Any Brits here?

[Louis Cypher]

What @StevenC said basically is my take too, plus I'd add the SNP walk out is alot to do with their firm belief that they and therefore Scotlands interests and concerns are consistently ignored/disrespected by the fundamentally English centric Government and Opposition and Parliament "proceedings" and "protocol".
The SNP only get 3 days of formal "Opposition" a year and they feel that one of their days was hijacked by Labour thanks to the Speaker of the House.

 

[StevenC]

What @StevenC said basically is my take too, plus I'd add the SNP walk out is alot to do with their firm belief that they and therefore Scotlands interests and concerns are consistently ignored/disrespected by the fundamentally English centric Government and Opposition and Parliament "proceedings" and "protocol".
The SNP only get 3 days of formal "Opposition" a year and they feel that one of their days was hijacked by Labour thanks to the Speaker of the House.

I was doing an edit to include some extra SNP context, but lost service on the tube.

 

[Moongrum]

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask, but why is the pound so strong? And how/why does it benefit the UK?

I'm a real n00b at this, so sorry if I'm misspeaking, the Bank of England is largely responsible for setting it's worth, right?

 

[Louis Cypher]

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask, but why is the pound so strong? And how/why does it benefit the UK?

I'm a real n00b at this, so sorry if I'm misspeaking, the Bank of England is largely responsible for setting it's worth, right?

Tbh It's pretty complicated I really don't know too much but this is worth a read
Historical Perspective & Factors Behind UK Pound’s Strength

The bank of England tho has no responsibility for setting the worth of pound sterling, the exchange rate for the pound is set by the market supply and demand. Like any currency the pound is strong when more people buy more pounds
Brexit and its implications have had severe affects on the pound and Tory lunacy fiscal policy has too but due to alot of the info in the link the pound is still considered one of the top currencies of strength in the world

 

[Drew]

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask, but why is the pound so strong? And how/why does it benefit the UK?

I'm a real n00b at this, so sorry if I'm misspeaking, the Bank of England is largely responsible for setting it's worth, right?

This shit gets complicated fast... but if you strip it down to it's simplest level, currencies are commodities like anything else, and their "strength" or basically their "price" is largely a product of supply and demand.

There are, off the top of my head, two primary ways this plays out -

1) international trade. If a lot of people need pounds to do business in the UK, then they sell their home currency and buy pounds, which bids up the price of pounds.

2) interest rate differential/"carry" trade. This is sort of a variant on the above - if your (or someone else's) currency pays a fairly low interest rate, and some other currency pays a higher one, then it can be profitable to sell or borrow in the low-rate currency and hold the high rate one. This should cause high rate currencies to appreciate relative to low rate ones until the forward exchange rate hits a point where this trade is no longer profitable. Don't overthink the whole interest rate/passage of time/and spot/today's rate vs forward/future rate thing so much, as just think of the big picture; if one currency has a low rate, you should borrow in that currency and sell it to buy the higher-interest-paying currency (in practice this would be thinks like short term sovereign debt or forward currency contracts rather than raw currency, but again let's keep this simple), which should depress the price of the low rate one and bid up the price of the high rate one.

So, putting this together, the pound is NOT strong. It tanked after brexit, where it had been trading in the range of $1.5-1.8 US Dollars needed to buy 1 pound fpr much of the decade before, down to about $1.25 needed to buy a single pound. It then started to recover a bit during 2020 and 2021, but then the Federal Reserve ended up being far more aggressive than the Bsnk of England in hiking short term policy rates, with the UK lagging by between half a percent to a percent for most of 2022 and 2023, and currently sitting 0.25% below the US Fed Funds Rate. So, the pound weakened some more, and us currently aitting at about $1.26 dollars to buy a pound.

That may sound "strong" in relative terms, but as recently as 2007 the pound was worth more than $2, so it's weakened by nearly 40% in the last 20 years, with a large chunk of that because of Brexit.

 

[StevenC]

This shit gets complicated fast... but if you strip it down to it's simplest level, currencies are commodities like anything else, and their "strength" or basically their "price" is largely a product of supply and demand.

There are, off the top of my head, two primary ways this plays out -

1) international trade. If a lot of people need pounds to do business in the UK, then they sell their home currency and buy pounds, which bids up the price of pounds.

2) interest rate differential/"carry" trade. This is sort of a variant on the above - if your (or someone else's) currency pays a fairly low interest rate, and some other currency pays a higher one, then it can be profitable to sell or borrow in the low-rate currency and hold the high rate one. This should cause high rate currencies to appreciate relative to low rate ones until the forward exchange rate hits a point where this trade is no longer profitable. Don't overthink the whole interest rate/passage of time/and spot/today's rate vs forward/future rate thing so much, as just think of the big picture; if one currency has a low rate, you should borrow in that currency and sell it to buy the higher-interest-paying currency (in practice this would be thinks like short term sovereign debt or forward currency contracts rather than raw currency, but again let's keep this simple), which should depress the price of the low rate one and bid up the price of the high rate one.

