Due to an unfortunate wakefulness, I was up in the dead of night here, and got to watch Theresa May (P.M. U.K.) give a speech in Manchester. I think it was to her party members, but didn’t care enough to find out who the audience was.
Most of it was clearly a Ra-Ra-Speech about British Conservatives… who sound a whole lot like USA Progressives. Lots of “Free stuff!!!” for everyone. But seasoned with some admiration of private enterprise, sort of.
What most interested me, though, were two topics. First, her full support of Global Britain and the repeated advocacy for “Free and Open Markets” at many points in her speech. Markets good. Got it.
Maybe…
Toward the end May addressed outrageously high “energy bills”. The proposed solution? Price caps.
Now I’m constantly amazed by the human capacity to believe two antagonistic things at the same time. I have trouble doing it, but others seem to glory in it. Upper Management, in particular, seems unclear on the concept of “Fast, Good, Cheap. Pick any TWO.” So it ought not to be a surprise that T. May is just as good at it.
Early in the speech, there is a one-liner about things Britain needs to address. Included in the list was “Climate Change”. Going to be a global leader in it, eh? Well, all that loverly wind and solar is what is causing your energy bills to skyrocket. See the conflict? No? Sigh…
Then after many many praises of “Free and Open Markets”, we get the solution being “Price Caps”. Well, you can have a “Free and Open Market”, or you can have price controls, but you can’t have both at the same time. See the conflict? No? Sigh…
OK, I know it’s a political speech and you make sure every Hot Button Group is told their Hobbyhorse Matters and they will get what the want. But really? It’s like saying all cars will be electric AND you are expanding gas stations across the country. Or that you will shut down 100 GW of generation AND add 200 GW of eCar charging load. It just screams Stoopid.
Hopefully someone will ‘splain it to the UK Government. Cake, eating it, not keeping it.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Yikes. So, once again, someone not aware of what money is, why people trade, and the history of governments monkeying with money in various ways for thousands of years; has power. She is saying “It is going to work this time because the previous people didn’t do it correctly and we will this time?”. Ugh
Some things are easy to understand. And so to confuse for people who DO NOT think. Besides “price controls” (instituted here by a supposed republican – Nixon), there is the gun control debate. The left screams about banning guns and at the same time screams about the new “Il Duce” Trump.
People can easily hold 2 contradictory things in their mind when they do not understand one or both.
EM, many people have tried to tell the government the stupidity of the Climate Change Act and about the uselessness of Windmills and Solar Panels. But it never gets past the first step, your own MP, won’t raise it and just quotes the party line.
There are a few sensible MPs, but they also have absolutely no effect on the current poliies.
It is like head butting a brick wall.
My wife and I both signed the Cancel the Climate Change Act petition to no avail.
I am afraid Stupid is as Stupid Does, there is not “getting” through to them, it is dogma all the way.
The price cap is on a type of tariff that people can already opt out of, but either don’t know or just fail to do it.
In the UK you can only have the invisible hand of the free markets if you agree to have it controlled by the dead hand of the government’s bureaucracy.
By the time the problem becomes a real annoyance, there will be someone to blame other than the idiot/opportunist who caused it. That’s the politician’s ace in the hole. The public has a short memory and is easily distracted. May knows how to play the game.
Most of UK politics at present is essentially the party leaders scratching about trying to get some support from within their own party, never mind the electorate. The Conservatives are having their annual party conference this week, so May will talk whatever tosh seems likely to her to keep a majority of her “remainiac” party behind her. (They are certainly “behind her”, although the bad news for her is that quite a lot of them have the knives out and ready …)
In such a fervid atmosphere, “merely” contradictory policies are pretty much standard fare, as parties suggest any and all sorts of halfwitted nonsense in an attempt to find something, anything which will garner them enough votes next time out.
Similarly Corbyn is battling to hold on to power within a Labour party which is still over 50% Blairites, who want to return the “workers’ party” back into a force for controlling workers on behalf of the corporations, like some kind of Conservative Party Mk.II. Whatever you think of his position, Corbyn has a lot of support from the rank and file of his party, which really annoys the Blairites – hence, for example, the ongoing BS about “antisemetism” in the party, and whatever other irrelevances they can dig up which might make a stick to beat Corbyn.
The Liberals are still (or do I mean “once again”?) a minor party, though one likes to hope they’ll think a little more deeply about propping up unpopular governments in future. The other parties are just also-rans, as ever. Even UKIP is still flailing about, trying to find a new leader and a consistent policy package at the same time their members are becoming worried about the damage being done to our Exit, the Islamic invasion, etc., etc..
Our politica are a bad joke, and the main reason is that the bulk of all parties, and of the civil service, are still doing their level best to make Brexit unworkable at whatever cost. Meanwhile, most of us plebs continue to decline, with prices steadily aiming upwards, incomes stagnant at best (except for CEOs, of course!) and the streets swarming with hostile aliens who want to take our country (and who are already taking our jobs. exacerbating our long-term housing shortage and pumping up our crime rate). The UK is not at all a happy country at the moment – and it’s not caused by our politicians contradicting themselves so much as by their insistence on trying to contradict us.