Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
I said it was very approximate
The point that could be raised against that is if there are to be significant losses from Brexit they won’t be instant. They will likely be incremental. A decision between keeping a factory in Britain and one in Italy now tends towards Italy. A decision about where a multinational wants to open a new branch for European operations might have gone to London before and to Dublin now.
Which over time means we will be less prosperous than we would have otherwise been.
What ultimately tipped me to Remain - and I don’t think I come across as a great admirer of the EU - was the belief that partly due to Northern Ireland and partly due to the sheer size and proximity of the EU it would be very difficult in practice for us to regain any meaningful level of sovereignty commensurate with those future losses and short-term disruption.
But nuanced arguments were strangers to both sides in the campaign.
But we have regained a meaningful level of sovereignty haven't we?
At the Referendum the Leave campaigned promised to: Leave the ECJ, Leave the Single Market, Leave the Customs Union, stop paying fees and determine immigration policy.
Post-Brexit deal we've left the ECJ, left the Single Market, left the Customs Union, stopped paying fees and can now determine our immigration policy.
How is that anything other than all five promises of meaningful sovereignty met?
Except part of the UK hasn’t done the first three, and our immigration policy looks set to be far more relaxed than it was in the EU.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
"Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers."
That has been pretty much the case for nearly every decade since the end of the WW2 - at least wrt some European countries.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
I said it was very approximate
The point that could be raised against that is if there are to be significant losses from Brexit they won’t be instant. They will likely be incremental. A decision between keeping a factory in Britain and one in Italy now tends towards Italy. A decision about where a multinational wants to open a new branch for European operations might have gone to London before and to Dublin now.
Which over time means we will be less prosperous than we would have otherwise been.
What ultimately tipped me to Remain - and I don’t think I come across as a great admirer of the EU - was the belief that partly due to Northern Ireland and partly due to the sheer size and proximity of the EU it would be very difficult in practice for us to regain any meaningful level of sovereignty commensurate with those future losses and short-term disruption.
But nuanced arguments were strangers to both sides in the campaign.
But we have regained a meaningful level of sovereignty haven't we?
At the Referendum the Leave campaigned promised to: Leave the ECJ, Leave the Single Market, Leave the Customs Union, stop paying fees and determine immigration policy.
Post-Brexit deal we've left the ECJ, left the Single Market, left the Customs Union, stopped paying fees and can now determine our immigration policy.
How is that anything other than all five promises of meaningful sovereignty met?
Philip,
Have you ever heard of the phrase "cutting one's own nose off to spite your face?"
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
The shortage of workers is because after 18 months of Covid a lot of jobs no longer look appetizing when easier work is available that pays the same or more.
Why work in a high pressure environment or one where you are expected to sit around unpaid (a lot of lorry driving) when easier work is available that pays the same and allows you to be home every night.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
But that wasn't and isn't the consensus view. If EU membership was viewed as pooling sovereignty in exchange for financial LOSS it would have been a no-brainer to leave. And - obvious joke aside - it wasn't.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Mr. T, the Remain side drastically underestimated non-economic factors but it's unwise to lump together all of one side or the other into acting/thinking the same way. The economy did loom large, and was a concern for me.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
"Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers."
That has been pretty much the case for nearly every decade since the end of the WW2 - at least wrt some European countries.
Given that we spent 30 years importing cheap labour rather than automating everything possible to maximise productivity things were not going to change unless the industry was forced to be an external shock.
It's possible that Brexit will be the shock that is required.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
"Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers."
That has been pretty much the case for nearly every decade since the end of the WW2 - at least wrt some European countries.
From the 80s to the early 2010s, Britain closed the gap.
The nadir was presumably “sorpasso”, when Britain fell behind Italy, but at some stage in the 90s-00s it overtook successively Italy, France, and Japan (in terms of GDP per head).
It was closing the gaps with the USA.
It is now falling behind again. Even 5 years after Brexit the data suggests we are stalling and countries like Czechia and maybe Spain could overtake us in GDP per person over the next decade.
London remains “immune” in some senses, the divide is actually scary when one looks at Hartlepool etc vs comparable regions in Western Europe.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
I said it was very approximate
The point that could be raised against that is if there are to be significant losses from Brexit they won’t be instant. They will likely be incremental. A decision between keeping a factory in Britain and one in Italy now tends towards Italy. A decision about where a multinational wants to open a new branch for European operations might have gone to London before and to Dublin now.
Which over time means we will be less prosperous than we would have otherwise been.
What ultimately tipped me to Remain - and I don’t think I come across as a great admirer of the EU - was the belief that partly due to Northern Ireland and partly due to the sheer size and proximity of the EU it would be very difficult in practice for us to regain any meaningful level of sovereignty commensurate with those future losses and short-term disruption.
But nuanced arguments were strangers to both sides in the campaign.
But we have regained a meaningful level of sovereignty haven't we?
At the Referendum the Leave campaigned promised to: Leave the ECJ, Leave the Single Market, Leave the Customs Union, stop paying fees and determine immigration policy.
Post-Brexit deal we've left the ECJ, left the Single Market, left the Customs Union, stopped paying fees and can now determine our immigration policy.
How is that anything other than all five promises of meaningful sovereignty met?
Except part of the UK hasn’t done the first three, and our immigration policy looks set to be far more relaxed than it was in the EU.
Sucks for that part of the UK, but that's on them. They can opt to rejoin the UK by ending their own special arrangements if that's what they want to do. I frankly don't care too much about NI, I care far more about England, let the voters in NI prioritise NI. 🤷♂️
For the rest of us in England (and Wales), we've got what we voted for haven't we?
As for the immigration policy being relaxed, I am very happy with that. I want a relaxed but equitable immigration policy. I don't want an uber-relaxed [for Europeans only] but super-strict [for everyone else] immigration policy, I want a relaxed but fair for everyone one. If that's what we have now, then what's the problem with that?
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
Weird mercantilism. I thought this kind of thinking died out in the early 19th century.
It went out of fashion because both ourselves and then the Americans had huge competitive advantages that made free trade very much in our interests. We were in the 19th century extremely competitive and the US was the same in the 20th. In these circumstances the country with these advantages is the one enriched and their economists were quick to sell the advantages to everyone else.
Now that neither ourselves or the US has these advantages the benefits of free trade are less obvious. Creating a free trade market with China has been one of the most disastrous policies in the history of the west and may ultimately prove fatal to it. It has created a dangerous rival which has no interest in our views on civil rights, equality and human rights. Massive mistake.
I wasn’t clear in my original response.
The bit I take objection to is the idea that a trade deficit equals millions of lost jobs.
That’s a fantasy.
One can argue that the U.K. could / should be protectionist but of course there are considerable downsides to doing so (ie slower growth, slower productivity, lower wages, and loss of consumer choice).
I wouldn't dispute that. I was merely trying to give an indication of the scale of the problems that a trade deficit like that causes. £80bn of goods roughly = 1m jobs but I agree it is a fantasy that we could somehow magic up these jobs if we no longer imported stuff and you are right to say that such dislocations would cause great damage to our economy.
The real issue is not looking back at Brexit but looking forward: how do we bring our trade back into balance after the disastrous last 30 years? There are no simple solutions. We need to invest more, spend less, train better, educate better, improve our infrastructure etc etc. It is a massive job of work which will require a lot more competent government than we have had over those 30 years. Brexit was by no means the solution to this real problem but I still think it was a small part of the solution.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
Weird mercantilism. I thought this kind of thinking died out in the early 19th century.
Trade is a zero sum game. Only countries that live in a perpetual state of austerity can win out of it by using beggar-thy-neighbour policies.
I used to think it wasn't. Evidence has shown me that the most cynical players win because they have already accepted it is a zero sum game and their gains will necessarily mean other nations will have to lose.
That realisation isn't a Brexit issue either, it's more an acceptance that there are fundamental issues with how the world conducts business. As usual, I've got no answers but I do recognise there's an issue.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
No.
But companies invest a fortune to make HGVs more productive via route-planning etc
Plus HGV drivers salaries can go up attracting more people to work driving HGVs leaving fewer people working in less productive jobs that can't match the salary increase.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Well I have 5 years of data so far, and you have zero.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
I said it was very approximate
The point that could be raised against that is if there are to be significant losses from Brexit they won’t be instant. They will likely be incremental. A decision between keeping a factory in Britain and one in Italy now tends towards Italy. A decision about where a multinational wants to open a new branch for European operations might have gone to London before and to Dublin now.
Which over time means we will be less prosperous than we would have otherwise been.
What ultimately tipped me to Remain - and I don’t think I come across as a great admirer of the EU - was the belief that partly due to Northern Ireland and partly due to the sheer size and proximity of the EU it would be very difficult in practice for us to regain any meaningful level of sovereignty commensurate with those future losses and short-term disruption.
But nuanced arguments were strangers to both sides in the campaign.
But we have regained a meaningful level of sovereignty haven't we?
At the Referendum the Leave campaigned promised to: Leave the ECJ, Leave the Single Market, Leave the Customs Union, stop paying fees and determine immigration policy.
