Former Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry seems to have embarked on a new career course – as an irritant.
Watch him in his appearance on the BBC’s Politics Live, where he came out with a series of falsehoods, overtalked other guests, and tried to start argument after argument.
I was live-tweeting at the time and tried to comment on as many of his shenanigans as possible. Feel free to comment down below on his words, my observations and anything I missed.
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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:
To anyone arguing that taxes will necessarily have to increase to “pay for” public sector increases, that’s not where the government gets its spending money from…
or as little as it wishes, but in doing so, it (maybe without realising it) is setting the price level. If it spent 10% more each year on the same quantity of goods and services it IS going to cause inflation to be around 10%, unless it can force down the prices of everything
I had a similar thought – at least some of the increased wages would be spent in the economy. But, some might also be saved or used to pay off debt, plus it will all (eventually) be taxed back anyway without necessarily increasing tax rates.
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:
And wage price spirals are very rare in the historical record, say those looney lefties at the IMF. https://t.co/THfX8jAxzO
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?
The big takeout from this clip is around eight minutes in. I’ll copy it below:
“Not that it’s just underfunding that [the Conservatives in government] use to stop the NHS from functioning properly.
“They broke up the NHS into smaller, less efficient parts, unconnected parts; they’ve put people with private healthcare interests in charge of NHS budget decisions in the NHS trusts, they’ve allowed hospital buildings to fall into disrepair, they’ve systematically lowered people’s standard of living – making illness and injury more likely in the population to increase the burden on the health service, they’ve reduced the number of [staff] employed in the service; this collapse of the NHS isn’t sudden… it’s been happening for years.
“Before Covid we had at least two years’ of reports of patients being left in corridors – not always even on a trolley.”
At least three years, in fact. Here‘s an article from This Site in January 2017. Bear in mind, that is now six years ago.
“This has been going on for a very long time indeed, across five different Tory prime ministers, now.”
Additionally:
“To a Tory, ‘efficiency’ doesn’t mean what it does to you or I. It doesn’t mean ‘doing more with your resources’… it means having fewer resources. It means cutting the resources – and just hoping that the productivity stays the same.
“The Tory meaning of efficiency is always – always, 100 per cent of the time – job cuts.
“[Their angle] will be: ‘You can have better pay; we will pay you more – if that comes as a result of sharing out the salaries of staff leaving the service, and you do their work on top of your own. We don’t even try to recruit replacements. You do the extra work.
“That’s what it will mean.”
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One of the most consistently-reliable critics of Tory government health policy appeared on a social media politics programme – and explained the policy behind the current NHS crisis and staff strikes that Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay don’t want you to know.
Dr Bob Gill explained on the Not The Andrew Marr Show that the NHS has too few staff because people don’t want to work for the increasingly-lower wages the Tories are offering – and the Tories are cutting wages because a lower wage bill will make the health service much more attractive to private health firms when the Tories finally offer its constituent parts up for sale.
Apart from that, the main takeouts from this interview are firstly that a public-private partnership – in health or any other public service area – never works. Private firms will simply cherry-pick the most lucrative and least risky elements of the service to provide themselves, but they will be motivated by profit, meaning they’ll cut corners in service provision and mess up the procedures they carry out – and the public purse will have to pay to put matters right.
Secondly, Labour are as little to be trusted as the Tories, now that the party is rotting under the leadership of Keir Starmer. He’s as New Labour as they come, and under Tony Blair, that organisation went through with the Private Finance Initiative for the provision of hospitals, that led to a huge number of NHS beds being closed – and now the NHS is in crisis because there aren’t enough beds for the number of patients.
Here’s the clip:
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Have you seen this on the mainstream news… anywhere?
It seems the Tory government has taken advantage of its new Brexit-given freedoms to lift a cap on bankers’ bonuses.
It’s being touted as part of a drive to return the UK to economic growth – but in reality it is nothing of the sort.
Bankers are paid a fortune already and don’t need the cash. Therefore they won’t spend it into the economy – they’ll stash it away somewhere and it won’t do anything to restore economic growth.
Also, the Bank of England has been advocating pay restraint for the rest of us – in the face of double-figure inflation – because it says pay rises in line with inflation will cause even more inflation.
Do you get the impression these people are talking out of their collective rear ends?
If a government wants to get its economy going, it has to pay money to the poorest people in the country – because they need it, and they’ll spend it. The cash will go through more hands, if it starts at the lowest level, before being taxed out of the system – and this means it will create the greatest boost to the economy, adding value with every exchange.
What’s happening here will harm the UK economy. See if I’m wrong.
Here’s the clip that inspired this article:
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Gratitude to Open Democracy for putting together a video clip showing Jacob Rees-Mogg demonstrating his extreme antipathy towards working people.
