Current Affairs EU In or Out

[roydo]

Even I tend to pay little attention to BOE forecasts, cos I know the model they use to arrive at them. It is ALL about the data and assumptions that are inputted. At best they can signal a trend, based on modelling likely outcomes on past reality. So if interest rates were 5% 10 years ago, what happened then would likely happen again if they hit that level again.

Trouble is, we have NEVER left the EU before, so no past data is available. Ergo, its guesswork. Especially when they say things like house prices will fall 30%, They will, if the data you used caused such an output.

What they can say with 100% certainty is the future is very uncertain.

Haha! Which is exactly what Mark Carney has just said! "We prepare for the worst and used assumptions accordingly"

 

[The binman chronicles]

Even I tend to pay little attention to BOE forecasts, cos I know the model they use to arrive at them. It is ALL about the data and assumptions that are inputted. At best they can signal a trend, based on modelling likely outcomes on past reality. So if interest rates were 5% 10 years ago, what happened then would likely happen again if they hit that level again.

Trouble is, we have NEVER left the EU before, so no past data is available. Ergo, its guesswork. Especially when they say things like house prices will fall 30%, They will, if the data you used caused such an output.

What they can say with 100% certainty is the future is very uncertain.

These are the only forecasts I would actually pay attention to as a trend to be anywhere near right. Take a business how it is running now, throw in lots of new regulations; increase costs for any bits coming in from the EU; possibly increase costs going out; make it harder to get staff or at least drive up costs in doing so, which in turn increases costs of products further knocking sales. Add to the companies that fold or have to cut staff and it is no surprise we are going to have a weaker economy.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

As an aside, this might be worth reminding people - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36341530

"When asked on the Andrew Marr Show about the warnings given by the Bank of England, the IMF and the US on the potential economic risks posed by leaving the EU, Andrea Leadsom dismissed them, and said: "These people all said we should join the euro."

The euro was introduced in 1999. Britain did not have to join because the UK negotiated a permanent opt-out from European Monetary Union (EMU) as part of the Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992.

Joining has remained an option. So have the Bank of England, IMF or the United States ever said the UK should join the Euro?

Back in 1999 the then governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, said: "It really is too soon to say whether all participating countries will be able to exist comfortably within the single monetary policy framework or whether there will be tension."

He also said that it would be "tremendously difficult" ever to know for certain if the British economy was ready to join.

Just one year later, in 2000, Sir Eddie reiterated the same position, suggesting that the UK's hesitance to join the euro was down to "a real debate about the risks and potential costs of divergence between our own monetary policy needs and those of the members of the eurozone".

In the same year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that a strong case for or against UK membership of the euro didn't exist.

It judged that the main benefits from joining EMU would be savings in transaction costs and better market transparency. This, they argued, would have a positive impact on investment, productivity and growth.

On the negative side, they said: "joining the EMU would imply relinquishing an independent monetary policy and a flexible exchange rate."

The Reality Check team looked into what the US Treasury were saying in the lead up to the introduction of the euro. We found a number of statements on the benefits of the EMU in general, with one suggesting that any move to strengthen Europe economically would be good for the United States.

But we didn't find any explicit recommendations from the US Treasury arguing for the UK to join the euro."

So perhaps people can stop trotting out the nonsense that 'the experts' suggested Britain join the Euro. There are people who have been repeatedly wrong however, but you don't need me to tell you who they are.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Environmental principles inform legal and political frameworks that aim to minimise the ill-effects of human activity on the environment. In the EU (Withdrawal Act) 2018, the UK has committed to incorporating a set of environmental principles into UK legislation. This POSTnote summarises these principles and considers potential opportunities and challenges surrounding their implementation post-Brexit.

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/POST-PN-0590

POST are the impartial parliamentary research team btw.

 

[davmaher]

In it's own special way, this is the most honest Brexit post of them all.

It really only makes sense, at this point, as a form of religion.

How the hell should I know why it will work? I just feel it in my bones.

Like Peter Pan, Brexit will fly, if only enough of us believe it will fly.

It's like a national rain dance.



To be clear, I have never called on us to understand the mind of the @peteblue @Old Blue 2 Joey66 Brexiteer - those minds are obvious, impermeable, and immutable, and in any case, not what swung the election.

What I am suggesting is that we need to understand why Brexit appealed to so many desperate, alienated people - and why those championing Remain did not.

