The latest poll by the Institute of Directors (IoD) found that business leaders’ confidence in their own company plunged to -20 immediately after the Budget, down from zero in October. This was the second-lowest monthly reading on record. Confidence has only ever been lower in April 2020, when Britain was reeling from the pandemic and lockdown restrictions.
The IoD said that bosses’ expectations for revenue growth, hiring and investment have all fallen.
Reeves is choosing to return our economy to pandemic days.
She is not the first. Attlee, Wilson/Callaghan, Blair/Brown all ended up busting the economy. It's just a question of how long it takes, which is dependent on two factors:
1. How socialist they are
2. How bad the economy was when they inherited it.
This government is the most socialist ever, and inherited an economy already on its knees. No prizes for guessing the inevitable outcome. With any luck the bond markets will force them to go. But more likely they will just force them to be a bit less socialist, which will risk alienating their dwindling loyal supporters, but mean we are stuck with them.
It is interesting to apply the two factors to the previous 14 years:
1. They were mildly socialist.
2. They inherited a bust economy, as they always do, courtesy of Labour.
As a result of 1, they presided over a woke obsessed decline. But make no mistake, they were a million times better than the current crew.
It will not be good enough next election for those on the right to sit on their hands and whine that they have nobody to vote for, so voting for nobody. That led to this government's massive majority, more than the "split of the right" between Reform and the Conservatives. It may be that the left wing vote is split between Labour, LibDems, Your Party (finally we know its name) (Silly Party), and Green (Very Silly Party).
One of the problems we face is that some 18% of voters actually think that they should vote for a party led by a communist lunatic who believes in no borders at all, no landlords, the legalisation of all drugs, and breast enhancement through the power of thought, whose second in command appears to be a radical Islamist. And another cohort would vote for the anarchist omnishambles created by a has been Marxist and a rabid trans ideologue that doesn't think it needs a leader. As Sigourney Weaver famously said in Aliens, "did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?"
Which brings me to my final question. If Starmer and Reeves do go, which of the brainless lickspittle boneheads that form the cabinet (or recently were forced out of it) would you replace them with?
Absolutely spot on as ever Jeremy. We’re all terrified of what comes next. You can see it in all the comments today. If the Greens are a ‘viable’ party, ie they could actually form part of a leftist coalition, it’s very worrying.
On the upside, I just bought Alien and Aliens on 4K. I’ve never seen Alien look so good, (not watched Aliens yet) and I saw it on the big screen last year. I haven’t got a home cinema or anything like that. Just a fairly large TV. 👽
I think you need the director's cut, which includes all the automatic gun firing scenes, but also the interview with Ripley. I would guess the 4K version would include them.
Yes. The Aliens 4K pass was redone by Cameron and I think includes the Directors Cut. Some people say it looks weird, haven’t seen it yet, but I was very happy with what he did with The Abyss. Controversially my 2nd favourite Cameron flick..
The worst bit is that those 18% are well off, middle class pseudo intellectuals. They don't think. They just vote out of reflex.
The failure of the previous government was that it did absolutely nothing. The argument over covid or Brexit is a side issue. There are over half a million people employed (I don't say working) in Whitehall. So much could have been done and nothing was. The political class just lurch from one frenzied chaos to another.
The clue the state was clueless was when after spaffing all the cash on Covid they said 'Right, now we're hiking taxes to get *our* money back'.
Err... do you think big government matters? Do you think we need you? We needed low taxes. A small, efficient state that serves the public. The statists immediately said 'Now give us our money back' without a single comprehension or consideration of the damage they would do. It was a moronic, egotistical, desperately socialist arrogance - worse, it was from the bloomin' Tories!
Our revenue is down 20%. Mostly because several of our customers have folded. A planned expansion into another building by a firm of solicitors we work for has been halted - and the comp work we would do scrapped. Admin staff have been made redundant. Every year we vote to continue the company. Usually we've made a profit and reinvest that in kit or people. This year we're likely to say no, and set a time to stop and either retire or find other work. It's just not worth it.
I appreciate Reeves is thick beyond measure, that the Treasury, insulated from the carnage it causes doesn't care but there are real world consequences from their spiteful, twisted ideological malice.
Sorry, how can confidence be negative? That's like colder than absolute zero. I get the idea of course, but surely confidence can be no lower than zero?
The sobering fact, however, is that, if Reeves is ousted, there is nobody on the Labour benches who wouldn’t be as bad and probably a whole lot worse to replace her as chancellor.
It’s the main worry isn’t it Paul? Get rid of Reeves and Starmer and it’s not like the government would lurch to the right. It’s inevitable I think. This budget might end up seeming like a set of measures from Hayek compared to what Rayner would impose.
I understand she didn’t do I’m a Celebrity TV show because she sensed an opportunity was coming up. And say what you like about her, her political instincts are pretty spot on.
On the upside, so much damage would be done so quickly even the banks would stop funding them. They'd be done within a month, Labour ousted and consigned to the dustbin of history.
Thing is, Reeves does not write the budget. She's dumb as a lead box of rocks! Replacing her would make no difference. The entire state machine is the problem.
The budget is written by the Treasury. Can you imagine Reeves doing the maths to understand the basics of a profit and loss spreadsheet? She's a serial liar and crook.
She stole from her bank job, she lied about the BoE job, she had her government card revoked and slapped just about everything on expenses. She's a crook!
What is the most damning verdict on Rachel Reeves , is that the OBR who lived through about 15 chancellors with the Tories. Went enough is enough and leaked the budget and then doubled down and made it perfectly clear that there was a surpass just to officially end her career. Although today in the Guardian they are claiming Kier Starmer is coming out fighting….
Starmer and Reeves are joined at the hip. I don’t see how he survives if she goes. Yes, he could do a deal with the far far left of his party-he hands the Treasury to them in return for staying on as P, but that would just mark him out as a lame duck, all his authority (if he even has any left at this point) would evaporate in an instant.
Suppose it’s the quality of the fight Starmer puts up now. If he goes in hard and directly uses all his authority to get behind her, they are both done. On the flip side he could use the platform to talk up the good things Labour has done, admit they made some “mistakes” and push her out. Putting in Darren Jones in her place and we can rinse and repeat this cycle after the may elections 😂
Remember the good old days in British politics when you had a leader for the 4 year term ?
