The Greens are coming! Quick, panic!

The current policy is infinite (unevenly distributed) growth on a finite planet.

So you’re saying we need to put more effort into space research?

Quite right to say our debts are still increasing but at a much lower rate and amount than if we had had an alternative government. You only need to look at the situation in France where the economy is in deep trouble to see that the “ignore austerity” policy has not worked. In fact France is now making cuts as it acknowledges it got it wrong. As Obama said the US and UK are growing, “we must be doing something right”

1. Unsustainable property bubble? Tick
2. Economic recovery* based on credit fuelled consumer spending on imported goods? Tick
3. An unreformed, and over-powerful banking sector, still ‘too big to fail’ serving its own interests, with barely a consideration for the ‘real’ economy? Tick

@binner’s
1) Property supported by significant foreign buying, these buyers are long term holders and are buying for cash – no mortgage. Hundreds of new multi-millionaires in Asia are buying property in London which look much cheaper than their domestic property markets. London and SE are outperforming as that’s where the foreign money wants to buy and where the employment is for Brits and significant number of immigrants who are coming to the UK to work as EU economies are shrinking.
2) Credit much harder to get now, not sure what you say is true at all.
3) Huge changes to the banking sector which has shrunk massively (IMO contributing significantly to fall in average earnings, 100,000’s of very well paid jobs have gone). Big changes in regulation mean banks continue to shrink, reversing the excesses of prior years. Bonus and total pay down significantly since 2008, resulting in much less tax revenue for the UK.

I’m all for diversifying the UK economy but when I think about trying to compete with the likes of German high quality manufacturing all I can think of is Delorean.

shame that is all you can think of you need more hope*

* see what i did there eh

Not sure that using France as an example is all that helpful – didnt Greece have a right wing govt when it went belly up – seeing as we are highly selecting stats to prove our view and then making assumptions that “other untested” approaches would have been worse – really they teach this “thinking” at Oxford?

and of course ..bless those bankers eh

In early 2010, it was revealed that through the assistance of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and numerous other banks, financial products were developed which enabled the governments of Greece, Italy and many other European countries to hide their borrowing.[137][138] Dozens of similar agreements were concluded across Europe whereby banks supplied cash in advance in exchange for future payments by the governments involved; in turn, the liabilities of the involved countries were “kept off the books”

…I’m all for diversifying the UK economy but when I think about trying to compete with the likes of German high quality manufacturing all I can think of is Delorean.

why would you think of an American car made in Northern Ireland?

Bonus and total pay down significantly since 2008, resulting in much less tax revenue for the UK.

They can have their bonuses back when they’ve paid back the hundreds of billions in bailout money that the rest of us are now having to pay for.

If he achieves his aim of a surplus, the next decision will be how much to spend, and what on.

Unmarked graves for Atos victims? Compensation for families?

The current policy is infinite (unevenly distributed) growth on a finite planet.

We’ve always been smart like that. Who needs bison now we’ve got cattle where there was once forest?

Of course a high tech manufacturing economy also tends to need healthy foreign markets to export to.

Some of the more interesting ideas in sustainability have actually cropped up through austerity, I was at a meeting the other day being filled in on how surrey county council had signed a deal with the wildlife trust (who manage most of the council owned open spaces like woodlands and nature reserves) to wean them off of subsidy with a more commercial focus, which will see them selling a lot more firewood from woodland management, expanding their sawmill and selling more furniture to the public, putting the grazing on a more commercial footing etc.

JY the banks did what Greece asked them too, hide their borrowing from the markets. The fact is everyone, including the EU governments and central bank, knew or at least suspected what was going on they just ignored it. France is a useful example of an economy which chose a path other than budget cuts as a solution to the crises. What happens in Greek elections will be interesting, left wing government potentially defaults on debt (again !) and exits the euro. If Greeks are complaining now about austerity they are going to get a very rude shock with the consequences of what I just described.

why would you think of an American car made in Northern Ireland?

As an example of trying to create a high quality manufacturing business out of thin air.

They can have their bonuses back when they’ve paid back the hundreds of billions in bailout money that the rest of us are now having to pay for.

