John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote an article for the Independent last weekend in which he pointed out the folly and failure of George Osborne’s austerity fetish, and told us about the new economic strategy that the Labour Party is currently devising as an alternative to the Tory government’s slash and burn…
Here’s a little film that gets to the bottom of the money problem.
For most of the last 30 years it looked like socialism had been soundly beaten by its old adversary, capitalism. From the mid 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s second government defeated Britain’s striking coal miners, until around 2009 when the extent of the banking crisis had sunk in, free-market capitalism was the only game in town.…
All of the main political parties in the UK agree that government debt is a bad thing. All of them would like to fund 100% of government spending from taxation alone. There are many respectable economists who will tell you that this phobia of government debt is irrational, and I’m inclined to agree with them,…
Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected leap to the front of the Labour Party leadership race has inadvertently created a modern miracle: it has united every organ of the mainstream media from the Guardian to the Telegraph, and every politician to the right of Dennis Skinner. They all agree that his plans for the economy are bonkers. If…
Last month’s general election for the UK parliament provided a harsh reminder to some political parties that electoral success is all about telling a good story. The narrative has to be one that the electorate wants to believe or, at the very least, one that appeals to their common sense. The Scottish National Party won…
Over the last few months I have been involved in a campaign that is asking for an independent review of local health and social care services. The campaign was sparked by the local health board – NHS Highland – announcing that both community hospitals in the area will be closed and replaced by a single new…
All around the world government ministers are obsessed by the size of their deficits: the gap between revenue and spending that can only be filled by borrowing money. This year’s deficit gets added to all of the previous years’ deficits, which accumulate into an ever-expanding mountain of debt. As the debt piles up, so too…
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21631140-interest-rates-turn-negative-some-worse-nothing?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/worsethannothing : The Economist reporting that a German bank is to apply a negative interest rate to personal accounts with balances of more than 500,000 euros in an attempt to get people to do something productive with their spare money. I can’t see how negative interest can work when it’s applied by only one bank…
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/green-party-monetary-policy-ahead.html: A very pertinent article from Another Angry Voice pointing out that the Green Party is the only one in the UK that has recognised the stupidity of our monetary system. He explains that the Conservatives, in their ignorance, are amplifying the ill-effects of the system thanks to their idiotic Help To Buy policy while…
Views From The Boatshed 