You see Brexit as the disease itself, but its only just a symptom. And you don't seem willing to attempt to cure what actually ails this country, or even to grapple with why so many everyday voters mistrust if not despise people like you (and I). But you really need look no further than your own posts on Universal Credit, for example, if you'd like some clues. The haughtiness and disdain for the suffering caused by your own politics is remarkable.



You still don't seem to realise that Leave lost the the election. The pigswill has already been sold to the nation. It is incumbent, obviously, upon us and not them if we want to win it back. How are you going to do that? What are you willing to offer instead? All I see is sneering at people's desperation, or preposterously blaming "the civil service" (as if that in any way addresses the issue), or mocking the rising appeal of conspiracy theories (as though, after Iraq and the financial crisis, the responsibility of the "responsible" class for making them so plausible wasn't obvious).

Leave offered an alternative - the only alternative, however absurd and farcical, to the status quo. And the status quo has failed. That argument has been lost. Just look at how your spirit animal Macron is doing these days. Do you really still think we can just put all just let bygones be bygones, put Humpty Dumpty together again, dust off our copies of The Lexus and the Olive Tree and pretend its the nineties again? I'm sure you can proudly reel off an arsenal of statistics about car factories, or the net positive of EU immigration on GDP/capita, but the point is that that would be missing the point.

How are we, "metropolitan liberal elites" in the parlance of our times, going to tell people a better story. What better vision of society are we proposing? Absent that, the real question swing voters are pondering is less "how will the NHS be helped by Brexit?" but "how will the NHS be helped by maintaining the status quo?"

And so far, your only answers are "it's very complicated" and "the NHS is already great", which is a) obvious political suicide and b) only true if you benefit from and are committed to maintaining the status quo.

The core issue is not so much why the millions of people we've driven to despair since 2010 trusted in Brexit, but why they no longer trust people like you and I, and why so many people like you (but not I) still stubbornly persist in the delusion that there isn't even really an underlying problem that needs solving, other than that the people who disagreed with us in 2016 are all morons.

The first step is always admitting that there is a problem, but I'm not sure you're even ready for that yet.

I pretty much agree with all of this. I had a bit of a Road to Damascus moment earlier this year, although for me it was the road to Shirebrook - a small town in north Derbyshire I visited through work a few times earlier this year. It was the worst place outside of some of our inner cities that I can remember ever going to in the UK. The town centre didn't really have much in the way of shops, it was primarily book-makers, charity shops, cheap booze outlets and some Eastern European super-markets, most of the pubs seemed to have closed and there was literally nothing I could see about the place that was appealing. After my first couple of visits I was just glad to leave, but after my third I thought I'd do some checking on it to see what it's history was and try to talk to some of the locals on my next visit. I found out that up until the early nineties it was a pit town and had been quite a thriving community, all built around the pit. Work, family,friendships, social life, were all based around the mine. This closed in 1993, although it was being run down for a long time before that. The mine gave the place a sense of identity and the whole fabric of the town was built around it. The land where the pit stood was re-developed under government funding and turned into a huge business park. The largest employer there now is Sports Direct - Shirebrook is their main warehousing/distribution centre and has been in the news several times regarding zero hours contracts etc. The site employs several thousand people, a significant number of whom are Eastern European. I was told that the majority of workers are on zero hours contracts.
Shirebrook is in one of the areas that voted most strongly to leave. Whilst some of the reasons for voting leave were probably related to the EU - particularly freedom of movement - I think the referendum gave people in the area the opportunity to stick 2 fingers up to the politicians, which they took with glee. I can't imagine their situation or opportunities for improvement have changed much whichever party has been in power so whether it be Labour or Conservative, it makes no difference. I don't think the likely fact that the country as a whole will be worse off will affect their opinion one jot, in fact I suspect that there will be some element of "let it burn" in their thinking. If you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
As you said in your post, unless we try to understand why Leave won the referendum nothing will change. Maybe it is just too difficult and so we will just look the other was and continue to talk about how good globalisation is, how things are being revolutionised by the gig economy, man, whilst ignoring the great unwashed, for whom neither is remotely true.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I pretty much agree with all of this. I had a bit of a Road to Damascus moment earlier this year, although for me it was the road to Shirebrook - a small town in north Derbyshire I visited through work a few times earlier this year. It was the worst place outside of some of our inner cities that I can remember ever going to in the UK. The town centre didn't really have much in the way of shops, it was primarily book-makers, charity shops, cheap booze outlets and some Eastern European super-markets, most of the pubs seemed to have closed and there was literally nothing I could see about the place that was appealing. After my first couple of visits I was just glad to leave, but after my third I thought I'd do some checking on it to see what it's history was and try to talk to some of the locals on my next visit. I found out that up until the early nineties it was a pit town and had been quite a thriving community, all built around the pit. Work, family,friendships, social life, were all based around the mine. This closed in 1993, although it was being run down for a long time before that. The mine gave the place a sense of identity and the whole fabric of the town was built around it. The land where the pit stood was re-developed under government funding and turned into a huge business park. The largest employer there now is Sports Direct - Shirebrook is their main warehousing/distribution centre and has been in the news several times regarding zero hours contracts etc. The site employs several thousand people, a significant number of whom are Eastern European. I was told that the majority of workers are on zero hours contracts.
Shirebrook is in one of the areas that voted most strongly to leave. Whilst some of the reasons for voting leave were probably related to the EU - particularly freedom of movement - I think the referendum gave people in the area the opportunity to stick 2 fingers up to the politicians, which they took with glee. I can't imagine their situation or opportunities for improvement have changed much whichever party has been in power so whether it be Labour or Conservative, it makes no difference. I don't think the likely fact that the country as a whole will be worse off will affect their opinion one jot, in fact I suspect that there will be some element of "let it burn" in their thinking. If you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
As you said in your post, unless we try to understand why Leave won the referendum nothing will change. Maybe it is just too difficult and so we will just look the other was and continue to talk about how good globalisation is, how things are being revolutionised by the gig economy, man, whilst ignoring the great unwashed, for whom neither is remotely true.

