye!
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  170. THis is pure spam
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  171. Yes. All the law you can afford to buy.
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  172.  @clivewilliams3661  Gordon Brown removed democratically accountable control of the Bank of England because he doesn't like democracy. Period. The crash in 2008 was entirely due to the action (or rather lack of it) on the part of central banks (including BoE) who trusted the market to correct itself.
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  173.  @clivewilliams3661  Brown's not the only one who hates democracy, I see.
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  174.  @clivewilliams3661  And it's been Sooo stable under the bankers....
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  175. England loses out from the so-called union too. It deserves to be able to proudly embrace its own culture and traditions and interests without having to be constantly reminded that they often conflict with those of the rest of us. In fact, I often wonder if advocating English independence is the key to a mutually beneficial future for all the UK countries.
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  176. The shops were empty of consumer goods. But no one was hungry or homeless.
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  177.  @andyinsuffolk  Um indeed. The Chileans elected a Communist government and the US backed a coup against it and imposed a constitution which imposed "freedom" from government. It was locked in by a voting system designed to make it impossible to reverse. It was so unpopular that even the impossible conditions it imposed were overcome and it was finally returned to democracy recently.
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  178. RMT and ASLEF? Why? Rail workers' pay has fallen behind just like everyone else.
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  179. eh?
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  180.  @knobfieldfox  Yes. That's the point entirely. Currently, one of the two parties captures government which then imposes the will of whatever faction or faction has in turn captured it. Under PR, the two factions of the parties would form into parties in their own right and get representation according to the wishes of the population. This would mostly mean coalition government in which a broad spectrum of views would be represented. Thatcherism would be dead.
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  181.  @perkinscrane  " The UK’s demographics since the 1950s have under FPTP favoured Labour." Um no. A quick look at the electoral results since 1950 will show you the opposite. Your prognosis assumes that the same parties would fight elections under PR as under FPTP. This would not be the case. The Labour Party came into existence precisely because its constituent parts - Marxists, Fabians, Co-op Movement, trades unionists, Syndicalists etc could not achieve the critical mass to break through in FPTP. It's a party which has always been dominated by its right wing and the Left components would be able to break off and fight elections in their own right under PR. The Tory Party is not homogenous either. It has always been a mix of the Disraeli one-nation tendency and right-wing liberals. In recent years it has suffered increased entryism from extreme right liberals - mostly encapsulated in the ERG. Again, PR would afford them the facility to fight elections in their own right. I have not suggested that PR would be a panacea. The Left would certainly not dominate as I would like. But it would be represented. Likewise the Right. But most importantly, the Right-wing extremism which has wrecked the UK economy, separated it from Europe and brought it to the brink of dissolution (now inevitable) would not be able to continue to prevail.
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  182.  @gerhard7323  I'd put it differently. The majority didn't want a referendum so with a more democratic and representative PR system, we wouldn't have had one and the UK economy wouldn't be imploding.
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  183.  @gerhard7323  Yes. The UK economy has been destroyed by Brexit and Brexit happened because a very small number of voters were able to manipulate FPTP. This wouldn't have happened in EU countries because PR means government more closely represents the will of the people.
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  184.  @darkarts59  Could well be but I suspect the proportion of ordinary people's savings that goes to start-ups is too small to be even measured let alone be significant.
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  185.  @adenwellsmith6908  I'm emphatically NOT blaming the staff. I'm blaming underfunding - along with the marketisation introduced by Kenneth Clark, of course. The creation of the trusts and "internal competition" has led to a top heavy system stuffed with accountants and administrative managers with financial targets taking precedence over medical care.
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  186. Why remove trade union funding? What's wrong with democratic institutions?
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  187. Spot on, Richard. There was not only the advantage of being able to spot the rogues but also accountability for staff. I worked in a PAYE tax district in the 1970s. We each had an allocation of taxpayers - from a few hundred to several thousand depending on complexity. We established relationships with taxpayers and employers and, believe it or not, this makes even something as banal as taxation less unpleasant and impersonal. And everything was much more manageable: Everyone got a tax return when they started work and then at least once 6 years after that. If their affairs were complex they would get an annual return. The point being to avoid build-ups of underpayment or overpayment. The only hitch was the system of files and control cards which had to be transferred between offices when there was a change of employment. Sometimes, if someone had several jobs over a period, it could take weeks to get all the informaiton together and make repayments or allocate tax codes. But all that information is now on computer and it can be transferred in literally minutes. Computerisation could have been used to make the system more effective. Instead, it was used to make spurious staff "efficiencies" so that ministers could present a reduced payroll as evidence of their success. As you point out, this often meant that the amount of saving was actually less than the tax lost through the very real inefficiencies which resulted.
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  188. The measures imposed by Nixon/Thatcher/Reagan etc were not what tamed the inflation of the 1970s - which was then, as now, caused by external issues. It was going to come down anyway - because it does! The other similarity to that period, of course, is that the inflation was falsely blamed on wage rises rather than the other way around. The interest rate policy was (and is) simply a scam to aid the rich.
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  189. Aristotle was a slave-owning aristocrat.
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  190.  @bregawn  Yes. You're right about that. But it is a means of accounting for it - taking the appropriate amount out of circulation to prevent inflation - and for re-distribution.
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  191.  @robertovary9736  What does that mean?
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  192.  @honkytears  You haven't yet seen the impact of tariffs and it will be interesting to see how you grow food without immigrants. One thing you've got right though is using the word "reign". He does think he's a monarch and it's doubtful that you'll ever have another election that is free and fair in any meaningful sense.
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  193. You'll find that most of the trolls tend to keep working hours and simply shill out Tufton Street propaganda. Not difficult to join up the pieces!
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  194.  @edwardmclaughlin7935  Indeed. A senior moment, perhaps. Thank you for pointing that out.
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  195.  @fylbike  My apologies!
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  196.  @grolfe3210  On the contrary. The state is very good at running things. It was the total failure of the private sector to run procurement in the Crimean War which led to the establishment of the UK's Civil Service - which supercharged the running of the British Empire and, in due course, the welfare state. It was the state which resued the railways from chaos and inefficiency - which has since been returned by privatisation, gave us clean water and effective sewage disposal (ditto), standardised electricity and gas production, gave us a universal postal service, telephone coverage, universal schooling and so on. Public Transport was much better when it was municipally run. The NHS, before it was "reformed" by Kenneth Clark and his successors was one of the world's most efficient and effective health care providers. Compare it with the top heavy US system. Private sector efficiency is largely myth based on ideology.
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  197. An excellent explanation marred by the careless mistake about UDI - even though it doesn't really impact on the argument.
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  198. Yeah! Cos' who needs schools, hospitals, roads, pensions, emergency services, defence etc? Such a waste!
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  199. I'd go for that. It's clear to anyone that thinks that migrants a net benefit. The figure to prove it to the gammon would be welcome.
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  200. Of course it is. The far left has every right to worry.
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  201.  @stuartd9741  But that's a political position in itself.
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  202.  @BOZ_11  How old are you? Pre-election giveaways have been a thing since universal suffrage! And, in most cases, electorates see through them.
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  203. You're generally right here but I think you might be remembering past Labour governments through rose-tinted spectacles, Richard. By and large, Labour has been marginally more progressive than the Tories but it has always set out to preserve rather than replace capitalism. When major economic policy decisions had to be made, it came down on the Right rather than Left - consider, for example, Healey's (he was considered to be on the Left at the time) imposition of austerity in the 1970s. In terms of foreign and colonial policy, it was often more aggressive and bellicose than the Tories and certainly more slavishly compliant with US aims and wishes. But there was some difference. This was largely because there were good people in the upper levels who genuinely wished to change society for the better and they were able to achieve some wins. That started to wear thin under Kinnock and then Blair but even then there were still one or two principled gadflies buzzing around and frustrating the attempts to Thatcherise the party. Sadly, Starmer has either corrupted or expelled the few remaining Social Democrats so there is little or no resistance to the Neoliberal direction in which the Labour Party is now moving. You are quite right to say that it is now almost indistinguishable from the Tories.
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  204.  @helenheenan3447  Indeed. But I think the right have made a strategic blunder - and are continuing to do so. If they had supported JC getting into No 10 and then undermined him and forced him out, they could have done considerable long-term reputational damage to the very idea of left politics. Corbyn could have been blamed for everything and the press and media would have had a field day presenting the "evidence" and ensuring that such a thing could never happen again. As things have turned out, they've shot their bolt on the Antisemitism scam and they've created the nucleus of a new party and provided it with able politicians and experienced and committed activists. They achieved a massive majority purely because of the arithmetic of FPTP and that very same arithmetic could wipe them out as thoroughly as it did the Tories and leave room for a genuinely progressive party to fill the vacuum.
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  205.  @CuriousCrow-mp4cx  Word salad. You're either for democracy or agin it.
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  206.  @albertinsinger7443  Indeed. That's what I said.
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  207. Keynes put it best: "If we can do it, we can afford it". The problem is that people intuitively cling to the "tax and spend" narrative that neoliberal hucksters sell. But here's the bottom line: The reason Starmer and Reeves won't release the potential of the economy is not because they can't. It's because they don't want to. Or rather their new corporate backers don't want them to. And if they don't do as they're told, the loadsamoney jobs they've been promised for their retirements won't happen.
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  208.  @cleanhit777  But we don't have to repay it. And we're paying the interest to ourselves.
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  209. Commercial spam
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  210.  @simonjohn9525  Agreed - but more than that. The three-party system only exists because broad coalitions are needed to get through the FPTP system. Both Labour and Conservatives would break down into their various factions. This would result in representation which would more fairly reflect the views of the population and with it would come fluid coalitions and alliances. The downside, of course, is that far-right parties like Reform and worse would also get some representation. But as such parties already exert a dangerous right-wing drag on the Tories in FPTP, that would probably be the lesser evil.
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  211.  @WarrenPeaceOG  Private banks are licensed to issue new money by the Bank of England. It is the BoE which creates it.
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  212.  @Redf322  You think think that there might be bright people in Tufton Street? Why would they be there?
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  213. Dangerous nonsense. Pubs and cafes are community hubs. They have a social function way beyond their commercial presence.
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  214. Why are we "meant" to live in a market economy? I don't remember that referendum.
