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Tag Archives: the consciousness of sheep
Our Predicament Re-stated
Our Predicament Re-stated There is a meme doing the rounds on social media… a picture of a vegetable patch, captioned “the time is coming when only those who know how to grow food will survive.” The idea being that, as our complex civilisation breaks down, we will be forced to return to a far simpler […]
Central banks are stealing underpants
Central banks are stealing underpants Let’s talk about supply shocks. Cast your mind back to the beginning of March 2020. Remember how everyone panic bought pasta and toilet paper? Except that it didn’t really happen – at least on a large scale. What happened was, in their usual underhand way, the establishment media paid supermarket […]
In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel
In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel OPEC and out The political fallout from the OPEC+ decision to cut its oil production target by two million barrels a day – which would leave the world economy around six million barrels a day short […]
Since when did banks produce energy?
Since when did banks produce energy? It takes a special kind of cynical self-interest to make people pay twice for something they already cannot afford, while claiming you are doing them a favour. This though, is the energy price relief package announced by Liz Truss yesterday. The package plays that old political card of being […]
Nobody could have seen it coming
Nobody could have seen it coming Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was £1,287. Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to £3,582 in October and to £4,266 in January 2023. Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount. All but those […]
Those who the gods wish to destroy…
Those who the gods wish to destroy… The UK is already in a de facto recession – only the fiddling of the data to count GP appointments as a value-adding activity led to a paltry 0.5 percent GDP growth in May. Discretionary spending has already plummeted, and it is only a matter of time before we see […]
Bigger than you can imagine
Bigger than you can imagine One of the problems with claims that our situation is “just like the 1970s,” is that very few adults of the period are still around to share the memory. Those of us who were children at the time have only memories distorted through the lens of childhood innocence. I, for […]
The great unravelling
The great unravelling Real life Bond villain Klaus Schwab has become the focus of ridicule following crude attempts to remove articles praising Sri Lanka’s “Vision 2025” economic plan from the World economic Forum (WEF) website – the world’s leading proponent of the hi-tech fourth industrial revolution apparently not realising that nothing ever disappears from the internet. Sri Lanka was supposed […]
The devil is in the detail
The devil is in the detail 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 […]
Welcome to the age of cuts
Welcome to the age of cuts 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 this year. However, […]
Days of reckoning
Days of reckoning Here’s something which will likely be universally unpopular: The government shouldn’t do anything to subsidise energy prices. I say this in the face of a £700 or so increase on annual bills announced today. And this is just the beginning, because, as Nils Pratley at the Guardian points out, when the price cap is raised again […]
It’s okay to look up
It’s okay to look up I am told I should look into filing a copyright claim against the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, since I wrote a version of it in my 2015 book, The Consciousness of Sheep, and for exactly the same reason: “We’ve all seen this movie before: A giant asteroid is heading straight for […]
This economy is going down
This economy is going down 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 […]
The hidden recession of 2020
The hidden recession of 2020 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 […]
In Brief: Fracking back, new weather warnings, lockdown by any other name
In Brief: Fracking back, new weather warnings, lockdown by any other name Fracking back Anti-fracking campaigners like to flatter themselves by claiming that it was their protests which finally brought UK fracking to an end. The reality though, is that the price at which UK shale gas might be recovered was far higher than the […]
