Michael Lambert: Gothenburg, Sweden Shows How Far the UK Has Fallen behind since Brexit

Oct 19, 2024 | This week, I have visited Gothenburg in Sweden to make another video showing how the quality of life in cities within the EU compares with that of cities in the UK following Brexit. Gothenburg (Göteborg) is the second city of Sweden with a population of around 600,000. It is a clean, well-run city with nice streets and plenty of parks. I saw no empty shops, charity shops, pound shops, betting shops, graffiti or litter. The city was busy, with of plenty of people out shopping.

The food in the supermarket, especially fresh fruit, was outstanding. Prices in restaurants were reasonably and the food was amazing.

Sweden is a progressive country where university education is free, healthcare is inexpensive or free and where parents of new babies can share up to 18 months maternity/paternity leave on 90% of normal pay.

Recently Sweden has become known for violent crime, but this is almost exclusively within immigrant communities and relates to drug gangs who now operate in Sweden.

Rich to Get Twice as Much Cost-of-living Support, Says Think Tank

BBC: Rich households will receive twice as much support aimed at reducing the cost of living than poorer households next year, a think tank has claimed.

The Resolution Foundation said if the government cuts National Insurance and limits energy bill rises, richer homes will get support worth £4,700 in 2023, compared to £2,200 for the poorest.

A typical household energy bill will be limited to £2,500 annually until 2024.

The think tank said "details and costings" were missing from the plan.

Support for the richest tenth of households will "far exceed the level of support for the poorest tenth of households despite the latter being most exposed to high energy bills", the Resolution Foundation, which focuses on low to middle income households, said.

The huge support scheme could cost up to £150bn, but Prime Minister Liz Truss has refused to put a figure on it, saying "extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures". » | BBC | Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Michael Lambert : Truss & Sunak Desperately Chase the Extreme Right of the Tory Party

Aug 6, 2022 The UK economy is in serious trouble with runaway inflation, the biggest rise in interest rates for thirty years, soaring prices and widespread anxiety.

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak desperately chase the right-wing of the Tory party membership and are offering ever more extreme and impossible policies. Whilst Truss is the clear favourite, Sunak desperately moves further to the right. She is offering massive unfunded tax cuts whilst he promises just as large tax cuts but not until 2029.

The NHS is in crisis, company failures are at a record, there are desperate labour shortages in many key areas. A food crisis is approaching since UK farmers have been unable to plant as much as previously given that EU workers are no longer available. Petrol, gas and electricity prices are all at their highest ever despite power companies making record profits.

Truss tries to blame others for the failings whilst insulting the entire Scottish nation and all public sector workers who work outside of London. Sunak talks of 'lefty lawyers' who take action against politicians and government. He wants to treat those who 'vilify' the government as 'extremists' and impose £10 fines on those who fail to arrive for any medical appointments.

Finally he seeks to 'level up' prosperous Tunbridge Wells and undo Labour's policy of sending money to depressed urban areas.

Thousands March in London over Cost of Living Crisis

THE GUARDIAN: Demonstration organised by TUC calls on government to make ‘better deal’ for people struggling to cope with soaring inflation

Demonstrators marching in central London on Saturday. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters
Thousands of people have gathered in London to protest against the government’s lack of action in tackling the cost of living crisis.

Protesters marched from Portland Place to Parliament Square for a rally with speakers including Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, which organised the event.

O’Grady was met with applause and cheers as she gave a speech to the crowd.

Demonstrators carried banners reading “cut war not welfare” and “end fuel poverty, insulate homes now”. » | Anna MacSwan and Tom Ambrose | Saturday, June 18, 2022

In Full: Former BoE Governor Warns of a "Very Unpleasant Period" Ahead

May 20, 2022 • Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King blames central banks for fuelling the cost of living crisis by printing too much money during the pandemic.

King headed Britain's central bank from 2003 to 2013, and oversaw the start of its QE programme in March 2009 during the global financial crisis.

But in more recent years he has criticised the scale of central bank asset purchases, which were funded by newly-created money.

The Observer View on the Cost of Living Crisis

THE OBSERVER – EDITORIAL: Cabinet ministers’ glib shortcuts are dire response to economic crisis

Living standards are set to fall at their fastest rate since records began in the mid-1950s. Last month, the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted that real household incomes will fall by 2.2% this year, as energy and food prices increase but wages fail to keep pace with rising bills.

