As someone who has only lived in SE England, I really have no connectiuon with Scotland at all, and I cant imagine all that many other people from Southern England do either. Why dont we just let them have their independence? Why would any English person care?
Why would Scottish people rather be in th UK than independent? I dont get it
Nothing against Scotland, I support them in the football etc, but I would suppoert Eire as well in the World Cup unless they played England.
What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?
As someone who has only lived in SE England, I really have no connectiuon with Scotland at all, and I cant imagine all that many other people from Southern England do either. Why dont we just let them have their independence? Why would any English person care?
Why would Scottish people rather be in th UK than independent? I dont get it
Nothing against Scotland, I support them in the football etc, but I would suppoert Eire as well in the World Cup unless they played England.
What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?
Eff all.
In its history, Scottish Nationalism hasn't killed anyone, nor will it ever.
It's never been an ethnic nationalism, it's an civic form of Nationalism.
Interestingly, Lloyds share price has now moved above the government's nominal buy-in price. Don't tell Sid.
Do you think that the sell-off of some of its branches will not now be enforced as I am not sure who would want to buy them.
I could be wrong, but isn't the sell off of branches a consequence of Lloyds (and RBS) having excessive market share in certain parts of the country. Or, to put it another way, there is no way the Competition Commission would have allowed Lloyds TSB to buy HBoS in ordinary circumstances, and only allowed it under the terms that they sold off certain branches and customers. (The same is true of RBS which is spinning out Williams & Glyn).
Of course any customer who wishes to stay with Lloyds TSB or RBS can simply ask for their account to be transferred to another branch. Which is a small pain, but hardly disastrous.
Similarly, in the case of RBS / Williams & Glyn, I believe that W&G will continue to use RBS IT systems for a couple of years, so there shouldn't be any great discontinuity for customers.
What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?
Kneecappings, car bombs and murder because Farage was shouted at by students? It must surely only be a matter of time.
Oh dont get me wrong!
I wasnt saying soon, on the back of this Farage rubbish!!
I meant in 20 years time if Scotland stays in the Union would the Nats turn nasty? Or if they get independence, would there be tension brewing amongst whose home is Scotland but who wanted to stay in the Union?
Basically are there parallels w Ireland?
Im not suggesting anything, I know nothing about the issue at all, and care even less which way it pans out, just interested in gaining a bit of knowledge on the subject
What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?
Zero, unless those types who get outraged at insults to the Union flag bring over their nastier, meaner big brothers from Northern Ireland.
Ho hum, you play with fire and think you won't get your hands burned. Salmond's Scotland is turning in to a them and us state. So much for nation building.
"That matters. As the biggest economy in the region, the U.K. will have greater political weight, it will attract more migrants and investment, and the London stock market will receive a much-needed boost."
There's a good chunk of the population who would rather not have the growth if it involved attracting more migrants
Absolutely. It is not GDP growth that matters so much as GDP growth percapita. 2% growth with 3% population growth means we are on average poorer and more overcrowded. Not a good outcome.
How the hell do you get a population growth of 3% per annum, thats two million people
My figures were illustrative. If our population expands then GDP needs to expand at the same rate in order for average GDP to remain stable. With an expanding population we need to run to stand still.
It is not GDP growrh that matters to voters it is whether their standard of living is increasing, one measure being GDP per capita.
When you subtract the effect of population growth from the figures for GDP growth we see why voters are so unhappy with their personal stagnation economically, a problem stretching back a decade or more.
I suggest you look at the different options for debt growth and migration set out by the OBR among others. You can choose the low growth high debt option if it makes you feel better
So are you saying that you support increased immigration even if it exceeds economic growth so that mean GDP per capita continues to fall?
It doesnt sound like a manifesto likely to go down with the voters.
On topic: Either party to the coalition would have to be certifiably insane to break it up just at the point where the pain they've endured is beginning to bring some gain.
Ho hum, you play with fire and think you won't get your hands burned. Salmond's Scotland is turning in to a them and us state. So much for nation building.
It really is shocking stuff.
'Gerri Peev @GerriPeev 10h One Ukip staffer said the 'best' protesters managed with him was: 'we think your trousers are shit'. Pants putdown.'
"The Europe row is of a different order altogether. The Lib Dems in the centre, I am told, are fizzing over the way Mr Cameron has allowed a referendum vote this Parliament, when the Coalition deal was that there wouldn't be one.
Mr Clegg's complaint is largely political – he hates the idea of being seen by voters opposing giving them a say. But there is also a principled point: when is a deal not a deal? To which his Tory critics might say – boundaries. Or child care."
On the EU and gay marriage, wouldnt it be a good idea if you were pro both to have a referendum on both on the same day?
The majority of anti gay marriagers seems to be also anti EU , so those in favour of staying in and having gay marriage would have a huge advantage in being able to paint anti EU people as the same kind of old fashioned bigots who are anti gay marriage.... and as Gay marriage is very likely to win the vote it would get many people to vote to stay in the EU who might not bother voting at all on another day.
Interestingly, Lloyds share price has now moved above the government's nominal buy-in price. Don't tell Sid.
Do you think that the sell-off of some of its branches will not now be enforced as I am not sure who would want to buy them.
Of course any customer who wishes to stay with Lloyds TSB or RBS can simply ask for their account to be transferred to another branch. Which is a small pain, but hardly disastrous.
Similarly, in the case of RBS / Williams & Glyn, I believe that W&G will continue to use RBS IT systems for a couple of years, so there shouldn't be any great discontinuity for customers.
Actually not so. I had a real fight with lloyds about trying to stay with them.
My branch (which is being sold off) told me outright that I had no alternative, that I would be moved to the new company and that there was no systems in place for me to transfer to another branch. The same happened to my sister.
We then went to another branch in the same town and asked to set up new accounts and were told we were forbidden because we already had accounts at a branch that was being sold off.
We actually got as far as to say to Lloyds that we would shut down out accounts entirely and were told we were not allowed to do that (though of course that was ridiculous). At that point the staff of our branch refused to have any further discussions on the matter.
My business manager at Lloyds (my business account having already been cherry picked out from the branch and transferred to another branch so it would stay with Lloyds) tried to help but was told it was not his palce. In tyeh end we had to follow a formal complaints procedure to get them to agree that they would transfer us to another branch. This has still not occurred but I do have letters saying it will happen at the point of the sell off.
I meant in 20 years time if Scotland stays in the Union would the Nats turn nasty? Or if they get independence, would there be tension brewing amongst whose home is Scotland but who wanted to stay in the Union?
Was there some part of "Zero" that confused you?
I'd ask if the kippers are going to start turning nasty and transform into paramilitaries when an IN/OUT referendum doesn't materialise, but it's still a stupid question regardless of who it is asked of.
David Cameron is trusted more than the other party leaders on three of the top five issues that voters say are important to them, an exclusive poll reveals today.
New research by Ipsos MORI found the Tory leader is far ahead on the economy, which research shows is the issue the public regards as paramount.
He is also ahead on immigration and crime, the third and fifth most salient issues on Ipsos MORI’s issues index.
Classic. Farage gets confronted with the facts, blusters and runs off in the huff yet again.
Poor old Nigel appears to have forgotten that the current PM called his party "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". Nor can he find any of this union jack burning he was foaming at the mouth about. I expect he'll find them when he finds those millions of Bulgarians he thinks are coming to invade England. Bless.
Seemingly more than that to grasp that they were rightly expelled. If only Nigel could understand instead of stupidly conflating a few students shouting at him to a governing political party capable of winning seats and MPs and an independence movement capable of getting a referendum instead of living off the worthless scraps that Cammie throws to gullible eurosceptics.
Reduced to the same smear tactics Cammie used against him. The irony is most amusing.
No wonder he ran off in the huff again from the interviewer, poor chap. If that's the best he can muster it's a blessing for UKIP that he won't be in the debates.
I do find it ironic that the Scottish nationalists are apparently too thick to realise that the same arguments apply to both the Scots Independence and the BOO campaigns.
As I have said before the two most ludicrous positions in British politics are pro-EU Scots nationalism and anti-EU Unionism. Neither argument makes any logical sense.
Ho hum, you play with fire and think you won't get your hands burned. Salmond's Scotland is turning in to a them and us state. So much for nation building.
It really is shocking stuff.
'Gerri Peev @GerriPeev 10h One Ukip staffer said the 'best' protesters managed with him was: 'we think your trousers are shit'. Pants putdown.'
Just for the record divvie since the missus had dragged me off to bed before your last post yesterday. Having seen the effects of hot-headed eejits close up there is no part of me wishing the same on Scotland, quite the reverse.
