BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

a highly original analysis.

Your thoughts, insights, and musings on this matter intrigue me

One of you mentioned the GFC today. Funny seeing it in the wild from this post
https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1 … 4348805120

extremely strange scenes in parliament these past few days. we've had a soft coup, truss is now PM in name only.

she ducked the urgent question tabled by kier/the opposition due to 'an urgent matter elsewhere'. bizarrely, left one of her main rivals in the leadership contest, penny mordaunt, to take the driver's wheel (and display a comparatively superlative performance and sense of command and leadership in the process). i bet mordaunt loved every second of apologising profusely for truss's mistake. the govt is basically now a mordaunt/hunt double-team whilst truss dresses up like thatcher and posts weird 'lo-fi and chill' montages to tiktok.

truss then showed up in the commons chamber about 35 minutes later, and proceeded to sit on the front row, blinking constantly, whilst the show went on around her. as if the economy wasn't in meltdown because of her recent actions. just passive. a weird, mute look on her face. she looks very heavily medicated, in my opinion. i wouldn't be surprised if she's had a panic/anxiety attack over the last few days and has been benzo'd to oblivion by her doctor. she doesn't look present in any way at all.

she turned up, sat there for 15 minutes, and then swiftly left. she didn't even say a word! it is honestly one of the strangest things i have ever seen in the leadership of this country. sat in the eye of the storm that she created, blinking like a person in shock.





every interview she does just makes it worse. the conservative party are either going to continue with this 'soft coup' arrangement or soon re-write their own internal rules to get rid of her before the 12 month cooldown period after the last leadership election. in the last interview she repeated the same 2-3 talking points, seemingly not realising that in the previous 24-48hrs her new chancellor, jeremy hunt, had just u-turned on and abandoned every single one of them. her entire agenda has been abandoned. all she can do is repeat slogans she learned from her paymasters at the IEA. doctrinaire bullshit divorced entirely from reality.

she even had the gall to laugh in her last press interview. you almost wouldn't realise this was the woman who just single-handedly added +£400 to people's mortgages by sending interest rates and BoE monetary policy into panic mode. what a totally fucking bizarre state of the nation.

and always with the constant blinking.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-19 01:32:30)

johnson is way too toxic with vast amounts of the electorate. the idea of him returning is a fittingly 'roman republic' intrigue, but i highly doubt it will happen.

no, the chancellor has not always been more powerful than the PM.

what is interesting in these developments, however, is the notion that the markets, and bond traders specifically, are more powerful than an elected government. this is a problem going back even to clinton's more ambitious policies in the 1990s. if a small cadre of bond traders and speculators don't like what you're doing, it can spook the whole system.

the entire pension system is dependent on investment in 'low-risk' bonds so it's generally not a good idea to be blithe about the government adding to them in a spending spree and devaluing the whole gilt system.

in the event the inevitable rescue package cost us £65bn in the space of a few days, twice the covid-19 £30bn stimulus package. amazing. and what was the initial uncosted spending spree for? guaranteeing private energy companies' record profits and tax cuts for the super-rich. genius!

as 'prudent guardians and sensible heads on the economy', the conservatives are trashed. only a decade in the wilderness can follow this level of mismanagement.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-19 02:08:02)

what, supposed to deliver in 10–20 years? we were told that free-market fundamentalism and neoliberal trickle-down would 'deliver in 10–20 years' ... in 1980. where's the delivery? was i out? they didn't leave a card.

i think it's telling that the people 'panicking' and supposedly losing their cool were ... the City traders and 1%ers being given the chef's selection of tax cuts. even they know that shit doesn't work. the only area in which it 'delivers' to is financial management and offshoring companies.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-19 02:29:04)

it hasn't happened in over half a decade. the UK has had consistently some of the lowest corporate tax for the last lustrum.



and you want to know something? france and germany have better levels of investment.

do i have to mention the giant B-word? the same government that just cut us off from our biggest trading partner are now prescribing trickle-down economics to ... attract companies and professionals? from where? certainly not from europe, where most professionals and companies did have relationships with the UK.

and you just said yourself that we should be wary of making deals with huge population groups and markets like india, lest their professionals come here.

so where are we to attract 'businesses and professionals' from? you are simultaneously banging the ethnonationalist nativist populist drum, whilst also adverting to the 'payoffs' of free-market fundamentals. well the free-market believes in the free movement of labour, dilbert. not arbitrarily scuppering deals with giant economies like india's because they're 'not the right colour'.

let's face it, the best idea that any of your gammon-faced brexiting lot have had for 'the UK unchained', as far as a future growth plan goes, is just reheated thatcher: nothing to do with labour, or viable industries, or sorting out 'generational structural issues', such as the levelling up agenda purported to do: the only idea you lot have is turning the UK into singapore-on-thames, a money laundering and financial services haven anchored off the european peninsula. what amazing growth! we just have to keep cutting taxes for the super-rich and corporations and soon pennies shall rain from heaven in Hull!

you're not very good at this politics thing, for an engineering philosopher-king.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-19 08:02:37)

This Liz Truss lady is certainly not having a good start at this.

https://twitter.com/thecentrelefty/stat … Scs9m6KjSA

hahahaha

Liz Truss would truly be special if she causes the new king of the U.K. to start a constitutional crisis. Seeing that happen in real time is what keeps many historians going.

Larssen wrote:

I'm still dumbfounded at the fact that Kwasi Kwarteng apparently succesfully pursued a PhD in economic history of all topics and then ends up cowriting and publishing a retarded book advocating trickle down economics and even tries to implement it in his first days as chancellor. Just what is going on in the minds of these people? He's perfectly capable of 'reading a fucking book' yet the contents don't seem to pass beyond his eyeballs at all.

This is exactly what I've been saying since about forever.

How is it possible for someone to be qualified in a supposedly rigourous subject by a supposedly eminent institution only to produce the sort of work which would get slapped down in a competent high-school?

There's certainly something weird going on in the heads of people who come through Oxford and finish up in government.

NYT sent an alert saying Liz Truss is going to resign