For the record, I reckon Labour will switch back to the re-join the customs union policy they previously had under Corbyn about mid-term IHMO. -It doesn't involve FOM -People in the Red Wall don't give a shit about having an independent trade policy -The trade deals signed by Truss (particularly the Australia and NZ deals) are regarded even by even Leavers as being crap.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
The issue is really that a confluence of interests slows the rate of building down. Which is how the local politicians like it - because they would get voted out, if they voted to allow building to increase.
There is just a little bit of a younger Yvette Cooper about her.
Nonsense. If that were the case, the captions would be the other way around.
The issue is really that a confluence of interests slows the rate of building down. Which is how the local politicians like it - because they would get voted out, if they voted to allow building to increase.
There is just a little bit of a younger Yvette Cooper about her.
It's a longstanding meme.
Her: "I bet he's thinking of other women"
Him: "The February grade deficit figures are better. Is this due to reduced domestic consumer demand, or improved export performance?"
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
Oh dear, the Captain is straining to condescend again. Never a pretty sight.
You have bought all the trappings of a Hampstead artsy-fartsy intellectual apart from the artsy-fartsy intellectual bit.
I'm not 'artsy-fartsy'. You shouldn't think I am just because I live in NW3.
I was just asking you a question but it seems to have triggered something I wasn't looking for. Ah well. Live and learn.
"WTF is that?"
One of us was triggered that's for sure.
Yes, I was triggered to ask you what that was. Still no answer either. Good job others have or I'd still be in the dark. Jeez. Hard work.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
For the record, I reckon Labour will switch back to the re-join the customs union policy they previously had under Corbyn about mid-term IHMO. -It doesn't involve FOM -People in the Red Wall don't give a shit about having an independent trade policy -The trade deals signed by Truss (particularly the Australia and NZ deals) are regarded even by even Leavers as being crap.
Yes, agree with that. 'Negotiating our own trade deals' was the big talking point during the Brexit referendum/negotiations. Now we can actually do it - and everyone realizes it's not really an amazing sensation - no one any longer gives a stuff.
A short presentation by Kate Ball of Wheels for Wellbeing to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling in response to some current Government e-bike proposals around more powerful e-bikes and pure throttle use up to 16mph in shared pedestrian/cycle spaces.
In addition to problems with the proposals - especially around fast accelerating lighter e-bikes, and 500kg 4 wheel cargo bikes, in space shared with pedestrians, it is very good on what cycling means and can mean for disabled people, with some other material about the aims of Wheels for Wellbeing covered around inclusive cycling.
If you move around the video, there are also presentations by Brompton Hire cycles, Pedal Me (a cargo bike courier ./ delivery company), and the Bicycle Industry Association.
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
Oh dear, the Captain is straining to condescend again. Never a pretty sight.
You have bought all the trappings of a Hampstead artsy-fartsy intellectual apart from the artsy-fartsy intellectual bit.
I'm not 'artsy-fartsy'. You shouldn't think I am just because I live in NW3.
I was just asking you a question but it seems to have triggered something I wasn't looking for. Ah well. Live and learn.
"WTF is that?"
One of us was triggered that's for sure.
Yes, I was triggered to ask you what that was. Still no answer either. Good job others have or I'd still be in the dark. Jeez. Hard work.
It didn't inspire me to read Joyce. That stream of Consciosness stuff may have been pioneered by him, but it is rather wearying to read. Plenty of other stuff that I want to get through first.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
I certainly am! We were coming back from Mallaig on Monday and it was snowing at Corrour. Still cold and windy out of the sun.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
You can assume SKS will move us much closer to the EU. What does this mean? Well it means above all that YOU shouldn't be voting Labour.
Can we agree (agree here and now in writing) that you won't?
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
For the record, I reckon Labour will switch back to the re-join the customs union policy they previously had under Corbyn about mid-term IHMO. -It doesn't involve FOM -People in the Red Wall don't give a shit about having an independent trade policy -The trade deals signed by Truss (particularly the Australia and NZ deals) are regarded even by even Leavers as being crap.
Yes, agree with that. 'Negotiating our own trade deals' was the big talking point during the Brexit referendum/negotiations. Now we can actually do it - and everyone realizes it's not really an amazing sensation - no one any longer gives a stuff.
Trade deals with a higher productivity bloc (like USCMA) or with a higher growth bloc (CPTPP) would be major boosts to the UK economy. You can see how ideological the Europhiles are by the fact they think "reducing trade barriers" is such a critical thing, but only with the EU and no one else.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
Oh dear, the Captain is straining to condescend again. Never a pretty sight.
You have bought all the trappings of a Hampstead artsy-fartsy intellectual apart from the artsy-fartsy intellectual bit.
I'm not 'artsy-fartsy'. You shouldn't think I am just because I live in NW3.
I was just asking you a question but it seems to have triggered something I wasn't looking for. Ah well. Live and learn.
"WTF is that?"
One of us was triggered that's for sure.
Yes, I was triggered to ask you what that was. Still no answer either. Good job others have or I'd still be in the dark. Jeez. Hard work.
I know this is virgin territory for you and hence the WTF was a defensive mechanism in case you were exposed, which indeed you were.
Apologies, I shouldn't have rubbed your nose in it.
A short presentation by Kate Ball of Wheels for Wellbeing to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling in response to some current Government e-bike proposals around more powerful e-bikes and pure throttle use up to 16mph in shared pedestrian/cycle spaces.
In addition to problems with the proposals - especially around fast accelerating lighter e-bikes, and 500kg 4 wheel cargo bikes, in space shared with pedestrians, it is very good on what cycling means and can mean for disabled people, with some other material about the aims of Wheels for Wellbeing covered around inclusive cycling.
If you move around the video, there are also presentations by Brompton Hire cycles, Pedal Me (a cargo bike courier ./ delivery company), and the Bicycle Industry Association.
Can I just thank you for your posts on these topics? They're a welcome change to our usual conversations, and cover some important things that IMO are too infrequently talked about. Even when I disagree with them.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
All other things being equal an increase in population ought to suck in more imports and damage our balance of payments by boosting domestic demand. That has not been happening since the beginning of 2022. Instead we are slowly improving our balance of payments situation, albeit it remains poor and we have a long way to go.