Two types of bailout funds, loans and equity (like RBS and Lloyds). The loans and guarantees have been profitable (ie net benefit to the tax payer), the equity investments where at a paper profit back in 2010 but further regulations and restrictions on the banks put them back underwater. Its worth noting that the US has exited all it’s equity investments at a profit, they where smarter about how they went about it. You have to pay people to work to sort the mess out, most of those responsible for it are long gone. In any case pay is materially lower – half to a third of what it was in many jobs, as I said one reason tax receipts are so much lower than expected/hoped for.

Some of the more interesting ideas in sustainability have actually cropped up through austerity, I was at a meeting the other day being filled in on how surrey county council had signed a deal with the wildlife trust (who manage most of the council owned open spaces like woodlands and nature reserves) to wean them off of subsidy with a more commercial focus, which will see them selling a lot more firewood from woodland management, expanding their sawmill and selling more furniture to the public, putting the grazing on a more commercial footing etc.

Hang on, isn’t this exactly the sort of local, sustainable and environmentally focused economy that the Greens say that they want to try to stimulate?

I saw a programme on iPlayer the other day about the moon, hosted by the enthusiastic Maggie Aderin-Pocock.

It would seem that the technology already exists to enable us to wrap the moon in an enormous belt of a thin membraneous energy panel that could transmit, by microwave, unlimited energy back to the earth. I believe the word “cheap” was also used, solving all our energy problems at a stroke. No need for nuclear fission or fusion or any silly windmills or the like.

Of course, you need 1: the political will and 2: a HUMUNGOUS amount of money.

The first is a matter of convincing the public (“ask not what your country can do for you…”) and conjoining all the industrialised countries of the planet into the effort, and the second is a matter of everybody focusing on arranging the economic systems to grow an absolutely huge “pie” so that we can afford to do it.

Any takers, I wonder? No no no. Let’s all just drivel on about “localism” and local shops.

For local people…

I’m in!

All is forgiven! 😆

how surrey county council had signed a deal with the wildlife trust (who manage most of the council owned open spaces like woodlands and nature reserves) to wean them off of subsidy with a more commercial focus, which will see them selling a lot more firewood from woodland management, expanding their sawmill and selling more furniture to the public, putting the grazing on a more commercial footing etc.

Yes they are definitely doing this in Surrey, clearing lots of forest and as a side effect destroying a lot of trails. Of course these trails are not permanent but harvesting forests earlier than they would otherwise isn’t necessarily universally good.

I’d like to see us let the free market rip and make some real progress

That’s working out pretty poorly wherever it’s being tried. Like Somalia for example.

Jambalaya – I believe most of that is based around heathland restoration

There’s a fairly strong critique of this here: http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/heath_madness.htm

Very much led by Natural England priorities, especially nightjar and carbon. (And I was chatting to the NE regional officer yesterday, who we are going to have a decent session talking about mountain bike management with) Certianly little or nothing to do with economic forestry

This return to heathland and also grazing is in evidence on Cannock Chase. In the last year they have re-introduced highland cattle to small, fenced-off areas of the AONB.

The amount of forestry work, and thereby destruction to mtb trails (most of which is an unintended consequence, but some of which is deliberate) has risen significantly. I have lived on the Chase for over ten years and, in the last two or three, have seen more felling of trees and mowing of heather and heathland than ever before.

I do worry whether some of the work is misguided. There are places where it seems the trees are doing a very good job of reducing rainwater erosion of the sand and gravel bunter ground.

The amount of forestry work, and thereby destruction to mtb trails (most of which is an unintended consequence, but some of which is deliberate) has risen significantly. I have lived on the Chase for over ten years and, in the last two or three, have seen more felling of trees and mowing of heather and heathland than ever before.

This is happening in Thetford too. I’m only an occasional visitor there now, but it was very apparent a few years back.

Property supported by significant foreign buying, these buyers are long term holders and are buying for cash – no mortgage. Hundreds of new multi-millionaires in Asia are buying property in London which look much cheaper than their domestic property markets. London and SE are outperforming as that’s where the foreign money wants to buy and where the employment is for Brits and significant number of immigrants who are coming to the UK to work as EU economies are shrinking.

The obvious problems here are that A. it’s removing properties from the market as ‘holiday homes’ which could otherwise be lived in (although I realise the people that would buy to live in wouldn’t exactly be poor) but it also artificially raises property prices around the country as Londoners can’t afford to buy in London, so move into the ‘burbs, and so forth and so on.

It was a problem in Cornwall and Devon several years ago – Londoners buying holiday homes at inflated prices – and it’s subsequently priced locals out of the market.