GBP Sinking.

Rob I'm not a political animal, I spent my life avoiding politics, I spent my time trying to not think about politics and I've never been very good at expressing my own views on the big political issues of the day, but I can see what is happening and what happened back in my early adulthood.

This guy George Monbiot expresses and explains things very clearly far better than I ever could, I suspect he will be demonised as some kind of ultra left journalist, but all I hear from him is good sense and good analysis of where we are and how we got here, this one is worth a watch.

I met George a long time ago when he was living in Machynlleth, nice guy, speaks a lot of sense as you say.

In my lifetime, I've seen both sides of Tory and Labour, and how they polarise opinion.

I spent most of my childhood in a place called Clevedon, near Bristol, a Tory stronghold, and an affluent area. If you were Labour, you were in the minority. Clevedon did well during the Thatcher years, and people in the town thought Thatch was the best thing since sliced bread. At the end of the 80's I moved to Caldicot in Monmouthshire. Most of that county, again is very pro-Tory (being largely rural), but Caldicot was very much Labour, more in keeping with its neighbour Newport - this is primarily due to Llanwern steel works.. As we all know, Wales came off badly during the Thatcher years, and in Wales, they hated her with a passion. It was rightly deserved, she absolutely devastated the South Wales valleys, putting 1000's out of work. The Tories are still regarded as scum in Wales, but with increasing gentrification of South Mons - border towns Chepstow, Caldicot and even as far as Newport, where people are buying housing due the overpricing in Bristol, its slowly turning blue.

There will never be a Tory government in Cardiff, so by default we have a Labour administration, who are busy treating Wales like a testing ground for their bizarre socialist policies. First Minister Mark Drakeford gets a lot of stick for his quite frankly pro-Corbyn policies, some of it deserved, some not. Cardiff Bay spent millions and many years looking into the M4 expansion around Newport, then decided, sod it. Anyone who has encountered the famous Brynglas tunnels will know what I mean. They also decided to stop all new road building across Wales, period. Oh, they also bought an airport. Then lowered the default speed limit on roads to 20mph from next year. To keep things balanced, Welsh Labour have done a lot of good for Wales - they've given Wales a voice and identity. For many years, Wales was the poor neighbour, always last on the list for handouts from London, always trodden on, made fun of, and ridiculed. Even I was sometimes embarrassed to be Welsh in the past. Labour gave us the Senedd, free prescriptions, local democracy, equal rights to Welsh and English language. We think its funky and we want more.

In conclusion, I've seen how the Tories are totally up their own backsides not having one idea how we have to suffer for their utter stupidity, and how Labour, full of good intentions, can sometimes come across a bit naive.

The Tories are fast becoming something out of the 1800's - they are not relevant, they haven't got an idea and they are too London centric. They belong in a different era. They need to go.

I'm sure you can relate to all of this Jim, being Scottish. Nicola is right to push for a vote. The SNP are still riding high, so there must be appetite for independence.

I'm not sure that there is much genuine socialism in the labour party these days, I wish there was.

The so called parties of the left both in the UK and USA are as George Monbiot says timid, I doubt they will have the courage to properly counter the sort of right wing government we now have.

Yeah I can totally relate to what you're saying, the Scots had extreme skeptisism of the Thatcher experiment right from the start, I don't think we were as negative about the conservatism of a Ted Heath led government but Thatcher really upset the Scots, however I think it's still too early for another referendum I don't think they will win it yet and losing another referendum this early could finish off the idea for decades.

I wish I had seen more of Wales, I've never really travelled in Wales, I visited one of our directors homes many years ago down in Newport and stayed in Cardiff for a couple of nights but that's about it, I am glad though that Wales got some devolution along with the Scots back in 1997 can't believe it has been 25 years already.

Few will have anything but what they can carry on their back when they have to "bug out", "almost time" implies some kind of fatalistic view, a prepper or survivalist view is that how you see things?

GBP back to 67.3 ish it was higher than that today, sadly I had to buy this month at 66.72, half a peso is a fair amount to lose out on when you are converting £800 but thank god it was not much lower than that, I converted £1000 a couple of months ago at just above 67.3 and I am holding in my Wise account that as my Christmas money for survival in the run up to Christmas, I will spend on credit as well at whatever the FX rate is while I am there and I won't mind that too much, but my immediate costs are now at least limited even if the pound crashes again in November because I'm travelling end of November and only need to send one weeks worth of support before I arrive, so my Christmas costs are largely locked in already apart from what I spend on credit cards while I am there, just to be clear I have not paid interest on a credit card in 14 years but with having to move home in the UK this month, I might end up paying interest for 2 or 3 months after I buy some of the things I have planned over there.

The pound is not out of the woods yet, Sunak was the far better choice but still pretty awful and the markets are giving him some faith at least in the short term that translates to stability and that's great but Truss has seriously damaged the bond market and that is not recovering as quickly, she created what will likely become a built in increased premium on UK Government borrowing which would not have been the case if she had simply done NOTHING at all and that is not going to go away as quickly as the FX rate changes. It's the government bond rates the price of GILTS that will determine the fate of this country for probably the next decade and it looks pretty terrifying right now.

My reason for converting money to peso in my Wise account a couple of months ago was because I was anticipating the usual increase in inward remittances to the Phils which happens every year often starting late Sept in the run-up to Christmas and that inward flow of money tends to strengthen the peso but, I've not seen that start yet this year, the peso still seems weak.

There was a point in December 2007 where buying peso in Manchester airport was only giving 68 peso to the pound when the official rate was 84.75, Ana left the UK on the 11th December and we got a lousy rate trying to get her some cash to get home from NAIA when she got back to the Philippines.

The year 2008 was volatile, started at around 83 peso went up to 91.32 peso then plummeted to 68.8154 on the 31st of December 2008, not a good year to have a newborn although at least the rate was highish in July when my daughter was born.

Are you sure it was 2002 Jim?

2002 shows Jan 1st at about 75 peso then ends the year at about 85 peso, December 2004 was where it reached it's highest at 109.88 peso to the pound, it stayed high throughout 2005 but gradually declined.

It's creeping up because interest rates are going up in the UK making the pound more attractive to investors, generally when interest rates go up the stock market goes down although it's not been too bad this time, with interest rates predicted to increase evern further in the next few months we mightg see 71 or 72 peso to the pound again maybe even more, but it will only take one shock to the system to see it all evaporate.

There's also a bit of a bounce back from the US Debt ceiling fears at the start of the month after the MAGA morons tried to hold the US debt hostage.

Right now I win on currency FX but lose on pension valuation, although I have recently moved into less risky investments regards my pension so the swings are not as scary now.

I spoke too soon it just hit 70.96 a moment ago so we are basically at 71 peso already and maybe heading over the next couple of weeks to 74