crisis, devastating wars, terrorism, the israeli lobby, crackdown, diplomacy, uk of economy. in shambles, make sure to join the show through facebook, twitter, only on press tv.

cost of living crisis is a term that is associated with europe these days more than other parts of the world, the country that is in the lead in europe is the uk. the series of labor strikes and industrial disputes have occurred in various industries of the uk's economy as workers have walked out over pay and conditions, the most recent one being junior doctors and consultants. in this edition of the spotlight we will look at why so many workers in so many different sectors of the uk are striking and whether the sun government and has been able to handle the issue properly. first let me introduce our guests for this program. keith pilbing, professor of international and finance at city university, joins us in london. tony gosling, historian and investigative journalist joins us from bristol. welcome to you both, keith pilbeam. i'll start with you. what are your thoughts on the strike by doctors and consultants? um, it's a three-day walkout, it is said. that it's going to

affect uh obviously the care that patients are going to need um and that's another whole question that i'm going to ask on that regard but um do they stand it sounds like the government has to come to the negotiating table but are they do that well the government let's be honest is out of money um of wasted so much money during the covid pandemic etc yeah ppe equipment they don't have much money left we still got a massive fiscal deficit in this country. all right, um, and therefore there really isn't the money to make big pay rises in the public sector. um, so at the end of the day, the government must also realize that these strikes are extremely costly, because they're leading to people not getting their medical care on time, that means they're off work, not paying taxes, etc., so at the end of the day, there has to be some sort of compromise, it's going to be nowhere near the 35% catch up the doctors would like, that's never

happen um because it would just spark off further pressures in the public sector, but um, inflation matching pay rise is certainly something the government can afford, and we've got to remember that lot of these um people, you know, particularly consultants, um, they're getting taxed at 62% for quite a bit of their income, between 100,00 pounds and 125,000, i'm sorry, 62%, 62%, yeah, because they lose their tax allowance, is also tack at 40%, so if you earn an extra 25,000 um, between 100 and 125,00, which lot of consults are in, 15,500 goes to the government and 9,500 goes to them, so not many people know about this, but this is clearly another thing that is um, really, i mean, the government wants to cut taxes for the wealthy, but won't cut it for middle classes who are being taxed rageously.

you see so let's trust when she did these tax cuts for the very wealthy okay above 16000 um which you know that that seems rather stupid when she could have actually done something for these doctors that are between the 100 to 125 thousand all right so that's stupidity of the first order um and it's a stupid tax anyway it's actually holding the economy back because lots of doctors stop working when they've got 99,9900 okay no one wants to be taxed at 62%. i'm not making these figures up, they're facts, you can go to the hmrc website and check them out, so i just i just, i'm sorry to jump in, but i just checked out what you said in terms of taxes and i put average worker, i'm shocked to find out that it says, um, the uk's take home pay of average single worker after tax benefits was

76.4% of the gross wage, compared to thoec average of 75.4%, yeah um, how does that this changes the whole tone of the program, how do you figure the government? i what comes to mind is if they're taking that much taxes away, it must leave the government more room to negotiate, but then they probably are banking on these taxes in terms of revenues that they're spending in other places, i'm guessing. well, you see, you also when you earn your money, they take off income, national insurance off you everything like that, but of course they're taking vat when they doing your spending money, so you just you even more, when you fuck your car with petrol, you know, you put 100 pounds in, 75 pounds, it's probably off to the government, let me bring it. rates of taxation we're facing and um basically the government can't raise taxes anymore that's clear right let's bring in here let's bring tony here i'm sorry to take so long to get to you but this is just shocking um stats on the tax issue uh where uh aside from the government uh putting

that aside people survive that much taxes are taking out is that's something that was overlooked uh and not really spoken much about when it comes to the workers and the pay they're getting in terms of how much tax is there. that's been taken out, it's built into the system, as uh, there is inflation, as is now running food inflation nearly 20%, it's just coming down a little bit, but that's where it's been uh, so everybody is moved up into the higher tax brackets, and what they've been doing is they've not been moving uh, the tax brackets, so people at the moment average wages are being taxed like maybe cade ago the super rich were, so these rates of tax, and it's the same with how. exactly the same with housing, so say for example, you uh, the inheritance tax threshholds haven't been raised, even though the price of housing is going up, so as as the economy starts to fall apart, more and more middle earners and low wage earners are are moving up into the high tax rates and

