Category Archives: Public services

Privatisation of local government begins – and why it will cost us far too much

Michael Gove: he’s using the few months of government left to the Tories to do as much damage to public services as possible.

Michael Gove has taken another major Tory step towards making public services unaffordable – and his party unelectable.

He has transferred more than £14 million of Middlesbrough Council assets to the Middlesbrough Development Corporation, a private company chaired by Tory Lord Ben Houchen.

So it seems the bankrupting of local councils was a deliberate Tory policy, intended to force the sale or transfer of more public assets into private hands.

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This is problematic on at least three levels:

Firstly, the MDC’s parent organisation, the Tees Valley Combined Authority, is the subject of long-running allegations against it – as described in a report commissioned by the Tory government.

Next: loss of assets means loss of revenue. In local government, assets are property that are used to provide services – that sometimes come with a charge. If they aren’t available to local government any more, then it means less money will come to councils.

Finally: this means the public will be asked to pay more for public services – because the council will have to rent the assets it has lost, back from the new owner.

This is simply a way of passing public money over to the extremely rich, who don’t even have to pay for it. And we all know:

Here’s a quick TV clip in which Houchen was nailed by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire, proving that he is a liar and his corporations can’t be trusted:

Here’s the bottom line:

Funnily enough, the process described above was discussed on This Site, only a week ago, after economist Gary Stevenson told us why privatisation puts up our taxes. I wrote:

Neoliberal governments since 1979 have sold off all the property they own, meaning that – in order to provide services – they have to rent property from the rich people to whom they sold it all.

This is, of course, a ridiculous proposition because renting property from rich people is much more expensive than owning it oneself. We can see this from the sale of council housing; now councils don’t have any low-cost, low-rent houses, more and more people are becoming homeless because they can’t pay the sky-high rents demanded by private landlords, or the sky-high mortgages demanded by lenders.

So ordinary working people are now having to pay enormous taxes in order to allow our governments to pay for these services at exorbitant prices, because they’ve given all the means of providing these services to the rich.

Gary’s answer is to tax the rich, so they have to sell off their ill-gotten government assets in order to make ends meet.

The problem is that Tories like Michael Gove want the rich to own public assets and charge the Earth for the use of them; it’s an opportunity to say public services are too expensive and close them down, hugely disadvantaging the poor and laying them open to exploitation – by the rich.

Now that Gary has exposed the strategy, we can all see it for what it is.


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The bigger Budget picture – that British politics is glossing over – is terrifying

Jeremy Hunt: he was all smiles when delivering his Budget but the underlying implications will harm almost everybody in the UK who has to earn a living or draws a pension.

They’re trying to hide something from you, you know.

According to Torsten Bell, over at the Resolution Foundation, there’s more to it than the winners – National Insurance payers – and losers – pensioners, landlords and pensioner-landlords.

Jeremy Hunt’s speech, he wrote, paints a picture of “a country that is somehow managing to combine higher taxes, crumbling public services and debt levels that are struggling to fall”.

He warned that “British politics is trying to generally gloss over this bigger picture pre-polling day, not least given the tax rises and spending cuts pencilled in to follow”.

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Apparently the tax rises and spending cuts will be necessitated by the fact that Hunt has now splurged on two sets of tax cuts – now, and back in the Autumn.

Hidden in the details are the consequences: “£14 billion a year of lower debt interest was eaten up by lower tax receipts,” meaning Hunt – or any new Chancellor coming in after an election – will want to find a way to make up for that loss, probably with more taxes.

But they’ll then run into the problem of how to pay. The population is increasing rapidly – a fact that he didn’t dwell on in his speech, but one that may mean a million more people living here by the end of the decade and, yes, it’s due to immigration. This will mean more income for the Treasury, sure – but not an improvement in living standards as the amount people keep for themselves will not increase.

And there’s gloom over the number of us who are going to be too sick to work – due, again, to Tory political policies. “This knocks 0.5 per cent off employment, unwinding the GDP boost from a bigger population.” And it seems likely that a Tory or Labour government will simply try to deny sick people any state benefits in the hope that they’ll die off, as so many others have over the last 14 years.

With the economy in the doldrums, Hunt should have held off on more tax cuts – his whole package will cost £65 billion over the next five years. Instead, he picked Labour’s pocket – using two of the income streams Keir Starmer’s party intended to use to fund its own policies, if it wins an election.

