Uppers and downers

+One of these days Starmer is going to tell us that he never knew who he was, or what his job was. He has said, (in relation to  the revelation that his covert campaign group in the Labour Party, the so-called ‘think tank’ Labour Together,’ run by Morgan McSweeney) that he wasn’t aware the group had commissioned a private company to investigate journalists looking into Labour Together’s secretive funding model. “I didn’t know anything about this investigation” Starmer said. Of course, the sum of money at issue, £700,000 is small change. Who would dream of asking where it was all coming from? Just like Jimmy Savile (never crossed my desk), Peter Mandelson (he lied to me) or Jeremy Corbyn (never knew him), Prime Ministerial amnesia and its consequential evasiveness reveal a deeply cynical abuse of public trust.
 
+Chancellor Rachel Reeves showed off her full grasp of economics today after news that the inflation rate had fallen from 3.4% to 3%. She said it was great that prices were falling. No, Rachel, if that were the case it would be called ‘deflation.’ All that’s happened is the rate of increase has slowed down a little—prices are still going up. One of the components in the reduced overall rate of inflation is a reduction in the price of petrol but I’ve not heard quite how government policy has achieved this.

UPDATE 19th February: Inflation figures in Canada also dipped a little, with fuel prices being much of the story. Conclusive evidence I think that that has nothing whatsoever to do with UK government policy. Unless of of course Rachel also runs the Canadian economy.