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Hogwash
Hogwash 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, the steelworks employs some […]
#215. The price of equilibrium
#215. The price of equilibrium FUTURITY, REALITY AND THE COMING FINANCIAL CORRECTION The simplest way to define the current economic and broader situation is that consensus expectations and realistically probable outcomes have become polar opposites. One of the most predictable consequences of this disparity is a sharp fall, both in asset pricing and in the viability of […]
Separating the self-flagellation from the greenhouse gas
Separating the self-flagellation from the greenhouse gas Speaking to the media at the Youth4Climate event last week, Greta Thunberg berated the UK for continuing to extract oil and gas from the North Sea while pretending to be green ahead of the coming COP26 conference. Not only that, but as the originator of the industrial revolution, Britain is […]
A red light on the dashboard
A red light on the dashboard 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 […]
When they say money, think energy
When they say money, think energy 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 fossil […]
The climate war won’t work
The climate war won’t work There are, in fact, no human comparisons for the effort required to reverse the global-scale damage wrought by 300 years of industrial growth. Nevertheless, people still reach for past human endeavours to try to spur our political leaders to an action which, in truth, is far beyond them. How many […]
This is not 1997
This is not 1997 Not that minimum wages are anything new. The USA introduced its Federal Minimum Wage as far back as 1938; although today each state sets its own rate. And the general consensus is that minimum wages help raise wages in general with little or no impact on employment as a whole. The broad […]
Closer to the edge
Closer to the edge There may well be worse to come. With the end of the various government support schemes, redundancies have shot up once more. According to the BBC:Earlier this year when the establishment media was running fear stories about excess savings, the opening up of the economy was predicted to result in a massive […]
Feynman’s Law writ large
Feynman’s Law writ large Elizabeth Holmes, Chairman and CEO of Theranos, is a living archetype for the modern age. Lauded by upmarket glossy magazines and heralded as a symbol of modern feminism, Holmes was the world’s first female tech billionaire. In the tradition of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Tesla’s Elon Musk, Holmes was a driven individual determined to […]
Is this peak gas?
Is this peak gas? The recent, spectacular increase in the price of gas has created a sense of crisis not seen outside the financial sector since the early 1980s. In Europe in general and the UK in particular, it has begun to expose the folly of having an economy entirely dependent upon imports; including imports […]
What then are we to become?
What then are we to become? According to Boris Johnson, the economic dislocation which appears to be gathering pace across the UK is merely “a period of adjustment after Brexit.” In Johnson’s formulation, those who would turn the clock back are tacitly in favour of the low-pay and poor working conditions which were encouraged when the UK […]
A crisis of affordability
A crisis of affordability Western capitalist economies don’t really do shortages. There are a few stand alone exceptions such as a music festival or a sporting event, where demand so outstrips supply that queues form. But for the most part – as we saw last week with the eye-watering rise in wholesale gas prices – […]
The march of folly
The march of folly It is of some interest that people have been contrasting images of British petrol queues this weekend with the petrol queues which formed back in 1973 as a result of the OPEC oil embargo. Not least because a more accurate comparison is with the fuel protests in September 2000. That is, […]
Crisis by design
Crisis by design Believe it or not, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has every right to stand before the nations of the world and lecture them on climate change. Not that Johnson himself has done much to address the crisis (indeed, given that having children is the single biggest cause of climate change at this point, Johnson’s inability […]
Wrong for a different reason
Wrong for a different reason Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – A well-meaning but not particularly bright left-leaning US politician – made a stir earlier this week by wearing a figure-hugging dress emblazoned with the slogan “Tax the Rich” to the prestigious 2021 Met Gala. Since the slogan was clearly political, it wasn’t long before the various political […]