So he scrapped the non-dom tax regime and extended the windfall tax on energy firms. That accounts for one-third of the tax cuts. The rest is being funded by borrowing, meaning that the Tories are once again marking themselves out as the party of financial IRresponsibility.

The National Insurance cuts may seem nice for employees – at the moment. But “£8 billion is being raised by the freezes to thresholds for employer NI… In time this will feed through into lower pay levels for employees.

“And then we come to the biggest group of losers: pensioners, who are already exempt from NI but affected by freezes to Income Tax thresholds. All eight million taxpaying pensioners will see their taxes increase, by an average of £1,000 – an £8 billion collective hit.”

Pensioners contain the largest remaining group of Conservative voters. This Writer wonders whether those Tories will continue to vote tribally in the face of this betrayal.

So does Torsten Bell: “This is the Conservative core vote losing out, as the next chart spells out. Whether this is an intentional choice to pivot towards those the Tories are struggling to win over, or a bit of an accident, is far from clear… It’s one hell of a political gamble.”

In fairness, though: “The focus on working-age employees reflects that they already pay higher rates of tax than pensioners or landlords. Furthermore, pensioners’ income growth has outstripped that of working households for some time.”

Now comes the burn.

“Personal tax increases combine with chunky rises in the corporation tax take (which is being sustained at its highest level this century) and wider economic changes to ensure this will be the greatest tax-raising Parliament since the Second World War. Tax relative to GDP is rising from 33.1 per cent in 2019-20 to 36.5 per cent in 2024-25 even with the pre-election tax cut rush.“But the tax rises don’t stop on polling day. Highly unusually, £19 billion of tax rises have already been announced that will  come into effect after the election. So the tax take is set to rise further to 37.1 per cent in 2028-29 (the highest since 1948). The increase since 2019-20 amounts to £3,900 per household.“Further tax rises are not all that is coming after the election. Even with loose fiscal rules, the tax cuts announced by Jeremy Hunt are only affordable by pencilling in major spending cuts to come. Real per-capita day-to-day spending for unprotected departments (think prisons, courts, FE colleges and local government) is set to fall by 13 per cent between 2024-25 and 2028-29 – equivalent to cuts of £19 billion and three-quarters (71 per cent) of the cuts inflicted on these departments in the first austerity parliament (2010-2015). The idea that such cuts can be delivered in the face of faltering public services is a fiscal fiction.

“More plausible, but deeply undesirable and damaging for growth, are plans to cut Public Sector Net Investment from 2.5 per cent today to 1.7 per cent of GDP by 2028-29 (a £26 billion decline). For too long Britain has been living off its past, rather than investing in its future. On current plans, we risk repeating this mistake in the decade ahead.”

The conclusion is scathing:

“The big picture for Britain has not changed at all. It remains a country where taxes are heading up not down, and one where incomes are stagnating. In fact, they are set to remain below their level at the last general election when voters return to the polls – the first time this has happened on record.

“Big tax cuts may or may not affect the outcome of that election, but the task for whoever wins is huge.

“Not only will they have to wrestle with implausible spending cuts, but they’ll also need to restart sustained economic growth – the only route to ending Britain’s stagnation.”


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Jeremy Hunt’s Budget fails to cut the tax burden after all

Jeremy Hunt: from the look on his face, this might have been Mr Bean’s Budget. Mr Bean-counter?

At long last, the Tories have unveiled the final Budget of their 2010-2024 government – and what a sad example of political opportunism it was!

Chancellor (for the moment) Jeremy Hunt was widely expected to use it to sabotage a future Labour government by imposing tax cuts for no good reason and then challenging Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to explain which taxes she would restore to pay for Labour’s planned economic programme.

And what vital public services does Hunt propose to end? It was unlikely we would ever be told because nobody cares; he won’t have to think about it if there’s an election soon.

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Fair play to Labour neoliberal Angela Eagle for using Prime Minister’s Questions to ask which Tory achievement prime minister Rishi Sunak views with the most pride – the highest taxes since World War II, or the longest period of wage depression since the Napoleonic War.

Sunak responded by citing his damp squib furlough scheme that he contends kept jobs safe during the Covid crisis. He didn’t respond on the issues Eagle mentioned because he didn’t have to; they will be for someone else to tackle.

Hunt was wheeled on at 12.30 and promised permanent tax cuts – so our expectations were proved correct.

He started by referring to people on Universal Credit who have to take out loans – falling into debt by so doing – while waiting for their claims to be approved. He’s increasing the repayment period to four months. Big deal! They shouldn’t have to take out a loan in the first place and only have to do so because the Tories impose a five-week delay on payments.

