#UK economy

[thoughtlessarse]

The Tories’ cuts were an obvious economic blunder, but their disastrous consequences are still piling up – and there is little hope Labour will reverse the damage Unless the polls are wildly inaccurate, the Conservative party is heading towards a catastrophic defeat in the coming election. All across the rich world, voters are angry at their governments – they blame politicians for a burst of inflation that happened almost everywhere and is now subsiding almost everywhere, including in the UK. But the Conservatives deserve defeat more than most: they took power 14 years ago promising to deliver responsible policies and economic success. Instead they have presided over economic stagnation and a collapse in public services. Why has Conservative governance gone so badly? It is natural to blame Brexit, which did indeed increase trade frictions and therefore surely had a negative effect on British real income. However, Brexit has not had the disastrous effects some predicted, and has somewhat perversely led to a rise rather than a fall in immigration, especially of the highly skilled. In fact, the roots of Britain’s poor economic performance are older and deeper than Brexit. Though many bad decisions undoubtedly contributed, one central cause was the way David Cameron and George Osborne gratuitously embraced fiscal austerity when they came to power after the global financial crisis. At the time, this looked like an obvious macroeconomic error; more than a decade later, it has become a social and political catastrophe.

continue reading

[tweetingukpolitics]

[taxusbaccata6]

[nevermindtheb0ll0cks]

Anyone else feel a bit lost in life? Tired of everything but not knowing how to change the feeling.

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

'Minimum wage is destroying jobs and must be cut', Liz Truss's economy group claims

They propose freezing the national minimum wage at its current level before going on to reduce the minimum amount a worker can be paid.

As of April, those aged 23 and over earn a minimum of £10.42 per hour.

Those aged 21-22 must be paid a minimum of £10.18, while 18 to 20-year-olds receive £7.49 and under 18s and apprentices are eligible for a £5.28 hourly rate.

Commission co-chairman Shanker Singham said the group was “concerned about how high” the UK’s minimum wage is compared with other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which includes members such as the US, France and Japan.

Singham said: “There is nothing wrong with the minimum wage. What matters in terms of competition is where it is set.

“What we are intending to do in the UK is move it to 66% of median wage, which is far higher than any other OECD country by next year and will be a significant drag on the economy.

[very-uncorrect]

Apparently our economy is in an official recession now

Can't get much worse than it already has been tbh

[thatstheproblemwithnapkinman]

if y’all want an idea of how bad the uk economy is rn

when i moved to liverpool in early september 2023, the car park at the end of my road cost £5 for 24 hours

now (late february 2024) it is £8

that’s a 60% increase in about 6 months

no wonder we are in a recession

[andysouldancer]

Sky News: General Election 2024: Five things the main parties aren't talking about this election

Remember, the money is there!

Tax wealth over £10 million, at 1%. That's £50 billion plus in tax income. Every single year!

[adrastalofnjordergarrten]

I'm laughing so hard rn

[tradermade]

#UKInflation stuck at 2%, but $GBP unsure of its next move. Explore: https://markets.tradermade.com/breaking/sterling-muted-post-uk-inflation. Core inflation remains high, keeping the Bank of England on hold. Will rate cuts or strong inflation pressures win?

[thoughtlessarse]

A Labour government under Keir Starmer will fail to maximise the UK’s economic growth unless it takes the country back into the European Union’s single market and customs union, leading economists and diplomats have said. The warnings come as an Opinium poll for the Observer finds that 56% of voters now believe Brexit has been bad for the UK economy as a whole, compared with just 12% who believe it has been economically beneficial. Some 62% of people questioned also believe Brexit has contributed to higher prices in shops, against 8% who think that it has had the opposite effect. With less than two weeks to go until polling day Labour has increased its overall lead to 20 points over the Conservatives and is firmly on course for a large Commons majority. But there is increasing pressure on Starmer and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to spell out how they plan to deliver on their manifesto pledge of securing the highest sustained economic growth of any G7 country while keeping within tight fiscal rules, and while post-Brexit barriers to trade remain in place between the UK and EU. The Office for Budget Responsibility says UK GDP will be around 4% lower every year than it would have been had we remained inside the EU. Starmer insisted while campaigning in south London that On Saturday he would not rejoin the bloc either in the short or longer term. “We are not rejoining the EU, we are not rejoining the single market or the customs union,” the Labour leader said. Asked if he would ever reconsider this, he added: “No. It isn’t our plan, it never has been. I’ve never said that as leader of the Labour party and it is not in our manifesto.”

continue reading

Nope, he's never said it, indeed rarely mentions brexit or its effects. Neither do the Tories. None of their budget policies add up, either. There's a huge deficit, but they're talking about tax cuts. Public services are going to shit, but there will be no money to make things better despite the lofty promises. The Tories are so desperate it's only a matter of time before they start offering free second-hand fossil fuelled cars because nobody's horny for their attacks on (U)LEZ zones and traffic-calming measure.

Reform UK would make the UK Airstrip One, more so than it already is. If the two main parties economic policies are shit, Reform's are a complete work of fiction. Tons of tax cuts mainly for big business would actively make public services much, much worse. They would also cancel any attempt to reach net-zero. Needless to say, immigration would be very restricted, probably to WASP countries.

