Later, we are told it is a multitude of small, short-term issues, of which panic-buying fuel is but the latest, and once we're through we'll be in global-Britain times enjoying our prosperity, power and independence to the max.
But will we? As it feels as though the situation is
worsening, with bad surprises flying in every week. And for the causes,
don't look local, because these are global supply chain problems. Of
course.
working conditions, pay, red tape, laziness and over-sensitivities, many drivers quitting because of the lockdowns, not training up new HGV operators, and not women, Brexit causing many to return home, giving a shortage of 100,000 drivers. That's a lot and you do wonder what the RHA has been doing - all asleep in their cabs!
We are talking about logistics for retail food and fuel, but that's not all. What we are talking about is shipping costs, and gas price rises and a drop in sterling, we're concerned about inflation and interest rates, tax rises both 2.5% NI (yes, 2.5%) and local authority tax rises, and ultimately how all this joins up to the medium and long term as concerns the EU FTA, the break-up of the kingdom, and beyond that to recession, debt-collapse, climate change, migrations, the rise of China.
We can imagine low interest rates and high inflation, followed by high interest rates and recession. If high-wage, capital is going to replace labour and put those low-wage often immigrant, workers on the dole, at taxpayer expense.
It's a lot for Boris to think about (we are getting into a cult figure status).
Can we see what's happening through this glare of more and more short-term problems? Saunders is interesting
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/09/brace-interest-rate-rises-warns-bank-england-rate-setter/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr.
Oil prices have reached a three year
high, $80 a barrel, and climbing thanks to output disruptions and this
high demand. Traditional oil companies are selling out and investing in
green, adding to supply problems and green is much more expensive.
Germany is now back to relying on coal and on Putin!
Then there's the construction sector where more than one in three businesses can't get the materials, goods and services they need within the UK. How will a young person rehab the flat they've just bought? What effect on the target of 300,000 housing starts?
The gas surge closed two of
the UK’s big industrial fertiliser plants in a completely unexpected and
inflationary surprise, showing graphically how everything is connected
to everything and everywhere there are knife-edges,resulting in more
govt takeover in the "market" economy and state aid and yet more
borrowing.
Food prices and staples. Commodities. Is this the start of a new supercycle?
So now we have inflation at 4 per cent for the short-term, plus a possible base rate rise early next year, possibly even this year 2021. America same same. Plus if we enter the land of 5% inflation there will be the threat to stock markets, not just imminent tapering.
Still, no significant upturn in unemployment nor substantial corporate distress. Only inflation, supply difficulties that threaten the economic recovery (which is already faltering).
And what about the jobs of those coming off furlough? Will they want to back to work? Will employers have work for them? Given the worsening outlook.
Only
worries and questions. No real answers. Yet everyone is talking of
recession. And the Prince of Norway offers the UK help with food and
fuel. That's quite humiliating.
Sort out the short term, the central bank needs to say no interest rate rises medium term, but the long term is surely out of the hands of management or politicians.
At last week’s Conservative conference, the Prime Minister championed a high-wage, low-immigration economy driven by high productivity, accusing firms of being drunk on cheap labour from abroad. But unless productivity is also there, it will simply lead to higher inflation and require a more stringent response from the BoE.
For all the PM’s urging, growth in productivity, which allows the economy to get more bang for its buck, has been anaemic for a decade or more. The best way, really the only way, to achieve a sustained rise in real wages is through higher productivity growth. But are there any signs of that? So far, no.
In any case, what are the answers to how to raise productivity among the likes of HGV drivers, or baristas in coffee shops? It’s very hard in advance to anticipate the details of how productivity growth can pick up, but we know the general conditions which help :
It has well overstepped the mark with its claim to sovereignty over nation states. If it could restrain itself to a trade body such as the IEEE that would be fine.
Instead, this creeping federalism, where it bribes trade bodies into accepting its constitution by offering subsidies, offering control through the ECJ, and in return it stuffs their boards with its representatives and imposes its political goals on their charters.
There are 40 such agencies.
But also the
EASA now controls them because it sits on the boards of the nationals to
ensure they are fulfilling obligations for the free movement of
individuals, services and goods... not a national objective.
That's how integration works. National govts are sapped of their powers and cannot achieve their priorities for their own peoples.
That's broadly why the UK left.
7 October 2021
*Paula Rego at Tate Britain
I have a ticket to see paintings by a Portuguese artist, Paula Rego, at Tate Britain on Friday.
*About
She explores adults’ cruelty and children’s wildness and in her paintings, her stories tell of dangerous adventures.
Rego is a clever and deep woman and this expo will be difficult for me to comprehend ... which is why I'm going!!
*Jungian
Rego explains: ‘it was very important to go to the origin, the imaginative origin that provides the images of what we have inside us, without us knowing what it is’.
*Surrealist
*Your biography
Or go for a globally diversified portfolio with a mixture of equities and high-quality bonds bonds providing stability and equities providing the growth to beat inflation. Ramin again
https://youtu.be/jKMZOojV0mE
It may not lend much immediate comfort, but in the long run it could prove to be the wisest choice: lower expectations, aim not to lose against inflation, ie weather the storm for now and wait for stability to return.
And parents were supposed to work from home and teach their kids. Work, with the kids under their feet all day. Teach, with neither the knowledge nor the pedagogy.
Terrible times, empty memories. Time hangs when you've nothing to do, but looking back, getting on for two years gone in a flash.
4 October 2101
Pragmatic, except that it would further align the N S economies and distance NI from GB, further opening the road to a united Ireland.
I mean, imagine that one day the impossible happens and a referendum in NI puts Unite ahead. The Green flag wins, the Orange flag sees a complete rupture with GB and is desperate, the Get-ahead flag doesn't much care either way. Think GFA...
Wouldn't it have been better to prepare a home of sorts for Ireland in GB, rather than a hurt daughter plight (or plaid) her troth to the EU?
Outlining the Government's desire to bring about a “British renaissance”, he will go on to state:
“All history, all experience, shows that democratic countries with free economies, which let people keep more of the money they have earned, make their own decisions, and manage their own lives, are not just richer but also happier and more admired by others.
“The long bad dream of our EU membership is over. The British renaissance has begun."
5 December 2025 Rome, Spain, the Dutch and Britain fought to the end for their currency and their supremacy. Talks in Moscow hin...