He’s extending an alcohol duty freeze – it was due to rise by three per cent this year. But will prices stay the same or will manufacturers and pubs simply raise their prices and take higher profits.

He’s extending the fuel duty freeze as expected, maintaining the 5p cut. He reckons it will save the average driver £50 next year – but will it? Fossil fuel giants and supermarkets are also expected to raise prices anyway and take the cash as profit.

The Household Support Fund to support people on low incomes is being extended for six months. One must take it that this is in the absence of any plan to improve household incomes on a permanent basis.

He referred to the National Debt, saying it will fall to “just” 92.9 per cent of GDP in 2028-9. It’s meaningless; the debt was 250 per cent of GDP at the end of World War II and Clement Attlee’s – socialist – Labour government of 1945-51 ushered in a period of expansion that had not been seen before or since.

He said the economy is set to grow faster than similar countries; nobody cares. Where is the money going? It isn’t going to the people who will use the money but to the Tories’ rich friends – who hide it in banks.

Hunt claims his government is providing more investment, more jobs and better public services.

On investment, he says businesses are investing £30 billion more than during the last Labour government. Gosh. What’s that after inflation?

He cutting investment taxes for businesses by more than £10 billion – money that will go to shareholders and CEOs and won’t do the rest of us any good at all.

He’s providing £200 million to extend the Recovery Growth scheme for small businesses. And he said he’d increase the VAT registration threshold to £90,000, taking thousands of businesses out of paying VAT – another loss to the Treasury, although possible a benefit to the economy, depending on how those small businesses spend the extra cash.

He announced new devolved powers to local areas to support projects there, despite claims of corruption in at least one project that is already running.

He says the government is on track to deliver the building of a million new houses during the current government. Strange – the news has been full of stories about developers delaying building work.

He’s giving £100 million of Levelling-Up funding to support “cultural projects” in communities. What will be the knock-on effect for the economy?

He says the UK has a huge innovative technology economy. If that’s true, why have wages stagnated over the last 14 years? Why has the economy as a whole stagnated too? If these industries are doing so well, why has the government not intervened to ensure the benefits are spread as widely as possible?

He says the government will explore how people can take their pension pots with them when they change jobs. This would be good – but This Writer won’t hold his breath waiting for it.

Turning to other growth industries, Hunt refers to nuclear energy – which is a contradiction in terms as nuclear energy is highly-polluting.

In the creative industry, he’s increasing tax relief for visual effects in movies, and 40 per cent relief on film studios’ business rates. These are expanding industries – soon to be second only to Hollywood in the world, Hunt says. Why is he cutting their taxes when they are clearly doing fine and well able to pay? This is economic sabotage.

He announces new tax reliefs for theatres, saying this should be of particular interest to the Shadow Chancellor who specialises in acting like a Tory. This is a jibe that should strike home – but it renders all his talk of higher taxes by Labour hollow; Labour is a Substitute Tory Party.

Oh, there’s investment in AstraZeneca, the drugs firm that developed one of the controversial Covid-19 vaccines. With questions unanswered about the effect of the vaccines, is this wise?

Public services: He refers to investment in 20,000 police officers halving burglaries and violent crime – which is a lie. The Tories cut police by more than 20,000 and numbers haven’t recovered.

He says spending on public services has increased – by one-third, in real terms, in the NHS. Where has the money gone, then? We’re not seeing it in provision.

Oh – he says the money needs to be used wisely. He’s keeping a planned one per cent growth in real terms, but wants to “reform” public spending.

In the NHS, he’ll spend £3.4 billion to modernise IT systems in order to unlock £35 billion by slashing the time lost in form-filling, carrying out operations and reducing missed appointments. In fairness, that seems good. How much of it will be lost in private-sector profits?

Apparently the NHS will have nearly £6 billion in additional funding. Why, then, is there no more money for junior doctors who earn only slightly more money per hour than the bouncer at This Writer’s local pub?

The Chancellor has been mentioning lobbying by fellow Tory MPs; this is election-year campaigning – he’s trying to flag them up as useful for their communities. But are they? Who lobbied those MPs for the measures he has announced and how will they improve living standards among the rest of us?

Taxes: Hunt says the money we earn doesn’t belong to the government but to the people. This is nonsense; money is the oil that lubricates the economy and governments always control the amount we have because they control the amount we are taxed.

