The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
Some truth in that, I guess
I was shocked by the PB-er who said "he's scared of driving on the right". To me that seems pathetically lame, but then I have spent a lifetime travelling, often to very remote places, so almost nothing phases me, travel-wise. But I am unusual, as you say. I actually get frustrated with more timorous friends and relations who say they want to travel but then quail at the "potential problems". To them "going to Tbilisi" seems impossibly difficult but it really isn't. It's easier than most places. Zero visa issues, you can stay a year, everything is cheap, the young speak English, the food is good the wine is ace and the sun shines reliably from May-October. Do it!
As for your other points, hmm. If you get a pet, or buy a 2nd home in the Algarve, or get married, you are making a conscious choice to make your life more rooted, and travel more tricky. You get great rewards, but you won't be able to zip around the world. I have chosen to be untramelled, and it does mean I am blissfully free to bugger off to anywhere that will let me in, but it also comes at a cost, it can be lonely, for a start (tho you make friends as you go, I have a new Mingrelian friend here in Tbilisi).
We all make these choices. We all have the freedom to choose
The brain re-wires itself when you learn a new task, such as driving on the right, and after a while anyone who has done it regularly will have neural connections separately for the tasks of left-side and right-side driving, such that with enough practice they can switch from one to the other without difficulty or confusion - essentially the brain has made them into separate 'jobs'.
Starting out, however, you don't have those neural connections and the activity is daunting and not without risk, since you're having to think everything out from scratch. Hence Anne Sacoolas.
There was a fascinating experiment where they made a bike where the front wheel turned in the opposite direction from the way the handlebars were turned. To begin with, the subject found it impossible to ride, and it took a fair bit of practice before he was able to ride it, and even then, as soon as he encountered a novel situation his instinctive reactions kicked in and he fell off the bike. Eventually after hours of practice the motor skills began to be 'learned' and brain scans showed the areas of the brain being dedicated to the new task.
Interestingly some confusion between the new task and the old persisted, such that when the subject went back to riding a normal bike, he made new mistakes. It took longer for the two tasks to become separately instinctive.
p.s. my dog says he's been to twelve countries including 20 US states, and he's just four. Pets can travel!
I found something similar to this with languages. For about a decade I used to work for a French company in Norway on a rotation and then, on occasion, teach at the headquarters of the company in Paris. Norway work was in Norwegian and English, and teaching was either teach in French and explain in English of teach in English and explain in French.
My problem I found was that when I first arrived in either Paris or Norway after an extended period in the other country my brain had trouble adjusting to the change. English was fine but, for the first few days after arriving Paris, if someone spoke to me in French my brain would say 'ah, foreign language' and would default to Norwegian and I would answer in that language. The same for the first few days back in Norway, I would automatically default to French.
The effect never wore off even after a decade. It seems my brain can handle English and one other language but goes into meltdown when a second new language is introduced.
I suspect the answer is that when you learn something closely related to another that is already instinctive, the brain starts off by 'building out' or 'copying over' from the skills you already have and - like in that bike experiment - the last stage is the breaking of links between two similar but separate tasks, and to reach that stage requires a lot of practice. Until you reach that point there is some sharing of connections that means you risk confusing the two or find it harder to switch. Thus in your case the same connections were being used for both foreign languages, with the most recently used dominating the connections.
Certainly using Leon's example, I can relate to the early days of driving on the right where it was all too easy to forget and set off on the wrong side, or get a complicated junction wrong. And, later when I was more experienced abroad, still making the occasional reverse mistake at home in the days after returning.
Now, I can switch between one and the other without any difficulty of mishap, and the only time I even notice when away is if I run into some particularly fiendish road layout which needs working out from scratch - basically the same as if you encountered similar at home.
Telling someone it's 'easy', when you can already do it, isn't particularly helpful, any more than telling someone that since you learned piano, they can too.
I'm always interested on side-of-road and accident figures.
Here we have road accident casualty figures far lower than almost everywhere else as far back as 1970 - to get comparables it has long been necessary to reach for places like Sweden.
There are engineering and regulatory explanations - eg use of roundabouts here rather than so many junctions, speed limits, priorite a droite in France German speed limits, and so on.
But I've always wondered how much of the difference is due to an isolated system - both due to the side of the road, and it being more difficult to get here in a car with the wheel on the wrong side.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
You can have two UK passports if you are a frequent traveller or need them for work reasons or to visit so-called 'incompatible' countries.
It doesn't, of course, help you get round the EU visa rules as entry and exit increasingly moves over to being recorded on a central database.
And if you're missing an exit stamp, that could be a problem whenever you tried to use that document again.
As long as the EU relies on old-fashioned stamps (why do they do this?!), then a 2nd passport allows you to evade the visa rules
I'm not encouraging it. But if they are stupid enough not to install e-gates everywhere, making life better for everyone, then pff
As I say, the problem will be solved by the free market (or e-gates). Countries that want British tourists and need the money will make it easy for us to go there. Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Portugal, probably Spain
The EU isn't relying on old fashion stamps, it is us British travellers who are. The EU is now recording it electronically, but we are scared of falling foul of the rules so need the proof we haven't (I gave you the example of the woman who was deported from Spain, although that may have been before the electronic system came into force, because her leaving Spain on a previous trip wasn't recorded).
To be honest I have no idea how it works with 2 passports, but if you do have a hiccup with the electronic system (and with your level of travel you might) and you have an incomplete passport (because you have 2) you might find yourself back on the plane to the UK tout sweet.
Soon the electronic system will be universal - but it isn't, or at least hasn't been recently. Otherwise those people without a stamp wouldn't have had any problem - the database would show that they returned home the previous time. A second UK passport is merely a duplicate piece of paper, and may be physically empty but doesn't allow you to travel as two different people! (even if you do have multiple accounts on PB)
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
I didn't say Roger is witless. I said his remark is. And it is. There is no way Britain is "losing 4% of GDP every year because Brexit". So, no it was not "ad hominem"
Besides: what do you expect me to do? Ignore an obviously false statement out of politeness? Say "Well done Rog on your great insight", even though it is clearly and foolishly wrong?
If I say something as daft as that - and it hardly unknown - please feel free to call my remark witless. I won't complain, I will thank you for pointing out my egregious error
And I'm sure if you asked Mr Meeks why he left PB, his answer won't be "because people chased me off"
An economist writes: Actually Roger is absolutely right and you have misunderstood what he has said. Since I don't engage in ad hominem remarks I won't call you witless. GDP is a flow concept. It measures the amount of output (or equivalently spending or income, the three are theoretically equivalent) produced in a given economy over a given period of time. The statement that Brexit has cost us x% of GDP per year (I won't comment on whether x is 4 or some other number as estimates differ, but FWIW 4 seems reasonable and is in the ballpark of the BOE and OBR estimates) means that the level of GDP is 4% below what it would have been if we hadn't Brexited, every year or every quarter. It doesn't imply lower GDP growth for ever, simply a permanently lower level of GDP vs this counterfactual. I hope this helps.
lol. So we Brexited six years ago and we've lost (on average?) 4% GDP a year and our economy is now about 20% smaller than it was in 2016? Crumbs!
Or is this from 2020 when we actually Brexited so we've lost 4% and counting, except that of course Covid intervened in 2020 and we lost about 10% of the economy due to that, then regained it, and how anyone can perceive actual Brexit effects in the middle of a global plague and now a war, fuck knows
And of course Roger said we are "losing 4% of GDP a year". Which means - in normal, sane English - 4% every year. If I say I earn about £30k a year, I mean every year. Otherwise I would specifiy "THIS year"
Apart from that, your comment is mere sophistry. I will refrain from calling it witless, in case I upset @Heathener
Again I think you are misunderstanding how GDP works. Saying GDP is 4% lower every year than it would have been otherwise does not involve the economy shrinking by 4% every year. Since GDP is a measure of national income, the simplest analogy is with personal income. Imagine you lose your job and your new job pays 4% less than your old job. Every year you are earning 4% less than you would have been if you stayed in your old job. This doesn't mean that your pay is going down by 4% every year.
This is my last comment on this, as I have dildos to attend to, and chisels lying idle
Let's go back to Roger's original remark
"Brexit is costing us 4% GDP a year"
A year, in ordinary English, means "every year", as I have said. "I earn £20k a year." "I drink thirty gallons of wine a year". "I go abroad 200 times a year". It clearly means EVERY year, not THIS year, let alone THIS YEAR BUT NEVER AGAIN
There are, in that light, only two common sense interpretations of Roger's comment. The first is: Brexit is costing us 4% of Britain's total economic output, our GDP, which has shrunk 4% every year since Brexit, and will likely continue to do so. But that is nonsense, as we all know
The other more charitable interpretation is that by Brexiting we are losing 4% potential growth, an opportunity cost, every year - and that without Brexit GDP growth would be, say, annually 7% rather than its present ~3%. But again, that's bollocks, for multiple reasons (and how would we even know in the context of Covid and war?)
I conclude that Roger's remark was witless. But I am sure he is a lovely guy, and he is very good on movies, and tells some cracking anecdotes, when he is in the mood, so peace to all
Good day
I don't think you understand this stuff at all. Roger was referring to the level of GDP not the growth rate. Whether you agree that the number is 4% or not is a different question, but he expressed it completely clearly and accurately. Go back and read my explanations of this, and if that doesn't work go and read up on GDP somewhere else. And stop calling people witless when you are speaking from a position of ignorance.
I went back to the original quote that Roger sourced. Here it is. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP
"Political distance from Brussels has been achieved. This is not up for question. However, economically speaking, there is vast room for improvement. The OBR calculates, in its current form, that Brexit is reducing our GDP by four per cent. This compares to around 1.5 per cent caused by Covid."
