Our age has become characterised by a growing if inchoate sense that there is something undesirable and even illegitimate per se about ordinary people wanting to be more prosperous. Of course this is not stated openly and is generally an unconscious reflex. But it is there all the same: a kind of intellectual ambience, if I can put it in those terms, which holds that the nation’s wealth is not its own, and is rather a state-owned resource which Government apportions and manipulates as it sees fit in order to achieve policy objectives of whatever kind. Since this is the case, the accumulation of assets by individuals, households, families and so on – particularly the educated working and lower-middle classes – is increasingly portrayed as being intrinsically antagonistic to what Government is trying to achieve. The result is that the aspirational desire to amass wealth and pass it on to one’s children (the root by which my family, for example, found a way from poverty to financial stability across three generations) is becoming itself pathologised.
This mood has gradually permeated our institutions. And you notice it whenever you are able to get a glimpse at what the people in power really think. Policymakers say all kinds of interesting and revealing things when they believe themselves to be talking to the like-minded. This is why it is very important for the informed citizen to in particular pay attention to the ‘grey literature’, which is often published on the basis that almost nobody will read it except those for whom it is directly relevant. It generally paints a much truer picture than what you can read about in the newspapers or hear people spout in interviews.
A good example of this is a speech given in 2021 by Gertjan Vlieghe, then-External Member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC, the body which decides the Bank’s base interest rate), and now economic adviser to Jeremy Hunt (the man who purports to be the U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer). Vlieghe’s credentials speak for themselves. He is a clever man – obviously much cleverer than I am. But he is also a consummate economic establishment insider. And paying attention to the kinds of things he says to fellow economic establishment insiders therefore gives us a window onto what one might call the intellectual ambience of modern economic governance. The results, to say the least, are intriguing. And they demonstrate in a quite nuts-and-bolts sort of a way the extent to which the ‘intellectual ambience’ that I earlier mentioned has filtered into what ought to be the least political and most pragmatic of our institutions – the Bank of England.
The speech, titled ‘Running Out of Room: Revisiting the 3D Perspective on Low Interest Rates’, has an otherworldly quality to it when read from the perspective of 2024. Statements like “I have not changed my view that this inflation peak is likely to be temporary” and “[W]hen tightening does become appropriate, I suspect not much of it will be needed” must have sounded very sensible in July 2021, but raise a sense of alarm when read now. Not only is Jeremy Hunt at the helm, but he is being advised by people too hubristic to admit that they have the same predictive powers as a chimp tossing a coin. But this is not the place to dispute its substance, which I am in any case much too thick and ignorant to do; what we are chiefly interested in here is its approach to economic affairs and what that tells us.
The speech concerns the reasons why in Vlieghe’s view the natural or ‘neutral’ interest rate (which you can think of as the interest rate that would be at the sweet spot where the economy is neither being artificially stimulated nor contracted) is likely to remain ‘persistently low’ (as it is inferred to have been in most developed economies for a long time), and what to do about it. This matters for the Bank of England because the lower the natural interest rate, the less ‘policy space’ there is. In layperson’s terms (and I should say straight away that I am very much a layperson, being merely a humble lawyer who just likes to ask awkward questions and read obscure books), if the neutral rate is low, this means that the bank will not see much bang for its buck in terms of wheezes to stimulate the economy if it ‘needs’ to, whether through lowering and then raising the base or ‘policy’ rate or through quantitative easing. And this in turn means it will not be able to do very much to help if there is a downturn. Its main policy levers in such circumstances will in short be largely ineffective if pulled.
Since the Bank of England, like any central bank, largely justifies its existence on the basis that it keeps the economy stable – particularly in a downturn – then this is of course in its view going to be a bad thing. So a low neutral interest rate is identified by Vlieghe as a problem in search of a remedy.
There are two main reasons, in Vlieghe’s opinion, why the neutral interest rate has been so low for so long and will remain so (others are put forward by other people, for example here and here; it seems to me that, as in almost any macroeconomic question, the jury is very much still out). The first is to do with people living longer and having fewer children. As people age they naturally accumulate more savings, particularly in the run-up to retirement, so you then get a bigger stock of savings – weighted towards low-risk asset classes – which pushes down the natural interest rate. And since we have a bigger and bigger share of old people in the population, we have proportionally fewer workers, so there is less demand for investment, which also pushes interest rates down. The second is due to ‘wealth inequality’: as people get richer, they have a lower marginal propensity to consume (they spend a lower proportion of their income on food, clothes, etc.) and therefore use their income to accumulate assets. This then produces an oversupply of credit which results in cheaper loans. There are just more assets floating around in search of demand for credit. And so the result is a lower natural interest rate. We appear to be seeing more ‘income inequality’, which leads to ‘wealth inequality’, and this produces precisely this oversupply of credit.
This all sounds plausible enough, at least insofar as my dull brain understands things. It may be wrong, and indeed Vlieghe’s argument may not be as I have described it; economically literate readers may be sniggering up their sleeves at my inept account as they go. But as I said earlier, what is really important for our purposes is the approach which the speech adopts to the subject of the accumulation of wealth. And we see this most clearly in Vlieghe’s suggested remedies, some of which are in the remit of the MPC, and some of which are in the remit of Government. It is perhaps important to make clear that Vlieghe does not advocate any in particular; he just moots them as possibilities.
The first thing he suggests are negative interest rates. If your problem is a low natural interest rate, the theory goes, then why not just go much lower with the policy (base) rate – i.e., into negative territory? Readers who like to play News from Uncibal bingo will be glad to know this turns into a paean to the wonders of CBDCs. The ‘problem’ with negative interest rates from the perspective of implementation, you see (I leave to one side the obvious fact that anything that presents a ‘problem’ for the implementation of negative interest rates is to be welcomed) has always been that people would abandon other assets in favour of cash. If your money in the bank is going to go down in value by 0.5% or 0.75%, or whatever, a year, then it becomes more rational to hold physical cash stuffed under the mattress; its value won’t depreciate. This will end up harming bank profits and worsen any downturn, and therefore negate any ‘stimulative’ effect associated with the policy. Ah, yes, but not if the digital pound has replaced cash!