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  215.  @JoinTheTemple  The track record of fundamentalist market-based economies is far worse. Socialists have been rightly criticised for not lifting backward economies out of poverty but neoliberals have plunged advanced economies into poverty where there was little or none before. Mixed economies with proper democratic accountability and effective regulation have been, by far, the most successful.
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  216. I remember back in 2008, many commentators were saying that Neoliberalism had lost the argument. They seemed to be blissfully unaware that it had never won any arguments. It came to dominate because rich people like the Kochs, Mellons, etc financed university economics departments that taught it. They continued to finance it, even when its weak and incoherent dogma was utterly and completely destroyed by reality and it has limped on regardless. I wonder if 2024 will have turned out to have been the year in which it had its final throes in the UK as both Tories and Labour stubbornly hung on to its ridiculous dictates with the inevitable results becoming obvious to even the most stubbornly economicly illiterate amongst us.
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  217. How on Earth do you come to that silly conclusion? We've had Thatcherite government non-stop since 1979 and farmers are the most coddled part of the economy.
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  218. AI is potentially a good thing but.... The ruling classes realised quite some time ago that educating the masses for the workplace has the unfortunate side effect of educating them ABOUT the workplace. The more they understood what was going on, the more they realised that they could make a more positive contribution to the enterprise than just their raw muscle or brain power and, more importantly, they realised that they were entitled to a more equitable share of the fruits of their labour. That's why university grants were abolished and that's why, when the fall in the birth rate offered the opportunity for smaller classes in secondary education, government opted for shrinking the sector instead. Alongside this, advances in technology also offered the opportunity for a massively dumbed down entertainment sector for a dumbed down population: Junk food and Strictly being the modern equivalent of bread and circuses. Moving to the subject at hand, an educated population would not only realise the potential of AI to improve the lives of all and enhance democracy but also be aware of how dangerous it becomes if it is entirely controlled by an elite while the rest of loll on our sofas stupefied by "reality" TV and soaps and stuffing ourselves with awful snacks.
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  219. You mean the workers and consumers? Yes, it would. Taxing the rich would be a completely different matter.
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  220. Rubbish. Any secrecy is to protect the parasites in the City of London.
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  221. Well they're certainly been done over. But by the spivs in the City. Nothing whatsoever to do with redistribution - which has gone into reverse over the last 50 years anyway!
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  222. ​ @petermach8635  Something which wouldn't have happened without Keynes and Galbraith Influencing both political parties
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  223. Be assured that you would learn nothing useful on a modern economics course in most UK or US universities. Most of them are just regurgitations of neoliberal dogma.
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  224.  @arazchelsea7  Spot on. My comment saying pretty much the same thing was deleted for some reason or other.
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  225.  @stevemitchell1454  Agreed, but there's also an element of the Tory Party which could also be considered well to the right of mainstream opinion. The comical goose stepping Nazis, with their hilarious right arm salute are only part of the picture. People like Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg are also Far Right.
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  226.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  Um no. The inches are the measurements, not the wood.
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  227.  @peterbennet7145  In Chile, Pinochet's "reforms" resulted in massive unemployment, lower wages and everyone losing their pensions - the wealthy prospered though. In Iran, such nonsense has resulted in massive levels of poverty. Argentina is undergoing market fundamentalist reforms right night now. Have you checked how that's going? Marxist governments are rightly criticised for not dealing with poverty quickly enough. Free Market dogma, on the other hand, has always created poverty where there was none before. I'm not a Keynsian by any means but only a total ignoramus would call Keynes "delusional". The reforms put into place by Keynes and Galbraith resulted in the biggest and fastest rise in living standards for ordinary people in history. The dogma of Von Mises, Hayek and Friedman has result in the biggest and fastest fall in living standards.
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  228.  @physiocrat7143  Thou shalt kill is about people, not foetuses. Killing people doesn't bother the Christian Right one tiny bit - especially if the victim is not white and fine if they are thousands of miles away. By the way, most churches in the US only took up the cudgels against abortion relatively recently. In 1968, a conference of all the major protestant churches made a statement: “Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful we are not agreed but about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances we are in accord.” The Southern Baptists, one of the biggest Chistian organisations in the US actually came out in favour of full legalisation of it in 1974. So your claim that Bishop Budde is opposed to some long-standing Christian tradition is simply untrue. An interesting aside is that the first abortion laws in the US were enacted in slave states to protect "property" from being damaged by mothers unwilling to bring a child into the world to become a slave.
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  229. Well said. I have to say that, for the first time in my life, I don't care whether Labour or Tories win. They really have become identical now and it's time to reject both.
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  230. Spot on, Richard. 40 years ago we controlled inflation with progressive taxation which benefited everyone. Now we control it with interest which benefits only the rich. In effect, we are paying tax to them so that they get richer instead of democratically accountable government which would use it for our benefit. Time for a serious u-turn, I think!
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  231. High time someone said this. The way to get health costs under control is to make people healthier and safer. Curtailing sugar consumption is a big part of that but also alcohol and tobacco. Educatio is the key to that. In addition, a number of measures could be taken to make older and disabled people safer in and around their homes. Finally, let's get kids into healthy habits like walking, cycling and playing sports and taking those habits into adulthood with more swimming pools and sports facilities. All will save money in the long run. One last thing to save the NHS - let's all pray for Streeting to lose his seat to an independent or Green candidate.
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  232.  @denisripley8699  You have evidence that Syrians are more likely to claim benefits than those born in the UK? I live in a high unemployment area and I don't know or know of a single immigrant or successful refugee who lives on benefits.
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  233. What nonsense! The part once played by the democratically accountable state has been replaced by increments since the late 1970s. The railways, water, telecoms, buses, gas, electricity etc are all run by unaccountable corporations now. What's more, within state institutions (like the NHS) , we have out-sourcing which increases the costs and waters down the service.
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  234. Yes. But banks shouldn't be run as businesses anyway. They are administrative facilities which we all need and should not be subject to market forces or the profit motive.
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  235. Quite right. We also need to limit Corporations' ability to fight quasi-political single-issue campaigns. It is outrageous that they can get tax relief for these.
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  236. Bankers' fingerprints all over the place. We should have listened when Rachel Reeves told us that was going to happen!
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  237. Yes. So far as there is any coherent belief amongst these grifters, it is that government as we know it should be destroyed and power should be in the hands of the super-rich. For them, the state should only be there to maintain law and order and allow the rich to keep their loot. It's the classic liberty versus democracy struggle. I doubt if you'll ever find that in one of their manifestos, though.
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  238. I can't help thinking that rags like the Daily Mail and certainly establishment media concerns like the BBC keep negative dossiers on all politicians ready for the day when it becomes necessary to destroy or undermine them for whatever reason. All this stuff will have been sitting somewhere gathering dust for some time. I wonder why it's being leaked now. It's certainly not because she's turned out to be a left winger and a threat to the status quo. Could it be because Starmer or those who work his strings are beginning to realise that her incompetence and economic illiteracy are becoming a liability? That way, she can be pressured into resigning in such a way that looks bad for her rather than those who put her there.
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  239. Wisdom indeed. The best case for PR I've heard.
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  240.  @adenwellsmith6908 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 is that how Tufton Street is spinning FPTP now?
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  241. Spot on. New systems and technology could have been used to allow what were then the Inland Revenue, HM Customs, the Dept of Health and Social Security and Dept of Employment to work more effectively - In other words, they could have facilitated able and motivated people to improve the job they were already doing well. They could have improved outcomes. Instead, the systems were deployed in such a way as to achieve the same outcomes but with less people. What's more they also removed much of the skill and motivation. When I joined the Inland Revenue in 1975, it took 12 months to train a Tax Officer. At the end of the training he or she could be deployed without supervision in several different kinds of tax and understood the interaction between all of them. What's more, as you say, they knew their local area, they knew who needed help and they knew the dodgy traders, employers and accountants. It wasn't the best job in the world but I and most of my colleagues took some pride in doing it well. The Tax Officer's modern-day equivalent is trained in a matter of days, works from a script and has little or no idea what the on-screen selections they make mean. More to your point, they don't have a hope in Hades of spotting the organised fraudsters that have evolved to boiler-room scale as a result.
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  242. Starmer, along with many in his cabinet, is a Neoliberal bordering on Libertarian. These people have twisted the Labour Party around to serve the interests of big corporations and banks - all of which lobby against regulation which protects us but dents their profits. That also explains their turnaround on Brexit, by the way.
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  243. Couldn't agree more with your take on retirement. It is indeed liberating and you are wise not to fall into the trap of seeing it as the conclusion to life. It is an enhanced continuation with benefits. I'll look forward to your new YouTube channel but please don't stop doing this one. I wish you the best for 2025.
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  244. ​ @Historia.Magistra.Vitae.  No. Lack of humanity and decency is inherent in it. It's the epitome of corruption and social injustice. That's why the rich like it.
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  245. Most of it is hoarded and anyway, the production of luxury goods is a tiny part of the economy.
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  246.  @alecdurbaville6355  Yes. Also known as "John".
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  247. Commercial spam
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  248. There has been a coup. It occurred when the Supreme Court gave him immunity for everything he does in the act of government. That single decision made the US Constitution 100% dependent on the goodwill and competence of the President - and guess what, SCOTUS! Your reference to Knut is a good one. Unfortunately, this time all the sensible advisers were replaced with either yes men or complete loons and it's both the King AND his advisers who think the monarchs are omnipotent.
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  249. He'll be even more unloved as his policies start to unfold, the NHS gets sold off to private providers and inequality increases. The people who think they voted for change are quickly going to find out that it's business as usual. I expect the bankers and billionaire donors will remain quite fond of him , though.
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  250. Any chance you could use some punctuation. I'm sure you have something interesting to say but, with no demarcation between one sentence and another, it's impossible to work out what it is.
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  251.  @MrMarinus18  Hmm. You seem to have misunderstood what I said. I completely agree with you about deregulation.
