The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
As long as the pearly gates haven't got any golden bits- 'cos they'd have been flogged off for tuppence by him. Still being checked in up there he wouldn't be needing a pension, which is just as well considering he taxed them and helped screw them over in the private sector.
Nothing to do with private sector pension funds being stripped in the 1980s then?
Well no actually. Ours was not stripped and has the only run since the late 80's but back of an envelope Gordon's tax represents 20-25% of the deficit now. What an utter plank of a policy that pension dividend tax was. How to destroy saving for old age in one easy lesson. And all that before the Byzantine wonders of the 2004 Act. Folks will be working till deep into theirs 70's thanks to Brown. He was to pension saving as Stalingrad was to the German army.
Do you know what, I'm sick of all this 'neeer, neeer, your side all kept lying about immigration'.
I think sovereignty is really important. But I have also seen the negative impacts of uncontrolled EU immigration on the lives of my family who are not so privileged as to be antiquarian booksellers. I've seen their standards of living decline. I've seen competition for public services increase. Even in the poorest parts of North Wales, most of my generation will never buy a house; despite being better educated than most of their parents, who do own houses. I've seen the relentless pursuit of GDP growth at the expense of real GDP/capita growth. I've seen the long-standing social contract between employer and native employee and government and native eroded, for the sake of neo-liberal growth prospects. It makes me sick.
I do not have anything but respect for those who have come here; but I don't think the numbers in which they've come is beneficial to our social settlement. I think it is, in fact, detrimental.
Immigration IS a big issue. Brexit has to tackle it.
The lie was in purporting to offer a sea change in immigration. I think you'll find it doesn't happen - the economic undercurrent that powers it is too strong.
I think that too. Even if Brexit crashes the economy to a Greek style 25% GDP drop (which may well be on the cards anyway due to public and private debt), effects would balance. A lot of EU migrants would depart, but the differential in income and standard of living will continue much the same for African and Asian migrants, even the purely economic ones. Ones fleeing wars or environmental destruction from global warming would have a double reason to come.
Do you know what, I'm sick of all this 'neeer, neeer, your side all kept lying about immigration'.
I think sovereignty is really important. But I have also seen the negative impacts of uncontrolled EU immigration on the lives of my family who are not so privileged as to be antiquarian booksellers. I've seen their standards of living decline. I've seen competition for public services increase. Even in the poorest parts of North Wales, most of my generation will never buy a house; despite being better educated than most of their parents, who do own houses. I've seen the relentless pursuit of GDP growth at the expense of real GDP/capita growth. I've seen the long-standing social contract between employer and native employee and government and native eroded, for the sake of neo-liberal growth prospects. It makes me sick.
I do not have anything but respect for those who have come here; but I don't think the numbers in which they've come is beneficial to our social settlement. I think it is, in fact, detrimental.
Immigration IS a big issue. Brexit has to tackle it.
The lie was in purporting to offer a sea change in immigration. I think you'll find it doesn't happen - the economic undercurrent that powers it is too strong.
I think that too. Even if Brexit crashes the economy to a Greek style 25% GDP drop (which may well be on the cards anyway due to public and private debt), effects would balance. A lot of EU migrants would depart, but the differential in income and standard of living will continue much the same for African and Asian migrants, even the purely economic ones. Ones fleeing wars or environmental destruction from global warming would have a double reason to come. </blockquote
For whatever reason, good, bad, or indifferent, our geography means that in any kind of meaningful numbers it is and will be a political choice who comes here.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
How quickly Leavers abandon the need to control immigration when they realise that the current path of the Brexit negotiations is leading down a very unpromising path.
Perhaps they should have thought about it before pandering to xenophobia.
It was immigration which got Leave 52% certainly and that is all down to Blair's failure to impose transition controls on migration from the new accession countries in 2004
Reading this thread has been an education. In the event of Brexit being a woeful catastrophe it is now clear who is to blame for the ultimate fiasco! Blair for his mismanagement of pan-European migration. Brown for crashing the world economy and Corbyn for his hatred of multi-nation trading blocs (except for the Soviet Union).
Please note, Brexit looking calamitous has absolutely nothing to do with a vanity referendum, a vanity bids to become leader of the Conservative Party and hence PM or a vanity General Election.
It is Blair and Brown who created the forces necessary for the Brexit vote certainly
Blair was indeed responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire!
