Britain’s last Prime Minister, Liz Truss, sold herself as a liberty-loving free-marketeer. Yet her energy policy was decidedly statist. Instead of letting the market handle rising energy prices, she proposed a £170 billion bailout.
Truss’s replacement, Rishi Sunak, is generally seen as more pragmatic – though in July of 2022, he penned an op-ed for the Telegraph titled ‘I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher’. Now, writers don’t often choose their own titles, but Sunak did say, “I am a Thatcherite, I am running as a Thatcherite and I will govern as a Thatcherite.”
Well, he can repeat the word “Thatcherite” as many times as he wants, but that won’t make his solution to Britain’s rampant food price inflation any less socialist.
According to the Telegraph, “Downing Street is drawing up plans for retailers to introduce price caps on basic food items such as bread and milk”. The newspaper describes this as “the biggest attempt to manage supermarket prices since controls established by Edward Heath in 1973”.
It’s the five-year-old’s approach to economic management. If prices are going up too fast, we’ll just cap them. And why stop at price caps – why not introduce price reductions? That would make basic food items cheaper!
“No 10 insists that any action by retailers would be voluntary”. But why would retailers voluntarily set prices below the market rate? There’s something funny going on. The Telegraph talks of a “deal with supermarkets”, which may mean the government ends up subsidising basic food items. They’ll be taking money out of our left pocket and putting it back in our right pocket – all while taking credit for “tackling inflation”.
Just how bad is food price inflation? According to the ONS, Britain is the second worst in the G7 after Germany, which just entered recession.
In fact, the inflation rate for food and non-alcoholic beverages in the year to April 2023 was 19.1%. So Brits are paying almost 20% more for food and drink than they were a year ago.
Unfortunately for Sunak, the British Retail Consortium has already poured cold water on his proposal, with a spokesman telling the BBC, “This will not make a jot of difference”. Prices aren’t rising because supermarkets suddenly got greedier. They’re rising because of higher energy and transport costs – which stem from other failed policies.
My advice to Sunak would be to govern a little more like Thatcher, and a little less like Heath. That is, after all, what he claimed he would do.
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A success.
Primarily a relative one over the hated EU.
Seemingly wiping out the collective memory of and responsibility for scandals, ineptness, corruption, one of the Covid highest death rates in Europe and the World, probably the highest lockdown death rate in the World due to turning the health service into Covid only for 9 months and the in the end estimated 5 million people killed in the 3rd World through the British lockdowns alone.
And whether the ‘vaccination’ with the unnecessary, botched, manipulated and rushed gene therapies will really be deemed a success or a Titanic success historically, can only and will be estblished within the next 6 months (worst case) to 15 years (best case).
Do you have a source for the 5 million deaths due to Uk lockdown?
7 deaths within 28 days of a positive test… How many within 28 days of a vaccine?
Not to mention Long Vaccine.
Oh very good, well done.
Yes indeed, this really is the worry!
well we know, don’t we? look how many more deaths there were in the weeks after they started vaccinating the most vulnerable. Imagine the msm was on our side...”Huge increase in over 80 deaths in wake of vaccine rollout”!
Israel has the highest proportion of covaxxed people on the planet and yet there is so much Covid-19 in circulation that the CDC saw fit to issue a travel advisory to Americans thinking of going to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank. Don’t go, they say, the danger is at level 4 – very high.
I really think some critical analysis of the mass vaccination programme is required by the editors here.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/traveler/none/israel
“I really think some critical analysis of the mass vaccination programme is required by the editors here.”
Indeed – there seems to be a marked lack of ‘scepticism’, and a lot of passing on of gullible comment.
one dose of useless gunk, two doses of useless gunk.
Twice zero is zero. I learned that in infant school.
In what way is this a sceptic article?
I might as well read the Guardian or watch the BBC.
“Given the success of the vaccine rollout”
The vaccine is:
In what way is this a success?
You could perhaps admire the “success” of the logistics of getting so many “jabs in arms” in such a short space of time but that’s about it.
What a terrible article. A waste of space. Please try harder, LS.
I agree. Some of these articles are getting very non sceptical.
Six spot on bullets. The last one may, in the longer term, be the worst. A large part of it is that they seem to have ‘adjusted’ the definition of ‘vaccination’. Might have assisted sales of a novel drug aimed at infection mitigation, but it could undermine confidence in ‘real’ vaccines that do a proper job for us overall.