The impact will not be felt equally. For some, it will barely register. For other families, it will mean difficult decisions about what to cut back on. For others still, it will be profound, stretching precarious budgets in which there is already no give, forcing impossible choices between essentials such as putting food on the table and keeping the heating on, and sharpening the fear of the unexpected outlay that can trigger a debt spiral from which there is no escape. One estimate suggests lower-income households will face a drop in income of £1,300 this year. » | Editorial | Sunday, May 1, 2022

Truth to Power: Cost of Living Crisis: Brexit Identified as a Major Factor

Apr 2, 2022 • Every serious independent economist argued that massively raising barriers with your main trade partner is an extraordinary act of self-harm. And now, 6 years too late, the extreme right-wing Brexit backing Express newspaper last week carried the headline “Brexit blamed as UK exports drop 14% – Britain 'missing out' on global trade”. Eventhough the article went on to trumpet the world-beating amount of trade deals the UK has struck, it concluded by reporting the Office of Budget Responsibility statement that Brexit has meant a 14% drop in exports, and also reported economist Gabriella Dickens’ comment that UK export growth would remain sluggish “as UK exporters continued “to be slowly cut out of global supply chains, due to the extra administrative burden for EU firms of sourcing goods from Britain”. As every single day seems to bring a new reminder of how stupid an idea Brexit was, is there now a widespread acceptance that every one of those economists was right, and that Brexit is a contributing factor to the current cost of living crisis?

Michael Lambert: Cost of Living Crisis as Government Wastes £Billions

Apr 2, 2022 • Whilst the biggest cost of living crisis approaches, the government wastes billions through incompetence and mismanagement.

The Bounce Back Loan scheme was designed to help businesses survive the pandemic. It involved lending out $47 billion without any checks and with the government guaranteeing all loans. Already £4.9 billion has been written off due to fraud.

The buying of PPE at the start of the pandemic was a disaster, with friends of Tory politicians with no experience of buying PPE being given priority. The NHS calculates that the cost of some PPE being unsuitable, some being unusable and some out of date, as well as much that was sold at twice the normal price, has cost them as much as £20 billion. £7 million per week is being spent on storage and much of the stock is being incinerated.

The test & trace for which £37 billion was budgeted appears to have been as good as useless and this has been confirmed by the Public Accounts Committee.

Cost of Living Rising in UK - BBC News

Jan 29, 2022 • The cost of living is rising in the UK, and it's changing people's lives. Growing inflation, supply-chain shortages and changing demand are having a big impact on sticker price. Ros Atkins reports on the causes - and the people most effected.

The Cost of Living Extremely Well
"…the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves." – Adam Smith

TOWNHALL.COM: WASHINGTON -- Enough, already, with compassion for society's middle and lower orders. There currently is a sympathy deficit regarding the very rich. Or so the rich might argue because they bear the heavy burden of spending enough to keep today's plutonomy humming.

Furthermore, they are getting diminishing psychological returns on their spending now that luxury brands are becoming democratized. When there are 379 Louis Vuitton and 227 Gucci stores, who cares?

Citigroup's Ajay Kapur applies the term "plutonomy" to, primarily, the United States, although Britain, Canada and Australia also qualify. He notes that America's richest 1 percent of households own more than half the nation's stocks and control more wealth ($16 trillion) than the bottom 90 percent. When the richest 20 percent account for almost 60 percent of consumption, you see why rising oil prices have had so little effect on consumption.

Kapur's theory is that "wealth waves" develop in epochs characterized by, among other things, disruptive technology-driven productivity gains and creative financial innovations that "involve great complexity exploited best by the rich and educated of the time." For the canny, daring and inventive, these are the best of times -- and vast rewards to such people might serve the rapid propulsion of society to greater wealth.

But it is increasingly expensive to be rich. The Forbes CLEW index (the Cost of Living Extremely Well) -- yes, there is such a thing -- has been rising much faster than the banal CPI (consumer price index). At the end of 2006, there were 9.5 million millionaires worldwide, which helps to explain the boom in the "bling indexes" -- stocks such as Christian Dior and Richemont (Cartier and Chloe, among other brands), which are up 247 percent and 337 percent respectively since 2002, according to Fortune magazine. Citicorp's "plutonomy basket" of stocks (Sotheby's, Bulgari, Hermes, etc.) has generated an annualized return of 17.8 percent since 1985.

This is the outer symptom of a fascinating psychological phenomenon: Envy increases while -- and perhaps even faster than -- wealth does. When affluence in the material economy guarantees that a large majority can take for granted things that a few generations ago were luxuries for a small minority (a nice home, nice vacations, a second home, college education, comfortable retirement), the "positional economy" becomes more important. The Cost of Living Extremely Well (more) By George Will

Mark Alexander