Ours.
The British people.
We have consistently voted for politicians who offered us an extensive welfare state and relatively low levels of direct taxation.
We have been living beyond our means for years.
Now international markets are realising that fact. The pound is falling accordingly. If we had Rishi, not Liz Truss, the sh1show could have been kept on the road for a bit longer, but sooner or later the penny (and for that matter, the pound) would have dropped.
You cannot have an economy based on Deliveroo and selling investment flats to the Chinese.
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Well said
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It's just like running a shop.
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Hotblack Desiato 28 Sep 22 13:18
You cannot have an economy based on Deliveroo and selling investment flats to the Chinese.
___________________________________________________________________________
1. Why not?
2. In any case we don't
10 biggest industries in the UK 2022 are
1.Supermarkets
$187.6B
2.Pension Funding
$155.9B
3.Construction Contractors
$113.6B
4.New Car & Light Motor Vehicle Dealers
$109.9B
5.Hospitals
$106.4B
6.Banks
$92.2B
7.General Insurance
$72.3B
8.Management Consultants
$67.6B
9.Residential Building Construction
$66.8B
10.Pharmaceutical Wholesaling
$61.9B
the run on the pound is the fault of a government of morons who think, as the last 3 governments did, that all you need is WILL to see things through and who have committed to taking on new debt
it's fcuk all to do with people voting for the most attractive policies when they are not the ones taking the operational and risk decisions
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it's the IMF
we should send a gunboat.
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I hope you aren’t suggesting that people didn’t know what they were voting for?
because that, apparently, is the very worst thing you can say and will make them vote extra hard next time…
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It's because of the tories - especially Cameron's arrogance re the referendum and because of the idiot party members who didn't want to elect a brown man so opted for a blonde moron.
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Heh Tories blaming voters is proper cuck behaviour
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Heh Tories blaming voters is proper cuck behaviour
One of the reasons I have historically voted Tory was because they were the party that was going to bankrupt Britain more slowly of the two. Now, they have lost that mantle.
The fundamental problem is about short, medium and long term, and humanity's in built short term preferences.
It has proved possible to keep the gravy flowing to the electorate thus far, but that was at the expense of future problems. Those future problems are no longer future problems, but present problems.
Oh and BTW, if we had a Labour government, we would still be completely fvcked, just in a different way - there is zero chance that a Keir Starmer government would run anything like a balanced budget.
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Er, I'd quite like an economy that didn't incentivise i) startups specialising in employment law evasion, and ii) offering the beneficiaries of grift somewhere to park their ill-gotten cash out of their own countries whilst also worsening housing affordability for residents.
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I BLAME SIR BEER!
A CURRENCY TRADER TOLD ME THAT ALL THIS IS HIS FAULT!
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there's a difference between like and can't Johnny
I suspect we like the same things, well, economically anyway, you probably don't have 10 "catwoman fisted" videos in your chrome bookmarks, but you get the idea
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1. Why not?
2. In any case we don't
10 biggest industries in the UK 2022 are
1.Supermarkets
$187.6B
2.Pension Funding
$155.9B
3.Construction Contractors
$113.6B
4.New Car & Light Motor Vehicle Dealers
$109.9B
5.Hospitals
$106.4B
6.Banks
$92.2B
7.General Insurance
$72.3B
8.Management Consultants
$67.6B
9.Residential Building Construction
$66.8B
10.Pharmaceutical Wholesaling
$61.9B
Gee. That list made be feel a lot better. Not.
Let's just run through the beating heart of the British economy shall we:
1. Supermarkets - these have now expanded to be general merchandisers (especially basic clothing and household wares), not just food and drink sellers. So it is not really surprising that they are our biggest sector - without clothes and food you aren't going to get very far. They also generate little to no foreign currency sales, but certainly buy a fvck load of imported food and manufactured goods, and pre-2022 inflation operated at a profit margin of.....
3%
Yes, that's right, 3%.
So the first entry on Sumoking's "LETS NOT PANIC ABOUT THE BRITISH ECONOMY" are the shops that sell 80% of what we buy, most of which is imported, and which are now almost certainly all operating at a loss due to inflation. So its fine. We shouldn't think that the run on the pound is actually because Britain is fvcked, because Tesco's are making a loss selling Spanish blueberries and Chinese made T-shirts that fall apart after 3 months.
