Good & Bad News – War Games – SADS – Britain’s Mega Squeeze – The Farce Ends – Winter of Discontent – Woke Still Broke – Letter from Great Britain [09-03-22]

“If I don’t know – I can’t act” – Knowledge of The Word is Spiritual Power

INTERESTING FACT:  “Only a tiny 4% of wild mammals constitute the biomass of all mammals on Earth. The remainder is domesticated animals (60%) and humans (36%)”  This must tell me something – but what?

GOOD NEWS!  A thousand cheers for our Unvaxxed Heroes!  A walk-back over the last two years or so – just to remind us:   https://prepareforchange.net/2022/08/25/the-unvaccinated-will-be-vindicated

BAD NEWS! Liz Truss says she would press the button! Yikes! With ‘friends like this, we certainly don’t need enemies! https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1562159858719330304.  Ms Truss has been among the most bellicose British officials in her comments about the Russian SMO in Ukraine, issuing a steady stream of hostile rhetoric toward Moscow while encouraging escalation at virtually every turn.

And she has been calling for Russia’s “defeat” on the battlefield regardless of the cost in Ukrainian blood.  BUT stay happy, it won’t happen, because this is what really happens when the politicos are in charge:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YR6WICIAI

PLEASE MARK THIS ANNIVERSARY:  Liz won’t remember 83 years ago today, perhaps she should?  On this day, Neville Chamberlin declared war on Nazi Germany and the Second World War had begun, at first as a ‘phoney war’, and then 10 months later, on July 10 1940, Herr Hitler unleashed the full force of his massive Luftwaffe against the puny RAF and their fighter airfields; but then we had some brave, stalwart and patriotic youngsters before ‘Trans’ and ‘Woke’ arrived in the 21^st century and so sadly, not so much today.

Within two months the Nazis had failed in their mission and switched their bombing to London itself, saving devastation for the RAF and attempting to terrify the brave Londoners.  When that failed they settled down to a war of attrition and the rest is history looking very much like Ukraine 82 years later.  But Liz, can’t you see that you are supporting the Nazis this time? Who says history doesn’t repeat?  However, sometimes it’s inverted!

Amazing isn’t it.  A war that ended 103 years ago is religiously marked by a plethora of poppies every year and yet the next nearest to us today, WW2, goes by with nary a peep. To my mind it’s all very odd.  Perhaps my perceptive readers have an answer?

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: What’s going on?  Death from unknown causes, SADS – doctors confused?  Mark Steyn; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkQ7LsHPASA  “Correlation IS NOT causation” says Mark in just 7 minutes at GB News.  What do you think?  Even more serious data associated with this SADS syndrome that baffles the health people and practising medics is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wLu98NygrA

BUT to save me writing lots of words of no count, I call upon the great stalwart truth-teller, Neil Oliver at GB News with his 11 minute monologue exposing the fraud that is among us every day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTA90R9FMoQ

BREAKING NEWS:   Britain is facing the biggest squeeze in living standards for a century, a new report into the challenge facing the next Prime Minister shows.  In a desperately worrying forecast, real household disposable incomes are on track to fall by 10% over this year and next.  With inflation surging, rising prices mean all the real pay growth since 2003 will have been wiped out. The Resolution Foundation fears that the number of people living in absolute poverty is set to rise by three million, to 14 million people in 2023-24.  And one in three children could fall into relative poverty, the highest level since the peaks of the 1990s.

Resolution warns that Britain faces a bleak winter for living standards – with the living standards crisis set to stretch well beyond this winter into next year and 2024.  Real earnings, which are already falling at their fastest rate since the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977, are forecast to continue falling until at least mid-2023, by which time all real pay growth since 2003 will have been wiped out.

Lalitha Try, a researcher at the Resolution Foundation, says “radical action” is needed by the next PM: “Britain is already experiencing the biggest fall in real pay since 1977, and a tough winter looms as energy bills hit £500 a month. With high inflation likely to stay with us for much of next year, the outlook for living standards is frankly terrifying.  Typical households are on course to see their real incomes fall by £3,000 over the next two years – the biggest squeeze in at least a century – while 3 million extra people could fall into absolute poverty.”

