Is the mini budget a recipe for doom?

[kenneal - lagger]

Quite right. Most of the present situation was caused by bailing out the banks and debasing the currency. .

The current situation of large numbers of people being so short of money that they are having to decide between eating and heating their homes started in the late 1970s and early 1980s when management decided that they deserved a larger slice of the cake and started to award themselves larger salaries at the expense of their workers. It has got worse ever since with the earning ratio within some companies reaching 400, the highest paid "worker" being paid 400 times the lowest paid worker. The government can truthfully say that the average wage has gone up but that is because the pay of the highest paid has gone up hugely while the lowest pay has gone up very little. More to see here:- https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-econ ... quality-uk

Directors salaries being decided by other directors with no moderation hasn't helped either. The greedy rewarding the greedy at the expense of the rest just doesn't work for the rest.

Empirically it does work. Look at the most profitable, largest tech companies in the world. They have their world headquarters in tax dodging Ireland. Why? because they are greedy, and THEY want to decide how to invest those profits. NOT the government. It's basic, the more you tax, the less economic activity you get.

The answer to that is finding a way to directly tax companies on their takings within this country. Do that and it doesn't matter where the company is based. You can also avoid all the dodges of companies booking profits in a low tax country. Also the company isn't going to stop trading in this country because they will loose turnover and profit. Even if they do stop trading the trade will simply move to another company within this country.

Not sure about moving to isolated country areas and growing your own food is going to help other than it is cheaper to buy a similar house. If things get really bad (and the majority of population is still alive but hungry) you will still get overrun fairly quickly by the starving masses unless you have some serious firepower or good razor wire fences. Much better to prepare as a country on a national scale and that is where the government spending should go.

It has been shown in many places that the majority of people will stay at home in the hope that rescue comes until they are too weak to move anywhere where they might find or steal food. So provided you are far enough away you should be relatively safe especially if you have a fed community around you to cooperate with on security. The problem with staying in a city is that there is often not enough land to provide food for the umbers of people. Historically all cities have imported food from their hinterland and exported their waste to fertilise those fields. More recently urban fringe farming has been uneconomic because of vandalism from nearby urban dwellers. In a time of food shortage the problem would be theft of food by urban dwellers and probably by organised gangs of urban dwellers.

I agree that it is better to prepare on a national scale, probably with a Civil Defence Organisation (where have I heard that name before?), but preparing for a disaster isn't politically correct any longer.

[UndercoverElephant]

Not sure about moving to isolated country areas and growing your own food is going to help other than it is cheaper to buy a similar house. If things get really bad (and the majority of population is still alive but hungry) you will still get overrun fairly quickly by the starving masses unless you have some serious firepower or good razor wire fences. Much better to prepare as a country on a national scale and that is where the government spending should go.

Rather obviously, I have much more control over my own circumstances than I do over the preparation of the country. And I don't believe what you are saying is true anyway. The starving masses aren't going to wander about the Welsh hills looking for smallholdings to raid. It is too much effort to get here without transport they cannot afford, especially at times of the year when they are most likely to be starving.

[Stumuz2]

The current situation of large numbers of people being so short of money that they are having to decide between eating and heating their homes started in the late 1970s and early 1980s when management decided that they deserved a larger slice of the cake and started to award themselves larger salaries at the expense of their workers. It has got worse ever since with the earning ratio within some companies reaching 400, the highest paid "worker" being paid 400 times the lowest paid worker. The government can truthfully say that the average wage has gone up but that is because the pay of the highest paid has gone up hugely while the lowest pay has gone up very little. More to see here:- https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-econ ... quality-uk

Agree with most of that Ken, but I don't think Directors just one day started saying we will have more pay. Instead Reagan/Thatcher fired the globalisation gun, and the rest is history.

The answer to that is finding a way to directly tax companies on their takings within this country. Do that and it doesn't matter where the company is based. You can also avoid all the dodges of companies booking profits in a low tax country. Also the company isn't going to stop trading in this country because they will loose turnover and profit. Even if they do stop trading the trade will simply move to another company within this country.

Yes you can do that, but you get fewer goods and services and of a lower quality. Country becomes a poorer place. A bit like Russia.




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[Stumuz2]

The starving masses aren't going to wander about the Welsh hills looking for smallholdings to raid. It is too much effort to get here without transport they cannot afford, especially at times of the year when they are most likely to be starving.

There will be no starvation masses. Just in peoples head.
What there will be is a huge reduction in living standards. But, I know communities will come together.....eventually.
Look at food banks. Were they set up by TPTB? Government? No, the original ones were set up by decent people wanting to help.

