Today, however, the Bank of England is doing the opposite. Despite ongoing economic weakness, a cost-of-living crisis, stagnant growth, unaffordable housing and rising business pressures, it has deliberately pushed real interest rates back into positive territory. The result is a transfer of income from borrowers to lenders and from ordinary households to those who already own substantial financial assets.

House prices are falling. Mildly, in nominal terms perhaps, a bit more in real terms, yet more as a multiple of incomes. So, positive real interest rates are aiding in solving that unaffordable housing thing, no?

Yet Spud whines.

The post Sigh first appeared on Tim Worstall.

What is more, unlike any other business, banks’ business is explicitly underpinned by the government through the provision of a guarantee to those who place deposits with them. No one would trust them without that guarantee. People need to know that they will be bailed out when banks fail, but as a result of it, banks know they will be. Their profit-extraction model, which is based on these guarantees, deserves special tax treatment as a consequence.

The banks are – righteously – charged an annual fee for this insurance. So, we’re done, right?

But, of course, Spud doesn’t know that.

The post Spud betrays yet more ignorance first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Extra £174m earmarked for ‘spiralling’ bill for Lower Thames Crossing

It’s the only way.

The post Hang the Lanyards first appeared on Tim Worstall.

This is a legacy of a much wider erosion of the ways in which we can come together as a collective around things that aren’t just about competitions with other races for the prize of most subjugated. A rapacious individualisation is the legacy of the smashing of places to gather, where people could once identify material concerns (rather than race hallucinations) and collectively bargain for their delivery. The trade union movement is weakened, labour itself is changing into something more precarious and atomised. Deindustrialisation wrecked working-class systems and the halo of social and cultural life around them. Austerity undermined the ability to commune in free spaces and mix socially, in youth clubs, in family support centres, and drove people indoors and on to their phones and into a state of hermetic siege.

All of this is happening against a backdrop of scarcity of all sorts. Not just cost of living crises, but more stressed housing, healthcare and state schooling, which intensify that state of siege. This is not to suggest that actual racism, pure and uncomplicated, is not a factor, but that its activation into something violent and aggressive is more easily achieved in such conditions. The correctives to these conditions are hampered by the long march of modernity and by governments, both Labour and Conservative, that have resigned themselves to the inevitability of austerity. And with that has come a failure to articulate a new class politics, one in which people no longer array themselves in terms of work or industry, but would recognise themselves as being on the sharp end of a capital- and asset-owning class that privatises, gouges and exploits. However, that dynamic is never identified. Appealing to vague groups such as “working people” isn’t going to cut it.

Rampant individualism and neoliberal, capitalist, austerity. ‘S obvious, innit?

And, of course, she assumes that the cold, pure, rage, is about the murder itself. Which, well, no, it ain’t. Murders happen, they’re vile and appalling when they happen and that’s that. We all know they happen. What has got people going is that the victim was left to drown in his own blood as the one who’d cried waaacism was comforted by the police. The fucking police! Which is, to the average man and woman in the street, something to rage about.

Just not getting it in the slightest.

The post Nesrine on Nowak first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Marie-Annick Gournet is an associate professor and associate pro vice-chancellor for reparative and civic futures at the University of Bristol

Her views on the subject of slavery are going to be?

The French government therefore does not need to invent a model from scratch. There are examples to draw upon. The Caribbean nations’ 10-point plan for reparatory justice offers a practical framework, combining historical acknowledgment with measures addressing public health, education, economic development and psychological rehabilitation.

Open your wallet, Frogs!

We are so surprised, eh?

These two amuse:

They remain visible in contaminated land, unequal economies

Lots of economies are unequal unrelated to slavery or not slavery. Therefore the inequality may not be anything to do with the slavery.

And:

Consumers in the overseas territories routinely pay substantially more for basic goods than in mainland France, despite lower average incomes.

Small populations on islands without much local production face higher living costs, do they? My word that is just such a surprise.

