Martin Kettle uses the crisis in prisons as an example of a wider crisis of governance across the country... and to draw out one specific issue (and use a phrase he doesn't), the various crises are excavated by the problem of a rigid Treasury oversight, which 'know the cost of everything & the value of nothing'.
This is forcing departments into a constant crisis management & constraining any forward planning to actually resolve crises!
Its idiocy!
#politics
1/2
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/07/prisons-report-crisis-overcrowding-keir-starmer-labour-uk
Will the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee make a cut to interest rates today, bringing them down to 4% at noon today?
Commentary seems to think despite a split MPC, the decision will go to a 25 basis points reduction, but given the BoE's continual gaslighting, I'll believe it when I see it.
The sado-monetarists will be talking up 'inflationary pressures' as usual & may regard the UK's continuing stagnation as vindication of their policy not a problem for it!
#economics #politics
Jostein Hauge concludes that:
'When policymakers, business leaders, & analysts graduate with a mathematically sophisticated but contextually impoverished understanding of economic systems, it has serious consequences. An army of economists out there has been taught to prioritise market efficiency over social outcomes & treat complex socioeconomic challenges as mere technical puzzles'!
There is an urgent need to reform & pluralise economics education!
#economics
https://www.theglobalcurrents.com/p/how-economics-lost-its-soul?subscribe_prompt=free
How can you run a health service when a third of doctors are considering leaving the profession or the country?
The General Medical Council reports that 19% of Doctors are actively considering a career change, while a further 12% are looking at opportunities abroad pay better & have more acceptable working conditions.
An exodus of doctors from an already understaffed NHS will (of course) worsen the crisis.
Demonising striking Resident Doctors is not the answer!
#doctors #health
h/t FT
Yesterday I posted a link to a sign-up page for Defend Our Juries action on Saturday in London protesting the proscription of Palestine Action, but overnight the link is broken & indeed the DOJ website has disappeared with my browser returning a message that it cannot find the server....
Either an oddly timed technical issue has hit the DOJ webpage, or police/state action has removed their webpage;
yet another attack on the democratic right to protest in the UK?
#protest #democracy #politics
Yet more voices raised against the proscription of Palestine Action... ahead of the action in London on Saturday.
The Q. is: will Yvette Cooper (and Keir Starmer) double down or step back from this attack on protest & democracy... perhaps we'd better check with the Daily Mail?
#protest #democracy #politics
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/palestine-action-ban-is-an-attack-on-fundamental-freedoms
It now seems that people do have a genetic disposition towards chronic fatigue syndrome & ME... not caused by but can 'tip the balance' towards experiencing CFS/ME.
Whether this new research will help sufferers avoid both disbelief & medical neglect, and allow CFS/ME to be taken more seriously & recognised more easily.
And then we might also wonder whether there are any links with Long Covid?
#CFS #health
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/06/genes-me-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
Rachel Reeves & the head of the Financial Conduct Authority (the recent reappointed) Nikhil Rathi would like the payments to recompense car buyers treated unfairly by undisclosed incentive payments around car financing, to be the last 'mass redress' event to engulf the financial services sector...
Well, here's an idea; how about ensuring the spivs, gamblers & self-enriching liars behave a lot better & stop ripping off their customers?
#FinancialServices
h/t FT
The Horizon IT fightback moves up a few gears as the first victim of Fujitsu & Post Office's lies & manipulations takes to the courts to sue for £4M damages....
Will be interesting how this plays out... and whether this will be the first of many such actions to hit these firms hard & where it hurts.
#Horizon #politics
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c30zq28v0dlo
Hilary Allen (AmericanU) is right:
When technology firms claim they need legal regulations removed to allow their innovations, what is too often forgotten by our political class is that those regulations were put in place (often) to protect the public.... and if the only way technology firms can innovate is by removing those protections, we need to be clear that their profits are more likely to come from exploiting & harming the public that from innovations itself!
#technology #regulation
Emeritus Prof Christopher May