Economy

If you get your news from the BBC, you might be forgiven for thinking that the economic hit from the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions has come to an end.  Indeed, if you merely skim through the headlines in your social media feed, you might believe that the UK is poised …

The UK government faced a barrage of criticism over its National Insurance hike this week.  The tax – which theoretically pays for public services, pensions, and benefits – was in creased last autumn, before the political class became aware of the massive increase in gas and electricity prices coming later …

UK gas prices have fallen back this week – although they are still some 400 percent higher than at the start of 2021.  And the reasons for the fall in price should not breed complacency.  First, the arrival of a south-westerly airflow off the Atlantic has finally begun to spin …

After 20 months of economy-wrecking lockdowns and restrictions, 2019 is fondly remembered as a period of prosperous calm.  Memories though, are deceptive.  And in the days before we learned what gain-of-function meant, things were not as rosy as they now seem.  Although the decade 2009-2019 was officially one of the …

The arrival of the Omicron variant, just weeks before Christmas, has caused a large part of the establishment media and the neoliberal elite to salivate at the prospect of more lockdowns.  This despite early evidence that the variant is mild even though it appears even more transmissible than the Delta …

In the early 1980s, to Margaret Thatcher’s annoyance, union reps and managers at the steelworks in Port Talbot agreed a strategy to save the plant.  As a result, Port Talbot was spared the post-industrial blight visited upon most of Britain’s ex-industrial towns.  Now in private hands, and despite periodic crises, …

It is mid-November, the autumn has been unusually mild, and the NHS has just declared its first crisis of the 2021-22 winter season.  Across the UK, emergency ambulance services are failing because ambulances which should be on station waiting to respond to emergencies like heart attacks, strokes and road traffic …

On New Year’s Eve 2006-7, something unexpected happened.  For most of the previous two decades, most of the pubs where I live had operated a system where they gave tickets to regular drinkers in order to limit the number of people seeking entry.  This was a problem because one couldn’t …

The Indian government ruffled a few feathers at the COP this morning, by raising the thorny question of the £722bn they were supposed to receive to aid their transition away from fossil fuels.  Because, when all is said and done, the proposed transition is all about money.  Decommissioning the old …

Although introduced to the UK by a Labour government, the National Minimum Wage is closer to the Tory approach to economic policy.  This is because it passes the costs onto someone other than the state immediately.  In this case, Britain’s employers.  Labour governments, in contrast, have generally sought the politically …