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 of last year - since the employment situation has worsened significantly since then, I've recently updated it to reflect recent developments and the prospects for our economic recovery.  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 article will I hope provide some practical suggestions on how we might do this. UK Government has, somewhat belatedly, declared this as a priority - time will tell whether they (or indeed their successors!) are prepared to put their (i.e. our) money and resources where their mouths are... -------------------------------------

    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. 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 particular to the way it was announced and justified, will have been noted, however, and I think this has probably been responsible for restraint on any further cuts – so far.…. It remains to be seen whether we will ever get universal WF payments back – if t

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 kilter w

  Now that the dust has settled on the election result, it’s worth taking some time to reflect on what the 2024 UK General Election results actually tell us about the way the electorate feel about politics in general, and the individual parties in particular. Although by polling day a change of government was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and we’re all no doubt relieved that the electioneering is finally all over, a look at the results may give us some valuable indicators as to what we should expect to happen in the next 10 years or so. First, let’s take a look at the overall voting statistics for each major party, and compare these with the results for 2019: UK General Elections: 2019 vs 2024 2019 2019 2024 2024   Party %Votes cast Seats won %Votes cast Seats won Conservative 43.6 365 23.7 121 Labour