Gosh. No mention of "a year". No mention of this year next year any year. No arse-wobblingly stupid YEAR thing
Just "4%"
A bald total figure. He surely means total lost potential growth. He didn't say we are "losing 4% GDP a year" because that would be RIDIC. Roger misheard
You're categorically wrong Leon.
If it has cost us 4% this year, then it will also cost us 4% next year and the year after, unless we find a way to regain the lost growth.
I think Elwood is completely wrong on this matter personally and the statistics are bullshit made from flawed models rather than reality, but adding the words "a year" is redundant and has been done for dramatic effect, they are correct.
My objection is to the 4% claim which I think is unmitigated and hubristic bullshit, rather than a year claim which is just redundant language used for dramatic effect.
What will Ukraine's quid be for the Russian quo of clearing out? They have nothing to offer Putin that he wants and which also doesn't undermine Ukraine.
It's obviously going to be territory. The Ukrainians will have to decide the trade off between thousands of lives and economic ruin vs hundreds of kms of shell cratered mud and shithole izbas.
So from that you think the Ukrainians ought to give the Russians territory I assume? Of course they won't which will certainly cost them lives but if it means their children and grandchildren don't have to live in fear of Russian aggression it is deemed a price worth paying.
The Tories have a huge problem. A large chunk of Tory support backs Boris. That goes if they ditch him, this tends to be ex Lab hard-core brexiteers I think. But they're going to lose a large chunk of soft remain fiscally centre right voters that Cameron picked up and kept through the Corbyn era if he stays. Its insoluble, at least in time for the next GE.
They need to find someone who would be seen as a unity candidate, or perhaps a unity pairing. Brexit is finished, over with. What people did or said they thought on that subject is no longer relevant. They need to find someone who can heal wounds and demonstrate competence and has an air of trustworthiness .
I generally agree with what you are both saying. Brexit isn’t finished and in the past. Soon as by election comes up PB rightly turns to the 2016 stats. It’s still playing in UK elections, some places much more than others.
One big part of Boris appeal in 2019 election was his promise to unite the divided electorate and more the country on from Brexit division. He hasn’t. If anything Remainia are even more pissed off at the Tories about it. Tell me I am wrong.
But to be fair to Boris, how exactly does he achieve that promise? How does a PM actively move the electorate on from Brexit division?
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
Some truth in that, I guess
I was shocked by the PB-er who said "he's scared of driving on the right". To me that seems pathetically lame, but then I have spent a lifetime travelling, often to very remote places, so almost nothing phases me, travel-wise. But I am unusual, as you say. I actually get frustrated with more timorous friends and relations who say they want to travel but then quail at the "potential problems". To them "going to Tbilisi" seems impossibly difficult but it really isn't. It's easier than most places. Zero visa issues, you can stay a year, everything is cheap, the young speak English, the food is good the wine is ace and the sun shines reliably from May-October. Do it!
As for your other points, hmm. If you get a pet, or buy a 2nd home in the Algarve, or get married, you are making a conscious choice to make your life more rooted, and travel more tricky. You get great rewards, but you won't be able to zip around the world. I have chosen to be untramelled, and it does mean I am blissfully free to bugger off to anywhere that will let me in, but it also comes at a cost, it can be lonely, for a start (tho you make friends as you go, I have a new Mingrelian friend here in Tbilisi).
We all make these choices. We all have the freedom to choose
The brain re-wires itself when you learn a new task, such as driving on the right, and after a while anyone who has done it regularly will have neural connections separately for the tasks of left-side and right-side driving, such that with enough practice they can switch from one to the other without difficulty or confusion - essentially the brain has made them into separate 'jobs'.
Starting out, however, you don't have those neural connections and the activity is daunting and not without risk, since you're having to think everything out from scratch. Hence Anne Sacoolas.
There was a fascinating experiment where they made a bike where the front wheel turned in the opposite direction from the way the handlebars were turned. To begin with, the subject found it impossible to ride, and it took a fair bit of practice before he was able to ride it, and even then, as soon as he encountered a novel situation his instinctive reactions kicked in and he fell off the bike. Eventually after hours of practice the motor skills began to be 'learned' and brain scans showed the areas of the brain being dedicated to the new task.
Interestingly some confusion between the new task and the old persisted, such that when the subject went back to riding a normal bike, he made new mistakes. It took longer for the two tasks to become separately instinctive.
p.s. my dog says he's been to twelve countries including 20 US states, and he's just four. Pets can travel!
The bikes thing is interesting. In our metalwork classes in school the teacher made weird bikes. Ones where the wheels turned in a different direct to the wheel, one where you went backwards when peddling, a double decker bike, etc.
It was an interesting experiment because the subject had brain scans while he was doing it, and it revealed the extent of the re-wiring and rededication of brain 'space' that goes on when we learn something new. For me - as with Leon - it 'clicked' as an explanation for the various stages I've gone through when driving on the right. I've just been seven weeks in Europe and am now back and I can honestly say I made no mistakes nor had to think about it at all (except once on a petrol forecourt when I had to think about how best to navigate past the other moving traffic) - the point does arrive when it just comes naturally.
For a newbie, of course, they have the choice between avoidance - deciding it's not worth the effort or risk - or jumping in and learning through practice. There are various tricks - in the early days I used to keep a loop of string tied round the right side of the steering wheel as a reminder - but there is always the risk of a beginner getting it wrong, as Ms Sacoolas discovered with sadly tragic consequences.
It always takes me a few minutes, but then I am ok. I can forget at a junction on an empty road which of course is dangerous and sometimes have to think at roundabouts.
Re my bike post I meant handlebars turned in opposite direction to wheel.
Until most non-British cars were automatic it took me a few miles driving to get used to the position of the gear lever.
I haven’t checked but I’d imagine that there’s a fairly developed theory that British/English culture and politics can be explained via children’s literature, very often involving animals.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
I didn't say Roger is witless. I said his remark is. And it is. There is no way Britain is "losing 4% of GDP every year because Brexit". So, no it was not "ad hominem"
Besides: what do you expect me to do? Ignore an obviously false statement out of politeness? Say "Well done Rog on your great insight", even though it is clearly and foolishly wrong?
If I say something as daft as that - and it hardly unknown - please feel free to call my remark witless. I won't complain, I will thank you for pointing out my egregious error
And I'm sure if you asked Mr Meeks why he left PB, his answer won't be "because people chased me off"
An economist writes: Actually Roger is absolutely right and you have misunderstood what he has said. Since I don't engage in ad hominem remarks I won't call you witless. GDP is a flow concept. It measures the amount of output (or equivalently spending or income, the three are theoretically equivalent) produced in a given economy over a given period of time. The statement that Brexit has cost us x% of GDP per year (I won't comment on whether x is 4 or some other number as estimates differ, but FWIW 4 seems reasonable and is in the ballpark of the BOE and OBR estimates) means that the level of GDP is 4% below what it would have been if we hadn't Brexited, every year or every quarter. It doesn't imply lower GDP growth for ever, simply a permanently lower level of GDP vs this counterfactual. I hope this helps.
lol. So we Brexited six years ago and we've lost (on average?) 4% GDP a year and our economy is now about 20% smaller than it was in 2016? Crumbs!
Or is this from 2020 when we actually Brexited so we've lost 4% and counting, except that of course Covid intervened in 2020 and we lost about 10% of the economy due to that, then regained it, and how anyone can perceive actual Brexit effects in the middle of a global plague and now a war, fuck knows
And of course Roger said we are "losing 4% of GDP a year". Which means - in normal, sane English - 4% every year. If I say I earn about £30k a year, I mean every year. Otherwise I would specifiy "THIS year"
Apart from that, your comment is mere sophistry. I will refrain from calling it witless, in case I upset @Heathener
Again I think you are misunderstanding how GDP works. Saying GDP is 4% lower every year than it would have been otherwise does not involve the economy shrinking by 4% every year. Since GDP is a measure of national income, the simplest analogy is with personal income. Imagine you lose your job and your new job pays 4% less than your old job. Every year you are earning 4% less than you would have been if you stayed in your old job. This doesn't mean that your pay is going down by 4% every year.
This is my last comment on this, as I have dildos to attend to, and chisels lying idle
Let's go back to Roger's original remark
"Brexit is costing us 4% GDP a year"
A year, in ordinary English, means "every year", as I have said. "I earn £20k a year." "I drink thirty gallons of wine a year". "I go abroad 200 times a year". It clearly means EVERY year, not THIS year, let alone THIS YEAR BUT NEVER AGAIN
There are, in that light, only two common sense interpretations of Roger's comment. The first is: Brexit is costing us 4% of Britain's total economic output, our GDP, which has shrunk 4% every year since Brexit, and will likely continue to do so. But that is nonsense, as we all know
The other more charitable interpretation is that by Brexiting we are losing 4% potential growth, an opportunity cost, every year - and that without Brexit GDP growth would be, say, annually 7% rather than its present ~3%. But again, that's bollocks, for multiple reasons (and how would we even know in the context of Covid and war?)
I conclude that Roger's remark was witless. But I am sure he is a lovely guy, and he is very good on movies, and tells some cracking anecdotes, when he is in the mood, so peace to all
Good day
I don't think you understand this stuff at all. Roger was referring to the level of GDP not the growth rate. Whether you agree that the number is 4% or not is a different question, but he expressed it completely clearly and accurately. Go back and read my explanations of this, and if that doesn't work go and read up on GDP somewhere else. And stop calling people witless when you are speaking from a position of ignorance.
I went back to the original quote that Roger sourced. Here it is. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP
"Political distance from Brussels has been achieved. This is not up for question. However, economically speaking, there is vast room for improvement. The OBR calculates, in its current form, that Brexit is reducing our GDP by four per cent. This compares to around 1.5 per cent caused by Covid."