[BritDownUnder]

It has been shown in many places that the majority of people will stay at home in the hope that rescue comes until they are too weak to move anywhere where they might find or steal food. So provided you are far enough away you should be relatively safe especially if you have a fed community around you to cooperate with on security. The problem with staying in a city is that there is often not enough land to provide food for the umbers of people. Historically all cities have imported food from their hinterland and exported their waste to fertilise those fields. More recently urban fringe farming has been uneconomic because of vandalism from nearby urban dwellers. In a time of food shortage the problem would be theft of food by urban dwellers and probably by organised gangs of urban dwellers.

I agree that it is better to prepare on a national scale, probably with a Civil Defence Organisation (where have I heard that name before?), but preparing for a disaster isn't politically correct any longer.

I think it depends on the nature of collapse. A very slow collapse with a semblance of government remaining may lead to a drift to the country by those who can and the masses trapped in cities.

A more sudden collapse combined with a decrease in law and order authority may lead to warlords, vigilantism and general criminality. Depends how the ability to travel remains. Food stores in cities could be discovered and held by a few well organised/armed people who may have the ability to plan their next moves. If there are a lot of abandoned vehicles about then sufficient fuel could be scavenged from near empty tanks to travel long distances. There are few parts of the country that could not be reached on a tankful of fuel on clear roads.
However an EMP attack may render most transport ineffective and keep people trapped in cities and limited to a horse or bike ride distance.

Those living in the country might give thought on how to limit access to their areas such as vital bridges, digging of ditches or moats, blocking of roads with vehicles or equipment or heaps of soil.
The horse and cart, or even sail or canal boats may be valuable currency in some forms of future collapse. Boats in particular can carry a lot of cargo very slowly. Supposedly my grandfathers family (he was the youngest of ten) moved their whole household by canal boat to a different town about 50 miles away. Large quantities of loot could also be carried.

[BritDownUnder]

The starving masses aren't going to wander about the Welsh hills looking for smallholdings to raid. It is too much effort to get here without transport they cannot afford, especially at times of the year when they are most likely to be starving.

There will be no starvation masses. Just in peoples head.
What there will be is a huge reduction in living standards. But, I know communities will come together.....eventually.
Look at food banks. Were they set up by TPTB? Government? No, the original ones were set up by decent people wanting to help.

Even with modern equipment and fossil fuels the UK can only produce around 60% of its food under the current methods of cultivation. Whether intense hand cultivation could improve that I am not sure. If imports of food to the UK are cut off then there will be panic especially in the halls of power.

[UndercoverElephant]

A more sudden collapse combined with a decrease in law and order authority may lead to warlords, vigilantism and general criminality. Depends how the ability to travel remains. Food stores in cities could be discovered and held by a few well organised/armed people who may have the ability to plan their next moves. If there are a lot of abandoned vehicles about then sufficient fuel could be scavenged from near empty tanks to travel long distances. There are few parts of the country that could not be reached on a tankful of fuel on clear roads.

This looks like a work of fiction to me. It's not going to happen like this - not in the UK anyway.

The horse and cart, or even sail or canal boats may be valuable currency in some forms of future collapse. Boats in particular can carry a lot of cargo very slowly.

And canals won't be maintained in the sort of collapse you are describing. They are big bits of infrastructure which require expensive maintenance and which are easily sabotaged. The canals may yet serve the UK very well in the future, but only if enough of civilisations persists to keep them open.

Large quantities of loot could also be carried.

Sure. Except you can walk faster than a narrowboat moves.

[Stumuz2]

Even with modern equipment and fossil fuels the UK can only produce around 60% of its food under the current methods of cultivation. Whether intense hand cultivation could improve that I am not sure. If imports of food to the UK are cut off then there will be panic especially in the halls of power.

I disagree. A huge amount of food we consume in this country is superfluous. I was at a meet up in swanky Alderery Edge home in Cheshire yesterday. The caterers brought the food in on trays, laid it out in various places. First thing that struck me was there was nothing actually to eat! Lots of artistically arranged cured meats in swan shapes with what looked like a painting made of canapés and nuts. Second thing was it was all imported. But it was not the sort of food that you would eat in a severe global downturn.
So, i do think that the UK will be self sufficient in food in the future, just not some arsey French table trimmed carrot with an Italian drizzle down it!

[BritDownUnder]

Even with modern equipment and fossil fuels the UK can only produce around 60% of its food under the current methods of cultivation. Whether intense hand cultivation could improve that I am not sure. If imports of food to the UK are cut off then there will be panic especially in the halls of power.

I disagree. A huge amount of food we consume in this country is superfluous. I was at a meet up in swanky Alderery Edge home in Cheshire yesterday. The caterers brought the food in on trays, laid it out in various places. First thing that struck me was there was nothing actually to eat! Lots of artistically arranged cured meats in swan shapes with what looked like a painting made of canapés and nuts. Second thing was it was all imported. But it was not the sort of food that you would eat in a severe global downturn.
So, i do think that the UK will be self sufficient in food in the future, just not some arsey French table trimmed carrot with an Italian drizzle down it!