“No responsible government could accept such an outlook, so radical policy action is required to address it. We are going to need an energy support package worth tens of billions of pounds, coupled with increasing benefits next year by this October’s inflation rate.  The new Prime Minister also needs to improve Britain’s longer-term outlook, which can only be achieved by a new economic strategy that delivers higher productivity and strong growth.”
Meanwhile, the latest manufacturing surveys are likely to confirm that UK and eurozone factory activity contracted last month.  European stock markets will start September with losses, after finishing August on the back foot. The FTSE 100 fell 1% Thursday, as government bond markets weakened.  Worries about the global economy, as inflation accelerates, are hitting stocks and bonds and the British pound (GBP) is falling too – £1.15/USD this morning, which portends costlier imports.

The past four days have seen a sharp change in sentiment with yields jumping sharply across the board since Fed chair Jerome Powell’s hawkish Jackson Hole speech,   says Michael Hewson of CMC Markets: “While US markets fell sharply in August, we’ve also seen sharp declines in global bond markets, with US yields jumping sharply higher.

While US yields have seen a sharp rise, these gains have been outpaced by a surge in German and UK yields both on the short and the long end, as markets increasingly price in the prospect of much higher interest rates and central banks signal a singular determination to rein in sharply rising inflation.”

IN THE MEANTIME at the ‘Theatre of Farce’: [Note: ‘farce’: being a comic dramatic piece that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, extravagant exaggeration, and violent horseplay] having continued ad nauseam with Liz Truss running scared, we will know on Monday September 5 if Liz has won and if so, Britain will have its second female PM.

She has been accused of “running scared” of scrutiny after pulling out of a BBC interview scheduled for Tuesday, meaning she is likely to become Prime Minister without undergoing a single set-piece broadcast quizzing.  A source in Sunak’s campaign said their tally showed Truss had done just two broadcast interviews of any form during the campaign, whereas Sunak had undertaken nine,

The source said: “It’s important that candidates face proper scrutiny so that members and the public know what they are offering. Avoiding that scrutiny suggests either Truss doesn’t have a plan at all or the plan she has falls far short of the challenges we face this winter.”  However, as the crass farce ends, John Crace offers a final epitaph:

“In the absence of the government doing any actual governing, we’ve been forced to endure the tedium of a drawn out Tory leadership contest. A niche psychodrama for the 160,000 people allowed to vote. One with very little actual drama as we’ve all known who was going to win from the moment MPs reduced the candidates down to the final two. Given a choice of a halfwit with half an idea and a flat-lining ideologue with no actual ideas, the Conservative members were always going to vote for the most hopeless. There’s even less to Liz Truss than meets the eye.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/31/finally-the-truss-v-sunak-psychodrama-comes-to-end-for-now

Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrats’ chief whip, said: “Liz Truss is running scared of the media and proper public scrutiny. How can she lead our country through an economic crisis when she can’t even cope with a basic media interview?  She wants to follow in Margaret Thatcher’s footsteps but she’s fallen at the first hurdle. She’s fighting for the highest office by answering the lowest number of difficult questions.”  Read the details here:  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/29/liz-truss-pulls-out-of-primetime-interview-with-bbc

BUT the salient fact is, Liz Truss only gained 30% support from Tory MPs – the lowest percentage of any leader since Ian Duncan Smith in 2001 – and he was thrown out of the leadership after only two years.  Umm, doesn’t bode well for our Liz’s survival prospects – does it?  However, the key question is: can she unite a fundamentally fractured Tory Party and secure a 2024 election victory?  Whichever way the cookie crumbles, Joe Public will pay in the end – as always – otherwise known as the perennial ‘levelling down’.

WILL THERE BE A WINTER OF DISCONTENT?  The British government or the Establishment (or both) are telling you fibs yet again.  [OK, so maybe it’s not deliberate this time, unlike Covid – maybe just upper-class twits’ twaddle]. The Cost-of-Living crisis already feels like a defining moment in the politics of our era.

Come winter there will be a catastrophe. The reality has descended: confirmation last Friday week saw the new energy price cap rise to £3,549pa from October [but why the odd number?  Is it to show that their ‘models’ are so accurate that they compute to +/- one pound?] Predictions say prices will be £5,400pa in January 2023, and £6,600+pa in April.