Isn't that Dennis Skinner's patch?

 

[davmaher]

Isn't that Dennis Skinner's patch?

Yes it is, which made me even more depressed. I don't have any idea how involved he was - if at all - in the re-development plan, but you'd think he would have had some in-put.

 

[Mutzo Nutzo]

I don’t know what’s more frightening, those figures or the fact we will be reliant on Liam Fox trying to negotiate new trade deals for us.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes it is, which made me even more depressed. I don't have any idea how involved he was - if at all - in the re-development plan, but you'd think he would have had some in-put.

Aye, wasn't being critical. As I've said earlier in this thread, there are precious few communities that have lost a huge employer/industry and managed to reinvent themselves successfully. Not an easy thing to do at all.

 

[Mutzo Nutzo]

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/eu-divorce-bill
reading that guff its a goodwill gesture we have the right to pay zero and let them take us to court ........

FFS Joey!

 

[davmaher]

Aye, wasn't being critical. As I've said earlier in this thread, there are precious few communities that have lost a huge employer/industry and managed to reinvent themselves successfully. Not an easy thing to do at all.

That's true, and as you also said, it's not just a question of throwing money at it.

 

[Groucho]

Aye, wasn't being critical. As I've said earlier in this thread, there are precious few communities that have lost a huge employer/industry and managed to reinvent themselves successfully. Not an easy thing to do at all.

It’s long overdue the time to knock the whole thing on the head if you ask me.

 

[davmaher]

I don’t know what’s more frightening, those figures or the fact we will be reliant on Liam Fox trying to negotiate new trade deals for us.

It does amaze me that the people complaining about how rubbish the deal the government have got are pretty much the same ones who believe we will negotiate these amazing trade deals despite the fact it will broadly be the same people doing our negotiating again.

 

[Joey66]

I see the news that @Joey66, @Old Blue 2 and @peteblue were waiting for has come out, we will be significantly better off with a no deal brexit...

Hang on one second, I had the graph turned upside down

Project fear 4 mate they will release Project fear 5 if we ever leave it will have more remakes then the movie Rocky....lol

 

[peteblue]

I see the news that @Joey66, @Old Blue 2 and @peteblue were waiting for has come out, we will be significantly better off with a no deal brexit...

Hang on one second, I had the graph turned upside down

We now have our Remainer in Chief Chancellor stating how bad it will be, conveniently especially in Leave areas, together with our BoE chief telling us it will be worse than WW2. These two head up the exact same organisations that said similar at the vote, but it didn’t happen, but now it must be true.

We are being systematically stitched up by the government and the elite. We will not leave the EU. They will scare the populace having learnt from their last failed attempt, and those that do not actually think for themselves will be happy.....