My e-pal, 'Whitewall', takes me to task, albeit gently and politely, for failing to 'rumble' further yesterday. He is entirely right and I was uneasily aware during the course of the day of my failure to do so. Alas, the fact is that yesterday I fell, or perhaps 'slumped' is more accurate, into a prolonged fit of idle uselessness. I simply could not think of what to write which, in a way, was useful because I also totally lacked any energy with which to write it! I was in a state of 'languor-max', or, as the 'Memsahib' puts it "dead idle"! I just could not raise a single thought worth the trip up two flights of stairs in order to share it with y'all - and don't think I failed to hear that cheer!
Must, nay, will do better today!
Been contemplating how Covid is a major boost for Brexit, an absolute gift for Brexiteers.
BoJo can even let no deal happen if he wants, and certainly can make it his baseline in discussions.
Because all the damage and destruction can be swept under the Covid carpet - "No, this, that and the other wasn't Brexit, it was Covid" will be the mantra for the next decade.
And what seems like a voluminous quantity of helicopter money - the very magic money tree forest that BoJo accused Jezza of relying on for his £600bn splurge - is apparently real. Depending on who you read, the bond markets and inflation are and will be benign.
The bond markets will tolerate another couple of trillion debt to add to the current two trillion taking Blighty to 200% debt to GDP ratio as it was at the end of WW2.
Inflation might not be quite so generous - all that new money chasing fewer goods and services on the very inflationary one hand, but a general depression with deflationary pressure on the other hand.
If GDP doesn't come back to match the growth of money and debt then it's game over for Blighty. With four trillion debt there's no way the state will be able to stop printing money to check inflation because interest/bond rates will move upwards and not be affordable. 5% interest on four trillion is 200 billion a year interest. The state will go bust - or hyper-inflation will destroy us.
The critical third component that might head the bond markets and inflation off at "Bankrupt Blighty Pass" is the Singapore-on-Thames model. If the world throws its capital lot and human stock into Blighty due to low corp tax, zero tariffs across the board, multi-market rules and regulations, then the T in MV=PT will float the boat off the inflation and debt rocks.
Otherwise we'll be dashed to pieces on those rocks - the Venezuela of Europe.
Question is: Do you trust Blighty's Pol class and hoi polloi to do it?
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Monday, 25 May 2020 at 10:55
"Dead idle" you say? That is what we shift the boat motor to when more than one fish is on the line at one time. I know you weren't fishing....
Posted by: Whitewall | Monday, 25 May 2020 at 11:50
Your attitude needs adjustment, David:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE186w91YVU
Posted by: Bob | Monday, 25 May 2020 at 13:00
What?! Do you mean to say, Whiters, that you don't row your own boat? Or at least, get the 'missus' to do it?
Posted by: David Duff | Monday, 25 May 2020 at 13:08
"Because all the damage and destruction can be swept under the Covid carpet - "No, this, that and the other wasn't Brexit, it was Covid" will be the mantra for the next decade."
How right you are SoD.
See the link I left on 'The times are a'changing' to Malcolm's site, and its link-thru.
Posted by: JK | Monday, 25 May 2020 at 15:19
That same lassitude has affected me a lot lately, David. If I have nothing to say, why say it?
I find myself much more inclined to read than write lately.
Posted by: Malcolm Pollack | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 00:28
David, you have to be on the ball, get the long John's on remember you are British. We are not out of the corrupt mafia EU yet. The EU belly crawlers are those attacking Cummings. They still think they have an edge and can reverse the democratic vote.
Posted by: Glesga | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 02:27
Excess deaths have now reached 60,000 since the Covid crisis started a quarter of a year ago ...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/26/uks-covid-19-death-toll-rises-60000/
Watch out Gaffer, Zummerzet's still approaching its peak and for all the hard earned wonga you've given it, the NHS, envy of the world, is simply closing its doors ...
North Somerset - the location of Weston Hospital, which had to shut its doors to new patients over the bank holiday weekend - is also on this list.
450,000 died in WW2 over 6 years. 6 years is 24 quarters. So that's 18,550 deaths per quarter.
So the criminally negligent behaviour of HMG, NHS, PHE, and SAGE in failing in every one of the 10 actions required to save lives ...
1. Testing
2. Track and trace
3. Lockdown
4. PPE
5. ICU / ventilators
6. Public masks
7. Borders
8. Care homes
9. Leveraging EU purchasing
10. Leveraging private sector and academics
... has killed Brits at a rate that's 3x greater than the Axis powers of WW2.
And you excuse the architects of that mass killing, like Dominic Cummings who breaks the law of his own making with impunity?
You guys are a menace. Sick in the head with your perverse populism and nationalism.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 12:30
There are still interesting things happening in D&N favorite topics. For example, American leadership's response to covid has even turned Darling Ann:
COVID gave Trump a chance to be a decent, compassionate human being (or pretending to be). But he couldn't even do that. https://t.co/fIzHtmbOfR - Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 24, 2020
And she's none too happy about other aspects of his performance:
Ann Coulter went on an early Sunday morning Twitter tear, ripping Donald Trump, calling him "the most disloyal actual [retard] that has ever set foot in the Oval Office ... a "moron" and "lout" ...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ann-coulter-turns-on-disloyal-trump-in-twitter-rant/ar-BB14x5cm?ocid=spartanntp
It could be she's just trying to stay relevant. We'll see if Trump takes the bait.
Posted by: Bob | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 14:49
Saving Patient 91 ...
https://www.ft.com/content/3d6ee676-609f-4168-a7fa-36cedca5016d
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/british-covid-19-patient-in-vietnam-could-have-lung-transplant
Plucky little Vietnam - well, not so little, actually there's 97 million of them! - has had 324 cases and NO deaths.
To keep their clean sheet they're pulling out all the stops on Patient 91, a Brit pilot, who's been in ICU with his lung capacity dropping to 10% at one point. He's even being prepared for a lung transplant. What an astonishing attention to individualism and the value and preservation of each human life. Truly in the spirit of the theme of Saving Private Ryan.
And how about Blighty's "envy of the world" then? Tune out now if you're too cowardly, too infused with populism, nationalism, collectivism and authoritarianism to face the truth. Coz you from me it ain't gonna be pretty ...
https://www.hsj.co.uk/commissioning/exclusive-nhs-trusts-suspend-life-saving-organ-transplants/7027301.article
Operations cancelled without further notice. In some cases the relevant state authorities not even gracing us with a response as to whether they're actually doing transplants now or if not when they might restart. The transplant patients thrown onto the scrap heap of 60,000 excess deaths.
What a role reversal: The Vietnamese doing Saving Patient 91 - maximum preservation of the individual - and Blighty doing Rooskie / Chinky mass wave attacks and mowing people down like a wheat crop.
And then the Brits leaning out of their windows to applaud, like a bunch of Soviet lackeys as a big-wig Commissar cruises past in his limo.
Well here's what I'll be leaning out of my window for tonight at 8pm ...
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/boo-for-boris-johnson-protest-1-6668928
https://www.facebook.com/events/s/boo-for-boris/1635023729980734/
Boo for Boris.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 16:04
Ain't heard much from Ann in quite awhile. I was worried she was slipping into irrelevancy. Thanks for the update Bob.
Posted by: JK | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 16:16
JK,
I'm surprised she hasn't retired to a pole in the middle of a corn field to scream at crows.
Posted by: Bob | Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 18:30