Righty, hang on. If there's a surplus, why are we borrowing more than ever?
This 'black hole' and redefinition of deficit, combined with 'my fiscal rules on capital spending' are just lies to disguise a truly lethal combination.
It's an attempt at clever accounting that always happens under Leftists and always fails.
Should we have a whip round and buy her the entire works of Thomas Sowell as a Christmas present?
The salmon ridiculousness reminds me of being obliged by the local planning authority to pay over £5k for two bat surveys (one at night) to identify that one COMMON pipistrelle bat had decided to roost in the loft of the hovel I was demolishing, rather than any of the trees in the surrounding woodland and that I was also therefore obliged (as a planning condition) to provide said bat (and how will they know it's the evicted one and not just some other chancer who doesn't like trees) with new accommodation once the proposed house was built.
Meanwhile, the government is quite happy for the HS2 project to destroy dozens of ancient woodlands (ie irreplaceable remnants of our ancient forest) and kill countless wildlife that will be part of those woodland habitats. As usual, different rules apply to us mortals.
I am surprised the EPA and the nuclear regulatory agency only spent £700M saving one salmon every 12 years!! Thanks for that bit of news to start December with!! 🤬🤬
Ah, but a lot of people benefitted from that £700m - Quango employees, state employees, some might have even leaked to a few of the people at Hinckley Point. Not bad news for everyone!
"Thanks in no small part to her own ineptitude, mismanagement, and lies, Grub Street will be far too busy over the next few weeks and months, writing a completely different obituary.
The obituary of Britain."
They won't because they won't even recognise it. They live in their own world. Britain has been decaying for years - average incomes are lower now than in 2007, an unprecedented fall, and public services hobble along while public sector wage increases outpace those of everyone else. Importing alien cultures is the final nail in the coffin of the old-fashioned Brit.
I think - I don't know - I think - most salmon for food comes from farmed fish. I don't know enough about that to present an argument for or against.
You're entirely right that there must be a limitation on expenditure, but that's the whole point of the 'climate' farce: not to actually achieve anything, but to hold up the rational by the irrational. The more damage the Left can do, the more they hinder the economy, the happier they are.
I have no words for the political situation (well, I do but I'd prefer action, specifically a series of ropes and lamp posts). As you say, it is just malice. Pure, unadulterated malice.
The worst bit is the perpetual lies. The blithering on about 'growth' and 'making you better off' when the absolute sole intent is to destroy growth, to steal from workers and savers and to hand it to an ever growing welfare base solely to buy votes - of course, that *is* the growth they're talking about. It is an explicit reward and thank you from Labour to the growing tumour of idle welfare dependent and immigrants - over 80% of the demographic are welfare dependent and a spiteful slap in the face and kick in the nads to those who have repeatedly voted (including Brexit) to refuse the population replacement tsunami.
The OBR only accounts immigration as a grower of GDP - it doesn't even bother with GDP per capita. It's their only dynamic response variable. They don't even account for tax cuts, despite the evidence (a reduction in corp tax of 6% more than doubled tax revenue 24% to 58%). Imagine what would happen if the tax allowance were set to 16K and the upper and higher rates scrapped?
I know a spinal surgeon, a proper genius who only works 2 days a week (in the UK). Why? Any more and he falls into the 60% bracket. He *loses* money the more he works. What a waste (to this country) of ability all because the Left wing state is greedy, spiteful and run by people with no competence, experience of ability except to - mostly fraudulently - steal other people's money.
The saddest bit though, is that so few people understand the basics. So few actually get that cutting taxes for the well off - supply side economics - works. The Left so demonise it as trickle down (ever known a pauper to build and staff a factory?) but that's just their own envy. Normal folk don't get it either. They see 'oh, hike to the min wage' and think it goes to them. It doesn't. It's a tax on employers and the state, which; thanks to freezing the tax allowance takes the majority. That's why the scum hike it and why they freeze the bands (Brown did this with working tax credits. Why raise the tax allowance/cut taxes when you can reward your favoured few?). It'd be simpler for the employee to raise the allowance but the Treasury is a cynical, greedy robber baron.
While people don't understand we're doomed. Worse, the state ensures that cohort grows. It likes ignorant, dependent people. They vote for more money from workers and the state happily, cruelly obliges.
Hey Wibbling. I agree with all this apart from the lamp posts bit. There is already enough politically inspired violence to go round at the moment. I certainly don’t think we need more of it.
Just respecting democracy- honouring referendums, sticking to manifesto promises, not gerrymandering votes by creating voters from children and foreigners would be a good start.
I am angry, Mr LSO. I wouldn't wish anyone harm at all but the political class exist in a bubble, waffling on about tax this, debt that more for Tracey and Sharon (or sadly more likely 'the diversity') to have as many children as they like and that someone else must pay because 'that is fair'. What is fair about stealing what i have earned for my family and giving it to another that hasn't?
Why is that 'fair'? Of course, it isn't, except in an evil, cruel socialist mind. Why should my son go without so another one can buy booze, fags or another revolting tattoo with *my* money?
What we need is the revocation of universal franchise. No work? No vote. I might make exceptions for people who contribute in other ways but I imagine such folk wouldn't want a say.
In addition, referism - the state asks us for permission on what it can spend and we can refuse that in part or whole. Then we need recall. The state cannot be permitted to exist when they are blatantly corrupt. When the infighting and squabbling becomes their goal to do in the country - as Grieve, Soubry, Starmer and Bercow wanted to over Brexit - we sack them and prevent their holding office ever again.
But the only group who can enact those controls is the state and it's not going to let annoyances like democratic accountability hinder it's demented globalist rationing plan. Heck, Starmer is desperately trying to undo Brexit beneath us by re-writing the treaty to give away all the caveats fought for to prevent the hated EU having the power over us Frost worked for (such as making the ECJ arbiter default).
They will never permit true democracy so it has to be forced on them. That's all they've left us. If there is another way I'd love it, but I do not see one. I wish there were. I wish the political class understood they are servants, not master. If they felt shame and guilt for their malice, greed and stupidity. But they don't.