Gosh. No mention of "a year". No mention of this year next year any year. No arse-wobblingly stupid YEAR thing
Just "4%"
A bald total figure. He surely means total lost potential growth. He didn't say we are "losing 4% GDP a year" because that would be RIDIC. Roger misheard
Sigh. 4% or 4% a year is the same thing because GDP is a flow concept. You could argue that the "per year" is therefore redundant, although it is helpful in my opinion as it clarifies that this is a permanent effect on the level of GDP rather than a temporary effect that will be reversed. He definitely didn't mean a 4%pt reduction in potential growth, because that would be a far far bigger effect, which not even the most bitter of remoaners would suggest as the impact.
155 flights cancelled from British airports today. I'm sure Carlotta will be along to say it's better than every other country in the world but I'm not sure that will satisfy anyone.
It's F*cking Brexit! And it's about time the Labour Party started showing some leadership or Starmer should go and leave it to someone with some bottle
Outside of trans rights or abolishing the monarchy, maybe the worst thing Starmer could do is talk about Brexit. It's a trap. He needs to focus on issues that unite actual and potential labour voters (cost of living crisis, Johnson broke all the rules and is a crook).
Really, just the cost of living. I need to see from SKS some actual policies that will make my life better in the next parliament. I wasn't able to see his statement yesterday and I can't find a transcript now, but my understanding is hwe said Labout have a plan. Great. Bully for you. What is it?
I sympathise - it is quite difficult to find out what Labour's plan is, for some reason newspapers and journalists don't seem to want to write it out neatly or talk about it, and Labour's website isn't very clear either. What I have discovered from google:
1. Windfall tax on energy companies to give houses relief on energy bills. 2. Scrapping national insurance rise 3. Discount on business rates for SMEs 4. Rapid ramp-up of installing insulation into homes 5. Investigation by National Crime Agency into taxpayer money lost through fraud
And then from previous speech on universal credit: 6. Increase universal credit/keep pandemic uplift. 7. Reform to reduce universal credit taper rate/reduce marginal tax for those on low incomes 8. Increasing national minimum wage to £10/hour 9. Sick pay for all, right to flexible working, protection against unfair dismissal
The dreariest manifesto in history. My god. Starmer encapsulated in 9 bullet points
Targetting the key Insulate Britain/business rate tinkerer coalition of voters
If that really is going to be the Labour offering, they could still lose, even to Boris
But they must have some more interesting eyecatching stuff they are hiding. Surely. Surely
*head::Georgian table*
The more I think about this, the more annoyed I get with the "we can't tell you our policies in case the Tories implement them" argument. So what if they do? If they do and they work, that'll make me look more favourably on the other policies which I'm sceptical about.
A cut of VAT on energy and fuel, as suggested by Ed Davey, for example ?
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
I didn't say Roger is witless. I said his remark is. And it is. There is no way Britain is "losing 4% of GDP every year because Brexit". So, no it was not "ad hominem"
Besides: what do you expect me to do? Ignore an obviously false statement out of politeness? Say "Well done Rog on your great insight", even though it is clearly and foolishly wrong?
If I say something as daft as that - and it hardly unknown - please feel free to call my remark witless. I won't complain, I will thank you for pointing out my egregious error
And I'm sure if you asked Mr Meeks why he left PB, his answer won't be "because people chased me off"
An economist writes: Actually Roger is absolutely right and you have misunderstood what he has said. Since I don't engage in ad hominem remarks I won't call you witless. GDP is a flow concept. It measures the amount of output (or equivalently spending or income, the three are theoretically equivalent) produced in a given economy over a given period of time. The statement that Brexit has cost us x% of GDP per year (I won't comment on whether x is 4 or some other number as estimates differ, but FWIW 4 seems reasonable and is in the ballpark of the BOE and OBR estimates) means that the level of GDP is 4% below what it would have been if we hadn't Brexited, every year or every quarter. It doesn't imply lower GDP growth for ever, simply a permanently lower level of GDP vs this counterfactual. I hope this helps.
lol. So we Brexited six years ago and we've lost (on average?) 4% GDP a year and our economy is now about 20% smaller than it was in 2016? Crumbs!
Or is this from 2020 when we actually Brexited so we've lost 4% and counting, except that of course Covid intervened in 2020 and we lost about 10% of the economy due to that, then regained it, and how anyone can perceive actual Brexit effects in the middle of a global plague and now a war, fuck knows
And of course Roger said we are "losing 4% of GDP a year". Which means - in normal, sane English - 4% every year. If I say I earn about £30k a year, I mean every year. Otherwise I would specifiy "THIS year"
Apart from that, your comment is mere sophistry. I will refrain from calling it witless, in case I upset @Heathener
Again I think you are misunderstanding how GDP works. Saying GDP is 4% lower every year than it would have been otherwise does not involve the economy shrinking by 4% every year. Since GDP is a measure of national income, the simplest analogy is with personal income. Imagine you lose your job and your new job pays 4% less than your old job. Every year you are earning 4% less than you would have been if you stayed in your old job. This doesn't mean that your pay is going down by 4% every year.
This is my last comment on this, as I have dildos to attend to, and chisels lying idle
Let's go back to Roger's original remark
"Brexit is costing us 4% GDP a year"
A year, in ordinary English, means "every year", as I have said. "I earn £20k a year." "I drink thirty gallons of wine a year". "I go abroad 200 times a year". It clearly means EVERY year, not THIS year, let alone THIS YEAR BUT NEVER AGAIN
There are, in that light, only two common sense interpretations of Roger's comment. The first is: Brexit is costing us 4% of Britain's total economic output, our GDP, which has shrunk 4% every year since Brexit, and will likely continue to do so. But that is nonsense, as we all know
The other more charitable interpretation is that by Brexiting we are losing 4% potential growth, an opportunity cost, every year - and that without Brexit GDP growth would be, say, annually 7% rather than its present ~3%. But again, that's bollocks, for multiple reasons (and how would we even know in the context of Covid and war?)
I conclude that Roger's remark was witless. But I am sure he is a lovely guy, and he is very good on movies, and tells some cracking anecdotes, when he is in the mood, so peace to all
Good day
I don't think you understand this stuff at all. Roger was referring to the level of GDP not the growth rate. Whether you agree that the number is 4% or not is a different question, but he expressed it completely clearly and accurately. Go back and read my explanations of this, and if that doesn't work go and read up on GDP somewhere else. And stop calling people witless when you are speaking from a position of ignorance.
I went back to the original quote that Roger sourced. Here it is. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP
"Political distance from Brussels has been achieved. This is not up for question. However, economically speaking, there is vast room for improvement. The OBR calculates, in its current form, that Brexit is reducing our GDP by four per cent. This compares to around 1.5 per cent caused by Covid."
Gosh. No mention of "a year". No mention of this year next year any year. No arse-wobblingly stupid YEAR thing
Just "4%"
A bald total figure. He surely means total lost potential growth. He didn't say we are "losing 4% GDP a year" because that would be RIDIC. Roger misheard
You're categorically wrong Leon.
If it has cost us 4% this year, then it will also cost us 4% next year and the year after, unless we find a way to regain the lost growth.
I think Elwood is completely wrong on this matter personally and the statistics are bullshit made from flawed models rather than reality, but adding the words "a year" is redundant and has been done for dramatic effect, they are correct.
My objection is to the 4% claim which I think is unmitigated and hubristic bullshit, rather than a year claim which is just redundant language used for dramatic effect.
lol. Ellwood didn't say "a year". Roger misheard. I am right
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
I didn't say Roger is witless. I said his remark is. And it is. There is no way Britain is "losing 4% of GDP every year because Brexit". So, no it was not "ad hominem"
Besides: what do you expect me to do? Ignore an obviously false statement out of politeness? Say "Well done Rog on your great insight", even though it is clearly and foolishly wrong?
If I say something as daft as that - and it hardly unknown - please feel free to call my remark witless. I won't complain, I will thank you for pointing out my egregious error
And I'm sure if you asked Mr Meeks why he left PB, his answer won't be "because people chased me off"
An economist writes: Actually Roger is absolutely right and you have misunderstood what he has said. Since I don't engage in ad hominem remarks I won't call you witless. GDP is a flow concept. It measures the amount of output (or equivalently spending or income, the three are theoretically equivalent) produced in a given economy over a given period of time. The statement that Brexit has cost us x% of GDP per year (I won't comment on whether x is 4 or some other number as estimates differ, but FWIW 4 seems reasonable and is in the ballpark of the BOE and OBR estimates) means that the level of GDP is 4% below what it would have been if we hadn't Brexited, every year or every quarter. It doesn't imply lower GDP growth for ever, simply a permanently lower level of GDP vs this counterfactual. I hope this helps.
lol. So we Brexited six years ago and we've lost (on average?) 4% GDP a year and our economy is now about 20% smaller than it was in 2016? Crumbs!
Or is this from 2020 when we actually Brexited so we've lost 4% and counting, except that of course Covid intervened in 2020 and we lost about 10% of the economy due to that, then regained it, and how anyone can perceive actual Brexit effects in the middle of a global plague and now a war, fuck knows
And of course Roger said we are "losing 4% of GDP a year". Which means - in normal, sane English - 4% every year. If I say I earn about £30k a year, I mean every year. Otherwise I would specifiy "THIS year"
Apart from that, your comment is mere sophistry. I will refrain from calling it witless, in case I upset @Heathener
Again I think you are misunderstanding how GDP works. Saying GDP is 4% lower every year than it would have been otherwise does not involve the economy shrinking by 4% every year. Since GDP is a measure of national income, the simplest analogy is with personal income. Imagine you lose your job and your new job pays 4% less than your old job. Every year you are earning 4% less than you would have been if you stayed in your old job. This doesn't mean that your pay is going down by 4% every year.