[A]s central banks… are considering a move to [CBDCs], this constraint can potentially be moved more easily in the future. If digitisation becomes sufficiently widespread so that cash is used much less, this opens up the possibility of having more deeply negative interest rates in the distant future, without causing any negative effect on bank profits since interest rates on all safe assets would become negative, so banks can maintain their net interest margin, as bank deposits are no less attractive than other negative rate assets.
I hope you didn’t miss the import of that amidst the awkward phrasing: what’s important, to be clear, is bank profitability, not the fact that you, I and every other poor schmuck in the land would be slapped with a de facto tax on having some money tucked away for our children or a rainy day. Which is more important: the net interest margin of banks, or governing on behalf of savers who have just been trying to be prudent? It’s a no-brainer, really, isn’t it?
The second remedy Vlieghe suggests is even more reassuring: having a higher inflation target so as to “create more monetary policy space”. The idea here is that if inflation is higher, nominal interest rates (i.e., interest rates not taking into account inflation) have to also go higher, so if the central bank then cuts the base rate, it has a bigger effect. There is something almost endearing about central bankers’ enduring belief that monetary policy is just a matter of pushing a button in order to achieve an outcome (as though they have it in their power to actually meet their inflation target). Much less endearing is the idea that higher inflation should be endured as a matter of course simply in the interests of giving the Bank of England greater power to ‘stimulate’ the economy as it wills it.
The third remedy Vlieghe suggests – really a package of remedies – would be designed to try to tackle the problem of the low natural rate of interest itself. Here, he covers a range of options, and this is where we get to the real heart of the matter:
- Since the problem is partly a product of a low birth rate and longevity, you could try to raise the birth rate. But this is a member of Britain’s ‘new elite’ we are talking about here, so having brought up the idea of boosting the birth rate Vlieghe immediately dismisses it as crazy talk. It would be bad for climate change, first of all (yes, he actually says this), and in any case, we don’t like children anyhow, do we? So whatever the solution is, it cannot be promoting the idea that having children is inherently wonderful, that it’s better to do it when you are young than when you are old, that marriage is the bedrock of society and that large families are really nice. Definitely not any of those things.
- Reducing time spent in retirement, on the other hand, is a very good idea. Since older people have this annoying habit of leaving the labour force, if we can keep them in it for longer, then we get more economic output and therefore more demand for investment and higher interest rates. Vlieghe is chary about detail, but speculates in a footnote whether “more can be done to raise the average effective retirement age”. People, it should be clear, are first and foremost economic units.
- We could tackle “income inequality”, which leads to higher wealth inequality, which is apparently intrinsically undesirable in addition to its effect on the natural interest rate that we have already sketched out. And this is where the mask really begins to slip, as Vlieghe takes the opportunity to ventilate some embarrassing Student Union opinions about economic policy: “over the past several decades”, he tells us, we have seen “widespread deregulation” to the effect that there have been “rising profits” (boo! hiss!), “weaker investment” and a “reduction in wages”. The solution to this – remember, this is member of the Bank of England’s MPC who was also at one time a Director at Deutsche Bank and a senior economist at a hedge fund – is “strong regulatory anti-trust legislation and the promotion or facilitation of collective bargaining in labour markets” so as to “restore the balance of power and therefore the balance of incomes”. We need stronger unions and more Government intervention, folks. You read it here first.
- And while we’re on the subject of why capitalism is bad, we could also tax people more. “There is a pendulum that has swung”, you see, “from a high tax, high regulation environment to a low tax, low regulation environment since the early 1980s”, and this needs to swing back. It is astonishing that anybody could have looked at the U.K. economy in 2021 and identified its main problem as being low taxation (in fairness, Vlieghe was speaking before the various changes Jeremy Hunt brought in when appointed Chancellor in 2022), but for the avoidance of doubt, here are his verbatim comments:
Falling corporate tax rates and falling marginal income tax rates on the richest, as well as a range of other tax policies, have contributed to rising income inequality since the early 1980s. Flexibility in tax regimes for high income individuals to reclassify income as corporate profits have also played a role. Low inheritance taxes allow income inequality in one generation to become entrenched in future generations.
I said I would not dissect the substance of Vlieghe’s speech, so I will refrain from drawing attention to the very low likelihood of him having arranged to voluntarily overpay his own tax bill to reflect his earnest desire to remedy the problem of income inequality in the U.K. What is significant here is the mindset. Vlieghe, who, as I earlier described him, is a consummate economic establishment insider, has no interest in the question of how poor people might become richer. His interest is in how to make things more equal – with the emphasis entirely on what can be done to diminish the wealth of the wealthy. As none other than Margaret Thatcher put it in one of her last Parliamentary appearances as Prime Minister, there are simply some people in Left-learning Britain who would rather see the poor poorer as long as the rich were less rich. High inflation? Negative interest rates? Vlieghe would, as we have seen, merrily sacrifice the interests of the aspirational poor before the altar of “monetary policy space”. But income inequality? Rising profits? Flexible tax regimes? Those are the sorts of things up with which he will not put. This tells you everything you need to know about priorities and everything you need to know about the mindset of Britain’s economic establishment (and, by the way, the ideas and opinions of those in a position to advise the Chancellor about economic policy).
According to Vlieghe, in sum, the banquet of policy options before us basically involves negative interest rates (punishing savers), higher inflation (punishing everyone, but especially savers), shorter time spent in retirement and higher taxes. And all of this done to, er, increase the Bank of England’s capacity to make recessions less harmful. Did he really think this through?