The post Guess what this lassie is going to say, eh? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Jakupovic was referring to the comic book Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which depicts the lives of four turtles who live in the New York City sewer system. The turtles, who are brothers, were exposed to radioactive waste as youths, which turned them into human-turtle hybrids. Trained in martial arts by a large rat, the turtles fight New York criminals. The story is not based on real events.

The post So the sub has his fun first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Survivors of abuse perpetrated by the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed are calling for a full trafficking investigation to be launched, arguing that without it the “true scale” of the billionaire’s alleged network would remain hidden.

What we used to call the White Slave Trade. Innocent lovelies drugged and kidnapped to wake up in a foreign brothel where they are raped forevermore.

Lawyers representing the Justice for Fayed and Harrods Survivors group said 421 people had come forward about abuse that allegedly took place at the luxury department store in central London, as well as the Ritz hotel in Paris, Fulham FC and other places owned by Fayed.

The Met is investigating 155 victims who have contacted the force directly, 21 of whom came forward before Fayed’s death. However, NOA has argued the Met should focus primarily on trafficking to ensure a wider international network of people who enabled the abuse were also investigated.

Sexual abuse – which shouldn’t happen, agreed – is not really the same thing now, is it?

The post Trafficking, eh? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A doctor stopped me in the street recently to thank me for making videos that make sense of a world that doesn’t. I get messages like that all the time. And I want to say this clearly: you are not going mad. The world around you is.

The post I’ll take things that did not happen for $1,000, please first appeared on Tim Worstall.

In his own statement, Sullivan said: “After a lifetime spent building businesses in the adult industry in which I have met thousands of women, it is sadly inevitable that a small number of improper conduct claims are being made against me.

The strategy has, after all, worked elsewhere, no?

The post He could well be right about this too first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Scotland Yard has been captured by the “woke mind virus” and no longer treats citizens equally under the law, a veteran police officer has claimed.
Rick Prior, the former chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said the force had prioritised equalising outcomes among different ethnic groups over ensuring equality of opportunity for more than a decade.

The question now is, what do we do about it?

Which is a problem. Cultures are notoriously difficult to change. It’s taken them these decades to get to this point, where the idea of equity not equality dominates. So, how do we shift it back?

The post Yes, we know this first appeared on Tim Worstall.

17% is LBGTetc? And wishing to be mongamous with it?

Ho Hum.

The Observer then goes on to talk about, well, why monogamy? In their preview of the science they manage, not once, to mention children. The human experience is that to raise children requires a pair for a decade or three. The resources necessary to raise ’em need to come from two people. That intent toward monogamy is because we are descended from those who were a pair for the necessary time to get grandchildren. Now, whether you’re monogamous within a pair bonding is indeed another thing. But we can see the constraints that poses – the bloke won’t want to be raising what isn’t his, the bird will be pissed if he’s spreading his resources over those not hers.

Which is what makes it all rather fun. That discussion of monogamy doesn’t even mention that likely reason for the tendency – bints and bins.

The post Kids these days, eh? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

I’m willing to be corrected – don’t want to cause a schism – but that does, I think, betray a certain ignorance of the Holy Screed. ‘Ee might know ‘is Matthew from his Mark but of the canon of Pelham G I’m not so sure. Bertie would misremember, no?

Other than that it’s a darn good review actually.

The post The Archbish might not know his Holy Books, you know? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

And sure, they do now allow the peasant plots. Which do have much better yields than the state farms. They use a lot of “agroecological” techniques which is, I think, the modern code word for medieval peasantry methods. But they’re not growing wheat, they’re growing yams, yucca, beans, light veggies and citrus. Things where the peasant farmer can indeed produce a considerable surplus even using those medieval techniques, no fertiliser – other than night soil – etc.

So I was still not quite getting why horrendous food shortages. They’ve got those peasant plots, peasants can sell in free markets, should all work out even if there’s going to be a shortage of beefsteak on such a basis.