David Cameron is trusted more than the other party leaders on three of the top five issues that voters say are important to them, an exclusive poll reveals today.
New research by Ipsos MORI found the Tory leader is far ahead on the economy, which research shows is the issue the public regards as paramount.
He is also ahead on immigration and crime, the third and fifth most salient issues on Ipsos MORI’s issues index.
As someone who has only lived in SE England, I really have no connectiuon with Scotland at all, and I cant imagine all that many other people from Southern England do either. Why dont we just let them have their independence? Why would any English person care?
Why would Scottish people rather be in th UK than independent? I dont get it
Nothing against Scotland, I support them in the football etc, but I would suppoert Eire as well in the World Cup unless they played England.
What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?
Without the English to mutually hate i'd say it was guaranteed but basic sectarian not necessarily politically unionist per se.
"Ukip leader Nigel Farage came a close second to Mr Cameron on immigration, overtaking Mr Miliband."
Oh dear
"Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was joint-third on the economy, and third on the NHS, but trailed in last place on immigration, crime and unemployment."
Oh dear
"The economy and law and order were both traditional Tory issues that Tony Blair successfully targeted in New Labour’s most successful years. Today’s survey provides little evidence that Mr Miliband is making the same inroads. He was most trusted by just 23 per cent on the economy and 20 per cent on crime."
As Gary Anderson posted the other day, if Red Bull go on to take the title(s), especially by a narrow margin, it may well look like a victory due to successful tyre lobbying.
Ho hum, you play with fire and think you won't get your hands burned. Salmond's Scotland is turning in to a them and us state. So much for nation building.
It really is shocking stuff.
'Gerri Peev @GerriPeev 10h One Ukip staffer said the 'best' protesters managed with him was: 'we think your trousers are shit'. Pants putdown.'
LOL
Playing with fire indeed.
Yesterday, May 16, 2013 a date which will live in infamy as a UKIP staffers trousers were called shit and Nigel was viciously branded a bawbag by some rowdy students. The shame will never die.
"That matters. As the biggest economy in the region, the U.K. will have greater political weight, it will attract more migrants and investment, and the London stock market will receive a much-needed boost."
There's a good chunk of the population who would rather not have the growth if it involved attracting more migrants
Absolutely. It is not GDP growth that matters so much as GDP growth percapita. 2% growth with 3% population growth means we are on average poorer and more overcrowded. Not a good outcome.
How the hell do you get a population growth of 3% per annum, thats two million people
My figures were illustrative. If our population expands then GDP needs to expand at the same rate in order for average GDP to remain stable. With an expanding population we need to run to stand still.
It is not GDP growrh that matters to voters it is whether their standard of living is increasing, one measure being GDP per capita.
When you subtract the effect of population growth from the figures for GDP growth we see why voters are so unhappy with their personal stagnation economically, a problem stretching back a decade or more.
I suggest you look at the different options for debt growth and migration set out by the OBR among others. You can choose the low growth high debt option if it makes you feel better
So are you saying that you support increased immigration even if it exceeds economic growth so that mean GDP per capita continues to fall?
It doesnt sound like a manifesto likely to go down with the voters.
As I pointed out your figures of two million people a year are a joke, population growth exceeding GDP growth is a fantasy
I'll have to look but the GDP figure versus population growth between 2001 and 2011 must be pretty tight.
@hugorifkind: Couldn't UKIP have done a LITTLE research as to what Scots might think of them? Teamed up with some suitably nasty Orangemen, or something?
Just for the record divvie since the missus had dragged me off to bed before your last post yesterday. Having seen the effects of hot-headed eejits close up there is no part of me wishing the same on Scotland, quite the reverse.
Glad to hear it, and I think you really can sleep easy over that. The troubles didn't begin because some lippy republicans called a shires Tory a bawbag some time in the 1960s.
Listened to the Radio Scotland interview with Farage. What a buffoon. Whining about the interviewer hating him and storming off after perfectly reasonable questioning. I've faced tougher interviews from local radio over bin collections.
The direct effect of this pathetic performance will be very limited: there are, as the interviewer pointed out, very few UKIP supporters in the BBC Scotland broadcast area. However, I wonder if the indirect effect will be significant. Farage has generally been treated gently by the London-based media: now that there is a demonstration of how he crumbles under standard political questioning, they might be encouraged to properly challenge him, if only for the lulz.
I do find it ironic that the Scottish nationalists are apparently too thick to realise that the same arguments apply to both the Scots Independence and the BOO campaigns. As I have said before the two most ludicrous positions in British politics are pro-EU Scots nationalism and anti-EU Unionism. Neither argument makes any logical sense.
By the same logic, being constrained within one Union is surely an advance on being constrained within two.
"That matters. As the biggest economy in the region, the U.K. will have greater political weight, it will attract more migrants and investment, and the London stock market will receive a much-needed boost."
There's a good chunk of the population who would rather not have the growth if it involved attracting more migrants
Absolutely. It is not GDP growth that matters so much as GDP growth percapita. 2% growth with 3% population growth means we are on average poorer and more overcrowded. Not a good outcome.
How the hell do you get a population growth of 3% per annum, thats two million people
My figures were illustrative. If our population expands then GDP needs to expand at the same rate in order for average GDP to remain stable. With an expanding population we need to run to stand still.
It is not GDP growrh that matters to voters it is whether their standard of living is increasing, one measure being GDP per capita.
When you subtract the effect of population growth from the figures for GDP growth we see why voters are so unhappy with their personal stagnation economically, a problem stretching back a decade or more.
I suggest you look at the different options for debt growth and migration set out by the OBR among others. You can choose the low growth high debt option if it makes you feel better
So are you saying that you support increased immigration even if it exceeds economic growth so that mean GDP per capita continues to fall?
It doesnt sound like a manifesto likely to go down with the voters.
As I pointed out your figures of two million people a year are a joke, population growth exceeding GDP growth is a fantasy
That's not to say you shouldn't be down on your knees thanking Blair for defusing the demographic time bomb this country was facing
But you accept the principle that talking about GDP growth on its own is meaningless drivel?
For example if driving down wages and living standards with unlimited mass immigration creates "growth" but the benefit of that growth all goes to globalist plutocrats then it's not "growth" from the point of view of the average person.
The only growth that is worthwhile from the point of view of the average person is growth in average levels of prosperity which is something that unlimited mass immigration of unskilled labour can't possibly do.
I meant in 20 years time if Scotland stays in the Union would the Nats turn nasty? Or if they get independence, would there be tension brewing amongst whose home is Scotland but who wanted to stay in the Union?
Was there some part of "Zero" that confused you?
I'd ask if the kippers are going to start turning nasty and transform into paramilitaries when an IN/OUT referendum doesn't materialise, but it's still a stupid question regardless of who it is asked of.
@Richard_Tyndall My views on the EU are set out in an article on pb2, in case you missed it yesterday.
That was a much better discussion than your usual EU posts on here. I even think your argument for how the EU would turn protectionist is a reasonable one.*
However, your entire argument rests on the possibility of reform. This ties in with this claim:
"Britain could have joined the intellectual leadership of the EU if it could resist the temptation on every occasion to throw rocks at the other member states."
Yet a decade of Tony Blair was exactly this. Not only did he not "throw rocks" he regularly gave speeches about how committed the UK was to Europe, surrendered previous opt-outs and also agreed a financial deal where Britain contributed a lot more. Yet reform still did not happen. This idea that "if only we were less mean and played nice, it would all work out" was tested to destruction. Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We have tried being nice, we have tried being mean, we have tried quiet words in the corridor and we've tried loud noises in public. Reform, if it happens at all, is minor and fleeting, and is more than made up for by negative moves in the other direction. Despite trying for years on the fishing issue, and we can't even get them to agree that throwing illegally caught fish overboard should be stopped.
If we could get an open-trading, accountable, efficient, subsidiarity-based EU I would support it. But it's as mythical as a unicorn. We need to make decisions on the choices as they actually exist, rather than as they would ideally be.
*My counter argument to this would be that it's going in this direction anyway (which you accept), and that it would be a smaller effect than reducing trade barriers with the rest of the world.
"That matters. As the biggest economy in the region, the U.K. will have greater political weight, it will attract more migrants and investment, and the London stock market will receive a much-needed boost."
There's a good chunk of the population who would rather not have the growth if it involved attracting more migrants
Absolutely. It is not GDP growth that matters so much as GDP growth percapita. 2% growth with 3% population growth means we are on average poorer and more overcrowded. Not a good outcome.