More broadly, taken together, all of this builds an ugly picture of the attitudes which prevail among society’s purported ‘elite’ towards the whole idea of economic growth. For all of Tony Blair’s many diabolical features, one thing that you can say about the early New Labour Governments was that at least in those days people on the centre-Left seemed to have it in their heads that it would be nice if everybody could be wealthier. And this, of course, was built on Thatcher’s own revolutionary notion that even working class people might aspire to one day own property, have disposable income and enjoy some comfort in retirement. Neither of these figures was uncontroversial when they were in power, of course, and neither can be said to have been even close to perfect. But in this regard at least they were both on the right subject.
Our conversation has now moved to a different topic entirely, as Vlieghe’s 2021 speech unwittingly demonstrates. Not how we can increase national wealth; not how we can help individual people – even poor people! – become more prosperous; and certainly not how we can tackle some of the really deep and intractable problems that our society faces (the low birth rate being chief among them). Rather, how the state can best rearrange the stock of assets in the economy to achieve purposes of one kind or another (to make people more equal, to give more monetary policy firepower to the Bank of England etc.) The result is a vision of the nation’s wealth as itself simply being assets on the state’s balance sheet rather than the property of the people who own it, with phenomena such as tax, interest rates, inflation targets and so on being conceptualised as mere tools by which those assets are bestowed upon the grateful population in greater or lesser measure.
This should not really surprise those of us who have read our Michael Oakeshott, our Leo Strauss, our Friedrich Hayek; the modern State wants to make the population reliant upon it to retain their loyalty, plain and simple, and taking total responsibility for the divvying-up of assets to make things more ‘equal’ and to stave off recession is a very good means of achieving that goal. It of course produces bizarre genuflections (the population must sacrifice their wealth in order to help the state fight off recessions), but that must be understood as a feature, rather than a bug, of the underlying rationale. In the state’s view, what could be more appropriate indeed than the gradual diminution of the holding of assets by individuals (since that would increase reliance of the individual upon the state itself) and an ever greater emphasis placed on the importance of the central bank in saving us all from economic harm?
In closing, it is fitting to return to the words of our friend Dr. Vlieghe, whose (I am sure unintentional) implications are genuinely chilling:
Absent policy changes, there is no prospective reversal in this particular driver of interest rates: downward pressure from demographics either continues further or remains where it is. The key mechanism is not that older people have lower savings rates, but rather that, as people age, they hold higher levels of assets, in particular safe assets, and those assets are only run down slowly and partially late in life. The higher saving of the middle-aged outweighs the modest dissaving of the retirees.
A political environment in which the mere saving of money, the most fundamental feature of a sound economy and the main way in which poor people become wealthier over the course of generations, is conceptualised as a problem is one that is ready to go to some quite dark and dangerous places. I doubt very much that Vlieghe means anything in particular by problematising the fact that older people’s assets are only “slowly and partially [emphasis added]” run down late in life. But taken together with his comments about low inheritance taxes allowing income inequality to become “entrenched”, one begins to see an image of future “policy changes” being sketched out which will I think have very disturbing consequences for that most basic human practice, wherein grandparents and parents pass on what little they can to their descendants in the hope those descendants might have a better life than their own. What, after all, could be more logical than an inheritance tax of 100%, given that it is really the state that owns the nation’s wealth in the first place, and which therefore ultimately ought to determine what proportion of the pot each individual is entitled to?
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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As an Antipodean, who has just been part of a jubilant rebellion by the plebs, I pose the following:
Do the numbers of hard core Khan disciples, for whom support for every radical shibboleth is just another way of garnering even more social currency, outweigh those who just want a simple life?
If so, I would be leaving London, as my parents did 60 years ago.
Yup, already left London. Shame in a way, it could be so much better. The virtue signallers that can afford to live in nice parts of London stay there, others hold their nose and move to the home counties – some of them think the home counties are full of horrid racists. I think they are frightened by places that have a lot of white working class British people in them.
My guess would be that a large part of Khan voters are ethnic Pakistanis voting as the head of the family told them to who don’t even understand his political speeches.
Or English.
Not so sure. He is hurting them as well as everyone else living under this what? Fill in the blank.
Wouldn’t it be easier if he just left town?
Khan does not care what we eat, he only seeks destruction, poverty and chaos.
All going according to plan, all tying into the Great Reset and Agenda 21. They’ll be after our woodburners next.
Coming for us boaties first…
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/23/ban-on-wood-burners-threatens-british-boat-dwellers-with-winter-freeze
You boaties are too damned independent of the government which is why you are in the cross hairs.
I live in a canal village so know & understand just how self reliant you are. Dangerous to the plan of control
So, it’s the depth of winter, in the middle of nowhere, I light up the small wood burner, as you really don’t need it very large in such a small space, the bit of wood smoke is bothering absolutely no one and thats £300 is it..
It’s absolutely ludicrous & in my book criminal. All designed to tip those who already live on very little into greater poverty. What does it matter if a few hundred boaties freeze to death??
We’re all expendable to the parasite class…
I posted this a fews ago, but it relevant here..
Its not just Birmingham council that is broke, one of my employees was in magistrates here in Plymouth a few weeks ago as he wanted to stand his ground, he was being fined by the council for fly tipping, he left a cardboard box no larger than a shoe box next to his wheelie bin, as the bin was full a day before collection day.
Further to his research he notified the council that the legal definition of fly tipping was a bin liner or more.. They then changed the fine to “littering”
He had the day off work as court was 2pm, he stood his ground but to no avail, they fined him 375£,he has 5 kids and lives in the poorest area of the city….
This screams of desperation, but what does one expect after throwing 400 billion around like confetti during the Covid scam and spending 60 billion a year on keeping immigrants happy..
The poor man. They are nothing but tax collectors & thieves
And they always spend your money so wisely – NOT!
I don’t believe this would ever happen here in our unsmart part of south London. The bin men either take it or leave it, I really don’t think they’d report it. Besides which, it’s worth making friends with your bin men. We still give them a Christmas tip (£20 for each of three teams of three – recycling, landfill, garden/kitchen waste) and I go out there to chat with them when I give it (getting myself up at crack of dawn to do so). As a result, they take whatever we leave out (eg three or four bags of garden waste sometimes during the summer when it’s supposed to be only two); not only that, they push all our bins and bags, once emptied, back up three steps from the pavement, up our windy path and put them away down the side of our house for us. Every single week. We never asked them to do this. We, in our mid-70s, consider that cheap at the price. And shows how kind people can still be. But even just to go and chat with them once or twice a year and thank them for doing their job would probably help.