What a wonderful rant Wibbling. Though calling it a rant does it a disservice.
This idea of No Work No Vote is something I’ve heard a couple of times this week. And I think it kind of makes sense-not because it takes power away from the workless, but that it removes power from politicians, making it harder for them to bribe one set of voters, with another set of voters’ money.
The only problem of course, and it’s a big one, is that once a group is rendered ‘worthless’ to our political class it dumps them like a hot potato, treating them like less than dirt. Working class white boys are the second best example these days. After the working class white girls of Rotherham and the rest.
I share your anger at the Brexit betrayals. They started on June 24 2016 and they haven’t let up since. I’ve always said they will never stop until they take us back in. For Labour and Tory. It was always the mission.
I'd far prefer government simply didn't interfere at all - with anyone. It does an appalling job and distorts the natural order of merit and outcome by favouring one side or the other.
The rape gangs are again an example of government malice as it protects one group from another - in this case, muslims from justice.
However, going up a step, if the state hadn't deliberately forced massive uncontrolled immigration on this country (again, through interfering) the whole problem wouldn't exist.
Just cut off the money. The State acquired enormous power when the docile, short-sighted majority traded it for dependence and ‘benefits’, paid for by overtaxing the productive minority. Both the State and their dependents have no interest in changing this arrangement. It falls to the extorted minority to revolt against it in a massive class action.
Here is an extract of UK law on extortion:
“Section 21 of the Theft Act 1968…involves making an unwarranted demand with menaces (threats) for a gain or to cause loss. To be a crime, the demand must be unwarranted, meaning the person making it does not have a reasonable belief that they have the right to the demand and that using threats is a proper way to get it.”
Of course if it’s not Rayner then it’s likely to be Miliband who desperately wants to prove that he a) was right all along about Net Zero, and b) you should have supported me for Prime Minister all those years back.
I can't anything on the whole sh**show that you and other subscribers haven't already pointed out, LSO. I thought I had done all my ranting....but then your stat about the amount of benefits claimed every month by non-nationals set me off again! As if we haven't got enough lifelong indigent clans of our own to contend with....
I don't know what it's like where you live, but you can hardly move in my nearby town or supermarket without walking into an amazingly nimble person carrying a very colourful "walking stick" accessory, and then seeing them jumping into their new Motability wagon laden up with goodies for a weekend of Netflix and TV football.
Liam Halligan has done a good post-mortem on the Budget which is worth a look as well, though not sure if it's paywalled (I sub). He talks about the eventual possibility of a reprise of the 1976 IMF intervention, and I am afraid that any political satisfaction at Labour humiliation, elections etc would be very short-lived in his estimation. The remedies would hit all of us very hard, probably. But even then, you can bet that the worst the benefits classes would get would be a freeze on increases, as I suspect actual cuts of any size would lead to massive civil disruption of an undefined and unpredictable nature; wherein most of the "disabled" would find no difficulty in physically expressing their dissatisfaction in goodies-reduction policies. Grim times lie in store one way or another, I fear. At least the previously disappointing Mrs Badenoch delivered a rather satisfying and deeply personal monstering of the utterly dense Reeves. Short-lived mirth, though.
Oh, on the salmon thing: all of our salmon that isn't tinned (Alaskan ranched salmon) is farmed, mainly in Scotland. Wild Atlantic salmon are actually endangered these days and almost all of those caught by anglers in the UK (which is basically Scotland and the Tyne and not much else), are released again to hopefully spawn and replenish the stock. So to make matters worse, the hundreds of millions splurged on "saving salmon" in the Bristol Channel is utterly wasted in the very first instance, as very few wild salmon would be in the vicinity at any time since probably the 1970s if not before !
Another suitably scathing analysis, LSO. Thank you.
Thanks Leaf. Moving people off unemployment benefits onto sickness benefits was originally a ruse to keep the numbers down back in the 80s I think. It’s now become an industry of its own.
As ever I’m wary of always blaming the recipients. They are simply responding to incentives in most cases. If you can get more from the state by sitting idle than you can working in an Amazon warehouse for 40 hrs plus I can’t say I wholly blame them.
But yes. We need to cut that welfare bill in half. But the only real way to do that is to create a landscape/economy that creates jobs. And no potential government I can see has the intelligence or even will, to start going about that.
Yes, I definitely agree that you can hardly blame them for just accepting what is given on a plate, with hardly even a face-to-face discussion these days even with the massive handout of a free all-expensed car every three years. Just fill in a form online and over-egg the disability (or claim to be anxious maybe) and away you go down to the dealer to pick from a selection of hundreds. I suppose it grates on me as I am from the generation where claiming state handouts was seen as an absolute last resort purely as a matter of self-respect. But the past is another country, as someone famously and wisely quipped. And yes, as you said, she is only buying back-bencher support, even if the nett result is the same as is she was an actual communist.
Coincidentally, when I was laid off in my early ‘fifties with little in the way of prospects in my particular field at my age, I signed on for the six months that was not means-tested at the time, as long as you attended every week with written records of jobs you had been applying for. I was having predictably little success, but the bloke dealing with me advised that Amazon were opening a huge warehouse about twenty miles away and were recruiting for operatives. I jumped at the chance. This was before the TV expose and whistle-blowers about the work environment and culture there.
I lasted three days before I handed back my heavy duty boots and hi-viz. That experience is another story, but needless to say I have never ordered anything from that company that day to this ! Sadly, the missus continues to be an Amazon groupie…..
It grates on me too Leaf. It just annoys me that people find it easy to blame the victims of the decisions that incredibly powerful make about their lives. (I’m definitely not saying you’re doing this! )
I can’t even imagine working for Amazon. I did work in a warehouse once-for MFI the furniture people -remember them?! But I bet it was a million miles removed from the battery farm of an Amazon warehouse.
I watched a YouTube video which said that -I think in America- their churn was so great among employees that it was only a matter of time before *everyone* in America had worked for them. Which is why Bezos is so keen on automation/AI.