How the hell do you get a population growth of 3% per annum, thats two million people
My figures were illustrative. If our population expands then GDP needs to expand at the same rate in order for average GDP to remain stable. With an expanding population we need to run to stand still.
It is not GDP growrh that matters to voters it is whether their standard of living is increasing, one measure being GDP per capita.
When you subtract the effect of population growth from the figures for GDP growth we see why voters are so unhappy with their personal stagnation economically, a problem stretching back a decade or more.
I suggest you look at the different options for debt growth and migration set out by the OBR among others. You can choose the low growth high debt option if it makes you feel better
So are you saying that you support increased immigration even if it exceeds economic growth so that mean GDP per capita continues to fall?
It doesnt sound like a manifesto likely to go down with the voters.
As I pointed out your figures of two million people a year are a joke, population growth exceeding GDP growth is a fantasy
That's not to say you shouldn't be down on your knees thanking Blair for defusing the demographic time bomb this country was facing
My figures were illustrative. Current population growth is 0.55% per year (2012). We have had no net economic growth since 2006; therefore the GDP per capita is lower than it was 8 years ago. We are on average poorer and more crowded.
The coalition has made progress in that 45% of new jobs created last year went to Britons rather than migrants. This is substantially better than under Labour, but it seems that for many employers that migrants are preferred to our own children. We need to address that issue rather than continue to have a human Ponzi scheme.
Classic. Farage gets confronted with the facts, blusters and runs off in the huff yet again.
Poor old Nigel appears to have forgotten that the current PM called his party "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". Nor can he find any of this union jack burning he was foaming at the mouth about. I expect he'll find them when he finds those millions of Bulgarians he thinks are coming to invade England. Bless.
Seemingly more than that to grasp that they were rightly expelled. If only Nigel could understand instead of stupidly conflating a few students shouting at him to a governing political party capable of winning seats and MPs and an independence movement capable of getting a referendum instead of living off the worthless scraps that Cammie throws to gullible eurosceptics.
Reduced to the same smear tactics Cammie used against him. The irony is most amusing.
No wonder he ran off in the huff again from the interviewer, poor chap. If that's the best he can muster it's a blessing for UKIP that he won't be in the debates.
I do find it ironic that the Scottish nationalists are apparently too thick to realise that the same arguments apply to both the Scots Independence and the BOO campaigns.
As I have said before the two most ludicrous positions in British politics are pro-EU Scots nationalism and anti-EU Unionism. Neither argument makes any logical sense.
Listened to the Radio Scotland interview with Farage. What a buffoon. Whining about the interviewer hating him and storming off after perfectly reasonable questioning. I've faced tougher interviews from local radio over bin collections.
The direct effect of this pathetic performance will be very limited: there are, as the interviewer pointed out, very few UKIP supporters in the BBC Scotland broadcast area. However, I wonder if the indirect effect will be significant. Farage has generally been treated gently by the London-based media: now that there is a demonstration of how he crumbles under standard political questioning, they might be encouraged to properly challenge him, if only for the lulz.
The BBC Scotland journalist sounded like an Alabama good ol'boy from the 1960's telling Dr King not to get uppity or he'd get what was coming to him.
Classic. Farage gets confronted with the facts, blusters and runs off in the huff yet again.
Poor old Nigel appears to have forgotten that the current PM called his party "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". Nor can he find any of this union jack burning he was foaming at the mouth about. I expect he'll find them when he finds those millions of Bulgarians he thinks are coming to invade England. Bless.
Seemingly more than that to grasp that they were rightly expelled. If only Nigel could understand instead of stupidly conflating a few students shouting at him to a governing political party capable of winning seats and MPs and an independence movement capable of getting a referendum instead of living off the worthless scraps that Cammie throws to gullible eurosceptics.
Reduced to the same smear tactics Cammie used against him. The irony is most amusing.
No wonder he ran off in the huff again from the interviewer, poor chap. If that's the best he can muster it's a blessing for UKIP that he won't be in the debates.
I do find it ironic that the Scottish nationalists are apparently too thick to realise that the same arguments apply to both the Scots Independence and the BOO campaigns.
As I have said before the two most ludicrous positions in British politics are pro-EU Scots nationalism and anti-EU Unionism. Neither argument makes any logical sense.
I've often responded to you on this point but I don't think I've ever heard you address the counter argument. Surely there is more to where sovereign power should lie than just the smaller level? Would you say that it's ludicrous to support English independence from the UK and oppose Cornish independence from England, for example?
Listened to the Radio Scotland interview with Farage. What a buffoon. Whining about the interviewer hating him and storming off after perfectly reasonable questioning. I've faced tougher interviews from local radio over bin collections.
The direct effect of this pathetic performance will be very limited: there are, as the interviewer pointed out, very few UKIP supporters in the BBC Scotland broadcast area. However, I wonder if the indirect effect will be significant. Farage has generally been treated gently by the London-based media: now that there is a demonstration of how he crumbles under standard political questioning, they might be encouraged to properly challenge him, if only for the lulz.
Just for the record divvie since the missus had dragged me off to bed before your last post yesterday. Having seen the effects of hot-headed eejits close up there is no part of me wishing the same on Scotland, quite the reverse.
Glad to hear it, and I think you really can sleep easy over that. The troubles didn't begin because some lippy republicans called a shires Tory a bawbag some time in the 1960s.
Just for the record divvie since the missus had dragged me off to bed before your last post yesterday. Having seen the effects of hot-headed eejits close up there is no part of me wishing the same on Scotland, quite the reverse.
Glad to hear it, and I think you really can sleep easy over that. The troubles didn't begin because some lippy republicans called a shires Tory a bawbag some time in the 1960s.
LOL - Bernadette Devlin attacking O'Neill perhaps - I'll have a think about that one.
Listened to the Radio Scotland interview with Farage. What a buffoon. Whining about the interviewer hating him and storming off after perfectly reasonable questioning. I've faced tougher interviews from local radio over bin collections.
The direct effect of this pathetic performance will be very limited: there are, as the interviewer pointed out, very few UKIP supporters in the BBC Scotland broadcast area. However, I wonder if the indirect effect will be significant. Farage has generally been treated gently by the London-based media: now that there is a demonstration of how he crumbles under standard political questioning, they might be encouraged to properly challenge him, if only for the lulz.
The BBC Scotland journalist sounded like an Alabama good ol'boy from the 1960's telling Dr King not to get uppity or he'd get what was coming to him.
"we dont need your sort round ere boy, stirring up trouble"
Amazing the amount of stick Farage is getting for having a load of rabble give it the big one to him!
Has Alex Salmond condemned the rather unpleasant behaviour of these nationalist protesters? Farage was right that this behaviour is not that of most Scots, who are polite, decent people, but it would be good for Alex Salmond to come out and say the same thing.
Interestingly, Lloyds share price has now moved above the government's nominal buy-in price. Don't tell Sid.
Do you think that the sell-off of some of its branches will not now be enforced as I am not sure who would want to buy them.
Of course any customer who wishes to stay with Lloyds TSB or RBS can simply ask for their account to be transferred to another branch. Which is a small pain, but hardly disastrous.
Similarly, in the case of RBS / Williams & Glyn, I believe that W&G will continue to use RBS IT systems for a couple of years, so there shouldn't be any great discontinuity for customers.
Actually not so. I had a real fight with lloyds about trying to stay with them.
My branch (which is being sold off) told me outright that I had no alternative, that I would be moved to the new company and that there was no systems in place for me to transfer to another branch. The same happened to my sister.
We then went to another branch in the same town and asked to set up new accounts and were told we were forbidden because we already had accounts at a branch that was being sold off.
We actually got as far as to say to Lloyds that we would shut down out accounts entirely and were told we were not allowed to do that (though of course that was ridiculous). At that point the staff of our branch refused to have any further discussions on the matter.
My business manager at Lloyds (my business account having already been cherry picked out from the branch and transferred to another branch so it would stay with Lloyds) tried to help but was told it was not his palce. In tyeh end we had to follow a formal complaints procedure to get them to agree that they would transfer us to another branch. This has still not occurred but I do have letters saying it will happen at the point of the sell off.
That's astonishing. I'm genuinely shocked. Personally, I would move away from Lloyds on principle after that. Have you considered the excellent Svenska Handelsbank?
I meant in 20 years time if Scotland stays in the Union would the Nats turn nasty? Or if they get independence, would there be tension brewing amongst whose home is Scotland but who wanted to stay in the Union?