Funny how Schroeder, Chirac, Berlusconi and Aznar all agreed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries in 2004 and none have had as big a rise in an anti EU party (and hence a Leave vote) as we have had with the rise of UKIP after Blair failed to impose transition controls
Not sure those are good examples. Both France and Italy have anti EU parties with bigger voteshares than the kipppers ever managed here.
FN was already in 17% in 2002, UKIP went from 3% to 13% by 2015 and even more in European elections
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
As long as the pearly gates haven't got any golden bits- 'cos they'd have been flogged off for tuppence by him. Still being checked in up there he wouldn't be needing a pension, which is just as well considering he taxed them and helped screw them over in the private sector.
Nothing to do with private sector pension funds being stripped in the 1980s then?
Well no actually. Ours was not stripped and has the only run since the late 80's but back of an envelope Gordon's tax represents 20-25% of the deficit now. What an utter plank of a policy that pension dividend tax was. How to destroy saving for old age in one easy lesson. And all that before the Byzantine wonders of the 2004 Act. Folks will be working till deep into theirs 70's thanks to Brown. He was to pension saving as Stalingrad was to the German army.
Presumably Osborne reversed this in his first budget 7 years ago then? Oh...
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
So what is the threat? That they will treat us like any outsider, non-EU country liked we asked them to?
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
Which is why I've always said that Brexit will provide the cathartic defeat that is needed for the British to sign up to the EU project. It's the last hurrah for Euroscepticism.
There is also an honour in it, I think. In any other nation, the risk of a failed attempt to leave the EU turning into something uglier than gallows humour and derision for the government would be much greater.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
I wonder how Trump feels that more people in the US are looking to Merkel rather than himself to lead in regard to world affairs (according to Pew). Awkward....
People who would not vote for him so I doubt he gives a flying fuck.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
So what is the threat? That they will treat us like any outsider, non-EU country liked we asked them to?
No favours. We asked to leave and out we go.
No problem there - they won't be wanting any 'divorce payment', then, presumably?
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
Brown could never allow major retail banks to fail - the effects would have been catastrophic for this country. Osborne would have done the same, as would any other chancellor.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
Which is why I've always said that Brexit will provide the cathartic defeat that is needed for the British to sign up to the EU project. It's the last hurrah for Euroscepticism.
There is also an honour in it, I think. In any other nation, the risk of a failed attempt to leave the EU turning into something uglier than gallows humour and derision for the government would be much greater.
You assume it will be a defeat?
I just looked at the WTO MFN tarriffs for my business. 0%. Worldwide.
How quickly Leavers abandon the need to control immigration when they realise that the current path of the Brexit negotiations is leading down a very unpromising path.
Perhaps they should have thought about it before pandering to xenophobia.
It was immigration which got Leave 52% certainly and that is all down to Blair's failure to impose transition controls on migration from the new accession countries in 2004
Reading this thread has been an education. In the event of Brexit being a woeful catastrophe it is now clear who is to blame for the ultimate fiasco! Blair for his mismanagement of pan-European migration. Brown for crashing the world economy and Corbyn for his hatred of multi-nation trading blocs (except for the Soviet Union).
Please note, Brexit looking calamitous has absolutely nothing to do with a vanity referendum, a vanity bids to become leader of the Conservative Party and hence PM or a vanity General Election.
It is Blair and Brown who created the forces necessary for the Brexit vote certainly
Errr? No, Mr Cameron called the referendum and Mr Johnson inadvertently won it in a bid to become Prime Minister. What has happened since the vote has been bewildering! Mrs May's triggering Article 50 on some random day she picked out of thin air without first getting even her first duck in order was nothing short of dereliction of duty!
It was Blair's failure to impose transition controls in 2004 which gave Vote Leave their biggest piece of ammunition
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
As long as the pearly gates haven't got any golden bits- 'cos they'd have been flogged off for tuppence by him. Still being checked in up there he wouldn't be needing a pension, which is just as well considering he taxed them and helped screw them over in the private sector.
Nothing to do with private sector pension funds being stripped in the 1980s then?
Well no actually. Ours was not stripped and has the only run since the late 80's but back of an envelope Gordon's tax represents 20-25% of the deficit now. What an utter plank of a policy that pension dividend tax was. How to destroy saving for old age in one easy lesson. And all that before the Byzantine wonders of the 2004 Act. Folks will be working till deep into theirs 70's thanks to Brown. He was to pension saving as Stalingrad was to the German army.
Presumably Osborne reversed this in his first budget 7 years ago then? Oh...
Quite. But £100bn plus deficit is a bit of a restrained.
