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New European
09-02-2025
- Business
- New European
Rachel Reeves's long-distance plans
Certainly, there is evidence that the economy is struggling. Britain's main market is Europe, which is in the doldrums and apparently stuck there – particularly Germany. The government has had to raise taxes in a way that is damaging to business, business confidence and job creation. Brexit never helps. Trump's threat of tariffs alone is enough to throw a spanner in the works, and ministers have been spreading far too much doom and gloom about the state of the economy; keep smiling is one of the first rules of politics. However, the main economic forecasts still suggest the UK will grow this year, although the highest estimates of around 1.7% feel optimistic. This steady outlook is partially because the increases in spending and investment announced by the chancellor are good for growth, while wages are rising faster than prices and interest rates are falling. The government has been saddled with persistently low growth, appalling productivity, a crumbling state and empty coffers, none of which are going to be turned around overnight. It is disingenuous to claim that everything was rosy until Rachel Reeves took over, or that she can conjure up growth overnight, or that she has stymied a booming economy. While it is true business confidence is down, to say, as the Spectator does, 'When they can, businesses are getting out' is pushing it. Is it really that bad? The examples cited in the magazine do not convince; apparently Santander is to quit the UK, WH Smith is to quit the High Street and WPP is to quit the London Stock Exchange. Santander is supposedly leaving because it cannot find a way of making money out of its 14m customers, which is probably news to its 14m customers. It is also news to its chairwoman Ana Botín, who told the World Economic Forum in Davos, that Santander would remain in the UK 'into the future'. Botín also reassured delegates that 'We love the UK.' WH Smith, it is true, is quitting the high street to concentrate on its other more profitable businesses. But then if that were a sign that the economy is heading for disaster maybe the Spectator shouldn't have commissioned another article this week entitled 'WH Smith died years ago'. The opening line even called WH Smith's sale an 'all-but-inevitable fate'. WPP is just the latest in a long list of companies abandoning the London Stock market, but not the UK. It is a trend that started many years ago and is a sign of the LSE's decline, as it fell behind New York and some European competitors, where companies can raise far more investment from a far larger pool. This is a worrying structural problem of deep political concern, which is why the government is trying to encourage UK pension funds to invest more in the UK. As with so many of the UK's other structural problems, the Tories did nothing about this, instead spending years obsessing over Brexit, Wokeness and the Whitehall 'Blob'. I don't know if a recession is inevitable. Certainly short-term growth prospects are not great, but the right-wing press is not just talking to its own readers when it publishes endless stories about the 'inevitability of recession'. It is trying to set the media agenda. On the morning of the chancellor's speech, the BBC led with the headline that Rachel Reeves was under 'increasing pressure' to deliver on her promise of higher growth. As if she had promised to boost the economy with some kind of 'Barber boom'. No chancellor would ever say that. Her speech was about the long-term prospects for growth and outlined policies that will take years to bear fruit. That is the economic reality. Labour are making a lot of mistakes, like not reforming the apprenticeship system, and allowing the university sector to suffer. But the key to its success will be if it can make long term growth in the UK slightly higher. That is not especially headline grabbing. It will be years before we see the results and it will involve a complex process of reform. Better infrastructure, a better Brexit deal, an easier planning system, improved skills, better management, more homes, attracting foreign investment, an industrial strategy, more highly educated immigrants. Reeves addressed many of these in her speech and offered solutions and proposals, some obvious, some controversial. She knows that a lack of spending by the water industry is blocking growth in Cambridge and elsewhere, that linking Oxford and Cambridge in a high-tech arc like Silicon Valley is a no-brainer and that Heathrow is vital to our international competitiveness. The Tories gave us shit in the rivers, ludicrous cuts to foreign student numbers, far too few new homes and 'Boris Island' – the 'new London airport' nowhere near London, with no transport links, no workers nearby and no hope of ever being built. None of Reeves's plans will happen today, not many by next year, very few will grab headlines and most will never be noticed by most people. But they should make a difference. If the UK economy grows by 1.5% this year, we will be lucky, perhaps very lucky. But longer term, we need 2% consistently and over 3% in good years. The UK is trying to win an ultra-marathon, not a sprint, after 14 years of self-destructive, economically illiterate Tory floundering. We start at a huge disadvantage, but at last we have a chancellor who is boasting about increasing our national level of investment from a disastrous 1.9% of GDP to a barely adequate 2.6%, not boasting about reducing it. She is both heading in the right direction and trying to wean the country of its addiction to short termism, by introducing long-term reforms to multiple sectors of the economy. By definition ending short-termism is going to take time, something the Spectator (founded 1828) should bear in mind.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Army recruiting is up, but data show trend began before the election, former Army official says