Ah. You’ve got sell 80% of your crop to the state at state determined prices. Yea, even if you’re farming half an acre with a hoe and machete. And guess how efficient the state is at coming to pick up your crop, let alone take a guess at the prices the state offers……

Sure, I know, pretty silly thing to thing about but there the thought arrived as I was hacking at weeds in my own garden in fact. Yes, I’m getting, for the very first time in my life, a real and direct idea of how much physical effort goes into hand farming. I’m not being stupid enough to actually try to feed myself – a few chili peppers just to show I can notwithstanding. And the muttering I’m doing to myself is, well, if you know what you’re doing (!) then yes, you really can feed yourself and household off a few acres. With a substantial surplus to sell too. It’s not going to be grand riches, by any means, but there wouldn’t be a shortage of plant based food calories.

A general shortage of basic plant – and perhaps eggs, say – calories has to be about something else therefore. And there I found it – the 80% confiscation (because their prices are confiscatory) by the State. The peasants are growing enough to feed their families, which no doubt disappears into bellies before the state calculation of yield, then there’s only a bit on top.

And that, I assume – or even would insist – is why beaucoup de fertile land on a tropical island – citrus is damn near a weed in such places, ‘nananananas too – with private plots allowed still has basic food shortages. Because, effectively, the state steals 80% of what the farmers don’t simply stuff into their own bellies.

It should even be possible to test this. Check the diets of the peasant farmers. Really test them – and find out whether they’re living off the declared crops that the state takes 80% of or there’s a bit of leakage before that calculation.

The thing that’s always got me about the Cuban variety of socialism is just how drearily shite it is. Yes, yes, gross political repression, the early days most certainly saw more than a few bourgeois up against the wall and so on. But over the decades it all just seems to be so, well, shite. I mean, seriously,. food shortages on a tropical island with a surplus of fertile land? How fucking shite do you have to be to achieve that?

The post So, just thinking, as you do….. first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A Virginia man who was having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without parole for the murder of his wife and a man who was lured to the couple’s home as a fall guy.

Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) law enforcement officer, claimed he shot Joseph Ryan after he came across Ryan attacking his wife on the morning of 24 February 2023. But prosecutors said Brendan Banfield and au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães set Ryan up in a scheme to kill Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse.

The au pair was in on the plot and has also been jailed.

It’s just one of those things that has always occurred to me. Being the second wife of a man who murdered his first seems like a pretty high risk occupation. Presumably increased when you have a kid and then there’s another au pair…..

The post Fairly high risk occupation first appeared on Tim Worstall.

As if that were not cavalier enough, Britain’s place in Europe became dependent on the soap-opera dynamics of the Notting Hill set: it was all tennis in Regent’s Park and weekends at Chequers, Michael (Gove) letting down Dave and what will Sam (Cameron) think of Boris. Johnson insists he didn’t “give a fuck about being prime minister,” while Osborne begs to differ: “It was nothing to do with the EU, Britain’s place in the world. It was Game of Thrones. That’s what Boris Johnson was playing. And he could see the Iron Throne right there about to be vacated.” This stuff was all-consuming at the time – and yet what was at stake, as these Etonians worked out their schoolboy rivalries, was nothing less than the destiny of the UK. That recklessness with the futures of 70m people remains unforgivable – and the guilt belongs to Cameron and Osborne almost as much as to Gove and Johnson.

Whinge whinge about the EU.

It reminds you of things some may have forgotten, including the extent to which this whole thing came about as a wheeze, a clever tactical ploy, plotted by the careless people who were then running the country. In 2013, David Cameron and George Osborne sought to placate noisy Eurosceptics in their own ranks by promising an in/out referendum after the next election – a pledge they assumed they’d never have to honour because they were sure they’d fail to win an outright majority in parliament, whereupon they would cheerfully trade the promise away as a concession to the Lib Dems.

Because allowing the people their say is unforgiveable recklessness, of course.