Was there some part of "Zero" that confused you?
I'd ask if the kippers are going to start turning nasty and transform into paramilitaries when an IN/OUT referendum doesn't materialise, but it's still a stupid question regardless of who it is asked of.
I'm very surprised that I need to tell a Scottish nationalist about recent Scottish history, but I'd put the chance of violence after a failed independence referendum as moderate to high (for a low-enough definition of violence).
Listened to the Radio Scotland interview with Farage. What a buffoon. Whining about the interviewer hating him and storming off after perfectly reasonable questioning. I've faced tougher interviews from local radio over bin collections.
The direct effect of this pathetic performance will be very limited: there are, as the interviewer pointed out, very few UKIP supporters in the BBC Scotland broadcast area. However, I wonder if the indirect effect will be significant. Farage has generally been treated gently by the London-based media: now that there is a demonstration of how he crumbles under standard political questioning, they might be encouraged to properly challenge him, if only for the lulz.
The BBC Scotland journalist sounded like an Alabama good ol'boy from the 1960's telling Dr King not to get uppity or he'd get what was coming to him.
I was forgetting about the systematic oppression of wealthy middle-aged white men. Silly of me.
"That matters. As the biggest economy in the region, the U.K. will have greater political weight, it will attract more migrants and investment, and the London stock market will receive a much-needed boost."
There's a good chunk of the population who would rather not have the growth if it involved attracting more migrants
Absolutely. It is not GDP growth that matters so much as GDP growth percapita. 2% growth with 3% population growth means we are on average poorer and more overcrowded. Not a good outcome.
How the hell do you get a population growth of 3% per annum, thats two million people
My figures were illustrative. If our population expands then GDP needs to expand at the same rate in order for average GDP to remain stable. With an expanding population we need to run to stand still.
It is not GDP growrh that matters to voters it is whether their standard of living is increasing, one measure being GDP per capita.
When you subtract the effect of population growth from the figures for GDP growth we see why voters are so unhappy with their personal stagnation economically, a problem stretching back a decade or more.
I suggest you look at the different options for debt growth and migration set out by the OBR among others. You can choose the low growth high debt option if it makes you feel better
So are you saying that you support increased immigration even if it exceeds economic growth so that mean GDP per capita continues to fall?
It doesnt sound like a manifesto likely to go down with the voters.
As I pointed out your figures of two million people a year are a joke, population growth exceeding GDP growth is a fantasy
That's not to say you shouldn't be down on your knees thanking Blair for defusing the demographic time bomb this country was facing
But you accept the principle that talking about GDP growth on its own is meaningless drivel?
For example if driving down wages and living standards with unlimited mass immigration creates "growth" but the benefit of that growth all goes to globalist plutocrats then it's not "growth" from the point of view of the average person.
The only growth that is worthwhile from the point of view of the average person is growth in average levels of prosperity which is something that unlimited mass immigration of unskilled labour can't possibly do.
MrJones: where is your data that "unlimited mass immigration of unskilled labour" damages living standards?
I know it is a firmly held belief on your behalf, but I believe that there is a clear positive correlation over 150 years or so between high openness to immigration and high relative levels of immigration of all types and high per-capita economic growth. The danger with reading too munch into these correlations, of course, is that high economic growth causes a country to desire labour more, and therefore is likely to cause reduced barriers to immigration.
I would be interested to see what happens to economic growth and unemployment in the event that barriers to migration are sharply raised. (Again: you have to be careful or correlation and causation - we sharply increased barriers to immigration in the inter-war periods, and saw terrible economic data, but I think there were other factors at work.)
What I'm saying, to be honest, is that I'd like a discussion based on data and evidence, rather than on firmly held beliefs, unanchored by evidence. ('Casual empiricism' is not evidence.)
'It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.'
Terminator quote or good working description of the negotiation process for self-determination minded countries in Brussels?
@politicshomeuk: The SNP release a statement suggesting Nigel Farage has "completely lost the plot", after the UKIP leader's comments on Scottish nationalism
Or have the SNP airburshed the SNLA out of existence in their minds? After all, no true Scotsman could act like that...
Like most normal folk I think they regard them as pathetic, powerless idiots.
'In June 2009, Adam Busby Jr., the son of the SNLA founder, was jailed for 6 years for sending a total of 6 packages to various political figures, including First Minister Alex Salmond, Liberal Democrats MSP Mike Rumbles and Glasgow City Council.The packages contained shotgun cartridges and threatening notes. Police linked the crimes to Busby after calls made to journalists claiming SNLA responsibility for the actions were traced to his mobile phone.'
@YouGov: EuroTrack poll reveals Brits are the most cynical about the #Eurovision Song Contest - http://y-g.co/11JqJFo
We're just sore losers. I remember years when we thought we'd win and got all excited and involved.
In many ways Eurovision is an irrelevance to the UK because we have a rather healthy music industry. We may lose a rather entertaining (if silly) competition, but we do rather well in the world market compared to our European neighbours:
Ignorant Patrick seeking education from the PB commentariat: What is the difference between Marriage and a Civil Partnership? I thought gays already could get hitched. Is there a legal distinction or is is merely religious? Any practical real world differnces (eg inheritance, tax reliefs, etc)?
Civil partnerships don't have the same pension rights as marriage.
"Civil partners do not have the same pension rights as married couples. If one civil partner dies, the pension share that the surviving partner receives is often lower and lasts for less time than with married couples.
The reason for this is the pension a surviving partner is entitled to is measured differently depending on whether they have been civil partnered or married.
For civil partners, public sector schemes are dated back to 1988. For private sector schemes, it need only be backdated to the Civil Partnership Act 2004.
But for married couples, a surviving partner is entitled to a pension based on the number of years their spouse paid into the pension fund."
Travel/living abroad
Travel restrictions apply to civil partners but not married couples.
Countries like Sweden, Argentina and Portugal, where same-sex marriage is legal, do not see civil partnerships as marriage.
This means UK civil partners living abroad do not enjoy the same rights as same-sex married couples in the 11 countries where equal marriage is legal.
In addition, the marriages of foreign gay couples who travel to the UK are not legally viewed as marriages.
But plenty of straight couples that arent married manage to live abroad with no problem.
My main eyebrow raiser for this kind of argument is that fewer and fewer straight couples marry nowadays, and they dont campaign for the same rights as those that are married, they dont find the things you list, for example, a burden. So why is it such a big deal for gay people?
"The instrumental variables estimates imply that an inflow of immigrants equal to 1 percent of the population of a standard metropolitan statistical area reduces average weekly earnings of less-skilled natives by 1.2 percent."
You very sneakily switched from Mr Jones' "immigration of unskilled labour" to just "immigration". High skill immigration increases wage levels, low skill immigration reduces it.
@politicshomeuk: The SNP release a statement suggesting Nigel Farage has "completely lost the plot", after the UKIP leader's comments on Scottish nationalism
" Completely lost the plot " is the kind of hideous cliche I'd expect from the SNP press office. How long before they say that Farage has " completely jumped the shark " ?
I'm very surprised that I need to tell a Scottish nationalist about recent Scottish history, but I'd put the chance of violence after a failed independence referendum as moderate to high (for a low-enough definition of violence).
Dear god are the simple souls really conflating a few extremist dickheads to the decades of paramilitary violence, murder and terrorism that wracked Northern Ireland and the UK?
Only on PB.
Do you think the EDL or BNP any less odious or violent? Remember the National Front? Any idiotic predictions of increasing violence from any of those active groups should there continue to be immigration and we remain in the EU?
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank in favour of tighter controls, argues that the influx of low-skilled immigrants has already harmed native-born competitors. As the proportion of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the labour force has risen, the proportion of relatively unskilled natives in work has fallen (see charts). Moreover, many unskilled natives have left the labour force: they are discouraged workers. A standard counter-argument, wearily familiar on both sides of the Atlantic, is that immigrants are taking jobs that natives are unwilling to do. This is doubly wrong. First, the supply of labour is dependent on its price. Business people must know this: after all, it is the argument they use to justify soaring executive pay. Without the illegal immigrants, people would have to spend more on nannies, cleaners, farm workers and so forth. Second, most of the workers doing the jobs done also by immigrants are native-born. The obstacle is not the absence of native-born workers, but that they would have to be paid higher wages if immigrants were absent.
There's a famous quote about how happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own special way.
Slovenia is not Cyprus. But that does not mean it does not have some serious problems.
On World Bank numbers (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), private sector debt-to-GDP in Slovenia is 91.4% - which compares very favourably to Cyprus (298%) or Iceland pre its implosion (320% in 2006).
