The state of the UK

[Scot Dutchy]

Ministers have no clear plan to tackle child poverty, say cross-party MPs

Committee calls for robust cross-departmental anti-poverty strategy to tackle growing problem

Ministers have no clear plans to tackle rising child poverty, while a lack of focus and leadership has hindered efforts to reduce the numbers of youngpeople living in hardship, a cross-party group of MPs has said.

The House of Commons work and pensions select committee said ministers needed to draw up a fresh cross-departmental anti-poverty strategy driven from No 10 and underpinned by fresh and robust evidence of the scale of the problem.

“At the moment, the government has no strategy and no measurable objectives against which it can be held to account,” said the committee chair Stephen Timms. “How can it hope to reduce child poverty when it doesn’t have a plan?”

He added: “If a generation of young people facing poorer educational outcomes and chronic health problems are to be lifted out of poverty, there needs to be clear leadership and a strategy driven from the top to ensure that every part of government is focused on tackling the problems that they face.”

Latest figures, from 2019-20, estimate about 14.5 million people in the UK are in relative poverty after housing costs (22%), including about 4.3 million children (31%). The pandemic is likely to see this increase, while some estimates suggest the withdrawal of the £20 uplift to universal credit will push at least 500,000 below the breadline.

Just cut Universal Credit. The Brexiteers wont pay. The UK is so fucked what does it matter?

[Scot Dutchy]

The special relationship is now fucked:

US has ‘no closer ally than Australia’, Biden says after Aukus pact

US president and Australian PM welcome new security ties after deal that has infuriated France

Joe Biden and the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, have welcomed their new security ties after last week’s announcement that Washington would provide Canberra with advanced technology for nuclear-powered submarines as part of trilateral deal with the UK.

“The United States has no closer or more reliable ally than Australia,” Biden said on Tuesday ahead of a bilateral meeting with Morrison on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly in New York.

In his speech to the general assembly earlier, Biden made no direct reference to the controversial new security pact, under which the US agreed to share nuclear propulsion technology for submarines in a move that is designed to contain China.

Fuck the UK. Is Biden losing his marbles?

[Brian Peacock]

Why should we care?

[JimC]

Uncle Sam wants us!

[pErvinalia]

We're lapdog number one!

[Hermit]

#1 house slave

[JimC]

#1 house slave

You know you're going to trigger Sean and Seabass...

[Hermit]

#1 house slave

You know you're going to trigger Sean and Seabass...

[Scot Dutchy]

The papering has started but the cracks are reappearing. Johnson is getting a brown arm. He even travelled on a Biden train into Washington.

US-UK ‘special relationship’ faces new challenges despite signs of healing

Relationship between Biden’s US and Johnson’s post-Brexit UK remains complicated and inevitably transactional

What a difference a month makes.

In August Joe Biden was being denounced in the British parliament for a “shameful” retreat from Afghanistan that blindsided the UK and other allies. The US president reportedly took a day and a half to return prime minister Boris Johnson’s call.

On Tuesday, by contrast, Johnson rode triumphantly into Washington on one of the Amtrak trains so beloved by Biden, celebrating both a new military pact and the lifting of a pandemic ban on British travellers visiting the US. He sat in the Oval Office and lavished praise on the president’s address to the UN general assembly.

The swing from hapless despair to giddy euphoria made for snappy headlines. But neither extreme was realistic. The relationship between the US and post-Brexit Britain, and between Biden and Johnson, remains complicated, nuanced and inevitably transactional – with further highs and lows surely still in store.

“Three weeks ago, a lot of the conservative British press was saying it was the total collapse of the relationship and the worst ever,” said Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “I guess tomorrow they’ll say it’s a huge breakthrough. I don’t think either is true.”


Even this week’s news that fully vaccinated British nationals can visit the US from November, though welcome, also gave a clue that Biden does not have Johnson on speed dial. Just a day before it was announced, the prime minister was downplaying to reporters any hopes that he could “crack” the issue this week.

Johnson has also struck notes of caution during the trip, including over the likelihood of striking the comprehensive US-UK free trade deal that was touted as a prize of Brexit by Leave supporters during the EU referendum.

Asked if he would get the deal by 2024, the prime minister told Sky News: “We will keep going with free trade deals around the world including in the United States. I have plenty of reason to be optimistic about that. But the Americans do negotiate very hard.”

The EU travellers are also allowed back in but of course Johnson will ignore that. Johnson must have been quite a "fag" in Eton. The grovel expert.

[Brian Peacock]

He's the leader of a nation. Special rules apply aside from his regular daddy-paid-for-it privileges.

[Scot Dutchy]

Fags had to supply their own lube otherwise it was...

[Scot Dutchy]

Britain faces a triple crunch – and the political cost for the Tories could be huge

The combined challenges of an economic slowdown, rising energy costs and the transition to net zero loom over this government

Long before there was talk of an energy crisis, the government had been looking vulnerable. Economic growth is slowing and inflation is rising. Despite the Indian summer, Covid-19 infection rates remain high, and the warm weather won’t last for ever.

The prop provided to the labour market by the furlough scheme will be kicked away at the end of the month, and nobody can be sure of how that will affect the businesses that have grown used to the wages of their staff being met by the state. Millions of struggling people are about to become £20 a week worse off when universal credit reverts to its pre-crisis level. There will be tax increases next spring to bring down NHS waiting lists.

Add in higher fuel bills and food shortages, and it is easy to see why ministers are getting a bit jittery. The deal cobbled together to reopen plants producing the CO2 needed to maintain food and drink supplies encapsulates the fundamental problems within the British economy: its short-termism, its lack of investment, and its over-reliance on long supply chains.

The sad fact is that the UK was ill-prepared for a pandemic and it is now ill-prepared for the spiralling costs of energy. Sure, there has been an unfortunate concatenation of events, from an exceptionally windless period to a fire that forced the closure of a power cable importing energy from France, but these things happen when a country lacks self-sufficiency. Being adequately prepared means hoping for the best but planning for the worst, and that simply hasn’t happened.

A triple crunch now looms: an economic crunch as the post-lockdown bounce in activity falters; an energy crunch that will make it even harder for those on low incomes to make ends meet; and a climate crunch as the government struggles to turn its fine words about a net-zero transition into action.

[Brian Peacock]

They forgot to mention the crisis in the health and social care sector and the empty shelves in the supermarkets.

[macdoc]

Total cock-up - UK has been a fuckup for a while

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... m-tax-bill

[Scot Dutchy]

Perfect storm: how the energy crisis, pandemic and Brexit affect UK households

With inflation set to rise, alongside the cost of shopping and transport, the economic fallout will squeeze Britons’ budgets

The Bank of England warned this week that surging energy bills will lead to inflation topping 4% this winter, piling pressure on already tight household budgets. The economic fallout from the pandemic and Brexit is pushing up the cost of essentials such as food and clothing as well as travel and even doing up your home. We look at how this perfect storm is affecting you.

Welcome to the third world (for some).