This is my last comment on this, as I have dildos to attend to, and chisels lying idle
Let's go back to Roger's original remark
"Brexit is costing us 4% GDP a year"
A year, in ordinary English, means "every year", as I have said. "I earn £20k a year." "I drink thirty gallons of wine a year". "I go abroad 200 times a year". It clearly means EVERY year, not THIS year, let alone THIS YEAR BUT NEVER AGAIN
There are, in that light, only two common sense interpretations of Roger's comment. The first is: Brexit is costing us 4% of Britain's total economic output, our GDP, which has shrunk 4% every year since Brexit, and will likely continue to do so. But that is nonsense, as we all know
The other more charitable interpretation is that by Brexiting we are losing 4% potential growth, an opportunity cost, every year - and that without Brexit GDP growth would be, say, annually 7% rather than its present ~3%. But again, that's bollocks, for multiple reasons (and how would we even know in the context of Covid and war?)
I conclude that Roger's remark was witless. But I am sure he is a lovely guy, and he is very good on movies, and tells some cracking anecdotes, when he is in the mood, so peace to all
Good day
I don't think you understand this stuff at all. Roger was referring to the level of GDP not the growth rate. Whether you agree that the number is 4% or not is a different question, but he expressed it completely clearly and accurately. Go back and read my explanations of this, and if that doesn't work go and read up on GDP somewhere else. And stop calling people witless when you are speaking from a position of ignorance.
I went back to the original quote that Roger sourced. Here it is. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP
"Political distance from Brussels has been achieved. This is not up for question. However, economically speaking, there is vast room for improvement. The OBR calculates, in its current form, that Brexit is reducing our GDP by four per cent. This compares to around 1.5 per cent caused by Covid."
Gosh. No mention of "a year". No mention of this year next year any year. No arse-wobblingly stupid YEAR thing
Just "4%"
A bald total figure. He surely means total lost potential growth. He didn't say we are "losing 4% GDP a year" because that would be RIDIC. Roger misheard
Sigh. 4% or 4% a year is the same thing because GDP is a flow concept. You could argue that the "per year" is therefore redundant, although it is helpful in my opinion as it clarifies that this is a permanent effect on the level of GDP rather than a temporary effect that will be reversed. He definitely didn't mean a 4%pt reduction in potential growth, because that would be a far far bigger effect, which not even the most bitter of remoaners would suggest as the impact.
lol. Ellwood didn't say "a year". Roger misheard. I am right
boulay is angry and sad at how Boris has turned out as PM. I'm not because his character was there for all to see. You can't be disappointed by someone from whom you expect nothing less. He is shameless and always has been.
Very few here are arguing he might survive. It's seems to be accepted generally that it's a matter of when, not if, he gets ousted. However Betfair punters are less certain.
Boris to be PM at the next GE market
Yes 2.76-2.82 (36% chance) No 1.55-1.57 (64% chance)
Easy money to be made if you are sure he is going before the next GE.
An exccellent post and one of the very few -even among the civilised on here- to spot the huge hole in Boulay's post. It isn't even one of those 'but we thought he would get the trains running on time'. It's 'we thought he might know someone who would get the trains running on time"
"So what if he's a shameless liar". .........Until half his party noticed and then he was Shocked!
You don't post enough.
PS. I lost my £13 on your 8/1 Derby tip!
I hold my hand up that I was utterly wrong about Boris - better a sinner repenteth and all that….
I was hoping he would be Prince Hal turned into Henry V, a dissolute arse made good by the weight and grim responsibility of power. I thought/hoped that once he finally had got to world king he would want to make a difference and be a great leader however he just stayed a dissolute arse, just with a crown. And bad wallpaper.
I don’t think it’s wrong however to believe that a good PM can he hands off and put capable people in charge and simply act as a chairman of the board type - clearly just not Boris.
What will Ukraine's quid be for the Russian quo of clearing out? They have nothing to offer Putin that he wants and which also doesn't undermine Ukraine.
It's obviously going to be territory. The Ukrainians will have to decide the trade off between thousands of lives and economic ruin vs hundreds of kms of shell cratered mud and shithole izbas.
Maybe, but I don't think Ukraine will see any advantage to conceding territory, short of outright defeat, which no-one should want. Maybe the 2014 territories plus a token such as Mariupol, which is dead and pointless now, thanks to the Russians.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
Some truth in that, I guess
I was shocked by the PB-er who said "he's scared of driving on the right". To me that seems pathetically lame, but then I have spent a lifetime travelling, often to very remote places, so almost nothing phases me, travel-wise. But I am unusual, as you say. I actually get frustrated with more timorous friends and relations who say they want to travel but then quail at the "potential problems". To them "going to Tbilisi" seems impossibly difficult but it really isn't. It's easier than most places. Zero visa issues, you can stay a year, everything is cheap, the young speak English, the food is good the wine is ace and the sun shines reliably from May-October. Do it!
As for your other points, hmm. If you get a pet, or buy a 2nd home in the Algarve, or get married, you are making a conscious choice to make your life more rooted, and travel more tricky. You get great rewards, but you won't be able to zip around the world. I have chosen to be untramelled, and it does mean I am blissfully free to bugger off to anywhere that will let me in, but it also comes at a cost, it can be lonely, for a start (tho you make friends as you go, I have a new Mingrelian friend here in Tbilisi).
We all make these choices. We all have the freedom to choose
Good post. Only bit I disagree with is the last para and I have to say normally I wouldn't disagree with you because as you say if you decide to do something then you need to take responsibility for that. However that wasn't the choice with Brexit. If you already had a holiday home (and to make it worse had pets) you were completely scuppered by it. You made the decision when none of these restrictions applied. Now the pets stuff could be made a lot easier, but as usual the UK Govt has made a pigs ear of it. I wouldn't mind an offline conversation with @IanB2 who I know travels with his dog. One of my friends sold his house to travel around Europe in a motorhome. Brexit caused him to have to come home and live on his son's driveway!
Re the first para I fully agree, but as you accept all people are different and have different hang ups which aren't rational, but we aren't rational beings and I reckon if the travel a lot you get less fazed. To give you an example I suffer from anxiety (like many) but only in a very specific and unusual form, mainly to do with taking on campaigns, which I do a lot of. I have none of the normal anxieties and for instance I can present to 100 people without any problem. I once attended a seminar of people with anxieties and the people all had to say what they suffered from. As it went around the group I was thinking 'I shouldn't be here, you are all a bunch of loonies', except when I spoke they all looked at me as if to say 'What the hell is wrong with you? Why take on these campaigns'
I guess in a nut shell most of us are a bit nutty. Those that aren't are a bit boring. You are definitely not boring
The biggest challenge with extended travel in Europe is the 90/180 visa rules for humans. The dog thing is surmountable - the new paperwork is an immense hassle, but it's a question of money and preparation, and doesn't actually stop you travelling (the new certificate lasts four months, but if it expires you just pay for a new one). And many Brits are doing what I have managed to do, and secure a new pet passport from a friendly vet in an EU country - which should make it cheaper and easier for us to travel in future. But there's a tussle going on with the UK government - which wants to be inside the scheme without accepting that the EU sets the rules - and meanwhile the EU Commission is trying very hard to stop British holidaymakers getting hold of EU PPs. On the relevant Facebook and other forums there are acres of posts discussing it all.
Thanks @IanB2 The problem we have found is you need to get the health certificate within 10 days of travel, but we can't get a vet to do one for about 2 months which means travel needs long term planning and no just popping over the channel for a weekend. Interested in being able to get an EU passport if possible. What do you also do re worming certificate prior to returning. Is that simple and how much?
And of course the other annoying thing is it costs more to take your bloody dog to France than it costs to take yourself.
If you know you're going to travel, you book the AHC with your vet weeks in advance. Or you can use one of the few specialists that has popped up (Abbeywell, Passpets...) - they charge more for short notice certificates, but if you don't mind paying, you can get one quickly. Abbeywell regularly bails out people who pitch up at Dover or for the tunnel with flawed documentation and need their holiday rescuing.
The worming certificate is easy - some people just call at vets and have it done there and then; I like to have an appointment lined up. You have five days (so for a weekend break can actually have it done in the UK before you leave) and it typically costs between €15-€25. Nearer Calais, for some mysterious reason, many vets are charging €50 or more, hence it is cheaper to get it done further away. Last October in Freiburg it cost me €11 and last month in Bergamo €20.
Getting a PP was easy, and is gradually becoming more difficult. In France and Belgium it's already exceptionally difficult, in Italy it can be done but the bureaucracy you have to jump through is worse, in Spain and Germany it's still possible if you hunt around - but one feels the door is slowly being closed. Whether they get as far as trying to 'disqualify' those already issued to travelling Brits is another matter. If you have a foreign address, long-stay visa or residency it is much easier.
Cheers Ian. I am thinking of buying a property in France with a friend. We were quoted £150 for the health certificate and we have 3 dogs between us so that is £450/trip! If we have a property and can get an EU passport that would be great. I knew about the fee thing as you get nearer to Calais. Free market and all that. Can't blame them. Didn't know about the short notice guys. That is useful because 6 - 8 weeks is ridiculous. Our vet, which is a reasonable sized practise and very good, has only one person qualified to issue the certificate and apparently it is labourious, hence the fee.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
Some truth in that, I guess
I was shocked by the PB-er who said "he's scared of driving on the right". To me that seems pathetically lame, but then I have spent a lifetime travelling, often to very remote places, so almost nothing phases me, travel-wise. But I am unusual, as you say. I actually get frustrated with more timorous friends and relations who say they want to travel but then quail at the "potential problems". To them "going to Tbilisi" seems impossibly difficult but it really isn't. It's easier than most places. Zero visa issues, you can stay a year, everything is cheap, the young speak English, the food is good the wine is ace and the sun shines reliably from May-October. Do it!