Full disclosure, for my sins I use Amazon all the time. 😩
I would never lecture anyone, LSO. I can see for a consumer it is an incredibly convenient way of shopping, so fair enough. And they have got you with the Kindle books in any case - and I forgot that I occasionally use that, so my principles are a bit elastic there ! MFI I remember well of course....they went bankrupt overnight and my poor old mother lost her money paid in advance for kitchen units she had paid for on the same day :( . ATB.
I share your complaints about our current chancellor.
> Fourteen disastrous Tory years, and two calamitous Labour budgets later, Britain is no longer a viable nation.
But I wonder what happens next. Who happens next?
Does Reform UK have good chancellors on standby? Are the Tories back to full strength yet? The Greens will have been reading Das Kapital. Maybe the LibDems have someone.
It doesn't feel like we have a good future ahead of us.
We agree on that Ragged. Elsewhere on here I’m chatting to Jeremy about James Cameron movies. It really does feel we’re aboard Titanic. And for once it’s not just ‘doom and gloom’. I’m making some fundamental life choices in response to a budget/government-I’ve never done that before!
This is all very sad, but I wonder what happens when Elon Musk decides that he'd like to buy a European country. Reform UK people can be bought by Putin, but what if the world's richest man decides that he'd like to buy ALL of the MPs? Would we know how to stop that from happening?
Ha ha really? I was chatting with a communist friend of mine today. He assures me that a 78 year old Trump would somehow engineer a change to the US Constitution ( his orders are frequently blocked by district judges btw ) so that he could steal the Presidency for a third term in 2028. I thought that would be the most nuts TDS adjacent thing I’d hear all day. And yet here we are.
Elon Musk openly bribing hundreds of MPs to ‘buy’ a country, our country, and all this being waved through-
‘Well Musk paid good money for those MPs. There’s literally nothing we can do I’m afraid.’
He doesn't have to buy all of the MPs. If one MP can be bought for £30,000, how many would he have to buy to get a majority in parliament?
They won't have to wear Musk-4-Ever t-shirts. He can just slip the cash into their back pockets. And they won't have to exercise his sovereign will either. They just need to tweak the laws a little bit to be more Musk-friendly.
I think you underestimate how our politics will change, now that we have trillionaires.
I'm not bothered about a man who wants to build a house on Mars. Musk has taken a strong interest in UK politics recently. I don't think it is outrageous that he might want to change them.
But you are too focused on Musk specifically. There's a long list of multi-billionaires now who might want to interfere in our politics. I'm concerned about how that might go down.
Ah yes, the propagandists and censors of the EU and the leftist socialist/ communists are in full on battleground mode to discredit any opposition to their agenda- whatever that might be. We can see bankrupting the west financially and culturally is definitely one.
As I said in my most recent piece named ‘Spend Now, Cry Later’ - a contrarian take: Reeves may not get sacked immediately post Budget due to her alternatives having even worse policies (Torsten Bell, I’m looking at you)
we have 2 questions to answer, and you cannot answer 2 without answering question 1.
1) Who’s going to replace Reeves is she gets sacked? Jones, Bell or McFadden? I don’t have faith any of them, especially Torsten.
2) Is [insert name] going to do a better job than Reeves? I’m afraid she’s the best of a horrible lot…
Here's a novel thought. What happens if she resigns/gets thrown out and nobody replaces her as Chancellor of the Exchequer presumably all the rules and regulations she is responsible for would just carry on in force? At least if the post is vacant they can't make it even worse?
As Margaret Thatcher, our greatest ever PM once said, the problem with socialists is that eventually they run out of other people's money to spend....This cohort of clowns will soon appreciate just what she meant. The wealthy are leaving. The HENRY'S are leaving. Both taking their tax receipts with them.....the only folk arriving are foreign chancers who are intent on exploiting our welfare state. Tax receipts DOWN welfare costs UP.
This is a doom loop that will take years and a bloody strong stomach to fix. It will take an iron political will, tunnel vision and the hide of the most indifferent rhino.
If I performed as badly in my job as Thieves does in hers, I'd be out on my ear. So many kites were flown before this budget, it's a minor miracle the economy didn't go into freefall. The only reason, the ONLY REASON the markets were calm on Wednesday was because "it could have been so much worse" - the mansion tax for example was originally floated for properties over 500k. Would have affected millions of homeowners.
It makes me laugh when they bang on about Liz Truss. PM for a whole month, hounded out of office by the grey men in suits in the city - for giving a tax break to the wealthiest. The people who drive our economy, the risk takers, job creators, business owners. The folk who are now fucking off in their thousands from this miserable socialist hell hole to sunnier climes where they are welcomed with open arms and lower rates of tax. Thieves is the very worst chancellor we've ever had, and Gordon Brown set the bar high (sold all our gold reserves off cheap the fool). She doesn't understand business, taxation or how an economy works. She can't even manage her personal finances, why the hell would we expect her to manage those of the country?
Socialism is not just a disease, but a pandemic.
The latest poll by the Institute of Directors (IoD) found that business leaders’ confidence in their own company plunged to -20 immediately after the Budget, down from zero in October. This was the second-lowest monthly reading on record. Confidence has only ever been lower in April 2020, when Britain was reeling from the pandemic and lockdown restrictions.
The IoD said that bosses’ expectations for revenue growth, hiring and investment have all fallen.
Reeves is choosing to return our economy to pandemic days.
She is not the first. Attlee, Wilson/Callaghan, Blair/Brown all ended up busting the economy. It's just a question of how long it takes, which is dependent on two factors:
1. How socialist they are
2. How bad the economy was when they inherited it.
This government is the most socialist ever, and inherited an economy already on its knees. No prizes for guessing the inevitable outcome. With any luck the bond markets will force them to go. But more likely they will just force them to be a bit less socialist, which will risk alienating their dwindling loyal supporters, but mean we are stuck with them.
It is interesting to apply the two factors to the previous 14 years:
1. They were mildly socialist.
2. They inherited a bust economy, as they always do, courtesy of Labour.
As a result of 1, they presided over a woke obsessed decline. But make no mistake, they were a million times better than the current crew.
It will not be good enough next election for those on the right to sit on their hands and whine that they have nobody to vote for, so voting for nobody. That led to this government's massive majority, more than the "split of the right" between Reform and the Conservatives. It may be that the left wing vote is split between Labour, LibDems, Your Party (finally we know its name) (Silly Party), and Green (Very Silly Party).