So, it is not the absolute level of private sector debt that is the problem in Slovenia. Rather it is that the banking system was never fully privatsied post the fall of Communism. So, the biggest banks in Slovenia remained controlled by the State, even when they had public listings.
This led to a culture of 'crony lending' - with banks lending to friends of the government, rather than on strictly commercial criteria. As might be expected, this has not gone very well. And, despite the relative low levels of private sector debt in the country, the banks have serious loan loss problems.
At the end of 2012, 13.2% of Slovenian loans were categorised as 'non-performing' by the World Bank. This is almost certainly an underestimate, as banks can be quite creative at propping up insolvent borrowers, for a while at least. Realistically, somewhere between one in four and five commercial loans are probably troubled.
This means the banks are undercapitalised, and the government will almost certainl need to do some kind of bail out. The good new is that this is not 'Cyprus-scale'. Even if you needed to recapitalise the banks with the equivalent of 20% of their entire private sector loans, this would be less than 20% of GDP. Which makes it pretty horrendous, but not the same as the 100% or so of GDP that was lost by bad lending by Cypriot banks. It's also worth noting that debt-to-GDP in Slovenia is a relatively modest 54%.
However, the fact that the banks are deeply f*cked has meant that credit supply to the local economy has been choked off, which is not going to be good for the hitherto relatively resilient Slovenian economy. (It's worth noting that Slovenia's unemployment rate has actually edged down of late.)
The big question for Slovenia is: can they do a bank recapitalisation equivalent to 20% of GDP without spooking the bond markets? I would suspect not. However, because the numbers are relatively modest (debt-to-GDP, even after bank recap would be among the lowest in the Eurozone), I would expect that the EU/IMF/Eurozone will backstop Slovenia without much (if any) in the way of conditions beyond a commitment to fully privatise banks in the medium term.
Or have the SNP airburshed the SNLA out of existence in their minds? After all, no true Scotsman could act like that...
Like most normal folk I think they regard them as pathetic, powerless idiots.
'In June 2009, Adam Busby Jr., the son of the SNLA founder, was jailed for 6 years for sending a total of 6 packages to various political figures, including First Minister Alex Salmond, Liberal Democrats MSP Mike Rumbles and Glasgow City Council.The packages contained shotgun cartridges and threatening notes. Police linked the crimes to Busby after calls made to journalists claiming SNLA responsibility for the actions were traced to his mobile phone.'
But it is violence, and it is terrorism.
Therefore the contention that the possibility of violence is zero is, in my mind, on shaky ground. And the idea that people sending letterbombs and interfering with whisky is somehow harmless, and that they will not go the next step, is dangerous.
Besides, the full size and list of sympathisers of the SNLA was never discovered, as is often the case for terrorist groups. It was more than the Busby's: Andrew McIntosh, Tommy Kelly, David Dinsmore, Kevin Paton and more were all jailed for SNLA-related activities.
The SNLA's aim to drive English people out of Scotland also resonates with yesterday's events.
Interestingly, Lloyds share price has now moved above the government's nominal buy-in price. Don't tell Sid.
Do you think that the sell-off of some of its branches will not now be enforced as I am not sure who would want to buy them.
I don't see how Lloyds share price affects the sell-off. Isn't the difficulty securing credibale bids from elsewhere, especially given the delicate balance sheets of so many European banks. One thing I saw recently was the idea that TSB will be recreated and separated off.
But surely the increasingly buoyant share price is good news for the incumbent government.
@tim You didn't take apart his argument at all. Just because there has also been mass skilled immigration doesn't mean there hasn't been mass unskilled immigration.
I think we both know that we can find data that points both ways, and you would be suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance if you did not recognise that.
I do find it ironic that the Scottish nationalists are apparently too thick to realise that the same arguments apply to both the Scots Independence and the BOO campaigns. As I have said before the two most ludicrous positions in British politics are pro-EU Scots nationalism and anti-EU Unionism. Neither argument makes any logical sense.
By the same logic, being constrained within one Union is surely an advance on being being constrained within two.
It's the kind of 'logic' that also excludes all other supra-national bodies, agreements and treaties as well as ignoring differing levels of devolution and just how far down to localism such 'logic' applies.
@YouGov: EuroTrack poll reveals Brits are the most cynical about the #Eurovision Song Contest - http://y-g.co/11JqJFo
We're just sore losers. I remember years when we thought we'd win and got all excited and involved.
In many ways Eurovision is an irrelevance to the UK because we have a rather healthy music industry. We may lose a rather entertaining (if silly) competition, but we do rather well in the world market compared to our European neighbours:
To be honest I am a little surprised that we are not even more dominant than that. Presumably these things change quite a bit from year to year and this data is quite old. A quick trip around google did not produce anything better but Adele has had the best selling album in each of the last 2 years (the same one of course).
Interestingly, Lloyds share price has now moved above the government's nominal buy-in price. Don't tell Sid.
Do you think that the sell-off of some of its branches will not now be enforced as I am not sure who would want to buy them.
I don't see how Lloyds share price affects the sell-off. Isn't the difficulty securing credibale bids from elsewhere, especially given the delicate balance sheets of so many European banks. One thing I saw recently was the idea that TSB will be recreated and separated off.
But surely the increasingly buoyant share price is good news for the incumbent government.
The govt divesting its stock would be good news for the bank too. Lets hope some big chunks get sold off soon - will probably help the share price upwards in a virtuous circle.
“Portugal is not Greece” – The Economist, (April, 2010)
“Spain is not Greece” – Elena Salgado, S(panish Finance Minister, February, 2010)
“Portugal is not Greece, and Spain is not Greece.” (Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, May 2010).
“Spain is not Greece. But Greece is where it is thanks to a policy like Zapatero’s policy in Spain.” Mariano Rajoy, leader of the Spanish opposition, May 2010).
“Hungary is not in the same situation as Greece.” (Olli Rehn, EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, June 2010).
“Hungary is quite obviously not Greece.” (Gyorgy Matolcsy, Hungarian Finance Minister, June 2010).
“Spain is neither Ireland nor Portugal.” (Elena Salgado, Spanish Minister of Finance, November 2010).
“Ireland is neither Spain nor Portugal.” (Angel Gurria, OECD Secretary-General, November 2010).
“Ireland is not Greece.” (Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, November 2010).
“Greece is not Ireland.” (Giorgos Papakonstantinou, Greek Minister of Finance, November 2010).
“Ireland is not in Greek territory.” (Brian Lenihan, Irish Minister of Finance, November 2010).
“Ireland is not Greece.” (Michael Noonan, Irish Minister of Finance, June 2011).
“France is not Greece and it’s not Italy either.” (Barry Eichengreen, American economist, August 2011).
“Italy is not Greece.” (Rainer Bruederle, Germany's FDP parliamentary party leader, August 2011).
“Italy is not Greece.” (Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister, October 2011).
“Italy is not Greece.” (Christian Lindner, FDP general secretary, November 2011).
“Portugal is not Greece, and it will not turn into Greece.” (Antonio Saraiva, head of the Confederation of Portuguese Industry, February 2012).
“Spain is not Greece.” (Richard Youngs, head of the Madrid-based think tank FRIDE, May 2012).
“Portugal is not Greece.” (Pedro Passos Coelho, Portuguese Prime Minister, June 2012).
“Italy is not Spain.” (Ed Parker, senior director of Fitch Ratings Agency, June 2012).
"For illustration, we will consider the extreme case where all immigrants are low-skilled. Immigration will now lead to an excess supply of unskilled labour at the pre-immigration wages. Because unskilled labour is in excess supply, firms will therefore be able to satisfy their demand for labour even at lower wages. This leads to a decrease in wages of unskilled workers, which, in turn, increases demand, until all unskilled workers (immigrants and natives) are employed, but at a lower wage than the pre-migration wage.
Accordingly, low-skilled native workers lose as a consequence of immigration. However, a supply shock of unskilled workers leads to relative scarcity of skilled workers in our economy, driving up their wages. Skilled workers therefore enjoy a surplus from immigration."
Which might explain why us metropolitan elite are in favour :-)
Ignorant Patrick seeking education from the PB commentariat: What is the difference between Marriage and a Civil Partnership? I thought gays already could get hitched. Is there a legal distinction or is is merely religious? Any practical real world differnces (eg inheritance, tax reliefs, etc)?
Civil partnerships don't have the same pension rights as marriage.
"Civil partners do not have the same pension rights as married couples. If one civil partner dies, the pension share that the surviving partner receives is often lower and lasts for less time than with married couples.