So, putting this together, the pound is NOT strong. It tanked after brexit, where it had been trading in the range of $1.5-1.8 US Dollars needed to buy 1 pound fpr much of the decade before, down to about $1.25 needed to buy a single pound. It then started to recover a bit during 2020 and 2021, but then the Federal Reserve ended up being far more aggressive than the Bsnk of England in hiking short term policy rates, with the UK lagging by between half a percent to a percent for most of 2022 and 2023, and currently sitting 0.25% below the US Fed Funds Rate. So, the pound weakened some more, and us currently aitting at about $1.26 dollars to buy a pound.

That may sound "strong" in relative terms, but as recently as 2007 the pound was worth more than $2, so it's weakened by nearly 40% in the last 20 years, with a large chunk of that because of Brexit.

Don't forget The Truss Effect

#10YearsToSaveTheWest #TrussAtCPAC

 

[Moongrum]

Tbh It's pretty complicated I really don't know too much but this is worth a read
Historical Perspective & Factors Behind UK Pound’s Strength

Great article, and just enough context for a rube like me, thank you!

The bank of England tho has no responsibility for setting the worth of pound sterling, the exchange rate for the pound is set by the market supply and demand.

I was thinking more like interest rates. I don't know how things work, but when the US Federal Bank raised interest rates, USD had a lot more worth in forex. I assumed a country's banks could control the value of their currency that way.

Like any currency the pound is strong when more people buy more pounds
Brexit and its implications have had severe affects on the pound and Tory lunacy fiscal policy has too but due to alot of the info in the link the pound is still considered one of the top currencies of strength in the world

Yeah, I recall GBP and USD getting closer to each other like a year ago, then was surprised when I looked today and the GBP is doing a lot better now.
The historical context makes sense as to the pound's strength, as well as what the article says "Rule of Law" Outside looking in the UK looks socially, and as a gov't, more stable than the USA

This shit gets complicated fast... but if you strip it down to it's simplest level, currencies are commodities like anything else, and their "strength" or basically their "price" is largely a product of supply and demand.

There are, off the top of my head, two primary ways this plays out -

1) international trade. If a lot of people need pounds to do business in the UK, then they sell their home currency and buy pounds, which bids up the price of pounds.

This makes sense. The article Lewis linked pointed out how London is and has always been a huge finance sector, so it makes sense a lot of international business being done there would be done in gbp.

That may sound "strong" in relative terms, but as recently as 2007 the pound was worth more than $2, so it's weakened by nearly 40% in the last 20 years, with a large chunk of that because of Brexit.

When you increase the time window like that, you're right Thanks for writing that out.

What pushed me to make the original post was when looking at the GBP/JPY exchange. My friend lives in Japan and wants to visit the UK, so I checked. It's around 1 gbp to 190 jpy, that's crazy

So, UK posters, do you feel rich when you travel to other countries?
When I went to Japan the exchange was like 1 usd to 135 yen, and just that made me feel like everything was a good deal lol. I can't imagine visiting the UK, I feel like my dollar doesn't go too far in the US, so for it to be worth even less in another country sounds painful.

 

[StevenC]

Outside looking in the UK looks socially, and as a gov't, more stable than the USA

LOL no. It only looks that way because America is so stagnant whereas everything good about the UK is in free fall with no chance of a turnaround. The current pitch from the opposition is "things aren't going to get better, but they'll get worse more slowly".

--

I haven't felt rich on holidays since like 2015. It used to be so advantageous to buy guitars in America. When I bought my SG, the same guitar cost 250% of the US price in the UK. I saved like £1800 on my JPX. The savings paid for the trip on expensive guitars.

The whole concept of conservatism is the economy will get better, but the UK Cons have fucked done uniquely terrible privatisations (see rail franchises, Royal Mail). The past 14 years have been a systematic looting of the country in every capacity. Brexit and The Truss Fiasco were planned to give those betting against the pound huge returns at the expense of everyone in the country.

I feel rich going to Japan, but that's because the yen has been tanking even harder than the pound.

 

[StevenC]

I should also add that the British Isles are quite an expensive place to live as far as essentials like groceries and transportation go. Both cars and fuel are expensive here compared to the US for example, and where train lines haven't been torn out they're ancient, unreliable, slow, and expensive. It's generally cheaper to fly between cities than get the train. Bearing in mind that it's hard to do more than an hour long flight.

There was a recent scandal about the Prime Minister flying around on a private jet while cancelling a high speed rail project from London to Manchester. Not much would have been made of it if he was on a commercial flight because the trains are shit.

The EU banned short haul flights that can be achieved by train to incentivise high speed rail. But we left the EU.