Growth of our exports of goods have been relatively modest, especially to the EU but that reflects their poor economic performance and reduced demand. Services, on the other hand, specifically financial services based in London, are growing strongly, something else that contradicts the remainer thesis.
I do not pretend that these statistics "prove" that Brexit was a good thing. We don't have a proper comparator. What I do say is that the statistical, recorded base for Brexit damaging the UK economy basically doesn't exist. Sometimes, inevitably, the odd statistic indicates otherwise but the underlying trends are unaffected. It really is time we moved on and focused on the things that actually do affect our performance.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It's more that the month up until a few days ago was extremely warm, and since then it's gone cold. Everyone has short weather memory.
It's one reason my vines will almost certainty get zapped by frost in the next few days. They came out early because of all the warm weather and now they're vulnerable.
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
Oh dear, the Captain is straining to condescend again. Never a pretty sight.
You have bought all the trappings of a Hampstead artsy-fartsy intellectual apart from the artsy-fartsy intellectual bit.
I'm not 'artsy-fartsy'. You shouldn't think I am just because I live in NW3.
I was just asking you a question but it seems to have triggered something I wasn't looking for. Ah well. Live and learn.
"WTF is that?"
One of us was triggered that's for sure.
Yes, I was triggered to ask you what that was. Still no answer either. Good job others have or I'd still be in the dark. Jeez. Hard work.
I know this is virgin territory for you and hence the WTF was a defensive mechanism in case you were exposed, which indeed you were.
Apologies, I shouldn't have rubbed your nose in it.
Ok, I sense genuine remorse. We're cool. But don't speak to me like that again.
For the record, I reckon Labour will switch back to the re-join the customs union policy they previously had under Corbyn about mid-term IHMO. -It doesn't involve FOM -People in the Red Wall don't give a shit about having an independent trade policy -The trade deals signed by Truss (particularly the Australia and NZ deals) are regarded even by even Leavers as being crap.
As Kettle suggests in this week’s Guardian, it will depend partly on the decisiveness of Labour’s win and the state of the Tory opposition to it, but mostly on our economic performance by midterm. If we continue to underperform and growth isn’t there, the need to relax the newly imposed (and not all yet implemented) trading barriers with the EU will be clear.
For the record, I reckon Labour will switch back to the re-join the customs union policy they previously had under Corbyn about mid-term IHMO. -It doesn't involve FOM -People in the Red Wall don't give a shit about having an independent trade policy -The trade deals signed by Truss (particularly the Australia and NZ deals) are regarded even by even Leavers as being crap.
As Kettle suggests in this week’s Guardian, it will depend partly on the decisiveness of Labour’s win and the state of the Tory opposition to it, but mostly on our economic performance by midterm. If we continue to underperform and growth isn’t there, the need to relax the newly imposed (and not all yet implemented) trading barriers with the EU will be clear.
If we outperform France and Germany, would it make the case for more protectionism?
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
Oh dear, the Captain is straining to condescend again. Never a pretty sight.
You have bought all the trappings of a Hampstead artsy-fartsy intellectual apart from the artsy-fartsy intellectual bit.
I'm not 'artsy-fartsy'. You shouldn't think I am just because I live in NW3.
I was just asking you a question but it seems to have triggered something I wasn't looking for. Ah well. Live and learn.
"WTF is that?"
One of us was triggered that's for sure.
Yes, I was triggered to ask you what that was. Still no answer either. Good job others have or I'd still be in the dark. Jeez. Hard work.
It didn't inspire me to read Joyce. That stream of Consciosness stuff may have been pioneered by him, but it is rather wearying to read. Plenty of other stuff that I want to get through first.
Doubt I will - but you never know. Big time commitment unless you're a fast reader. Ironically what I find is that now I'm old and have the time I read less and what I do read is not challenging fiction.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
All other things being equal an increase in population ought to suck in more imports and damage our balance of payments by boosting domestic demand. That has not been happening since the beginning of 2022. Instead we are slowly improving our balance of payments situation, albeit it remains poor and we have a long way to go.
Growth of our exports of goods have been relatively modest, especially to the EU but that reflects their poor economic performance and reduced demand. Services, on the other hand, specifically financial services based in London, are growing strongly, something else that contradicts the remainer thesis.
I do not pretend that these statistics "prove" that Brexit was a good thing. We don't have a proper comparator. What I do say is that the statistical, recorded base for Brexit damaging the UK economy basically doesn't exist. Sometimes, inevitably, the odd statistic indicates otherwise but the underlying trends are unaffected. It really is time we moved on and focused on the things that actually do affect our performance.
The irony of Brexit is that it has exacerbated the economic divergence of Remania and Leaverstan. It is indeed the service, knowledge and cultural industries that have been growing, while the industries and towns of Leaverstan continue to stagnate.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
Rather surprising. I suppose services are the future.
Now the German model is under stress, I wonder if we will hear a little less from the "Stupid Little Britain doesn't make anything anymore" crowd.
None of this is "surprising" to people who actually that look at economic statistics, rather than those who just absorb the agenda of the Guardian/BBC/Channel 4.
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
Oh dear, the Captain is straining to condescend again. Never a pretty sight.
You have bought all the trappings of a Hampstead artsy-fartsy intellectual apart from the artsy-fartsy intellectual bit.
I'm not 'artsy-fartsy'. You shouldn't think I am just because I live in NW3.
I was just asking you a question but it seems to have triggered something I wasn't looking for. Ah well. Live and learn.
"WTF is that?"
One of us was triggered that's for sure.
Yes, I was triggered to ask you what that was. Still no answer either. Good job others have or I'd still be in the dark. Jeez. Hard work.
It didn't inspire me to read Joyce. That stream of Consciosness stuff may have been pioneered by him, but it is rather wearying to read. Plenty of other stuff that I want to get through first.
Doubt I will - but you never know. Big time commitment unless you're a fast reader. Ironically what I find is that now I'm old and have the time I read less and what I do read is not challenging fiction.
I "read" a lot of books on Audible while commuting, gardening etc. They are unabridged and far better than listening to endless recycled news etc.
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
That's a very small village judging by the scale of the dog.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
Scale dog seems to have cheered up since the last pic.