As for your other points, hmm. If you get a pet, or buy a 2nd home in the Algarve, or get married, you are making a conscious choice to make your life more rooted, and travel more tricky. You get great rewards, but you won't be able to zip around the world. I have chosen to be untramelled, and it does mean I am blissfully free to bugger off to anywhere that will let me in, but it also comes at a cost, it can be lonely, for a start (tho you make friends as you go, I have a new Mingrelian friend here in Tbilisi).
We all make these choices. We all have the freedom to choose
The brain re-wires itself when you learn a new task, such as driving on the right, and after a while anyone who has done it regularly will have neural connections separately for the tasks of left-side and right-side driving, such that with enough practice they can switch from one to the other without difficulty or confusion - essentially the brain has made them into separate 'jobs'.
Starting out, however, you don't have those neural connections and the activity is daunting and not without risk, since you're having to think everything out from scratch. Hence Anne Sacoolas.
There was a fascinating experiment where they made a bike where the front wheel turned in the opposite direction from the way the handlebars were turned. To begin with, the subject found it impossible to ride, and it took a fair bit of practice before he was able to ride it, and even then, as soon as he encountered a novel situation his instinctive reactions kicked in and he fell off the bike. Eventually after hours of practice the motor skills began to be 'learned' and brain scans showed the areas of the brain being dedicated to the new task.
Interestingly some confusion between the new task and the old persisted, such that when the subject went back to riding a normal bike, he made new mistakes. It took longer for the two tasks to become separately instinctive.
p.s. my dog says he's been to twelve countries including 20 US states, and he's just four. Pets can travel!
I found something similar to this with languages. For about a decade I used to work for a French company in Norway on a rotation and then, on occasion, teach at the headquarters of the company in Paris. Norway work was in Norwegian and English, and teaching was either teach in French and explain in English of teach in English and explain in French.
My problem I found was that when I first arrived in either Paris or Norway after an extended period in the other country my brain had trouble adjusting to the change. English was fine but, for the first few days after arriving Paris, if someone spoke to me in French my brain would say 'ah, foreign language' and would default to Norwegian and I would answer in that language. The same for the first few days back in Norway, I would automatically default to French.
The effect never wore off even after a decade. It seems my brain can handle English and one other language but goes into meltdown when a second new language is introduced.
I suspect the answer is that when you learn something closely related to another that is already instinctive, the brain starts off by 'building out' or 'copying over' from the skills you already have and - like in that bike experiment - the last stage is the breaking of links between two similar but separate tasks, and to reach that stage requires a lot of practice. Until you reach that point there is some sharing of connections that means you risk confusing the two or find it harder to switch. Thus in your case the same connections were being used for both foreign languages, with the most recently used dominating the connections.
Certainly using Leon's example, I can relate to the early days of driving on the right where it was all too easy to forget and set off on the wrong side, or get a complicated junction wrong. And, later when I was more experienced abroad, still making the occasional reverse mistake at home in the days after returning.
Now, I can switch between one and the other without any difficulty of mishap, and the only time I even notice when away is if I run into some particularly fiendish road layout which needs working out from scratch - basically the same as if you encountered similar at home.
Telling someone it's 'easy', when you can already do it, isn't particularly helpful, any more than telling someone that since you learned piano, they can too.
I'm always interested on side-of-road and accident figures.
Here we have road accident casualty figures far lower than almost everywhere else as far back as 1970 - to get comparables it has long been necessary to reach for places like Sweden.
There are engineering and regulatory explanations - eg use of roundabouts here rather than so many junctions, speed limits, priorite a droite in France German speed limits, and so on.
But I've always wondered how much of the difference is due to an isolated system - both due to the side of the road, and it being more difficult to get here in a car with the wheel on the wrong side.
I don't think any of those are relevant. Side of the road, objectively, makes no difference either way, and given the tiny minority of drivers driving on an unaccustomed side, both here and there, I can't see that would ever explain significant differentials in accident rates. France doesn't really have the priorite system any more, and I don't think German Autoroutes have dramatically worse accident rates (but may be wrong?).
Portugal always used to be one of the worst in Europe.
I suspect the explanation is some combination of geography (mountain roads, for example), culture (anyone who has driven in Europe knows that habits are different), weather and physical safety measures.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
I didn't say Roger is witless. I said his remark is. And it is. There is no way Britain is "losing 4% of GDP every year because Brexit". So, no it was not "ad hominem"
Besides: what do you expect me to do? Ignore an obviously false statement out of politeness? Say "Well done Rog on your great insight", even though it is clearly and foolishly wrong?
If I say something as daft as that - and it hardly unknown - please feel free to call my remark witless. I won't complain, I will thank you for pointing out my egregious error
And I'm sure if you asked Mr Meeks why he left PB, his answer won't be "because people chased me off"
An economist writes: Actually Roger is absolutely right and you have misunderstood what he has said. Since I don't engage in ad hominem remarks I won't call you witless. GDP is a flow concept. It measures the amount of output (or equivalently spending or income, the three are theoretically equivalent) produced in a given economy over a given period of time. The statement that Brexit has cost us x% of GDP per year (I won't comment on whether x is 4 or some other number as estimates differ, but FWIW 4 seems reasonable and is in the ballpark of the BOE and OBR estimates) means that the level of GDP is 4% below what it would have been if we hadn't Brexited, every year or every quarter. It doesn't imply lower GDP growth for ever, simply a permanently lower level of GDP vs this counterfactual. I hope this helps.
lol. So we Brexited six years ago and we've lost (on average?) 4% GDP a year and our economy is now about 20% smaller than it was in 2016? Crumbs!
Or is this from 2020 when we actually Brexited so we've lost 4% and counting, except that of course Covid intervened in 2020 and we lost about 10% of the economy due to that, then regained it, and how anyone can perceive actual Brexit effects in the middle of a global plague and now a war, fuck knows
And of course Roger said we are "losing 4% of GDP a year". Which means - in normal, sane English - 4% every year. If I say I earn about £30k a year, I mean every year. Otherwise I would specifiy "THIS year"
Apart from that, your comment is mere sophistry. I will refrain from calling it witless, in case I upset @Heathener
Again I think you are misunderstanding how GDP works. Saying GDP is 4% lower every year than it would have been otherwise does not involve the economy shrinking by 4% every year. Since GDP is a measure of national income, the simplest analogy is with personal income. Imagine you lose your job and your new job pays 4% less than your old job. Every year you are earning 4% less than you would have been if you stayed in your old job. This doesn't mean that your pay is going down by 4% every year.
This is my last comment on this, as I have dildos to attend to, and chisels lying idle
Let's go back to Roger's original remark
"Brexit is costing us 4% GDP a year"
A year, in ordinary English, means "every year", as I have said. "I earn £20k a year." "I drink thirty gallons of wine a year". "I go abroad 200 times a year". It clearly means EVERY year, not THIS year, let alone THIS YEAR BUT NEVER AGAIN
There are, in that light, only two common sense interpretations of Roger's comment. The first is: Brexit is costing us 4% of Britain's total economic output, our GDP, which has shrunk 4% every year since Brexit, and will likely continue to do so. But that is nonsense, as we all know
The other more charitable interpretation is that by Brexiting we are losing 4% potential growth, an opportunity cost, every year - and that without Brexit GDP growth would be, say, annually 7% rather than its present ~3%. But again, that's bollocks, for multiple reasons (and how would we even know in the context of Covid and war?)
I conclude that Roger's remark was witless. But I am sure he is a lovely guy, and he is very good on movies, and tells some cracking anecdotes, when he is in the mood, so peace to all
Good day
I don't think you understand this stuff at all. Roger was referring to the level of GDP not the growth rate. Whether you agree that the number is 4% or not is a different question, but he expressed it completely clearly and accurately. Go back and read my explanations of this, and if that doesn't work go and read up on GDP somewhere else. And stop calling people witless when you are speaking from a position of ignorance.
I went back to the original quote that Roger sourced. Here it is. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP
"Political distance from Brussels has been achieved. This is not up for question. However, economically speaking, there is vast room for improvement. The OBR calculates, in its current form, that Brexit is reducing our GDP by four per cent. This compares to around 1.5 per cent caused by Covid."
Gosh. No mention of "a year". No mention of this year next year any year. No arse-wobblingly stupid YEAR thing
Just "4%"
A bald total figure. He surely means total lost potential growth. He didn't say we are "losing 4% GDP a year" because that would be RIDIC. Roger misheard
Sigh. 4% or 4% a year is the same thing because GDP is a flow concept. You could argue that the "per year" is therefore redundant, although it is helpful in my opinion as it clarifies that this is a permanent effect on the level of GDP rather than a temporary effect that will be reversed. He definitely didn't mean a 4%pt reduction in potential growth, because that would be a far far bigger effect, which not even the most bitter of remoaners would suggest as the impact.
lol. Ellwood didn't say "a year". Roger misheard. I am right
What a waste of your time.
And mine, for that matter. Good day!
Arguing with people who are wrong on the Internet is never a waste of time.
I've never driven outside of the UK, and I never intend to try driving on the right. I consider the risk too great.
My wife has done it a couple of times years ago on holiday, and while generally OK she tended to keep the speed right down and we had a couple of anxious moments. I don't think she'd want to do it again.
It's odd, as it's not something that's ever bothered me. The only time I briefly had a problem was encountering an automatic for the first time, in the US. The temptation to search for the non existent clutch, and consequent left foot braking, took a good half an hour to eradicate.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
Some truth in that, I guess
I was shocked by the PB-er who said "he's scared of driving on the right". To me that seems pathetically lame, but then I have spent a lifetime travelling, often to very remote places, so almost nothing phases me, travel-wise. But I am unusual, as you say. I actually get frustrated with more timorous friends and relations who say they want to travel but then quail at the "potential problems". To them "going to Tbilisi" seems impossibly difficult but it really isn't. It's easier than most places. Zero visa issues, you can stay a year, everything is cheap, the young speak English, the food is good the wine is ace and the sun shines reliably from May-October. Do it!
