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The U.K. 2022
(553 Posts)If you have made the mistake of following the Tory leadership election then you will, presuming you suspended your disbelief, now know that we are facing a bright future under Liz Truss, where growth, prosperity, light touch regulation, low tax and strong international trade will deliver us all we have ever aspired to.
In fact, more than that, the climate crisis will, under her rule, be so insignificant it can be ignored; the rule of law will no longer be required; every town, village and hamlet will be a freeport making its own regulations and laws under the benign guidance of a company given the task of doing so; and the land will flow with milk and honey.
None of this is true, of course.
This morning we have news of drought and the risk of hose pipe bans and even outright water shortages.
There is also a warning of power cust to come this winter as electricity supply will not meet demand.
Avanti has just axed two-thirds of its train services on the West Coast mainline.
Six million people are waiting for NHS treatment.
Half the UK's households do not know how they will pay their fuel bills when the average energy price increases to £4,200pa this winter. The likelihood that many will simply be unable to pay is high.
As a consequence, the rest of the economy is under severe threat of recession.
A banking crisis is possible as rents go unpaid, landlords fail to service their debts, joining those mortgage holders who will be in the same boat.
Schools and hospitals face impossible choices due to their increasing energy costs this winter.
Hardly talked about, but something I fear greatly is the risk that many care homes - which have to be warm - will simply be unable to afford to carry on trading this winter as those they p[provide for cannot pay increased bills, creating a massive care crisis.
It is actually quite hard to think of anything that is working well in the UK now, and which is not at risk of failure quite soon.
The Tory leadership election is taking place in some fantasy space created by a political party wholly out of touch with reality. The difficulty is that one of those taking part - and making the absurd promises on offer to the Tory party faithful, will be governing us soon. There is little sign that they will embrace reality then.
We are in deep, deep trouble.
Richard Murphy
10/08/22
Where are the decent, honest politicians with vision and the guts to put their views across without compromise ? Are they not paid enough to attract these sort of leaders? It is no longer an attractive job and it seems to attract self promoting liars and charlatans. Can you think of one really good, strong ,honest leader ? I can’t where we live, can you ?
Balance is not possible when one side is factually wrong. The Catholic hierarchy tried it with Galileo for over 400 years until they had to climb down to admit he was right. Climate change is a similar case: finding a change denier to provide 'balance' is a not good practice. And the weight of educated economic opinion is, as noted above, pretty clear about Brexit being a bad mistake with few economists taking the contrary view.
Katie59
It’s a fact that there was no energy crisis before Ukraine
In fairness most of the UKs gas is home produced or supplied by friendly countries so mostly storage is not needed, in any case the amount of storage needed for say a months supply would be massive, it’s not like coal where you just heap it up.
The policy of having a free market energy policy where producers or generators charge whatever they can get for energy that’s causing the price spike. The government has been reaping billions from offshore production licences for decades now its pay back time.
We used to have things called gasometers which were everywhere when I was young. I've no idea when they disappeared - maybe after the discovery of natural gas. Most of the gasometers have disappeared but there are still one or two around - perhaps of a memory of our industrial heritage.
More doom and gloom from Richard Murphy on Twitter today about the predicted rise of Bank rate next year to 4% with all sorts of implications for mortgages and housing market.
For my sanity think I’ll give Twitter a miss for a while.
I was just listening to “Tom” on LBC. He earns £34k pa. His wife also works but I didn’t catch what she earns.
At the beginning of the year, their private landlord kicked them out of their home because he wanted to sell the property, so they temporarily moved in to Tom’s parents house.
His father has MS and what has happened is that Tom has now gradually taken over as the main breadwinner.
His position is becoming impossible. He has two children and bills he simply can no longer pay.
It left me feeling so very very sad for people. What on earth is going to happen?
My biased BBC story...
During the Scottish Independence referendum, I complained to the BBC about one of their reporters who told a lie on live TV. I knew it was a lie because I was watching a live stream of the event he was talking about on the News Channels and he said something hadn't happened when it had. What he said made one of the politicians look like he was dodging difficult questions and didn't have an answer, which was incorrect.
The BBC responded with an anodyne email about how important reporting was to them and how politicians had to be held to account.
A few years later I heard the reporter on TV in a documentary about the referendum saying he has "bent the facts" to make his story stronger, i.e. it was a lie.
I haven't trusted anything they say since.
Grany
Labour’s £29 billion plan would not fully cover the cost of freezing the energy price cap
Full Fact Check
fullfact.org/economy/labour-energy-bills-seasonal-consumption/
The point is that Labour have a plan, any plan will undoubtedly begin with problems we can point to.
But there is absolutely no doubt that it has wide support, including 80% of Tory supporters.
Starmer is on the right track and acting as a leader as we should be able to expect for any government, just as those leaders in Europe have done.
The BBC hasn't been unbiased for decades .From a Scottish viewpoint ,the rest of the UK is fed the same drivel about how Scotland cant manage on our own ...that'll be the Scotland that can provide power for the whole country AND have power to send to the rUK .The Scotland who brings in £7 billion in taxes MORE than New Zealand does with a similar populaton .The Scotland whose NHS has out performed England and Wales for 7 consecutive years , There are many many other instances .
As someone else said PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THE BBC BROADCAST ...beggers belief that even after the Brexit fiasco people still believe in the outdated biased BBc
Labour’s £29 billion plan would not fully cover the cost of freezing the energy price cap
Full Fact Check
fullfact.org/economy/labour-energy-bills-seasonal-consumption/
Whitewavemark2
? warning language, but I agree with the sentiment
“sarah murphy
How fucking dare she. How fucking dare that pathetic little woman who cosplays Thatcher, who has no mind of her own, who robotically spews out her fascistic slogans to please her nasty Little England fanclub… how dare she think she can judge Macron.
