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Posts Tagged ‘UK Economy’

This picture of the G8 Leaders sitting around a table together, is very symbolic because whilst they can arrange a meeting and deliver a conference, the one thing that they can’t do is deliver their electorates.

Solving the Euro crisis would be simple if either the Eurozone countries opted for a “United States of Europe” where all resources are pooled, both assets and liabilities or, Germany accepted ‘funding’ such a programme without such a structure. The real problem as the election of Hollande in France and the non-election of any kind of government in Greece demonstrates is that the average European voter is not prepared to face reality.

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All Socialists are Pond Life…but so too are their equivalents on the political Right, both are stuck fast in “nostrums and remedies” based upon political dogma from the past that have little to no relevance in today’s world. The biggest problem when faced with the failure, real or apparent of one course of action, is to immediately correct it by steering sharply in the opposite direction which seems to be the reaction of the French people in electing Hollande to the Presidency.

Whilst this is natural, when it comes to nations and economies, perhaps this is not the wisest course of action to take in fact, it is most likely the wrong one and can lead to lots of unintended and nasty consequences.

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As a rather clear sign of what the public think about Local Elections generally, a turnout of under 30% on Thursday rather paints the picture all too well. The truth of course tells us absolutely nothing of any value because only those with some kind of commitment and/or anger, will bother to turn out. In this sense, it is rather like those unreliable “satisfaction surveys” on owning particular models of cars.

The results are always suspect because the only people who bother filling in the surveys are those wanting to ‘justify’ their original purchase decision or, those who have had reliability issues and/or bad customer service who want to give the brand a severe kicking. Whatever the motive, the results are unreliable to say the least and of no use in your decision about what car to buy next yourself.

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There were a number of interesting articles in The Economist on Scottish Independence and one was quite amusing: http://www.economist.com/node/21552572 “The economics of home rule: Scotland could probably go it alone now, but the economics of independence are steadily worsening”.

Quite hilariously I got involved in a “comments war” in the reader’s comments section but I must confess that whilst Scots Nats always have a chip on their shoulders, I really didn’t realise what had set them off until the next day. Because I read on line, I didn’t see the “tongue in cheek” map of Scotland the Economist had put on its cover which along with the headline “It will cost you…” also renamed it Skintland…

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For an exercise in soft and weak minded liberalism, it would be hard to beat an editorial in The Independent that prattles on about youth unemployment. Whilst they sketch out some of the issues rather as plotting dots on a chart, they totally fail to join those dots up. The current levels of unemployment are distressing in all sorts of ways but what this Editorial like most politicians seem to miss is the key point about these figures…

This is not the disease, it is just a symptom of the real underlying ailment that is not local but global in nature. If you want to read it yourself, here is the link: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-we-allow-joblessness-to-rise-at-our-peril-7627537.html

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Although I am sure that something will spark me off again, sooner rather than later, I find our current political scene amazingly flat, totally boring and not worth too much effort to write about. I even feel sorry for the Media struggling to create drama out of very little, Greg’s Pasties and so on, how boring, boring boring.

We have the Local Elections which should see a fairly big swing to Labour. This will not be due to the ‘charms’ of Ed Miliband but rather that the public normally likes to vote against the incumbent party in Government when it comes to the mid term Local Elections. Of course the “buggeration factor” will be what happens to the LibDem vote…

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To my mind, Budgets are the same as New Year’s Eve parties, they come high on expectation and are guaranteed to disappoint in the actual event. I feel a touch of sympathy with any journalist having to write anything on this week’s Budget, to be honest, even felt the same for the hapless Ed Millipede…” Millionaires budget…” was the best he could manage, bless.

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I was quite amused to read an article today about two people who are “camping” outside the Apple Store in London, a week ahead of the sale date of the iPad 3 tablet just so that they could be the “First to get one…” Whilst rather sad and a bit pathetic too it is also quite thought provoking in an entirely different way when thinking about the wider world economy.

The iPad itself is a device for “consuming” material with limited data input potential rather than the “creative space” fully fledged computers offer. However, this probably more properly reflects the limited use that the vast majority of people have in terms of computing power. However, I suspect that whether we look at smart phones, iPads, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest, what we are really seeing is the start of a major decline in the current business model they all represent…

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I knew that it had to happen, it was a racing certainty once they stopped distributing the local free weekly newspaper because it became uneconomic to keep publishing it. Inevitably the day would dawn when for the first time in almost 5 years, I would have to go out and buy a newspaper and on the basis of my ‘needs’, it was obvious that only The Sunday Times would do.

As is most often the case in these things, there were several factors at work which combined to force my hand. Of course losing the ‘freebie newspaper’ was crucial but, it was most certainly exasperated by the amount of print making and framing that I had been doing of late, without the latter, I could have put off the evil day for some months I suspect.

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Although I find the “reader’s comments” on the Telegraph these days, increasingly shrill and stupid, apart from the sheer ‘fun’ of BoJo’s Monday column, Benedict Brogan is also a wonderful “fresh breath” in the dens of the “Right Wing Nutters of the Telegraph”.

He wrote an interesting piece the other day in which he asked, “Where will the voters come from in order to get Cameron re-elected as PM ?” It is an excellent piece which you can read here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100140226/where-are-the-voters-who-will-turn-david-cameron-into-a-winner-in-2015/ But more than that, he raised a series of interesting questions too…

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