One of the problems we face is that some 18% of voters actually think that they should vote for a party led by a communist lunatic who believes in no borders at all, no landlords, the legalisation of all drugs, and breast enhancement through the power of thought, whose second in command appears to be a radical Islamist. And another cohort would vote for the anarchist omnishambles created by a has been Marxist and a rabid trans ideologue that doesn't think it needs a leader. As Sigourney Weaver famously said in Aliens, "did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?"
Which brings me to my final question. If Starmer and Reeves do go, which of the brainless lickspittle boneheads that form the cabinet (or recently were forced out of it) would you replace them with?
Absolutely spot on as ever Jeremy. We’re all terrified of what comes next. You can see it in all the comments today. If the Greens are a ‘viable’ party, ie they could actually form part of a leftist coalition, it’s very worrying.
On the upside, I just bought Alien and Aliens on 4K. I’ve never seen Alien look so good, (not watched Aliens yet) and I saw it on the big screen last year. I haven’t got a home cinema or anything like that. Just a fairly large TV. 👽
I think you need the director's cut, which includes all the automatic gun firing scenes, but also the interview with Ripley. I would guess the 4K version would include them.
Yes. The Aliens 4K pass was redone by Cameron and I think includes the Directors Cut. Some people say it looks weird, haven’t seen it yet, but I was very happy with what he did with The Abyss. Controversially my 2nd favourite Cameron flick..
I can vouch that Aliens also looks equally stunning on 4K 😍 Much better than I was expecting! 👌🏼
The worst bit is that those 18% are well off, middle class pseudo intellectuals. They don't think. They just vote out of reflex.
The failure of the previous government was that it did absolutely nothing. The argument over covid or Brexit is a side issue. There are over half a million people employed (I don't say working) in Whitehall. So much could have been done and nothing was. The political class just lurch from one frenzied chaos to another.
The clue the state was clueless was when after spaffing all the cash on Covid they said 'Right, now we're hiking taxes to get *our* money back'.
Err... do you think big government matters? Do you think we need you? We needed low taxes. A small, efficient state that serves the public. The statists immediately said 'Now give us our money back' without a single comprehension or consideration of the damage they would do. It was a moronic, egotistical, desperately socialist arrogance - worse, it was from the bloomin' Tories!
Our revenue is down 20%. Mostly because several of our customers have folded. A planned expansion into another building by a firm of solicitors we work for has been halted - and the comp work we would do scrapped. Admin staff have been made redundant. Every year we vote to continue the company. Usually we've made a profit and reinvest that in kit or people. This year we're likely to say no, and set a time to stop and either retire or find other work. It's just not worth it.
I appreciate Reeves is thick beyond measure, that the Treasury, insulated from the carnage it causes doesn't care but there are real world consequences from their spiteful, twisted ideological malice.
I feel your anger Wibbling. Sorry to hear that about your business. Best of luck to you.
Ideally it would force an early General election, that's what the public wants atm. Yeah, I know we never get what we want 😆
Sorry, how can confidence be negative? That's like colder than absolute zero. I get the idea of course, but surely confidence can be no lower than zero?
It means they believe things will keep on getting worse.
That's the pollsters for you!
You forecast revenue based on previous times and consider what you do. If it looks bad, you stop doing things that would make you more money.
Oh, how greedy the Leftists wail! Yeah, like buying new kit and creating a job elsewhere, or hiring a new person to take on a specific project.
The sobering fact, however, is that, if Reeves is ousted, there is nobody on the Labour benches who wouldn’t be as bad and probably a whole lot worse to replace her as chancellor.
It’s the main worry isn’t it Paul? Get rid of Reeves and Starmer and it’s not like the government would lurch to the right. It’s inevitable I think. This budget might end up seeming like a set of measures from Hayek compared to what Rayner would impose.
I understand she didn’t do I’m a Celebrity TV show because she sensed an opportunity was coming up. And say what you like about her, her political instincts are pretty spot on.
Miliband as PM, Rayner as Chancellor. Or vice versa. What’s not to like?
😱
Stop! Stop! You are giving me even worse nightmares.
On the upside, so much damage would be done so quickly even the banks would stop funding them. They'd be done within a month, Labour ousted and consigned to the dustbin of history.
Thing is, Reeves does not write the budget. She's dumb as a lead box of rocks! Replacing her would make no difference. The entire state machine is the problem.
The budget is written by the Treasury. Can you imagine Reeves doing the maths to understand the basics of a profit and loss spreadsheet? She's a serial liar and crook.
She stole from her bank job, she lied about the BoE job, she had her government card revoked and slapped just about everything on expenses. She's a crook!
What is the most damning verdict on Rachel Reeves , is that the OBR who lived through about 15 chancellors with the Tories. Went enough is enough and leaked the budget and then doubled down and made it perfectly clear that there was a surpass just to officially end her career. Although today in the Guardian they are claiming Kier Starmer is coming out fighting….
Starmer has to doesn’t he Outside?
Starmer and Reeves are joined at the hip. I don’t see how he survives if she goes. Yes, he could do a deal with the far far left of his party-he hands the Treasury to them in return for staying on as P, but that would just mark him out as a lame duck, all his authority (if he even has any left at this point) would evaporate in an instant.
Suppose it’s the quality of the fight Starmer puts up now. If he goes in hard and directly uses all his authority to get behind her, they are both done. On the flip side he could use the platform to talk up the good things Labour has done, admit they made some “mistakes” and push her out. Putting in Darren Jones in her place and we can rinse and repeat this cycle after the may elections 😂
Remember the good old days in British politics when you had a leader for the 4 year term ?
Righty, hang on. If there's a surplus, why are we borrowing more than ever?
This 'black hole' and redefinition of deficit, combined with 'my fiscal rules on capital spending' are just lies to disguise a truly lethal combination.
It's an attempt at clever accounting that always happens under Leftists and always fails.
Two tier never here couldn't fight his way out of the proverbial paper bag 🤣
Should we have a whip round and buy her the entire works of Thomas Sowell as a Christmas present?