She’s pitiful in comparison.”
Steady on WW, although I do agree Truss is pathetic, we really do not need to upset the French any more, she is well out of line and no more a diplomat than Johnson.
MaizieD
Katie59
The BBC is in a “special” position because most viewers believe what they see, (unlike newspapers where bias is obvious), BUT the BBC does dramatise and “drive” news. Doing this give more exposure to minority opinions, Farage is a good example. This give viewers the impression that any topic has much more support, importance or truth than reality.
That is what Maitlis was more or less saying (did you watch her lecture?). Because the BBC is a trusted news source it shouldn't be misleading its viewers by treating all opinions as having equal value.
What is even more important is that she pointed out that the BBC is being turned into a government propaganda vehicle.
Entirely my own opinion the woke BBC is shaping how the population thinks and I don’t like it.
Farzanah
Anna Soubry Twitter Just when you thought L Truss couldn’t sink any lower or sound even sillier.
France is one of our most important allies.
Not in Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun world it isn't.
Some Gnetters have been known to dislike France, too. Particularly if they voted for Brexit...
But this is Truss's constituency, isn't it? Xenophobes...
I havent watched the BBC News for some time and prefer to get my information from other sources. I do watch ITV News at 10 from time to time and Tom Bradby comments in a way that BBC presenters would never be allowed to do. BBC have lost a lot of good journalists over the last few years, some to Chanel 4. No wonder the Tories want to get rid of it.
Anna Soubry Twitter Just when you thought L Truss couldn’t sink any lower or sound even sillier.
France is one of our most important allies.
MaizieD
A bit garbled that, I didn't preview
So.
....^ they could find x no of anti Brexit economists in 5 minutes but only 1 pro Brexit in five hours^
^It wasn't up to the journalist to say which was right and which was wrong.^
I suppose it depends on whether it's about a fact (my "raining" example) or an opinion. It could be scientific opinion, e.g., your example using Galileo or a political opinion, e.g., Brexit.
One of the problems is that programme planners insist on putting themselves under time pressure - and that when we have 24-hour news. We really can manage to listen for long enough to be told who (credentials) and how many are currently putting forward that opinion, can't we?
At the moment it does feel as if politics, at least, is driven by a small minority. I would like to be told the truth about that.
? warning language, but I agree with the sentiment
“sarah murphy
How fucking dare she. How fucking dare that pathetic little woman who cosplays Thatcher, who has no mind of her own, who robotically spews out her fascistic slogans to please her nasty Little England fanclub… how dare she think she can judge Macron.
She’s pitiful in comparison.”
I see Truss has insulted Macron.
God almighty! What is the matter with the bloody Tories.
Mamie
I guess then, if what they really wanted was balance they should have had fifty economists on one side and one on the other.
Exactly!
Katie59
The BBC is in a “special” position because most viewers believe what they see, (unlike newspapers where bias is obvious), BUT the BBC does dramatise and “drive” news. Doing this give more exposure to minority opinions, Farage is a good example. This give viewers the impression that any topic has much more support, importance or truth than reality.
That is what Maitlis was more or less saying (did you watch her lecture?). Because the BBC is a trusted news source it shouldn't be misleading its viewers by treating all opinions as having equal value.
What is even more important is that she pointed out that the BBC is being turned into a government propaganda vehicle.
The BBC is in a “special” position because most viewers believe what they see, (unlike newspapers where bias is obvious), BUT the BBC does dramatise and “drive” news. Doing this give more exposure to minority opinions, Farage is a good example. This give viewers the impression that any topic has much more support, importance or truth than reality.
I guess then, if what they really wanted was balance they should have had fifty economists on one side and one on the other.
A bit garbled that, I didn't preview
So.
....^ they could find x no of anti Brexit economists in 5 minutes but only 1 pro Brexit in five hours^
It wasn't up to the journalist to say which was right and which was wrong.
I've been following a bit of a twitter discussion between a well known BBC journo and 'the rest of twitter'. He maintains that in the case of the economists that Maitlis instanced it didn't matter if they could find x no of anti Brexit economists in 5 minutes but only 1 in five hours because it was the journalist's job to preserve balance by presenting both views impartially. It wasn't up to the journalist to say which was right and which was one. It was argued, however, that some context should have been given, such as there are 100 economists against Brexit and only in favour...
But it's a bit of a grey area, isn't it?
After all if 50 people said the sun revolved around the earth and one said that the earth revolved around the sun where would the 'balance' lie? does the journo. say, "the one is correct, because it's been empirically proven to be the case", or is that the journo. presenting their own bias?
I know that's a strange example, but wasn't Galileo almost excommunicated for saying that the earth went round the sun? One man against the hierarchy...
Whitewavemark2
Talking about Maitlis and the BBC.
I have long thought that the BBC fails to give a proper balanced view.
As Maitlis said, they would find 15 economists in 5 minutes to give strong doubts about Brexit and then take 5 hours to find one who supported Brexit.
I suspect that is why they continually rolled on Farage. Easy option to show balance?
I see that Robbie Gibbs who acts as the arbiter of impartiality in the BBC, gave £400K to the Tory party.
I agree with the detail of your post WWM, but you could say they have insisted on giving a "balanced" view, even when it isn't balanced.
I keep going back to the fact that the BBC - and other channels - have to decide if the people fronting debates are hosts or journalists. I am not sure why we need so many hosts. If they are journalists and one person says, "it's raining outside", and the other replies that "it's perfectly dry", it's the journalists' job to look out of the window and tell us the truth. They do seem to have stopped doing this.
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