Goodness - golden boy Sunak now less popular than Starmer!

And for that matter, where's your evidence that this is the "politics of envy"?

Slightly off the point, but please stop calling her Mrs Sunak. Her name is Akshata Murty.

Are they not married then?

Pantglas2

It’ll be the same people who didn’t have a good word to say about him even when they were grabbing all that furlough money.

I have friends who bought their council houses and still hate Thatcher for depleting social housing stock!

Hooray someone with a good memory and some sense. Some idiot freelancers have soon forgotten the billions given in furlough money and money to help businesses survive. If this was another country they would not have received anything and been left to go under. I notice that a huge number of people working from home were not in a hurry to get back to the workplace. The owner of Pimlico Plumbers ordered all his staff back to the workplace or they would be sacked.
Absolutely right about Margaret Thatcher, (my hero). How many people bought their council houses with a massive discount and then sold them for a massive profit after the number of years had lapsed before they could sell them. Margaret Thatcher, the milk snatcher, what a load of bxxxxxxs, she was actually outvoted on this issue.

What are you on?

I'm one of those "idiot freelancers" and I received not one penny, nada, zilch from any Covid scheme. There are about 3 million of us in the same situation. I couldn't carry on with my work, so I had no income for a while - absolutely nothing - but still had bills to pay. Sunak knew, but made his excuses and did absolutely nothing.

As for people working at home ... some still are - working. They have jobs which can be done in front of a computer screen and that's what they're doing. They weren't furloughed because they were working.

Callistemon21

Are they not married then?

That doesn’t make her name Sunak, any more than it makes his Murty.

Oh dear, 5 pages into this topic, several explanations of what non dom status entails (absolutely nothing to do with citizenship of any country) and we're still getting tirades from the uninformed. ?

Oh well, it takes all sorts...

Zonne

Callistemon21

Are they not married then?

That doesn’t make her name Sunak, any more than it makes his Murty.

It makes her Mrs Sunak. Or titles of married women have changed radically in the past few days...

Ah, he is (allegedly) listed as his wife's beneficiary on documents related to her financial arrangements.
That's as well as holding a green card for 2 years whilst working as the chancellor. Allegedly, of course.

from dishy to fishy.
from hero to zero, or rather more than six zeros...

Sunak did not pay furlough money out of his own pocket, we paid for it and will be paying it back for years , plus billions was claimed fraudulently by business owners and not being pursued. So stop pretending Sunak is some sort of philanthropist.

With you there vegansrock. Furlough was a political decision & I suspect reluctantly made.

I am sure there were both those who would have benefited from such a scheme but did not qualify & those few who used it inappropriately / fraudulently. I am sure it was a lifesaver for many..but it was not a result of the personal generosity of Sunak!

This. Murdoch isn’t keen on Sunak either.

Daniela Nadj
@DanielaNadj
·
9h
Rishi Sunak is limping heavily tonight. It sounded like the Sunday Times has a major scoop on Sunak coming up. I think he will fall by the end of the weekend.

PECS

With you there vegansrock. Furlough was a political decision & I suspect reluctantly made.

I am sure there were both those who would have benefited from such a scheme but did not qualify & those few who used it inappropriately / fraudulently. I am sure it was a lifesaver for many..but it was not a result of the personal generosity of Sunak!

He was forced to pay it. Germany's "Kurzarbeit" scheme (similar to furlough) was more generous and, I believe, still ongoing. Once the decision to lockdown was made, there wasn't a choice and he obviously decided that the minority who received no help didn't have a loud enough voice to matter.

Whitewavemark2

This. Murdoch isn’t keen on Sunak either.

Daniela Nadj
@DanielaNadj
·
9h
Rishi Sunak is limping heavily tonight. It sounded like the Sunday Times has a major scoop on Sunak coming up. I think he will fall by the end of the weekend.

I wish he was being criticised for being a rubbish economist rather than the personal stuff.

vegansrock

Sunak did not pay furlough money out of his own pocket, we paid for it and will be paying it back for years , plus billions was claimed fraudulently by business owners and not being pursued. So stop pretending Sunak is some sort of philanthropist.