The salmon ridiculousness reminds me of being obliged by the local planning authority to pay over £5k for two bat surveys (one at night) to identify that one COMMON pipistrelle bat had decided to roost in the loft of the hovel I was demolishing, rather than any of the trees in the surrounding woodland and that I was also therefore obliged (as a planning condition) to provide said bat (and how will they know it's the evicted one and not just some other chancer who doesn't like trees) with new accommodation once the proposed house was built.
Meanwhile, the government is quite happy for the HS2 project to destroy dozens of ancient woodlands (ie irreplaceable remnants of our ancient forest) and kill countless wildlife that will be part of those woodland habitats. As usual, different rules apply to us mortals.
Jesus. What a nightmare. No wonder no one builds anything.
I am surprised the EPA and the nuclear regulatory agency only spent £700M saving one salmon every 12 years!! Thanks for that bit of news to start December with!! 🤬🤬
Ah, but a lot of people benefitted from that £700m - Quango employees, state employees, some might have even leaked to a few of the people at Hinckley Point. Not bad news for everyone!
🤔🤣
Ah yes - god bless that famous “trickle-down” economics in action, beloved of my “favourite” president - No 44 Barry O 😉😉
But his one saving grace was that he was not Hilary Clinton ....
🤣
"Thanks in no small part to her own ineptitude, mismanagement, and lies, Grub Street will be far too busy over the next few weeks and months, writing a completely different obituary.
The obituary of Britain."
They won't because they won't even recognise it. They live in their own world. Britain has been decaying for years - average incomes are lower now than in 2007, an unprecedented fall, and public services hobble along while public sector wage increases outpace those of everyone else. Importing alien cultures is the final nail in the coffin of the old-fashioned Brit.
Well, if the DT is to be believed, the silver lining is that this might bring down Two Tier as well ? That said, "what comes next ?".
Absolutely Christian. Loads of my commenters are making the same, scary, point. We could end up thinking these are the Good Old Days….🥺
Looking at the benches in Westminster I have to say we're screwed.
Restrained, but comprehensive. I thank you.
I think - I don't know - I think - most salmon for food comes from farmed fish. I don't know enough about that to present an argument for or against.
You're entirely right that there must be a limitation on expenditure, but that's the whole point of the 'climate' farce: not to actually achieve anything, but to hold up the rational by the irrational. The more damage the Left can do, the more they hinder the economy, the happier they are.
I have no words for the political situation (well, I do but I'd prefer action, specifically a series of ropes and lamp posts). As you say, it is just malice. Pure, unadulterated malice.
The worst bit is the perpetual lies. The blithering on about 'growth' and 'making you better off' when the absolute sole intent is to destroy growth, to steal from workers and savers and to hand it to an ever growing welfare base solely to buy votes - of course, that *is* the growth they're talking about. It is an explicit reward and thank you from Labour to the growing tumour of idle welfare dependent and immigrants - over 80% of the demographic are welfare dependent and a spiteful slap in the face and kick in the nads to those who have repeatedly voted (including Brexit) to refuse the population replacement tsunami.
The OBR only accounts immigration as a grower of GDP - it doesn't even bother with GDP per capita. It's their only dynamic response variable. They don't even account for tax cuts, despite the evidence (a reduction in corp tax of 6% more than doubled tax revenue 24% to 58%). Imagine what would happen if the tax allowance were set to 16K and the upper and higher rates scrapped?
I know a spinal surgeon, a proper genius who only works 2 days a week (in the UK). Why? Any more and he falls into the 60% bracket. He *loses* money the more he works. What a waste (to this country) of ability all because the Left wing state is greedy, spiteful and run by people with no competence, experience of ability except to - mostly fraudulently - steal other people's money.
The saddest bit though, is that so few people understand the basics. So few actually get that cutting taxes for the well off - supply side economics - works. The Left so demonise it as trickle down (ever known a pauper to build and staff a factory?) but that's just their own envy. Normal folk don't get it either. They see 'oh, hike to the min wage' and think it goes to them. It doesn't. It's a tax on employers and the state, which; thanks to freezing the tax allowance takes the majority. That's why the scum hike it and why they freeze the bands (Brown did this with working tax credits. Why raise the tax allowance/cut taxes when you can reward your favoured few?). It'd be simpler for the employee to raise the allowance but the Treasury is a cynical, greedy robber baron.
While people don't understand we're doomed. Worse, the state ensures that cohort grows. It likes ignorant, dependent people. They vote for more money from workers and the state happily, cruelly obliges.
Hey Wibbling. I agree with all this apart from the lamp posts bit. There is already enough politically inspired violence to go round at the moment. I certainly don’t think we need more of it.
Just respecting democracy- honouring referendums, sticking to manifesto promises, not gerrymandering votes by creating voters from children and foreigners would be a good start.
I am angry, Mr LSO. I wouldn't wish anyone harm at all but the political class exist in a bubble, waffling on about tax this, debt that more for Tracey and Sharon (or sadly more likely 'the diversity') to have as many children as they like and that someone else must pay because 'that is fair'. What is fair about stealing what i have earned for my family and giving it to another that hasn't?
Why is that 'fair'? Of course, it isn't, except in an evil, cruel socialist mind. Why should my son go without so another one can buy booze, fags or another revolting tattoo with *my* money?
What we need is the revocation of universal franchise. No work? No vote. I might make exceptions for people who contribute in other ways but I imagine such folk wouldn't want a say.
In addition, referism - the state asks us for permission on what it can spend and we can refuse that in part or whole. Then we need recall. The state cannot be permitted to exist when they are blatantly corrupt. When the infighting and squabbling becomes their goal to do in the country - as Grieve, Soubry, Starmer and Bercow wanted to over Brexit - we sack them and prevent their holding office ever again.
But the only group who can enact those controls is the state and it's not going to let annoyances like democratic accountability hinder it's demented globalist rationing plan. Heck, Starmer is desperately trying to undo Brexit beneath us by re-writing the treaty to give away all the caveats fought for to prevent the hated EU having the power over us Frost worked for (such as making the ECJ arbiter default).
They will never permit true democracy so it has to be forced on them. That's all they've left us. If there is another way I'd love it, but I do not see one. I wish there were. I wish the political class understood they are servants, not master. If they felt shame and guilt for their malice, greed and stupidity. But they don't.