To prove this: Hunt went on to announce taxation of smoking and vaping, in order to discourage it by forcing smokers to lose more of their cash. See how it works? The money you keep is always dependant on a government’s priorities and that is why the richest people in the UK have increased their wealth massively over the last 14 years.

Non-dom taxation has been a political football in the run-up to the Budget. Hunt is abolishing the current system – as expected, to derision from the Opposition benches. He’ll replace it with a “residency-based” system. New arrivals from April 2025 will not have to pay tax for four years, but from that point onward, they’ll pay the same taxes as the rest of us.

Finally – the biggest announcement was a cut of two per cent in National Insurance – from 10 per cent to eight per cent for employees, and from eight per cent to six per cent for the self-employed.

It’s a £900 cut for employees and £450 for the self-employed (showing how those of us who work for ourselves are struggling?) – but what will be lost as a result?

He didn’t say. This is a Budget that is heavy on the tiny details of individual funding announcements and light on the details of public services that will be cut.

Oh, and I’m hearing that the overall tax burden is still rising because tax thresholds – the amount of earning that people can do before paying tax – are still frozen. So much for the “tax-cutting budget”!


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There is more money in the UK economy than ever before. Who’s got it?

Money, money, money: Rishi Sunak says there’s hardly any available for public services but there is more of it in the UK economy than ever before – more than three times as much as when the Tories came into office in 2010. Why doesn’t he use some of that, rather than leaving it in the hands of people who didn’t deserve to be given it in the first place?

Who is hoarding all the cash?

There is currently around £2.7 trillion washing around the UK economy somewhere. It’s not debt, as your mainstream Establishment politicians keep telling you, because the system needs to have money in order to work. It’s the blood that keeps the body alive; the oil that keeps the engine working. This Writer demonstrated as much in a previous article.

In a population of 68 million people, £2.7 trillion comes out as around £40,000 per person – easily enough for us to be able to pay for top-level public services and have enough left over to treat ourselves.

But we are constantly being told – most recently by Keir Starmer – that there is not enough money to provide the public services that we need; to re-nationalise our national utilities that are mostly making profit for firms owned by foreign governments, to restore our rotting water and sewage network that greedy private shareholders have allowed to fall into ruin while they took our bill payments for themselves, to invest in environmentally-friendly power and technology, to provide cheap housing… the list goes on and on.

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So where is all the cash? It must have gone somewhere, right?

The answer is that it has been given to extremely rich people who don’t need it, mostly (for example, in the case of the Covid-19 PPE scandals) in return for goods and/or services that didn’t actually work.

If you believe people like Gary Stevenson (and I tend to), these people have then hoarded that wealth, using it only to buy assets – property or businesses, in order to make them too expensive for the rest of us to be able to afford.

These things may then be rented or sold back to us at a price so high that we need to go into debt (think how much a mortgage costs these days) and spend the rest of our lives trying to pay the money back to them, with interest, so they can sit back on their fat backsides, eating lotus or whatever it is the idle rich do.

Remember: the inflated prices they ask us to pay are entirely arbitrary. They don’t have to charge us the Earth for anything because they are already rich and don’t need the cash to support them; a far lower price would be enough for them to get by.

So (again) if that’s where the cash has gone and what it is doing there, why is this happening?

The answer can only be: to keep the rest of us down. By denying us properly-funded public services, they force us to pay for expensive private schemes that don’t work because of profiteering, and this keeps us poor. Because we are poor, we have to work like slaves to try to make ends meet.

And this is the logical conclusion of all the neoliberal politics of the last 40-50 years: the creation of a new slave state, toiling in the dirt to keep a tiny group of elite citizens in absolute luxury.

Am I mistaken?

If you think so, then ask yourself: Where is my £40,000?


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The UK supports public ownership of utilities. Why do none of our politicians agree?

Privatisation of public services and utilities has failed dismally. Why do both the Conservatives and the Labour Party under Keir Starmer support it?

Why are they determined to ram it down our throats?

We all know the problems with privatisation:

And we all know the tricks our politicians use to support privatisation:

So we all know that privatisation doesn’t work as a way of providing water, energy, healthcare, rail and bus services and the mail.

And when I say all of us, the polling is conclusive:

Here’s the problem:

At the next general election, neither of the main UK political parties are going to offer public ownership to the people.

You will not be allowed the chance to vote for it.

Don’t you think that’s, well… wrong?

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Your politicians should be seeking election on platforms that have public support, shouldn’t they?

