Hello, um, we're introduction. Sorry a bit late now. I was just actually chatting to our tea brilliant guests just going through the show and then I saw the comments going stop me so late.

So that is extremely rude me, but I mean, so calm down everyone don't have a riot in the comments section blind me come on.

It's a lovely day out, depending on where you are. Let's all just calm down. Right. What we talking about today. I should probably know this.

We're talking about oh, economic calamity.

So this is this. This is in the context, obviously, the Bank of England, hiking interest rates by 0.5 points. That's the highest increase for 27 years.

And this isn't cherry this. Look, none of these shows a cherry these days, but we have to work for what we've got. They're predicting a recession lasting more than a year.

Inflation hitting 13% and a 5% drop in people's living standards. Now we've already gone through the longest trees in living standards since the early 19th century.

Since the Battle of Waterloo. That's how long that squeeze in people's living standards are. Why is that because of the financial crash and the ideologically driven austerity that was then imposed of course by Dave Cameron.

And George Osborne, who is the biggest villain of the last 12 years. I'm going to write about this sometime, worse than Boris Johnson, worse than anyone. George Osborne. Anyway, even before the financial crash hit, living standards were already stagnating for many as well.

Between 2004-2008, the bottom half income stagnated. The bottom third actually fell. So we've been talking now about two decades of stagnating and declining living standards for a massive chunk of the British population.

We're talking about people's wages basically being what they were back in 2008. That's when Katie Perry's I Kiss the Girl was top of the charts. It was a while ago.

That annoying catchy song is stuck in your heads apologies for that. Now for younger generations millennials and they were told financial crash once in a lifetime crisis guys.

And then they got co the COVID crisis where they younger people, if we're going to be generous under 40s, formed a cordon sanitaire amongst the older and vulnerable populations.

Overwhelmingly, obviously many of us get more COVID, but not of fatal complications, but they took a big hit to their living standards. And now they're about to suffer another one.

It's not been great for millennials or many millennials. Millennials, of course, is not a is not a modernist group. It includes people are wealthy and doing fine, but includes huge numbers of people who are very insecure because of the housing crisis, the jobs crisis, the welfare state crisis, the public services crisis, we could go on.

Now, and the insecure jobs crisis, of course, what I want to know, not an economist, just to make that clear, you already knew that.

What's driving all of this? Why are we in such a mess? Is there a simple answer to it? How bad is this actually going to be? I mean, I've obviously asked if our economic armageddon is going to happen. I mean, the apocalypse.

That's not going to be a apocalypse because we're still going to be alive, probably. I mean, given the twists and turns of the last few years, I wouldn't bet everything on that.

But given the 14 years of decline and stagnation, arguably, as I've said, beyond that as well, I just want to know just how bad this is likely to be for much of the population, particularly, of course, let's say the bottom half.

People who live whose lives are insecure, who will always one pay packet away from being impoverished, for whom sudden increases in living costs spell disaster, actually, for them in the family.

Many of whom, of course, are in debt, and now the cost of being in debt has gone up because interest rates have been hyped. Now, I want to know what the likely impact of Liz Truss' proposed policies are, particularly tax cuts.

Truss, because there's absolutely no chance whatsoever that Rishi Senak is going to become leader of the Conservative Party and thus Prime Minister. I'm willing to bet everything on that.

...