 

[Louis Cypher]

So apparently there is a point where a Tory can go too far and guess who it is who has? Everyone's favourite northern racist fcukwit Lee Anderson has been suspended by the party for his quite mental islamaphobic rant about London Mayor Sadiq Khan on GBNews and then refusing to apologise for it.

According to Anderthal islamists have control of Khan and therefore London.
From the BBC news app:
Speaking on GB News Mr Anderson said: "I don't actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they've got control of Khan and they've got control of London… He's actually given our capital city away to his mates." Where the fuck is OFCOM btw yet again found wanting

This was in regards to Bavermans utterly insane islamaphobic article in the telegraph about how Islamic extremists run the UK. That article was apparently ok tho for Tory HQ

 

[Louis Cypher]

And obviously since his suspension GeeBeebies presenters and pundits have been calling his suspension a disgrace! Political heavy weights on the channel such as Lizzie Cundy..... (self styled original WAG and famous for selling her story of how she fucked footballer Teddy Sheringham)



Edit
Another classic. Caller on LBC saying Anderson shouldn't have been suspended because of the Rotherham grooming gangs??! Brain has been boiled by right wing anti Muslim/Islamic hatred

 

[Drew]

What pushed me to make the original post was when looking at the GBP/JPY exchange. My friend lives in Japan and wants to visit the UK, so I checked. It's around 1 gbp to 190 jpy, that's crazy

I mean, that's a product of WWII. After Japan's loss, which decimated their economy, the yen was pegged at 360 to the dollar under Bretton Woods (I'm looking this shit up, I know the theory of how this functions today but am NOT an expert on the histor of currency ), eventually rising to 227 yen per dollar after the 1970s oil crisis. At about 150 yen to the dollar today it's more than halved the damage that was caused by losing a world war.

In practice, anyway, it's less the exact ratios that matter, so much as changes in those ratios. We live in a world where for the most part things are globilized enough that purchasing price parity holds - if something costs 150 yen in Japan and 150 yen is worth 1 dollar, you should loosely expect it to cost $1 in the US (this isn't 100% perfect, but The Economist's "Big Mac index" of the implied relative strengh of currencies based on the cost of a Big Mac in local currency vs the exchange rate to the dollar is both pretty damned cool as an example, and suggests it's generally pretty safe to assume purchase price parity). Whether or not you pay 150 units of a currency or 1 unit of a currency doesn't hugely matter if both baskets have about the same purchasing power.

When it does matter is when the ratios change - if the yen strengthens against the dollar, then an imported good that costs say $100 to import from the US that used to cost 15,000 yen might suddenly cheapen to 12,000 yen, and if your income is in yen and doens't change, then suddenly a weaker dollar means imported American goods just got a lot cheaper for you. Over time this will kinda wash out with time - lower yenb denominated prices should increase demand for the good in japan, which both should bid up its price in USD, but also means a lot of Japanese importers will be sellinh yen to buy dollars to pay US exporters. But in the short run, it's changes in the ratios, rather than the actual ratios, that really impact how strong a currency "feels," and it's when you have a pronounced and ongoing slide in value over a long period of time - see: Argentina - that this kind of becomes concerning.

 

[Louis Cypher]

Multi Millionaire Chancellor's response to being fact checked in an interview by Amol Rajan on the BBC, sums up the Tory party

Hunt accuses Today presenter of being 'not worthy of BBC' after he suggests budget not enough to revive 'stagnant' economy​

Jeremy Hunt has accused a Today presenter of being “not worthy of the BBC” after he suggested the budget did not do enough to revive Britain’s “stagnant” economy.

Towards the end of what was otherwise a relatively good-tempered interview, Amol Rajan said:

This might be, and you’ll say you don’t want it to be, one of your last big acts in politics. Do you really think you’ve read the moment?
This is a country ravaged by economic shocks, at best drifting, at worse, stagnant. We all know about its potential, but we’ve had seven quarters of falling GDP per head, that’s been revised downwards.
We’re hooked on foreign labour, the birth rate is collapsing. Many public services are creaking, councils are going bust.
Those are facts, has your budget really come even close to meeting the scale of the challenges this country faces?

In response, Hunt said:

I think the overall characterisation that you’ve just given of the British economy is unworthy of the BBC.

Rajan insisted that there was “no such thing as ‘the BBC’”, because so many different people worked there, and he said he was “just putting to you facts about this country”. But Hunt replied: “It’s unworthy of you Amol.”

And then more denial of facts from Hunt later to the fact that 8m pensioners who pay income tax will lose £1,000 each on average due to the income tax threshold freeze

8m pensioners who pay income tax will lose £1,000 each on average from threshold freeze, Resolution Foundation says​

The Resolution Foundation has described pensioners as the the biggest losers from the budget.

