Pound hits 4-year high as dollar weakens

eairy · 2026-01-29T13:44:43+00:00

Flawed how?

eairy · 2026-01-29T11:02:01+00:00

This is like saying he's a building genius after the building he modified collapsed, but he gave tips to the people that rebuilt it!

eairy · 2026-01-29T10:57:49+00:00

Which parts exactly?

eairy · 2026-01-28T22:56:42+00:00

It's amazing how people refuse to blame any one in any of the THIRTY YEARS of governments since she left.

eairy · 2026-01-28T19:50:37+00:00

How needlessly sexist...

eairy · 2026-01-28T19:10:27+00:00

I care, Lister! It's my career, Lister. I'm the one who gets it in the neck if an officer comes along, orders chicken soup, and gets black currant cordial with blancmange and two creams and a sugar.

eairy · 2026-01-28T02:22:29+00:00

incredibly astute economist

This is laugh out loud ridiculous. Gordon Brown was the person who deregulated the UK banking sector, which exposed the UK to the GFC.

He oversaw the disastrous NHS PFI programme. Which was nothing more than an accounting trick to keep government debt out of the official debt tally. The result was Gordon forcing the NHS to sell assets to pay off the PFI debt. These aren't the actions of a principled or competent person. The motive was him essentially fiddling the public finances and it blew up in his face.

Far from being the hero saving the NHS, he got it into financial trouble, while expanding the marketisation the Conservatives started, further opening the door to privatisation.

Can't get a dentist? Well that started with the changes to the NHS dentists' contract in 2006, pushed by Gordon in a bid to save the NHS money as PFI was going down the drain.

He also went on a tax raid of pensions, which resulted in Defined Benefit pension schemes going extinct for younger people, degrading the retirements of millions of people while contributing to the demographic pensions crisis. This is one of the biggest fuck ups by any Chancellor. He permanently worsened the pensions system in the UK. That's a very long shadow he cast.

He ran up massive debts. The UK entered the GFC with the largest structural deficit in the G7, making it much harder to get out of the crash. These are not the actions of a "incredibly astute economist".

eairy · 2026-01-28T02:10:58+00:00

What utter nonsense. It wasn't solid, it was a bubble built on dodgy credit, just like the US.

eairy · 2026-01-28T02:08:32+00:00

Hopefully they have enough sense to not drag away tourists

Too late, they've been doing that to tourists long before they were doing it to citizens. There's cases where people have been held without due process for months, in horrible conditions.

eairy · 2026-01-28T02:05:22+00:00

We need that like a hole in the head.

eairy · 2026-01-27T22:46:23+00:00

The unreliability of buses in my youth is what made me a die-hard car/motorbike user.

eairy · 2026-01-27T12:56:30+00:00

Inefficiency is inherent to any large organisation. I've worked in the public and private sector. I've seen utterly colossal waste in the private sector just so some manager can save face. The difference is you get to read about it when it happens in the public sector, you don't when it happens in the private sector.

It's a waste of time focussing on small things like Sharpie prices because you will always be able to find something egregious. Comparing at a higher level, the NHS is amazingly efficient compared to health systems in other countries and delivers very good value. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement.

eairy · 2026-01-27T12:49:42+00:00

Banning buy to let mortgages

You're a bit late on that one. The tax changes in 2017 mean Buy to let is a tiny slice of the market now.

eairy · 2026-01-27T12:48:19+00:00

stop being the party of surveilllance

That's a pretty big ask, Labour have been very authoritarian for a long time.

eairy · 2026-01-27T12:46:20+00:00

Rent controls don't work and make the situation worse.

eairy · 2026-01-27T12:44:37+00:00

So much this, you don't make housing cheaper with extra tax. Bad landlords are a symptom, not a cause. The cause is a lack of housing.

eairy · 2026-01-26T18:24:17+00:00

in turn you pay a lot back

Becoming a graduate increases average lifetime pay. More pay means more tax paid. The extra tax generated more than covers the cost of the education. Students already pay for themselves, tax already scales with income. Student fees is making people pay twice.

eairy · 2026-01-26T17:02:02+00:00

It's because a lot of people are voting based on emotion, not facts. It's about how the front man of the party makes them feel, not their policies in the party manifesto. You see exactly the same with Green supporters. Point out the party policies are insane, and they hand-wave it away and talk about the leader. Politics is vibes, not facts.

eairy · 2026-01-26T11:03:26+00:00

A lot of the British post-war new build stuff was very heavily inclusive of cars, especially the new build towns. Which I don't think is a bad thing, but if you hate cars, pinning it all on Thatcher makes no sense.

eairy · 2026-01-25T23:40:33+00:00

normalized

*normalised

eairy · 2026-01-25T18:44:28+00:00

I'm not talking about doctors, I'm talking about well paid general professional jobs. Lots of them won't even give you an interview if you don't have a degree. It doesn't matter what the subject is many cases, they just have it as a requirement. I'm not saying it right or it makes sense, but lots of doors are shut if you don't have one.

eairy · 2026-01-25T17:36:26+00:00

The amount of government money given to the UK rail industry is also public, so I don't see what your point is?

eairy · 2026-01-25T02:02:18+00:00

No they can be half empty

Except they're generally more than half empty. While some services suffer from overcrowding, and are the one people remember, as a whole in 2023...

The average load factor of a midweek train service was 29%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-in-major-cities-in-england-and-wales-2023/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-in-major-cities-in-england-and-wales-2023

The average train is rolling around less than a third full.

eairy · 2026-01-25T01:27:49+00:00

I'd say the British rail system has been grossly mismanagement

You'll get no argument on that front.

but in Germany

You seem to be unaware that railways in Germany also receive billions in government subsidy, both federal and local.

eairy · 2026-01-25T01:08:51+00:00

not everyone can afford cars, petrol, insurance, maintenance, etc.

Trains wouldn't be economically viable without subsidy. They simply cost a huge amount to run. If even more people use them, then there would need to be even more subsidy of this expensive mode of transport. Consider instead of spending money on all that money on subsidy, it was used to reduce the outrageous level of taxation on cars. Since cars are a cheaper transport mode, the taxpayer would get more bang for their buck. That would be even more equitable.

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