Post-Brexit deal we've left the ECJ, left the Single Market, left the Customs Union, stopped paying fees and can now determine our immigration policy.
How is that anything other than all five promises of meaningful sovereignty met?
Except part of the UK hasn’t done the first three, and our immigration policy looks set to be far more relaxed than it was in the EU.
Sucks for that part of the UK, but that's on them. They can opt to rejoin the UK by ending their own special arrangements if that's what they want to do. I frankly don't care too much about NI, I care far more about England, let the voters in NI prioritise NI. 🤷♂️
For the rest of us in England (and Wales), we've got what we voted for haven't we?
As for the immigration policy being relaxed, I am very happy with that. I want a relaxed but equitable immigration policy. I don't want an uber-relaxed [for Europeans only] but super-strict [for everyone else] immigration policy, I want a relaxed but fair for everyone one. If that's what we have now, then what's the problem with that?
The problem is that’s not what we’re going to get. What we’re going to end up with is at best managed unrestricted migration and at worst a complete free for all.
And while personally I have no issues with or worries over immigration I do worry somewhat about the law of unintended consequences.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
I said it was very approximate
The point that could be raised against that is if there are to be significant losses from Brexit they won’t be instant. They will likely be incremental. A decision between keeping a factory in Britain and one in Italy now tends towards Italy. A decision about where a multinational wants to open a new branch for European operations might have gone to London before and to Dublin now.
Which over time means we will be less prosperous than we would have otherwise been.
What ultimately tipped me to Remain - and I don’t think I come across as a great admirer of the EU - was the belief that partly due to Northern Ireland and partly due to the sheer size and proximity of the EU it would be very difficult in practice for us to regain any meaningful level of sovereignty commensurate with those future losses and short-term disruption.
But nuanced arguments were strangers to both sides in the campaign.
But we have regained a meaningful level of sovereignty haven't we?
At the Referendum the Leave campaigned promised to: Leave the ECJ, Leave the Single Market, Leave the Customs Union, stop paying fees and determine immigration policy.
Post-Brexit deal we've left the ECJ, left the Single Market, left the Customs Union, stopped paying fees and can now determine our immigration policy.
How is that anything other than all five promises of meaningful sovereignty met?
Except part of the UK hasn’t done the first three, and our immigration policy looks set to be far more relaxed than it was in the EU.
Sucks for that part of the UK, but that's on them. They can opt to rejoin the UK by ending their own special arrangements if that's what they want to do. I frankly don't care too much about NI, I care far more about England, let the voters in NI prioritise NI. 🤷♂️
For the rest of us in England (and Wales), we've got what we voted for haven't we?
As for the immigration policy being relaxed, I am very happy with that. I want a relaxed but equitable immigration policy. I don't want an uber-relaxed [for Europeans only] but super-strict [for everyone else] immigration policy, I want a relaxed but fair for everyone one. If that's what we have now, then what's the problem with that?
Philibet cares about England. I feel safer already.
I think you drink a great deal too much coffee. Real pressure of speech thing going on here.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Higher earnings = higher GDP
How does higher earnings mean more work done?
Are you extendung their hours? or doubling the height of the lorries.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
I said it was very approximate
The point that could be raised against that is if there are to be significant losses from Brexit they won’t be instant. They will likely be incremental. A decision between keeping a factory in Britain and one in Italy now tends towards Italy. A decision about where a multinational wants to open a new branch for European operations might have gone to London before and to Dublin now.
Which over time means we will be less prosperous than we would have otherwise been.
What ultimately tipped me to Remain - and I don’t think I come across as a great admirer of the EU - was the belief that partly due to Northern Ireland and partly due to the sheer size and proximity of the EU it would be very difficult in practice for us to regain any meaningful level of sovereignty commensurate with those future losses and short-term disruption.
But nuanced arguments were strangers to both sides in the campaign.
But we have regained a meaningful level of sovereignty haven't we?
At the Referendum the Leave campaigned promised to: Leave the ECJ, Leave the Single Market, Leave the Customs Union, stop paying fees and determine immigration policy.
Post-Brexit deal we've left the ECJ, left the Single Market, left the Customs Union, stopped paying fees and can now determine our immigration policy.
How is that anything other than all five promises of meaningful sovereignty met?
Except part of the UK hasn’t done the first three, and our immigration policy looks set to be far more relaxed than it was in the EU.
EU free movement has ended and been replaced by the same points system we had for non EU migration.
The main reason Leave narrowly won was immigration and sovereignty, if the economy was your main concern you likely voted Remain.
Fortunately we have a trade deal with the EU now post Brexit which has minimised the economic impact and avoided the economic damage No Deal would have done
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
No.
But companies invest a fortune to make HGVs more productive via route-planning etc
Plus HGV drivers salaries can go up attracting more people to work driving HGVs leaving fewer people working in less productive jobs that can't match the salary increase.
That's how a free market works.
Oh, by moving the shortages around? Doesn't a free market include expanding the number of workers? I didn't think border controls were called a free market either.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
But that wasn't and isn't the consensus view. If EU membership was viewed as pooling sovereignty in exchange for financial LOSS it would have been a no-brainer to leave. And - obvious joke aside - it wasn't.
That is because our political class is absolutely crap (I could just stop there, couldn't I) at dealing with the real problems and therefore argues about inconsequentialities instead. The rule book of the SM didn't of itself stop us from a more mercantilist approach, it has, after all, never stopped Germany. But how we interpreted and applied it did seem to make things more difficult for us and after 30 years of huge trade deficits the only rational conclusion was that the rule book was not working to our advantage. So we needed to change it. That, of course, is only the first step. The remainder still need to be taken.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
"Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers."
That has been pretty much the case for nearly every decade since the end of the WW2 - at least wrt some European countries.
From the 80s to the early 2010s, Britain closed the gap.
The nadir was presumably “sorpasso”, when Britain fell behind Italy, but at some stage in the 90s-00s it overtook successively Italy, France, and Japan (in terms of GDP per head).
It was closing the gaps with the USA.
It is now falling behind again. Even 5 years after Brexit the data suggests we are stalling and countries like Czechia and maybe Spain could overtake us in GDP per person over the next decade.
London remains “immune” in some senses, the divide is actually scary when one looks at Hartlepool etc vs comparable regions in Western Europe.
Not something I've studied in detail but I live in SE Spain with massively high youth unemployment, and an average annual salary of around €13k, way fewer benefits than the UK. I suppose that could all change in the next 10 years. It certainly hasn't changed much in the 12 years I've been living here. Overall cost of living is cheaper by around 20% depending on how you spend. Electricity,eg, is among the most expensive in Europe. I'm able to live very comfortably on my UK pensions but I'd hate to be a young Spanish national.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
"Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers."
That has been pretty much the case for nearly every decade since the end of the WW2 - at least wrt some European countries.
From the 80s to the early 2010s, Britain closed the gap.
The nadir was presumably “sorpasso”, when Britain fell behind Italy, but at some stage in the 90s-00s it overtook successively Italy, France, and Japan (in terms of GDP per head).
It was closing the gaps with the USA.
It is now falling behind again. Even 5 years after Brexit the data suggests we are stalling and countries like Czechia and maybe Spain could overtake us in GDP per person over the next decade.
London remains “immune” in some senses, the divide is actually scary when one looks at Hartlepool etc vs comparable regions in Western Europe.
The comparison between the NE as a region (which contains many wealthy areas) and some regions of Eastern Europe is not pretty.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Well I have 5 years of data so far, and you have zero.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
I have a decade of data, you just don't like it.
The Brexit referendum was announced in 2013 not 2016 and absolutely I stand by saying that if Brexit was so horrendous as you make out then it would be possible to view that in the span of the decade 2010-19, but you can't.
The real issue will be whether we can discern any Brexit decline in 2020-29 data. My bet is no you can't, quite the opposite in fact.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
Weird mercantilism. I thought this kind of thinking died out in the early 19th century.
Trade is a zero sum game. Only countries that live in a perpetual state of austerity can win out of it by using beggar-thy-neighbour policies.
I used to think it wasn't. Evidence has shown me that the most cynical players win because they have already accepted it is a zero sum game and their gains will necessarily mean other nations will have to lose.
That realisation isn't a Brexit issue either, it's more an acceptance that there are fundamental issues with how the world conducts business. As usual, I've got no answers but I do recognise there's an issue.
I tend to agree that a persistent balance of trade deficit is not ideal. This has been the case in NZ for example.
Now, NZ has delivered years of growth and low unemployment etc, and the balance of trade issue is not at all politically salient there, but it does mean that NZ is forced to keep selling its businesses to overseas investors so that all the sums balance. Over time that pushes NZ toward a branch economy model.
I tend to follow young Smithson though in believing the issue is NOT access to a free trading area, which has been an utter boon for NZ via trade agreements, but rather domestic savings rates which are amenable to govt policy.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Higher earnings = higher GDP
How does higher earnings mean more work done?
Are you extendung their hours? or doubling the height of the lorries.
No need to do so.