The reason for this is the pension a surviving partner is entitled to is measured differently depending on whether they have been civil partnered or married.
For civil partners, public sector schemes are dated back to 1988. For private sector schemes, it need only be backdated to the Civil Partnership Act 2004.
But for married couples, a surviving partner is entitled to a pension based on the number of years their spouse paid into the pension fund."
Travel/living abroad
Travel restrictions apply to civil partners but not married couples.
Countries like Sweden, Argentina and Portugal, where same-sex marriage is legal, do not see civil partnerships as marriage.
This means UK civil partners living abroad do not enjoy the same rights as same-sex married couples in the 11 countries where equal marriage is legal.
In addition, the marriages of foreign gay couples who travel to the UK are not legally viewed as marriages.
But plenty of straight couples that arent married manage to live abroad with no problem.
My main eyebrow raiser for this kind of argument is that fewer and fewer straight couples marry nowadays, and they dont campaign for the same rights as those that are married, they dont find the things you list, for example, a burden. So why is it such a big deal for gay people?
Heterosexuals always have the option of getting married, if they find that they encounter legal obstacles.
In any case, I think the main issue is one of respect and normalcy. There are a pair of people who love each other, and wish to publicly declare their commitment to each other in front of their friends and family. Why should this be a different thing just because the two people are of the same or differing sex?
It is only a different thing because there is a history of not allowing people to love each other if they are of the same sex. This is about putting that behind us.
Not sure which countries you are talking about with mass unskilled immigration.
It's certainly not the UK
"Over 50% of immigrants to Canada and 47% of those to Britain have completed tertiary education, the highest levels among rich countries."
"Start with who is migrating where. Britain’s foreign-born population includes a higher proportion of people with tertiary education (broadly, university graduates and above) than in almost any other OECD country (see chart 1 for a selected list and here for the full data). Incomers are much more likely to be highly educated than native Brits, and that gap is growing."
Economist
I'll leave Robert to take apart the rest of your argument
The argument is very simple: from the point of view of the average person GDP growth as a metric on its own is meaningless drivel.
GDP per capita is better as at least it shows upward or downward motion in the average but even if GDP per capita is going (edit) up then from the average person's point of view it's still the *distribution* of the benefits of that growth that matter. If the benefits are all going to the richest 5% of the population while the other 95% are getting poorer then it's not growth in a meaningful sense to the average person. What's meaningful to the average person is growth is average levels of prosperity.
People like us might need academic papers to understand what is happening, but that low skilled immigration reduces wages has been obvious to the low skilled British for many years now, while politicians called them all bigots.
I'm very surprised that I need to tell a Scottish nationalist about recent Scottish history, but I'd put the chance of violence after a failed independence referendum as moderate to high (for a low-enough definition of violence).
Dear god are the simple souls really conflating a few extremist dickheads to the decades of paramilitary violence, murder and terrorism that wracked Northern Ireland and the UK?
Only on PB.
Do you think the EDL or BNP any less odious or violent? Remember the National Front? Any idiotic predictions of increasing violence from any of those active groups should there continue to be immigration and we remain in the EU?
I am not a simple soul; I'm just not looking at the situation through saltire-coloured glasses. For one thing, I am not conflating the SNLA with the IRA or other groups; just pointing out they existed, and started after the failed 1979 referendum. Indeed, you must have missed the bit I put in parentheses in the above quote - the violence may be low-level, as it was with the SNLA.
And you react in exactly the way I expect: it was just a few people; they did not do any harm, and then start personal attacks.
I have no idea what the scale of the attacks may be, if they occur, or how many people will be involved; just that the history of the SNLA makes the odds of such action rather larger than your stated zero.
You are being remarkably, and dangerously, complacent.
The Boston Bombers were 'just' two people. All it takes is these idiots to go the next step and there could well be deaths. They've shown their intent.
And we're not talking about the BNP, EDL or NF; I think everyone can guess my viewpoint on those odious groups. Still, a great attempt at trying to divert attention from the Scottish terrorist group wanting independence that formed after the failed 1979 referendum.
Your papers aren't showing the same thing. The effect of total immigration on economic growth is a very different thing to the effect of low-skilled immigration on poor people's wages.
growth = 1 foot growth per capita = 1 inch but 11 people didn't grow at all (distribution)
From the average person's point of view growth as a metric is meaningless drivel. Growth from the average person's point of view is a metric that somehow measures overall prosperity.
People like us might need academic papers to understand what is happening, but that low skilled immigration reduces wages has been obvious to the low skilled British for many years now, while politicians called them all bigots.
Then make a case for a living wage, instead of supporting govt policies that use the benefit system to subsise low wages. Scapegoating immigration is tedious in the extreme
@tim I have and do make the case for a living wage.
However, let's not pretend the living wage doesn't have problems. There is clear evidence that if a minimum wage is too high it will have an impact on employment, particularly among the young. The extent to which you can increase the minimum wage without having employment affects will depend what the market level of wages is, and if you're depressing the market level through unskilled immigration, that's a problem.
There is also decent evidence from Germany that increasing entry level wages reduces the pay gap between entry level and one level up, and reduces the incentive to work hard and get promoted.
I support the living wage, but I also support another measure to protect the living standards of the poor in this country: reducing unskilled immigration. I notice that you do not.
And we're not talking about the BNP, EDL or NF; I think everyone can guess my viewpoint on those odious groups. Still, a great attempt at trying to divert attention from the Scottish terrorist group wanting independence that formed after the failed 1979 referendum.
Sorry JJ but I am with Mick all the way on this. The idea that the peaceful, democratic debate and vote on Scottish Independence is suddenly going to spawn some sort of sectarian civil war out of nowhere is just ludicrous.
Latest YouGov / The Sun results 16th May - CON 31%, LAB 39%, LD 9%, UKIP 15%; APP -38
Was thinking about this a couple of threads ago, but couldn't post from rural Germany.
I hadn't realised that YouGov doesn't apply a certainty to vote adjustment, which seems surprising. Is there a rule of thumb adjustment that you can use that you help give (what I think) would be a more realistic view of where opinion is?
Yes just make up a figure that looks better for the Tories and post it over and over again.
It was a serious question.
Of course, I should have expected a petty and pointless answer from you.
Comments
Why would Scottish people rather be in th UK than independent? I dont get it
Nothing against Scotland, I support them in the football etc, but I would suppoert Eire as well in the World Cup unless they played England.
What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?
Nats getting a taste of their own medicine.
In its history, Scottish Nationalism hasn't killed anyone, nor will it ever.
It's never been an ethnic nationalism, it's an civic form of Nationalism.
So no chance of troubles ever.
It must surely only be a matter of time.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/farage-attacked-by-scottish-farage-2013051769143
Of course any customer who wishes to stay with Lloyds TSB or RBS can simply ask for their account to be transferred to another branch. Which is a small pain, but hardly disastrous.
Similarly, in the case of RBS / Williams & Glyn, I believe that W&G will continue to use RBS IT systems for a couple of years, so there shouldn't be any great discontinuity for customers.
I wasnt saying soon, on the back of this Farage rubbish!!
I meant in 20 years time if Scotland stays in the Union would the Nats turn nasty? Or if they get independence, would there be tension brewing amongst whose home is Scotland but who wanted to stay in the Union?
Basically are there parallels w Ireland?
Im not suggesting anything, I know nothing about the issue at all, and care even less which way it pans out, just interested in gaining a bit of knowledge on the subject
Peter Collier admits to making silly mistake in 'liking' image of 16-year-old exposing himself in 'sneaky nuts' prank
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/17/peter-collier-facebook-photo-teenagers-genitals?CMP=twt_gu
9:49AM
'What are the chances of Scotland having Irish style "troubles" on the back of this?'
Don't think Sam is a Scot Nat is he?
It doesnt sound like a manifesto likely to go down with the voters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/francois-hollande/10062935/Europe-can-survive-without-Britain-says-Francois-Hollande.html
'Gerri Peev @GerriPeev 10h
One Ukip staffer said the 'best' protesters managed with him was: 'we think your trousers are shit'. Pants putdown.'
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100217404/reports-of-the-coalitions-death-are-exaggerated/
but...
"The Europe row is of a different order altogether. The Lib Dems in the centre, I am told, are fizzing over the way Mr Cameron has allowed a referendum vote this Parliament, when the Coalition deal was that there wouldn't be one.
Mr Clegg's complaint is largely political – he hates the idea of being seen by voters opposing giving them a say. But there is also a principled point: when is a deal not a deal? To which his Tory critics might say – boundaries. Or child care."