A short presentation by Kate Ball of Wheels for Wellbeing to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling in response to some current Government e-bike proposals around more powerful e-bikes and pure throttle use up to 16mph in shared pedestrian/cycle spaces.
In addition to problems with the proposals - especially around fast accelerating lighter e-bikes, and 500kg 4 wheel cargo bikes, in space shared with pedestrians, it is very good on what cycling means and can mean for disabled people, with some other material about the aims of Wheels for Wellbeing covered around inclusive cycling.
If you move around the video, there are also presentations by Brompton Hire cycles, Pedal Me (a cargo bike courier ./ delivery company), and the Bicycle Industry Association.
Can I just thank you for your posts on these topics? They're a welcome change to our usual conversations, and cover some important things that IMO are too infrequently talked about. Even when I disagree with them.
Agreed - especially as these issues tend to get talked about in a dismissive manner in some cases ("LTNs = woke", for instance).
In this case, for instance, I had no idea that half-tonne 4 wheel cargo bikes were a thing. To put that into some context, a wartime Willys GP 'Jeep' had a working load of 540kg (not sure if those figures include the human riders).
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
All other things being equal an increase in population ought to suck in more imports and damage our balance of payments by boosting domestic demand. That has not been happening since the beginning of 2022. Instead we are slowly improving our balance of payments situation, albeit it remains poor and we have a long way to go.
Growth of our exports of goods have been relatively modest, especially to the EU but that reflects their poor economic performance and reduced demand. Services, on the other hand, specifically financial services based in London, are growing strongly, something else that contradicts the remainer thesis.
I do not pretend that these statistics "prove" that Brexit was a good thing. We don't have a proper comparator. What I do say is that the statistical, recorded base for Brexit damaging the UK economy basically doesn't exist. Sometimes, inevitably, the odd statistic indicates otherwise but the underlying trends are unaffected. It really is time we moved on and focused on the things that actually do affect our performance.
The irony of Brexit is that it has exacerbated the economic divergence of Remania and Leaverstan. It is indeed the service, knowledge and cultural industries that have been growing, while the industries and towns of Leaverstan continue to stagnate.
Sectors full of Leavers like construction and retail have had huge wage boosts too.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
Scale dog seems to have cheered up since the last pic.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
How can supposedly intelligent people on PB not recognise that excerpt? It’s like a reader survey of the site. Not very impressive
Talking of AI - as you did - I had drinks with a photographer friend in Highgate last night. He’s very smart and quite tech literate but still clueless (like 99% of people) about how far A.I. has come
So I sat with him at the pub table and got out my phone and summoned Claude 3 Opus. Then we both fed it a 90,000 word PDF of a novel - simply attached the file.
Wow. I have honestly never seen intellectual shock exhibited so profoundly. Claude (of course) took the book, read it, devoured it, then spooled out a long detailed critique, right down to character arcs and specific plot weaknesses and chapters with poor dialogue. And all forensically accurate
Claude did all this in 50 seconds. From start to finish. Did what an expert editor might do in days, after weeks of delay
My friend was literally speechless. He sat there in silence. Finally he said “fuck”. Then: “this is going to change everything”
So I’ve now learned what you have to do to get people to understand. You have to literally SHOW them. And then they respond like Amazonian Indians seeing their first plane
Leon.
When you feel the urge… step away. Let the baubles of sweat on your upper lip out, then wipe them clean. Splash yourself down.
Don’t worry I’m off for oysters at Sheeks in a minute
Which I happen to be passing, right now! Wanna buy me a drink Leon?
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
Isn't much of the post-covid outperformance of the US due to huge monetary stimulus which, in or out the the EU, we could never muster?
Reading, for example, Springfield's doppelganger must be done with that in mind. The idea that, if we had stayed in the EU we would be growing at a rate closer to the US than the EU seems fanciful, no matter how solid the original methodology of such studies.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
Scale dog seems to have cheered up since the last pic.
In the last one he looked like he was recreating the Tony Blair devil eyes poster.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
@Casino_Royale mate this book is right up your street you and the author/protagonist have a lot in common you should get yourself a copy off Amazon pronto.
"And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!"
WTF is that?
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.
But it is in fact an illustration a) of the failings of AI; and b) that the Speccie piece is nothing new, and that people have been outraged by the male view of the female for centuries.
How can supposedly intelligent people on PB not recognise that excerpt? It’s like a reader survey of the site. Not very impressive
Talking of AI - as you did - I had drinks with a photographer friend in Highgate last night. He’s very smart and quite tech literate but still clueless (like 99% of people) about how far A.I. has come
So I sat with him at the pub table and got out my phone and summoned Claude 3 Opus. Then we both fed it a 90,000 word PDF of a novel - simply attached the file.
Wow. I have honestly never seen intellectual shock exhibited so profoundly. Claude (of course) took the book, read it, devoured it, then spooled out a long detailed critique, right down to character arcs and specific plot weaknesses and chapters with poor dialogue. And all forensically accurate
Claude did all this in 50 seconds. From start to finish. Did what an expert editor might do in days, after weeks of delay
My friend was literally speechless. He sat there in silence. Finally he said “fuck”. Then: “this is going to change everything”
So I’ve now learned what you have to do to get people to understand. You have to literally SHOW them. And then they respond like Amazonian Indians seeing their first plane
Leon.
When you feel the urge… step away. Let the baubles of sweat on your upper lip out, then wipe them clean. Splash yourself down.
Don’t worry I’m off for oysters at Sheeks in a minute
Which I happen to be passing, right now! Wanna buy me a drink Leon?
Feck, that's wet.
Current update from 'The Shithole'.
More overcast on the east, but still a very pleasant walk in the woods amidst the spring flowers, green buds and young lambs this morning. Not so many Bears on this side, of course.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
Per capita figures over that period must be distorted by the unprecedentedly high rate of immigration.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
But investors knew what was coming. Not their fault that the Brexiter regime was so ****ing useless at actually introducing its own UK Customs. In fact it still hasn't, completely.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
That's hyperbole. European citizenship meant nothing to me.
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
Surely it’s a differential turnout effect usually because the oldies with their permanent postal votes form a larger proportion of the ballot box than in a regular election? It doesn’t follow that people are switching from the Greens.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
Those rootless, cosmopolitan construction workers are also benefitting.
