Brexit and GDP

This isn’t going well. “The Office for Budget Responsibility on Wednesday said its long-running prediction is “broadly on track” to show a 15% fall in trade and a 4% reduction in the UK economy’s potential productivity compared to if the UK had stayed in the EU”. Here are some notes and links …

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Enshittification and Apple

This is a note, I might convert it into an essay. What’s the difference, I write the notes for me, I write essays for at least one other person. I am not sure this is finished, but as it stands, a bit of Corey Doctorow, and a bit of me. Corey Doctorow has turned his…

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Economic Statistics

I found a couple of sources while researching some recent articles. Here are some links and comments. These articles are ‘coming soon’, and we all know what that means …

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Down the rabbit hole

I am not sure where this started but I have known about Professor Danny Dorling‘s work for a number of years. He has written a book and authored a white paper called variously Shattered Nation or Shattered Britain. I watched the launch of AEIP’s joint report which he authored, “Brexit: A failed project in a…

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Creative Industries & Trade

I have looked at whether the UK’s creative industries are net contributors to the nation’s wealth i.e. Do we import more than we export? The music industry on the BBC are both very proud of their export data, but discovering important facts is much more difficult. Here are my notes and links, …

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Capitalism Divided

I am reading this, by Geoffrey Ingham and making some notes. At the moment, i.e. where I am in the book, he is examinimg why the British state is not acting as the executive committee of the [industrial] bourgoisie. As ever, here below or overleaf are my links and notes …

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Kier Starmer and Resolution Foundation

At the launch of the Resolution Foundation’s report, “Ending Stagnation”, [Press Release], they had a bunch of speakers, including Sir Kier Starmer, Labour’s Leader, whose speech is posted at Labour List. It seems Hunt was also there. Here are some notes and links …

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Why treat the CEO as a superman?

OpenAI just did a boomerang firing of its CEO, Sam Altman. The press went mad as did the stock price. Their major investor and most of the staff demanded his reinstatement and got what they wanted but why? What did and does Altman bring to the company, he seems to be a venture capital manager,…

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Germany’s future

In this article in the New Statesman, Walter Münchau looks at the macro-economics and industrial policy of Germany and predicts its failure and notes the effect of ‘leaving behind’ the old East in particular in its politics with the rise of the AfD. The article is subtitled, “The country is in economic and political crisis…

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Interest, debt & housing prices

I came across the video from the i linked to below and wondered how much the assertion that the UK has never had such a malign nexus, oh high inflation, high interest rates and high consumer debt. I was shocked at the Schroders report that the price to income ratio is now nine i.e. a…

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Germany and debt fetishism

The stability and growth pact (SGP) is the EU’s public debt management rules and embedded in a separate treaty to the T[F]EU treaties. I have commented on these treaties elsewhere on this wiki. Elsewhere in several articles, on the blog, I criticise the SGP on my blog, including here, here, and here. My main criticism…

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What about the Euro?

Should we campaign to rejoin the Euro? In my blog article, Say no to extrawürst, I look at Niall Ò Conghaile’s arguments on EU re-entry terms and dovetail them with my realisation that the UK’s previous unique deal and its opt-outs are gone. I have felt there is room for a deal on the Euro…

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World Economic Power

I was thinking about UK defence policy and considering the role of the domestic economy. I was doing this in the light of the GMB’s internal debates on defence manufacturing. These charts are dated 2017 and I believe that Italy and France have both overtaken the UK since then and the measurement in USD will…

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Marini and superexploitation

I was sent this, an essay/review of Marini’s “Dialectics of Dependency”  by Andy Higgenbottom. I find it a tough read and one that requires a solid understanding of Capital, the Labour Theory of Value and surplus value, which I don’t have. Frankly this needs a reread, but I highlighted these, see below, notes for my…

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