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  252.  @yaneznayoui1597  Most didn't vote for the Fascist. Most either voted for the corporate democrat bankers' stooge or didn't vote at all. Some of those who didn't vote would have been unable to bring themselves to vote for someone who has said that she will continue to support a genocide. Personally, I would have held my nose and voted for her as the (slightly) lesser of the two evils. But I'm sure as hell not going to condemn anyone for voting (or not voting) according to their conscience
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  253.  @tjwcoast  "What the US will not do is continue business as usual." The US seems to think it can call all the shots. That's no longer the case. It's in serious decline and can no longer bully others in the way it's been accustomed to. Trump's started a trade war that he's going to lose badly. Canada will learn the lesson that it cannot rely on its southern neighbour and will strengthen its trade links with others.
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  254. Yes. If we're not careful, we end up descending into tribalism (there's another one!) . We definitely see that in Scotland where SNP and Labour politicians, both broadly in agreement about most practical things, fight over political turf. The "ism" isn't important. The point is to get things done and to do it in a way, which is fair and sustainable.
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  255.  @simonjohn9525  All valid points. STV would be my preferred option but anything but FPTP or ATV
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  256.  @fanfeck2844  I agree. They are completely clueless. Most mainstream financial journalists still subscribe to the neoliberal nonsense which, incredibly, is still taught in universities.
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  257.  @marksesum  A bit of a waste of sock-puppet user. Surely you could have said something more profound or convincing than that
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  258. There actually two measures of extremism/moderation. The one which seems to be adopted (without question) by most mainstream journalists makes anyone an extremist who broadly agrees with what the UK Labour Party once stood for (public control of strategic industry and utilities, a strong NHS uncompromised by private companies, democratically accountable schooling, public provision of housing and a strong welfare state). Problem is that most people are supportive of most of those things. So perhaps we should consider to be extremists of the Right all those who oppose them? That would be all Tories, most Social Democrats and (amazingly) the leadership of today's Labour Party.
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  259. Yes. It's frightening. This government has a cultish devotion to the principles of neoliberalism. The NHS doesn't comply with them. It is probably one of the most efficient institutions of its size in the world but because it isn't based on the invisible hand of self-interest it must, to them, be deficient.
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  260. Quite right. The US is now in alliance with Europe's main enemy. So it has become an enemy. But it is an enemy which has a collection of air bases on our soil through which it can easily invade, privileged access to our intelligence systems and control over many of our armament systems. So that's what "special relationship" means!
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  261. I agree almost everything you are saying but I'm afraid I can't make the link with book-keeping. Surely, the book-keeper tends to be blinded to the non-financial consequences of expenditure by the need to make the corresponding counter entry in financial terms and this is the difference between book-keeping.accountancy and economics. The accountant knows how to track already existing wealth (actually meaning money) while the economist is concerned with the creation of it and it may not necessarily be money at all.
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  262. Boom and bust is a feature of "free" market capitalism generally but this is accentuated in the finance capitalism we currently have because many of the financial "products" which drive up the stock market are Ponzi style scams which will inevitably fold as soon as it becomes clear that they have no substance: They rise in price because people are buying them and people are buying them because they are rising in price. Sooner or later, someone looks down and sees that there is nothing underneath them and then gravity takes over.
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  263. Issuing currency is one of the most important preserves of the state. Provided the state is democratically accountable and those charged with managing currency are competent, this is a recipe for stability and popular accountability. Libertarians hate this because they hate democracy. They consider it to be a tyranny imposed on the individual. That is why they like Bitcoin: It undermines government and gives control to those who hold most of the currency. If that's not a good reason to oppose it, I don't know what is.
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  264. Starmer's not just wrong in the sense of being mistaken. He is lying. He genuinely believes in privatisation. He is a Neoliberal who believes in greed and self-interest as a force for good. The claims about costs are an excuse to leave these utilities in private hands - or potential donors, as I'm sure he sees them.
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  265. From a practical point of view, RM is quite right. Let's make sure we're getting everything we can from the sources we've got first. That means taxing dividends, capital gains and property rents properly but also looking for international cooperation to close down tax havens and money laundering.
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  266. "depoliticising it and involving professionals". That's a delusion. Most modern "economists" are more committed to Neoliberalism than they are to economics. They embrace the TINA doctrine of Thatcher and the utterly discredited academics that advised her and all Chancellors have gone along with it - including Labour ones.
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  267. @ Yeah! He's got a great record on promises. Remember "We're going to build a wall and Mexico's going to pay"? How'd that one go? He doesn't give a flying F@@@ what he promises. He's promised a lot of nonsense he doesn't understand. For example, Canada and Mexico don't pay tariffs, ordinary Americans do. The tariff goes on the price YOU pay for the goods. The supplying country doesn't pay anything. So he's keeping a promise to make ordinary Americans poorer - and you're impressed!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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  268.  @joaniesimpson2016  At that point, I'm pretty sure the government of Scotland will be quite happy to allow it.
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  269.  @joaniesimpson2016  Indeed!
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  270. He's a professor of accounting with an excellent track record of advising government. He's advocating the very opposite of "arithmetic tricks" - or Neoliberalism, as we have come to know it.
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  271.  @aporiac1960  Way to misquote! I said " an excellent track record of advising government. " In other words giving advice on successful policies. I appreciate that this must be strange concept for Neoliberals - who have never given successful policy advice.
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  272. ​ @aporiac1960  If only it could be warded off just by voicing its name! Unfortunately, it has been the guiding ideology of all governments of the UK for the last 4 decades and is the cause of the woeful economic and political trajectory of the UK over that period. I often point that out. I'd be fascinated to find out how you know that. The term was actually coined by the far-right Mont Pelerin Society back in the 1950s but its adherents have tended to disown it as it has become increasingly associated with economic decline and oppressive regimes like Khameini's Iran or Pinochet's Chile. As for what you believe, that's entirely up to you. Believe what you want.
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  273.  @Arbitrary-z6j  Just like the amount of time you've been on YouTube makes a great deal of sense. That's VERY unprofessional sockpuppet trolling! Most of the Tufton Street mob are much better at hiding it.
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  274. "We're obsessed with inflation because it destroys incomes and savings. " Indeed. It discourages using money as a store of value and thereby NOT using it to facilitate the purchase and therefore production of goods. A little inflation is therefore a good thing.
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  275.  @foxmoongaze  Nonsense. They generally exceed the rate of inflation. They are a consequence of vendors attempting to gouge more money out of the consumer.
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  276.  @foxmoongaze  "Your comment just proves how little you understand about inflation". And the tone of your comment just shows that you are a patronising troll. IEA, perhaps? The richest 1% didn't get rich by hard work and ingenuity. Those who didn't inherit it got rich by robbing the rest of us - either by underpaying wages or overcharging prices.
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  277. To some extent, yes. Remember that the original Scottish nationalists came mostly from the Tory Party - which had far more Nazi sympathisers. In fact, it still does.
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  278. When Vic Reeves said "88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot", he must have known more than he was letting on.
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  279. Yes. That's the anti-democracy case. Good luck with that one, Nazi.
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  280. There's nothing "authoritarian" about democracy. "Freedom" is the buzzword libertarians like to use to attempt to legitimise the dominance of the rich.
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  281. Fear perhaps. But I also think that they are star-struck. Because they have swallowed the Neoliberal myth cultl, they believe that the wealthy created their wealth rather than extract it. Incredible though it might be to any rational person, they believe that the more these parasites extract from the economy, the better off we'll all be.
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  282.  @andyinsuffolk  Have you asked the ones who are hungry and homeless?
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  283.  @glynnwright1699  The "lavish" (🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣) spending is the result of the poverty, not the other way around. It was the policies of the Unionist parties which brought that about.
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  284.  @bernieburrows3731  It's true to say that the SNP have accepted too many of the Unionist parties' Neoliberal policies. But they're nowhere near as far to the right as Starmer's Labour. "Tartan Tory" may have had some resonance once but the SNP has been to the left of Labour for at least 50 years.
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  285. @glynnwright1699  sigh! The economy is reserved to Westminster. You can't blame the Scottish Government or the council for that!
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  286.  @glynnwright1699  Of course it would be higher than Guildford! I'm not talking about central government spending. I'm talking about economic policy. That's what's ruined Dundee - along with similar cities all around the UK. The problem is being part of an incompetently run country.
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  287. @glynnwright1699  That's not control of economic policy.
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  288.  @Number9s  It's less than Corbyn got,FFS! And 34% is NOT a mandate!
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  289. He's bought and paid for. Did anyone notice that Labour got less votes this time than in 2019, BTW? It won despite him, not because of him.
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  290. Voting records for parties are not a good indicator - especially in a FPTP system where people often vote tactically or (sadly) consider their vote to be a waste of time in safe seats. It's far more instructive to look at attitudes to specific issues such as public ownership of strategic industries and utilities such as rail and water or to public services like the NHS. When you do that, you find that the proportion with "left" leaning views is far higher than 57%.
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  291.  @williammcintyre-v6d  That still doesn't equate to the OBR and IFS figures, which you can easily google. It also doesn't take account of the fact that they are able to get part of their income as gains and hide money in trusts and overseas.
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  292. It's unusual for someone with an accountancy background to understand the meaning of wealth in the economics sense rather than in financial terms. This is the difference between neoliberalism and real economics too.
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  293.  @adenwellsmith6908  I didn't know I got a pension for being a socialist. Where do I apply?
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  294.  @adenwellsmith6908  You're talking about the myth of the state pension debt? Why didn't you say so? The state pension was introduced by David Lloyd George following the model developed by the government of Otto Von Bismark in Prussia. Anyone describing either of these two jokers as socialists either knows nothing about them or nothing about socialism. The system was introduced to alleviate age-related poverty, which economists of the time (qualified people, unlike the idiots who have the gall to call themselves economists now) had begun to realise was a drag on the economy. It was to be partly funded by general taxation and partly by a "stamp" to be paid out of wages. It has worked perfectly well since but offends the sensibilities of the glorified book-keepers (aka as neoliberals) who claim to be economists these days. The last time I saw this so-called "debt" mentioned it was 1.2 trillion pounds but that's academic because it's pure baloney anyway. Richard Murphy isn't a "government account", by the way.
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  295.  @adenwellsmith6908  There is no "debt". The state pension system is working as it was intended to.
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  296.  @gerhard7323  That's right. They're democracies. No one is asking for a referendum so no one is forcing one upon them.
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  297.  @adenwellsmith6908  you've described something completely irrelevant. What's more, the subject you've dragged into the discussion is not even pertinent to it. Just to remind you, the matter at hand is proportional representation. If you have any more to say about that, I'll engage firther.
