Love Blackford! My favourite speaker on the PMQ show
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But principally - so far- in the anglosphere: Trump, Morrison, Johnson/Truss (we have to always be on guard against the English assumption that fascism is inherently foreign).
Oddly enough I found what I think is the best insight into the current economic disaster overtaking the UK in an article about a film series exploring ordinary Russians’ experience of the transition from communism to capitalism. In particular it focuses on the disastrous Yeltsin period and his PM Yegor Gaidar, ‘the ultra-free marketeer architect of the shock therapy designed to radically remake Russia’s economy, who became despised by the Russians who bore the brunt of his malfunctioning ideals even as the oligarchs used them as cover to steal an entire country’.
Looking back, one Russian journalist comments:
“You in Britain are Moscow in about 1988. Everyone knows the system isn’t working. Everyone knows that the managers are completely looting it. They know that you know that they know, but no one has any concept of a possible alternative. The only difference is you’ve already tried democracy. You’ve got nothing else left.”
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Interesting article in The Guardian today:
Four decades after the neoliberal experiment began, the evidence is in: trickle-down economics is dangerous make-believe. Growth is in fact impervious to the top income tax rates. Paul Krugman recently showed that neither Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts nor Bill Clinton’s tax hikes affected the US’s income path significantly. Similarly in the UK, the data dispels the Tory conviction that Thatcher put Britain on to a brave new path to higher growth. We find that in 1979, the output per hour worked in the UK was trailing France and Germany by 17% and 18% respectively. Did the UK catch up after four decades of trickle-down tax policies and assorted deregulation measures, which never happened in France? No, in 2019, France’s productivity remained 18% higher than the UK’s, and Germany’s 17%.
(Also interesting that it’s France, not Germany. that has significantly improved performance in this respect.)
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Varoufakis’s book “Talking to my daughter” I just bought today for £1 on Amazon UK (Kindle).
It’s not a Daily Deal, so the price might well be around for a few days yet
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“Never in my career did I expect to be creating warm banks,” said Ian Brookfield, the Labour leader of Wolverhampton council. “I’m embarrassed that in this country we’re having to do this…
"But we’re doing it because there is a very realistic chance we will lose people, not from accidents or illness but because they can’t afford to heat or eat.”
Meanwhile a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health has found found there were already (before covid) 334,327 excess deaths directly attributable to spending cuts to public services and benefits because of UK government ‘austerity’ policies.
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They need to not call them “warm spaces” as it gives it a cosy name. Call it a “heat bank”, similar to a food bank not an “eating space”. Let’s not diminish the fact that people are forced to go to these places because they’re unable to afford to hear their homes. Those isn’t somewhere people will sit in a comfy armchair, having a nice cuppa and maybe some Hob Knobs whilst catching up with old friends. And this isn’t to shame anyone who’s in that position… It’s to hopefully embarrass the government who have been so woefully inadequate that they’ve allowed this situation to occur.
PS - this isn’t a dig at you, Geof.
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But they’re only going to be open in the daytime I think not when it’s really cold at night.
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Oh wow. I didn’t realise that 
While OH in the other room is listening to PM Truss speaking, I am afraid I just cannot, I have found this video by the Economist sums up the UK’s economic state:
And worse….
State pension age will be 70 by the time my son draws his, I suspect.
If the oceans haven’t boiled off by then, of course.
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more likely to be 70 by the time you get there…
No, it will have gone up to 67 by the time I retire but, thankfully, not any higher.
Not that it’s worth much.
Never mind Putin and his rat story, look at the nest the UK has got
Watched the video. Very clear. The political difficulty of the Tory government getting the UK out of the mess that has been considerably accelerated by their mini-budget, is one thing.
I can hear @John_Scully cackling schadenfreudily all the way from Alpes-Maritimes, here in the Lot. As this is a good blow towards this current crock of Tories being gone. Note my new collective noun for a group of Tories - a “crock” :-).
Unfortunately there"s not just a political difficulty to overcome, but a massive economic difficulty. And who in the UK has the expertise to overcome that?
my 4 year old grandson 
I think a “crook of tories” suits them better, thats what they all seem to be and makes Dick Turpin an angel
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Life imitating art - but not in a good way
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That is the same dress…
Is this a good time to remind everyone that the Nazis didn’t introduce concentration camps for the jews, or the gypsies, or the homosexuals - or any of the groups we generally think of as their victims. The first concentration camps were for the internment of their left-wing political opponents.
The old Niemöller poem actually gives the literal, chronological order of suppression:
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a CommunistThen they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a SocialistThen they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionistThen they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a JewThen they came for me, and there was no one left
To speak out for me
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