It was an utterly destructive and idiotic policy from Brown. The bill is yet to really come in in the shape of smaller matured pension funds, but it's out there, and it will have big effects. The man was an utter fool on this issue. Eating the seed corn par excellence.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
Brown could never allow major retail banks to fail - the effects would have been catastrophic for this country. Osborne would have done the same, as would any other chancellor.
I wonder how Trump feels that more people in the US are looking to Merkel rather than himself to lead in regard to world affairs (according to Pew). Awkward....
People who would not vote for him so I doubt he gives a flying fuck.
As said before, he's proven to be very sensitive to criticism....which generally comes from people who wouldn't vote for him. It was only recently we had him attacking the Morning Joe hosts on Twitter and that comment he made about Mika in particular was pretty vicious. And that's just one incident I'm mentioning.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
Which is why I've always said that Brexit will provide the cathartic defeat that is needed for the British to sign up to the EU project. It's the last hurrah for Euroscepticism.
There is also an honour in it, I think. In any other nation, the risk of a failed attempt to leave the EU turning into something uglier than gallows humour and derision for the government would be much greater.
Complete rubbish, we never signed up even to the EEC project in the first place, we never signed up to the Euro, like Scandinavia, Switzerland and Eastern Europe we will never be at the heart of the EU project. We should now return to EFTA where we belong
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
Brown could never allow major retail banks to fail - the effects would have been catastrophic for this country. Osborne would have done the same, as would any other chancellor.
No Osborne would probably at least have allowed Northern Rock to go bust
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
Which is why I've always said that Brexit will provide the cathartic defeat that is needed for the British to sign up to the EU project. It's the last hurrah for Euroscepticism.
There is also an honour in it, I think. In any other nation, the risk of a failed attempt to leave the EU turning into something uglier than gallows humour and derision for the government would be much greater.
Complete rubbish, we never signed up even to the EEC project in the first place, we never signed up to the Euro, like Scandinavia, Switzerland and Eastern Europe we will never be at the heart of the EU project. We should now return to EFTA where we belong
Ha, well I agree with the last point, given where we are now - EFTA would be the best solution!
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
So what is the threat? That they will treat us like any outsider, non-EU country liked we asked them to?
No favours. We asked to leave and out we go.
No problem there - they won't be wanting any 'divorce payment', then, presumably?
They will just be asking us to settle the bills we agreed to run up as members. Perfectly normal.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
It's the Brexiteers that don't understand the European experience, not the other way round
It is a mark of Britain’s estrangement from the European Union – and, at least for now, the country’s diminished standing on the international stage – that although Theresa May attended a memorial service to Helmut Kohl at the weekend, she was not invited to speak.
yet another reminder that the British, or most of them at any rate, have never really understood the European project. Or rather, the European’s Europe was not the British Europe.
Britain cannot avoid Europe but it has never imagined itself a full part of the continent; our history is European but not altogether of Europe.
Britain’s war story unavoidably meant we never understood the emotional appeal of the European project. Our finest hour was their darkest and, at least in terms of the painstakingly slow construction of the new Europe – a project that’s been sixty years in the making and is not finished yet – we never, really, truly, appreciated what it was was all about. What we saw as traps and the erosion of the nation state, they understood as safeguards. What we took to be German expansionism – albeit by peaceful means – they saw as constraints on German power. Germany would be embedded – buried, actually – in Europe.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
Not if Northern Rock for example had not been bailed out, though I accept there came a point where the government had to intervene
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
So what is the threat? That they will treat us like any outsider, non-EU country liked we asked them to?
No favours. We asked to leave and out we go.
No problem there - they won't be wanting any 'divorce payment', then, presumably?
They will just be asking us to settle the bills we agreed to run up as members. Perfectly normal.
Nah, if they want to treat us like any outside, non EU country, they shouldnt expect any further contributions.
Now, if they're going to be sensible, and stop threatening us, they might get some cash to fill their budget chasm.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
Which is why I've always said that Brexit will provide the cathartic defeat that is needed for the British to sign up to the EU project. It's the last hurrah for Euroscepticism.
There is also an honour in it, I think. In any other nation, the risk of a failed attempt to leave the EU turning into something uglier than gallows humour and derision for the government would be much greater.
Complete rubbish, we never signed up even to the EEC project in the first place, we never signed up to the Euro, like Scandinavia, Switzerland and Eastern Europe we will never be at the heart of the EU project. We should now return to EFTA where we belong
Ha, well I agree with the last point, given where we are now - EFTA would be the best solution!