Well, as the story goes, there was actual fly tipping at the other end of his street, and he suspects that when the council cleared that they saw this box and used it as a way to try to cover the cost of the clear up of this flytipping.
The council is broke, they are no longer true councils but for profit corporate entities
Your poor friend
Like you I still tip the bin men, although I think ours are all just one team. We also tip (Christmas box / card) everyone who delivers to us too.
Okay it’s not much, a token, but it results in friendly service every year. Perhaps we shouldn’t have to pay over the odds for good service but a little bit of acknowledgement of the people around us who do service jobs is no bad thing. The boot could be on the other foot sometime.
I totally agree.
Those who vote for establishment parties don’t deserve to have one
Khan, like Sunak, Starmer and 90% of all establishment party grifters are just following orders from above. They don’t govern they are mere functionaries and they know it. They simply focus on building their political careers and accruing secondary income streams. It is those who vote for anyone (or spoil their paper) that appear to be the enlightened voters. They are the ones who can see the elephant in the room and not prepared to be taken for a sucker by the uni party.
The same story applies to Citizen Khan as applies to what I wrote here:
Just try to snatch a Big Mac out of the hands of a pleb!
Somehow the phrase ‘Big Meal Deal’ has a different ring to it when you consider insects!
As a beef farmer, I get very confused. No meat animals, no leather or wool.No fossil fuels either, so no plastic (‘fake/vegan leather’, anyone) or nylon. What are people going to wear?
Nothing, just like we used to in prehistoric times. It’ll be interesting when they come to take the smartphones out of the hands of the youf.
Didn’t we wear animal skins and twigs?
Loin cloths knitted from the hair of virgins?
Don’t forget you will already be in your 15 minute mud hut village, using wooden spears to kill the local wildlife!! And using large leaves and tree bark as plates.
while your wife and children trudge the 20 miles and back to bring water from the nearest source….!
….and…the 40g of meat will not be real meat it will come from Bills ‘fake meat shit factory’ while he and his cohorts chow down on their chateaubriand …
no pets either .. as they are meat eaters….(and you may have had to kill little Timmy for food..)
This is the time to take that course (or make money from offering them?) in woodworking, ancient art of flint tool making, identifying mushrooms, and making meals from ingredients foraged from the hedgerows!!
LOL!!! ???…..
You would freeze to death in Manchester.
LOL!
It’s fine for the Muslims. They have 72 virgins waiting for them in Paradise. No problem weaving a coat from a wife’s hair.
What people? None of this will apply to “the Elite.”
Don’t you understand the real objective yet?
If it gets that far, Charlie, they’ll be rounding us up and transporting us to smart prisons where we’ll wear orange jumpsuits!! No, that won’t happen. I don’t things are going the way THEY say they are going. People are not going to put up with it. I live on a large organic dairy farm and the farmer has woken up to the lies of climate change thank god! No one is going to start bossing our farmers about!
You livestock farmers need to get together to deal with what is coming down the line. We’ll be on the barricades (see my post above) with you, with our pitchforks. We’re fortunate carnivores as we have grass fed beef from local farms easily available, and are indeed, friends with one of the farmers.
It’s a joy to hear what she has to say about Vegans
Worth pointing out. We are the most ecologically friendly people in the country. Our food miles are minimal; the only things we buy that do not come from our butcher or the farm shop run by the farm noted above (they have been farming the same patch of land in Somerset for over 300 years, have always practised what is now called “regenerative” farming (rotating livestock and arable and feeding the land with shit), and if that sort of thing worries you, have been assessed as carbon neutral) are goat milk, tea and coffee.
Food waste? None – any fat too gristly for us to eat (and animal fat is as important to good health as animal protein) the dog gets (boy is he a fit dog – mince and offal his base diet), the tea bags and egg shells go in the compost.
They take our red meat off us over our dead bodies….
Breakfast today
Bacon
Fresh black pudding (i.e. made with fresh blood, so moist, not dry like the horrible stuff sold in supermarkets and most butchers), fried in loads of butter
Lamb’s Liver – finely sliced, and flash fried in the bacon fat.
4 x scrambled eggs, cooked in butter, with slabs of butter on top.
Yowser,
I suspect that your diet and lifestyle is in line with the EAT-Lancet proposal just not with Morrison’s depiction of it.
Mean Time to Failure returns again.
I think you’re wrong about so many things.
Obviously most people on this forum disagree with me on most issues. Some of them find it valuable to hear an opposing opinion. You presumably don’t.
I wasn’t being insulting, you seem to have chosen an apposite handle for your posts which chimes with how my old engineer’s brain works.
Debate is all very well except that much of it is from entrenched positions and thus more like ships that pass in the night.
You replied so quickly you got my original version of the comment. Surely debate from entrenched positions is better than no debate?
You might find that most people disagree with you because you want to use exaggerated claims of a climate crisis which is not supported by any science to support your eco socialist world view that our standard of living in the west is too high based on the Maurice Strong way of looking at things. ——Basically that we have used up more than our fair share of the worlds resources and that Industrial Society must be brought down by removing the use of fossil fuels. But that is a political argument not a scientific one. If you want to be an eco socialist then that is fine, but don’t try to pretend it is all just about the climate because it clearly is not.
Never heard of it. If you want to know why we ended up Carnivore, go check out Dr. Jordan Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila, on YouTube and her tale. Nothing to do with Lancet. Or Morrison, whoever he is (not Jim, I guess?)
The Supermarket perhaps?
Wot, no fried bread??!!