Yes totally agree. And the stupidest comment, “polling says most people believe this is the right pace”. Why are you saying this government fed bullshit. All right let’s do a poll on here, who thinks we should be still locked down. All right 100% say we should be fully open and never locked down again. Articles like this just hurt our cause. This is why I spend more time on the reddit site than here. And the first story that being vaccinated stops you catching the disease is utter bollocks.
Toby et al need to ask themselves one very important question in their quest to promote these expensive Lemsips.
Why is our government, and indeed practically every government around the world, lockstep marching towards “vaccinating” the entire planet with these potions that are currently only granted emergency use authorisation when there doesn’t appear to be much of an emergency (was there ever, or were their articles denouncing the testing criteria/cycles just candyfloss to keep our sugar levels on the up)?
Surely, any competent government would only offer such ill tested potions granted EMA to those at most risk (ie the elderly and those with underlying health issues) until sufficient trials have been completed in 2023?
Perhaps they’re okay to proffer their own kids’ arms after the trials on just 300 kids (which parents in their right mind would volunteer their kids for said trials?), or is Mike Yeadon’s opinion no longer to be trusted? Come on guys, please at least try and be a little bit more sceptical. I think we’re truly past the point of cockupspiracy. This is evil personified. I’m beginning to wonder where exactly your line in the sand lies.
Please don’t misconstrue my gratitude for providing the site but, really?
Well, that’s 40 million Genetically Modified British People. Let’s hope Antibody Dependent Enhancement isn’t a thing otherwise we’re headed for a Deagle scenario.
nah, some of em were 2nd doses. we’re headed that way though. if this goes wrong, it could go very wrong. oh wait, it already did in gibraltar.
It’s amazing that people still claim to trust the vaccine, although I think there’s a good chance that a lot of people give pollsters what they consider to be the socially acceptable answer. G.P. surgeries and A&E departments are being “overwhelmed” with people suffering from side effects, especially headaches (at least according to papers such as the Mail and Evening Standard). Are people really so scared/stupid that they line up like sheep outside an abattoir for the jab then panic if they feel slightly unwell afterwards. I’m not saying that the Covid vaccine is safe, but a lot of side effects will be minor and short lived. I’ve had plenty of jabs before, mainly for travel purposes, and often felt a bit under the wearther the next day, but didn’t rush off to hospital like a cry baby. What has happened to this country?
“AZ jab has saved thousands of lives” – Boris Johnson.
I suppose he has made sure that there is 100% agreement among (genuinely) independent scientists that there is definitely no link between the start of the UK’s vaccination programme and the huge increase in official cv deaths over the following six weeks, hasn’t he? Hasn’t he? These politicians!
And why does Labour appear so supportive of big business – or have I missed something?
Opinion polls for risk assessment! That’s a novel idea. Wouldn’t get very far if it was recommended to a proper person responsible for complying with the Health & Safety at Work Act.
Here come the human microchips we warned about!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9460389/Pentagon-scientists-invent-microchip-senses-COVID-19-body-symptoms.html
Because despite their denial they’re going for zero covid or as close as possible.
40 million vaccinated – this is nonsense. This is from the school of project management to exaggerate progress complete.
The latest figures show that of the 39,587,893 vaccinations administered in the UK so far, 32,121,353 were first doses and 7,466,540 were second doses.
Over 32 million have been partially vaccinated with nearly 7 and a half million fully vaccinated is where we are now.
With respect, nothing the bbc report is worth reading.
Aside from my comments below about the fact that this isn’t really a sceptical article and doesn’t belong here, I think some of the information in the original BBC story is incorrect.
“A record total of 475,230 second doses were administered on Saturday – along with 111,109 first doses.”
Looking at the UK vaccination data on OurWorldInData, on March 20th a total of 844 285 doses were administered.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=40..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Vaccinations&Interval=New+per+day&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~GBR
Unless the laws of arithmetic have changed over the last year (along with the laws of virology, immunology, epidemiology and numerous other fields of science), 844,285 is a lot more than 475,230+111,109.
So. To sum up. This article is rubbish, and the original story at the BBC is factually incorrect. (Or the data on OurWorldInData is incorrect, but given the choice between the BBC and OurWorldInData, I know who I would trust more).
There was one other possibility: that I didn’t read the article properly.
The total number of second doses of 475,230 may well have been a record. But the total number of first+second doses was not.
So the text of the article is correct. The problem with the article though (and the LDS quoting of it) is the impression it gives from its tone is that the vaccination programme continues to be a rip-roaring success – when the reality is that March 20th was the peak in terms of daily vaccinations and the programme has been in steady weekly decline since then.