Cost of Living Crisis

A rich person going on telly trying to tell people who have nothing how to save a few pennies here and there, is the height of condescension. She can go *@?$ herself.

 

I see ITV have public mood to a tee.

Phil and Holly doing a win your energy bills on a wheel of fortune phone in quiz.

Reminds me of the time Sky Sports had Jim White stood infront of a countdown clock whilst Bury FC were going out of business as if it were transfer deadline day.

Maybe we could have a higher or lower card game on next to win a gallon of fuel.

 

Information is mixed on the state of the Russian economy, depending on which reports you read (see below). It's clear that the Russian economy has not collapsed overnight due to sanctions, but that was never going to happen. The loss of oil and gas exports to its biggest customer - Europe - may be hurting us more than Russia at present, but that's a temporary phenomenon which will finally push Europe into developing other, non fossil, sources of energy. The loss of this market is a massive mid/long term economic blow which cannot be easily or quickly replaced. The exceptional measures being utilised by Russia central bank to shore up the economy cannot go on forever.
It's clear that Putin did not envisage a long drawn out conflict, nor that his army would perform so terribly and suffer such huge losses of troops and expensive ordinance. There are now credible reports of Russian troops running short of ammunition and other kit. The longer the war goes on the more the technologically superior western weaponry will prevail; the harder it will become for Russia to replenish its (often unwilling) troops with necessary equipment and the greater the drain on the economy. This is not what Putin envisaged at all when he set off to annexe Ukraine back into his dreams of a new Russian Empire/USSR.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/29/did-sanctions-really-hurt-the-russian-economy

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/business/russia-economy-gdp.html

https://www.ft.com/content/eebc166b-0ab3-4a69-b61c-62908ee984e5

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/22/russia-economy-sanctions-myths-ruble-business/

I have some sympathy with what you say about our inaction in other conflicts and I accept that there is an element of hypocrisy, particularly given the colonial history of the west in most of those countries.
However, there is a hugely significant point of difference. In geographical terms, Russia is on our doorstep compared to those other countries. It is also inextricably bound up with the history and culture of Europe. It directly borders several countries that are part of the European family of modern democratic Western nations. Several of those countries used to be subservient elements of the Russian Empire/USSR and have made a considered democratic choice to be free of Russian domination and part of the western European family.

Democracy undoubtedly has its faults but, as Churchill (amongst others) once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all those others that have been tried from time to time". Putin has no interest in democracy. He believes it is weak and decadent. He is only interested in power. He wants to be remembered in history as the man who reconstituted the Russian Empire, regardless of whether any of those former colonies wish to be slaves to Russia again. He openly states that Ukraine is a region of Russia, not an independent state with its own history and the right to elect its own government.

The reason that the west is so involved in Ukraine is because it's not just about Ukraine. It's about the right of sovereign democracies to maintain their self determination as independent states. Putin has already illegally annexed Crimea, installed puppet regimes in Belarus and parts of Donbas. If the West does not help Ukraine to stop him, it would be Moldova, the Baltic States and Poland next. And he would go on and on until he recaptures everything he believes is 'rightfully' part of Russia's empire.

You may be too young to have lived through the Cold War years, but I'm not. Putin wants to take us back to those times, when Russia was a superpower and all of Eastern Europe was subjugated in poverty, uniformity and state surveillance. For all the West's faults, and they are many, the world is a safer place without a Russian dictator dominating half of Europe.

 

Just out of interest, which country would you emigrate to and why that particular country?

 

Love the tax cuts, hate the borrowing that has been used to fund them. That's a massive gamble, especially at a time when there's so much general uncertainty around anyway.

In terms of the housing market, I'm not sure you're right, the competition for the majority of sales is still nuts. The continuing increases in interest rates is gonna stop that soon though.

 

It's pure economic madness, driven by ideological extremists who believe, as an article of faith, that the market will solve everything.

I'm a dyed in the wool Keynesian. Governments borrowing to fund direct investment in industry and infrastructure to pump prime the economy and create jobs and wealth - bang on.
Governments borrowing to fund tax cuts in the (fingers crossed) hope that the rich and powerful will do the investment for them - laughably inept and unrealistic.
There's not a shred of evidence that making the rich richer will create the conditions for economic growth. 'Trickle down economics' is a myth that has never once been shown to work.

 

Can’t see how this government makes it to even the second half of 2023 before a general election. They’ve basically done a complete 180 on almost everything they got elected for economically. I think the the rumblings of them having no mandate will snowball quite quickly and become so loud that an early election will be inevitable.

Only a mug votes for them now.

That budget was a disgrace. Wanting the super rich to bail the country out basically. Cost of living crisis and the poor get nothing.

This government is ruining the country badly and we need to get them out.

 

Absolutely
The "Rich and Powerful" are investing already but not in progressive industry eg Bill Gates buying farmland Why ???
Property a one time sound investment will soon be priced out the market house prices will soon collapse with many many thousands of people plunging hopelessly toward negative equity, who will be able to afford a mortgage when interest rates reach double figures (it won't be long,)
This will bite the Tories in the bum soon enough it's always been the same with them the rich get richer the poor get poorer maybe if Liz Truss spent a day at a foodbank or soup kitchen it would give her a reality check (I doubt it)
No great shocks

 

Bonnet de douche, Rodders.

 

You voting Labour then at the next GE?

 

Yes. I will be. Think after 12 years I have and others given the current party enough time and what they have produced most of all is failure. Enough is a Enough.

Friday mini budget was a joke of the highest order.

You being a mug?

 

Tories : " we're going to give everyone one million pounds and you no longer have to go to work...Labour: " It's not enough" ...

 

edited for you

 

Looks like there’s limited oxygen in that there Upper GreetLaLaLand.

 

You have just admitted to voting tory for the last 12 years and moaning they haven't done very well. Who is the mug here?

 

Except they aren't giving most ordinary people anything. The limited amount of 'help' they have latterly promised (U-turning widely in the process) is massively outweighed by their disastrous economic management for the past twelve years, leaving everybody but the most well off significantly poorer under their management.
And now Truss's bunch of economic morons are making it even worse by gambling on tax cuts for the rich, which has totally spooked the markets, leaving our currency at its lowest level for decades, making imports - which we rely heavily on for our food - even more expensive.

If the Tories had deliberately set out to wreck our economy they could hardly have done a better job of it. They simply don't know what they're doing.