Being ironic doesn’t mean you are only joking. There’s a logic in her proposal that holds up. If women out on their own are in danger from men then it surely follows that men’s liberties should be curtailed, not women’s?
Nick Wilkins
What we value
Back in December this blog issued two warnings about borrowing to finance the Covid support measures: That deferring tax raises until the point of return risked a sluggish recovery The “we can’t afford pay rises” narrative was likely to be trotted out again as an excuse for further austerity. Arguably, last week’s budget partly recognised […]
Unsustainable response
Back in November, Rishi Sunak commented on Radio 4’s Today programme that the current projections for UK borrowing are “obviously not sustainable”. The question that nobody seems prepared to put to him is why there is no attempt made to balance the books? It’s as if the consensus on the need to spend and the […]
The Balancing Act fallacy
Speaking to Andrew Marr on 4th October, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “And, you know, we’ve got to continue to bear down on this virus, whilst protecting the economy. That’s the balance we’ve got to strike.” Few will take him to task for saying this, as it is a sentiment that is widely held. […]
Eat out to help out
So here we have it, UK’s much-praised Chancellor is urging us to “eat out to help out”. Recognition of the absurdity of this formula requires a certain naivety, we being so brainwashed into thinking economic orthodoxy to be a law of nature. We need to see the world more like the boy in Andersen’s “Emperor’s […]
The struggle to be heard
Labour’s response on dealing with the economics of Covid-19 has been rather insipid to date. Beyond criticising the Chancellor for a one-size-fits-all approach there’s no big new ideas coming from Anneliese Dodds. One would hope she would be consulting widely at this time, but her office responded with the predictable “thank you but Anneliese can […]
The grip of concepts
So, furlough payments have been extended in the UK but it’s clear the language is changing. We are now being encouraged back to work not because it is now any more safe (forget “R”, more people infected in aggregate means greater risk of catching the disease), but because they cannot afford to maintain the current […]
Covid-19
The current health crisis is occupying so much of the current bandwidth of government worldwide that insufficient attention is being paid to the economic tsunami that is following in its wake. Radical measures are required, and it has been heartening to see that some of the necessary policy has been enacted by finance ministers across […]
Campaign launch
We are now inviting all interested parties to contribute to this campaign with your impressions and comments. We would be delighted to hear from anyone who would like to work with us to put some more flesh on these proposals. I see the process going something like this:- 1) Sanity check the basic ideas by […]