Dodger

Rational optimist. Dallas Beer Guardians - FC Dallas🇺🇸

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

HEALEY to Starmer: "you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats."

[Dodger @FallonRogeri]

@julianHjessop @JoshFG Maths

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

I don't think the gap between my optimism about the spectacular future that innovation can bring to humankind...

and my pessimism about the dismal future my own government seems determined to force upon my nation...

has ever been greater.

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

And cutting energy costs. And cutting energy costs, right?

[David Frost @DavidGHFrost]

"Mariana Mazzucato's ideas now influence how millions of people are governed."

I'm afraid so. That's partly why we're in the miserable state we're in.

[Dodger @FallonRogeri]

@saddenedenglish @BasilTheGreat And likelihood is the email address on the referral is nonexistent. There are no waiting lists in Russia…

[Vincent Geloso @VincentGeloso]

I have written papers debunking the works of half these authors (Raworth, Piketty, Hickel). All three for being sloppy (Piketty and Hickel), and/or self-contradicting (Raworth and Hickel), and/or outright incompetent (Hickel).

References below:

[Dodger @FallonRogeri]

@saddenedenglish @BasilTheGreat Yes, it’s called appointment triage. They don’t inform you, just bin it. Complain, they’ll progress it.

[Dodger @FallonRogeri]

@BasilTheGreat GP requested Consultant in April, NHS to review in 3rd June, no appt, just request to call them, deferred for 4 months for review….anticipated this…went private in April, consultant within the week.
We have an expensive Potemkin NHS, function is playing games with statistics.

[Douglas Murray @DouglasKMurray]

‘Are we allowed to feel angry yet?’ My column in this week’s @spectator https://t.co/ihCQHb71Ii

[Dodger @FallonRogeri]

The fast money is now dominating the trading, and the trading sets the price.

The borrowing hasn’t changed. But the lender has.

And this is why it’s stiff drink time. The state needs to sell £246 billion of gilts this year, and every year for years, into exactly this market.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

There’s a seismic shift happening in the gilt market that seems to be mostly going unnoticed. Everyone argues about how much Britain borrows, but the question of who lends rarely gets asked.

For most of the post-war period the gilt market had a captive domestic buyer. In recent decades that was overwhelmingly British defined benefit pension funds. They typically bought 30-year gilts and held them to maturity, because the rules said they had to. Which means the gilt market had a captive lender, quietly underwriting the entire post-war state.

The seismic shift we’re seeing… the captive lender is leaving.

DB pension schemes are closed and maturing. They are running off their gilts to pay pensioners, not buying more. They still own around 45% of the index-linked market, and that holding winds down over the next decade. On top of that, the BoE is selling too. Quantitative tightening, year after year, to unwind its balance sheet.

The replacement to British pension funds has arrived quietly. And most people have no idea about this shift.

Hedge funds now account for 63% of electronic gilt trading, which is up by a third since 2021. Pension funds and insurers have fallen from 45% to 26%. Overseas investors hold around 35% of the market, up from under 25% a decade ago. This isn’t central banks, it’s global bond funds. These are mobile, yield-hungry, gone-in-an-afternoon type entities. Not the long term holders we had in the pension funds.

The fast money doesn't own the majority of the stock yet. But it’s now dominating the trading, and the trading sets the price. This is a relatively new dynamic that will only continue to grow as pension funds see their holdings mature.

This is why long yields hit 1998 highs while inflation fell. The borrowing hasn’t changed. But the lender has.

And this is why it’s stiff drink time. The state needs to sell £246 billion of gilts this year, and every year for years, into exactly this market.

Every deficit argument in British politics assumed the lenders would be there, just like the dependency ratio assumed the workers would be there.

The whole system runs on lenders who no longer have to show up. And they expect a higher premium. Potentially a much higher premium.

[Willis Eschenbach @WEschenbach]

I love how these folks always pick some less-than-useful metric to boast about … here's the reality.

Best to all,

w.

[Tony Heller 🇺🇸 🇯🇵 @TonyClimate]

Last year a warm North Atlantic was caused by global warming. This year a cold North Atlantic is caused by global warming.

[John Redwood @johnredwood]

Net zero zealotry wants to be rid of many of our grazing animals. See my comments on @facts4eu and @GBNews on this attack on our farms and wild ponies.

[spiked @spikedonline]

Net Zero is destroying Britain’s industrial heritage. Denby Pottery survived the Napoleonic Wars and the Great Depression – but it couldn’t survive Ed Miliband. Net Zero is suicidal, says James Woudhuysen
https://t.co/JcCzCt3tkD

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Here’s the problem. The liberal political class wants us to treat atrocities like Belfast as single, random, isolated incidents. “Yes, it’s horrific, but don’t overreact,” they say. “Let the police do their job. Justice will be delivered. Let’s remain united,” and so on.

But the public can see that such incidents *aren’t* random or isolated. They are, in fact, all the consequence of massive state failure in the area of asylum and immigration. All roads lead back there.

That’s why people are angry.. They are sick of the platitudes that get trotted out after each fresh incident. They don’t want to hear them anymore. They know that the decisions of establishment politicians have brought us to this current pass, and they don’t trust those same politicians to fix things, especially when some of them refuse to even recognise that the public’s anger is justified.

There has been a huge vibe shift in recent years. Imagine - God forbid - there were another 7/7. Does anyone think the public response would be anything like as restrained as it was then? We are in really dangerous territory.

The public don’t want flowers and candles and “Don’t let them divide us.” They want someone who says, “I recognise that the state has failed abjectly. We have allowed far too many people to settle in the country without knowing who they truly are. It has disrupted your communities. Your anger is justified. And I will do everything in my power to put things right.”

Any politician unwilling to articulate that message, fully and sincerely, is effectively sanctioning more years of growing social disharmony and discord. Things cannot heal until those in power recognise the extent of the problem and what it will take to fix it. And, on both counts, most of them don’t.

That’s why the next few years are going to be very, very turbulent.

[Tony Diver @Tony_Diver]

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is livid about rumours the government will publish the Defence Investment Plan on Friday, when MPs are not sitting.

Says he would be "appalled" to see the plan announced without a statement to the Commons first and makes a direct appeal to No10:

"That would be an utter disgrace and an utter kick in the face to members of this House.
....
"Once again, it seems to me that we are becoming second-class citizens with the Government. I don't want that to be the case, and I hope I am proven wrong."

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

First edition of The Andrew Neil Report out tomorrow morning, June 11. On all major podcast platforms and YouTube. Or use the QR to go direct to it.

[Liz Truss @trussliz]

Tonight on The Liz Truss Show, I speak to @WillKingston about what's happened in Belfast, Nigel Farage's reaction and why Britain is at a breaking point. Set a reminder here: https://t.co/taPzsA5lhz

[Dodger @FallonRogeri]

@rcolvile Indeed, why should young families be taxed with huge sums for moving house as their families grow.