If their least valuable hauls are no longer carried, because they're no longer efficient to be carried, then the remaining hauls are the most efficient ones, which means more work done per driver.
The fundamental problem is we have fewer and fewer working age people as a percentage of the population. This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one. And one only soluble by the free market if you incentivise more supply into the labour market. Edit. Or reduce demand by collapsing the economy.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
To a certain extent drivers will be becoming more productive - in some cases by driving bigger vehicles, in others by their companies working harder to secure back loads, reducing empty mileage.
"That gives Democrats two years to govern. Two years to prove that the American political system can work. Two years to show Trumpism was an experiment that need not be repeated.
Two years.
This is the responsibility the Democratic majority must bear: If they fail or falter, they will open the door for Trumpism or something like it to return, and there is every reason to believe it will be far worse next time."
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Well I have 5 years of data so far, and you have zero.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
I have a decade of data, you just don't like it.
The Brexit referendum was announced in 2013 not 2016 and absolutely I stand by saying that if Brexit was so horrendous as you make out then it would be possible to view that in the span of the decade 2010-19, but you can't.
The real issue will be whether we can discern any Brexit decline in 2020-29 data. My bet is no you can't, quite the opposite in fact.
2019 to 2022 is out. I would be happy to look at 2023-2029.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
Weird mercantilism. I thought this kind of thinking died out in the early 19th century.
Trade is a zero sum game. Only countries that live in a perpetual state of austerity can win out of it by using beggar-thy-neighbour policies.
I used to think it wasn't. Evidence has shown me that the most cynical players win because they have already accepted it is a zero sum game and their gains will necessarily mean other nations will have to lose.
That realisation isn't a Brexit issue either, it's more an acceptance that there are fundamental issues with how the world conducts business. As usual, I've got no answers but I do recognise there's an issue.
I tend to agree that a persistent balance of trade deficit is not ideal. This has been the case in NZ for example.
Now, NZ has delivered years of growth and low unemployment etc, and the balance of trade issue is not at all politically salient there, but it does mean that NZ is forced to keep selling its businesses to overseas investors so that all the sums balance. Over time that pushes NZ toward a branch economy model.
I tend to follow young Smithson though in believing the issue is NOT access to a free trading area, which has been an utter boon for NZ via trade agreements, but rather domestic savings rates which are amenable to govt policy.
NZers (and Brits) don’t save enough.
Yep, that is the core of the problem. We need to change our policies to improve net saving as a country reducing domestic demand and improving investment in export industries both directly and through education etc. Oh, and get elected. That might prove the trickiest part!
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
The fundamental problem is we have fewer and fewer working age people as a percentage of the population. This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one. And one only soluble by the free market if you incentivise more supply into the labour market.
Importing ever more minimum wage people at the bottom of the pay pyramid (who are then entitled to in-work benefits and pensions) doesn't solve the pensions issue, or our deficit.
Having better more productive jobs per person does.
Sustainable growth has always come from creative destruction. New more productive processes arrive that lead to better growth, and older least productive jobs die out. Importing people on minimum wage, then subsidising them with in-work benefits, just keeps the least productive jobs alive rather than letting them die off.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
I highly doubt it. The No vote was not about economics. That is the huge mistake that the Remain campaign made - to assume it was.
Agreed. It was identity driven. There's simply no question about that.
And btw I don't mean this as snide code for racism. I mean it more broadly. Eg the sentiment, "I don't want to be bossed around by Brussels. We should make our own laws." This is an aspect of identity. It's about a feeling in your bones - us being run by Brussels - that you had or you didn't. People can seek to intellectualize it, pretend it's a factual matter that you can get to the bottom of by looking at the statute book, or election processes, or governmental bodies, but that's not the reality of how most came to their conclusions. They felt it or they didn't. It depended on what sort of person they were. On their identity.
Plus, the Remain campaign did of course make the argument we were financially better off in the EU. It was the main argument they made. Didn't matter. Identity goes deeper. Identity in all its various guises.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
Absolutely not so. The real cost of membership of the SM was an £80bn a year trade deficit with the EU year after year after year. The cost of that was roughly 1m well paid jobs in this country and low tens of billions of foregone tax revenue.
You can make arguments that we did not play the game well, that it was our own fault that we were so inept at exporting and so prone to import, that government policy in this country positively encourages excess consumption etc but the fact remains that being in the SM was economically ruinous for this country and free trade with the EU is not actually in our interests until we can improve our competitiveness.
Weird mercantilism. I thought this kind of thinking died out in the early 19th century.
Trade is a zero sum game. Only countries that live in a perpetual state of austerity can win out of it by using beggar-thy-neighbour policies.
I used to think it wasn't. Evidence has shown me that the most cynical players win because they have already accepted it is a zero sum game and their gains will necessarily mean other nations will have to lose.
That realisation isn't a Brexit issue either, it's more an acceptance that there are fundamental issues with how the world conducts business. As usual, I've got no answers but I do recognise there's an issue.
I tend to agree that a persistent balance of trade deficit is not ideal. This has been the case in NZ for example.
Now, NZ has delivered years of growth and low unemployment etc, and the balance of trade issue is not at all politically salient there, but it does mean that NZ is forced to keep selling its businesses to overseas investors so that all the sums balance. Over time that pushes NZ toward a branch economy model.
I tend to follow young Smithson though in believing the issue is NOT access to a free trading area, which has been an utter boon for NZ via trade agreements, but rather domestic savings rates which are amenable to govt policy.
NZers (and Brits) don’t save enough.
Yep, that is the core of the problem. We need to change our policies to improve net saving as a country reducing domestic demand and improving investment in export industries both directly and through education etc. Oh, and get elected. That might prove the trickiest part!
Well yes, totally agreed. And we *also* need to do it in a way that encourages productivity growth outside the greater South East.
In reality, this policy requires tax increases (to dampen spending) and a commensurate increase in govt spending on infrastructure etc.
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
Not fair, you need parsley to put into the white sauce for the boiled cod.
My gran and mum used to live above a British Restaurant.
Agreed. It was identity driven. There's simply no question about that.
And btw I don't mean this as snide code for racism. I mean it more broadly. Eg the sentiment, "I don't want to be bossed around by Brussels. We should make our own laws." This is an aspect of identity. It's about a feeling in your bones - us being run by Brussels - that you had or you didn't. People seek to intellectualize it, pretend it's a factual matter that you can get to the bottom of by looking at the statute book, or election processes, or governmental bodies, but that's not the reality of how people came to their conclusions. They felt it or they didn't. It depended on what sort of person they were. On their identity.
Plus, the Remain campaign did of course make the argument we were financially better off in the EU. It was the main argument they made. Didn't matter. Identity goes deeper. Identity in all its various guises.
Brexit isn’t just something people did, it’s something people think they *are*. That was the short term genius *and* long term catastrophe of campaigns designed to denigrate facts while stoking feelings of alienation & bogus victimhood. It’s almost impossible to climb down from. https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1430511659794239488
This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one.
Of course it's a Brexit issue.
One way of changing the demographics is 'free movement of people'...
It is. It is one out of a number of ways of addressing the fundamental issue. Which is demography. Efficiency and automation are other ways of tinkering with it. We need more working taxpayers. Brexiteers have closed off one solution. It is up to them to advance others.
Mr. Pete, aye, it was difficult and has been poorly handled by multiple UK governments.
However.
The 2007 referendum on Lisbon should've been held. Integrating endlessly without recourse to the electorate because the main parties all agreed with one another led to the rise of UKIP and then a referendum on the nuclear option rather than binning a referendum (about which we'd been promised a referendum by all major UK parties, a promise subsequently reneged upon by two of the three).
If the UK political class had bothered to either address the concerns of the electorate or make a case for the EU (in addition to not making manifesto pledges then breaking them immediately) we'd be in a better state of affairs.
I don't dispute your final paragraph, but that relates to Brexit as a separate issue. I agree forty years of UK Governments of all stripes blaming the EU for their failures led us to Brexit, but we are where we are with that.
My point was that those promoting the notion of leaving the EU ignored Northern Ireland, and then after the event blamed the inevitable issues Brexit would raise on the GFA. This is a particularly handy device for Johnson apologists.
It is disingenuous of Johnson apologists to blame the GFA in hindsight for the inevitability of a border in the sea, when a UKIP- style Brexit was determined by Johnson over twenty years later.
Absolutely right. The Brexiters poohpoohed the idea that the GFA and NI comprised a major issue. Possibly because they still thought Ireland was in the UK and could be ordered around, on at least one occasion witj the threat of An Gorta Mor Mark 2. Some of the comments at the time from Tory MPs did give the impresson some of them were a century or more out in their understanding of the political geography of the Isles of Ireland and Britain.
Not just Tory MPs: Secretary of State as well. Karen Bradley, in 2018 (after Brexit, but before any deal was done):
"I didn't understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa."
To be fair, Julian Smith did seem to understand the issues. So he was sacked after six months.