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  298.  @adenwellsmith6908  Apart form the fact that you're talking complete bollocks, the matter has nothing to do with the discussion at hand which is proportional representation.
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  299.  @salopian4037  Tufton Street.
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  300.  @salopian4037  I think the "we" would be Tufton Street. And it's certainly never been "chosen".
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  301. We're not going to get this from Starmer. In fact, no Labour Leader would be able to deliver this even if they wanted to. The vast majority of decent Labour MPs have either left the party or been expelled on spurious "antisemitism" charges. it's left a cabal of seat-warming detritus whose only concern is their future seat in the House of Lords or consultancies and directorships from companies that they ingratiate while in office. The UK needs a radical progressive party with imaginative leaders who will set out to provide the solutions Richard is advocating here. But I don't think that's going to happen until we get a shock like a Reform victory or, more optimistically, Scottish independence or Irish unification.
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  302.  @ScruffyTubbles  McDonald would be working under the same handicap as Corbyn: A parliamentary party full of self-seeking time servers. The last thing they want is Labour policies which sour their chances of jumping to lucrative directorships and consultancies when the electorate boot them out. The Labour Party has become rotten to the core and the only remedy is a new progressive party.
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  303.  @o2johnnybravo  And what has that got to do with the subject of this video?
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  304.  @StudentDad-mc3pu  Just said what? Where? Did you get confused swapping IDs?
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  305. You're paying rent on the money you borrowed. It's economic rent which means that there's no goods to show for it. Pure inflation.
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  306. Disillusion with Labour is inevitable and not a bad thing, in my view. What's worrying me is that their perfidy is going to corrupt the very idea of democracy. This happened in the Blair years, of course, but the danger is that a generation is growing up which has never seen anything from government but corruption and callous indifference to social justice. Politics then becomes an arena where the VERY worst of political adventurers flourish. I think Farage has sensed that too. That's why he's abandoned the Orange One and is setting himself up ready to take advantage of the coming chaos.
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  307. I had never considered this. Thank you for bringing it up.
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  308. It hasn't even reached the 19th century and it's not just the HoC. The whole notion of monarch, lords and commons is an outrageous affront to the very idea of democracy. It is the people who should be sovereign, not these relics of tyranny and oppression.
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  309. This is part of what she meant by the "fingerprints" of the bankers all over her plans. It's Blairism on steroids. But you've got the wrong "F" word, Richard. It's not "folly", it's fraud.
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  310. Trump/Musk is going to be the main story for 2025. There's a chilling parallel between the Musk/MAGA "civil war" and the conflict between the two wings of the Nazi Party. Hitler needed the middle class and war veterans to give himself muscle on the streets through the SA and, of course, a mass voter base. Once he had gained power, he had no further use for them and most of his populist promises evaporated and the aristocratic and better educated SS took over from the crude thuggery of the SA. Although there are very different policy matters involved, we can see the same class dichotomy going on with Trump and Musk's power grab. The MAGA nitwits who gave him his victory are already seeing the expectation dashed. Expect groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to become quasi-official paramilitary militias in the short term. They'll be used to quell protests by both the Left and by disappointed Maga cucks. But they'll be replaced in due course by a more disciplined force on message with Musk. It will certainly be "brutal and unacceptable" by any civilised criteria. The only silver lining I can see is that it will weaken US world dominance.
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  311. All they do is take investment from one place and put it in another.
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  312.  @3d1e00  It not only makes sense, it can be ascertained empirically. Wherever "free" ports spring up, nearby communities decline.
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  313.  @3d1e00  We aren't OK with leadership behaving incompetently. The problem is that there are powerful interests who want them to be incompetent because that gives them the the freedom to exploit and despoil. That's why both Tories and Labour have the most incompetent and economically illiterate leaderships ever and there is no real choice. All three main pan-UK parties are utterly sold on economic policies which have been impoverishing the country since Thatcher came to power in 1979. Thankfully, there are some emerging alternatives and some commentators who have the knowledge and ability to talk them up - Like Richard Murphy.
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  314. As usual, you're absolutely spot on with the analysis but I wish I had your optimism. I think that Starmer is likely to keep backing Reeves until he's forced to go himself and who would replace them? Almost everyone with competence and integrity has already been pushed out of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the majority of Labour MPs wouldn't support a genuinely progressive leadership anyway. That was the case when Corbyn was in charge but it is even more so now.
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  315.  @user-xu5vl5th9n  And people who think like you have probably never been abused then silenced by Savile. I said nothing about morality and the example of "affairs" is too ridiculous to answer.
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  316.  @user-xu5vl5th9n  No. It wasn't libel laws per se which protected him. It was the fact that he had deep enough pockets to finance a case and the prospective defendants would have been financially unable to fight. If libel was a criminal offence, Savile would have had to go to the police to report the libel and it would have been up to the Crown Prosecution Service to examine the evidence on both sides. Instead of fighting a multi-millionaire celeb at their own expense, the defendants would have been defending themselves against a state charge with Legal Aid. An entirely different contest. That, of course, assumes that the CPS decided that Savile had a case in the first place. I suspect that the prospect of a proper investigation by the authorities would have kept him well away from HM constabulary. And that is the point!
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  317. The ruling class
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  318. Your best and most important video to date. You have described the educational paradox of neoliberalism: It claims to promote merit but also to prevent those perceived to be the meritocracy from being challenged. Timely too. The dark forces behind Donald Trump have an identical agenda and we can expect plenty of (figurative and literal) book burnings, defenestrations of prominent academic progressives and closure of progressive institutions there over the next 4 years. And that's what we'll get here in the unlikely event of Badenoch ever achieving power. That's assuming that Starmer hasn't already beaten her to it, of course.
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  319. Trump's antics are going to seriously damage the US economy, let alone those of trading rivals/partners. There could be no possible reason for trying to tilt towards the US and away from Europe, anyway. But with the oncoming debacle of the Trump regime, it would simply be insane.
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  320. Excellent. Keynes said that it would be better for the economy if people put their money in jars and buried it in the garden. Note all the Tufton Street trolls here who are so brilliant that they have uncovered flaws that generations of smart economists have not. You know, the way that flat earthers and intelligent lifers have.
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  321.  @markmorfesse8080  Possibly. But that's not as stupid as overlaying HIS sensibilities on the present.
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  322. This is quite right and becoming urgent. The Labour/Tory/Liberal consensus has tried to appease racism and xenophobia as long as I can remember. They introduced racist immigration policies and talked about "real and justified fears" and the immigrant getting the "whip hand". But far from stealing the thunder of the Fascists, it just makes their views more respectable and here we are with 5 far-right MPs in the UK and Fascists like the AfD in Germany and National Rally in France becoming contenders for power.
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  323.  @daveisbrill  Immigration isn't a problem. Racism is the problem. I agree about building more affordable housing though.
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  324.  @daveisbrill  Even in London, non-whites are less than 50%. The overall figure elsewhere is about 14%. Why that should matter to anyone baffles me.
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  325.  @Historia.Magistra.Vitae.  I suppose you can nit-pick and say it's specific to a certain era. There are quite a few historians who hide behind that one. I wonder why? Alternatively, you can live in the real world and recognise the fact that there's very little difference between the ideology of AfD and National Rally and that of Mussolini and Hitler.
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  326.  @Historia.Magistra.Vitae.  Oh dear! You're one of those! In both replies here you are confusing what Hitler and Mussolini claimed to advocate with what they actually did. Anyone who takes Fascists of any era at their word completely misses the point about what Fascists actually are: Grifting opportunists who take power under whatever pretext happens to be available at the time. Mussolini's blackshirt thugs initially protected peasants from abusive landlords. Then they flip flopped and helped the landlords against the peasants. And Hitler didn't nationalise anything! Far from it. He re-privatised many of the enterprises that had been nationalised under Weimar. The word "Socialist" was slipped into the party name in order to undermine the left and for no other reason. You've swallowed the "Hitler was a Socialist" guff aimed at people who don't think things through.
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  327. ​ @adenwellsmith6908  I fully understand the concept. It was the myth that was busted when Bear Stearns went down and all the other banks had to be rescued by government.
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  328. Most of them didn't. Unfortunately, not enough of them voted against so a plurality carried the day.
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  329.  @imagecollections6665  Utter nonsense! Foreign nationals do not get unemployment benefit and they have to pay more tax in order to use the NHS.
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  330.  @outsidethebox2037  Ah! So there's no evidence that the people who voted for an economic disaster know less about economics than those who voted against an economic disaster? Do you ever listen to yourself?
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  331. Yes. There were three positions: Yes, No, Not voting. The percentage who voted yes was 34% of the electorate.
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  332.  @dbz9393  Unfortunately, it's a lot more than that. Subsidising US warfighting is very expensive indeed
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  333. "When interest rates are on the floor there is no encouragement to save " Indeed. That is the point. If interest is low, it encourages people to invest in profitable and useful business or spend it into the economy rather than just putting it in the bank.
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  334.  @jonathanpaske2739  Good for you.
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  335.  @Vroomfondle1066  He's absolutely right. But I'm talking about the principle that you keep a level of inflation which encourages people to use money to invest profitably or spend it rather than simply rent it out - which is what investing for interest amounts to.
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  336. I don't think they've turned things on their head so much as pulled the curtain back on themselves. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Russian invasion (and predatory invasion is always wrong), the US has never been up to anything but mischief in Ukraine (and most other places, as it happens). That mischief dates back at least to 2014 and arguably to 1945. It didn't (and still doesn't) do this for any noble sympathy for the plight of Ukrainians. It is purely and simply a cynical exercise to undermine first the USSR and now Russia: Fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. The fact that we Europeans have colluded in this exercise is deeply shameful and now that the hypocrisy of it has been exposed by the audacity of Trump's self-serving greed is deeply embarrassing to European leaders. That's why they're all now running around like headless chickens trying to save the "special relationship" while still keeping the war going.