The reality is that the Brexit referendum was a manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. The decision to leave was endorsed by a referendum result, in the highest vote total for anything in British history. The type of Brexit was another manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. And, of course, Brexit itself returns governance to British elections, rather than the facade of democracy in the EU, where election ever changed policy.
Brexit has been fundamentally democratic. Whereas Remainers are currently plotting to return powers to Brussels after the election, while saying nothing about it before the election.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
Scale dog seems to have cheered up since the last pic.
He looked unhappy in the last pic because I had a big platter of bresaola and cheese, and he didn’t.
Today he’s broken a toenail on the cobbles, but after that photo was taken
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
It feels pleasantly warm here, with just enough cool in the air to make a decent morning walk an attractive prospect
Scale dog seems to have cheered up since the last pic.
The Scale Dog isn't really fulfilling his rôle when he's way infront of everything else in the photo!
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
But investors knew what was coming. Not their fault that the Brexiter regime was so ****ing useless at actually introducing its own UK Customs. In fact it still hasn't, completely.
Oh, give me a break. The reason for the implementation period was that the EU refused to negotiate until Article 50 had been invoked, as part of their stupid tantrum over someone leaving their club.
And I remember extremely clearly how Remainers on here were claiming that the massive interest rate spike and recession they predicted hadn't happened because "we haven't really left yet". Now we have fully left and are doing better than the EU, you are trying to claim poor performance during the same period gets credited to Brexit.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
The issue is really that a confluence of interests slows the rate of building down. Which is how the local politicians like it - because they would get voted out, if they voted to allow building to increase.
FFS. Labour already disappointing even before they enter Downing Street.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
Freedom of movement and unlimited unskilled migration.
Totting up the attrition rates, based on current parliamentary strengths:
18.2% of current Tory whip (63/346) 8.5% of current Labour whip (17/201) 20.9% of current SNP whip (9/43) 38.9% of current suspendees / Independents (7/18) 0% of current.Lib Dems (0/15) 14.8% of others (4/27)
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
That's hyperbole. European citizenship meant nothing to me.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
Barring WWIII, I expect that growth will be pretty brisk between now and the end of the decade. The 2020-23 period was a one-off period of shocks, and business investment has been growing rapidly over the past three years.
Yes, Keir* Starmer is really a lucky general.
He's going to inherit some pretty benign circumstances.
Both decent growth should be ahead, and expectations are low.
Success = Result - Expectations
So unless he screws up royally (very possible), I expect a second Labour landslide in 2028.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
That's hyperbole. European citizenship meant nothing to me.
You were free not to use it.
But he wasn't free to stop hundreds of thousands of unskilled Europeans moving to the country, undermining his wages and pushing up housing costs and road congestion.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
The regulations that we were part of the customs area meaning we couldn't sign trade deals with Australia etc as we have subsequently.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
@Leon has mentioned a big one a couple of times already. We are benefitting from not following the EU's misguided policies on AI.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
Those rootless, cosmopolitan construction workers are also benefitting.
The reality is that the Brexit referendum was a manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. The decision to leave was endorsed by a referendum result, in the highest vote total for anything in British history. The type of Brexit was another manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. And, of course, Brexit itself returns governance to British elections, rather than the facade of democracy in the EU, where election ever changed policy.
Brexit has been fundamentally democratic. Whereas Remainers are currently plotting to return powers to Brussels after the election, while saying nothing about it before the election.
In most of Europe it seems to be xenophobic right wing populists who take the view that national sovereignty is incompatible with EU membership.
Was our Brexit movement fundamentally different? I'm not sure it was.
But he wasn't free to stop hundreds of thousands of unskilled Europeans moving to the country, undermining his wages and pushing up housing costs and road congestion.
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
Strange but true, there are people who split their votes between Conservative and Green council candidates.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
That's hyperbole. European citizenship meant nothing to me.
You were free not to use it.
But he wasn't free to stop hundreds of thousands of unskilled Europeans moving to the country, undermining his wages and pushing up housing costs and road congestion.
He'll correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Sean's wages or housing or driving experience was suffering in that way.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
Those rootless, cosmopolitan construction workers are also benefitting.
The reality is that the Brexit referendum was a manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. The decision to leave was endorsed by a referendum result, in the highest vote total for anything in British history. The type of Brexit was another manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. And, of course, Brexit itself returns governance to British elections, rather than the facade of democracy in the EU, where election ever changed policy.
Brexit has been fundamentally democratic. Whereas Remainers are currently plotting to return powers to Brussels after the election, while saying nothing about it before the election.
In most of Europe it seems to be xenophobic right wing populists who take the view that national sovereignty is incompatible with EU membership.
Was our Brexit movement fundamentally different? I'm not sure it was.
If Tony Benn had lived, for example, a more cogent lexiteer narrative might have been presented.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
That's hyperbole. European citizenship meant nothing to me.
You were free not to use it.
But he wasn't free to stop hundreds of thousands of unskilled Europeans moving to the country, undermining his wages and pushing up housing costs and road congestion.
The EU didn't affect me one way or the other, in economic terms.
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
The issue is really that a confluence of interests slows the rate of building down. Which is how the local politicians like it - because they would get voted out, if they voted to allow building to increase.
FFS. Labour already disappointing even before they enter Downing Street.
How pathetic.
My proposal - that all planning and development becomes a Privilege of The Crown. Charlie gets to do all the development.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
Barring WWIII, I expect that growth will be pretty brisk between now and the end of the decade. The 2020-23 period was a one-off period of shocks, and business investment has been growing rapidly over the past three years.
Yes, Keir* Starmer is really a lucky general.
He's going to inherit some pretty benign circumstances.
Both decent growth should be ahead, and expectations are low.
Success = Result - Expectations
So unless he screws up royally (very possible), I expect a second Labour landslide in 2028.
* My phone autocorrected that to Weird.
Hardly a golden economic legacy with the state of the public finances.
But landslide + low expectations is a great political inheritance yes.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
The regulations that we were part of the customs area meaning we couldn't sign trade deals with Australia etc as we have subsequently.
You mean that great trade deal that will add zip to GDP!
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
Those rootless, cosmopolitan construction workers are also benefitting.