actually what's happening is is work is no longer a way out of poverty, so people are starting to work and then finding that they're actually ending up with less money than they've. on benefits and they just simply cannot pay the rent and the being evicted from their homes, this sort of thing, so you're right, welcome to uh basket case britain, because the economy is an absolutely terrible state, in a way it's a kind of hybrid war, the same hybrid war that's being waged on ukraine, and of course if you think about, but it's being wasted on the british people as well, and if you think about the amounts of billions that have been spent on ukraine, it's quite obvious the government does have the money to pay the doctors, they have a choice to make. do they want that money to go uh to arms and to arming this proxy war we're doing for the americans over in uh far distant east europe or want to pay doctors properly and the fact uh of the strikes i'm absolutely 100% with the doctors because the doctors know that what's happening is the senior staff in the health

service particularly the professionals that are making the life and death decisions, the consultants, the doctors, the registrars are moving abroad, because the pay is too low here, they cannot afford to pay the rent to pay the mortgage. on those wages and so they're going off to get much better wages abroad and so they are the ones who are trying to save the health service by flagging up to the nation that they need to be paid proper wages in order to keep the nhs alive and of course if you think about the government we've got at the moment the conservatives have always wanted to destroy the national health service this free health service for everyone in the country the conservatives don't like that they go over to a american style health insurance system and actually the american um health companies are all they've got very london offices because they are lobbying for this change too, they're trying to destroy the national health service and they're doing that by making sure the doctors just leave the country, flee the country and go abroad. well let's move on beyond just the health service and uh take a look at other sectors of the uk economy if we can because this uh thing about taxes has

thrown me off, but keith pillem nevertheless, i'd like to ask you about one of the things that are in the basket of expenses of the average person there in the uk and across the world really in a matter of speaking, and that's the cost. the food, we know food prices have risen, but by how much have they risen, i'm trying to get an idea based on uh going through the inflation, which puts it at around 7 or 8%, but i think it's a lot more than that, because when you look at uh categories food or just food itself, whether it's marjorin or eggs or other items, you can see that it's a lot than that, it depends what you're looking at, it doesn't really come out to the seven or eight they're talking about, what's the story there? um, well food inflation is higher than seven or eight percent, um, it is actually around 17%. of course it depends for different people it be higher or lower, depending what food they eat, but food inflation has been running particularly high, which impacts the poor people, you see the headlight rate of inflation 6.8 now, but don't forget it was 10.9. um, that that doesn't mean everything

went up by 10.9 or 6.8%. all right, some things go up far more, and of course poor people spend proportionately more of their money on food. so the inflation rates in poor people is substantially higher than the headline figure. everybody knows that, the government knows and no one can deny it, so that is causing poor people problems, because you know they spend more of their money on food and rent of course, which has also been sky rocketing, so the bank of england, i believe is trying to do some analysis of this, but you know, if you're in the lower 20%, right, um, of income, you're you're getting you, inflation plus tax rises, and and council tax going through the roof, it it's it's it's miserable, it is, well tony gosling, when i read this headline, i thought uh, i felt a si of relief for the people there. in the uk uh with the guardian i'm going to say the name ran and said uk food

prices fall in september for the first time in two years but then you read the print below that taking a closer look it dropped by 0.1% if we're looking at 19.4% uh 19.1% and they cited that as being uh food inflation for 2022 that's not much of a price drop uh if you ask me i mean it doesn't sound like lot at all. compared to the rate of food inflation, what's impact that it has had on poverty there in the uk? let me just explain, it's not really a price drop at all, what's been happening is these german-owned supermarkets, liddle and aldi have been opening across the country over they've been doing very well and opening new stores uh over the last couple of years and so what we're seeing more and more people leaving the mainstream um british supermarkets and going to these german chipo supermarkets and and so therefore the lot of the the that's the only thing that's been bring, the fact of the matter is that these massive food cartels

have been price fixing, they've been they know they've got a pretty much a strangle hold on the market that the small gross shops uh dotted around the country, there's not many left uh are really not able to compete with these massive supermarkets anymore and so they do deals with the supermarket as a cartel and they've been slowly putting up the prices, in fact there've been one or two super markets uh such as sainsburries in britain who have actually uh refused stock products like hen's products for example because massive food conglomerates uh have been price fixing and they're saying well this is too much we want to sell someone else's baked beans or whatever and we're not going to sell yours because your price is way too high your margins are high and course this is just being done to the benefit of shareholders uh because they now have such a strangle hold on the food market that they can start to jack up prices anywhere they want and mean this this is of course as uh keith says, it's affecting the poor far more,