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  337. Sadly, Richard, Labour's story was always something of a sham. It was always nominally about fighting for workers' rights, abolishing poverty, promoting democracy and opposing colonial oppression. In power, it did do some of those things early in its history: The NHS is obviously its crowing glory but also progressive taxation, improvements in housing, education etc. Even then, many of those things were diluted by people within its ranks who didn't really believe in them. Increasingly, those right wingers have come to rule supreme and have purged from Labour's ranks many of those who did believe in that story. If it has a story at all now, it is to be a vehicle for influence peddling and career progression and everything it once (at least nominally) stood for is what it now stands against
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  338. I hate the expression "How much are you worth?" Everyone is worth the same, whether you're Elon Musk or the guy that asks for change outside ScotMid. Can we say "How much have you got?", please?
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  339. "Manage other people's money or speculate with it". The problem with that is that it's the same people doing both. I knew someone who worked for a well known and highly respected but now-defunct firm of brokers. There were all sorts of highly illegal but difficult-to-detect scams worked. One was where different clients' money was used for a basket of speculations. At the outcome, the favoured clients would have the most successful speculations to their accounts and the others, usually smaller clients, would have the less successful ones. To say that the City is "John from Nigeria" multiplied by 678,000 would be an exaggeration - but only a small one. The irony is that, if these people had the same financialist and asset-stripping principles applied to their work that they force on others, they would all but disappear. Nearly everything they do can be done by technology. The system of monthly accounts they use in the Stock Exchange, for example, was only necessary when all transactions had to be written up by hand in ledgers. It facilitates the practice of shorting - selling shares you do not own in the expectation that you will be able to buy them at a lower figure at the end of the account. Modern technology would allow the whole thing to be done in real-time now but that would rob some very powerful people of a nice little earner.
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  340. Yup! It's undermining democracy that is the main aim. It also provides opportunities to hide and launder money but they are just bounuses.
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  341. Absolutely fundamental. Over the last half-century we have sunk into treating that Chicago School "truth" as a moral guide: Its logic says that because everything works best if we all follow our self-interest, then selfishness must be a virtue in itself. Consequently, we get Neoliberal ideologues like Margaret Thatcher, Charles Koch or Ayn Rand pronouncing that greed is good and demonising the very idea of empathy - especially where it finds expression in left-wing politics or mutualism and collectivism of any kind. The irony is that, not only is this catechism of greed obnoxious and unpleasant in itself, it doesn't work. Its application has brought nothing but poverty and misery to the vast majority of the world's population. Time for a new approach based on empathy and kindness.
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  342.  @blackbulldog4897  You're right. I should have said it doesn't work as claimed.
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  343. @ Starmer certainly doesn't have a clue about what he's doing. That's pretty much because he's being worked by a hand up his back. But no. As far as bulls in china shops go, he's not in the same league as Trump
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  344. Because it embarrasses neoliberals. They can't accept that the people who obey their rules are Nazis because it delegitimises their rules. As, indeed, it should.
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  345. Yes. The means test was always mean-minded and spiteful rather than fair. Unfortunately, the UK mind-set is closer to the former than the latter.
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  346. Yes. But Hailsham thought that was a good thing. A very nasty piece of work. I remember him bemoaning the passing of the time when a man could see his children hungry and barefoot and still be proud to be British.
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  347. It's important to note the difference between conservatives and reactionaries: Conservatives believe in slow and careful progress while reactionaries want to actually reverse it. This current Tory Party is almost completely reactionary and it seems to me that there is very little difference between it and Reform. It is certainly no longer conservative in the conventional sense.
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  348. Ironically, Labour does agree to this. It has been official Labour policy for over a hundred years. But the Labour Right knows that the bulk of its vote comes from people on the Left and if progressive parties were to become viable as a result of PR, their party allegiance would change. That is why they have prevented this mandated policy from becoming government policy even though they have had several opportunities to put it into practice. The Tory Party position is a mirror image of this, of course. The old Liberal Party was also once in the same position but had a Damascene conversion for some reason or other...
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  349. "the supply is entirely market driven. 22 suppliers bid to provide power." Yes. And they're all absolutely crap.
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  350.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  They "compete" by offering better prices to people who are better placed in the market. They balance that by price gouging the most vulnerable people. Even then, many of them fail, leaving customers high and dry. Just Google "energy companies gone bust UK"
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  351. Nasty hypocrites like Dyson get full media coverage for their ridiculous tantrums. The people that Richard highlighted at the end of this video- pensioners who will die of hypothermia, low income families starved by the 2 child cap etc - get ignored.
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  352. Good sentiments but I think the concepts of left and right are still useful for establishing a broad understanding of where parties stand. But right now, where we are in our political progress, the important division is between more and less democracy. It is having the tools to make our own decisions about which way we should go. So the litmus tests are about positions on proportional representation and on the devolving of political power to local communities. Personally, because I am in Scotland, I see the path to that leading through Independence but I'd like to see it down south too.
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  353. It was the favoured policy of Ben Bernanke, who is a Neoliberal clown. Richard is not arguing for the use of QE. There are much better and more equitable ways of creating money. But he is right to say that it saved the day in 2008. As for the number of people who knew about it, how many people in the general population do you suppose are even aware of the existence of the Chicago and Austrian cults, sorry, "Schools", let alone the incoherent nonsense they spew?
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  354.  @joepaluka9031  "The correct way to control govt power is to force govts to use taxation for everything they spend. " Balancing the books, you mean? Yes. Cos' that's always worked, hasn't it?
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  355.  @joepaluka9031  you inhabit a parallel universe. We haven't seen anything remotely Keynesian since the 1970s! Thatcherism has held sway even under Labour governments - including this one. It was the balanced budget dogma which led to the Great Depression and it looks like it's about todo the same now.
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  356.  @joepaluka9031  Neither Rothbard nor Von Mises have ever destroyed anything - except economies, of course. The Mont Pelerin insurgency is dead, pal. It will still limp on in the minds of right-wing academics because universities will keep getting funded by the rich people that benefit from it. But it has lost every argument it ever made.
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  357. Thank goodness someone is getting this into perspective as far as Germany is concerned - and spotting the danger that we in the UK are in. For me, the worry is not the number of people likely to vote Reform. I think they have probably reached their peak, in fact. The danger is in the number of people who are so appalled by the corrupt cynicism and rank incompetence of the major parties that they throw up their hands and stay at home while Reform supporters are enthused and energised by the opinion polls and turn out in record numbers. At that point, we are in serious danger of having a Fascist leaning party in charge
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  358. Of dear!
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  359. They've always loaned money that doesn't exist - until they loan it, that is. The crash of 2008 occurred because banks had made loans to people who couldn't pay it back.
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  360. There is always a tension between efficiency and effectiveness. A business only has to make a profit. To achieve that, it targets a certain sector of the market and tailors its operation to serve it well enough so that its customers don't go elsewhere. The underlying assumption is that those who do not fit into this sector will be looked after by another business which serves them best. In practice, this almost works. That is to say, it is not so dysfunctional that everything falls apart completely. But such a system is nowhere near good enough to provide essential services. A hospital cannot care for 60% of the "market" on the assumption that other hospitals will care for the other 40%. And what about sanitation? Provision of roads and bridges? Law and order? Sit and think about it for 10 minutes and you'll have a very long list indeed. The services that the public sector provides have to successfully reach everyone. There is no alternative public provider to fill "gaps" in the market. As a result, there are bound to be instances of inefficiency. For example, it's obviously cheaper to provide services to people in a city than it is to those who live in scattered villages or farms. But if society needs the input of the people concerned in order to function, then it's a cost that needs to be socially met.
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  361. Yeah! Cos, after privatising everything in sight, the UK is doing SO much better than France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway etc where they didn't. No? The Channel Tunnel came in at twice its original cost, by the way. In Edinburgh, the private sector built a tram system which cost twice the original estimate for half the project and it was delivered two years late. You're the one living in a fantasy world, chum. PFI is just a way of cooking the books to look as if we're not spending money when we are.
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  362. Her position can be summed up in one famous acronym: TINA. It's Thatcher all over again.
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  363.  @adenwellsmith6908  Yes. This is why we have something called a state.
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  364.  @adenwellsmith6908  "The state can have two currencies. " Why would it?
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  365.  @adenwellsmith6908  That declares that it can do that. It doesn't explain why it would.
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  366. It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his success would be a disaster for almost everyone but the very rich and very crooked. On the other hand, his (almost inevitable) failure to achieve his aims will also have catastrophic effects on most of us. The only silver lining I can see is that the US will be severely weakened and no longer be able to impose its will on the rest of the world, as it does now.
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  367. The very fact that you've found so many pertinent questions indicates that Starmer (nor any of the others obsessed with growth) has no idea what he is trying to achieve. The problem is that, since Thatcher, we have adopted a ruinous narrative which says that public sector services are a luxury paid for by private sector profits. Consequently, government has laboured away at reducing the "burden" of the public sector in the false expectation that this will allow the private sector to thrive. This will, in turn, provide the funds for improving public services. It's the same logic which justifies going to war for the purpose of establishing peace - and it will have the same level of success!
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  368. I can't help thinking that we're drifting into something resembling George Orwell's three power blocks. Russia is really a junior partner of China, of course. Your referral to Vlad and Donald as psychopaths also made me think of the kind of leader that seems to be prominent throughout the world right now. We don't have any MacMillans, De Gaulles, Kennedys, etc anymore. I'm not expressing admiration for any of the but at least they had personalities of their own with imagination and ideas. ALL today's leaders (think Blair, Johnson, Macron, Schulz, Biden) seem to say and so the same things and are all sociopathic with little or no care for ordinary people. Putin and Trump are different, of course. The former is extraordinarily evil and the latter extraordinarily stupid. That's why the others are unable to deal with them.
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  369. These are almost unknown waters. There is the experience of Pinochet's Chile, which still hasn't recovered nearly 20 years after his death. And we can all see the horror unfolding in Argentina. But this is going to be on a scale, to use Trump's favourite phrase, "never seen before". In a couple of years time, when someone creates one of those word clouds about the US, the standout words will be poverty, oppression, despair, guns, crime. Musk's economic idiocy is going to throw millions into unemployment, possibly tens of millions. A justice department staffed by his cronies is going to facilitate unprecedented white collar crime and general corruption and his goons are going to be breaking down the doors of anyone who stands up against it. And what if, as Richard suggests, he IS unable to get rid of the millions he considers to be undesirable? What then? A final solution?