Don’t eat carbs! Don’t eat plants! Fit as a ******* fiddle
I remember reading a book a few years ago about a guy who wanted to start a small holding in Wales. He was an idealistic ‘trendy’ vegetarian (no vegans then) he decided he would grow giant (elephant) garlic as his mates in Birmingham had told him what a great crop it was. Needless to say he failed, the crop failed and he discovered fairly quickly that people in rural areas weren’t interested in ‘trendy’ foods.
Soon after that he got a cow as his next project couldn’t survive without animal dung fertiliser. He eventually came to realise that vegetarian doesn’t work as his cow needed to get pregnant to produce milk for his family, 50% of the calves born to the cow were male and they would have to be slaughtered as they couldn’t remain on the farm, and there was so much milk produced from even one cow that he needed other animals (pigs) to consume it to just get rid of it all.
so eventually he came round to the idea that he had to eat meat, drink milk and grow mainstream vegetables to survive.
Read the plan rather what Morrison implies about it. It does not propose a ban on meat only a reduction. With 7 billion people on the planet I think you will find there is plenty of demand for your beef even under this plan.
Chris Morrison said “meat rationed to just 44 grams a day”, not “a ban on meat”.
Apparently 40g is about two very small meatballs! Just for visualisation! LOL!
I think I may have tracked down the source of confusion. It appears to be common medical advice to consume no more than 44 gms of protein a day. This corresponds to a lot more than 44 gms of meat (apparently a 70g steak has about 20 gsm of protein). However, it is also common medical advice to eat no more than about 70 gms of red meat – the rest of your protein is better obtained from other sources. Somehow this got mangled into no more than 44 gms of meat a day.
It’s common medical advice to keep having Covid boosters.
Me? I avoid “common medical advice” as it is almost always bad for you. I’m old enough to know what’s good for me.
Anyone here cook in seed oils?
Hands up?
You do realised you are cooking with industrial waste don’t you? Highly inflammatory. Not to mention that as well as sugar, seed oils are in almost ALL processed food, in all plant milk filth as well.
Olive, avocado oil and ghee for me. the oil is made from the flesh of the plants not the seed and ghee is clarified butter.
The 44 grams of meat is mentioned in the article….and as for medical advice..sheesh…I take that with a pinch of salt….if I’m allowed salt?! LOL!
Yes, your body needs salt. Once again the daily recommended intake is poppycock, just a figure gleaned from thin air by those that seek to control your diet.
But don’t take my word for it, please research the subject your self. Many electrolyte drinks that athletes use are chock full of salt.
I’ve just eaten one fairly small grass fed steak and it was 235gr approx the size of the palm of my hand.
He also wrote:
did I tell you that my globalist friends inform me that banning your burgers and meat pies will help save 11 million lives each year?
There are no bans of any kind that I can see in the proposal. This is key paragraph:
“While meat is an important source of key nutrients including protein, iron and vitamin B12, excess meat consumption can harm our health and the planet. Aim to consume no more than 98 grams of red meat (pork, beef or lamb), 203 grams of poultry and 196 grams of fish per week.”
Note that this is just advice and obviously a broad guideline for an “average” person. Similar to the advice to drink no more than 2 units of alcohol a day. It is not that controversial – I would think many doctors would agree. Curiously it works out as 70 gms a day not 44. I can’t find the 44 anywhere.
(Given that the population of the globe is 7 billion I would have thought a healthier diet would save far more than 11 million premature deaths per year)
“did I tell you that my globalist friends inform me that banning your burgers and meat pies will help save 11 million lives each year?”
And provided links and citations to this? No, of course not…
It is in the bleeding article!
I’m guessing the 11 million is the cows, pigs, sheep etc. after all the article doesn’t say ‘human’ lives does it?
““While meat is an important source of key nutrients including protein, iron and vitamin B12, excess meat consumption can harm our health and the planet. “
Eating only beef and water for a year saved my wife’s life and halted her “terminal” bone cancer in its tracks.
And yes, even her Oncologist is amazed.
And if you think medicine progresses all the time, think again.
Victorian doctors treated Diabetes mellitus with a diet of beef and water.
Worked.
Now they don’t tell you to stop eating crap, stop eating so much, and get OFF your arse – rather they just make you insulin dependent. Way to go.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-meat-diet
“The Arctic Explorer Who Pushed an All-Meat DietVilhjalmur Stefansson wanted to prove a point.”
“While doctors condemned the diet as dangerous, Stefansson was defiant, attributing his increased vigor and “ambition” to his all-meat diet. Newspapers and magazines across the country ran stories on his experiment, contrasting it with the vegetable-heavy diets most doctors recommended. Soon, Stefansson left the hospital, having lost a few pounds, and continued his meat-eating endeavor from his New York apartment. Doctors examining the two men during the year-long trial reported that neither had heightened blood pressure or kidney trouble, the expected result of a carnivorous diet. The one thing lacking in their diet, Stefansson noted, was enough calcium.”
It’s all connected…the planetary health diet is actually part of the C40 Smart Cities goals…towards a “fossil free future”….and details how to ‘implement solutions that make it easier for people to eat more plant based options’ LOL!
All of which is part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals…
…..they are bloody trying to force everyone into it, and we are way down the road…..
Isn’t the point that we don’t need any politician, especially an unhinged climatic like Khan, telling us what we can and can’t eat. Frankly, it’s none of their bl00dy business.
You got it.
And by the way, chitin, which the bugs they want is to eat is a) indigestible by human beings & b) causes inflammation.
There are days when one thinks they really are trying to kill off us serfs…
…if it was natural for human beings to eat insects and bugs..we would have been doing it for thousands of years….
I’ll follow the ways of my ancient ancestors thank you very much…LOL!
Us too.
Think about it. Homo sapiens (never mind our precursors) has been around c250,000 years.
Until c 8000 years ago, we had no agriculture. Ergo, meat was our staple; and when starving and waiting for the next mammoth, berries and roots.
Meat is our species-adapted diet.
