In the last week or so, the Government has staged a number of performances for the public’s benefit. This play is driven by the far-fetched conceit of a U.K. Prime Minister, acted by a wooden Keir Starmer, claiming that economic ‘growth’ is the Government’s key goal. The leading lady, Rachel Reeves (badly) plays the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is charged with developing the policies that will enable this growth. But the play’s antagonist, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, who is hammily rendered by a hyperactive Ed Miliband, has his own designs. The plot unfolds in front of the supporting cast, playing members of news media organisations. They all pretend to know of the tension between the goal of growth and Miliband’s plots to prevent it. And then the drama reaches its dramatic climax… nothing happens at all.
In this stupid play that we must endure as a captive audience, passionless robotic cardboard cutouts of humans attempt to synthesise emotions for us to ‘connect’ with. The Prime Minister wants the audience to understand that, despite his incantations of vapid slogans in interminable monotonous adenoidal whinges, he feels their pain as economic indicators tumble, and that his agenda for change is our shining beacon of hope. The loyal Chancellor’s best attempts to portray some likenesses of having anything between the ears with which to produce
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Bret Weinstein and Walter Kirn have a conversation along similar lines about US Congressional hearings. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that this whole sh*t show is a charade. The question is how are we going to do something about it in the UK?!
Rachel from accounts
The purpose of the play is to distract the audience from what’s actually happening by reciting the proper phrases. For instance, people associate economic growth with prosperity and hence, the government muppets keep using this term while promising nebulous benefits of their disastrous course of action which remain always just out of reach. Meanwhile, the wholesale plundering of the populace continues at an ever increasing speed.
Strange unnerving character with a voice like a tungsten drill. Can you imagine if she was your school teacher it would be like radiation poisoning. A lot of these people seem to be possessed by djinn. The nasal voice shared by Starmer. A nasal voice precludes a lot of range and they are like what Dorothy Parker said about Katharine Hepburn that she ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B. This lot are a murrain and a desolation. I feel dirty.
“Growth” is another word for cancer and malignancy.
Seems apt.
Although not a complete answer the countries that do well have governments who step back from trying to ‘control’ the economy. This is the reverse of what socialist governments expect to do.
Starmer must be conflicted. On one hand he has a Chancellor trying to pull off the impossible by encouraging growth yet imposing more taxes. On the other hand he has a Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero trying to pull off the impossible by limiting emissions yet growing green jobs. Something will have to give way.
The something being ‘reality’, for a period at least!
I’m afraid my default assumption is that all of this is pure theatre, like “covid”, and that behind the scenes they are all snorting coke and laughing at us.
Slow death by low ability management.
We have had growth since 2008 (ie when the CCA came in). What has made the recent position so stark? Presumably tougher and tougher targets of one kind or another (CO2; % renewables; % EVs, etc)? Or is it just factional infighting in the government?
Well I think energy prices have gone up a lot since 2008, and we pissed half a trillion or so up against the wall because of “covid” which probably didn’t help.
According to the World Bank, UK GDP PER CAPITA peaked in 2007 and has been hovering below 2007 levels since then. Per capita is the only important one, IMO.
Exactly – the reason we’ve had massive inflation, is because we’ve printed a ton of new cash and gave it away for zero return. That ain’t growth, it’s fiddling the books like every western economy
Thanks. I was wondering how major reversals like the Jackdaw and Rosebank extraction licenses have just started popping up now if we’ve had the CCA for 17 years. If I was Shell I’d want my pound of flesh for having to suffer this legislative stupidity……..
Indeed – Britain is increasingly closed for business unless you’re in the “green” business.
Good point – I’d hazard a guess the likes of Shell, BP etc are just keeping their heads down, trying to avoid even more punitive ‘windfall’ taxes… they are global operations, so plenty of other things to think about. Once one of them decides to leave the London stock market, that’ll really cause a stink. I can’t really see any downside for them in progressing a US listing instead
I assume that the CCA is like many such pieces of legislation these days, stuffed full of vague wording and modified via Statutory Instruments with little or no debate.