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sen. Tom Cotton attributed increased Army recruiting numbers to "America First" leadership and "the Trump effect." However, data indicates that recruiting numbers began to improve months before the U.S. Presidential election, according to a former official. "You had some number of young men and women who didn't want to join the army over the last four years under Joe Biden and Christine Wormuth, the former secretary of the Army, when they thought it was more focused on Wokeness and DEI and climate change," Cotton told Fox's "America's Newsroom." "That's not why young men and women join our military. They do it because they love the country." The uptick in recruiting started months before the election on Nov. 5. "No, it did not all start in December," former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, who served until Jan. 20, said in an interview with Fox News. Army Recruiting Shatters Records After President Trump Election Win Read On The Fox News App "Army's recruiting started getting better much earlier. We really started seeing the numbers, the monthly numbers, go up in February of 2024. We were seeing sort of in the high 5000 contracts per month, and that accelerated, you know, into the spring all the way into August, when the Army really hit a peak." Starting in October 2023, the Army put 1,200 more recruiters in the field. By September 2024, before the election, the Army announced it had exceeded its recruiting goals. The groundwork was laid that October when Wormuth and Gen. Randy George, the Army chief, began a sweeping initiative to help those who did not meet academic standards or fitness requirements. The six-week pre-boot camp, called the Future Soldier Prep Course, helps lower-performing recruits meet enlistment standards. They also moved away from just recruiting in high schools to posting on job message boards. Recruiters got trained by Amazon, Wells Fargo and other industry leaders in talent acquisition. Additionally, the Army brought back the "Be All That You Can Be" branding campaign from the 1980s. "We've been selecting soldiers who have personalities that are more suited to recruiting. We improved our marketing very dramatically in terms of being very data driven and very targeted. And then, of course, the future Soldier Prep course, which the Army established some time ago, has been a big success and has accounted last year for about 25% of the new recruits that came in," Wormuth said. "If you look at our Army ads, we show young people, you know, jumping out of helicopters. We show kids doing, you know, night patrols in the jungle." Democrats Press Army Secretary Nominee If 'Readiness' Affected By Southern Border Deployments Army data shows the Army has struggled with recruiting numbers since COVID, including a shortfall of 15,000 recruits in 2022. It reported record-breaking recruitment in December 2024, with nearly 350 recruits enlisting daily and the total number of active duty soldiers reaching 5877 recruits that month. Secretary Hegseth praised the recruiting numbers in a post on X. "@USArmy: @USAREC had their most productive December in 15 years by enlisting 346 Soldiers daily into the World's greatest #USArmy! "Our Recruiters have one of the toughest jobs - inspiring the next generation of #Soldiers to serve. "Congratulations and keep up the great work!" However, August of last year, three months prior to the election, saw a higher number of recruits than in December – 7,415 recruits compared to the 5,877 in December. January 2025 still has not surpassed August 2024 for the highest monthly count of the past year. In other words, the positive recruiting trend began before the election. Army Sec Nominee Questions Whether Military Pilots Should Train Near Dc Airport The increased recruiting numbers resulted from more women joining. Women made up 19% of the recruits last year, the highest rate to date. "For example, right now, 16% of the overall Army is women. And so, having a year where almost 20% of the new recruits are women is a notable increase," Wormuth said. "In 2024, we also had the highest ever recruiting year for Hispanics." There is a lag of about 10 to 12 weeks from the time a recruit enters a recruiting office and actually signs up due to medical exams and other paperwork. "The biggest reasons young people are hesitant to join the Army is because of fear of death or injury, fear of leaving their families, a sense that maybe somehow, you know, joining the Army will put their lives on hold for a period of time," Wormuth said. "Concerns about so-called wokeness are very low on the list of obstacles for most young people. And the last time the Army ran that survey, we didn't really see a change. That remains to be a small concern." During its recruiting crisis, the Army had seen a drop in the number of families who typically send their children to serve, families whose members have served for generations. Many of those families tended to be White and from one of the 10 states that make up nearly half of the recruits: Texas (13.3%), California (10.5%), Florida (9.7%), Georgia (5.1%), North Carolina (4.6%), New York (4.3%), Virginia (2.9%), Ohio (2.8%), Illinois (2.6%) and Pennsylvania (2.4%). There is no data suggesting a surge in White males joining the Army last year. In FY2024, 40% of the Army recruits were Caucasian, 25% were Black and 26% were Hispanic. "From the data we saw, there was no discernible change in young White men joining the Army compared to the spring of 2024. The Army had about 7,400 recruits in August, and in December it was about 5,800," Wormuth said. The Army is also set to expand its basic training capacity in the spring. "U.S. Army Recruiting Command is on track to exceed the fiscal year 2025 recruitment goal of 61,000 new Soldiers and an additional 10,000 in the Delayed Entry Program," Madison Bonzo, Army Recruiting Command spokeswoman, said in a statement. "As of today, USAREC has contracted 59% of the current FY25 goal. Our success couldn't be possible without the hard work of our Recruiters, continued transformation of the recruiting enterprise and modernization initiatives to attract qualified talent into America's most lethal fighting force." Wormuth said, "I would say we saw in the Army recruiting numbers, we started seeing us really get traction in February of 2024." "And we continued to build those numbers up to about, you know, high 5,000, 6,000 a month in August. And the Army has continued that momentum going into the end of the year. And I think the winds are at the Army's back for coming into 2025," she continued. Former Army officials warn that it is dangerous to link Army recruiting successes to the election cycle, since the military is supposed to be apolitical. Soldiers sign up not to serve a president or a party but to serve the article source: Army recruiting is up, but data show trend began before the election, former Army official says
