In Brief

Only by reading between the lines do we get a glimpse of what is actually happening.

Most of what we are fed as “news” is merely a re-hashing of corporate press releases designed to put a positive spin on the corporations behind them.

Over the next six months, more than a million mortgages which were fixed when the interest rate was at 0.1 percent, will flip over to a standard variable rate of more than 6 percent...

Sunak and his supporters will no doubt argue that there was no alternative – just as Thatcher and Blair argued that there was no alternative to the self-destructive political economy of neoliberalism. But there are always alternatives.

A tough spring ahead Central bankers were quick to explain that the recent string of bank failures was no cause for alarm and that inflation remains public enemy number one.  Bank boss Jamie Dimon is less sure, warning investors that: “The current crisis is not yet over, and even when …

There is no food shortage Media coverage in recent weeks has led to the false impression that Britain has a food shortage.  One reason for this is that much of the establishment media is vehemently opposed to Brexit, and used the absence of certain salad vegetables to play the Brexit …

As several people have said, making predictions is risky – especially about the future.  Nevertheless, based on what has unfolded in recent years, it is possible to discern trends which point to some likely events in the coming year.  With this in mind, let me make a few tentative predictions …

We are saved Just as Europe is succumbing to yet another self-inflicted energy crisis, news comes of a “major breakthrough” in the quest for the Holy Grail of zero-carbon energy, nuclear fusion.  Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had, apparently, generated an energy return – EROI – of 0.4MJ …

An absence of cleverness Although mainstream, neoclassical economists deny that there is any objective, material source of value, it is remarkable how many tacitly accept David Ricardo’s labour theory of value.  This is the – largely erroneous – belief that it is human labour which generates value within the economy.  …

By their excuses shall ye know them Vladimir Putin has added yet another superpower to his list this week by – presumably via some form of psychokinesis – causing an egg shortage across Britain.  In reality of course, the shortage is the result of the 2021 fertiliser shortage which, on …