They should have consulted with the electorate and they should be putting forward policies that we feel we can get behind – shouldn’t they?

Has any politician asked you if you support public ownership?

Have any of them asked if you support privatisation?

I’m guessing the answer is no.

Then, why on Earth would you vote for any of them? If they’re not offering what you want – and they very clearly aren’t – you need to find someone else.


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Keir Starmer’s economic growth plan doesn’t allow for contingencies. Awkward…

There are two serious flaws in Keir Starmer’s plan to fund public services by growing the economy.

While you’re watching this clip, have a go at working out what they are:

Firstly, economic growth doesn’t necessarily mean more money for the Treasury.

In order to put new public money into services, a responsible government (that isn’t borrowing) will need to tax a similar amount out of us all – and a responsible Labour government would ensure that such taxation is weighted to put most of the burden onto the rich and profitable businesses.

Has Keir Starmer publicised plans for a new taxation structure for the UK? No. He has been courting businesses because he wants their donations. In turn, this means they’ll want tax breaks from him, or they’ll threaten to remove their financial support.

So it is hard to envision much extra cash making its way into the public purse under Starmer (although we would see more of it than under the Tories, who want to cut both taxes and public services to the bone).

Worse still is this: Keir Starmer has no contingency plan if the economy does not grow.

Three times, in the interview above, he was asked to explain what he would do then – and all three times, his only answer was that he believes the economy will grow.

Faith is a wonderful thing, but you can’t fuel the economy of a developed western nation on hot air and fantasy.


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These new inflation figures should be awkward for the Tories

Inflation has dropped to 6.8 per cent – but this is not an endorsement of Conservative government policy.

The Tories have spent months claiming that they cannot pay the money they deserve to public sector workers (including the junior doctors who were on strike over the weekend) because it would worse inflation – but today’s fall comes alongside an increase in average pay.

Looking at the small print, we see that none of this pay rise has gone to people who actually need it; instead it has further fattened the bloated bank accounts of high-paid company executives and other friends of the Conservative government.

But that doesn’t matter; wages have increased and inflation still came down. The Tory lie has been exposed as – in the language of Peter Stefanovic – bollocks:

The clip includes a few other interesting take-outs:

Workers in the UK are £11,000 a year worse-off.

2022 was the worst year for wage growth in almost half a century.

Average real wages in the UK will still be lower in 2026 than they were in 2008.

So it is impossible for public sector wages – or any other wages paid to employees – to have had anything to do with inflation figures.

In fact, according to the extremely non-socialist International Monetary Fund, the largest contributor to Europe’s inflation over the past two years was rising corporate profits cause by companies increasing their prices by more than the costs of imported energy. Look at your own energy bill over the past few years and compare the increases with the costs of energy and you will see the factual accuracy in this.

Increases in private sector wages may increase the price of goods – because companies would factor those rises into their prices.

There is evidence of this in the new figures: strip away the cuts in energy and food costs and core inflation is one per cent higher.

But that doesn’t happen in the public sector where, for example, healthcare is free at the point of use.

And the public sector labour force is only 17 per cent of the total workforce, meaning its pay increases have a lower effect than anything happening with the 83 per cent in the private sector.

Of course, prices are still increasing, meaning that people will blame that on increasing wages and demand another interest rate rise from the Bank of England to curb spending by the little people (you and me, as opposed to the big bosses who have actually received the pay boosts).

I struggle to grasp the point of such a move as it is more likely to cause a recession than stabilise the economy. The precipitous rise in interest rates set by the Bank has not affected inflation at all, and conventional wisdom suggests we will not see the result until 18 months after the first one was imposed. With inflation already coming down of its own accord – as was widely predicted by people like economist Richard Murphy – this could be disastrous.

So when the Tories come out with outrageous nonsense like this…

… I am glad to see responses that put it into the proper perspective, like this:

Sadly, the message is unlikely to get through to the general public, thanks to the biased priorities of our right-wing social media platforms. Look at the number of views the Tory propaganda has received, in comparison with those collected by Clare’s response.

Finally: at least someone out there can laugh about it. Read this:

Sadly for the story, even though the Royals are technically working in the public sector, they are right at the top of it, so their pay rise comes in as equivalent to those of the fatcat company execs.

Still, I don’t see anyone talking about the inflationary effect of this massive increase, so it adds to the evidence that public sector pay does not affect inflation and the Tories have been feeding us bullsh*t since the public sector strikes started, if not before.