and that's the perversity of all of this is that you've now got the rich paying virtually no tax, this is these are the people by the way, if we wanted to raise tax, we've got lots of super rich people that we could be taking this money off from their investments, you know, say for example you've got hundreds of millions of pounds invested, well if you were to lose half of that, you wouldn't even notice a single difference in your lifestyle uh and so that we should be morally doing, we should be grabbing that money. uh even if it is offshore or if as soon as we should you know we we need to take the money off the rich and what's happening is with this food price inflation is the poor are being hit uh and the rich are being left scott free so it's almost certain i mean we've had the speech today by british prime minister rishi sunak at the conservative party conference they've got a general election next year so it's probably his last chance uh to sell the conservative vote to the voters and he's come up with absolutely nothing nothing at all. and he's talking about change, but he we know that he's not changing anything, so it seems to me, and in fact i've heard this from

insiders, that there are many people at the top of the conservative party here that don't want to win the next general election, so they're not interested in dealing with these issues, they're only interested in looking at their apps on their phones to see how much uh dividends on their big share investments that they're getting, that's their interest, the public and the voters are nowhere in the equation, we're going to talk about a little bit more, but i'd like to ask you and can't question here keith pillbean because uh it seems like it's a contradiction but yet it works out the benefit of the economy somehow which is why i want to ask you and that's the deal with uh interest. rates, all right, we know that uh, there's interest rates that have been risen a number of occasions by the central bank, and that is the way inflation for lack of better word, but when you when when you raise the interest rates, it's got as plusses and minuses, can you please explain to us how that works out, because we know that there are obviously setbacks based on the impact it has on the different sectors

the economy, well interest rates of course they've gone up, but what one must remember is that they were manipulated by the bank of england to record levels for a numerous years very below 1%. all right, so even on 10 years the government could borrow, listen at .6% with inflation, target of 2%. that made no economic sense whatsoever by the way, that's you know, and all these people that invested in those bonds, including pension funds by the way, um, that was stupidity of the highest order, i mean no one should be lending to governments at .6% with inflation target of 2%. all right, so now they can't print any more money, they printed so much that it's actually one of the big causes of inflation, they won't admit it, andrew failey, i insist on calling him failey, not bailey, um, you know, he printed so much money, it's just incredible, 300 billion in one year to pay for all this covid and fiscal deficits, so eventually you see, that's going

to come to roost, and interest rates are about to go up when inflation goes up, and now inflation is up. and not really under control because people are still trying to catch up because they lost out last year on their wage raises you know less than inflation so they're trying to catch up this year it's not going to go down quickly the bank of england was as usual a sleep at the wheel they said inflation would would go to 4.5 you know well outside their target by the way and it went to six and they were forecasting eight then they forcasted 10 i mean the bang should be closed as institution you know with its forecasting record um and the governor sat so we got to get used to much higher interest rates, all right, because we've now got record levels of debt, the government has borrowed so much money that the national debt has gone from you know to over 100% of gp, companies have borrowed too much, all right, when interest rates were low, what the people do, they borrow, borrow, borrow, and of course people borrow to buy houses at absurd prices and when interest rates go up, it's bound to hit the property

sector, and many other sectors a zombie companies, they've been kept a life through low interest rates. okay, but now interest rates are going up, those zombie companies have to liquidate, go bankrupt, and we're seeing that increasingly bankrupties everywhere, and it was because of the incompetence of the bank of england, um, they should not be celerating getting inflation down to 6.8 or five, it is ridiculously high, it is still well above the maximum of 3%, it's 2% plus almost 1%. okay, so this is not any success, this is fail, you can't celebrate, but of that degree and say you're doing something, all right, tony gosling, you talked about sunac, one of the things that has come out, i'd like to ask from you, whether it's a reflection of the types of decisions that go uh against uh, maybe improving the economy, and that was the cancellation from we understand the scrapping the s2, which was said that it would have cut journey times, would have created more space on the rail network and also would boost jobs