The only UK-wide party that specifically mentions “brentrance,” (my word, not theirs) is the Lib-Dems.

[tweetingukpolitics]

[workersolidarity]

🇬🇧 🚨UK ECONOMY SHRINKS BY 0.3 PCT FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER

The economy of the United Kingdom shrank by 0.3% month-on-month for the month of October, 2023.

Contractions were recorded across all three main sectors of the economy.

Services fell by 0.2%, being the main contributor to the fall in the U.K.'s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Production output fell by 0.8%, and Construction fell by 0.5%, according to the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics (ONS).

"Services were the biggest driver of the fall with drops in IT (information technology), legal firms and film production -- which fell back after a couple of strong months," Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, is quoted as saying.

"These were also compounded by widespread falls in manufacturing and construction, which fell partly due to the poor weather," Morgan added.

For the three months leading up to October, the U.K.'s economy showed no growth.

Increases in services, led by engineering, film production and education, which recovered from the impact of summer strikes, were offset by falls in both manufacturing and housebuilding, Morgan said.

Via@XinhuaNewsAgency

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[th3d0nutl0rd]

do you have any inspirational words for the middle class. 💋

Yes if you are middle class please give me money I am poor and I would like a new shirt that is not from shein. Anddddd post

[bottlesandbarricades]

The party of financial responsibility really do want this economy to collapse like a house of cards.

I don't want a single Tory to utter the words 'magic money tree' ever again.

[eco-friendly-ecology]

My struggles with the label vegan :

I don't eat meat, I don't purchase any animal products brand new in supermarkets and I avoid cosmetic products tested on animals. However I will butcher my own roadkill occasionally, and I will buy secondhand leather and vintage furs, I also buy ethically sourced animal bones/taxidermy/pelts/feathers etc from people I personally know or from people they trust.

I own horses, I ride my horses, I spend most of my time working to pay for my horses. I have spent 2 years building trust with my rescue racehorse who was abused severely once he came off the track, I have done everything at his pace and I listen to him when he says no, he used to be terrified of saddles and bridles due to the previous abuse. With painstakingly slow desensitisation training he can now wear a light saddle and bitless bridle without any signs of fear. He wouldn't let me stroke him when I first got him but now he seeks out affection and is confident/has positive reactions when I ride him (mostly bareback). Including tack I don't weigh more than 15% of his bodyweight, and i don't use spurs or whips (i would be dead if i tried to hold a whip on him). I ride him out on hacks as a form of enrichment and to boost his confidence when dealing with new things, I will school him in both flatwork and jumps on occasion to keep him occupied and to help build up more of his muscles and keep him in shape. Yes, I could lunge him or handwalk him to do the same thing but I can't run as fast as he can, working him on a lungeline will cause him to focus more on one side (the inside) than the other and not use all of his body correctly, and it's near impossible to assess a horses canter when you're the one leading them in a straight line and there's very rarely anyone to help me. Does this mean I'm 'exploiting an animal for my own benefit' ?

It is possible to farm animals with high welfare standards, it is possible to have meat/dairy/fur/wool farms that treat their animals with the kindness they deserve. Sometimes it's not the farmers abusing the animals, sometimes it's the actual slaughterhouses and abattoirs that are cruel and cause unnecessary suffering. I am not against farming/farmers, I am against the industrialisation of agriculture, I'm just not in a position to be able to support the farms I want to because they are more expensive and harder to trace.

I will forever put animal welfare above animal rights. You can't have animal rights that are beneficial for all animals without having a strong foundation of animal welfare legislation that is specialised to each species. (I am aware of the five freedoms but there's too many loopholes in them for me)

I own rescue snakes, geckos and frogs. They need to eat other animals to have a healthy life, so I have a section of my freezer dedicated to frozen rats/mice/quails and I have boxes of live cockroaches/crickets/mealworms.

I would rather kill an animal than force them to go through painful surgeries and treatments that reduce their quality of life.

I don't support most honey brands, because of the impact domestic bees have on wild populations (spreading diseases, purposefully putting hives in ecologically fragile locations such as lowland heathland etc)

Deforestation isn't inherently bad, it depends on the location and the type of forest. Huge man-made monoculture forests should be removed, and yes it will look like a post-apocalypse for a while but you soon see a variety of native plants sprouting (especially in areas where it used to have a dense canopy)

I will never call farmers evil and I will never advocate for the abolishment of all animal farms in the uk. I will advocate for more transparency in slaughterhouses, for easier tracing for the consumer so we know exactly where the animal products came from (not just a red tractor certified farm), for putting the animals welfare first, for paying farmers fairly, for more economic help for farmers to encourage sustainable and ecologically friendly methods (cover crops, woodland pastures, hedges>fences)

It is not beneficial to encourage human-wildlife interactions but understanding human impacts on wildlife is essential. Having foxes and badgers come to your back door isn't cute, it's an accident waiting to happen. Releasing 'rescued' invasive species ,like grey squirrels and mink, doesn't make you a wildlife warrior, it means you're uneducated and don't understand basic ecosystems.

(There's alot more but I needed this off my chest rn, so will be making a part 2)