Have a look at Elaine Morgan’s Elaine Morgan and “The Descent of Woman” — Lady Science – she points out that our ancestors likely spent a lot of time in or near water and that fish and shellfish were also an important part of our diet. Shellfish are very nutrient dense. A most enjoyable read with much to make one think about.
So how do the wealthy get wealthy if there are no serfs to produce goods for them to sell. Or indeed service their possessions, will they fix their own houses, cars and aircraft?
People are eating more meat. And a meat free diet stunts kids (way to go, VEGANS – nothing to beat deliberately harming your chidren eh? !)
ps – the stunting is cognitive as well as physical.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3918945/
“Meat consumption is associated with less stunting among toddlers in four diverse low-income settings”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743850/
“A Systematic Review Investigating the Relation Between Animal-Source Food Consumption and Stunting in Children Aged 6–60 Months in Low and Middle-Income Countries”
People are eating more meat
Maybe globally as more and more countries come out of poverty. Not in the UK:
Daily meat consumption in the UK has decreased by approximately 17.4g per person per day – just under a 17% reduction – in the last decade finds new research from the University of Oxford
https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/news/reduction-in-uk-red-and-processed-meat-intake-but-more-needed-to-meet-our-climate-targets
Sure people in low to middle income countries might well benefit from more meat. But that doesn’t mean it is healthy to eat more than 70 gm a day.
Yeah. We’re getting more stupid by the day. And eating a lot more than you state stopped wife’s terminal bone cancer in its tracks.
I’d say that’s healthy. And we are now sure that the chemo she had for breast cancer in 2017, and the appalling mess the NHS made of treating it, caused the bone cancer.
She’s had no chemo this time round. Just stuck to beef.
Keep up——–We passed the 8 billion mark a few months ago.
8 billion ! I thought we had a Pandemic
We were supposed to but it did not go to plan.
Don’t worry though, planning for the next one will fix it.
Keep your eyes on 2025.
These people don’t do workable proposals.
Greengrocer’s apostrophe at the end of paragraph 6.
“Nitpicker in aisle 3”. LOL!
Nutpicker, perhaps?
Is there any intention whatsoever to subject this to a democratic vote? And even if there is, is that what democracy is for? So that a majority can tell a minority what to eat?
If that’s democracy, no thanks.
None of these things get put to democratic votes, but people’s education on politics and law are so abysmal, that they think politicians can just do what they want and that laws have been handed down by god and must be obeyed no matter what.
Just look at the US, where the criminality and corruption of the current WH administration knows no bounds and gets supported by courts at every turn. I think we’re going to have to wait for society to collapse around our ears before people realise we have to do and decide for ourselves.
I think it’s rather worse than that.
People chose a political team and then convince themselves that their team is looking out for them and has their interests in mind. And in addition, the other teams are bad people with bad ideas and their own team is there to fight against and protect them from the other teams. Their own team might not be perfect but it’s better than the other teams and when their own team does bad or stupid things, it’s a mistake or the odd bad apple to be accepted from time to time.
People don’t think their political leaders have to be obeyed, they are deluded in thinking that the political leaders they like care about them and are somehow working to get the best for them.
Fools.
Democracy is analogous to being mugged by a rape gang. You are given the choice which member of the gang does the deed and if you refuse the choice is made for you.
Much as I’d like to think the Dutch government is hanging by a thread due to the farmer’s political movement, it has in fact already collapsed and is only in place until the elections in November. Of the current 4 coalition parties, only one, PM Rutte’s VVD is likely to be part of the next coalition, sans Rutte, fortunately. Rutte brought the government down (supposedly) over an asylum-related issue.
I would have expected the farmer’s party to win big, but a very popular politician, Pieter Omtzigt, formerly of the CDA, has set up his own party and is expected to have the biggest party and take votes from the farmer’s party. I think he’s sympathetic to the farmers, but I don’t think he will fight the EU particularly hard and I think he is to some extent on board with the ludicrous idea that the earth is boiling. Most of his fights have been related to other issues, so it’s not that clear, but he is old-school big tax nanny state, so I’m not holding out much hopes, even though I have a lot of respect for him. Although he will hopefully keep former EU green commissioner Timmersmans out as PM, as he would have out-Khanned Khan.
I’m starting to think one of the reasons the West seems to want WWIII, particularly in the Middle East, is because it allows all these tossers to back down from their net-zero nonsense by saying we need to pump up fossil fuels and increase farming due to the war – without having to say they’re giving up on their net-zero ideals.
I now see what the NL in your name means. You and the lovely Eva would get along fine. ———Thanks for all your very thoughtful comments.
I doubt if this was in Khan’s Manifesto, so he has no democratic legitimacy for it.
But then he isn’t a democrat and this isn’t about climate or health: it’s about control and Khan getting a new, lucrative, role in a WEF-approved organisation when he’s kicked out of Office.
Unless he screws up and his fellow travellers declare a fatwa on him (does the ULEZ rob all his compatriots of their cheapo taxi cars).
I pointed out a while back that Khant is in place to test the water & wind us up , backed by all political groups ! They all know whats going on , apart from a few Mayoral grillings that he gets where he gets to revel in showing his smug arrogant & actually un civilised self with bells on he does as he pleases ! HOW long has he been there ? How long has his extension been due to Covid & HOW can he be running again with predictions saying he will win again ! HOW ????
As I understand it, in WW2 rationing didn’t apply to restaurants,which is why in the famous episode of Dad’s Army Mainwaring was able to send out for fish and chips for the U-boat crewmen :”I vont plaice”. (Whoever suggested occupying the Faeroes and Iceland was a genius.)
Will this be how the wealthier are intended to get round the restrictions?
You can have plant based diets or you can build huge solar farms across vast swathes of arable farmland but you can’t have both.
You can ban non-organic fertilisers or you can hugely reduce manure producing animals but you can’t do both.
Every ecosystem works best when it is in balance. A catastrophe is looming.
You drink, you smoke, you eat meat and cheese and own pets and, according to the fanatics, have a life expectancy in the low 70s.