Yes I have tried those too. Often the food is too hot to hold in your fingers never mind eat.

Anyway this interesting site had the following stats that may worry people who eat more ''normal'' foods most of the time.

Did you know that the UK is:
18% self-sufficient in fruit
55% self-sufficient in fresh vegetables
71% self-sufficient in potatoes
For both vegetables and potatoes, self-sufficiency has fallen by 16% in the past 20 years.

Clearly some scope for backyard gardening to make up the shortfall.

[BritDownUnder]

A more sudden collapse combined with a decrease in law and order authority may lead to warlords, vigilantism and general criminality. Depends how the ability to travel remains. Food stores in cities could be discovered and held by a few well organised/armed people who may have the ability to plan their next moves. If there are a lot of abandoned vehicles about then sufficient fuel could be scavenged from near empty tanks to travel long distances. There are few parts of the country that could not be reached on a tankful of fuel on clear roads.

This looks like a work of fiction to me. It's not going to happen like this - not in the UK anyway.

The horse and cart, or even sail or canal boats may be valuable currency in some forms of future collapse. Boats in particular can carry a lot of cargo very slowly.

And canals won't be maintained in the sort of collapse you are describing. They are big bits of infrastructure which require expensive maintenance and which are easily sabotaged. The canals may yet serve the UK very well in the future, but only if enough of civilisations persists to keep them open.

Large quantities of loot could also be carried.

Sure. Except you can walk faster than a narrowboat moves.

I described a series of possible collapses. There could be others. You might categorise them into resource constrained, technology constrained or population constrained collapses. Maybe war could be added to that but I think except a nuclear war, or a civil war, the UK will be unaffected by any invasion pre-collapse. Some collapses might leave infrastructure intact, some not.

I think the best examples of modern societal near collapses are in Latin America. Cuba had to make do with a lot less energy and I think the average adult lost about 12 kg in weight as a result. Whatever you say about their government they were fairly well organised and managed it well without major disorder. Venezuela didn't manage so well as their government was no so well organised but high oil prices are pulling them out.

New Orleans during hurricane Katrina might be another good example.

Not a good sign when people are fighting over bog roll.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out in the next 6 months at least in the UK.

I think the canal infrastructure might be the last infrastructure to go. I would say it is pretty resilient at least for a few years. The major problem might be how much water in the system is maintained by mechanical pumping and how quickly they drain without water supply.

[clv101]

Closer the home, temporally and geographically might be Greece 2009-14. A 26% fall in GDP, 5-year long recession. Unemployment rose from under 10% to 25% (much worse in younger age groups). 36% of Greeks lived below the poverty line in 2014.

[UndercoverElephant]

I think the canal infrastructure might be the last infrastructure to go. I would say it is pretty resilient at least for a few years. The major problem might be how much water in the system is maintained by mechanical pumping and how quickly they drain without water supply.

Very little of the UK canal network is supplied by mechanical pumps. In general, the summit levels are fed by streams. A few were supplied by steam engines, but as a rule it was the canals that suffered from lack of sufficient water at the summit level were among the first to close.

They still require a lot of maintenance though - mainly keeping the locks working, dredging and fixing leaks.

[Catweazle]

Post collapse the canals will probably be used as a water resource, and those people using it will not be happy after the gates have been left open a few times, so expect them to be firmly fixed shut. Naturally, some idiots will push old cars into them, so they will be impassible in any case.

[adam2]

U turn announced over tax cut for rich. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63114183

[BritDownUnder]

Post collapse the canals will probably be used as a water resource, and those people using it will not be happy after the gates have been left open a few times, so expect them to be firmly fixed shut. Naturally, some idiots will push old cars into them, so they will be impassible in any case.

Just before I left the UK I was living in Telford and one Sunday afternoon went up to Titterstone Clee Hill where there was an old quarry. In the murky waters of an old flooded derelict mining pit up near the car park, possibly 10 metres deep, were the shapes of a few cars peering out of the gloom. There were the (almost obligatory for the time - late 90s) burnt out cars around the car park as well.
There was also a place viewable from the Southampton to Reading railway line that was a veritable gathering place for burnt out cars.
I viewed burning cars after joyriding as a very South of England thing. Almost never happened in Nottinghamshire.

Back on subject it looks like the Prime Minister has blinked. Expect runs on the pound if it is in such a state for the BOE to try to hold its value. I expect it may just be left to float with the whims of the market.

Don't forget that collapse is still out there biding its time.