As for your other points, hmm. If you get a pet, or buy a 2nd home in the Algarve, or get married, you are making a conscious choice to make your life more rooted, and travel more tricky. You get great rewards, but you won't be able to zip around the world. I have chosen to be untramelled, and it does mean I am blissfully free to bugger off to anywhere that will let me in, but it also comes at a cost, it can be lonely, for a start (tho you make friends as you go, I have a new Mingrelian friend here in Tbilisi).
We all make these choices. We all have the freedom to choose
Good post. Only bit I disagree with is the last para and I have to say normally I wouldn't disagree with you because as you say if you decide to do something then you need to take responsibility for that. However that wasn't the choice with Brexit. If you already had a holiday home (and to make it worse had pets) you were completely scuppered by it. You made the decision when none of these restrictions applied. Now the pets stuff could be made a lot easier, but as usual the UK Govt has made a pigs ear of it. I wouldn't mind an offline conversation with @IanB2 who I know travels with his dog. One of my friends sold his house to travel around Europe in a motorhome. Brexit caused him to have to come home and live on his son's driveway!
Re the first para I fully agree, but as you accept all people are different and have different hang ups which aren't rational, but we aren't rational beings and I reckon if the travel a lot you get less fazed. To give you an example I suffer from anxiety (like many) but only in a very specific and unusual form, mainly to do with taking on campaigns, which I do a lot of. I have none of the normal anxieties and for instance I can present to 100 people without any problem. I once attended a seminar of people with anxieties and the people all had to say what they suffered from. As it went around the group I was thinking 'I shouldn't be here, you are all a bunch of loonies', except when I spoke they all looked at me as if to say 'What the hell is wrong with you? Why take on these campaigns'
I guess in a nut shell most of us are a bit nutty. Those that aren't are a bit boring. You are definitely not boring
The biggest challenge with extended travel in Europe is the 90/180 visa rules for humans. The dog thing is surmountable - the new paperwork is an immense hassle, but it's a question of money and preparation, and doesn't actually stop you travelling (the new certificate lasts four months, but if it expires you just pay for a new one). And many Brits are doing what I have managed to do, and secure a new pet passport from a friendly vet in an EU country - which should make it cheaper and easier for us to travel in future. But there's a tussle going on with the UK government - which wants to be inside the scheme without accepting that the EU sets the rules - and meanwhile the EU Commission is trying very hard to stop British holidaymakers getting hold of EU PPs. On the relevant Facebook and other forums there are acres of posts discussing it all.
Thanks @IanB2 The problem we have found is you need to get the health certificate within 10 days of travel, but we can't get a vet to do one for about 2 months which means travel needs long term planning and no just popping over the channel for a weekend. Interested in being able to get an EU passport if possible. What do you also do re worming certificate prior to returning. Is that simple and how much?
And of course the other annoying thing is it costs more to take your bloody dog to France than it costs to take yourself.
If you know you're going to travel, you book the AHC with your vet weeks in advance. Or you can use one of the few specialists that has popped up (Abbeywell, Passpets...) - they charge more for short notice certificates, but if you don't mind paying, you can get one quickly. Abbeywell regularly bails out people who pitch up at Dover or for the tunnel with flawed documentation and need their holiday rescuing.
The worming certificate is easy - some people just call at vets and have it done there and then; I like to have an appointment lined up. You have five days (so for a weekend break can actually have it done in the UK before you leave) and it typically costs between €15-€25. Nearer Calais, for some mysterious reason, many vets are charging €50 or more, hence it is cheaper to get it done further away. Last October in Freiburg it cost me €11 and last month in Bergamo €20.
Getting a PP was easy, and is gradually becoming more difficult. In France and Belgium it's already exceptionally difficult, in Italy it can be done but the bureaucracy you have to jump through is worse, in Spain and Germany it's still possible if you hunt around - but one feels the door is slowly being closed. Whether they get as far as trying to 'disqualify' those already issued to travelling Brits is another matter. If you have a foreign address, long-stay visa or residency it is much easier.
Cheers Ian. I am thinking of buying a property in France with a friend. We were quoted £150 for the health certificate and we have 3 dogs between us so that is £450/trip! If we have a property and can get an EU passport that would be great. I knew about the fee thing as you get nearer to Calais. Free market and all that. Can't blame them. Didn't know about the short notice guys. That is useful because 6 - 8 weeks is ridiculous. Our vet, which is a reasonable sized practise and very good, has only one person qualified to issue the certificate and apparently it is labourious, hence the fee.
£150 is a little over the odds but not much - my vet charges £125 and Abbeywell, with notice, is I think £100. Most 'ordinary' vets in the UK only have one person trained up and authorised to issue them, hence the need to book and the waiting time - and some vets don't want the hassle and risk (people have been stopped from travelling due to minor admin slips and some go back to their vet wanting large amounts of compensation for a ruined holiday) and are deterring people by charging several £hundreds for them.
A lot of people - including vets - don't understand that one AHC can cover up to five dogs! Some vets charge a little more for the complexity of adding extra dogs onto a certificate, but you don't need separate certificates for the same "consignment" of non-commercially transported animals, assuming the owner is the same (and who would know?).
In France an address is pretty much required now, as the French have led the way in trying to clamp down on PPs for Brits, as is also an ICAD registration. Many vets won't issue a PP until the dog has been resident for three months, effectively excluding Brits on tourist visas. The very best bet for getting an EU PP is a trip to the Irish Republic - or even, currently (but very topical given the politics) Northern Ireland, since their odd status means their PPs are still valid. Spain is also a decent bet. If you join a relevant discussion forum you will be able to get some tips - although people are becoming more wary of publishing vets that are happy to deal with Brits, since the attention and numerous speculative enquiries they then get aren't always welcome and it looks pretty clear that some pro-Brexit people have been trying to make life difficult for those vets by trying to report them.
Does anyone know what would happen if there was a vonc in the commons which was carried? It seems it no longer forces a GE, but I can't find what the actual resulting situation would be.
PM either calls a GE or resigns and someone with the confidence of the house is summoned to lead If he doesnt resign HMQ dismisses him.
There isn't always a parliament but there is always a government. IMHO in this situation despite a resignation of government following a VONC (which is NC in government not an individual) the PM and government carry on until there is another.
If it is obvious that another person of the governing party might command the confidence of the house they would be given time by HM to test it out; ditto if another leader could cobble a coalition.
The backstop is a GE. Though in most circumstances you would reach the backstop fast. During a GE whoever is the government when the music stops (moment of dissolution) is still the government until it isn't.
Not having a government at all is what Johnny Foreigner does.
During this the palace consults with the PM and with cab sec and HM is advised by them.
Does HM ever have to make a personal choice between possibilities? That is a secret. I think the answer must be that it could happen.
So, in theory Tory rebels could back or abstain on a vonc motion which the LDs seem to be planning then without precipitating a GE. I don't think its likely of course, but who knows what might happen in coming days.
Don't know any precedent for it. Mr Speaker's call? I don't think it will be permitted.
Just seems there might be something there. The detail @wooliedyed and @bondegezou below seems to suggest that there's a possibility.
Leaving aside who gets to call a VONC, if one was called, of course any Tory MP could vote no confidence and, in sufficient numbers, that would bring down Johnson. If rebelling Tory MPs made clear that they were fine with Raab as deputy PM taking over while there was a leadership election, then a general election would be avoided, I think, hypothetically speaking. (Unless the non-rebel Tory MPs refused to support Raab, then they could team up with the opposition parties and force a general election.)
However, voting against your own party's government would generally mean immediate expulsion from the party. So there's then a bunch of ex-Tory, now independent MPs. Of course, a new leader could welcome those people back, but they wouldn't have to.
Thus, I think it's an unlikely hypothetical. However, if Johnson absolutely refused to go and the vast majority of the Conservative MPs wanted him gone and they couldn't get the 1922 Cttee to re-write the party rules, it does appear to offer a mechanism to depose Johnson.
It's similar to forming a new party. If the vast majority of Conservative MPs wanted, they could all resign the whip, form the New Conservative Party block in Parliament, VONC out Johnson and form a new Government. They could then worry about the mechanics of re-claiming control of the old party later.
It seems to me probable that even Johnson would buckle under the pressure to resign before we got to one of these extreme eventualities. But ultimately if Tory MPs want Johnson out, they can get him out.
boulay is angry and sad at how Boris has turned out as PM. I'm not because his character was there for all to see. You can't be disappointed by someone from whom you expect nothing less. He is shameless and always has been.
Very few here are arguing he might survive. It's seems to be accepted generally that it's a matter of when, not if, he gets ousted. However Betfair punters are less certain.
Boris to be PM at the next GE market
Yes 2.76-2.82 (36% chance) No 1.55-1.57 (64% chance)
Easy money to be made if you are sure he is going before the next GE.
An exccellent post and one of the very few -even among the civilised on here- to spot the huge hole in Boulay's post. It isn't even one of those 'but we thought he would get the trains running on time'. It's 'we thought he might know someone who would get the trains running on time"
"So what if he's a shameless liar". .........Until half his party noticed and then he was Shocked!
You don't post enough.
PS. I lost my £13 on your 8/1 Derby tip!
I hold my hand up that I was utterly wrong about Boris - better a sinner repenteth and all that….
I was hoping he would be Prince Hal turned into Henry V, a dissolute arse made good by the weight and grim responsibility of power. I thought/hoped that once he finally had got to world king he would want to make a difference and be a great leader however he just stayed a dissolute arse, just with a crown. And bad wallpaper.
I don’t think it’s wrong however to believe that a good PM can he hands off and put capable people in charge and simply act as a chairman of the board type - clearly just not Boris.
You can do it in a Presidential or Mayoral system. The big boss appoints capable but unambiguously subservient assistants, because nobody thinks that people in those roles are rivals.