What a wonderful rant Wibbling. Though calling it a rant does it a disservice.
This idea of No Work No Vote is something I’ve heard a couple of times this week. And I think it kind of makes sense-not because it takes power away from the workless, but that it removes power from politicians, making it harder for them to bribe one set of voters, with another set of voters’ money.
The only problem of course, and it’s a big one, is that once a group is rendered ‘worthless’ to our political class it dumps them like a hot potato, treating them like less than dirt. Working class white boys are the second best example these days. After the working class white girls of Rotherham and the rest.
I share your anger at the Brexit betrayals. They started on June 24 2016 and they haven’t let up since. I’ve always said they will never stop until they take us back in. For Labour and Tory. It was always the mission.
Your last para puts it perfectly for me.
ATB
I'd far prefer government simply didn't interfere at all - with anyone. It does an appalling job and distorts the natural order of merit and outcome by favouring one side or the other.
The rape gangs are again an example of government malice as it protects one group from another - in this case, muslims from justice.
However, going up a step, if the state hadn't deliberately forced massive uncontrolled immigration on this country (again, through interfering) the whole problem wouldn't exist.
Just cut off the money. The State acquired enormous power when the docile, short-sighted majority traded it for dependence and ‘benefits’, paid for by overtaxing the productive minority. Both the State and their dependents have no interest in changing this arrangement. It falls to the extorted minority to revolt against it in a massive class action.
Here is an extract of UK law on extortion:
“Section 21 of the Theft Act 1968…involves making an unwarranted demand with menaces (threats) for a gain or to cause loss. To be a crime, the demand must be unwarranted, meaning the person making it does not have a reasonable belief that they have the right to the demand and that using threats is a proper way to get it.”
Of course if it’s not Rayner then it’s likely to be Miliband who desperately wants to prove that he a) was right all along about Net Zero, and b) you should have supported me for Prime Minister all those years back.
Ah yes - he set his promises in stone. Would he like to do that with his wonderful world of Net Zero as well?
How is it that someone so obviously insane is in government?
> So protecting them, at any cost, makes zero sense.
You heartless bugger. Besides, what if an irradiated salmon mutated and became a sort of salmon-godzilla? Then how would you feel?
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🤣🤣🤣
I can't anything on the whole sh**show that you and other subscribers haven't already pointed out, LSO. I thought I had done all my ranting....but then your stat about the amount of benefits claimed every month by non-nationals set me off again! As if we haven't got enough lifelong indigent clans of our own to contend with....
I don't know what it's like where you live, but you can hardly move in my nearby town or supermarket without walking into an amazingly nimble person carrying a very colourful "walking stick" accessory, and then seeing them jumping into their new Motability wagon laden up with goodies for a weekend of Netflix and TV football.
Liam Halligan has done a good post-mortem on the Budget which is worth a look as well, though not sure if it's paywalled (I sub). He talks about the eventual possibility of a reprise of the 1976 IMF intervention, and I am afraid that any political satisfaction at Labour humiliation, elections etc would be very short-lived in his estimation. The remedies would hit all of us very hard, probably. But even then, you can bet that the worst the benefits classes would get would be a freeze on increases, as I suspect actual cuts of any size would lead to massive civil disruption of an undefined and unpredictable nature; wherein most of the "disabled" would find no difficulty in physically expressing their dissatisfaction in goodies-reduction policies. Grim times lie in store one way or another, I fear. At least the previously disappointing Mrs Badenoch delivered a rather satisfying and deeply personal monstering of the utterly dense Reeves. Short-lived mirth, though.
Oh, on the salmon thing: all of our salmon that isn't tinned (Alaskan ranched salmon) is farmed, mainly in Scotland. Wild Atlantic salmon are actually endangered these days and almost all of those caught by anglers in the UK (which is basically Scotland and the Tyne and not much else), are released again to hopefully spawn and replenish the stock. So to make matters worse, the hundreds of millions splurged on "saving salmon" in the Bristol Channel is utterly wasted in the very first instance, as very few wild salmon would be in the vicinity at any time since probably the 1970s if not before !
Another suitably scathing analysis, LSO. Thank you.
Thanks Leaf. Moving people off unemployment benefits onto sickness benefits was originally a ruse to keep the numbers down back in the 80s I think. It’s now become an industry of its own.
As ever I’m wary of always blaming the recipients. They are simply responding to incentives in most cases. If you can get more from the state by sitting idle than you can working in an Amazon warehouse for 40 hrs plus I can’t say I wholly blame them.
But yes. We need to cut that welfare bill in half. But the only real way to do that is to create a landscape/economy that creates jobs. And no potential government I can see has the intelligence or even will, to start going about that.
Great to hear from you.
Yes, I definitely agree that you can hardly blame them for just accepting what is given on a plate, with hardly even a face-to-face discussion these days even with the massive handout of a free all-expensed car every three years. Just fill in a form online and over-egg the disability (or claim to be anxious maybe) and away you go down to the dealer to pick from a selection of hundreds. I suppose it grates on me as I am from the generation where claiming state handouts was seen as an absolute last resort purely as a matter of self-respect. But the past is another country, as someone famously and wisely quipped. And yes, as you said, she is only buying back-bencher support, even if the nett result is the same as is she was an actual communist.
Coincidentally, when I was laid off in my early ‘fifties with little in the way of prospects in my particular field at my age, I signed on for the six months that was not means-tested at the time, as long as you attended every week with written records of jobs you had been applying for. I was having predictably little success, but the bloke dealing with me advised that Amazon were opening a huge warehouse about twenty miles away and were recruiting for operatives. I jumped at the chance. This was before the TV expose and whistle-blowers about the work environment and culture there.
I lasted three days before I handed back my heavy duty boots and hi-viz. That experience is another story, but needless to say I have never ordered anything from that company that day to this ! Sadly, the missus continues to be an Amazon groupie…..
It grates on me too Leaf. It just annoys me that people find it easy to blame the victims of the decisions that incredibly powerful make about their lives. (I’m definitely not saying you’re doing this! )
I can’t even imagine working for Amazon. I did work in a warehouse once-for MFI the furniture people -remember them?! But I bet it was a million miles removed from the battery farm of an Amazon warehouse.