Right on target for Freedland, yes.

The post Jonathan Freedland is right on target here first appeared on Tim Worstall.

In the United States, millions of homeowners have fixed-rate mortgages that last for the entire life of their loan. They know what they will be paying not just next year, but potentially for the next 20 or 30 years. And, if interest rates fall, they can usually refinance and benefit from lower rates, whilst if rates rise, they are protected. The world’s risks are not dumped on households as they are in Britain.

In this video, I explain how the American mortgage system works and why it delivers a level of security that most British homeowners can only dream of. I look at the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed institutions that help underpin much of the US mortgage market, and explain how their guarantees make long-term fixed-rate lending possible.

Spud does not explain two things.

1) Fannie and Freddie both went bust as a result of this structure

2) Americans pay an interest rate premium over UK mortgages. Someone, somewhere, has to carry that risk of refinancing as rates fall. In a fixed rate for term system that payment will be – is – in the form of an interest rate premium on all loans made. That’s just how that system works. A floating rate system is cheaper, at any given underlying base rate, than a fixed rate one. Jus’ one of those things. Also, one of those things that is well known. Except, obviously, to Spud.

The post Guess what? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Tech stocks have fallen sharply across the globe over fears that valuations of AI companies have surged too high.

The post What Spud really doesn’t get about markets first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Mountbatten-Windsor, now evicted to Marsh Farm on the Sandringham Estate, Norfolk, had a lease that permitted subletting, though it was not known how much he received through this.

He paid a £1m premium and £7.5m on refurbishment of Royal Lodge under the 75-year lease in 2003, and could be entitled to between £301,967.66 and £488,342.21 compensation by surrendering it early, the report said. However, the crown estate has previously said it is likely he will not be owed any compensation once dilapidations are taken into account.

That’s one way a lease can work. It’s the way most National Trust leases work. The building requires repair – or requires a lot of maintenance. So, you agree to pay all those costs and no – or peppercorn – rent. Wholly standard.

Meanwhile, the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Forest Lodge home in Windsor underwent £400,000 repairs carried out by the crown estate before the couple moved in with their three young children last year.

William and Catherine took out a 20-year lease in July on the Grade II-listed Georgian house, with gardens, paddock, a barn and three cottages set within 7.4 hectares, and pay £307,200 rent a year, reviewed every five years, the NAO said. They paid no upfront premium, and are responsible for internal refurbishments and alterations.

Or the landlord pays all the repairs before you move in, you pay no premium, and you pay full market rent while there. It’s possible, obviously, to mix and match these terms in any manner you like too.

Neither of these are odd, strange or even unusual sets of terms. But you can bet that there will be some who bitch about both sets of terms.

Fun, eh?

The post If only people understood how leases work first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Police footage showing Nowak’s final few minutes of life have been shared across the world. The 18-year-old was arrested and handcuffed as he lay dying from stab wounds, while his murderer, Vickrum Digwa, who had stabbed him five times, lied to police that he had been racially abused.

Sort of thing that should be reported perhaps. Give a glimpse, an insight, in the country?

He wrote on X: “This horrific murder is a metaphor for what the West is experiencing: the native is treated as a suspect, while the immigrant perpetrator is shielded by the religion of anti-racism, which paralyses government officials and police officers. This time, there will be no kneeling. Europeans, in their own homeland, are not allowed to do so.”

You can grasp why someone might say that, no?

Europe’s far right exploit

Oh, this is exploitation is it? I assume exploitation now means drawing the politically incorrect conclusion from events?

The post Something in the news first appeared on Tim Worstall.

You can call me picky if you like, pendant even, but if you’re going to try to comment upon oil you really do have to know the difference between oil reserves, strategic reserves and inventories.

Myself I predict a boom in US oil production. Takes a few months, at most, to bring new fracking online. So, that’s what will happen with these higher prices.

The post Thankfully no one asks him to spud a well first appeared on Tim Worstall.