It’s poorly expressed but what she is saying is that she didn’t appreciate the overriding salience of the nationalist/unionist issue. Unless you have studied NI that’s not an unreasonable lacuna
"Unless you have studied NI" or watched the news or read a paper or been sufficiently interested in politics to have become an MP... Seriously?
Yes.
For example in Scotland we are told on here (I haven’t studied the data that myself) that there is a group of pro-Union SNP voters.
Although Alliance tries to promote cross-community voting, it’s clear that community identity is far stronger and more overriding in NI
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Higher earnings = higher GDP
How does higher earnings mean more work done?
Are you extendung their hours? or doubling the height of the lorries.
No need to do so.
If their least valuable hauls are no longer carried, because they're no longer efficient to be carried, then the remaining hauls are the most efficient ones, which means more work done per driver.
So what happens to the less vauable loads and their customers?
Mr. Pete, aye, it was difficult and has been poorly handled by multiple UK governments.
However.
The 2007 referendum on Lisbon should've been held. Integrating endlessly without recourse to the electorate because the main parties all agreed with one another led to the rise of UKIP and then a referendum on the nuclear option rather than binning a referendum (about which we'd been promised a referendum by all major UK parties, a promise subsequently reneged upon by two of the three).
If the UK political class had bothered to either address the concerns of the electorate or make a case for the EU (in addition to not making manifesto pledges then breaking them immediately) we'd be in a better state of affairs.
I don't dispute your final paragraph, but that relates to Brexit as a separate issue. I agree forty years of UK Governments of all stripes blaming the EU for their failures led us to Brexit, but we are where we are with that.
My point was that those promoting the notion of leaving the EU ignored Northern Ireland, and then after the event blamed the inevitable issues Brexit would raise on the GFA. This is a particularly handy device for Johnson apologists.
It is disingenuous of Johnson apologists to blame the GFA in hindsight for the inevitability of a border in the sea, when a UKIP- style Brexit was determined by Johnson over twenty years later.
Absolutely right. The Brexiters poohpoohed the idea that the GFA and NI comprised a major issue. Possibly because they still thought Ireland was in the UK and could be ordered around, on at least one occasion witj the threat of An Gorta Mor Mark 2. Some of the comments at the time from Tory MPs did give the impresson some of them were a century or more out in their understanding of the political geography of the Isles of Ireland and Britain.
Not just Tory MPs: Secretary of State as well. Karen Bradley, in 2018 (after Brexit, but before any deal was done):
"I didn't understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa."
To be fair, Julian Smith did seem to understand the issues. So he was sacked after six months.
It’s poorly expressed but what she is saying is that she didn’t appreciate the overriding salience of the nationalist/unionist issue. Unless you have studied NI that’s not an unreasonable lacuna
Seriously? You think that appointing somebody as Secretary of State for NI who doesn't appreciate the salience of the nationalist/unionist issue is not an unreasonable lacuna? It's not even specialist knowledge that needs to be studied. It's general knowledge. I'd be disappointed if any MP didn't know that. For the SoS not to know it is pretty shocking.
The phrasing was X doesn’t do Y.
I am sure she assumed that the majority of X doesn’t do why, but she might not realise it was an absolute characteristic
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Higher earnings = higher GDP
How does higher earnings mean more work done?
Are you extendung their hours? or doubling the height of the lorries.
It doesn't mean more work done. But it means higher GDP nevertheless. I think you are working with a definition of productivity which differs from GDP.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
To a certain extent drivers will be becoming more productive - in some cases by driving bigger vehicles, in others by their companies working harder to secure back loads, reducing empty mileage.
This I agree could happen, but it's only a spit in the bucket really.
The fundamental problem is we have fewer and fewer working age people as a percentage of the population. This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one. And one only soluble by the free market if you incentivise more supply into the labour market.
Importing ever more minimum wage people at the bottom of the pay pyramid (who are then entitled to in-work benefits and pensions) doesn't solve the pensions issue, or our deficit.
Having better more productive jobs per person does.
Sustainable growth has always come from creative destruction. New more productive processes arrive that lead to better growth, and older least productive jobs die out. Importing people on minimum wage, then subsidising them with in-work benefits, just keeps the least productive jobs alive rather than letting them die off.
That is the free market ultra solution. Not one being advocated by any Party right now. Nor the voting public after the last 40 years. Best of luck.
Mr. Pete, aye, it was difficult and has been poorly handled by multiple UK governments.
However.
The 2007 referendum on Lisbon should've been held. Integrating endlessly without recourse to the electorate because the main parties all agreed with one another led to the rise of UKIP and then a referendum on the nuclear option rather than binning a referendum (about which we'd been promised a referendum by all major UK parties, a promise subsequently reneged upon by two of the three).
If the UK political class had bothered to either address the concerns of the electorate or make a case for the EU (in addition to not making manifesto pledges then breaking them immediately) we'd be in a better state of affairs.
I don't dispute your final paragraph, but that relates to Brexit as a separate issue. I agree forty years of UK Governments of all stripes blaming the EU for their failures led us to Brexit, but we are where we are with that.
My point was that those promoting the notion of leaving the EU ignored Northern Ireland, and then after the event blamed the inevitable issues Brexit would raise on the GFA. This is a particularly handy device for Johnson apologists.
It is disingenuous of Johnson apologists to blame the GFA in hindsight for the inevitability of a border in the sea, when a UKIP- style Brexit was determined by Johnson over twenty years later.
Absolutely right. The Brexiters poohpoohed the idea that the GFA and NI comprised a major issue. Possibly because they still thought Ireland was in the UK and could be ordered around, on at least one occasion witj the threat of An Gorta Mor Mark 2. Some of the comments at the time from Tory MPs did give the impresson some of them were a century or more out in their understanding of the political geography of the Isles of Ireland and Britain.
Not just Tory MPs: Secretary of State as well. Karen Bradley, in 2018 (after Brexit, but before any deal was done):
"I didn't understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa."
To be fair, Julian Smith did seem to understand the issues. So he was sacked after six months.
It’s poorly expressed but what she is saying is that she didn’t appreciate the overriding salience of the nationalist/unionist issue. Unless you have studied NI that’s not an unreasonable lacuna
Seriously? You think that appointing somebody as Secretary of State for NI who doesn't appreciate the salience of the nationalist/unionist issue is not an unreasonable lacuna? It's not even specialist knowledge that needs to be studied. It's general knowledge. I'd be disappointed if any MP didn't know that. For the SoS not to know it is pretty shocking.
Gavin Williamson ... "I hadn't appreciated the salience of teaching on learning outcomes.." Charles ... "not an unreasonable lacuna..."
Nope.
It would be the equivalent of saying “nothing else matters than teaching”
The alternative would be believing that things like discipline, parental attitude etc have an impact
Mr. Pete, it seemed bizarre to me that pro-EU MPs didn't even attempt (they had three shots) to slip in a confirmatory referendum clause and back May's deal.
By what means would they get something better? And, if they opposed her deal, what alternative except a harder departure was on the table?
I would have opposed on all three occasions. I was outraged Mrs May brought the same deal back on a one more heave basis.
However, knowing what I know now, I would have voted it through on the first time of asking, such is Johnson's thin gruel deal.
Defo. I was always for it. Never a Ref2 man. Just felt like tilting at windmills.
I was 100% sure Brexit would never happen.
Yes, a lot of people thought that. I think they underestimated just what a momentous and necessarily one-off event the 23 June vote was and that it really had to be implemented in some fashion.
People confuse what will cause great inconvenience and trouble and what can't happen. Lots of people think deep down that the worst case prospect of global warming couldn't happen just because the consequences are so grave.
Brexit is a special case. Once a truly significant number of people (I am one, though in general politically boring centrist/one nation/communitarian) believe that membership of the EU is, in the very long run, unsustainable for good reasons, including old fashioned sovereignty, there is a problem which no more has a good solution than Israel/Palestine or RoI/NI/UK.
It belongs to the category of problem where the one thing you should avoid is starting from where we currently are, because we should should never have got here in the first place.
Such problems have alternatives and choices, but not solutions.
Yes, not all problems have solutions. That's a good thing to get your head around. And if you can identify which these are - there are tons - you can get ahead of the game by concentrating only on how best to live with them. I'd actually say that's a piece of real wisdom there from you - and now me. What a site this is.
This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one.
Of course it's a Brexit issue.
One way of changing the demographics is 'free movement of people'...
It is. It is one out of a number of ways of addressing the fundamental issue. Which is demography. Efficiency and automation are other ways of tinkering with it. We need more working taxpayers. Brexiteers have closed off one solution. It is up to them to advance others.
But we are advancing others. Better and more productive jobs that pay more (and will thus pay more in taxes/demand less in benefits too).
How is importing people to work minimum wage jobs, then giving them Universal Credit including Housing Benefit and Child Benefits "solving the issue"?
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
There are other supermarkets than Waitrose, luv....
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Higher earnings = higher GDP
How does higher earnings mean more work done?
Are you extendung their hours? or doubling the height of the lorries.
It doesn't mean more work done. But it means higher GDP nevertheless. I think you are working with a definition of productivity which differs from GDP.
