Tag Archives: UK

I know that lots of you are heartily sick of the WASPI campaign, but it does have a tendency to throw up interesting issues. This time, it is the legal status of the UK's state pension.A couple of days ago, the WASPI campaign announced a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for legal action against the Government. Their CrowdJustice page says that legal action would potentially be twofold: (this is a screen print from the CrowdJustice page. Regular readers of my blog will be aware that I...

Well, this is fun. YouGov has asked the public which countries the UK's new trade negotiators (if and when they are recruited) should prioritise in their quest for free trade deals.Unsurprisingly, the US and the EU (considered as a whole trading bloc) came top of the list. But as ever, the devil is in the detail. These charts show the difference between the public's perception of the importance of a country versus its exports and GDP rankings: Now, of course the exports ranking is the...

That is the state of affairs in Britain today, as it made clear by a UK government report headed by Sir Eric Pickles, as reported here, here, and here, reporting on the widespread voting fraud and corruption within certain immigrant ethnic communities in Britain.The original report is here.Of the worst abuses is the systematic misuse of postal voting:“70. Postal voting on demand attracted the greatest degree of comment from respondents. It was considered by some to be the UK’s main electoral...

There has been a huge amount of analysis about the reasons why British people voted to leave the EU. Some of it is very good: some of it less so, saying more about the biases of the writers than it does about the motivations of the British (no, I won't link any of those posts here!). I confess, I have added to the literature myself. I leave it to you to judge into which of these categories my contributions fall.But in all the vast verbiage written on this topic, there appears to be a...

The result of the EU referendum was a considerable shock - not just to the UK, but to the EU and indeed to the whole world. Just how big a shock it was is evident from the fact that the OECD has suspended its forecasts until September. It usually only does this for "significant unforeseen or unexpected events", such as a major earthquake or a tsunami. Brexit is a shock to the global economy of a similar order. And it has permanently changed the world. Whatever the future holds, we can be...

The ONS has produced a fascinating discussion of the UK's productivity puzzle, with some great charts. This one shows just how much the UK's productivity has slumped: Notice when productivity started to slump. It was much earlier than 2008. In fact the data (which ONS have helpfully provided in Excel) show that output per hour started to fall in Q4 2006. The productivity slump, therefore, cannot be caused by the financial crisis. I suspect we have a "third variable" problem here. It seems...

The Governor of the Bank of England's opening remarks at the release of today's Financial Stability Report were stark: At its March meeting, the FPC judged that “the risks around the referendum [were] the most significant near-term domestic risks to financial stability.” Some of those risks have begun to crystallise. The Governor was admirably calm and balanced in his press conference. But nevertheless there was a degree of schadenfreude about his remarks. Prior to the referendum, the Bank...

I spent much of this weekend arguing on Twitter. (Yes, I know, nothing new there....) Specifically, arguing that Brexit cannot go ahead without Parliament. I said that before Article 50 is triggered, the result of the referendum must be debated by the full House of Commons, and ratified by a free vote. Unsurprisingly, since I openly supported Remain, a number of people assumed that I was suggesting this as a way of overturning the result. They are wrong. I think a Parliamentary vote is...

In a manner of speaking. See this splendid piece here by Paul Embery:Paul Embery, “The Demonisation of the Working-Class Shames Our Nation,” HuffPost Politics, 1 July, 2016.Except the new class war is being waged against the working class by an arrogant, metropolitan, snobbish, middle-class leftist elite that rules the left at the moment, with hordes of young university-educated leftists in tow. The elite is, to a great extent, influenced by economic neoliberalism (think: New Labour).The...

Guest post by Tom Streithorst. Brexit already looks a disaster. Sterling has plunged to the lowest level in thirty years, the FTSE fell more than 12% at the open, global equities lost $2 trillion in value in less than a day, and gold, the traditional safe haven in times of turmoil, has shot up. Uncertainly reigns. Firms are less likely than ever to hire or invest. It is going to get worse. Who shall we blame? David Cameron is the obvious villain. He did not need to call this referendum....