The majority of anti gay marriagers seems to be also anti EU , so those in favour of staying in and having gay marriage would have a huge advantage in being able to paint anti EU people as the same kind of old fashioned bigots who are anti gay marriage.... and as Gay marriage is very likely to win the vote it would get many people to vote to stay in the EU who might not bother voting at all on another day.
My branch (which is being sold off) told me outright that I had no alternative, that I would be moved to the new company and that there was no systems in place for me to transfer to another branch. The same happened to my sister.
We then went to another branch in the same town and asked to set up new accounts and were told we were forbidden because we already had accounts at a branch that was being sold off.
We actually got as far as to say to Lloyds that we would shut down out accounts entirely and were told we were not allowed to do that (though of course that was ridiculous). At that point the staff of our branch refused to have any further discussions on the matter.
My business manager at Lloyds (my business account having already been cherry picked out from the branch and transferred to another branch so it would stay with Lloyds) tried to help but was told it was not his palce. In tyeh end we had to follow a formal complaints procedure to get them to agree that they would transfer us to another branch. This has still not occurred but I do have letters saying it will happen at the point of the sell off.
I'd ask if the kippers are going to start turning nasty and transform into paramilitaries when an IN/OUT referendum doesn't materialise, but it's still a stupid question regardless of who it is asked of.
As I have said before the two most ludicrous positions in British politics are pro-EU Scots nationalism and anti-EU Unionism. Neither argument makes any logical sense.
Sounds like a perfect argument for not having a joint referendum
I will take a look later today.
Remember Lynton Crosby is rubbish - I read it on here.
"Ukip leader Nigel Farage came a close second to Mr Cameron on immigration, overtaking Mr Miliband."
Oh dear
"Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was joint-third on the economy, and third on the NHS, but trailed in last place on immigration, crime and unemployment."
Oh dear
"The economy and law and order were both traditional Tory issues that Tony Blair successfully targeted in New Labour’s most successful years. Today’s survey provides little evidence that Mr Miliband is making the same inroads. He was most trusted by just 23 per cent on the economy and 20 per cent on crime."
http://www.espn.co.uk/ferrari/motorsport/story/108241.html
As Gary Anderson posted the other day, if Red Bull go on to take the title(s), especially by a narrow margin, it may well look like a victory due to successful tyre lobbying.
Playing with fire indeed.
Yesterday, May 16, 2013 a date which will live in infamy as a UKIP staffers trousers were called shit and Nigel was viciously branded a bawbag by some rowdy students. The shame will never die.
The direct effect of this pathetic performance will be very limited: there are, as the interviewer pointed out, very few UKIP supporters in the BBC Scotland broadcast area. However, I wonder if the indirect effect will be significant. Farage has generally been treated gently by the London-based media: now that there is a demonstration of how he crumbles under standard political questioning, they might be encouraged to properly challenge him, if only for the lulz.
How very prescient of you, considering that you go in for "individual synchronised" posting style.
Chortles
For example if driving down wages and living standards with unlimited mass immigration creates "growth" but the benefit of that growth all goes to globalist plutocrats then it's not "growth" from the point of view of the average person.
The only growth that is worthwhile from the point of view of the average person is growth in average levels of prosperity which is something that unlimited mass immigration of unskilled labour can't possibly do.
Release them say I
However, your entire argument rests on the possibility of reform. This ties in with this claim:
"Britain could have joined the intellectual leadership of the EU if it could resist the temptation on every occasion to throw rocks at the other member states."
Yet a decade of Tony Blair was exactly this. Not only did he not "throw rocks" he regularly gave speeches about how committed the UK was to Europe, surrendered previous opt-outs and also agreed a financial deal where Britain contributed a lot more. Yet reform still did not happen. This idea that "if only we were less mean and played nice, it would all work out" was tested to destruction. Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We have tried being nice, we have tried being mean, we have tried quiet words in the corridor and we've tried loud noises in public. Reform, if it happens at all, is minor and fleeting, and is more than made up for by negative moves in the other direction. Despite trying for years on the fishing issue, and we can't even get them to agree that throwing illegally caught fish overboard should be stopped.
If we could get an open-trading, accountable, efficient, subsidiarity-based EU I would support it. But it's as mythical as a unicorn. We need to make decisions on the choices as they actually exist, rather than as they would ideally be.
*My counter argument to this would be that it's going in this direction anyway (which you accept), and that it would be a smaller effect than reducing trade barriers with the rest of the world.
The coalition has made progress in that 45% of new jobs created last year went to Britons rather than migrants. This is substantially better than under Labour, but it seems that for many employers that migrants are preferred to our own children. We need to address that issue rather than continue to have a human Ponzi scheme.
Independence for the Kingdom of Thames!
Amazing the amount of stick Farage is getting for having a load of rabble give it the big one to him!
What did he do wrong here exactly?
Dare show his face in Scotland?
There is a lot of spam mixed with the replies to your post on the EU.
It is from "Anonymous" and needs removing as it breaks up the thread of replies.
After all, there was limited violenceand terrorist acts by a bunch of d**kheads after the failed 1979 referendum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Liberation_Army
If it happened before, it may happen again. Devolution did not stop the sick so-and-sos.
I also put the chances of violence after a successful independence referendum as low to moderate, for much the same reasons.
Or have the SNP airburshed the SNLA out of existence in their minds? After all, no true Scotsman could act like that...
Why are they so over represented in that job?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22564368
So is the treacherous Clegg and whiner-in-chief Miliband.
I know it is a firmly held belief on your behalf, but I believe that there is a clear positive correlation over 150 years or so between high openness to immigration and high relative levels of immigration of all types and high per-capita economic growth. The danger with reading too munch into these correlations, of course, is that high economic growth causes a country to desire labour more, and therefore is likely to cause reduced barriers to immigration.
I would be interested to see what happens to economic growth and unemployment in the event that barriers to migration are sharply raised. (Again: you have to be careful or correlation and causation - we sharply increased barriers to immigration in the inter-war periods, and saw terrible economic data, but I think there were other factors at work.)
What I'm saying, to be honest, is that I'd like a discussion based on data and evidence, rather than on firmly held beliefs, unanchored by evidence. ('Casual empiricism' is not evidence.)
'It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.'
Terminator quote or good working description of the negotiation process for self-determination minded countries in Brussels?
'In June 2009, Adam Busby Jr., the son of the SNLA founder, was jailed for 6 years for sending a total of 6 packages to various political figures, including First Minister Alex Salmond, Liberal Democrats MSP Mike Rumbles and Glasgow City Council.The packages contained shotgun cartridges and threatening notes. Police linked the crimes to Busby after calls made to journalists claiming SNLA responsibility for the actions were traced to his mobile phone.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Total_value_by_country
My main eyebrow raiser for this kind of argument is that fewer and fewer straight couples marry nowadays, and they dont campaign for the same rights as those that are married, they dont find the things you list, for example, a burden. So why is it such a big deal for gay people?
"The instrumental variables estimates imply that an inflow of immigrants equal to 1 percent of the population of a standard metropolitan statistical area reduces average weekly earnings of less-skilled natives by 1.2 percent."
http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/natives.pdf
You very sneakily switched from Mr Jones' "immigration of unskilled labour" to just "immigration". High skill immigration increases wage levels, low skill immigration reduces it.
Only on PB.
Do you think the EDL or BNP any less odious or violent? Remember the National Front?
Any idiotic predictions of increasing violence from any of those active groups should there continue to be immigration and we remain in the EU?
And here's Martin Wolf:
http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/6e393c0a-c403-11da-bc52-0000779e2340.img
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank in favour of tighter controls, argues that the influx of low-skilled immigrants has already harmed native-born competitors. As the proportion of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the labour force has risen, the proportion of relatively unskilled natives in work has fallen (see charts). Moreover, many unskilled natives have left the labour force: they are discouraged workers.
A standard counter-argument, wearily familiar on both sides of the Atlantic, is that immigrants are taking jobs that natives are unwilling to do. This is doubly wrong. First, the supply of labour is dependent on its price. Business people must know this: after all, it is the argument they use to justify soaring executive pay. Without the illegal immigrants, people would have to spend more on nannies, cleaners, farm workers and so forth. Second, most of the workers doing the jobs done also by immigrants are native-born. The obstacle is not the absence of native-born workers, but that they would have to be paid higher wages if immigrants were absent.
Slovenia is not Cyprus. But that does not mean it does not have some serious problems.