I don't think the customer gives two hoots about GDP, it's whether they get their widgets or not.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
Not fair, you need parsley to put into the white sauce for the boiled cod.
My gran and mum used to live above a British Restaurant.
I imagine a whiff of boiled cabbage was an occasional occurrence? I read on Wiki that they transformed into 'civic restaurants' and in some cases survived till the late 60s. I guess it's not impossible that I may have been taken to one, though they'd have been an improvement on my school dinners.
The fundamental problem is we have fewer and fewer working age people as a percentage of the population. This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one. And one only soluble by the free market if you incentivise more supply into the labour market.
Importing ever more minimum wage people at the bottom of the pay pyramid (who are then entitled to in-work benefits and pensions) doesn't solve the pensions issue, or our deficit.
Having better more productive jobs per person does.
Sustainable growth has always come from creative destruction. New more productive processes arrive that lead to better growth, and older least productive jobs die out. Importing people on minimum wage, then subsidising them with in-work benefits, just keeps the least productive jobs alive rather than letting them die off.
That is the free market ultra solution. Not one being advocated by any Party right now. Nor the voting public after the last 40 years. Best of luck.
Isn't it?
I think its being backed by both the voting public and the governing parties.
I think its noteworthy that after months of special pleading and whinging from HGV employers that they can't hire enough staff they've basically been told by the government to train up more people and offer better wages as a solution.
Which is precisely the right thing to do. It is as you say the free market solution. And it is what was voted for in 2016.
The Stuart Rose argument of "vote Remain to keep wages low" was rejected five years ago.
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
Not fair, you need parsley to put into the white sauce for the boiled cod.
My gran and mum used to live above a British Restaurant.
I imagine a whiff of boiled cabbage was an occasional occurrence? I read on Wiki that they transformed into 'civic restaurants' and in some cases survived till the late 60s. I guess it's not impossible that I may have been taken to one, though they'd have been an improvement on my school dinners.
....there's nothing more enticing than the whiff of boiled cabbage....
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
So the least productive hauls don't happen then.
Exactly! Now you're getting it.
Every year we should be innovating more new productive ways of doing things, and losing the least productive ways of doing so. That's what generates growth, leads to sustainable pay rises, and allows for us to pay for pensions and other niceties.
Brexiters still blaming everyone but themselves, I see.
Nope.
The protocol is causing a problem
It needs to be renegotiated
One side is refusing to engage
It is therefore their fault
(Unless you argue that the UK could not leave the EU under any circumstances)
I agree the protocol is causing a problem. It is the problem predicted by me and other Remainers, and first dismissed, then denied by your mate Boris.
Fault rather lies with Boris, HMG, and thicko Brexiters who spent all their time gaslighting Remainers while signing up to an unworkable deal.
It now needs to be fixed.
Yes, the EU need to play ball, and sadly Britain’s most effective policy is likely the one Frost is following; ie dissembling non-cooperation.
I am sure Charles you would not run a business this way.
There is no trust so there cannot be a fix. What we know with absolute certainty now is that we do not hold all the cards.
Well you say that, but I literally saw some idiot Brexiter tweet that we still do just the other day.
I no longer care who holds what cards (if I ever did). The world has moved on and Britain is stuck in a siding for a while, and as for me I am moving to New York early next year.
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
There are other supermarkets than Waitrose, luv....
The only elegant solution to Brexit was the compromise one that Theresa May negotiated. What we have instead is a Brexit suited for headbangers on the right wing and it's an absolute disaster for the economy, for Northern Ireland, for the union, for supplies and relationships with Europe.
What an utter disaster the Boris Brexit is. He refused to back the previous deal not because he didn't like it but because he lusted after power.
About the only worthwhile promise of Brexit was that this country would get over its Euro-obsessions, but it turns out that was total bullshit as well!
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
The relative economic performance isn’t quite as simple as that - Belfast was the industrialised part of Ireland while the rest was much more agricultural.
The shift on wealth is more about the failure of the UK to manage de-industrialisation plus the stresses of the Troubles vs the success of the RoI’s parasitic business model
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Well I have 5 years of data so far, and you have zero.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
I am pretty confident that we will have higher growth this year than the EU average and very probably the top growth amongst the larger countries. But the figures are too distorted by Covid to be particularly meaningful. Next year might give us a better indication although the detritus of Covid will still be with us.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
So the least productive hauls don't happen then.
Exactly! Now you're getting it.
Every year we should be innovating more new productive ways of doing things, and losing the least productive ways of doing so. That's what generates growth, leads to sustainable pay rises, and allows for us to pay for pensions and other niceties.
So what happens to the customers for the least productive hauls?
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
To a certain extent drivers will be becoming more productive - in some cases by driving bigger vehicles, in others by their companies working harder to secure back loads, reducing empty mileage.
Isn't 90+% of the haulage industry standardv sized containers?
Mr. Pete, aye, it was difficult and has been poorly handled by multiple UK governments.
However.
The 2007 referendum on Lisbon should've been held. Integrating endlessly without recourse to the electorate because the main parties all agreed with one another led to the rise of UKIP and then a referendum on the nuclear option rather than binning a referendum (about which we'd been promised a referendum by all major UK parties, a promise subsequently reneged upon by two of the three).
If the UK political class had bothered to either address the concerns of the electorate or make a case for the EU (in addition to not making manifesto pledges then breaking them immediately) we'd be in a better state of affairs.
I don't dispute your final paragraph, but that relates to Brexit as a separate issue. I agree forty years of UK Governments of all stripes blaming the EU for their failures led us to Brexit, but we are where we are with that.
My point was that those promoting the notion of leaving the EU ignored Northern Ireland, and then after the event blamed the inevitable issues Brexit would raise on the GFA. This is a particularly handy device for Johnson apologists.
It is disingenuous of Johnson apologists to blame the GFA in hindsight for the inevitability of a border in the sea, when a UKIP- style Brexit was determined by Johnson over twenty years later.
The issue is that the EU has not shown the thoughtfulness that underpins the GFA
Similarly those who scream “the GFA is sacrosanct” are missing the point
The purpose of the GFA was to navigate between fundamental questions of identity to find a solution that allows different communities to co-exist. It was built on certain assumptions, one of which was that the RoI and the UK were part of a single market.
That is no longer the case.
There are now several options:
1. Amend the GFA to make sure the objective - peace - is achieved. Difficult but may be possible but it needs to EU to butt out and let the UK and RoI figure it out 2. Refuse to adjust the EU rules (which is their right) and insist on a hard land border - unacceptable to the Nationalist community 3. Refuse to adjust the EU rules (which is their right) and insist on a hard sea border - unacceptable to the Unionist community 4. Work collaboratively to find a technical solution to allow the GFA to continue in its current form
1&4 have the potential to be solutions. 2&3 do not.
1 - not preferred by anyone but might be possible with more capable leaders on all sides 2 - rejected by everyone 3 - insisted on by the EU as a matter of principle and tactical advantage 4 - probably the best approach even if it is non trivial
But until the EU grows up and shifts to 4 then we have a problem, Houston
Here we go again. In order to facilitate Johnson's oven ready deal, compromise is required from everyone else.
I remember compromise, it was called Mrs May's deal. Both Johnson and myself tossed it assunder, but for different reasons. With the benefit of hindsight I can confirm I was wrong.
May’s deal wasn’t compromise.
It was staying in the customs Union (a terrible outcome for the UK) until the EU agreed a solution for the border
We are where we are. The challenge now is how we stop NI from permanently fracturing off. The two zone GB/NI customs areas are not sustainable or even workable. But as we insist that we have to be able to diverge from EEA standards a border has to go somewhere.
It can't go on the island - the "digital border" guff has been laughed away and we refused to wait for it to be invented. It can't go down the Irish Sea. And ROI won't quit the EEA to suit England.
We knew this from the start. So what is our proposed solution? Its all very well telling the EU or ROI to compromise but this is our doing not theirs. Was our entire solution that they would yield to our will?
The technical working group was making good progress until the change of government in RoI
But if neither 2, 3 or 4 work then you turn to 1.
How do you achieve the objective of maintaining peace by changing the GFA.
This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one.
Of course it's a Brexit issue.
One way of changing the demographics is 'free movement of people'...
It is. It is one out of a number of ways of addressing the fundamental issue. Which is demography. Efficiency and automation are other ways of tinkering with it. We need more working taxpayers. Brexiteers have closed off one solution. It is up to them to advance others.
But we are advancing others. Better and more productive jobs that pay more (and will thus pay more in taxes/demand less in benefits too).
How is importing people to work minimum wage jobs, then giving them Universal Credit including Housing Benefit and Child Benefits "solving the issue"?
You are arguing a point I haven't made. I was clear that this isn't fundamentally a Brexit issue. However. Minimum wage jobs will need doing. Regardless of the rate of the NMW. Who will do them if everyone has better and more productive jobs? Bins need collecting, small shops need staffing, bogs need cleaning, bums need wiping. These are not tasks easily done by exhortations to higher productivity.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
So the least productive hauls don't happen then.
Exactly! Now you're getting it.