The reality is that the Brexit referendum was a manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. The decision to leave was endorsed by a referendum result, in the highest vote total for anything in British history. The type of Brexit was another manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. And, of course, Brexit itself returns governance to British elections, rather than the facade of democracy in the EU, where election ever changed policy.
Brexit has been fundamentally democratic. Whereas Remainers are currently plotting to return powers to Brussels after the election, while saying nothing about it before the election.
That article says nothing about Brexit. There have been pay rises because there are usually pay rises, and more so because of a period of high inflation.
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
Real votes are not matching the vast poll leads
Byelections show they are. We shall see in a fortnight the Blackpool one too.
Anger at the Tories is mostly at national government, and I suspect the Tories will have a bad, but not awful Locals as feelings over local politicians is often different. This may well give false reassurance as to the oncoming tsunami of MP seat losses.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
Freedom of movement and unlimited unskilled migration.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
Those rootless, cosmopolitan construction workers are also benefitting.
The reality is that the Brexit referendum was a manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. The decision to leave was endorsed by a referendum result, in the highest vote total for anything in British history. The type of Brexit was another manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. And, of course, Brexit itself returns governance to British elections, rather than the facade of democracy in the EU, where election ever changed policy.
Brexit has been fundamentally democratic. Whereas Remainers are currently plotting to return powers to Brussels after the election, while saying nothing about it before the election.
In most of Europe it seems to be xenophobic right wing populists who take the view that national sovereignty is incompatible with EU membership.
Was our Brexit movement fundamentally different? I'm not sure it was.
If Tony Benn had lived, for example, a more cogent lexiteer narrative might have been presented.
Perhaps. But most of the brighter people on the left were for Remain. Same on the centre and the centre right actually come to think of it! Not that that matters. It was a free and fair vote.
Haven't seen the whole of the Speccie piece but taken as is it is an example (we were discussing this yesterday) of why I don't take the magazine any more.
That said no one can dispute the quality of the writing - v funny indeed. Which makes it all the more irritating.
And thinking about it so it's offensive. So what. Are people calling for it to be cancelled? I'm sure Owen Jones will. That would be very bad if we're not allowed to be offensive. Ask Dave Chapelle.
As it objectifies women we are at the intersection of offence and abuse but the bigger the outcry the more minded I am too defend it even though it's the hated Speccie.
But on the third hand I am an old(er) white bloke so perhaps my time as leader of the western world is over.
I do hope the publicity benefits Ypi and boosts sales of her book and increases listenership of her podcast. Her family experience of persecution under Hoxha and the growing pains of the new Albania is a very interesting perspective, she seems to be on the leading edge of new left wing thought.
"repulsive and a disgrace" sounds to me like a step on the way to getting him sacked.
Listen you and I are both men d'un age certain. Are we saying that no one is allowed to comment on a person's looks any more.
Context is everything.
Well I haven't seen the entire article as it is paywalled. Neither have you, I suspect.
Good for middle aged loaded old lads mag. Unsuitable for a politics, culture and current affairs magazine. Its not exactly rocket science.
The Spectator has ALWAYS been like this. It mixes the high and the low, the sordid and the cerebral, the arts and the heart. And it seeks to surprise as all good magazines should
I very much doubt you subscribe, or ever will, and as it’s paywalled that means you never read it, so why on earth should they care what you think?
And I don't care if they care or not, its very much up to them. Just commenting on here as the topic du jour.
My point is you are acting as if this is some sordid new departure for the Spectator. It really isn’t. I’m old enough to remember when they ran a piece about a guy “wanking himself into hospital” which became mildly celebrated and got quoted in the US Congress and cited in famous books of psychology. So none of this is new
I doubt it shall survive contact with the generation or two below you, it shall have to choose one or the other.
You could be right. It’s not looking good. Here’s their 200 years of sales in a graph
Yes its popular with the posher end of the lads mag readership of the 90s. How did those fare with Gen Z?
I think it's wrong to attribute this to boomers. It's the old forgotten Gen X again, ignored in the Boomer-Millennial culture wars. Gen X, people from about 45 to 60 now.
My impression is this is the most hedonistic, don't give a shit of all the generations. The late 90s and early noughties when GenX were young were the peak of lad mags but also the celebration of binge drinking and drug taking, popular culture that didn't take itself too seriously, and apolitical comedy from The Office to the Fast Show to Reeves and Mortimer. And the nadir (in the sense of they didn't exist) of the culture wars. Toxic in many ways in both a literal and figurative sense, but also good fun.
I miss all that. I know parts of it were bad and not to be repeated, but I'm a creature of that era and it's hard not to be nostalgic for it.
They're enjoyable to discuss but tbh I'm not sure how meaningful these "Gens" are. Most of how the world changes happens gradually and continuously rather than by "decade" or by "generation".
Dunno, my brother is just in tail end of gen X (I'm early millennial) and we're chalk and cheese. I'm measured, sensible, avocado on toast kind of guy (until I discovered the environmental impact of avocado and decided to buy a house instead). He's a walking celebration of binge drinking and drug taking, popular culture that didn't take itself too seriously etc. At least, he's a Chartered Accountant, so I assume it follows that all that is true?
Binge drinking and Chartered Accountancy do go together, yes. I can totally vouch for that.
1960 so I'm a babyboomer, I think? Yet I'm nothing like Bill Clinton. So I don't know. I'm sceptical of most of this. Same as I am of national characteristics - a "brave" people, a "lazy" people, a "friendly" people, all of that sort of thing. It's mainly about oiling a certain sort of conversation.
The people I want to know about are the Silent Generation. But they ain't talking
(Actually, from Wikipedia, the Silents are births up to 1945, so we have a few here - Big G, OKC and a few others over 80, I believe? And my dad, but he is a silent type of Silent.)
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
Freedom of movement and unlimited unskilled migration.
Immigration has been much higher since Brexit.
Yes, but it has been substantially higher skilled. Meaning people with higher salaries and a greater net contribution to the exchequer. Especially on a lifetime basis.
Sunak really is useless . And by allowing non GPS to issue sick notes we know how this ends . Targets in place of proper fact based decisions.
Absolutely.
The really depressing thing will likely be Starmer's response.
I fear you’re right . And after last nights dreadful response to that very generous EU offer re 18 to 30 year olds I’m fast losing any enthusiasm for Labour .
