Firstly it shows what Government intervention does, often the opposite of what it ostensibly intends. Like other unpopular mandates, the smoking ban wasn’t legislature arising from public consultation, neither was it on the radar of pressing political issues at the time. Motion passed or not, enforcement should have remained at the sole discretion of the publicans themselves. A nationwide prohibition by our central planners does not allow for common sense to rule in the many differing circumstances where the law is applied. A small, dank, alehouse down a side street is not a metropolitan cocktail bar. The first is where life happens and the second where there happens to be life. Never the twain shall meet.

Empowering the landlords to take decisions of installing ventilation, or of reserving areas such as the old tap rooms, banning altogether or not at all. With the high density of pubs around Britain, plenty of choice could have been offered to the consumer whilst allowing the pubs with the correct business model to continue to thrive. That feeds back into the economy in more ways than one.

As expected, the clientel that left those inner city boozers were never replaced by rosy cheeked casual wine drinkers enticed by the new food area and patio. It has devastated the industry. As the working men’s clubs close, those rosy cheeked casual wine drinkers might yet see the skinheads in their nice pubs. Government intervention usually backfires like this, which is why I await with great trepidation the ugly outcome of the economic stimulus programme.

Second, the abandoned bars stand in contrary defiance to a media who are still trying to mollify the public and talk up an early recovery. Until the decline halts; until those steel shutters are defenestrated, there is no return to growth in this country. If there’s anything we British are still industrious at, it’s drinking. If there’s no disposable income for even that, then discretionary spending is at an absolute low and you can expect our consumer based economy to further contract. No massaging of quarterly statistics will convince me otherwise.

Beautiful downtown Bramall Lane.

There were 5.8 million working age benefit claimants at February 2009. This is an increase of 628,000 (13%) in the year.

UK base rate fell to a 315 year low when the official bank rate was reduced to 0.5% on 5th March 2009.

There were 5,055 compulsory liquidations and creditors’ voluntary liquidations in total in England and Wales in the second quarter of 2009 (on a seasonally adjusted basis). This was an increase of 2.9% on the previous quarter and an increase of 39.1% on the same period a year ago. In the twelve months ending Q2 2009, approximately 1 in 120 active companies (or 0.8%) went into liquidation. Additionally, there were 1,529 other corporate insolvencies in the second quarter of 2009 (not seasonally adjusted) comprising 345 receiverships, 1,027 administrations and 157 company voluntary arrangements. In total these represented an increase of 22.7% on the same period a year ago.

In August 2009 the public sector net debt (PSND) increased to £804.8bn, equivalent to 57.5% of gross domestic product and equivalent to ~ £32,192 per household. PSND has increased £172bn in 12 months (equivalent to £5,454 per second). The interest paid on this debt by the Government in April to August was £11.2bn which is equivalent to ~ £1,075 per household / annum.

According to the UK 2009 Budget report the public sector net debt (PSND), including unrealised losses from financial sector interventions, increases over the period to 2013-14 to £1,446bn (equivalent to £57,840 per household) and then stabilises at around 79% of GDP.

Real GDP in the UK economy during 2009 Q2 declined by 0.7% which means that Britain has officially been in recession for 15 months. GDP is now 5.5 per cent lower than the second quarter of 2008.

The number of unemployed people in the three months to July 2009 was 2.47 million (7.9%), up 210,000 (2,301 a day) from the previous three months and up 743,000 over the year. This is the highest figure in 14.5 years since April 1995. 246,000 people (2,696 a day) reported they had become redundant in the three months down 55,000 from the previous three months and up 107,000 from a year earlier.

If you were to find that we were in fact in a kind of economic slavery, you could say its because of some greedy powerful men that are evil. But they could not have this power, if it were not given to them by those who were subordinate and acquiesced… whether through intimidation, ignorance or coercion to this servitude. In today’s society it is because of a combination of these reasons. We are enslaved in this way, and the method has existed since the time of Babylon and perhaps even before. What this short paper is, is a quick primer about how money works.

[read article]

The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and two other institutions joined forces to offer over £55bn in emergency loans to the world’s beleaguered banking system. The move also involved swapping currency into US dollars to address shortages of the greenback in the European markets.

Bankers said the move was unprecedented in its scale and reach, exceeding the response to the 2001 terror attacks, when banks acted to prevent the financial markets from grinding to a halt.

But reaction in stock markets was modest, with the FTSE 100 finishing up only 22.9 points at 6559.8. In New York the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered only a fraction of the near-300 point loss it recorded the previous day, when the Fed disappointed investors by cutting rates only a quarter point.

[read article]