You do none of these and have a life expectancy in the low 90s. But you get euthanised at 70.
Whatever happened to the ice-free Arctic? latest leaflet
This is what happens when you rely on models full of assumptions and guesses for your truth rather than the real world.
When are people going to wake up to the pretend to save the planet eco socialist SCAM? Probably never. Here is a little experiment for everyone who comments on this website who does not accept the phony climate crisis emergency nonsense.————-The next time you have a house full of relatives make the following observation “There is nothing unusual about current temperatures or climate and there is no evidence of dangerous changes to the climate” ————-Pay attention to how many will stare at you like are from Mars. This is why the vast majority will never be able to avoid the scam. They have allowed themselves to be manipulated and brainwashed, and it is well known that humans prefer to be with the majority. It has something to do with feeling safer and not wanting to be considered an outsider, or to face ridicule. I would love to be a fly on the wall when Khan and his fellow Mayors get together at one of their globalist junkets discussing how to impoverish their own citizens while pretending it is all about the climate, when infact it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with that.
A few points that might not be obvious from Morrison’s polemic:
EAT-lancet does not propose banning anything. The suggested action that is closest to a ban is a tax on unhealthy foods such as sugary drinks (not meat). An idea that has been around for some time.
The objective is less meat not zero meat- something which would be healthier for most people in affluent countries. “Meat and dairy constitute important parts of the diet but in significantly smaller proportions than whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.”
This is not just about climate change. It is about several things such as better health and protecting biodiversity.
The nation was healthier than it had ever been on the WW2 diet (except for the ones being shot or blown up of course).
I’ll be you can’t wait for the WW3 diet.
What I eat is none of your business, none of the state’s business and none of anyone else’s business either. Define “unhealthy” and “healthier”. You won’t be able to. And in any case, who cares what people eat? If you like you can spend your time and money persuading other people to eat the things you think they should eat. Knock yourself out, just don’t ask the state to get involved using my money. Taxes should be raised for providing the essential functions of the state like protecting our borders and preventing crime and locking up criminals, based on income or land use or across the board consumption, not for the purposes of behaviour modification.
We are each entitled to trade quantity of life for quality.
Who said that nothing is worth giving up for an extra couple of years in a home?
Indeed, though sadly the world is full of people like MTF who seem happy not only for themselves to have their choices micromanaged by others, but for that micromanagement to be forced on everyone. Exactly the attitude that led to the covid tyranny, “vaccine” carnage, nut zero etc.
My wife, diagnosed with terminal bone cancer two years ago, with 6 to 9 months to live, is still very much alive and kicking.
How? We went Carnivore a year or so before the diagnosis. She’d already had breast cancer, and the RUH in Bath so messed her treatment we are convinced that the chemo she had caused the bone cancer.
Going carnivore stops feeding cancer cells. She is by NO means alone in staving off terminal illness with this diet.
So restricting her to 44 gms of meat a day will kill her.
You really are a fucking Khant, Khan.
Fyi.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-meat-diet
“The Arctic Explorer Who Pushed an All-Meat Diet”
At 72, I wish I had known that this was the way to eat when I was 22.
Putting one’s body into an alkaline state is how it can successfully deal with the rogue cancer cells. Another successful nutrition based intervention is B17.
I wish your wife continued good health.
Thanks. This worked for her, and we are now finding many other, also with other chronic conditions, especially autoimmune ones.
It is not quite correct to put one’s body into an alkaline state.
Our cells have a very tight narrow range of pH for normal healthy function of between 7.35 to 7.45.
pH 7 is neutral so a slightly alkaline level is the normal level for healthy cellular function.
Cancers thrive in an acidic environment so if your pH is below 7 you should think about doing things to correct that.
You can buy professional quality test strips which indicate the pH of saliva and urine.
To restore normal pH a diet rich in cruciferous vegetable is important. One can also take alkaline drops or as an alternative drinking during the course of the day from glasses of water with 10 drops of fresh [ideally organic] lemon juice will provoke your body to produce an alkaline rush.
You can use the test strips to tell that it works.
A word of warning about juicing cruciferous vegetables – too much can deny essential iodine to the thyroid and cause serious harm if allowed to continue.
Dizzyness and loss of balance in the morning when you try to stand up after sleep is a sign of this.
Iodine supplementation is a good idea.
But of course this is all pretty complicated stuff and profesional advice from a knowledgeable professional is important. Don’t think you can just read up online and DIY. That applies to what I have written here.
I concur entirely with you. A good diet of freshly cooked foods rich in vegetables, quality proteins & not too much of any one thing is the way to set one’s body into it’s optimum pH range, which is ever so slightly alkaline. Processed, artificial foods tip the body pH into the opposite direction with sugar being a prime culprit.
Like everything in life, balance is key. Dr Robert Young has done a lot of work on this, my criticism of him is that to access a lot of the information one has to pay a lot. Recompense oneself, yes. Charge the earth? No.
I collected haws yesterday and then read what to do with them Apparently the seeds contain B17. I tried hawthorn leaf tea yesterday, a bit bitter. Will try a few berries in hot water today. Good for circulation apparently.
“Going carnivore stops feeding cancer cells.”
Whilst it is good to hear this has worked for your wife JeremyP99 there is much journal published science [which BTW your average NHS doctor never looks at and did not learn in med school] which explains which foods to avoid to:
1) reduce cancer risk
and
2) to reduce what cancer cells need to thrive.
It has been established science for decades that sugars feed cancer:
Glucose Metabolism in Cancer: The Warburg Effect and Beyond
So cut out sugars and precursors to sugars like quickly digested carbohydrates. Slow energy carbs like ancient grain breads and whole rolled oats for porridge are apparently OK.
That is in effect what your wife has done – it is not the meat eating which is the factor and it can be a harmful factor.
Cancers are complex and there are many different varieties so professional guidance is important – but the average NHS doctor will turn to chemo and cutting and not give any advice on diet which happens to be a crucial factor.