Every year we should be innovating more new productive ways of doing things, and losing the least productive ways of doing so. That's what generates growth, leads to sustainable pay rises, and allows for us to pay for pensions and other niceties.
So what happens to the customers for the least productive hauls?
They either care enough to pay enough for their goods to make it productive, or they'll cease to get it.
If you want a good enough to pay what is needed for it, you'll get it. If you don't, you won't and you'll move on and pay for what you do want instead.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
The relative economic performance isn’t quite as simple as that - Belfast was the industrialised part of Ireland while the rest was much more agricultural.
The shift on wealth is more about the failure of the UK to manage de-industrialisation plus the stresses of the Troubles vs the success of the RoI’s parasitic business model
Yes agree.
But having honestly diagnosed that, what is your plan for the 60% of the U.K. population that live in “post-industrial” areas?
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
There are other supermarkets than Waitrose, luv....
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
So the least productive hauls don't happen then.
Exactly! Now you're getting it.
Every year we should be innovating more new productive ways of doing things, and losing the least productive ways of doing so. That's what generates growth, leads to sustainable pay rises, and allows for us to pay for pensions and other niceties.
So what happens to the customers for the least productive hauls?
If they valued it that much they would be prepared to pay more and therefore those hauls would become more productive.
This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one.
Of course it's a Brexit issue.
One way of changing the demographics is 'free movement of people'...
It is. It is one out of a number of ways of addressing the fundamental issue. Which is demography. Efficiency and automation are other ways of tinkering with it. We need more working taxpayers. Brexiteers have closed off one solution. It is up to them to advance others.
But we are advancing others. Better and more productive jobs that pay more (and will thus pay more in taxes/demand less in benefits too).
How is importing people to work minimum wage jobs, then giving them Universal Credit including Housing Benefit and Child Benefits "solving the issue"?
You are arguing a point I haven't made. I was clear that this isn't fundamentally a Brexit issue. However. Minimum wage jobs will need doing. Regardless of the rate of the NMW. Who will do them if everyone has better and more productive jobs? Bins need collecting, small ahops need staff, bogs need cleaning, bums need wiping. These are not tasks easily done by exhortations to higher productivity.
Why should bums being wiped be a minimum wage job?
If the only way to get bums wiped is to pay more than minimum wage, then pay more than minimum wage.
The minimum is supposed to be a minimum not a maximum. The culture that you can fill almost any of certain types of roles at no more than the minimum wage is one I'd be happy to see the back of.
Mr. B, big test now for many countries, especially the US. Go along with it and just accept China's land (sea) grab, or tell them to sod off?
Tell them to sod off? Yes, let's give that a whirl.
Government Ministers and their friends and family could make an absolute killing on the provision of tin hats ( from China?) to protect us from the onslaught.
I seem to remember that the MoD had run down UK productive capability so much that when it started one of the Middle East wars of recent decades, it discovered that its sole supplier of ammunition for one particular artillery equipment (can't recall if land, air or sea) was Swiss/Swedish - ergo neutral and at once stopping the supply. No idea if they have learnt that lesson.
I think the story you are thinking of is Belgium and it wasn’t neutrality and shitheadishness on their part.
That's it - thank you. Still pretty basic issue not having own capability for the main natures of artillery ammunition.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Well I have 5 years of data so far, and you have zero.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
I am pretty confident that we will have higher growth this year than the EU average and very probably the top growth amongst the larger countries. But the figures are too distorted by Covid to be particularly meaningful. Next year might give us a better indication although the detritus of Covid will still be with us.
2019-2022 data is out.
I notice Philip has not yet taken up my offer to bet real money on U.K. performance 2023 onwards.
👀 Details of classified Pentagon calls find their way into public domain, citing UK evacuation as the reason the US kept open Abbey Gate at Kabul airport, instead of closing it in light of terror threat…
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
There are other supermarkets than Waitrose, luv....
Maybe she exaggerated a Lidl.
There are aldi-ternatives....
That Asda be the weakest attempt at a supermarket up ever.
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
May well be - although money was not the reason I voted remain. BTW is this the same 'due course' we've been hearing about from the Labour since 2010 about the polls on the turn from Miliband/Corbyn/Starmer et al? Or is it the 'due course' beloved of Sir Humphrey?
No, not my reason either. Mine was the same as most people - IDENTITY. It applies to hard Remainers as well as hard Leavers.
Yes, "in due course" - as in at some point before the 12th of Never a settled consensus will form as to the long term economic impact on the UK of Brexit.
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Are you sure it hasn't? So many industries down the toilet, short of HGV drivers, short of workers? Not collecting customs at the borders to save queues? City of London individual earnings up the creek?
Yes.
The reason there's a supposed "shortage of workers" is because we're doing so very well that we've got full employment and burgeoning demand, not because of a collapsing economy leading to mass layoffs.
Not according to the last GDP figures. Also in a full employment situation you can't create workers, you need to import them.
No you don't.
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
Can you tell me how an HGV driver can drive more than one truck at once?
Ok, I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how 516000 HGV drivers can suddenly start doing the work of at least 650000 lorry drivers? Assuming that you aren't expecting them to do illegal overtime?
One option is to increase the pay for lorry drivers so that more drivers are attracted to the industry and all drivers in the industry are better off.
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
So the least productive hauls don't happen then.
Exactly! Now you're getting it.
Every year we should be innovating more new productive ways of doing things, and losing the least productive ways of doing so. That's what generates growth, leads to sustainable pay rises, and allows for us to pay for pensions and other niceties.
So what happens to the customers for the least productive hauls?
They either care enough to pay enough for their goods to make it productive, or they'll cease to get it.
If you want a good enough to pay what is needed for it, you'll get it. If you don't, you won't and you'll move on and pay for what you do want instead.
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
Not fair, you need parsley to put into the white sauce for the boiled cod.
My gran and mum used to live above a British Restaurant.
I imagine a whiff of boiled cabbage was an occasional occurrence? I read on Wiki that they transformed into 'civic restaurants' and in some cases survived till the late 60s. I guess it's not impossible that I may have been taken to one, though they'd have been an improvement on my school dinners.
Certainly the smell of cooking, though she didn't express an opinion on the quality. She did remark on such things as whale and snoek but I'm not sure if that was in the context of the BR as opposed to their own home kitchen rations. Though dried egg was very good for baking!
Interesting to see that cabbage was regarded as important in the battle against scurvy etc.
Edit: they were off the ration, too, and also a godsend for people whose workplaces had no decent feeding system. Or homes for that matter, esp if doing a lot of overtime. These were the days when your landlady often gave you beetroot sandwiches day in day out.
That Asda be the weakest attempt at a supermarket up ever. "I don't belong here", said old Tessa out loud "Easy, love, there's the Safe Way home." - thankful for her Fine Fare discount, Tess Co-operates Still alone in o-Hell-o - see the deadly nightshade grow
A united Ireland makes sense on a number of points, but occasionally people stumble into arguing for it on the basis that both current entities are in the same island so should be together or words to that effect, which I doubt they hold consistently for other islands like hispaniola, new guinea or Britain, as if islands are required to have unified politics.
The partition of Ireland is a historical anomaly, driven by decisions hundreds of years ago and then a political miscalculation by Carson combined with shameless manipulation and opportunism by Craig. It were better that it had never happened.
Unfortunately we are where we are - unless and until our brothers and sisters in the North chose differently they remain part of the United kingdom (which is why @Philip_Thompson ‘s approach - “good riddance” - is so inappropriate)
Its an anomaly that should have never happened that has been almost criminally devastating to the people of Northern Ireland.
Unless I'm very much mistaken Northern Ireland was the relatively wealthier part of Ireland when partition happened. Now its completely the other way around as quite frankly the Republic has in recent decades much better managed their own business than the United Kingdom has managed Northern Ireland.
Which is hardly a surprise because the people of Northern Ireland are quite frankly a forgotten irrelevance to British politics. They're not even a part of Britain proper and the British parties don't even stand properly in Northern Ireland either.
Median full time salary in Northern Ireland is £28,000 Median full time salary in the Republic of Ireland is €48,946 which converts to £42,000
What possible good reason is there that the people of Northern Ireland should be worth 2/3rds of a person just over the border? Its a disgraceful and shameful situation and I unashamedly will say good riddance to it the day that the people in NI vote to end this ridiculous mess that should have never occurred. That's entirely appropriate in my eyes.
Yes well we would expect no different from a republican, non Unionist, non conservative as you are.
Some of us proper Conservatives however remain committed to our Unionist brothers across the sea.
The Republic of course has no NHS either unlike the UK, it has hospital charges instead which pay for its very low taxes to boost its median income. It also has investment from the EU you voted to leave
So committed to the union you want to continue to impoverish your "brothers" [and forgotten sisters no doubt] across the sea?
The union has failed Northern Ireland because the people of Northern Ireland are alternatively either forgotten about, misunderstood or treated as an inconvenience by their "brethren".
Self determination works better than subsidies which is why no amount of "subsidising" NI has made them succeed like the Republics self-determination has allowed them to succeed.
