Manufacturing output and industrial production in the United Kingdom both weakened at the end of the year, figures released today showed, as the pound today fell further against the euro and the dollar.
Inflation, defined as the experience of not having enough money in the face of unchanged consumption patterns, what might be called 'suffered inflation', which is nastier than all the technical inflation definitions and has an unmistakeable in your face smack to it, rampages on and on.
And yes, we can keep lowering the quality of where we live, how warm we keep it, what we eat and drink, what we wear, how we get from place to place, and what we amuse ourselves with when not working. We do.
But all this is not the result of uncontrollable forces described in distancing statistics. It's not some sort of global weather system we must endure until it passes and be grateful to our Leader for giving us warning it is coming, indeed, is here. We are not protected from global economic and financial forces by the Labour regime; we are rendered utterly vulnerable by the mix of gross wealth transfers to non-productive parts of the population and the country to maintain the Labour regime in power, and the indulgence of financial excess, unregulated and untaxed to generate an economic and social environment for the rich which gives a wealth overflow for the political class and further protection for their maintenance of power.
But if you work in a productive job for your living, if you make and sustain the dwindling private economic sector, if you honestly try to sell your entrepreneurship, your skills, your labour to pay your way and meet your costs of living, now and for the future, there is no government creation of favourable environments for your efforts, there is no tax regime that encourages the wealth and job creation you might achieve; you will struggle against a stony-faced, latter day pseudo socialism that expresses itself through authoritarian controls on resources including most particularly the people trapped in Labour's dystopia. You are the milch cow, fair game, the deservedly ripped off for your unwillingness to subscribe to the post- democratic state and its economy managed for the herded, unionised, right-thinking many, and unbridled for the few.
And when the remnants of the rule of law, the independent media, the sense of propriety that is all but stifled, points at particularly distasteful breaches of common honesty, there is now, and always, corruption in the form of weasel words, false apology and if needed, the big knout of the state.
Friday, 11 January 2008
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6 comments:
One of your best ones, I think. I often feel your posts are condensed and allusive outlines of what should be lengthier works. Have you considered a full-length book? I know the thought is painful - the effort is so rarely adequately financially rewarded - but perhaps compensated for in other ways:
His servants he with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind all passion spent.
What you call "suffered inflation", labelled in the literature as "perceived inflation", is - apart from possible distortions in perception - the rate of inflation applicable to the actual basket of goods and services purchased by the perceiver. Each person - or rather household - has its own, personalised rate of inflation. This is known also as "the index number problem". Statisticians have sought to tackle the problem but a solution does not and cannot exist.
One conforting thought on inflation: different goods inflate at different rates, the resulting change in relative prices allows - to a significant extent - consumers to reduce the brunt of inflation by shifting their consumption patterns towards the goods that grow relatively more slowly in price. In other words, some of the inflation can be avoided by responding with changes in consumption behafiour. To that extent, price indices may sometimes exaggerate the real income loss due to inflation, even if they correspond to the pre-inflation consumption pattern of the consumer considered.
We don't want nasty cheap clothes made of nasty cheap materials, C. Or rice and potatoes instead of organic salads and river trout (well, I withdraw the potatoes). We don't want to change our way of life at all, if it is recently or even medium term established as reasonable and within our means, unless there are catastrophic changes in our circumstances, individual or as a class. But there are not. Perceived inflation is being imposed by political choices made by a minority, unelected Executive with a nasty Honecker mindset. That tells lots of lies. About it all being a global storm which we can weather under their wise guidance. So we are to do as we are told. Or Else.
That was a goody HG... which I will now read again. the Spectataor say of the weather that "He did not mend the roof when the sun was out "
( Oh since you mentioned it I did put that letter up, the first of many I hope )
It is unpleasant to have a ministry actually labelled Children, families and schools, let alone the persona of the minister currently holding this office of the state. And that ill-written programme published in the Telegraph (does he write this way himself or is that the way civil servants craft extended pieces of prose these days? Flat multi-purpose words without accuracy, or skill in choice, the simplest of constructions, without art or device, the whole without resonance or force or conviction and certainly raising hardly a glimmer of interest. Perhaps the intention is to avoid being read).
The statement that doing nothing would not be allowed and obligatory schooling would be extended to 18 measures their controlling mania. Doing nothing that isn't approved of, they mean, and what they approve of is as flat and dead as the language in which they set out their 'vision' and their rules.
Now they are at the bedding in stage of their programme the next step is to pursue everybody into their private lives - which is a good reason to practice and laud our culture and its beliefs and not their poverty stricken impositions.
Who do they think they are telling people to stay at school to any age, never mind into adulthood. And such vile schools too.
Good letter.
It's the essentials that are subject to inflation.
Not much choice ut to cut back really.
The items which are held back in price are produced through slavery.
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