There is for example an effective US FDA approved and licensed product for two kinds of skin cancer including the most common but it is not available to NHS patients – dermatologists here seem to know nothing about it and you will not find it with most online searches [thanks Google and big Pharma].
There are many books published by doctors who have read the science and by cancer survivors and others which explain aspects like the importance of diet – including eating and juicing cruciferous vegetables [broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts to mention a few], eating oily fish, avoiding beef, pork, with only very occasional lamb or chicken, avoiding dairy.
If you stick to organic then you help to eliminate environmental toxins like pesticides and weedkillers like glysophates which don’t help you to stay cancer free or to go into remission once you have a cancer.
I am only mentioning a few aspects here so please do not act on what I write here and rely on professional advice from those who really know all the options [if you can find anyone – but they are like hens teeth and not all those who claim to know necessarily do know].
The Gerson method of treating cancer follows those principles. I know someone who treated her breast cancer using this method, no chemo, was told she’d be dead if she didn’t follow the conventional chemo route, yet 12 years & counting later is healthy & cancer free.
I don’t think Khan has as many supporters as one might think. Participation in the Mayoral election is dismal; well under 50%. If enough anti-Khanites turn up to vote then I don’t think he could survive on the Corbynite and ethnic vote alone.
It’s a good microcosm of what is wrong with the UK and why direct democracy should be strongly preferred – even if the majority isn’t always right they are unlikely to directly vote against their immediate economic interests.
Where does Khans authority and mandate come from to sign and commit London to wide ranging societal change like this..?
Hehe. Little did the people of London think that when electing the Mayor, they were actually electing a tinpot dictator…
Seems to come from Labour & Tory being too scared to stop him! Starmer could kick him out of the Party and force him to stand as an independent. Sunak could put London into special measures.
The wide ranging societal change is coming to us all.
Some really aggrieved citizen could test out whether his Range Rover is really as bullet / bomb proof as he thinks it is, but they won’t.
My car mechanic is under the impression Citizen Khan got the motor because there is a contract out on him.
Sounds a bit far-fetched but MPs don’t get cars like that provided out of tax or rate-payers’ money.
Next we’ll hear he has a similar adapted London bus and an underground carriage so he can prove his green credentials and use his Oyster card to get around.
Just in from X:New Study blows ‘greenhouse theory out of the water’‘All observed climatic changes have natural causes completely outside of human control’“This climate controversy is costing billions, making the wrong folks rich, and keep us from solving real environmental problems.”
https://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/
It strikes me that if the 500 or so most influential/powerful people in the world were imprisoned on an island from which escape was made impossible, the rest of the world would be a lot safer, peaceful, more prosperous and fairer.
That’s only a (granted arbitrary) small number of people ruining it for the rest of humanity.
While we were sleeping…the World Economic Forum took over the world… “…so we penetrate ze cabinets…”
They’ve blatantly colonised ‘our’ governments.
Consider for example in Australia – the former Health Minister, Greg Hunt, was the strategy director for the World Economic Forum from 2000 to 2001, before he entered the Australian Parliament in 2001. Note also he was Engagement Manager at McKinsey and Co from 1999 to 2001.
See his bio on the Parliament of Australia website.
After presiding over the Covid debacle in Australia, along with former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Hunt is now ‘Honorary Enterprise Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Services and the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne’
“He advises a wide range of businesses and not for profits in the areas of innovation, leadership, strategic planning, health and the environment.”
Hunt’s current bio also includes reference to his time at the World Economic Forum, noting he was “responsible for the development of global strategy for the WEF, working directly to the CEO”.
I don’t think the electorate knew what they were getting when Hunt was elected to the Parliament in 2001…
So much has been and is being done without our informed consent…
Life imitating art.
Comedy
Citizen Khan “Larger than life, self-appointed leader Mr Khan is the voice of Muslim Birmingham – whether the community likes it or not.”
Series 1: Episode 1 (28 mins)
Democracy does not exist between Citizen Khan’s ears.
Who TF voted for this? I certainly did not. Where is the democratic mandate?
It’s just like the move to hand WHO powers to make decisions regarding national health security.
I didn’t vote for that either.
Believe me if and when Sur Kurr Stammer becomes our Supreme leader next year he will be weak and forced to do what the left demand.
He has the same frightened eyes that Margaret Thatcher’s Sir Keith Joseph had. Sadly Sir Keith suffered mental health problems and I fear Sur Kurr Stammer will go the same way under the pressure of office.
Someone has to get to this guy…
It’s all very well to say we can vote him out (and let’s hope and pray we do at the next mayoral election). But should he succeed in getting in again next time, then we’re stuck with him for another four years. And surely his fellow Muslims are just as affected by his crazy anti-motorist, anti-human rules as anyone else. BTW, just escaping London isn’t necessarily going to help since the grass very often proves to be less green on the other side than hoped. Eventually these things (if they succeed with their Great Reset) will catch up with people wherever they are; it’s just a question of time. And, BTW again, pride often/usually comes before a fall (a good biblical saying), and maybe it will with Khan too. (We can’t escape our quite unsmart, very racially – and everything else – mixed area of London, because we are in our mid-70s and want to remain close to our children and grandchildren – and our son, for one, won’t leave, as he says he’ll go down with the sinking ship (he is one of the elders of our little church and most members don’t have the easy option of upping sticks and escaping). So we’ll stay and fight! Let’s hope lots of others join us!!
Er excuse me Mr Morrison you’re not turning into a conspiracy theorist are you?
Why is there so nuch aqueasence on these posts. Khan, won’t even be Mayor next time around and don’t forget when they tried to ban alcohol in the USA. Supplies popped up everywhere and based on the performance of the UK Keystone Cops, it’ll be a crime heaven
Another Psychotic Gifts to Londoners.
I wish these guys would just mind their own f*ing business. Oh yes, it is their businesses and profits they’re looking after plus a nice bit of control & power.
Gratefully sadiq will be out of office by 2030, just like old Boris and a few others promising a draconian future. Thank god.