Thankfully I won’t have to think hard here in Eastbourne about how to vote at the GE . The Lib Dems should take this seat and can rely on my vote .
Was at a dinner last night that included some PhD students, pre-doc research assistants and young post-docs among the older contingent of more established academics. The younger group were hugely unenthusiastic about Starmer on the whole and far from committed to voting at all/likely to vote Green. The older group were pretty committed in getting the government out, which meant Lab votes even without much enthusiasm - but if the younger group do go wasted vote minor party or not vote then the votes for Lab, if not the seats, could be underwhelming.
There's a real and understandable enthusiasm gap out there. I will do my patriotic duty, but without much excitement and a Lib Dem party that actually enthused me could steal my vote in what could be - if there are any! - a reasonably tight Lab-Con seat*
*will be the new Selby seat - the by-election winning Lab incumbent for the old seat seems fairly popular and he's been trying hard popping up in supermarkets etc and willing to listen to anyone, so I suspect he might actually hold quite easily given the national picture
The ONLY time in my entire life I have ended up voting for the winning MP in a seat was in 2005 when we lived in Selby. FPTP, eh!
My father-in-law (liberal Tory, when the Tories are sane - probably more LD by instinct, but he's a realist and the LDs are not 'winning here') speaks quite fondly of Grogan as someone who took the time to know the constituency and its issues. Apparently Grogan's contesting Keighley again at the next GE (having also held that from 2017-2019).
I'm glad to see Rishi finally addressing the issues of worklessness. There are too many people option out of work entirely and sitting on benefits with spurious mental health problems. It's time stop that.
But he wasn't free to stop hundreds of thousands of unskilled Europeans moving to the country, undermining his wages and pushing up housing costs and road congestion.
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
Lol @ shackled. Which of said regulations have so far been relaxed or abolished?
Freedom of movement and unlimited unskilled migration.
Immigration has been much higher since Brexit.
Yes, but it has been substantially higher skilled. Meaning people with higher salaries and a greater net contribution to the exchequer. Especially on a lifetime basis.
I've not seen the evidence that it is "substantially higher skilled". Lots of immigration under EU freedom of movement was skilled. Lots of immigration now isn't. Can you provide a citation for your claim?
I'm glad to see Rishi finally addressing the issues of worklessness. There are too many people option out of work entirely and sitting on benefits with spurious mental health problems. It's time stop that.
Yeah, kinda what I thought before I experienced a total nervous breakdown brought on by lockdown induced isolation, severe workplace bullying and the utter indifference of the people I thought were my friends.
Never took a penny off the state for my troubles, but that's because I'm rich already. But I challenge you to walk a mile in those shoes and tell me mental health issues are "spurious".
I'm glad to see Rishi finally addressing the issues of worklessness. There are too many people option out of work entirely and sitting on benefits with spurious mental health problems. It's time stop that.
From the cityam story: 'The UK’s strong export performance has been supercharged by services generally and the financial and related professional services industry in particular.'
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
That's hyperbole. European citizenship meant nothing to me.
Wash Post (via Seattle Times) - [Pro-Trump] Turning Point Action official resigns after accusation of election-related fraud
PHOENIX — A top leader of the national conservative group Turning Point Action, which has amplified false claims of election fraud by former President Donald Trump and others, resigned Thursday after being accused of forging voter signatures on official paperwork so that he could run for reelection in the Arizona House.
State Rep. Austin Smith, R — who was senior director at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — was accused by a Democratic activist of submitting petition sheets with rows of voter names, addresses and signatures that “bear a striking resemblance” to his handwriting, according to a complaint. Smith “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures,” the complaint said. . . .
Smith submitted his resignation to Turning Point Action on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Smith also publicly ended his reelection campaign. . . .
TLDR they're not going to be able to ignore the issue forever.
Well, quite. I guess Remainers - which comprise the vast majority of Labour MPs, activists, and even voters - and many of them are REALLY REALLY Remainy - will tolerate lies and obfuscation from Starmer prior to the GE, in the assumption that he will change tack entirely once in government
But if Starmer refuses a Free Movement for the Young offer when he is in office they will go postal. He will be in danger of losing his job. This matters to many people
The amount of lies the media is pushing here is at a new level. They keep on claiming the economy will force Starmer to sell out over Brexit. But the UK's poor economy has actually done better than the EU's since Brexit was implemented. We have had higher growth and higher employment. And immigration controls have improved wages at the lower end of the income distribution.
From the ONS main points in February (the latest available)
"The total goods and services trade deficit narrowed by £2.0 billion to a deficit of £9.9 billion in the three months to February 2024, and has been steadily improving since Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2022."
But our media will simply not allow the actual story of the actual numbers to be told. Because it would show that they were wrong.
But we have had an unprecedented decline in GDP per capita. Yes we might have grown faster than Germany or whatever but we had 1.4m immigrants in 2 years. Anyone can get growth out of that
What matters is GDP per capita. And it’s been falling. We are getting poorer
GDP per capita has also grown faster than the EU since we left EU structures. Poor growth is a European wide thing, driven by long term low productivity vs the US, demographic decline and the war in Ukraine and knock-on effects. The UK is doing better than the rest, despite the screw up of Liz Truss.
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
I'm not sure about that. Data on real GDP per capita (in USD at 2010 prices and exchange rates) show UK GDP in 2022 at the same level as in 2019, but up by more than 2% in the Euro Area and almost 4% in the US. We seem to have gone from per capita growth rates pre Brexit that were more similar to the US, to ones that are worse than those in the EA, while Europe as a whole, including us, has fallen further behind the US. As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
You have your timeframes wrong. The UK left the EU proper in December 2020. Before that, we were still shackled by EU structures and rules.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The high pressure that has recently moved over Ireland is bringing northerly winds over Britain to the east. Last two days have been the warmest of the year so far and lovely for an evening sitting outside. Not much sign of the cold air shifting away from Britain until much later in the month.
I’d like to inform the Labour Party that women can have fully-fledged thoughts and views about policy too. Our brains aren’t just filled with jealous feelings about our partners. 🙄
36 But only due to mis-reading the Wall St Crash one to say 'since 1997' and so shrugging and going for 2007, even though it sounded more like the event from [year I knew - as most will - but will not repeat here to not spoil it]. Would have got 46 if I'd read it properly
The only genuinely tricky one for me was the Indira Gandhi assassination where I could have put it anywhere in a ten year or so period - sticking it more or less in the middle got me not too far away. The McDonalds one I didn't know the exact year, but placed it pretty close from the obvious global context at the time.