On World Bank numbers (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), private sector debt-to-GDP in Slovenia is 91.4% - which compares very favourably to Cyprus (298%) or Iceland pre its implosion (320% in 2006).
So, it is not the absolute level of private sector debt that is the problem in Slovenia. Rather it is that the banking system was never fully privatsied post the fall of Communism. So, the biggest banks in Slovenia remained controlled by the State, even when they had public listings.
This led to a culture of 'crony lending' - with banks lending to friends of the government, rather than on strictly commercial criteria. As might be expected, this has not gone very well. And, despite the relative low levels of private sector debt in the country, the banks have serious loan loss problems.
At the end of 2012, 13.2% of Slovenian loans were categorised as 'non-performing' by the World Bank. This is almost certainly an underestimate, as banks can be quite creative at propping up insolvent borrowers, for a while at least. Realistically, somewhere between one in four and five commercial loans are probably troubled.
This means the banks are undercapitalised, and the government will almost certainl need to do some kind of bail out. The good new is that this is not 'Cyprus-scale'. Even if you needed to recapitalise the banks with the equivalent of 20% of their entire private sector loans, this would be less than 20% of GDP. Which makes it pretty horrendous, but not the same as the 100% or so of GDP that was lost by bad lending by Cypriot banks. It's also worth noting that debt-to-GDP in Slovenia is a relatively modest 54%.
However, the fact that the banks are deeply f*cked has meant that credit supply to the local economy has been choked off, which is not going to be good for the hitherto relatively resilient Slovenian economy. (It's worth noting that Slovenia's unemployment rate has actually edged down of late.)
The big question for Slovenia is: can they do a bank recapitalisation equivalent to 20% of GDP without spooking the bond markets? I would suspect not. However, because the numbers are relatively modest (debt-to-GDP, even after bank recap would be among the lowest in the Eurozone), I would expect that the EU/IMF/Eurozone will backstop Slovenia without much (if any) in the way of conditions beyond a commitment to fully privatise banks in the medium term.
Therefore the contention that the possibility of violence is zero is, in my mind, on shaky ground. And the idea that people sending letterbombs and interfering with whisky is somehow harmless, and that they will not go the next step, is dangerous.
Besides, the full size and list of sympathisers of the SNLA was never discovered, as is often the case for terrorist groups. It was more than the Busby's: Andrew McIntosh, Tommy Kelly, David Dinsmore, Kevin Paton and more were all jailed for SNLA-related activities.
The SNLA's aim to drive English people out of Scotland also resonates with yesterday's events.
But surely the increasingly buoyant share price is good news for the incumbent government.
MIkes bet could be value according to "Mystic Hitchens"...
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/?ico=debate^editors_choice
* well actually he says next year, but it still makes 16/1 this year a decent bet I suppose
Two can play at that game :-)
http://www.uvu.edu/woodbury/pdfs/workingpapers/ImmigDevF_EL-uvscwp0307.pdf - "This paper provides evidence that immigration has a positive long-run impact upon economic
growth in the US."
http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/ImmigrantsIn25MetroAreas_20091130.pdf - 'Between 1990 and 2006, the metropolitan areas with the fastest economic growth were also the areas with the greatest increase in immigrant share of the labor force.'
I think we both know that we can find data that points both ways, and you would be suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance if you did not recognise that.
I was being cynical.
“Portugal is not Greece”
– The Economist, (April, 2010)
“Spain is not Greece”
– Elena Salgado, S(panish Finance Minister, February, 2010)
“Portugal is not Greece, and Spain is not Greece.” (Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, May 2010).
“Spain is not Greece. But Greece is where it is thanks to a policy like Zapatero’s policy in Spain.” Mariano Rajoy, leader of the Spanish opposition, May 2010).
“Hungary is not in the same situation as Greece.” (Olli Rehn, EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, June 2010).
“Hungary is quite obviously not Greece.” (Gyorgy Matolcsy, Hungarian Finance Minister, June 2010).
“Spain is neither Ireland nor Portugal.” (Elena Salgado, Spanish Minister of Finance, November 2010).
“Ireland is neither Spain nor Portugal.” (Angel Gurria, OECD Secretary-General, November 2010).
“Ireland is not Greece.” (Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, November 2010).
“Greece is not Ireland.” (Giorgos Papakonstantinou, Greek Minister of Finance, November 2010).
“Ireland is not in Greek territory.” (Brian Lenihan, Irish Minister of Finance, November 2010).
“Ireland is not Greece.” (Michael Noonan, Irish Minister of Finance, June 2011).
“France is not Greece and it’s not Italy either.” (Barry Eichengreen, American economist, August 2011).
“Italy is not Greece.” (Rainer Bruederle, Germany's FDP parliamentary party leader, August 2011).
“Italy is not Greece.” (Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister, October 2011).
“Italy is not Greece.” (Christian Lindner, FDP general secretary, November 2011).
“Portugal is not Greece, and it will not turn into Greece.” (Antonio Saraiva, head of the Confederation of Portuguese Industry, February 2012).
“Spain is not Greece.” (Richard Youngs, head of the Madrid-based think tank FRIDE, May 2012).
“Portugal is not Greece.” (Pedro Passos Coelho, Portuguese Prime Minister, June 2012).
“Italy is not Spain.” (Ed Parker, senior director of Fitch Ratings Agency, June 2012).
"For illustration, we will consider the extreme case where all immigrants are low-skilled. Immigration will now lead to an excess supply of unskilled labour at the pre-immigration wages. Because unskilled labour is in excess supply, firms will therefore be able to satisfy their demand for labour even at lower wages. This leads to a decrease in wages of unskilled workers, which, in turn, increases demand, until all unskilled workers (immigrants and natives) are employed, but at a lower wage than the pre-migration wage.
Accordingly, low-skilled native workers lose as a consequence of immigration. However, a supply shock of unskilled workers leads to relative scarcity of skilled workers in our economy, driving up their wages. Skilled workers therefore enjoy a surplus from immigration."
Which might explain why us metropolitan elite are in favour :-)
In any case, I think the main issue is one of respect and normalcy. There are a pair of people who love each other, and wish to publicly declare their commitment to each other in front of their friends and family. Why should this be a different thing just because the two people are of the same or differing sex?
It is only a different thing because there is a history of not allowing people to love each other if they are of the same sex. This is about putting that behind us.
GDP per capita is better as at least it shows upward or downward motion in the average but even if GDP per capita is going (edit) up then from the average person's point of view it's still the *distribution* of the benefits of that growth that matter. If the benefits are all going to the richest 5% of the population while the other 95% are getting poorer then it's not growth in a meaningful sense to the average person. What's meaningful to the average person is growth is average levels of prosperity.
People like us might need academic papers to understand what is happening, but that low skilled immigration reduces wages has been obvious to the low skilled British for many years now, while politicians called them all bigots.
And you react in exactly the way I expect: it was just a few people; they did not do any harm, and then start personal attacks.
I have no idea what the scale of the attacks may be, if they occur, or how many people will be involved; just that the history of the SNLA makes the odds of such action rather larger than your stated zero.
You are being remarkably, and dangerously, complacent.
The Boston Bombers were 'just' two people. All it takes is these idiots to go the next step and there could well be deaths. They've shown their intent.
And we're not talking about the BNP, EDL or NF; I think everyone can guess my viewpoint on those odious groups. Still, a great attempt at trying to divert attention from the Scottish terrorist group wanting independence that formed after the failed 1979 referendum.
Your papers aren't showing the same thing. The effect of total immigration on economic growth is a very different thing to the effect of low-skilled immigration on poor people's wages.
Isn't that the start of Anna Karenina? A magnificent book.
growth = 1 foot
growth per capita = 1 inch
but 11 people didn't grow at all (distribution)
From the average person's point of view growth as a metric is meaningless drivel. Growth from the average person's point of view is a metric that somehow measures overall prosperity.
The key difference is the name. Why should gay couples in state-recognised relationships be marked out as "separate but equal"?
However, let's not pretend the living wage doesn't have problems. There is clear evidence that if a minimum wage is too high it will have an impact on employment, particularly among the young. The extent to which you can increase the minimum wage without having employment affects will depend what the market level of wages is, and if you're depressing the market level through unskilled immigration, that's a problem.
There is also decent evidence from Germany that increasing entry level wages reduces the pay gap between entry level and one level up, and reduces the incentive to work hard and get promoted.
I support the living wage, but I also support another measure to protect the living standards of the poor in this country: reducing unskilled immigration. I notice that you do not.
Of course, I should have expected a petty and pointless answer from you.