Follow Stumbling and Mumbling, filter it, and define how you want to receive the news (via Email, RSS, Telegram, WhatsApp etc.) https://follow.it/stumbling-and-mumbling Thu, 21 Sep 2023 09:45:35 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLfeGcIas3OuuQEmsPXZ5C9 The government is changing the rules of the work capability assessment in an effort to push more people into work and thinking of cutting benefits. There's a link between this and those incessant scam phone calls we all get. To...]]> Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:19:15 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLfeGcIas3OuuQEmsPXZ5C9 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIrC4d1qKXvg-QEmsPXZ5C9 Thatcherism is dead. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. That seems to be the obvious inference...]]> Thu, 31 Aug 2023 14:18:50 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIrC4d1qKXvg-QEmsPXZ5C9 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLdVhbXZEFqB4MOI2eu70Rg A recent Yougov poll found that most people think that people out of work should not be able to afford smartphones, takeaways, visits to the pub or pets. This is not just evidence of their mean-spiritedness, but also of their...]]> Sun, 13 Aug 2023 14:50:42 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLdVhbXZEFqB4MOI2eu70Rg https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglJBZ_ey-8FOBTErtZyObPkc One of the tricks of bourgeois politics is to blame workers for the systemic failures of capitalism. So it is with the claim that there's a problem with increasing numbers of over-50s being out of the workforce. The Guardian, for...]]> Fri, 04 Aug 2023 09:32:41 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglJBZ_ey-8FOBTErtZyObPkc https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIEhy0qO6MyqslTP0vptTFR Whatever happened to the right's faith in market forces? I ask because of their complaints about "woke capitalism" after Coutts refused Nigel Farage's custom. Farage says: I find it extraordinary that in modern corporate Britain, being seen to be politically...]]> Mon, 24 Jul 2023 13:53:38 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIEhy0qO6MyqslTP0vptTFR https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKvZ1a4tzkIhgO5yOwvVe_2 Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out significant rises in public spending under a Labour government. He's partly right. What his supporters and many critics fail to appreciate, however, is that a tight fiscal stance is wholly consistent with some very...]]> Wed, 19 Jul 2023 14:19:03 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKvZ1a4tzkIhgO5yOwvVe_2 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglJpjJ-l-Hurcyxhxzpi7FpJ Katherine Birbalsingh recently tweeted something insightful: "Having small c conservative values" is not political. Many lefties have them. True. I think of myself as one of these. The conservative disposition, wrote (pdf) Michael Oakeshott, "is averse from change, which appears...]]> Tue, 11 Jul 2023 13:55:17 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglJpjJ-l-Hurcyxhxzpi7FpJ https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIUsc44Ub9y70FW8UNEQjUn Why is inflation a problem? I ask because the common sense answer is wrong, whilst a standard answer among economists is out-of-date. You might think the answer is obvious: inflation is making us poorer. Not so. Of course, wages haven't...]]> Mon, 03 Jul 2023 10:53:29 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIUsc44Ub9y70FW8UNEQjUn https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKi0hAZqJjTT1hGNgNo2_0q No, you can't. This is the mindset of our political class. Labour has this week reneged on its promise to offer universal free childcare for children following Rachel Reeves' delaying of Labour's proposed £28bn of green investments on the spurious...]]> Wed, 14 Jun 2023 14:52:18 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKi0hAZqJjTT1hGNgNo2_0q https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKX_9wks9IWTzErtZyObPkc "Globalisation, as we once knew it, is dead" said Rachel Reeves this week. Which is a problem for anybody wanting a high-wage high-productivity economy. I say so for a simple reason: globalization in the sense of faster world trade growth...]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 09:27:45 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKX_9wks9IWTzErtZyObPkc https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLvEjfyJA1WUFRpWVnEcNkS John Rentoul has been mocked for claiming that "the Twitter consensus is that the magic money tree should pay to upgrade our sewage system". Such mockery is right; people think that water company owners should foot the bill. But John...]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 10:45:19 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLvEjfyJA1WUFRpWVnEcNkS https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLPMO6AHi3Fxm7fhEn5oRuR Years ago, before the Great Forgetting, economists knew that people's preferences often did not originate with themselves but were instead cultivated by producers themselves. Inspired by Vance Packard's best-selling 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, J.K. Galbraith wrote: Production fills only...]]> Tue, 16 May 2023 10:17:19 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLPMO6AHi3Fxm7fhEn5oRuR https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKJYr6a3bKLtCVCAQLB0bf5 To someone of my generation, there's a curiosity about politics today - that the Tories are not making more of the fact that unemployment is remarkably low. Two facts make this especially strange. One is that the government has bugger...]]> Fri, 05 May 2023 15:00:59 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKJYr6a3bKLtCVCAQLB0bf5 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLpVZljLCnXhWW0GqTRQSgk Disputes about wages are rarely about financial considerations alone, but are often tied up with ideas of respect, expectations and morality. The fact that we call wages "earnings" alerts us to the close link between pay and our sense of...]]> Fri, 21 Apr 2023 14:21:53 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLpVZljLCnXhWW0GqTRQSgk https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIDdLsScgdMyu4DA87rvhPr Simon Wren Lewis asks: There is no doubt that Lawson was far better qualified than many other Chancellors, and also that he was clever, so why did he get these major judgements wrong? It's a good question because it broadens....]]> Sat, 15 Apr 2023 11:09:47 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglIDdLsScgdMyu4DA87rvhPr https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLAJGRstKcwn7myhX6zo8SW The Labour party is more influenced by the Tory press than by economic rationality. That's the inference to draw from Rachel Reeves saying she has no plans to raise capital gains tax. I say this because there is a widely-accepted...]]> Sat, 01 Apr 2023 13:33:33 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLAJGRstKcwn7myhX6zo8SW https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKBNEHg5BvXfIfjc6hd5eWF There's a common mistake in looking at politics which is shared by the left and right - to regard bad policy as mere intellectual error. Here, for example, is Mike Denham of the TPA complaining that Jeremy Hunt "has not...]]> Thu, 30 Mar 2023 14:14:19 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKBNEHg5BvXfIfjc6hd5eWF https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglISl0WZLhyOJOm6srrLMsqK There's a fascinating TV series on now about modern social and economic history. I refer of course to the re-runs of Brookside on STV Player. One thing this shows is how many opportunities there in the 80s were for workers...]]> Mon, 13 Mar 2023 11:05:07 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglISl0WZLhyOJOm6srrLMsqK https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLYUITipr38ZdKEpFgimKzx Labour's promise to "secure the highest sustained growth in the G7" is so far a mere aspiration without a detailed plan to achieve it. It is like a man claiming to want to become a great guitarist without practising or...]]> Mon, 06 Mar 2023 15:12:20 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglLYUITipr38ZdKEpFgimKzx https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKsybdJ6TU--B-xWH3zZqEA It's often the case that sport can give us lessons for other walks of life. So it is with Mikel Arteta's recent reaction to Lee Mason's failure to draw the lines on the TV replay which would have shown that...]]> Fri, 24 Feb 2023 15:10:42 +0200 https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/2N_LpZDgglKsybdJ6TU--B-xWH3zZqEA