I wonder how Trump feels that more people in the US are looking to Merkel rather than himself to lead in regard to world affairs (according to Pew). Awkward....
People who would not vote for him so I doubt he gives a flying fuck.
As said before, he's proven to be very sensitive to criticism....which generally comes from people who wouldn't vote for him. It was only recently we had him attacking the Morning Joe hosts on Twitter and that comment he made about Mika in particular was pretty vicious. And that's just one incident I'm mentioning.
None of that made him change his policies, which is what we really need to happen. If he spouts off on Twitter about some arsehole it just helps him motivate his base. If anything this kind of polling will make trump think he is right about America not being great. That they look to some foreign liberal as a more influential world leader than the POTUS. Clearly it isn't true. Trump has done more to change global politics in 6 months that Merkel has done on 10 years.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
It's the Brexiteers that don't understand the European experience, not the other way round
It is a mark of Britain’s estrangement from the European Union – and, at least for now, the country’s diminished standing on the international stage – that although Theresa May attended a memorial service to Helmut Kohl at the weekend, she was not invited to speak.
yet another reminder that the British, or most of them at any rate, have never really understood the European project. Or rather, the European’s Europe was not the British Europe.
Britain cannot avoid Europe but it has never imagined itself a full part of the continent; our history is European but not altogether of Europe.
Britain’s war story unavoidably meant we never understood the emotional appeal of the European project. Our finest hour was their darkest and, at least in terms of the painstakingly slow construction of the new Europe – a project that’s been sixty years in the making and is not finished yet – we never, really, truly, appreciated what it was was all about. What we saw as traps and the erosion of the nation state, they understood as safeguards. What we took to be German expansionism – albeit by peaceful means – they saw as constraints on German power. Germany would be embedded – buried, actually – in Europe.
I'm inclined to think UNS might work quite well for 2022, the big leave-remain switch (Overwashed by the youth surge) has happened in this election just gone.
Lab 329 SNP 28
Gives a small but very comfortable majority to Corbyn (Or his succesor).
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
As long as the pearly gates haven't got any golden bits- 'cos they'd have been flogged off for tuppence by him. Still being checked in up there he wouldn't be needing a pension, which is just as well considering he taxed them and helped screw them over in the private sector.
Nothing to do with private sector pension funds being stripped in the 1980s then?
Well no actually. Ours was not stripped and has the only run since the late 80's but back of an envelope Gordon's tax represents 20-25% of the deficit now. What an utter plank of a policy that pension dividend tax was. How to destroy saving for old age in one easy lesson. And all that before the Byzantine wonders of the 2004 Act. Folks will be working till deep into theirs 70's thanks to Brown. He was to pension saving as Stalingrad was to the German army.
Presumably Osborne reversed this in his first budget 7 years ago then? Oh...
Quite. But £100bn plus deficit is a bit of a restrained.
It was an utterly destructive and idiotic policy from Brown. The bill is yet to really come in in the shape of smaller matured pension funds, but it's out there, and it will have big effects. The man was an utter fool on this issue. Eating the seed corn par excellence.
Browns move was stupid but final salary pensions were always going to be doomed by longer life expectancy and poor investment returns since he turn of the century.
Ireland will never leave the EU. There is no point even discussing it!
It'd be wonderful on so many levels.
The Irish would be free of EU rule and Beverley_C would have to discover a Greek aunt so she can move there instead.
Go to Dublin.
See the flags of many European nations fluttering in the breeze.
Look for the butcher's apron.
You won't see it.
The mask slips.
It's ok if I call those who fly the EU flag here the traitor's apron, then?
Childish comment, but sadly typical of you.
My point is that that's what the Irish call the Union Jack. To think they will leave the EU to rejoin a union with what they see as their former oppressor is beyond swivel-eyed.
...if I could think what that might be - on stalks perhaps?
It's a specific type of Irish, violent Republicans, who use that expression.
Still don't see it flying in Dublin. Maybe all the flagpoles are controlled by a cabal of violent Irish Republicans.
I'm not sure why one would expect to see it flying in Dublin. It flies from big hotels, but one would usually expect the Irish flag to fly from public buildings.
Do try to keep up. Dublin is full of flags of many nations. Except the UK.
Do try to stop being a twat. I've been there.
Perhaps you've seen the bullet holes in the facade of the General Post Office. Ask yourself why they haven't been repaired.
Bone idle council repairmen always in the pub across the road?