I wonder which is better off for a household's income - avoiding a £50 charge rarely needed, or £14,000 extra in annual salary? 🤔
Every region and country of the UK is net subsidised apart from London, the South East and East.
On that basis the only parts of the UK left would be those 3 regions.
Ireland has also had vast subsidy from the EU, as almost every development project there has had EU funding.
It also benefits from very low corporation tax attracting multinational companies which Biden and the G7 want to end
I suspect they are also benefiting from UK companies getting a foothold in Ireland to make trading with the rest of the EU easier. Also just as a matter of interest, Ireland may have benefitted from subsidies, like a lot of EU countries, but in return they joined a free trade area and customs Union etc. It's a shame we never made use of EU subsidies as much when we were in.
The UK would have had to have a significantly lower GDP to receive vast subsidies from the EU. Instead it got its own recycled money back (well, a small fraction of it).
We used to receive a lot of subsidies based on a like for like basis I think. I remember a large number of local charities and organisations also received funding from the EU, (CADW etc), in Pembrokeshire. It's a shame the local populace threw it away by putting their cross in the wrong box.
No you didn't get any subsidies from the EU. You got a fraction of the UK's own money back.
If you give me a £20 note, then I give you back a £10 note along with a letter saying "this £10 note has been given to you by Philip Thompson", then is that a good arrangement for you or not?
It depends what the other £10 was for, such as access to free trade markets helping to grow our trade? You Tories are all the same, never telling the whole story.
It reminds me of the old joke about a Bed+Breakfast.
"The morning bill was larger than usual, and when queried the proprietor says there is an extra charge of £1 for the cruet set. The customer said that he didn't use it, yet the proprietor said it was there anyway. In retaliation the customer gave back a bill for £10, for sleeping with his wife. The proprietor said no way, it wasn't me. The customer replied 'but she was there anyway'.
You're the one being dishonest and not saying the whole story, claiming that charities and organisations received funding from the EU in Pembrokeshire but the local populace "threw it away". They didn't, there was no such thing as EU money. People in Pembrokeshire got a fraction of their own taxes back recycled to them.
Now you may claim that being net contributors was worthwhile in order to get access to trade markets, in which case make that argument. You're wrong IMHO, but at least that is a credible argument to be had. But to claim people got money from the EU when that was just a tiny fraction of the UK's own money returned back to us having had a massive haircut? That's preposterous.
No such thing as EU money?, like UK government money? or even BBC money? Tesco money?, Leisure centre money?
When you buy a service, such as membership of a leisure centre the money ceases to be your money, but the Leisure centre's money. If someone in the community gets cheap use of the pool before 8am that's still leisure centre money paying for it. When I taught in a private school, the school offered scholarships. That was school money not parents' money.
The bottom line is that the UK paid in to the EU much more than it got back. I voted remain in spite of that but to pretend otherwise is frankly absurd.
And the bottom line below that bottom line was that the wider economic benefits exceeded the net contribution. Whether that was true - and if so the extent of its truth - will become clear in due course.
May well be - although money was not the reason I voted remain. BTW is this the same 'due course' we've been hearing about from the Labour since 2010 about the polls on the turn from Miliband/Corbyn/Starmer et al? Or is it the 'due course' beloved of Sir Humphrey?
No, not my reason either. Mine was the same as most people - IDENTITY. It applies to hard Remainers as well as hard Leavers.
Yes, "in due course" - as in at some point before the 12th of Never a settled consensus will form as to the long term economic impact on the UK of Brexit.
You still identify as European surely? What has being a member of an organisation such as the EU got to do with it?
I reckon I've stumbled on the one person still using that True Blue Cookery Book. Bring back the British Restaurants, down with foreign muck like water, beans and lemons!
There are other supermarkets than Waitrose, luv....
Mr. kinabalu, if Remain had made that argument, it would've won.
Yes. ‘The EU adds £500 million a week to our economy.* If we leave, the NHS is screwed’ would have been far more effective.
*Very approximate figure based on the estimate EU membership had increased the size of the economy by around 10%.
Though if that were the case then our economy should have shrank £500mn a week post-Brexit.
Strip out the Covid effects and that's absolutely not happened. So it was never the case.
Pre Covid, the period 2015-2019 saw our rate of growth fall behind peer nations.
By a rounding error.
Pre-Covid, the period 2010-2019 saw our rate of growth increase beyond that of our peer nations. "Despite Brexit" referendum result being in that period.
It is retarded to use 2010-2014 as in any way relevant to Brexit, though, isn’t it?
No it is absolutely not. Looking over the course of a decade gives a big picture.
Plus the referendum was announced with accompanying "uncertainty" around the start of the decade not the middle of it.
If your argument is that the referendum result led to a drop in GDP so utterly inconsequential that we still grew faster than Europe over the course of the entire decade, then it can't have been a very significant drop now, can it?
It is not relevant to use 2010-2014 to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to do so.
In terms of the impact of Brexit, the analysis I’ve seen suggests our growth rate has dropped compared to peer economies, and in fact this is broadly in line with the Treasury’s estimates before the vote.
Year on year it’s not very noticeable. Give it 5 or 10 more years and people will be wondering why they are noticeably poorer than European travellers.
Covid has swamped everything, temporarily.
Completely disagreed. It is entirely appropriate to look at a long term trend to look at the impact of Brexit. Only a liar or an idiot would seek to exclude the big picture.
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Well I have 5 years of data so far, and you have zero.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
I am pretty confident that we will have higher growth this year than the EU average and very probably the top growth amongst the larger countries. But the figures are too distorted by Covid to be particularly meaningful. Next year might give us a better indication although the detritus of Covid will still be with us.
2019-2022 data is out.
I notice Philip has not yet taken up my offer to bet real money on U.K. performance 2023 onwards.
I would be happy to stake £100 at evens that the UK grows per capita faster than the Euro Area, as measured by the World Bank national accounts data, in the decade 2023-2032.
This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one.
Of course it's a Brexit issue.
One way of changing the demographics is 'free movement of people'...
It is. It is one out of a number of ways of addressing the fundamental issue. Which is demography. Efficiency and automation are other ways of tinkering with it. We need more working taxpayers. Brexiteers have closed off one solution. It is up to them to advance others.
But we are advancing others. Better and more productive jobs that pay more (and will thus pay more in taxes/demand less in benefits too).
How is importing people to work minimum wage jobs, then giving them Universal Credit including Housing Benefit and Child Benefits "solving the issue"?
You are arguing a point I haven't made. I was clear that this isn't fundamentally a Brexit issue. However. Minimum wage jobs will need doing. Regardless of the rate of the NMW. Who will do them if everyone has better and more productive jobs? Bins need collecting, small ahops need staff, bogs need cleaning, bums need wiping. These are not tasks easily done by exhortations to higher productivity.
Why should bums being wiped be a minimum wage job?
If the only way to get bums wiped is to pay more than minimum wage, then pay more than minimum wage.
The minimum is supposed to be a minimum not a maximum. The culture that you can fill almost any of certain types of roles at no more than the minimum wage is one I'd be happy to see the back of.
Comments
In a full employment situation you become more productive, raising the incomes of everyone and culling the least productive jobs altogether.
That has been pretty much the case for nearly every decade since the end of the WW2 - at least wrt some European countries.
Have you ever heard of the phrase "cutting one's own nose off to spite your face?"
We'll see what happens in 5 or 10 more years time but I expect that our GDP per capita will grow more not less than the EU's will over the next decade, just as it has done every decade since the Euro was launched without the UK, which will really put a stake through the heart of your argument would it not?
Why work in a high pressure environment or one where you are expected to sit around unpaid (a lot of lorry driving) when easier work is available that pays the same and allows you to be home every night.
It's possible that Brexit will be the shock that is required.
The nadir was presumably “sorpasso”, when Britain fell behind Italy, but at some stage in the 90s-00s it overtook successively Italy, France, and Japan (in terms of GDP per head).
It was closing the gaps with the USA.
It is now falling behind again.
Even 5 years after Brexit the data suggests we are stalling and countries like Czechia and maybe Spain could overtake us in GDP per person over the next decade.
London remains “immune” in some senses, the divide is actually scary when one looks at Hartlepool etc vs comparable regions in Western Europe.
For the rest of us in England (and Wales), we've got what we voted for haven't we?
As for the immigration policy being relaxed, I am very happy with that. I want a relaxed but equitable immigration policy. I don't want an uber-relaxed [for Europeans only] but super-strict [for everyone else] immigration policy, I want a relaxed but fair for everyone one. If that's what we have now, then what's the problem with that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train
The real issue is not looking back at Brexit but looking forward: how do we bring our trade back into balance after the disastrous last 30 years? There are no simple solutions. We need to invest more, spend less, train better, educate better, improve our infrastructure etc etc. It is a massive job of work which will require a lot more competent government than we have had over those 30 years. Brexit was by no means the solution to this real problem but I still think it was a small part of the solution.
I used to think it wasn't. Evidence has shown me that the most cynical players win because they have already accepted it is a zero sum game and their gains will necessarily mean other nations will have to lose.