outside of london, what what are your thoughts first on his decision on doing that and tell us some? the flops uh that he has actually um is is guilty of when it comes to the economy, the decisions that maybe that he made that uh has impacted the economy negatively? well, these massive infrastructure projects like hs2 should never have been signed off in the first place, that money could far better have been spent on upgrading existing railways, opening may be some of the railways which were shut in the 1960s and that sort of thing would have been extremely good for the environment, but no, the most of the... the um pressure to sign those contracts to build this railway were there from the construction companies because they've made an absolute fortune on this railway to nowhere uh and it is just from london to birmingham which is there is an existing fairly good service there anyway which they could have used maybe one tenth of this money to upgrade that service the whole thing is i think a contract fraud uh that was

signed by the labor the end of the last labor government put in 2009 and then the... conservatives if they had had look prop the books should have just scrapped it as soon as they came into office in 2010, but they don't like that, it's embarrassing, and there may be costs, they actually had jacob quite bravely said that the whole thing should have been scrapped five years ago, he said that, so this is a disaster, it's good that it's gone, the other thing is the other infrastructure project near me in bristol is this, hinkly c nuclear power station, again there's no real guarantees this is going to deliver affordable electricity ever, and yet billions are being spent on these projects, i think it's just really about the construction contracts, those companies are going to definitely get lots and lots of money, but there may be nothing at the end of it to deliver, so this is i think a massive fraud and enormous mistakes he's made - sunak, and of course the chances are he's never going to make it to uh uh to uh the to win an election

next year, no chance, it's most probably going to be a hung parliament, because the reason is because the this has not been a economic crisis for everybody, the super rich 0.1% have done incredibly well out of this conservative government, and they have actually seen their their billy. multiply and those are the people who are calling the shots and that's why it's almost impossible that sunak because he he came up with something today about smoking for example which you think well this is not going to win you the election mate, no chance uh and so he's got nothing to offer really except empty words and so we're probably going to see labor government next year and the conservatives are going to applaud their leader as he just drags them down into a black hole never to be seen again all right i got. one last question over here, i was going to talk about how the rich got richer, but that almost sounds like a cliche, so uh keith pilby, my last question is about manufacturing in the uk where it is said that

there's been a not it is said, it's been on the decline to the point where many headlines read why uh the government has actually abandoned the manufacturing sector, is it that bad, has manufacturing declined to the point that the uk doesn't really make anything anymore um in a minute if you can please, well we've still got the manufacturing. but it's been decimated by brexit, and uh, you see that in the car industry, you know, output is now half what it was in 2016, nots to invest here, you get the odd thing that comes up because the government's subsidizing it, yep, second the subsidies run out, they'll be either asking for more money or closing these factories, um, so it's been in decline for many years, this government doesn't care about manufacturing, we do have some good manufacturers by the way, but the death now has been paperwork, bureaucracy and brexit, their closest market. is of course now very difficult for them, especially small manufacturers, you know, they used to use the eu to grow a bit bigger, now they don't grow bigger, they stay in the uk, and and also

they can't get the parts so easily from europe because they don't want to supply them because of the paperwork again, so it's all self-inflicted, it's you know the whole country's gone to pot really and the and it's incompetence of the government, it's not just brexit, it is the most incompetent government we've probably ever had in the last 10 years, i can't think of... any government over the last 10 years including you know that includes boris of course, but this shambles is is just 13 years of disaster. 30 seconds, 30 seconds, okay, well look, the trouble is that britain lost control of its industrial policy, not because of brexit, but when they entered the eec, back in the 1970s, britain has never had, britain's governments have never had control of their economic policy, at least we still got the pound which gives us a little bit of... of lee way uh and ultimately uh, i'm afraid britain is not going to be, and it's not just britain, it's the whole of europe, germany is now, okay, slumping, it's manufacturing base, so britain

can shake hands with the germans and say we're going to go down together, thank you, sorry to interrupt you, tony gosling, the historian and investigative journalist, and thank you, keith pilbeam, professor of international economics and finance at city university, thank you to you both, with that we come to an end for this edition of the spotlight fromway in the team, mazandaron is one of the most beautiful provinces in iran and an ideal option for mountaineers. the symphony of colors is at play. i dare say this is one of the most amazing views of... i have ever seen, the

track was rocky and steep, and it was getting dark a rapid pace. each moment of this track is imbued with wonderful scenes.

the iranian army testfirers that steady the art domestically made drones on the second day of large-scale maneuvers. the palestinian authority calls a political scandal israel's

banning. european foreign ministers from visiting the west bank and the uk