36 But only due to mis-reading the Wall St Crash one to say 'since 1997' and so shrugging and going for 2007, even though it sounded more like the event from [year I knew - as most will - but will not repeat here to not spoil it]. Would have got 46 if I'd read it properly
The only genuinely tricky one for me was the Indira Gandhi assassination where I could have put it anywhere in a ten year or so period - sticking it more or less in the middle got me not too far away. The McDonalds one I didn't know the exact year, but placed it pretty close from the obvious global context at the time.
I was let down by the McDonalds one because I remembered the documentary on it and was convinced it was pre-Berlin wall falling. Got Indira Gandhi bang on.
I'm trying really hard not to mention the weather, but sweet fucking Jesus
It is late April and it is 11C and the cold cold rain is SHEETING DOWN. My god
And this is after the wettest 18 months in our history. WTF is going on?
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
An often misunderstood phrase
The May in this saying is the May tree, the hawthorn. Cf "the bloom is on the blackthorn but not yet on the May"
So what it is saying is you can't expect reliably warm weather until the hawthorn has blossomed, usually early-mid May
It doesn't mention 18 months of fucking freezing monsoons
New normal.
You could ask Claude to pen new traditional doggerel more appropriate to our climate.
"The rain is on the pavement, and now it's on the pavement again"
"Ne'er cast a brolly. Ever."
"The rain is in the house and now it's drowned the mouse"
"Who needs a fucking swimming pool, just take a walk"
When sky is grey, the dreary weather's here to stay When sky is blue, a sleety shower's just passed through When sky is white, the weather's probably staying shite When sky is red, Russia just nuked us and everyone's dead
Red sky at night, shepherds have banked up their fires because it’s nearly May and it’s still fucking freezing.
People might be surprised to learn that this month up to the 17th is running at 2.9C warmer than average.
The combination of damp (wet air conducts heat far better than does dry air), and wind chill make it feel much colder.
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
What TimS didn't tell you is that the weather at the beginning of April was at near record highs for the day in the Central England Temperature record, but the last few days have fallen below the 1961-1990 average, so there's been a bit of a swing in the weather.
I’d like to inform the Labour Party that women can have fully-fledged thoughts and views about policy too. Our brains aren’t just filled with jealous feelings about our partners. 🙄
We had a similar situation at work a few years ago where someone posted the jealous girlfriend meme about something boringly work related on a corporate communication, and was forced into an apology for offence caused.
Labour social media team have been reading this morning's PB and concluded the Speccie approach to political commentary is the way to go.
36 But only due to mis-reading the Wall St Crash one to say 'since 1997' and so shrugging and going for 2007, even though it sounded more like the event from [year I knew - as most will - but will not repeat here to not spoil it]. Would have got 46 if I'd read it properly
The only genuinely tricky one for me was the Indira Gandhi assassination where I could have put it anywhere in a ten year or so period - sticking it more or less in the middle got me not too far away. The McDonalds one I didn't know the exact year, but placed it pretty close from the obvious global context at the time.
I was let down by the McDonalds one because I remembered the documentary on it and was convinced it was pre-Berlin wall falling. Got Indira Gandhi bang on.
Comments
-It doesn't involve FOM
-People in the Red Wall don't give a shit about having an independent trade policy
-The trade deals signed by Truss (particularly the Australia and NZ deals) are regarded even by even Leavers as being crap.
If that were the case, the captions would be the other way around.
Her: "I bet he's thinking of other women"
Him: "The February grade deficit figures are better. Is this due to reduced domestic consumer demand, or improved export performance?"
If we want to improve growth, it isn't about doubling down on the failed European recipe of the last decade or two. It needs to be about diversifying our trade profile to the fast growing parts of the world, investing in capital improvements (especially digitalization) rather than cheap immigrant labor, and improving management practices.
A short presentation by Kate Ball of Wheels for Wellbeing to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling in response to some current Government e-bike proposals around more powerful e-bikes and pure throttle use up to 16mph in shared pedestrian/cycle spaces.
In addition to problems with the proposals - especially around fast accelerating lighter e-bikes, and 500kg 4 wheel cargo bikes, in space shared with pedestrians, it is very good on what cycling means and can mean for disabled people, with some other material about the aims of Wheels for Wellbeing covered around inclusive cycling.
https://youtu.be/m7zee72mZ88?t=2534
If you move around the video, there are also presentations by Brompton Hire cycles, Pedal Me (a cargo bike courier ./ delivery company), and the Bicycle Industry Association.
Can we agree (agree here and now in writing) that you won't?
(which is why you have a "feels like" page on your weather app)
Mentour Pilot has a new video on Pakistan Airlines 8303 which crashed in 2020 after attempting to land without the gear down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOKYR5ZJbQ
https://www.cityam.com/services-trade-sees-uk-become-worlds-fourth-largest-exporter/
Rather surprising. I suppose services are the future.
Now the German model is under stress, I wonder if we will hear a little less from the "Stupid Little Britain doesn't make anything anymore" crowd.
Apologies, I shouldn't have rubbed your nose in it.
Growth of our exports of goods have been relatively modest, especially to the EU but that reflects their poor economic performance and reduced demand. Services, on the other hand, specifically financial services based in London, are growing strongly, something else that contradicts the remainer thesis.
I do not pretend that these statistics "prove" that Brexit was a good thing. We don't have a proper comparator. What I do say is that the statistical, recorded base for Brexit damaging the UK economy basically doesn't exist. Sometimes, inevitably, the odd statistic indicates otherwise but the underlying trends are unaffected. It really is time we moved on and focused on the things that actually do affect our performance.
It's one reason my vines will almost certainty get zapped by frost in the next few days. They came out early because of all the warm weather and now they're vulnerable.
Acoba chair Eric Pickles says rules on post-ministerial jobs are ‘unenforceable’ after former PM avoids answering questions
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/19/boris-johnson-refused-to-be-open-with-watchdog-about-hedge-fund-role
Conservative Tim Loughton, who has represented East Worthing and Shoreham since 1997, became the 100th MP to announce he was leaving the Commons.