It doesn't work if you have a Prime Minister and a Cabinet. If the Chancellor becomes too effective, he might challenge for the Premiership. Good-to-great PMs take that risk. A certain kind of bad PM (COUGHBorisCOUGH) don't. They surround themselves with noboides to emphasise their somebodyness.
What will Ukraine's quid be for the Russian quo of clearing out? They have nothing to offer Putin that he wants and which also doesn't undermine Ukraine.
It's obviously going to be territory. The Ukrainians will have to decide the trade off between thousands of lives and economic ruin vs hundreds of kms of shell cratered mud and shithole izbas.
Maybe, but I don't think Ukraine will see any advantage to conceding territory, short of outright defeat, which no-one should want. Maybe the 2014 territories plus a token such as Mariupol, which is dead and pointless now, thanks to the Russians.
There's also the knowledge that Russia cannot be trusted. Putin has made it quite clear that he wants all of Ukraine (and more), and any 'deal' would have to offer Ukraine security guarantees.
Which would be fine, aside from the fact that previous guarantees evaporated as soon as Russia first threw a strop in 2014. The west abandoned Ukraine.
As for 'giving' territory; Russia took Crimea in 2014, and used it as a base for their conflict now. They used DNR and LNR as bases for their current invasion. They are making noises about using Transniestria to invade Ukraine from the west - a threat which ties up Ukrainian troops. Give Russia Mariupol as a separate enclave and they'll use it to attack Ukraine again.
Ukraine won't trust Russia, and given Russia's behaviour in the past and the current conflict, it is an existential crisis for Ukraine. Ukraine might well fight to the death because they know Russia will kill them anyway.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
It was not @Leon who chased Alastair Meeks off this forum. He left because of a spat with another poster. I know because I was there when it happened, as were others.
You have made this accusation twice now against @Leon. It is unjustified and you really owe him an apology.
That is true, it was a pirate wot dun it.
Nonetheless Leon does have an uncanny ability to p*** other posters off. In my case I find his claimed expertise of autism unsubtly followed by the use of ASD as a derogatory narrative for former Prime Ministers particularly offensive. I suspect others could name their poison.
My gripe is I was on PB many months before realising not really knapping sex toys, so the joke was on me. 😕
I was excited at thought of a solid dildo or double dildo that could also be a fantastic saucy ornament for the bedroom 🤦♀️
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But this is politics. Not project management. That's my point
The Leavers were allowed to get away with scant attention to detail of how Brexit would work and what it would look like - and people rightly criticized it. But in the same vein, @SouthamObserver can't airily say Oh Keir Starmer could solve this, this and this problem with Brexit, not without giving us hard practical examples of how and when Starmer would fix these glitches
You see every problem through the lens of your job (or your wife's job?). You have a deformation professionelle, as the French say
"Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader perspective."
Basic project management applies across the board and actually I posted from my experience and training, but thought my wife's example was better than any I could give, but my simple point was that it is wrong to assume that you have to have a solution when identifying a problem. You do obviously then need a solution so any team made up of representatives from one project management skill is useless. In our house we are both evaluator types which leads to not making mistakes, but nothing getting done. There is nothing wrong with occasionally making mistakes. On the other side there are people like yourself which is just to say let's do it without any consideration of the how or the disasters you get yourself into because nobody is standing there going 'just hang on a minute' eg inventing a plane without wheels to land on, or a car without brakes.
But this isn't so. Retract
I am one of the few Leavers on here who was explicit from the start that Leaving would bring significant problems and economic pain, for quite a while. I was scathing about the Leavers who promised "the best deal ever in 3 minutes"; Laaving was obviously going to HURT
I didn't mean about the leaving the EU in general. I agree you said it would cause pain in the short term. I mean your outlook in general.
Just look at all your posts this morning. Everything thing is easy, just get over it, not a problem. Well for most people it isn't.
You have two passports (how?), you are single, you don't have an existing property abroad, you don't have a pet to travel with, you haven't been caught out accidently by the 90 day rule because your return trip wasn't recorded.
Lots of this stuff can't be solved by the average person here. For all of them they are stuffed by these changes. Lots of people worry more than you do about travel. They don't have your experience of travel.
Some truth in that, I guess
I was shocked by the PB-er who said "he's scared of driving on the right". To me that seems pathetically lame, but then I have spent a lifetime travelling, often to very remote places, so almost nothing phases me, travel-wise. But I am unusual, as you say. I actually get frustrated with more timorous friends and relations who say they want to travel but then quail at the "potential problems". To them "going to Tbilisi" seems impossibly difficult but it really isn't. It's easier than most places. Zero visa issues, you can stay a year, everything is cheap, the young speak English, the food is good the wine is ace and the sun shines reliably from May-October. Do it!
As for your other points, hmm. If you get a pet, or buy a 2nd home in the Algarve, or get married, you are making a conscious choice to make your life more rooted, and travel more tricky. You get great rewards, but you won't be able to zip around the world. I have chosen to be untramelled, and it does mean I am blissfully free to bugger off to anywhere that will let me in, but it also comes at a cost, it can be lonely, for a start (tho you make friends as you go, I have a new Mingrelian friend here in Tbilisi).
We all make these choices. We all have the freedom to choose
The brain re-wires itself when you learn a new task, such as driving on the right, and after a while anyone who has done it regularly will have neural connections separately for the tasks of left-side and right-side driving, such that with enough practice they can switch from one to the other without difficulty or confusion - essentially the brain has made them into separate 'jobs'.
Starting out, however, you don't have those neural connections and the activity is daunting and not without risk, since you're having to think everything out from scratch. Hence Anne Sacoolas.
There was a fascinating experiment where they made a bike where the front wheel turned in the opposite direction from the way the handlebars were turned. To begin with, the subject found it impossible to ride, and it took a fair bit of practice before he was able to ride it, and even then, as soon as he encountered a novel situation his instinctive reactions kicked in and he fell off the bike. Eventually after hours of practice the motor skills began to be 'learned' and brain scans showed the areas of the brain being dedicated to the new task.
Interestingly some confusion between the new task and the old persisted, such that when the subject went back to riding a normal bike, he made new mistakes. It took longer for the two tasks to become separately instinctive.
p.s. my dog says he's been to twelve countries including 20 US states, and he's just four. Pets can travel!
I found something similar to this with languages. For about a decade I used to work for a French company in Norway on a rotation and then, on occasion, teach at the headquarters of the company in Paris. Norway work was in Norwegian and English, and teaching was either teach in French and explain in English of teach in English and explain in French.
My problem I found was that when I first arrived in either Paris or Norway after an extended period in the other country my brain had trouble adjusting to the change. English was fine but, for the first few days after arriving Paris, if someone spoke to me in French my brain would say 'ah, foreign language' and would default to Norwegian and I would answer in that language. The same for the first few days back in Norway, I would automatically default to French.
The effect never wore off even after a decade. It seems my brain can handle English and one other language but goes into meltdown when a second new language is introduced.
High-level skills can quickly deteriorate when not used.
I once lived in Spain for six months, and on returning home through France realised I’d forgotten even basic French.
I’ve not flown a plane for a decade, there’s very good reasons that the next time I do, it will be several flights with an instructor before being allowed to go up solo.
Left and right handed cars though, no problem at all, even with manual gearboxes. Some skills eventually become so ingrained they get stored in the long term memory.
I have heard it said that one of the most perishable skills is landing a conventional aircraft on a carrier. That even after a few weeks off, refresher training is required.
Maybe @Dura_Ace can comment on that one, but yes, something so complex would require constant practice to remain good at it.
Back in the days of the Space Shuttle, the pilots would be flying in the training aircraft, and the mission specialists would be in the spacewalk tank, for weeks on end, and up until the last possible moment before launch.
A chap I knew actually wrote a shuttle landing simulator for the space shuttle - it was designed for a laptop format Sparc station (IIRC) that would be velcro'd in position on the actual space shuttle in orbit. The pilots could then practise landings. The idea was that they could practise landings on longer missions.
According to him, they programmed it with the various aerodynamic coefficients etc for the actual Shuttle. It was an early example of a flight simulator based on actual physics.
No one in the team could land it - crashed every time.
A bit worried, after some checking of their work, they asked someone from the astronaut office to come and try it.
The astronaut did a bunch of landings, apparently quite easily. He thanked them for the quality of the work....
Ha ha, brilliant story!
The Shuttle landing was totally nuts to even experienced pilots, an insane exercise in energy management that sees the thing drop tens of thousands of feet per minute, all programmed into a flight director on a head-up display, to keep the pilot on course. Oh, and it’s a glider, so no going around around if you get it wrong!
ComRes had some interesting polling out on yesterday and the relevant stuff around it Broadly - 'still an asset to the Tories? 30 yes 60 no but improved from 24/64 in January 'More likely to vote Tory if he goes? 23 more likely 51 no difference 16 less likely
Doesnt suggest a big vote shift on the cards either way to me. Biggest impact will be certainty to vote when he goes. Also suggests position is as we see, single digit lead that regardless of what happens leader wise should swingback to within MoE even stevens and lead to a minority Labour government
All caveated by CoL and the response
The above us my attempt at dispassionate analysis. Angry me wants to say feck the fat lying betrayer and then fine the curry prick and turf him out
He’s there till the next GE at least. Only 4 points behind in latest polling scarily.
They couldn’t manufacture another VONC just to produce this same result, that would make them a laughing stock.
It’s purgatory. 😱
The way in which Thatcher was actually ousted, was by most or all of the cabinet telling her that she no longer had their support. The second round leadership vote in 1990 was the way the Conservative MPs publicly told the cabinet that her days were numbered. This is pretty much the same situation that Mr Johnson is in now (albeit the a different voting procedure), and if half of the cabinet decide that he is too much of a liability for the next election, they can easily engineer his "resignation".