He believes that no employee should have paid holidays; that the minimum wage should not be raised, even in the face of rampant inflation; that national pay bargaining should be abolished so that wages in the UK can become a postcode lottery; and that the Victorian Age was one of the finest in British history.
This man is now the UK’s Business Secretary. You see the problem?
Check out the clip for yourself – along with Maximilien Robespierre‘s commentary:
Oh, and this is on-point too:
From a bloke that works 26 weeks a year, 4 day week, part time hours and gets paid full time 52 weeks a year + unlimited expenses paid by the taxpayers – the hypocrisy is blatant. pic.twitter.com/EibqTYaRBR
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I found this little video, explaining why it makes more sense economically to pay workers enough money to meet their needs and have a little extra for leisure/comfort.
It’s pretty well established by now that such pay rises don’t drive up inflation – that comes from greedy company bosses whose profit motive demands that they increase prices arbitrarily. Am I right?
With that in mind, here’s the clip:
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THIS IMAGE IS FROM FIVE YEARS AGO: back then, the TUC said real wages were still lower than they were when the financial crisis hit in 2008. After all their protestations of making life better for us, the Tories have only inflicted worse suffering upon us.
The Conservatives have delivered the fastest fall in real wages ever recorded.
That’s right – and you can be sure Tory MPs will be celebrating their achievement in making the pound in your pocket practically worthless to you.
It flies in the face of every claim they’ve ever made in order to get your vote – remember Boris Johnson’s protestation that he was going to deliver a “high wage” economy, only last year? Who was stupid enough to believe that?
But they don’t care because they have feathered their own nests very nicely.
Remember: it didn’t have to be this way. It is Conservative government policies that have put you in a situation where you will not be able to afford the simple necessities of life.
Here’s the BBC:
While average wages rose 4.7% between April and June, that was outpaced by inflation – or price rises – which is growing at a much faster pace.
As a result, the “real value” of pay fell by 3%, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Household budgets are being hit by soaring energy bills as well as higher food and fuel costs.
The rise in prices has fuelled the UK inflation rate to a 40-year high of 9.4% and the latest figure due to be published on Wednesday is forecast to be higher.
The gap between pay growth and inflation is the biggest since records began more than 20 years ago.
Remember when the Tories froze public sector pay for years at a time, and private pay rises were limited to around one per cent per year (except for bosses, who wrote their own cheques as usual, and MPs who have their pay determined by an “independent” organisation that always offers higher-than-inflation pay increases)?
If pay had risen realistically at that time and afterwards, would we have been able to withstand this shock? I ask merely for information.
Wage growth has been behind inflation for most of the Tories’ time in office since 2010. It is Conservative Party policy to ensure that you are paid less, and that you are less able to afford vital goods and services.
It goes back to the “Starve the Beast” plan that George W Bush used in the United States – the idea being that tax cuts make public services impossible to provide and unaffordable to the general public, who are put into permanent wage slavery to pay off the debts they rack up trying to pay for (as an example) health care. Liz Truss is a huge fan of Starving the Beast.
And the government is still trying to fob us off with its usual excuse:
Julie Marson, minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, said… “Being in stable employment is one of the best ways for people to get on.”
This is clearly not true under the Tories.
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Liz Truss: after Boris Johnson said the UK was set to become a high-wage economy, she has accused anybody seeking a wage rise above the current poverty levels of “militancy”. This is the true face of Tory.
So, only months after Boris Johnson said the UK was going to be a high-skill, high-wage – and, yes, low-tax – economy, anybody demanding a wage rise is “militant”.
Check out what Peter Stefanovic has to say about Liz Truss’s Tory turnabout:
It was our trade unions which fought for & won the minimum wage, maternity & paternity rights, pension provision & the holiday & sickness entitlements which have benefited us all
And not only should Liz Truss not be prime minister, but she should never have been allowed into politics at all.
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What you’re worth: with more jobs available than workers, you’re doing employers a favour if you decide to work for them. MAKE SURE THEY PAY YOU PROPERLY FOR IT.
Official figures are telling us there are more job vacancies than people looking for work – for the first time since records began.
So why aren’t employers paying enough for their staff to survive?
This Writer remembers a moment, back when I was looking for my first newspaper job. I called up for an interview and the guy on the phone asked me if I could make the following Monday (or whenever).
“Oh,” said I. “I’ve got another interview then. How about another time?”
“Too bad!” said he, and rang off – because so many people were looking for work then that employers could afford to treat people like dirt.
(I got the other job, though – and it was better-paid.)
Now the tables are turned. Jobseekers can afford to treat poor-paying bosses like dirt for a change.
So, work out how much you need to earn in order to live comfortably, and when you go to that job interview, make sure they pay it to you.
Because if they can’t (or, more probably, won’t), then they’ll have to do without your expertise.
And their company will probably collapse due to the lack of it…
… like the newspaper whose editor couldn’t be bothered to give me a mutually-convenient interview!
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