Most - 63 in all - are Tories, and they include former prime minister Theresa May."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68839793
As others have said, Brexit seems to have made the UK economy more, not less, European.
Ely West (East Cambridgeshire) council by-election result:
LDEM: 47.9% (+10.6)
CON: 32.3% (+10.3)
LAB: 19.8% (-2.7)
No Grn (-10.6) and Ind (-7.5) as prev.
Valid votes cast: 2,351
Liberal Democrat HOLD.
Tories up 10.3%. Now they often gain votes when Independents don't stand, because independents are typically fishing from the same demographic and ideological pool as conservatives. But that wasn't enough this time. They must have taken significant votes reallocated from former Greens too.
Greens are fast becoming a vote repository at local level for small-c conservative, conservation-minded, NIMBY-inclined older voters. It looks like the previous Green vote in Ely West was exactly this.
In this case, for instance, I had no idea that half-tonne 4 wheel cargo bikes were a thing. To put that into some context, a wartime Willys GP 'Jeep' had a working load of 540kg (not sure if those figures include the human riders).
It's rootless global cosmopolitan types, who bankrolled the Brexit misinformation Leave campaigns, who are getting richer. Quelle surprise.
Leavers simply cannot admit that the vast majority of people, normal people, in this country are poorer and the rest of the country is being left to go hang. Levelling up was lies. Immigration control (which never bothered me but it tipped plenty of people's votes) was lies. The lie that there would be no downsides were the most whopperingist whopper of them all. You moan about Starmer supposedly lying - how do you think we Remoaners feel about Cummings' and Johnson's lies?
The Leavers on here are, I will wager, older and more affluent than most people and are largely insulated from the stinking pile of garbage you have inflicted on the rest of us. You burble on about about trade pacts with Texas, or how we should be selling cheese to Indonesia or something. You simply cannot admit that Brexit only just scraped over the line because it was sold on the lie that there would be no downsides. You simply deny the ever mounting evidence of sector after sector, outside of that London and its high-falutin' financial services, that farmers aren't happy, manufacturers aren't happy, small and medium sized businesses aren't happy. Costs are rising, medicines are scarce, the list goes on and on, steadily accumulating baleful influences here and there, bit by bit. Simply telling businesses they can now trade a bit easier with Tuvalu or something doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Millions of people aren't happy about having their freedoms and rights removed to satisfy elderly xenophobes.
Brexit was sold as being painless, 'no downsides'. And it isn't true. That's the biggest lie of all.
Current update from 'The Shithole'.
Reading, for example, Springfield's doppelganger must be done with that in mind. The idea that, if we had stayed in the EU we would be growing at a rate closer to the US than the EU seems fanciful, no matter how solid the original methodology of such studies.
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/financial/pay-rises-agreed-for-construction-workers-29-06-2023/
The reality is that the Brexit referendum was a manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. The decision to leave was endorsed by a referendum result, in the highest vote total for anything in British history. The type of Brexit was another manifesto commitment, endorsed by the public in a general election. And, of course, Brexit itself returns governance to British elections, rather than the facade of democracy in the EU, where election ever changed policy.
Brexit has been fundamentally democratic. Whereas Remainers are currently plotting to return powers to Brussels after the election, while saying nothing about it before the election.
Today he’s broken a toenail on the cobbles, but after that photo was taken
And I remember extremely clearly how Remainers on here were claiming that the massive interest rate spike and recession they predicted hadn't happened because "we haven't really left yet". Now we have fully left and are doing better than the EU, you are trying to claim poor performance during the same period gets credited to Brexit.
How pathetic.
18.2% of current Tory whip (63/346)
8.5% of current Labour whip (17/201)
20.9% of current SNP whip (9/43)
38.9% of current suspendees / Independents (7/18)
0% of current.Lib Dems (0/15)
14.8% of others (4/27)
He's going to inherit some pretty benign circumstances.
Both decent growth should be ahead, and expectations are low.
Success = Result - Expectations
So unless he screws up royally (very possible), I expect a second Labour landslide in 2028.
* My phone autocorrected that to Weird.
Was our Brexit movement fundamentally different? I'm not sure it was.
Godwin of Wessex of would approve of this plan.
But landslide + low expectations is a great political inheritance yes.
Anger at the Tories is mostly at national government, and I suspect the Tories will have a bad, but not awful Locals as feelings over local politicians is often different. This may well give false reassurance as to the oncoming tsunami of MP seat losses.
(Actually, from Wikipedia, the Silents are births up to 1945, so we have a few here - Big G, OKC and a few others over 80, I believe? And my dad, but he is a silent type of Silent.)
Never took a penny off the state for my troubles, but that's because I'm rich already. But I challenge you to walk a mile in those shoes and tell me mental health issues are "spurious".
PHOENIX — A top leader of the national conservative group Turning Point Action, which has amplified false claims of election fraud by former President Donald Trump and others, resigned Thursday after being accused of forging voter signatures on official paperwork so that he could run for reelection in the Arizona House.
State Rep. Austin Smith, R — who was senior director at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — was accused by a Democratic activist of submitting petition sheets with rows of voter names, addresses and signatures that “bear a striking resemblance” to his handwriting, according to a complaint. Smith “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures,” the complaint said. . . .
Smith submitted his resignation to Turning Point Action on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Smith also publicly ended his reelection campaign. . . .
https://www.economist.com/interactive/dateline-history-quiz-game
I got a creditable but eminently beatable 45/50.
(No googling)
Ure all having a laugh.
Waiting to try the Bugger Bognor Bugle Royal history quiz . . . .
I’d like to inform the Labour Party that women can have fully-fledged thoughts and views about policy too. Our brains aren’t just filled with jealous feelings about our partners. 🙄
https://x.com/soniasodha/status/1781322900730970367
The only genuinely tricky one for me was the Indira Gandhi assassination where I could have put it anywhere in a ten year or so period - sticking it more or less in the middle got me not too far away. The McDonalds one I didn't know the exact year, but placed it pretty close from the obvious global context at the time.
Labour social media team have been reading this morning's PB and concluded the Speccie approach to political commentary is the way to go.