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  370. Hmm! Yes. It's certainly the case that Trump fancies himself as a new Hitler. And there is certainly a tight-knit band of extremely evil people ready to back him up - though I would dispute that they are generally competent. Being good a raising a rabble does not necessarily translate into being good at governing or administrating. The myths about the trains running on time in Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy were pure propaganda. It was, in fact, administrative chaos. I suspect that, while the new Trump government will be extremely nasty, it will very quickly fail in nearly all of its objectives. The result could be the collapse of American power and that won't necessarily be a bad thing. Ask any Palestinian, Iraqi or Afghan. It will be a very dangerous time but the world's democracies are capable of withstanding it if they have the political will to do so.
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  371. It replaced other taxes. It's nothing to do with funding the EU. It was doubled under Thatcher to pay for tax cuts to the rich and to fund the unemployment her policies caused.
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  372. "Truss was assassinated by a WEF coup and replaced by Sunak in 49 days so didn’t have any time to do anything." Oh, I don't know. She managed quite a bit of damage in those 49 days. But Richard is right. Starmer is just as clueless.
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  373.  @adenwellsmith6908  Indeed. Central planning and democratic accountability is what is needed. The independent Trust system has produced nothing but corruption and rampant replication of effort. "Why did it fail to train enough staff? " Did it? Where does the private health industry get its staff from, then. Why should the NHS subsidise the private sector in this way?
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  374.  @adenwellsmith6908  Ah! So you ARE a professional troll with the resources to spend on so-called "research". This is exactly why we need transparency.
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  375.  @adenwellsmith6908  I think your word processing software has gone haywire, pal! That's pure gibberish. But I can answer your claim in the last paragraph and the first. The NHS has been one of the most successful and most efficient health-care organisations in the world. Its decline started when the Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown continuum started applying neoliberal dogma to it. Did central planning and training work? Yes. Ask all the living people who would have died under the previous regime. That includes me. I would have died aged 8 (sixty years ago) because my parents wouldn't have had the money to pay for the care and treatment I needed.
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  376. ​ @jamesdey9887  I know what his point is. It's nonsense. Most landlords won't sell up. They make a fortune and that will be dented by more effective regulation and rent capping but they would still make lots of money. If they did sell up, there would be more houses available to buy.
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  377. ​ @col.hertford9855  We Social Democrats have always been Socialists. Social Democracy is the democratic route to Socialism. Don't confuse the Blairites/Starmerites and other flavours of Tory-lite like the now-defunct SDP with Social Democrats. They're nothing of the kind - whatever rebranding they choose to adopt.
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  378.  @BOZ_11  Indeed. It would be, wouldn't it?
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  379.  @BOZ_11  All of which are election bribes just like dropping interest rates. I'm not going to be lectured on "focus" by a neoliberal!
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  380. Yeah! Let's make UK a haven for drug smugglers, money launderers and all the other crooks represented by Tufton Street.
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  381.  @scrambler69-xk3kv  I'm surprised there aren't cartoon characters in there. Luckily, someone must have taken him to one side and explained that Hannibal Lecter isn't real....
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  382.  @OB17358  "In a way, running government like a tv show can be a good thing. The more voters learn and are informed, the better citizens they (we) are. " TV shows like The Apprentice do not educate and inform. They titillate and entertain. The Apprentice in particular was a programme which set out to give its audience a false impression of how business was done. Trump is all chaff. He has no personal gifts. None at all. He is an idiot who inherited. Nothing he has was worked for or obtained fairly. If he ever did anything worthwhile in his life, it was by accident.
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  383.  @HectorMMoreno-hn2rt  Aye. Or maybe Trump could do it himself. Have you seen how ripped he is on those trading cards? And he can probably fly, make himself invisible and melt steel with his heat-vision.
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  384. @fiddlersthree8463 Apparently, 14 of his businesses were liquidated while the show was running.
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  385.  @ErnstKuhn  Amen to that!
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  386. Why is Reeves doing this? It's not a mystery, Richard. It's so that in 5 years time when she is again courting middle-class votes, she can say that she's made the country richer, even though her policies will have done nothing to lift people out of poverty. In fact, as she appears to be following a full neoliberal (Thatcherite) course, she is likely to have made many people even poorer. But they won't matter because they were unlikely to vote in the first place.
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  387.  @davidthompson797  Google "Britain's secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam" and see the "Declassified" entry. There were also other wee post-colonial exercises carried out for the US such as the South-Yemen and Cyprus emergencies and SAS support given to US friendly dictators like the Sultan of Oman.
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  388.  @Obsidian24776  I wouldn't disagree with any of that. Pretty much what I would say myself. What is your point?
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  389. The funniest part of this is the garbage about Second World War fascists initiating the EU. It didn't appear until 1993! Trump is no more a "free marketeer" than any of the other neoliberals. What they really believe in is markets rigged in their favour. "Free markets" is a scam they sell to the gullible and stupid. You have to give them credit for their targeting skills.
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  390.  @Art-is-craft  No government has built an economy on lower taxation.
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  391. The drift to Neoliberalism/Fascism feeds more off apathy and disenchantment than commitment to right-wing ideas. It will be people not voting as a result of the Starmer government's incompetence and betrayal which lands us with the coming Tory/Reform coalition.
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  392.  @Vroomfondle1066  Indeed it is. That's why we want democracy.
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  393.  @cleanhit777  The BoE was nationalised in 1946. It belongs to the UK government. It was made notionally independent by Gordon Brown in 1997. The arrangement was formalised by the Bank of England Act 1998.
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  394. "The trouble with PR is that it leads to very small political parties having political influence far beyond the votes they receive." I believe our current government had around 30% of those who voted and the support of 17% of those eligible to vote. Cameron forced the EU referendum on us with only 34% of those who voted. Most of the disasters of the last 50 years (eg Thatcher's privatisations, gradual erosion of the NHS and democratically accountable schooling, the invasion of Iraq War, Brexit) only occurred because a minority was able to capture power through FPTP. To say such a system is "robust" is true. So is dicatorship.
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  395. Wasn't that 28% of income tax, not taxes in general?
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  396.  @adenwellsmith6908  And what is the proportion of their income to the other 90%
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  397. What is the proportion of their income to the other 90%?
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  398.  @adenwellsmith6908  What do you mean "goes to others"?. Out tax doesn't "go" to anyone except the government.
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  399.  @adenwellsmith6908  "But you get back a percentage of what you pay in the form of state services. ". No. You don't. That's not how it works at all.
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  400.  @Volkan-z2v  I don't understand your question.
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  401.  @eddieharris6004  Yes. Winston Churchill brought the Gold Standard back in 1924. That went well...
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  402. Along with proportional representation and automatic registration at birth or on gaining resident status, it would be one of the most transformational changes that could be made towards democracy. I also think that donations should be confined to individuals and democratically accountable institutions.
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  403.  @schrodingerscat1863  Not really. They are generally hard-working and conscientious public servants with a strong sense of duty. The incompetent and shifty ones are usually those brought in by politicians.
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  404. The IEA is fanatically opposed to democracy. The idea is to transfer power to the rich so that they can then transfer all the wealth to themselves. It's time this political lobby and commercial advocacy group had its charitable status removed.
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  405. Well done! You've just explained why boom-and-bust happens
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  406. "... the idea that someone can care and be on the right is either beyond you or to be ignored" Yes. You have inadvertently put your finger on it there. We have had Neoliberal governments (I include Blair and Brown)since 1979 and it is clear to most that such a notion is beyond anyone who has paid attention over that period. Charles Koch is not alone amongst Neoliberal sages in saying that because self-interest is the only possible driver of economic progress then empathy (caring) is weakness and leads to economic atrophy.
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  407. Dark days ahead. Trump's clownish behaviour will have dire consequences, not only for the US but for everyone else too. The light at the end of the tunnel is that perhaps it will come out of it a little weaker and less able to dictate policy to other nations. That's assuming that the super-annuated orange preppy doesn't go completely out of control and push the big red button in a tantrum, of course!
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  408. The Labour Right would never do that. Under FPTP, people are fearful of voting for left-leaning parties because of the danger of splitting the vote and letting in the Tories. PR would result in the emergence of alternative left groups, such as the Greens and The Workers Party and would squeeze out the so-called "moderates" whom, you might remember, have already been tested and found lacking with the SDP and Change UK debacles. The Labour Right would rather be in opposition to a Tory government than in a genuine coalition government with the Left.
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  409. I think that a combination of STV and mult-member constituencies works fairly well. Party-list systems tend to give too much power to party leaderships. In Scotland, we use the D'hondt system, a compromise in which MSPs are directly elected and then a top system (from a list) is used to ensure that each party gets represented according to its share of the vote in that region. This was originally concocted because it was assumed that Labour would otherwise have a permanent majority under FPTP and the idea was that it would force the use of coalition. For local elections, we have STV but without the multi-member aspect. No system is perfect but, apart from ATV, all are better than FPTP.
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  410. ​ @simonjohn9525  I've just re-checked. You're right. AV is the one that favours third parties but in practice can actually result in a less proportional outcome than FPTP. That's why the Lib Dems liked it. I'd still favour it over most other systems because it gives minority views a voice they would not otherwise get. My second choice would be D'hondt.
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  411.  @simonjohn9525  Indeed. We would all have to accept the fact that views we disapprove of would be represented. The point is to prevent an extremist plurality from capturing the whole government and imposing its will on the majority - as Thatcher, Blair and Johnson did.
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  412. Cryptocurrencies aren't guaranteed to retain their value. In fact, they are all dodgy pyramid systems which can collapse at a moment's notice. That's why anyone with any sense sticks to currencies that are backed up by democratically accountable governments.
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  413.  @physiocrat7143  I think you'll find that most of us ridicule foolish pseudoeconomics.
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  414. Sums it up perfectly.
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  415.  @physiocrat7143  It has several variants. The most obvious one is the "school" established in 1947 in Mont Pelerin in Switzerland. It luminaries have included Von Mises, Von Hayek, Friedman, James M Buchanan and most laughably, Charles Koch. The flaw in their arguments is that they have been tried, often at gunpoint, and failed miserably. The only reason this pathetic group endures is because it prescribes remedies which rich people like so it is well funded.
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  416.  @physiocrat7143  The UK has been continuously run by Neoliberals since at least 1979. That is why we lurch from crisis to crisis.