It needs repealing in its entirety, along with a lot of other deranged parliamentary drivel.
Can you help?
I do not believe that governments can create “growth”. All they can do is stifle it, or not. If people are left alone to pursue prosperity, they seem to do so. But sadly this idea that it’s the government’s job to create growth is firmly embedded with most voters and most commentators.
Ain’t that the truth; which so many hard-of-thinking voters wouldn’t recognise if it punched them in the face.
As it always does.
The phrase used in the article above is ‘enable’:
“Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is charged with developing the policies that will enable this growth.”
If a government unstifles growth, is that not enabling growth?
“The number one mission of this government is to grow our economy, so we can raise living standards for everyone in the U.K.” (Starmer).
He probably thinks he’s like a gardener – preparing the soil, choosing the seeds, watering, pruning. I would prefer him instead to think of the economy as a thriving wilderness that he can help by leaving it the hell alone. But I’m not a socialist.
I’d say having a small a government as necessary to manage the core vital areas and then let people get on with what else they’d like to do, is wholly incompatible with the current uniparty approach (following orders from their masters)
Sad but true.
We have a ‘small’ government whose responsibilities have been basically reduced to itself. In absolute terms, this largely pointless government is anything but small but it’s small in productive output as it doesn’t have to worry about real-world stuff like running the trains or the mail system anymore. Just invent new reasons for ever more ever increasing indirect taxes —
“Rachel, can you remember if we already raised the tobacco tax this week?”
“Sorry Keir, I really can’t! I keep raising taxes all the time you cannot seriously expect me to remember all of them!”
“Oh well then, raise it by another 15% because of climate change and because the poorer the population becomes, the better its health will get!”
It would probably help if we had anyone in the Student Union government who actually knew what ‘growth’ is. Certainly not Never Here Kier the human rights robot. Nor the former Bank of England tea trolley pusher Rachel.
Well they are socialists, or they say they are, so I assume they don’t care about “growth”.
No Government can bind its successor; an Act of Parliament is not sacrosanct. They could repeal (or amend) the Climate Change Act.
But they won’t. Presumably their Controllers won’t let them.
So we need a Government which does not have those Controllers.
The truth is that economic growth has been outlawed by the Climate Change Act
The reality and truth is, no hydrocarbon energy (abiotic, renewable, natural), no ‘modern’ world. It is simple as that.
I think that is a brilliant way of putting it.
Agreed.
As a matter of interest, do you a have a link to unequivocal evidence in support of the abiotic origin of hydrocarbons?
Can’t put my hands on the references at the moment, but all I’ve come across are a Russian-Swedish collaboration that showed in a geo-chemistry lab hydrocarbons could be produced from carboniferous rocks at high temperature and pressure, along with overview articles from some 15 years ago.
Not a line of research that fits the Western climate narrative, so would get starved of public funding.
There is a book by the late Thomas Gold called the Deep Hot Biosphere which makes the case for abiotic hydrocarbons. I don’t know if any of his suggested experiments/investigations were carried out to prove/disprove the theory. For my part I think as far as it goes he makes a good case.
Steady on. Much more revisionist talk like that and terrain theory might get a look in again.
And that would be the death of Bigpharma. If only.
But at least hydrocarbons are vegan
Net Zero
No Growth
No Wealth
No warmth
No hope
But an excess of deluded fantasy
Lord Maceroon gave himself plenty of rope and hung himself on the Referendum Platform. Mrs Maybee hung herself cutting Lord Maceroon down. A. B. de Pfeffel took back control, only to hang himself with the silk bedsheets. His successor was strangulated by her own Truss. Mr Rishi Buoy was doomed to the drop right from the start.
Only a matter of time. Someone please give advance notice to the IMF to bring a sharp implement for cutting down the next cadaver in line.