A ‘Savanta ComRes’ poll finds that nearly one in four adults is planning to keep the heating off completely this winter – an alarming prospect when cold homes were responsible for 8,500 deaths in 2019.  Against that unprecedented situation are a set of political responses that feel, to most analysts, like they utterly fail to meet the gravity of the moment.

On Friday, we heard from some of those facing the most severe impacts on what soaring energy bills will mean for them.  Resolution Foundation data, suggests that the political mainstream has failed in all respects.  France has already taken swift action: French householders on their country’s regulated tariffs only face bills in the region of €950 pa (£803).  French President Macron has told EDF, the state-owned business, that they can only increase bills by 4% pa.  TheEnergyShop.com said: “When you see a difference like this you’d think there was something wrong with prices in the UK.”

Imported gas is responsible for 96% of the price increase so far. For more on that, read this piece  by Evans.  Keir Starmer’s plan to keep the cap below £2,000 pa. even people relatively high up the income distribution are really going to be feeling the squeeze” – a point acknowledged by the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, over the weekend – and the blanket nature of the approach means it can easily be administered.

But Scottish Power say freeze energy bills for two years.  There are critics on the left who see the scheme as a way to “bail out energy companies whose businesses have failed”, in the words of economist Richard Murphy. He argues that the plan would give a £100bn “bung” to companies which may go bust anyway.

But here is the key point.  Businesses are not subject to the energy cap unlike domestic users; they have to negotiate term contracts for energy supply. Electricity prices are currently pegged to gas even if the majority in fact comes from other sources – meaning that some renewable firms are making a killing.  I smell an inside-trader’s rat fixing global prices and arbitraging the difference.  It happens with Crypto all the time.

There is also a huge question over the government’s failure to take action on home insulation. This winter, the least efficient homes in band F will have gas bills about twice as high as those in band A, and cost £151 more a month to heat than C-rated homes. “The government has failed to have a serious energy efficiency policy,” said Evans. “The best time to do that was a decade ago. The next best time is now.”

The New York Times  has compiled years of “how to” tips in one place, from the potentially oblique (how to get someone out of a cult) to the arguably crucial (how to have fewer regrets).  AND this plays directly into the world of our poor bloody workers – again. https://dailysceptic.org/2022/08/28/hard-left-unions-barons-plot-strike-to-bring-britain-to-its-knees/

AND it looks like we will have ‘synchronised strikes’ this autumn; in the old days we used to call it a ‘General Strike’ but in the 21^st century the descriptions of things I knew only too well have been ‘Newspeaked’ to make it easier to digest.  But we all know that sugaring the pill does make it go down better – however it still causes pain in the end – my mum knew that.  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/27/uk-unions-waves-strikes-industrial-action-cost-living-crisis-autumn

FINALLY – ARE RUMOURS OF WARS REAL?  US/NATO would have us believe that the Ukraine conflict began on February 24 with the Russian SMO – but watching this video from 2018 proves conclusively to me that this conflict has been ongoing since 2014 (or well before) when I am sure you will remember the ‘Maiden Putsch’ occurred ushering in ‘Full Spectrum Domination’ of Eastern Europe to save ‘democracy’. Hat Tip ‘m’ from TBP: https://www.theburningplatform.com/2022/04/30/us-a-co-belligerent-in-ukraine-war-legal-expert-says/#comment-2606005

INFLATION WATCH:  How is it affecting you personally?  We all know what is happening to prices – we ‘feel’ it every day, but the statistics are just averages and don’t reflect individual circumstances that vary considerably from one person to another.  It is often declared that inflation impacts the lower income cohorts worse.  Pensioners and others on fixed incomes are especially vulnerable.

I remember the last episode of extreme inflation reaching 25% pa in 1970s Britain when pensioners were eating cat food – yes really – I witnessed it myself.  At this time I was fortunate to have a good secure job and benefitted from regular pay rises to beat the inflation monster thus it barely affected me personally.