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  417. And is that its democratic will? Do you see what I pointed out there?
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  418.  @michaelmayo3127  I don't disagree but I was arguing the in the context of the articlle
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  419.  @swojnowski453  Brexit IS Neoliberalism! The likes of Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson convinced a bunch of turkeys that Christmas was the answer to all their problems.
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  420.  @billB101  He bowed to the right-wing media over the supposed NEED to do it. To be fair. It's probably not fear. It's more a matter of him agreeing with their heartless and economically illiterate viewpoint.
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  421.  @billB101  Er yes. It's objective fact. He has continuously followed the path dictated by the right-wing media. Assuming that this so-called "black hole" had to be filled (it didn't) , he could have done it with taxes directed at the rich.
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  422.  @yourcarpro7072  That's easy. They could have told their customers that they were selling a product and that they were getting commission for doing so. I'm astonished that you need to ask. Are you so far down the rabbit hole of devious and misleading behaviour that honesty and candour are alien concepts for you?
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  423.  @yourcarpro7072  Oh! It was totally ethical and legal? Then there'll be no payouts.
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  424.  @yourcarpro7072  Yes. I'm sure many of the fraudsters will get away with it - just as the Pension and insurance mis-selling crooks got away with it. Not a single one of them went to jail.
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  425. Agreed. When I worked for a firm of tax accountants, I once accompanied an accountant to a Commissioner's meeting. She (herself an ex Inspector of Taxes) ran rings around them and proudly boasted later that they had missed several flaws in her arguments. Her salary was 3 times that of both the Inspectors of Taxes put together and, while she had a full week to prepare for that 30 minute hearing, the Inspectors would have had the same amount of time to prepare for all the hearings they had that week. Needless to say, the amount saved by the client (and therefore lost to the rest of us) was eye watering.
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  426.  @vickysharpe11  If you mean The 1834 Poor Law, yes, it has. It was replaced by the National Assistance Act in 1948.
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  427. It's selective justice. Did Indonesian assets get seized when it invaded East Timor? Have US assets been seized to pay for the damage it wrought in Indochina through the 1960s and 1970s? What about the damage done by the US's dirty wars in Latin America where local dictators were supported and protected while they siphoned their own countries' wealth into Swiss bank accounts? The big one mentioned by several people here is Iraq. That was an entirely unprovoked and predatory attack which killed hundreds of thousands of people and, together with the equally illegal sanctions regime which preceded it, destroyed an entire economy. The list of equivalents could fill an entire screen. I'm all for restorative justice but only if it's universally applied.
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  428.  @stevenwilliamson6236  Indeed. I want Scotland to be independent and I hope to see a United Ireland. But, in the meantime, if they want a "union", they should have some honesty and integrity about the way they make it work. I suppose that the silver lining is that, in the long run, the callous and indifferent behaviour of the likes of Starmer, Sunak, Johnson or whatever other cardboard cut-out the establishment use to rule us, will bring independence closer
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  429. That's very similar to what people were saying about Labour in 1919 and Labour's vote actually decreased in 2024, as did the Liberal Democrats'. The way they are currently going about government, they will certainly be even less popular in 5 years time and get an even lower vote, losing even more seats to independents and Greens. Most of the Labour and Lib Dem gains from the Conservatives were by very small margins and, because of the silly arithmetic of FPTP, it will only take a relatively small Tory recovery to reverse the current situation.
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  430. What Musk doesn't understand is humanity. He was raised to be "The Elon", the technocratic leader in Werner Von Braun's Fascist utopia novel. For him, the rest of us are just there to be exploited or disposed of. So democracy is anathema: It's a dystopia where inferior people have dominion over him and that can't be right. That's why he's quite happy to destroy government.
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  431. Indeed. It encourages people to spend, which encourages people to produce goods and services, which creates wealth.
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  432.  @karlarcher8773  Even under FPTP, Labour got a majority of seats last election. But with proportional representation, no party would dominate.
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  433.  @karlarcher8773  Their recent success in Scotland was due to Tories and Lib Dems voting tactically in an otherwise low turnout, and, of course, it was under FPTP. But the main point is that an English Parliament would have some form of PR. Neither of the two main parties would dominate. That's the reason they don't want it.
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  434. ​@Minimmalmythicist Why would we lose it? Did the UK stop trading with the EU when it so stupidly left that? Do you think rUK is going to throw a strop and close the border or something? As if it can afford to stop trading with anyone! Trade will continue. Though, of course, when we join the EU, it will be on the favourable terms the EU has already negotiated with Westminster.
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  435. ​@Minimmalmythicist Why would there be "far less access"? Are you seriously suggesting that either government would want to erect trade barriers? Why would they do that? The EU has reason to restrict members' benefits to members. Otherwise, there would be no point in being a member. The rUK would get no advantage from restricting trade access for Scottish businesses. This is one of the Project Fear myths which make no sense on examination. It has as much validity as the suggestion that we would no longer get Coronation Street or Greggs' sausage rolls! Yes. Both of these were suggested in 2014! I look forward to seeing the nonsense they'll invent for Indie 2.
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  436.  @andrewhyde2560  The old nonsense about wages causing spiralling inflation? They don't.
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  437.  @andrewhyde2560  No. It's not "fact". People get paid more, they spend more, the economy grows to absorb the inflation. That's not an off-the-wall theory. It's been understood by all credible economists for at least 80 years. If you take the trouble to punctuate your sentences properly so that you sentences are coherent, you might actually learn to structure your thinking so that your opinions are coherent. For example, you're arguing that what happens in Australia, a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world, is a disaster. Does that really make sense to you? Just asking.
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  438.  @andrewhyde2560  Australian commercial practices have no relevance whatsoever to the subject at hand but your question is the wrong way around. You should be asking "Would you rather have the standard of living that Australia has or the one that we have?" Australia's businesses make that charge because people will pay it. Why are they willing to pay it? Because they get higher wages! The reason your mate has to make ridiculous hours to earn not very much is because he lives in a low wage economy where all the money goes to the rich where ordinary people can't afford proper prices.
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  439.  @andrewhyde2560  There's a good reason why no one's answering your question. It's completely irrelevant to the subject at hand. You seem to be citing an Australian commercial practice and, for no apparent reason, linking it to a minimum wage figure which no one has proposed. To make it even more absurd, you start talking about the UK Labour Party. What have they got to do with anything being discussed here?
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  440.  @andrewhyde2560  Why do semi-literate (note grammar and punctuation) reactionaries all seem to think that Richard Murphy is a Labour Supporter? Anyone with the political understanding of a twelve year old can tell that he's not.
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  441.  @andrewhyde2560  Are you not aware that you need grammar and punctuation to make words mean something? Accusing someone of not making sense then stringing a series of words together into a meaningless word salad is is about as funny as you can get. Your dribbling nonsense might well be relevant to the Labour Party if anyone could translate it into English. But as it's unlikely that anyone on this web-site supports Labour, we have to wonder why you would want to share it with us.
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  442.  @andrewhyde2560  "if someone should get paid more to work out of hours, why on earth would I come out of hours to your house for FREE??????" No. You're talking about two completely different things. If you worked for someone else, they would be paying you. That's the law, it always has been and no one of any political party is proposing to change it. If you're working for yourself, it has nothing whatsoever to do with minimum wages. It's down to commercial practice. For example, if I want building work done, the builder wants the work so he'll come and give me an estimate - or he'll pay someone to do it and work the cost of that into his prices. If I call out a plumber, on the other hand, I'll usually have to pay a call-out fee. It's certainly nothing to do with minimum wage legislation. I didn't say anything about your spelling, by the way. It's grammar that makes your comments unreadable. When we talk to each other, we use pauses and changes in tone to convey meaning. When we write, we have to use punctuation and capital letters to tell people when we're ending or starting a new sentence or phrase.
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  443.  @andrewhyde2560  "Who are you or anybody to start reeling off ideas about increasing pay when I bet you employ not one single person." I'm a citizen in a democracy, pal. I have the same right as you to "reel off ideas" as you. Employing people does not give you special rights - no matter how much better than other people you think you are. "Quick question why would it be acceptable for a employer to have to pay someone, but not for you to have to pay someone who is self employed???" Because I am not employing him. I am contracting him. And you answered your own question when you pointed out that he will factor that time into his overall estimate. He is, of course, free to charge for giving estimates. That's his business decision. "British industry has been crushed and forced to move aboard due to a complete failure under the past labour government." I think you'll find that British manufacturing collapsed under Thatcher because her policies favoured finance capitalism. In any case, the following Labour government was no less Tory than she was and pursued the same policies. Blair has fully admitted that. A last thought for you. If minimum wages and unions are so damaging, why have countries like Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany, which have much stronger unions and higher minimum wages done so well, while the UK has declined? They also have much higher immigration, by the way.
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  444.  @andrewhyde2560  Tax rates in Germany are similar to those in the UK. They are higher in the Netherlands and Sweden. All three countries have higher unemployment benefits but less unemployment. The UK is one of the least generous in Europe. Unfortunately, your outdated and disproven views have been the ones that have guided the narrative here for the last fifty years or so of uninterrupted Thatcherism. That's why we're declining.
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  445.  @andrewhyde2560  "how they can better themselves instead of relying on the government to wipe there back side they voted for brexit after all." Yeah! And how's Brexit going then? Prospering in the brave new world, are you? You live in a fantasy world where Thatcherism worked and the rich make the economy work. It doesn't and they don't. We've just had 45 years of Thatcherism and, under Keir Starmer we're going to get another five. The British economy will sink even further into a low-tax low-spend ditch and you'll watch other countries speed past you - like Poland just did. But you'll will keep keep drinking the trickle-down Kool-aid and blaming everyone else for your failure as a country. Luckily, I live in Scotland and we'll be kissing you all goodbye in the very near future.
