Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Buy-to-let investor demand suffers sharpest drop as rates reach 12-year peak Source - Daily Telegraph  Link By Ruby Hinchliffe 13 July 2023 • 6:00am Demand for homes is plunging as the mortgage crisis forces buyers out of the market, estate agents have warned. On Thursday the Bank of England estimated nearly a million homeowners faced a mortgage shock of around £500 a month if remortgaging before the end of 2026. Figures published on Thursday also revealed that mortgage rates for buy-to-let landlords had hit a 12-year high, and that private rents had risen 5pc. Buyer enquiries across the country fell by 45pc in June to hit an eight-month low, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). Newly agreed sales also fell by over a third. The survey found that the cost of borrowing is starting to bite, dampening home buyers’ affordability and putting them off moving altogether. Colin Townsend, of John Goodwin Estate Agents in the West Midlands, said: “It feels as thou...

 People who thought they were doing okay are now feeling poor – and they blame the Government   Mortgage rate rises are going to dwarf the energy and NHS crises   When you talk to people about their real lives, the polls predicting Labour landslides become real Source - CAPX - 13/07/23 Link Like the impact of rampant inflation and the ugly reality of mortgage repayments jumping to previously unthinkable levels is going to have on how people vote in next year’s general election. This particular moment of clarity happened on Tuesday evening in a focus group I was moderating. I was chatting to a bunch of lower middle class Home Counties residents who had all voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 when suddenly an owner of a small electricians business piped up: ‘A couple of years ago I thought we were working quite hard and doing ok. Now I’m worried we might actually be poor.’ Around the (virtual) room everyone nodded. Cutting to the punchline, it soon became apparent that none – n...

 The Chancellor’s reforms to Solvency II could unlock £10bn of investment   Without investment reforms, Britain is unlikely to become a 'science superpower'   Hunt deserves credit for recognising the barriers to investment and acting Source  Capx 12/07/23 Link It may not be the sexiest of headlines, but in a time of soaring inflation and general economic woe, the new agreement between the Local Government Pension Scheme and various Defined Contribution schemes represents a genuinely exciting opportunity.  Jeremy Hunt’s announcement at Monday’s Mansion House speech matters, not least because Britain is sorely in need of capital; only 20% of our growth comes from investment, and the other 80% from employment. The effects of this can be seen across our economy, with productivity stagnant since 2009 and trailing our G7 peers. Our lack of ability or willingness to invest in automation and robotics is misallocating labour, driving down standards of living and real wag...

 Rising borrowing costs may be poisonous – but they will soon come tumbling down Source - Daily Telegraph 11/07/23 Link The surge in British borrowing costs to a 16-year high is slow poison for the budget deficit. It eats into government spending under the Treasury’s fiscal rules. It looks bad and makes for ugly politics. But it should not be confused with the Truss meltdown last September, when the cost of UK bankruptcy insurance quadrupled in a matter of weeks and sterling crashed at the same time. Those who follow global capital markets knew at once that British macroeconomic credibility was on the line.  The current circumstances are unrecognisable. The spike in two-year gilt yields to a peak of 5.6pc reflects UK inflation risk, not credit risk or fiscal risk. Nor is it raising the UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio as widely supposed. The same inflation is devaluing the real burden of Britain’s national debt through the denominator effect faster than rising interest costs are adding ...

 Civilian worker claims ministry harassed him by making research called ‘The Psychosis of Whiteness’ available as resource for managers Source - Daily Telegraph - 10/07/23 Link A Ministry of Defence civil servant launched a discrimination claim after a diversity training course featured an academic paper which he claimed attacked white people. Daniel Powell claimed that the MoD had harassed him by making research called “The Psychosis of Whiteness” available as a resource for managers who were running the mandatory Operation Teamwork exercise. An employment tribunal heard that the paper, described as a “detailed academic treatise”, is an analysis of two slavery films and defines “whiteness” as a “Eurocentric worldview that produces the privileges of white skin which can become normalised and invisible”. Mr Powell, a civilian based with the MoD in Glasgow, claimed that the paper suggests white people are “psychotic, cannot be reasoned with and must be destroyed”. He sued the Governm...

 Much of Javid's reasoning is sound, but his idea falls down in key areas   Halving the number of MPs would create a huge democratic deficit in Parliament   Even if this plan cost us no extra, the outrage at doubling MP pay would be the same anyway Source - CAPX 05/07/23 Link You can take the man out of the Treasury, but you can never take the Treasury out of the man. When Sajid Javid came up with his proposal for improving the calibre of our politicians, his guiding light seems to have been simple: that it doesn’t cost a penny extra. Speaking to the Institute for Government (IfG), the former Chancellor proposed halving the number of MPs, and doubling the salaries of those that remain. It is, alas, a terrible idea. Much of Javid’s analysis of the problem was sound. There is a real problem with the calibre of people entering Parliament today; politicians from both the major parties, at least, will often admit it when you talk to them privately. This manifests in various wa...

 The PM is by most measures to the Right of Boris Johnson, but this is an era in which vibes trump reality Source - Daily Telegraph 08/07/23 Link Let me advance a suggestion that, in the current climate, might seem shocking. Rishi Sunak is a conventional Conservative, a Thatcherite even. Certainly he is, by instinct and inclination, to the Right of Boris Johnson. I say “shocking” because the view among many Tories is that the Prime Minister is wealthy, wet and woke, a managerialist who has presided over a Leftward lurch in our economy and our institutions. Why, they ask, are we taxing, spending and subsidising so much? Why is identity politics on the march, pushed by state-funded lobbies? Why have we been so slow to grasp the opportunities of Brexit? Well, look at what Sunak inherited. Exactly one year has passed since Johnson was toppled – one year, three prime ministers, two Scottish first ministers and two monarchs. Regular readers will remember that I never wanted Boris to resi...