In its analysis, it says:

Looking beyond just employees, though, personal taxes are still going up significantly, with threshold freezes exceeding value of NI rate cuts by £20bn (£41bn versus £21bn). What’s going on? £8bn is being raised by the freezes to thresholds for employer NI, which in time should feed through into lower pay levels for employees. And there is a big group of losers: pensioners, who are already exempt from NI but affected by freezes to income tax thresholds. All 8 million taxpaying pensioners will see their taxes increase, by an average of £1,000 – an £8bn collective hit. This approach is justified with tax cuts focused on working-age employees and the self-employed, who currently pay higher rates of tax than pensioners or landlords, but it is a staggering turnaround from the approach of Conservative governments since 2010, who have generally focused support on pensioners.

Commenting on the figures, Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson, said:

This Conservative government has shown their true colours, pensioners are not their priority. They would rather cut taxes for the big banks than look after those who have given so much for so long to our society.

But Jeremy Hunt rejected this claim. He told Sky News:

We’ve done an enormous amount for pensioners. This government introduced the triple lock … we have really prioritised pensioners.

 

[StevenC]

Personally, I think they did a Paul McCartney on her.

Long live the Republic of England!

 

[Louis Cypher]

Conservative donor Frank Hester told colleagues that looking at Diane Abbott made you “want to hate all black women” and said the MP “should be shot”
Incredibily similar to Clarkson's anti Megan rant about hating Megan and wanting to see her have sh1t thrown at her like in Game of Thrones.... didn;t affect his career that tho....
Frank Hester has donated £10m to the Tory party and by pure coincidence the company he is CEO of, The Phoenix Partnership, has been awarded NHS contracts for over £135m since 2020..... #toryNHScorruption

Tory Ministers doing the rounds this morning saying its unacceptable what he said but that we need to move on, it was 5 yrs ago, what he said wasn't based on her race or gender, he can't poss be a racist as he has been to and done business in the Caribbean & Bangladesh. None of them with the guts to explain why its unaccectable coz they can then only say because the man is a racist. Same mental gymnastics as the other week with with Anderson racist and islamaphobic comments, what he said was unacceptable its right the whip was withdrawn, but they cannot say why its unacceptable or right he had the whip withdrawn....

James OB summed it up perfectly this morning
Imagine if it had been a Labour donor or Labour party member who had said that about Braverman or Kemi Badenoch, or if the word black was replaced by jewish.... the story has been buried by the right wing papers and media this morning, imagine what the front pages would look like if it was the other way round...... In the mean tme, as The Sun puts it on their front page, lay off Princess Kate!

 

[Louis Cypher]

Dawn Butler being brilliant as ever on this racist donor issue

 

[Louis Cypher]

Read a few things in the last few months that actually the real evil genius behind the complete debasement of the Tory party and the hard swing to the right is not any of the usual suspects who are front and centre but actually Michael Gove is the real driver of where the Tory's are now since 2016, this clip def makes a good case for that, its a question based on his new defintion of extremism under UK Law.......

 

[StevenC]

Puberty blockers, against all medical and scientific evidence from the last 45 years, were made illegal this week.

Joanne Rowling, famous for racist word association games, has been denying the holocaust this week.

 

[Louis Cypher]

Tories delete Sadiq Khan attack ad showing New York instead of London

The Conservatives have deleted an online video that used scenes of a panicked crowd at a New York subway station to criticise Sadiq Khan’s record on crime in London.

The attack ad, posted on X in support of Susan Hall – Khan’s rival for the London mayoralty, showed people panicking and rushing through New York’s Penn station after false reports of gunfire in 2017.


The caption on the video claimed “London under Labour has become a crime capital of the world”, and showed an emoji of a red rose – the symbol of the Labour party – wilting and shedding its petals.

After commentators such as the political journalist Paul Waugh spotted that the video about London showed scenes from New York, it was withdrawn and replaced with a video where the Penn station clips had been cut.

Originally, the scenes from Penn station had been shown in black and white, and overlaid with an ominous US-accented narrator saying: “A 54% increase in knife crime since the Labour mayor seized power has the metropolis teetering on the brink of chaos.

“And in the chaos, people seek a desperate reprieve.”

As the Guardian reported last month, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, people are less likely to be victims of crime in London than across the country as a whole. In the capital, 14.9% of people experienced a crime either to their person or their household in the year ending September 2023, compared with 15.7% nationally.

If Tories who want to run the capital think London is in New York, shouldn’t we be worried? Marina Hyde OpEd

The above is an Opinion piece by Marina Hyde on this and why its a dangerous road to be travelling down in the pursuit of electoral victory.
Applies to all parties tbh, the laws binding them by what they can and can't say in a TV or radio party political broadcast here in the UK, should apply equally to online campaigning, with the same penalties applied for this sort of BS campaigning

 

[Louis Cypher]

Guardian cartoon on the levels of raw sewage in UK waters