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  446.  @JoinTheTemple  "But it’s a sliding scale - the freer the economy, the demonstrably better it does." Absolute nonsense. The mixed economies of the Western powers, following the Second World War gave the highest rise in living standards in history. The return of free market dogma under Thatcher and Nixon arrested that progress and we are currently undergoing the biggest FALL in living standards in history. The main driver of the US economy from 1776 onwards was slavery followed by land theft and genocide. That's how the capital which brought about the expansion of the US economy was made. But you're right about one thing. An economy in which you can buy and sell people as if they were beasts of the field is about as free market as you can get. Neoliberals love Hong Kong. It's the centre of money laundering and corruption and has been since the British stole it from China in order to pursue the opium trade in the fine traditions of laissez faire capitalism: It's an entirely artificial economy which serves a niche purpose for the real economies around it. Using it as an exemplar of the virtues of the free market is simply ridiculous - as well as sordid
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  447. Being in denial of the knock-on consequences of your actions? That's been the fundamental flaw in every government since 1979. We call it Neoliberalism.
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  448. It will take a shock like the break-up of the Union to get any real changes.
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  449.  @martinaston1715  Bully for you!
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  450.  @suburbanyobbo9412  To begin with, I suggest that they are far from the most credible and trustworthy experts on fascism because they subscribe to liberalism. Fascism is a subset of liberalism. More importantly, I suggest that we make up our own minds about what fascism is by analysing what we see with our own eyes rather than defer to so-called experts.
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  451.  @suburbanyobbo9412  Which ones are socialist?
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  452.  @suburbanyobbo9412  I've read Mudde and he certainly isn't a Socialist. Renton's position is more nuanced than you suggest. He labels people like Le Pen and Trump as "New Authoritarians". The distinction between that and Fascism is cigarette paper thin. And anyway, in making that distinction he is an outlier on the left.
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  453.  @suburbanyobbo9412  He writes quite often in openDemocracy and in the Guardian. He is not a Socialist. He's more aligned with left wing Democrats in the US or with the UK Labour Party as purged of Socialists by Starmer.
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  454.  @suburbanyobbo9412  As I said, he writes often in the Guardian and in openDemocracy where he espouses views which are similar to those of Bernie Sanders or the UK Labour Party. What on Earth makes you think he's a Socialist?
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  455.  @suburbanyobbo9412  If they're not socialists they're liberals
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  456. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I don't agree with Edmund Burke on many things but he was spot on with this one.
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  457.  @gwynroberson198  It has more money than it ever has because it's being funnelled to private providers. So, starved of resources? Yes. Massively. I've come across that statistical ONS trick before. Of course there's a high rate of pay "across the income range"! That applies to the whole public sector because of the high level of qualified staff that are employed by public bodies: In this case, nurses, doctors, radiographers, pharmacists and a whole host of other highly qualified professionals. The mathematical trick was exacerbated under Thatcher and Blair when hospitals were forced to out-source many of the lower paying jobs - incidentally, resulting in dirty hospitals and unpalatable food. My relationship with the NHS has been close for my whole life. I was hospitalised for months as a child. My father suffered all his life as a result of wounds sustained in the war. My mother had cancer. My own children benefited from excellent care as they grew up, care which is now there for my grandchildren and I am seeing both my in-laws get excellent professional care as they suffer the problems that come with old age. The problem with your attempts to denigrate this incredible institution and the utterly superhuman efforts of those who work in it is that we all see with our own eyes and our own experience that you are telling lies which are as transparent as they are venal. You must think we are all idiots. We are not.
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  458. You're trying to be ironic but actually stating an objective truth. Of course they don't want to "learn". The ruling classes are doing fine out of impoverishing the rest of us.
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  459. ​ @kellyeye7224  Said luxuries arrived in the 1960s. Yes. Times were getting better. They went from poverty in the 1950s to marginally better in the 1960s.
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  460. NATO is a scam by which the US gets its military policy subsided by European countries. It was never about defence of Europe.
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  461.  @stephfoxwell4620  Indeed. It also skews educational chances leading to wasted talent and talentless fools getting access to opportunities they're not fit for, blocks access to healthcare. leading to excessive sick days and generally blighted lives and encourages crime and corruption. That's just for starters.
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  462.  @xtc2v  Nope. Muddled thinking is failing to to realise that austerity IS redistributing wealth - to the rich.
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  463. There's nothing more ridiculous than accepting a Fascist's definition of Fascism. Both Italian Fascism and its German sibling were grifts - just as MAGA is. Both claimed to be anti-capitalist but, in fact, capitalists prospered greatly under both regimes and workers were suppressed on their behalf. This will, of course, be the case if Trump (or an equally corrupt successor) is returned to power.
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  464.  @rjw4762  Indeed. Bring it on! Let's see how many of these actually exist.
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  465. The financial markets are controlled by people who can move their money around with a couple of clicks of the mouse. They can safely invest in things which have short-term value because they can easily get out in time when a collapse looks likely. As things stand, these are the people who have power over our pension funds and they run them for themselves, not for us. That's why there used to be fairly effective regulation which limited what sort of funds we could invest our pensions in and this kept them safe from unscrupulous or incompetent fund managers. ( A good example of the "Nanny State", if ever there was one) Thatcher's de-regulation and other piecemeal tinkering since then removed such safeguards. People were encouraged to take their money out of safe final salary pensions and into dodgy get-rich-quick schemes which promised better outcomes. In fact, they have generally resulted in pitifully small outcomes and a lot of people are suffering hardship now as a result. We need to go back to proper regulation with the state pension being a bigger part of our retirement income.
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  466. Ironically, the D'hondt system was chosen to prevent the Labour Party from being permanently in power. As for independence, we just need to convince more people. The core unionist vote is literally dying off and demographics will produce a majority in due course.
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  467. FFrothi Coffi am byth! But with an extra shot for my taste.
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  468. "Even the middle classes are bailing". I've not seen much evidence of that. Many of those that packed off to Provence or the Costas are having second thoughts as a result of discovering that their post-Brexit status is not the same as when they were EU citizens.
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  469.  @adenwellsmith6908  Where elsewhere? And exactly how many are doing so?
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  470.  @Metro6am  Of course they do. It's a dictatorship. The possibility of waking up to a Fascist coup d'etat or Islamic revolution is considerably higher than it is in East Cheam or Weybridge. That's when you realise that paying tax is a small price to pay for what it brings you.
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  471. There are MORE corrupt systems?
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  472.  @imbonkers3629  Your very poor grasp of English grammar reflects your poor grasp of reality. You're a living embodiment of the real reason the Right want to spend less on education.
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  473.  @vgstb  It's working-class vernacular for "the public"!
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  474.  @rfxtuber  This proud pleb has no problem with that.
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  475. Mostly. No way was Mugabe a Socialist, though. The land reform was a bribe to militias who might otherwise turn against him.
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  476.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  He or she is measuring space, things to fill it with, fastenings, tools and probably other things I am unaware of, not being a carpenter. There are as many of them as he needs to complete his task. The fact that each unit is fixed in value is irrelevant as the quantity of them isn't.
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  477.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  Not remotely puzzled. There always enough inches to measure the available materials and they can be designated in any measure he likes by agreement with other actors involved. It is the finite nature of the resources that matter, not the unit they are measured in.
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  478.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  Indeed. And there are as many instances (or copies) of that inch as you need! I'm starting to lose the will to live.
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  479.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  Money is for moving value, not storing it. That's like keeping you coffee in a spoon.
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  480.  @adenwellsmith6908  Bitcoin isn't fiat money. It's not money at all. It's just a scam. The scammers get dupes to fill it with value and then get out before it crashes
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  481.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  Nope. It's not one of the "required" properties. The only required property is that people trust it enough to make transactions without fear of getting something valueless in return. It is there to enable transactions.
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  482.  @Tensquaremetreworkshop  Anyone who has wasted any time on modern economics courses understands absolutely nothing about the basics.
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  483.  @Luckiestmanalive-bb1mi  There's no debate, pal. Neoliberalism is a dogma, not a theory.
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  484.  @JMORG-q9y  So we've nothing to learn from this DeepSeek episode then?
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  485. I'd say reluctant learners, rather than slow. Neoliberalism is an ideology, a cult even. It's not proper theory.
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  486. Exactly what did Bishop Budde say which was "against Christian teaching"? Her sermon sounded pretty much in line with the Sermon On The Mount to me. There is no "DEI" in the UK. There is certainly a problem with our education system, which has been progressively degenerating since Thatcher.
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  487.  @physiocrat7143  I don't recall Jesus saying anything about abortion rights. But then, he would certainly have been rejected as "woke" by the extreme right. Nope. Westminster council made an announcement about partners' compliance with certain conditions around equality diversity and inclusion. It is not the same thing at all as US positive discrimination policies.
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  488.  @physiocrat7143  Fringe heretical groups? The Southern Baptist Convention has over 12 million members! And Christianity Today is the flagship magazine of US Evangelicals, founded by Billy Graham in 1956. He was also against abortion bans. Was he a fringe heretical? US presidential candidates who grovelled before him to get endorsements certainly didn't think so. There is no reason on Earth by women can't be priests. Certainly, nothing that Christ said.
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  489.  @PolygonSwan  As opposed to Deranged Trump Syndrome? We love the right-wing trolls here. You provide entertainment and validation.
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  490. Starmer has abandoned the Labour base and now relies on the votes of reactionaries and racists. He's betting on those to the left simply fading out of the democratic process as they did under Blair. That's why he's abandoning everything the Labour Party ever stood for - which includes the internationalism implicit in the EU proposal to allow free movement of youth.
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  491. Good to challenge the lazy thinkers - and tax is the ultimate subject for lazy thinking. I think we have to remember that tax has a number of reasons for existing. Raising revenue is only one of them. But the range of options you have suggested is very sensible and, more importantly, very easy. Starting with the low-hanging fruit can never be a bad idea.
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  492. Yes. "The ability to explore, explain and understand". That is exactly what children should be getting from education. I think I would add "enjoy" to that list but otherwise it's what it should be. But I can't help thinking that our venal politicians would fear nothing more than adults who could "explore explain and understand".
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  493.  @abody499  Yes. I'm old enough to remember when early primary classes were to told to sit quietly with hands on heads, stand facing the corner when caught being "naughty" (a whole area of discussion in itself), and learn to speak only when given permission to. We'd always accepted this as a way of keeping classes orderly so that the teaching could be done. In fact, learning to submit meekly to authority and not question or interrupt WAS part of the teaching.
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  494. "Quite straightforward, quite simple and all fundamentally wrong ideas". A succinct and correct description of Neoliberalism. It's most basic requirement is pure nonsense. Nature abhors a vacuum but it just laughs at the idea of a free market. It simply can't exist.
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