The only people in Ireland who call the Union Jack the Butchers Flag are a special kind of demented, obsessive Shinner. Think the outer fringes of UKIP, but with Guardian political beliefs mixed with a weird romance about the right kind of violence. There are about three and a half of them in Dublin, from what I have seen. In general they are slightly less popular than smallpox with the population at large.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
Not if Northern Rock for example had not been bailed out, though I accept there came a point where the government had to intervene
The retail banks would have fallen like dominoes if NR had been allowed to fail. Widespread panic ATMs running out, payments bouncing, wages not paid... armageddon! We very very close to a situation that would have made brexit look like a bump in the road.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
Not if Northern Rock for example had not been bailed out, though I accept there came a point where the government had to intervene
The retail banks would have fallen like dominoes if NR had been allowed to fail. Widespread panic ATMs running out, payments bouncing, wages not paid... armageddon! We very very close to a situation that would have made brexit look like a bump in the road.
The banks might have learnt a bit of humility mind.
I wonder how Trump feels that more people in the US are looking to Merkel rather than himself to lead in regard to world affairs (according to Pew). Awkward....
People who would not vote for him so I doubt he gives a flying fuck.
As said before, he's proven to be very sensitive to criticism....which generally comes from people who wouldn't vote for him. It was only recently we had him attacking the Morning Joe hosts on Twitter and that comment he made about Mika in particular was pretty vicious. And that's just one incident I'm mentioning.
None of that made him change his policies, which is what we really need to happen. If he spouts off on Twitter about some arsehole it just helps him motivate his base. If anything this kind of polling will make trump think he is right about America not being great. That they look to some foreign liberal as a more influential world leader than the POTUS. Clearly it isn't true. Trump has done more to change global politics in 6 months that Merkel has done on 10 years.
What does any of that have to do with my original assertion - which touched on Trump's sensitivity to criticism? I wasn't making any argument that it was going to change his policies.
Clearly many (including most in this country judging by that Pew poll) do not share the view of Merkel espoused by many right leaning commentators on this site.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
Not if Northern Rock for example had not been bailed out, though I accept there came a point where the government had to intervene
The retail banks would have fallen like dominoes if NR had been allowed to fail. Widespread panic ATMs running out, payments bouncing, wages not paid... armageddon! We very very close to a situation that would have made brexit look like a bump in the road.
Incidentally, one of the reasons I'm not massively worried about the Remainer threats of economic armageddon is I basically started my business as the GFC happened.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
Not if Northern Rock for example had not been bailed out, though I accept there came a point where the government had to intervene
The retail banks would have fallen like dominoes if NR had been allowed to fail. Widespread panic ATMs running out, payments bouncing, wages not paid... armageddon! We very very close to a situation that would have made brexit look like a bump in the road.
The banks might have learnt a bit of humility mind.
Incidentally, this is something I don't think the EU realises. We've never lost. We've never been occupied. We've never had political extremism triumph. That is one of the many reasons why Leave is not as daunting for Britain as it would be for any other European nation.
14th October 1066
A thousand years ago. Longer than many European countries have existed
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
Gordon Brown started the nationalisation of banks and mass bailouts which gave the biggest boost to the populist left in half a century, after all if bankers could be protected from capitalism why can't the rest of us? If capitalism had been allowed to run its course and more banks been allowed to go under like Lehmans that argument would have been more difficult to make
And wages wouldn't have been paid, and ATMs would have run dry
Not if Northern Rock for example had not been bailed out, though I accept there came a point where the government had to intervene
The retail banks would have fallen like dominoes if NR had been allowed to fail. Widespread panic ATMs running out, payments bouncing, wages not paid... armageddon! We very very close to a situation that would have made brexit look like a bump in the road.
No they wouldn't, if the US economy could survive Lehmans going under then the UK economy could survive an ex building society like NR going under
Comments
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/883062989338836994
No favours. We asked to leave and out we go.
There is also an honour in it, I think. In any other nation, the risk of a failed attempt to leave the EU turning into something uglier than gallows humour and derision for the government would be much greater.
I just looked at the WTO MFN tarriffs for my business. 0%. Worldwide.
We're going to thrive as an independent nation.
The US allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust, one of its oldest and biggest investment banks
Well, no one, even Barclays, would buy it. Second, it was an Investment Bank so there was presumably less public exposure.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
As long as the pearly gates haven't got any golden bits- 'cos they'd have been flogged off for tuppence by him. Still being checked in up there he wouldn't be needing a pension, which is just as well considering he taxed them and helped screw them over in the private sector.
Nothing to do with private sector pension funds being stripped in the 1980s then?