However this week the NYT has launched a helpful App that allows you to calculate your personal inflation number.  I have tested it; it’s fairly crude but is a fair guide and reminder of how your expenditure items are varying.  My number came out at 10%, in-line with the ONS published figure: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/25/personal-inflation-rate-calculator-uk-price-rises-2022

COLLAPSE MONITOR:    Here’s an ironic quote from South Africa:  “They are not really fixing the streets. They are just moving the potholes around so the motorists cannot memorise them.” This rather exemplifies what is happening to Britain, our infrastructure and services have been declining since …well for as long as I can remember.  Now however I see the collapse accelerating due to the inevitable global financial system failure but further aggravated by the Russian SMO in Ukraine.

Despite pundits’ warnings, as BoJo vacates his privileged mansions, he continues to insist that the Brits maintain their support for Ukraine by prolonging the battle when he continues to scream “We also know that if we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood.”  Thank God he’ll be gone to Neverland next week, hopefully never to be seen again; more on this psychotic tyrant next week.

However as food and fuel inflation rages onward and upward, Johnson’s last hurrah just allocated a further £54 million to Ukraine for weapons systems, from Britain I guess – a bizarre sort of economic tango.  Energy bills are forecast to leap to £6,522 pa by next April which will push at least a third of the country into fuel poverty (defined as spending more than 10% of disposable income on fuel).  A Consultancy calculated the 2023 price cap will be three times the current limit of £1,971pa with bills having been closer to a normal £1,000 only a year ago.

Meanwhile,  Britain continues to pursue BoJo’s disastrous ‘net zero’ green energy policies that are unfit for purpose while refusing to allow fracking, which could moderate the energy crisis, but only if we adopt a national pricing regime, as opposed to bidding on the global wholesale auction markets.  Here are 11 minutes of sound advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IGMNDBFx7w

THE NARRATIVE BATTLE: Woke is just not cutting it enough to ensnare the masses as CNN is finding out to its detriment. “One thing about leftist culture that never ceases to amaze is their ability to take a failure and pretend that it was actually a success.  This attitude is perhaps an extension of their penchant for propaganda – They lie so much about everything that they end up falling victim to their own disinformation.  They tell their enemies they are winning even when they are losing, and then they actually start to believe it themselves.  It’s a bit like the old rule for drug dealers – Everything falls apart when you start smoking the drugs you sell. 

For CNN and outlets like them, the problem is that you can’t run from reality forever.  If no one wants to watch your content then you can’t force them to do so.  Leftists wish they could use force, but they can’t, so instead they try to use gaslighting and shame.  This has translated into the typical tactics we see today from the media, which include race baiting and accusations of bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, fascism, etc.  These tactics really took center stage from 2016 onward and they haven’t worked yet, but the political left continues to beat that dead horse in the hopes that it will one day win the Kentucky Derby”. ZeroHedge has the happy details: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cnn-being-gutted-because-leftist-media-not-appealing-they-fantasize

AND this is Stelter’s pathetic leaving address which just goes to show he must believe his own lies as per all Woksters: “CNN’s @BrianStelter goes out doubling down on what got his show canceled, It wasn’t difficult to discern that Stelter is complete trash and for years lied to viewers and pushed a one sided narrative (Russian collusion, Hunter Biden’s laptop etc etc). That’s exactly why he’s gone.” https://summit.news/2022/08/22/ultimate-irony-sacked-brian-stelter-declares-we-must-make-sure-we-dont-give-platforms-to-those-lying-to-our-faces/ In the ultimate celebration of the demise of now former CNN potato head Brian Stelter, The Babylon Bee offered him a job producing “funny fake news” for them. Here’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1560330245915512838?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

FOR MORE, READ: “The Financial Jigsaw” – at my academic network.  Scroll to view:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358117070_THE_FINANCIAL_JIGSAW_-_PART_1_-_4th_Edition_2020

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Author: Austrian Peter

Peter J. Underwood is a retired international accountant and qualified humanistic counsellor living in Bruton, UK, with his wife, Yvonne. He pursued a career as an entrepreneur and business consultant, having founded several successful businesses in the UK and South Africa His latest Substack blog describes the African concept of Ubuntu - a system of localised community support using a gift economy model. View all posts by Austrian Peter