Try to remember this amid the barrage of inadequate and misleading reporting by the BBC and the rest of the Tory media.


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Why is it now unattainable utopianism to want what we all had only a few years ago?

David Cameron: he told you you couldn’t afford the services that were once considered the bare minimum required in the UK, while funnelling the money that would have paid for those services to his rich friends. It has been going on for years.

It’s a good question, isn’t it?

Why are people who might broadly be described as socialists routinely ridiculed and patronised for ‘immaturity,’ ‘delusion,’ ‘utopianism,’ ‘naivety,’ ‘dreaming,’ and on and on – just for wanting a fairer society?

Martin Odoni tackles this in a new Critique Archives article, in which he states:

The idea behind this is the little-questioned assumption that being a socialist means believing in Utopia, and that socialists are therefore attempting to achieve the unachievable. The thing is, socialism has never been about making the world a perfect place, but only about making it a fairer place. A better place where no one is placed under unnecessary life pressure. Does that really sound wildly unattainable, or undesirable?

Of course it isn’t.

And the fact is that we had a much fairer society, here in the UK, within This Writer’s lifetime – and I’m not all that old.

The problem is that a succession of neoliberal governments – both Tory and Labour – have eroded that fairness away in the name of greater profit for the richest people in society.

They have privatised public utilities to make their services exclusive to people who can afford to pay higher prices for them, rather than a right that we all deserve. Did you not realise that this is the reason your heating bill was so high over the winter?

They have changed the tax system to ensure that the poorest people pay the largest proportion of their earnings. Rishi Sunak is the richest man in the entire country, and he pays a smaller proportion of his earnings in tax than a nurse.

They have cut average pay for employees while enabling bankers to take home huge undeserved bonuses.

And they have done these things to take money out of the economy and put it into private, tax-free bank accounts where it cannot be used to improve the quality of life of the nation as a whole.

This is the plan.

And while they have done it, they have been telling you that the services you once took for granted are now unaffordable.

It is the biggest, dirtiest lie in UK politics.

It has caused countless deaths – think of all the people who have died because their benefit claims were denied and they were too sick or disabled to defend themselves. Think of everyone who died of Covid-19 because the Tories were busy funnelling money that should have been spent on protective equipment and medical aid into the bank accounts of their friends, in return for nothing.

And they insult you by telling you anybody who thinks these deaths should be stopped is a naive dreamer. How do you feel about that – and what are you going to do?

Source: The lesson about “fanaticism” the Corbyn years should teach everyone ‹ TheCritique Archives ‹ Reader — WordPress.com


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Rishi Sunak caught lying about Tory achievements in local government?

Rishi Sunak in Parliament: he should check his facts before speaking – or was he just sneaking out a lie and hoping we wouldn’t notice?

Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak seems to have over-emphasized his party’s achievements in local government, as This Writer pointed out in a tweet:

I mentioned Guildford because the situation there was highlighted on Twitter recently, as follows:

So in this local government area, the Tories have increased council tax to the limit and have been cutting services – the exact opposite of the claim in Prime Minister’s Questions.

What’s the situation in your local government area?


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Strikes: will wage increases boost inflation? This may be a definitive answer

The Bank of England: don’t believe its claims about inflation.

Wage increases for striking public workers won’t increase inflation, no matter what Tory MPs say, because the government won’t add them to the cost of any products.

That’s the claim below, anyway – and it seems a good one.

The government creates money (well, orders it from the Bank of England, which then lends it to the government… it’s an over-complicated process, really) and uses taxation to keep the supply of cash within the economy at a reasonable level, thereby controlling inflation (as much as it can; the current situation is a special case, mostly caused by Brexit and foreign influences).

So it should be possible for the government to pay striking nurses (for example) as much as they want.

For commercial enterprises, matters may be different – but that’s only a possibility too:

Some have taken issue with this:

But this depends on greedy private enterprises deciding to raise their prices because they know people have more money to spend, which is poor business; taking people’s spare cash away the instant they get it means they won’t be able to support as many different parts of the economy as they would otherwise and ultimately the lot would overbalance (which is what it’s doing now, in fact).

Also, I didn’t notice prices falling when the government was stamping on everybody else’s wages.

Finally, I notice the International Monetary Fund is saying wage-price spirals are historically rare:

So what’s my verdict on the Tory claim that paying back to public sector workers the wages that have been taken away from them over the past 13 years will cause another inflation spike?

Scaremongering.