Well no actually. Ours was not stripped and has the only run since the late 80's but back of an envelope Gordon's tax represents 20-25% of the deficit now. What an utter plank of a policy that pension dividend tax was. How to destroy saving for old age in one easy lesson. And all that before the Byzantine wonders of the 2004 Act. Folks will be working till deep into theirs 70's thanks to Brown. He was to pension saving as Stalingrad was to the German army.
Presumably Osborne reversed this in his first budget 7 years ago then? Oh...
Quite. But £100bn plus deficit is a bit of a restrained.
It was an utterly destructive and idiotic policy from Brown. The bill is yet to really come in in the shape of smaller matured pension funds, but it's out there, and it will have big effects. The man was an utter fool on this issue. Eating the seed corn par excellence.
Apparently the reason he isn't coming for the State Visit any time soon is because he's scared of protests! Trump is known for being thin skinned. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/11/donald-trump-state-visit-to-britain-put-on-hold
It is a mark of Britain’s estrangement from the European Union – and, at least for now, the country’s diminished standing on the international stage – that although Theresa May attended a memorial service to Helmut Kohl at the weekend, she was not invited to speak.
yet another reminder that the British, or most of them at any rate, have never really understood the European project. Or rather, the European’s Europe was not the British Europe.
Britain cannot avoid Europe but it has never imagined itself a full part of the continent; our history is European but not altogether of Europe.
Britain’s war story unavoidably meant we never understood the emotional appeal of the European project. Our finest hour was their darkest and, at least in terms of the painstakingly slow construction of the new Europe – a project that’s been sixty years in the making and is not finished yet – we never, really, truly, appreciated what it was was all about. What we saw as traps and the erosion of the nation state, they understood as safeguards. What we took to be German expansionism – albeit by peaceful means – they saw as constraints on German power. Germany would be embedded – buried, actually – in Europe.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/brexit-retreat-not-liberation/
Now, if they're going to be sensible, and stop threatening us, they might get some cash to fill their budget chasm.
So things aren't going well for the Tories then....
https://www.axios.com/canada-aims-to-lure-talent-from-silicon-valley-2450964438.html
More importantly, any Brexit questions?
Glad you're finally spotting it.
Lab 329
SNP 28
Gives a small but very comfortable majority to Corbyn (Or his succesor).
Though 5 years is 'quite a while' in politics.
Interesting Lab gains on UNS:
Cities of London/Westminster,
Wimbledon
Shipley.
However, the nature of its collapse became iconic, symbolic and psychologically significant and started a process.
I suspect with hindsight many people wish it had been saved. I doubt its collapse helped McCain in the 2008 election but Obama would probably have won anyway.
iirc the American attempt to sell to Barclays (I almost wrote foist it on) was blocked by the government. Many observers believe the Americans letting Lehman's go bust is what triggered the global crisis.
"Many"? Name four ... that aren't related to James Gordon Brown.
A quick google finds the official US government enquiry said: The Commission concludes the financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I expect there were more than four people on the commission but you'd probably dismiss them as biased for saying the crisis started in America and not in Downing Street.
Gordon Brown saved the pound, saved the world, and saved the union. For all his manifest faults, that's a lot of fire insurance when he reaches the pearly gates.
As long as the pearly gates haven't got any golden bits- 'cos they'd have been flogged off for tuppence by him. Still being checked in up there he wouldn't be needing a pension, which is just as well considering he taxed them and helped screw them over in the private sector.
Nothing to do with private sector pension funds being stripped in the 1980s then?
Well no actually. Ours was not stripped and has the only run since the late 80's but back of an envelope Gordon's tax represents 20-25% of the deficit now. What an utter plank of a policy that pension dividend tax was. How to destroy saving for old age in one easy lesson. And all that before the Byzantine wonders of the 2004 Act. Folks will be working till deep into theirs 70's thanks to Brown. He was to pension saving as Stalingrad was to the German army.
Presumably Osborne reversed this in his first budget 7 years ago then? Oh...
Quite. But £100bn plus deficit is a bit of a restrained.
It was an utterly destructive and idiotic policy from Brown. The bill is yet to really come in in the shape of smaller matured pension funds, but it's out there, and it will have big effects. The man was an utter fool on this issue. Eating the seed corn par excellence.
Browns move was stupid but final salary pensions were always going to be doomed by longer life expectancy and poor investment returns since he turn of the century.
Clearly many (including most in this country judging by that Pew poll) do not share the view of Merkel espoused by many right leaning commentators on this site.
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