That realisation isn't a Brexit issue either, it's more an acceptance that there are fundamental issues with how the world conducts business. As usual, I've got no answers but I do recognise there's an issue.
But companies invest a fortune to make HGVs more productive via route-planning etc
Plus HGV drivers salaries can go up attracting more people to work driving HGVs leaving fewer people working in less productive jobs that can't match the salary increase.
That's how a free market works.
I meant to two separate venues at the same time.
So, thus far at least the stake is rather thrusting at your argument not mine.
Let us also all note for the future that you think GDP growth post the the financial crisis (2010-2014) is relevant to Brexit effects. You are usually, at least, more careful than to admit to such a fallacy.
And while personally I have no issues with or worries over immigration I do worry somewhat about the law of unintended consequences.
I think you drink a great deal too much coffee. Real pressure of speech thing going on here.
Are you extendung their hours? or doubling the height of the lorries.
The main reason Leave narrowly won was immigration and sovereignty, if the economy was your main concern you likely voted Remain.
Fortunately we have a trade deal with the EU now post Brexit which has minimised the economic impact and avoided the economic damage No Deal would have done
in Europe. I'm able to live very comfortably on my UK pensions but I'd hate to be a young Spanish national.
The Brexit referendum was announced in 2013 not 2016 and absolutely I stand by saying that if Brexit was so horrendous as you make out then it would be possible to view that in the span of the decade 2010-19, but you can't.
The real issue will be whether we can discern any Brexit decline in 2020-29 data. My bet is no you can't, quite the opposite in fact.
Now, NZ has delivered years of growth and low unemployment etc, and the balance of trade issue is not at all politically salient there, but it does mean that NZ is forced to keep selling its businesses to overseas investors so that all the sums balance. Over time that pushes NZ toward a branch economy model.
I tend to follow young Smithson though in believing the issue is NOT access to a free trading area, which has been an utter boon for NZ via trade agreements, but rather domestic savings rates which are amenable to govt policy.
NZers (and Brits) don’t save enough.
At the expense of safety...
If their least valuable hauls are no longer carried, because they're no longer efficient to be carried, then the remaining hauls are the most efficient ones, which means more work done per driver.
This is not a Brexit issue, but a demographic one. And one only soluble by the free market if you incentivise more supply into the labour market.
Edit. Or reduce demand by collapsing the economy.
Two years.
This is the responsibility the Democratic majority must bear: If they fail or falter, they will open the door for Trumpism or something like it to return, and there is every reason to believe it will be far worse next time."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/biden-inauguration-democrats.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-opinion-democratic-party®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&context=storylines_guide
Written in January.
How's that open door coming along for y'all?
One way of changing the demographics is 'free movement of people'...
I would be happy to look at 2023-2029.
How much do you wanna bet?
Counterintuitive at the very least...
Having better more productive jobs per person does.
Sustainable growth has always come from creative destruction. New more productive processes arrive that lead to better growth, and older least productive jobs die out. Importing people on minimum wage, then subsidising them with in-work benefits, just keeps the least productive jobs alive rather than letting them die off.
The protocol is causing a problem
It needs to be renegotiated
One side is refusing to engage
It is therefore their fault
(Unless you argue that the UK could not leave the EU under any circumstances)
And btw I don't mean this as snide code for racism. I mean it more broadly. Eg the sentiment, "I don't want to be bossed around by Brussels. We should make our own laws." This is an aspect of identity. It's about a feeling in your bones - us being run by Brussels - that you had or you didn't. People can seek to intellectualize it, pretend it's a factual matter that you can get to the bottom of by looking at the statute book, or election processes, or governmental bodies, but that's not the reality of how most came to their conclusions. They felt it or they didn't. It depended on what sort of person they were. On their identity.
Plus, the Remain campaign did of course make the argument we were financially better off in the EU. It was the main argument they made. Didn't matter. Identity goes deeper. Identity in all its various guises.
And we *also* need to do it in a way that encourages productivity growth outside the greater South East.
In reality, this policy requires tax increases (to dampen spending) and a commensurate increase in govt spending on infrastructure etc.
So it won’t happen.
BoZo and Frost negotiated it, said it was brilliant, now don't like it.
It's their fault.
NUmber of Chinese students in UK schools is down 26% year on year, as part of an overall 15% fall in overseas students:
https://www.ft.com/content/28ce1fb5-f1a3-4bfc-bed1-954172f7200c
My gran and mum used to live above a British Restaurant.
https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1430511659794239488
We need more working taxpayers. Brexiteers have closed off one solution. It is up to them to advance others.
For example in Scotland we are told on here (I haven’t studied the data that myself) that there is a group of pro-Union SNP voters.
Although Alliance tries to promote cross-community voting, it’s clear that community identity is far stronger and more overriding in NI
I am sure she assumed that the majority of X doesn’t do why, but she might not realise it was an absolute characteristic
Another option is for 516,000 lorry drivers could carry the most productive 516,000 hauls meaning the least productive 134,000 hauls don't get carried. The average value of the hauls carried would be higher then as a result (because the useless valueless hauls aren't being taken anymore) justifying a pay increase.
Reality would be something between these two. Prices go up, paying for pay rises, meaning more drivers, and the least productive hauls find its not worth paying the higher prices so they drop.
That is supply and demand 101. First lesson in an Economics class.
It is the problem predicted by me and other Remainers, and first dismissed, then denied by your mate Boris.
Fault rather lies with Boris, HMG, and thicko Brexiters who spent all their time gaslighting Remainers while signing up to an unworkable deal.
It now needs to be fixed.
Yes, the EU need to play ball, and sadly Britain’s most effective policy is likely the one Frost is following; ie dissembling non-cooperation.
I am sure Charles you would not run a business this way.
It would be the equivalent of saying “nothing else matters than teaching”
The alternative would be believing that things like discipline, parental attitude etc have an impact
How is importing people to work minimum wage jobs, then giving them Universal Credit including Housing Benefit and Child Benefits "solving the issue"?
I suppose you could argue the Brexit allows us to put vehicles on the road deemed unsafe in any other country.
Didn't see that on the side of a bus...
another thread of Brexit whining
I think its being backed by both the voting public and the governing parties.
I think its noteworthy that after months of special pleading and whinging from HGV employers that they can't hire enough staff they've basically been told by the government to train up more people and offer better wages as a solution.
Which is precisely the right thing to do. It is as you say the free market solution. And it is what was voted for in 2016.
The Stuart Rose argument of "vote Remain to keep wages low" was rejected five years ago.
Every year we should be innovating more new productive ways of doing things, and losing the least productive ways of doing so. That's what generates growth, leads to sustainable pay rises, and allows for us to pay for pensions and other niceties.
I no longer care who holds what cards (if I ever did). The world has moved on and Britain is stuck in a siding for a while, and as for me I am moving to New York early next year.
The only elegant solution to Brexit was the compromise one that Theresa May negotiated. What we have instead is a Brexit suited for headbangers on the right wing and it's an absolute disaster for the economy, for Northern Ireland, for the union, for supplies and relationships with Europe.
What an utter disaster the Boris Brexit is. He refused to back the previous deal not because he didn't like it but because he lusted after power.
The man who destroyed the union.
The shift on wealth is more about the failure of the UK to manage de-industrialisation plus the stresses of the Troubles vs the success of the RoI’s parasitic business model
But if neither 2, 3 or 4 work then you turn to 1.
How do you achieve the objective of maintaining peace by changing the GFA.
However. Minimum wage jobs will need doing. Regardless of the rate of the NMW. Who will do them if everyone has better and more productive jobs?
Bins need collecting, small shops need staffing, bogs need cleaning, bums need wiping. These are not tasks easily done by exhortations to higher productivity.
If you want a good enough to pay what is needed for it, you'll get it. If you don't, you won't and you'll move on and pay for what you do want instead.
But having honestly diagnosed that, what is your plan for the 60% of the U.K. population that live in “post-industrial” areas?
Nothing establishes value like a free market.
If the only way to get bums wiped is to pay more than minimum wage, then pay more than minimum wage.
The minimum is supposed to be a minimum not a maximum. The culture that you can fill almost any of certain types of roles at no more than the minimum wage is one I'd be happy to see the back of.
I notice Philip has not yet taken up my offer to bet real money on U.K. performance 2023 onwards.
Move by Washington to shift some responsibility for fatalities? https://twitter.com/laraseligman/status/1432299911970709504
Yes, "in due course" - as in at some point before the 12th of Never a settled consensus will form as to the long term economic impact on the UK of Brexit.
Interesting to see that cabbage was regarded as important in the battle against scurvy etc.
Edit: they were off the ration, too, and also a godsend for people whose workplaces had no decent feeding system. Or homes for that matter, esp if doing a lot of overtime. These were the days when your landlady often gave you beetroot sandwiches day in day out.
"I don't belong here", said old Tessa out loud
"Easy, love, there's the Safe Way home."
- thankful for her Fine Fare discount, Tess Co-operates
Still alone in o-Hell-o - see the deadly nightshade grow