True. But this is a different type of cheerleading cabinet. Apparently in vintage days before I was born they didn’t have cheerleading cabinets, they balanced all the best people from all wings of party which meant it was strong government governing well. I prefer the sound of that.
What you are referring to is europhilia Ken Clark still in Lady Thatchers cabinet to make that revolt happen! This is sooooo different with all useless cheerleaders around Boris as the supposed big beasts today. That ain’t happening doofy. 😕 Boris and his cabinet are tough it out, don’t walk when out types, it’s the modern way.
I think why we are governed more poorly without vintage type politics of integrity, honour, and strong cabinets tbh.
Changing rules for another vonc ain’t happening either just to produce the same result. That would if anything strengthen Boris and make 1922 laughing stock, so they need to be very careful about manufacturing the next VONC they can’t keep throwing spaghetti at wall voncs getting nowhere.
We have to accept he’s in till the next election where he gets chance to defend his eighty seat majority. 😩😩😩😩😩
I wasn't trying to claim that is what would happen. It was just trying to point out that the prime minister's survival is now completely dependent on cabinet support. While I realise that Mr Johnson has filled his cabinet with Johnsonites*, if many in the cabinet come to the conlusion that they are toast if Johnson is still leader in the next GE campaign, they will turn on him quickly.
*As Johnson's policies change with every headline a Johnsonite is not someone who supports a political theory (unlike Thatcherites) but someone who supports a politician called Johnson.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
There is a difference between GDP and GDP Growth. Probably Roger is talking about the former and you the latter.
There is no way of interpreting Roger's remark without concluding it is witless
There you go again. You just can't help but going Ad Hominem, can you? With everyone.
Can't you just try and stop yourself? Your point about GDP may have been really valid but you chase people off this board, like Alastair Meekes, by being so flaming personally nasty all the time.
It was not @Leon who chased Alastair Meeks off this forum. He left because of a spat with another poster. I know because I was there when it happened, as were others.
You have made this accusation twice now against @Leon. It is unjustified and you really owe him an apology.
That is true, it was a pirate wot dun it.
Nonetheless Leon does have an uncanny ability to p*** other posters off. In my case I find his claimed expertise of autism unsubtly followed by the use of ASD as a derogatory narrative for former Prime Ministers particularly offensive. I suspect others could name their poison.
My gripe is I was on PB many months before realising not really knapping sex toys, so the joke was on me. 😕
I was excited at thought of a solid dildo or double dildo that could also be a fantastic saucy ornament for the bedroom 🤦♀️
A pirate was involved but poor Alistair had lost it by that point and had become truly obnoxious. A shame, as he has much to contribute.
I've never driven outside of the UK, and I never intend to try driving on the right. I consider the risk too great.
My wife has done it a couple of times years ago on holiday, and while generally OK she tended to keep the speed right down and we had a couple of anxious moments. I don't think she'd want to do it again.
It's odd, as it's not something that's ever bothered me. The only time I briefly had a problem was encountering an automatic for the first time, in the US. The temptation to search for the non existent clutch, and consequent left foot braking, took a good half an hour to eradicate.
I have done it forever , bit easier if you are driving a left hand drive car mind you but if in UK car you just need to keep your wits about you at roundabouts , easiest if other cars about it is when road is empty you are liable to do things wrong. Never had any issues I must say.
On holidays we came back from a week in the Lake District last night. It was a pleasant holiday although it rained far too much. My wife looked at the chaos at the airports and decided that it just wasn't worth it this year. She was right (as usual). I suppose that saved the UK about £3k off the balance of trade. I suspect that many more will do the same. It was also noticeable in the hotel and restaurants we visited that far more local people were now working in these establishments than we would have seen in previous years.
Try one of the less well known resorts in Turkey (the lira is collapsing), or somewhere like Georgia
And unless you have kids in tow (did you?) travelling at half term is cray cray
It was our first holiday without kids for 30 years. We had a fine time, relaxing and walking. If it had been a tad dryer and warmer it would have been perfect.
We did Turkey a couple of times with the kids before Covid. I wouldn't be in a rush to go back. I was more interested in your trips to northern Greece. Keep up the travelogue though. Who knows what might catch our fancy.
I can't recommend Epirus highly enough. It's got everything - spectacular mountains, beautiful beaches, lovely towns, historic villages, glorious monasteries and castles and battlefields and ruins, and outside August it is pretty empty. But avoid August. It is too hot then, anyway
I lived there for three years and fully agree - especially about avoiding August when the Italian hordes arrive
Comments
Here we have road accident casualty figures far lower than almost everywhere else as far back as 1970 - to get comparables it has long been necessary to reach for places like Sweden.
There are engineering and regulatory explanations - eg use of roundabouts here rather than so many junctions, speed limits, priorite a droite in France German speed limits, and so on.
But I've always wondered how much of the difference is due to an isolated system - both due to the side of the road, and it being more difficult to get here in a car with the wheel on the wrong side.
If it has cost us 4% this year, then it will also cost us 4% next year and the year after, unless we find a way to regain the lost growth.
I think Elwood is completely wrong on this matter personally and the statistics are bullshit made from flawed models rather than reality, but adding the words "a year" is redundant and has been done for dramatic effect, they are correct.
My objection is to the 4% claim which I think is unmitigated and hubristic bullshit, rather than a year claim which is just redundant language used for dramatic effect.
One big part of Boris appeal in 2019 election was his promise to unite the divided electorate and more the country on from Brexit division. He hasn’t. If anything Remainia are even more pissed off at the Tories about it. Tell me I am wrong.
But to be fair to Boris, how exactly does he achieve that promise? How does a PM actively move the electorate on from Brexit division?
He definitely didn't mean a 4%pt reduction in potential growth, because that would be a far far bigger effect, which not even the most bitter of remoaners would suggest as the impact.
What a waste of your time.
And mine, for that matter. Good day!
I was hoping he would be Prince Hal turned into Henry V, a dissolute arse made good by the weight and grim responsibility of power. I thought/hoped that once he finally had got to world king he would want to make a difference and be a great leader however he just stayed a dissolute arse, just with a crown. And bad wallpaper.
I don’t think it’s wrong however to believe that a good PM can he hands off and put capable people in charge and simply act as a chairman of the board type - clearly just not Boris.
Portugal always used to be one of the worst in Europe.
I suspect the explanation is some combination of geography (mountain roads, for example), culture (anyone who has driven in Europe knows that habits are different), weather and physical safety measures.
The temptation to search for the non existent clutch, and consequent left foot braking, took a good half an hour to eradicate.
A lot of people - including vets - don't understand that one AHC can cover up to five dogs! Some vets charge a little more for the complexity of adding extra dogs onto a certificate, but you don't need separate certificates for the same "consignment" of non-commercially transported animals, assuming the owner is the same (and who would know?).
In France an address is pretty much required now, as the French have led the way in trying to clamp down on PPs for Brits, as is also an ICAD registration. Many vets won't issue a PP until the dog has been resident for three months, effectively excluding Brits on tourist visas. The very best bet for getting an EU PP is a trip to the Irish Republic - or even, currently (but very topical given the politics) Northern Ireland, since their odd status means their PPs are still valid. Spain is also a decent bet. If you join a relevant discussion forum you will be able to get some tips - although people are becoming more wary of publishing vets that are happy to deal with Brits, since the attention and numerous speculative enquiries they then get aren't always welcome and it looks pretty clear that some pro-Brexit people have been trying to make life difficult for those vets by trying to report them.
However, voting against your own party's government would generally mean immediate expulsion from the party. So there's then a bunch of ex-Tory, now independent MPs. Of course, a new leader could welcome those people back, but they wouldn't have to.
Thus, I think it's an unlikely hypothetical. However, if Johnson absolutely refused to go and the vast majority of the Conservative MPs wanted him gone and they couldn't get the 1922 Cttee to re-write the party rules, it does appear to offer a mechanism to depose Johnson.
It's similar to forming a new party. If the vast majority of Conservative MPs wanted, they could all resign the whip, form the New Conservative Party block in Parliament, VONC out Johnson and form a new Government. They could then worry about the mechanics of re-claiming control of the old party later.
It seems to me probable that even Johnson would buckle under the pressure to resign before we got to one of these extreme eventualities. But ultimately if Tory MPs want Johnson out, they can get him out.
It doesn't work if you have a Prime Minister and a Cabinet. If the Chancellor becomes too effective, he might challenge for the Premiership. Good-to-great PMs take that risk. A certain kind of bad PM (COUGHBorisCOUGH) don't. They surround themselves with noboides to emphasise their somebodyness.
Which would be fine, aside from the fact that previous guarantees evaporated as soon as Russia first threw a strop in 2014. The west abandoned Ukraine.
As for 'giving' territory; Russia took Crimea in 2014, and used it as a base for their conflict now. They used DNR and LNR as bases for their current invasion. They are making noises about using Transniestria to invade Ukraine from the west - a threat which ties up Ukrainian troops. Give Russia Mariupol as a separate enclave and they'll use it to attack Ukraine again.
Ukraine won't trust Russia, and given Russia's behaviour in the past and the current conflict, it is an existential crisis for Ukraine. Ukraine might well fight to the death because they know Russia will kill them anyway.
The Shuttle landing was totally nuts to even experienced pilots, an insane exercise in energy management that sees the thing drop tens of thousands of feet per minute, all programmed into a flight director on a head-up display, to keep the pilot on course. Oh, and it’s a glider, so no going around around if you get it wrong!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kkjDr5-I5-s
While I realise that Mr Johnson has filled his cabinet with Johnsonites*, if many in the cabinet come to the conlusion that they are toast if Johnson is still leader in the next GE campaign, they will turn on him quickly.
*As Johnson's policies change with every headline a Johnsonite is not someone who supports a political theory (unlike Thatcherites) but someone who supports a politician called Johnson.