vivweb01blog

Editors note: I first compiled this blog in late 2022 in the aftermath of  the ignominious fall of Trussonomics and before the 'advent' of AI. Many of the ideas are still very relevant today, so a revisit with recent developments in mind is probably appropriate.... Introduction This has been a momentous couple of weeks all told, with more than the usual quota of economic and political U-turns, and probably more to come. The ‘new’ regime’s primary task now has to be to restore some sense of stability and prevent the economic meltdown which still beckons…. I’ll take the optimistic viewpoint and assume that the new team (whoever they turn out to be) somehow manage to pull this off over the next few weeks. I sincerely hope my optimism is justified, for all our sakes. Assuming they do, what then do we need to do ‘post-crisis’ in the medium- and long-term to improve our economic and social prospects as a nation, and avoid getting ourselves into a similar mess in the future ? ...

I first published this mini-review in July 2022 - a 'lot of water has passed under the bridge' since then, with a new and highly unpopular government in place and already faltering.  The employment situation has worsened significantly since then due to the NI surchares leveled on Business in October 2024. I've recently updated it to reflect recent developments and the prospects for our economic recovery. There has been little or no progress on addressing our low productivity and high benefits dependency amongst the working age population. It's important for the sake of our economy and our children's futures that we address our poor productivity as a nation. We can only hope to do this if we make maximum use of our home-grown talent. It's important that we now include more of our older workers in our workforce, whether they have retired or not, and we can only tempt them out of their 'economic inactivity' by providing strong incentives. The following arti...

  Editor's note: Please see the recent update at the end of this text for analysis of the Winter Fuel reversal announcement in in June 2025, and its implications.....  ----------------------------- Now that the dust is starting to settle after Reeves’ so-called ‘Halloween Nightmare’ budget, let’s take a look at what actually happened to pensioner benefits…and what we might expect to happen in future. We all know about the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment for the majority of pensioners – you would have had to have been living on Mars for the last 3 months not to. Although he obviously thinks it's 'done and dusted', Starmer is not yet out of the woods on that one, although it’s unlikely he will give way without an adverse judgement in the courts, and he will doubtless fight to defeat any attempt to force an about-turn, since the loss of face involved would be too great for him to bear, both politically and personally.  The overwhelming adverse reaction to the move, and...

In short – it stifles incentive and enterprise..... Let me try to explain. The Covid pandemic, Brexit, and more recently the worldwide ‘cost of living crisis’ have undoubtedly put a huge strain on many western economies since the start of the decade, and ours in UK is no exception.  The many billions gobbled up by pandemic costs and the furlough scheme in particular were but one example of the financial challenges we faced, and these will still have to be paid for somehow.  Raising taxes was a logical response during the first years of the pandemic in an attempt to pay down some of our mounting debt. Maintenance of ultra-low interest rates and effectively ‘printing money’ via quantitative easing was another means adopted to try and soften the immediate economic blow in the late 2010s, but unfortunately had the effect of making the economy appear more robust than it actually was....and building up our debt mountain alarmingly. These policies, which were in any case out of...