I watched a YouTube video which said that -I think in America- their churn was so great among employees that it was only a matter of time before *everyone* in America had worked for them. Which is why Bezos is so keen on automation/AI.
Full disclosure, for my sins I use Amazon all the time. 😩
I would never lecture anyone, LSO. I can see for a consumer it is an incredibly convenient way of shopping, so fair enough. And they have got you with the Kindle books in any case - and I forgot that I occasionally use that, so my principles are a bit elastic there ! MFI I remember well of course....they went bankrupt overnight and my poor old mother lost her money paid in advance for kitchen units she had paid for on the same day :( . ATB.
Yes they were swept away by IKEA in the end I guess. Sorry to hear that about your mum.
I was v young at the time. I learned a lot in that warehouse!
I share your complaints about our current chancellor.
> Fourteen disastrous Tory years, and two calamitous Labour budgets later, Britain is no longer a viable nation.
But I wonder what happens next. Who happens next?
Does Reform UK have good chancellors on standby? Are the Tories back to full strength yet? The Greens will have been reading Das Kapital. Maybe the LibDems have someone.
It doesn't feel like we have a good future ahead of us.
We agree on that Ragged. Elsewhere on here I’m chatting to Jeremy about James Cameron movies. It really does feel we’re aboard Titanic. And for once it’s not just ‘doom and gloom’. I’m making some fundamental life choices in response to a budget/government-I’ve never done that before!
This is all very sad, but I wonder what happens when Elon Musk decides that he'd like to buy a European country. Reform UK people can be bought by Putin, but what if the world's richest man decides that he'd like to buy ALL of the MPs? Would we know how to stop that from happening?
‘But you are too focused on Musk specifically.’
You mentioned Musk! Not me! 🤣
The EU are just China. But they’re crap at it. Brussels is just a Poundshop Peking.
Ha ha really? I was chatting with a communist friend of mine today. He assures me that a 78 year old Trump would somehow engineer a change to the US Constitution ( his orders are frequently blocked by district judges btw ) so that he could steal the Presidency for a third term in 2028. I thought that would be the most nuts TDS adjacent thing I’d hear all day. And yet here we are.
Elon Musk openly bribing hundreds of MPs to ‘buy’ a country, our country, and all this being waved through-
‘Well Musk paid good money for those MPs. There’s literally nothing we can do I’m afraid.’
Thanks for the laugh Ragged. 🤣
He doesn't have to buy all of the MPs. If one MP can be bought for £30,000, how many would he have to buy to get a majority in parliament?
They won't have to wear Musk-4-Ever t-shirts. He can just slip the cash into their back pockets. And they won't have to exercise his sovereign will either. They just need to tweak the laws a little bit to be more Musk-friendly.
I think you underestimate how our politics will change, now that we have trillionaires.
Yeah ok. 👍
We actually do have this problem. It’s called China. And the EU.
But no one seems bothered about handing them our infrastructure/ regulatory framework in return for money.
But yeah. The real danger is a man whose revealed preference is being the first man to send people to Mars/smoking dope/making babies.
😈
I'm with you on China. I'm bothered.
I'm not bothered about a man who wants to build a house on Mars. Musk has taken a strong interest in UK politics recently. I don't think it is outrageous that he might want to change them.
But you are too focused on Musk specifically. There's a long list of multi-billionaires now who might want to interfere in our politics. I'm concerned about how that might go down.
Ah yes, the propagandists and censors of the EU and the leftist socialist/ communists are in full on battleground mode to discredit any opposition to their agenda- whatever that might be. We can see bankrupting the west financially and culturally is definitely one.
Really entertaining read!
As I said in my most recent piece named ‘Spend Now, Cry Later’ - a contrarian take: Reeves may not get sacked immediately post Budget due to her alternatives having even worse policies (Torsten Bell, I’m looking at you)
we have 2 questions to answer, and you cannot answer 2 without answering question 1.
1) Who’s going to replace Reeves is she gets sacked? Jones, Bell or McFadden? I don’t have faith any of them, especially Torsten.
2) Is [insert name] going to do a better job than Reeves? I’m afraid she’s the best of a horrible lot…
It’s shocking to realise that yes, Kier and Reeves really are, in comparison at least, ‘the adults in the room’! God bless us, every one!
Here's a novel thought. What happens if she resigns/gets thrown out and nobody replaces her as Chancellor of the Exchequer presumably all the rules and regulations she is responsible for would just carry on in force? At least if the post is vacant they can't make it even worse?
If that was to happen, I'd assume the rules put in place would still carry on. Someone would have to be in the post to overturn/intervene.
As Margaret Thatcher, our greatest ever PM once said, the problem with socialists is that eventually they run out of other people's money to spend....This cohort of clowns will soon appreciate just what she meant. The wealthy are leaving. The HENRY'S are leaving. Both taking their tax receipts with them.....the only folk arriving are foreign chancers who are intent on exploiting our welfare state. Tax receipts DOWN welfare costs UP.
This is a doom loop that will take years and a bloody strong stomach to fix. It will take an iron political will, tunnel vision and the hide of the most indifferent rhino.
If I performed as badly in my job as Thieves does in hers, I'd be out on my ear. So many kites were flown before this budget, it's a minor miracle the economy didn't go into freefall. The only reason, the ONLY REASON the markets were calm on Wednesday was because "it could have been so much worse" - the mansion tax for example was originally floated for properties over 500k. Would have affected millions of homeowners.
It makes me laugh when they bang on about Liz Truss. PM for a whole month, hounded out of office by the grey men in suits in the city - for giving a tax break to the wealthiest. The people who drive our economy, the risk takers, job creators, business owners. The folk who are now fucking off in their thousands from this miserable socialist hell hole to sunnier climes where they are welcomed with open arms and lower rates of tax. Thieves is the very worst chancellor we've ever had, and Gordon Brown set the bar high (sold all our gold reserves off cheap the fool). She doesn't understand business, taxation or how an economy works. She can't even manage her personal finances, why the hell would we expect her to manage those of the country?