The furlough money was newly created money, it wasn't 'borrowed' from anyone, it doesn't have to be paid back, we will NOT be paying it back for years. It would be good though if those who obtained it fraudulently had to pay it back.

I have tried over the years to explain just how our money is created by the state and how it gets into the economy. It is a coherent, logical and true (even the Bank of England supports it)

I would, though, be very happy to consider any logical and coherent explanation that challenges this explanation. I would be particularly interested in an explanation of why the furlough money has to be 'paid back' and who it has to be paid back too.

In the meantime, because no-one ever answers my 'who are we to pay it back to'? question I continue to be frustrated by the ability of seemingly intelligent fellow citizens to be conned by the myth that a national economy is like a household economy and willingly accept economically illiterate nonsense about tax, state spending and 'borrowing' even from a government they dislike.

I wish he was being criticised for being a rubbish economist rather than the personal stuff.

To be fair, he is being rubbished by economists and commentators with logical minds who can clearly see the connection between cutting people's incomes and a shrinking economy. It's just that they aren't the ones being published in the right wing media or being interviewed on the BBC.

But as most of the population is in thrall to the 'household economy' b*ll*cks and have no time for experts I don't suppose it would be as effective as the personal attacks.

I find the understanding of economic theory very hard - even though it was part - a minor part - of my degree.

But I do understand that Thatcher's idea that a state economy is just like a household budget is inaccurate and confusing - it is confusing enough already!

I admit I do not really understand economics at government, business or stock market level.

I did manage my work budget but that never even got to £1m, so tiny fry!

I do understand that some small countries choose to make economic decisions that benefit society across the board and others that make the choice to benefit one section of society more than another.
I know which approach I prefer.

I do realise that the economy is not like a household budget, but politicians do use the analogy to justify austerity/ raising taxation etc. This fact does not excuse ignoring fraudulence in the furlough scheme or government cronyism.

It's not that complicated if you can recognise the very basic fact that the supply of money in the economy of a country that issues its own currency is controlled by the government of the country. They are the ones who can issue more money to ensure that there is always enough in the economy. People might scoffingly call it 'the magic money tree', but whatever it's called it is issued by the government.

This is what most economists fail to acknowledge. They study what happens if x,y,z conditions are in place; how prices and wages behave; how the money markets behave etc. etc. but they never seem to look at how 'money' comes into existence. It's just 'there' with no explanation of why it's 'there' or how it got 'there'. MMT starts with an explanation of how money comes into existence and takes it from there.

It's what happens after it's issued that gets more complicated. And what happens after it's issued is a political choice. Our government, via the BoE, 'created' £billions to cover pandemic spending. Their political choice was to offer their friends and donors the opportunity to make vast profits from the issued money. For example, Test & Trace could have been done differently using Local Authority expertise and knowledge and giving the LAs the funds to execute it. But extra state funding of LAs is contrary to tory ideology. So they went down a different route.

For me, the issue of 'taxpayer's money' is a difficult one, because, technically, most of us who spend any money at all are 'taxpayers', but the phrase is so deeply associated with Thatcher 's completely false assertion that the only money that the 'state' has comes from the taxpayer (the 'income tax payer' at that) that I think that calling it 'public money' is a better way of looking at it. The'public' as a whole make up 'the state' and money issued by the state is issued for the public benefit. It is 'our' money. So we need to vote for people who we think will use our money wisely for the benefit of all citizens without having to worry about book balancing and 'how are we going to pay for it'. The state can always pay for it...

Obviously it's much more complex than this simple outline, but if we can keep hold of the notion that anything is possible because we can afford 'anything' I think we can make much better choices about how public money is spent. and call out the lies about things like 'need to pay it back'.

vegansrock

I do realise that the economy is not like a household budget, but politicians do use the analogy to justify austerity/ raising taxation etc. This fact does not excuse ignoring fraudulence in the furlough scheme or government cronyism.

Why do you repeat their lies, then?

When I played Monopoly with my children and it looked as though somebody was going to run out of money before we wanted to end the game, the banker (me) would hand out some more money to all the players in equal amounts, so the game could continue. I never asked for it back.

Ooops. Pressed "send" to early.

The prices of properties, houses and hotel stayed the same, but we could all afford more of them.

I love that analogy growstuff