2. Pension funding.
It is true that Britain does have a few pension management companies that are international players, bringing in much needed foreign currency. But pension funding as a whole essentially consists of current workers overpaying for worthless financial assets (such as UK and EU - area government bonds or corporate bonds, or over-valued equities) in the hope of not starving to death in old age - so overall, I wouldn't get too excited about what is essentially an enormous wealth-destruction exercise which people are forced in to because cash savings interest rates are well below inflation.
3. Construction Contractors
It is true that Britain has some construction contractors that generate meaningful foreign currency. But a lot of UK construction activity is debt-funded property development, building offices that people aren't going to move into, or shopping centres without tenants. So I wouldn't get too excited about the construction sector's ability to save us, particularly in a high interest rate environment.
4. New Car and Light Motor Dealers
Selling people cars that they don't need on finance packages that they cannot afford.
5. Hospitals
The fact that this is so high up the list just tells you how old, ill and fvcked we are. In a healthy society, hospitals, like funeral directors, should be far, far, far down the list of economic activity.
6. Banks
Well, that's alright then. Good old banks. We have literally never had any problem with them as a sector of the economy.
7. General Insurance
We do have some world class insurers and insurance does generate foreign currency, but the insurance sector is facing huge headwinds not just from Covid, but also climate change, and also the insurance sector has all its assets in financial markets, so doesn't provide an obvious engine to power our way out of a crisis in...financial markets.
8. Management Consultants
Fraudsters in suits with powerpoints. The fact that so much of our economy is management consultancy shows how little actual economic activity there is, and how corrupt we have become, if 25 year olds with powerpoints spouting sh1t about subjects that they know nothing about is apparently our 8th biggest industry.
9. Residential Building Construction
Flats for Chinese grifters.
10. Pharmaceutical wholesaling
See comment above re hospitals. The drugs are either necessary, in which case we are all old and fvcked, or they are not necessary (often this is the case - the drugs don't really work, or aren't worth the risk) in which case this is like saying that "Snake Oil" is our 10th biggest industry
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a classic HB response
HB, it's just us sun you can just write "harrumph! I don't want to believe you!"
I mean look at this classic HB mess here;
casually dismissing a $67 Billion industry because it doesn't fit the HB narrative
doesn't know what management consultancy is "how little economic activity there is"
doesn't know who does it "25 year olds with powerpoints"
doesn't know what it is used for "subjects that they know nothing about"
a whole industry that spreads know how across the economy so every single company doesn't have to learn and guess what best practice is, just waved off
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When I first started work the basic rate of income tax was 33%. Supertax was 98%.
Then along came Thatcher and sold off £billions of national assets, from North Sea oil licences to British Gas. She also benefited from the very ugly regressive tax of VAT, which she virtually doubled.
That enabled her to reduce income tax without slaughtering health, education, social services and so forth. They were crippled, but not slaughtered.
Ever since the political narrative has constantly been about reducing taxes.
I've never understood why those people who know full well that in your everyday life you get what you pay for are so easily convinced that macroeconomically everything changes so that you can pay less and less and continue to get the same quality of services.
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Let me guess though, it’s definitely 100% not the fault of brexit or the fvcking cretins who voted for brexit?
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It's Meghan's fault.
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Ooo really touched a consultancy nerve there.
sumo, did you mean to write
an entire industry that asks a company how it does things and then parrots that back to other companies, passing it off as a great approach ?
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I suspect insurance might be about to take a major hit. Not as big a hit as Fort Myers, Florida, but a pretty big hit anyway.
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Consultants are the most pointless thing a company can pay for.
They’re almost all completelyinept and unqualified to give any advice about anything.
The new one is ‘digital transformation consultant’it seems. They’re a special brand of own-fart-sniffing snake oil salesman.
Absolute charlatans.
These days you probably have consultants consulting to other consultants too. in some kind of recursive loop that ultimately gets funded by loans that will never be repaid because they’re not actually doing anything productive at all.
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