That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I remember in the late 1980s when the Italians celebrated ‘sorpasso’ - the moment Italy’s GDP overtook the UK for the first time in several centuries. There was actual celebration in Rome, and much lamenting in the British press, especially from the Left, as the Tories were in office, and further decline was eagerly expected
That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
Why are Brexiters so stupid?
It's had full employment post brexit.
Another_dickhead claims that Brexit has *caused* full employment.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
Why are Brexiters so stupid?
It's had full employment post brexit.
Another_dickhead claims that Brexit has *caused* full employment.
I didnt say that you moron. Its a statement of fact.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I remember in the late 1980s when the Italians celebrated ‘sorpasso’ - the moment Italy’s GDP overtook the UK for the first time in several centuries. There was actual celebration in Rome, and much lamenting in the British press, especially from the Left, as the Tories were in office, and further decline was eagerly expected
Today?
Italy’s nominal GDP is $2.1trn
UK’s nominal GDP is $3.1trn
The UK is a vastly bigger economy than Italy
I remember it well. Along with predictions that Japanese incomes per head would soon surpass Americans’.
We were right to leave. The Tories have made an arse of it. Hopefully the next government will do a better job of it.
That's where I sit.
I don't think Starmer can polish a turd any more than Sunak can.
Sooner or later one or both PM and LOTO will have to follow the public in their opinion of Brexit.
The problem for the Conservatives and Labour is that, at the moment, 31% thinking Brexit was the right decision is still higher than most estimates of Conservative support. It's a problem for the Conservatives because of the huge overlap between the Brexit 31 and the Conservative support; they can't afford to lose anyone by apostasy on Brexit. It's a problem for Labour because their moving faster on Brapprochment would help Sunak get the old gang back together and Starmer can't risk a "Brexit is in peril" election.
The interesting bit is if (and I emphasise if) the numbers continue to drift. Labour are reasonable to fear 30% of the electorate, especially with FPTP. But there's some threshold where the democratic thing is to ignore the minority. Twenty percent? Fifteen percent?
And then, if Norwayish is the next thing to try... What aspects of life is the UK going to tag along with the EU on, and where are we taking a different path? And if nearly all the rest of the continent is involved in one political setup, do we really want to be outside that? You might say "we don't want the politics", but how do you get democracy without politics?
After the inevitable disruption of our departure from the EU there is a lot of room to improve relations and cooperation with them again where we have common interests. That will happen under Labour or Tory governments. It started with this government with the Windsor accords.
The EU will also change. Poland is a coming power in the EU and will build a group that will shape the EU more to their liking. Our good relations with Poland over the Ukraine will make this another opportunity. The French will be unhappy about how things are going but we might just cope with that as well.
I’ve had comments from French and German friends having second thoughts about Ukrainian membership of the EU - a block consisting of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics would be a major power its own right.
Given the rapidity of the growth of Poland and the Baltics, if Ukraine can replicate that, it would be challenging for a top spot in the EU economies in a decade or 2.
This would transform the dynamics of Eastern Europe in the EU.
Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe by some distance before the SMO. Now it's even significantly poorer than that, a demographic disaster due to emigration and completely fucked up. It'll be many, many years before they can satisfy the acquis communautaire for full membership. There are also quite a few veto wielding member states who would have to be bought off or threatened somehow.
That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
Why are Brexiters so stupid?
It's had full employment post brexit.
Another_dickhead claims that Brexit has *caused* full employment.
I didnt say that you moron. Its a statement of fact.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I remember in the late 1980s when the Italians celebrated ‘sorpasso’ - the moment Italy’s GDP overtook the UK for the first time in several centuries. There was actual celebration in Rome, and much lamenting in the British press, especially from the Left, as the Tories were in office, and further decline was eagerly expected
Today?
Italy’s nominal GDP is $2.1trn
UK’s nominal GDP is $3.1trn
The UK is a vastly bigger economy than Italy
I remember it well. Along with predictions that Japanese incomes per head would soon surpass Americans’.
Or the Imperial palace in Tokyo was worth more than the whole of California
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
and then France and Germany took the actual decisions
Though Streeting has promised to double the size of our Medical Schools, he doesn't seem to have considered how that will be physically possible in terms of space and placements. So far as I can find out there has been no discussion with our Medical School.
Then there is the small matter of finding time to have more postgraduate training places ("junior doctors") in appropriate specialities and enough grognards like myself with enough protected time to actually train these rookies.
The Conservatives opened five new medical schools, so it cannot be that hard. There are already two more ready to go for whom the government has declined funding for home students.
We would be in a far better position on this if the BMA membership had not voted to stop the opening of new Medical schools 15 years ago.
Have they changed their position on this since? I assume so but I can't find any reference to votes in favour at subsequent conferences.
The BMA has no role in determining the number of medical school places, as this is set by the GMC, which is an organ of the government.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I remember in the late 1980s when the Italians celebrated ‘sorpasso’ - the moment Italy’s GDP overtook the UK for the first time in several centuries. There was actual celebration in Rome, and much lamenting in the British press, especially from the Left, as the Tories were in office, and further decline was eagerly expected
Today?
Italy’s nominal GDP is $2.1trn
UK’s nominal GDP is $3.1trn
The UK is a vastly bigger economy than Italy
Membership of the Euro has been seriously unkind to Italy. And its really not getting any better.
That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
Why are Brexiters so stupid?
Germany had lower unemployment in 2016 than now.
While Britain has lower unemployment now than in 2016.
Irrespective of that did anyone predict, on either side, that after years of outside economic turbulence that the UK would now have full employment.
A miracle almost, but perhaps you'd need to grow up in a mining district in the 1980s to appreciate it.
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
Why are Brexiters so stupid?
Germany had lower unemployment in 2016 than now.
While Britain has lower unemployment now than in 2016.
Irrespective of that did anyone predict, on either side, that after years of outside economic turbulence that the UK would now have full employment.
A miracle almost, but perhaps you'd need to grow up in a mining district in the 1980s to appreciate it.
I think the rejoin agreement could be one of the easiest negotiations in history. It’s so much in the EU’s interest to be able to show that the only country that ever left the EU came back as soon as it had a sensible government in place, that I think they’d be quite willing to allow the UK to come back under the old terms, rebate and all.
They’d just want to be assured that Johnson and the ERG morons were kept away from power for good, but it’s already pretty clear they’ve been utterly vanquished.
Though just to add, as others have said, best to leave all this until the election has been won.
What this misses is a large part of the cost of Brexit has been the internal division within the country. Rejoin and we go through that again however good the deal, with little guarantee we don't end up in a perpetual self harming hokey cokey.
I think it 7-8 more years until it is back on the table and viable, there needs to be a bit more 'die off'.
This die off - does it include my wife and I who voted remain or are we excused?
You're excused. You're not getting off this site that easily.
Come Rejoin, Big G and his fragrant wife will be all in favour anyway.
As soon as the Tories flip - which they will - the Tory faithful will forget they ever supported Brexit
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I remember in the late 1980s when the Italians celebrated ‘sorpasso’ - the moment Italy’s GDP overtook the UK for the first time in several centuries. There was actual celebration in Rome, and much lamenting in the British press, especially from the Left, as the Tories were in office, and further decline was eagerly expected
Today?
Italy’s nominal GDP is $2.1trn
UK’s nominal GDP is $3.1trn
The UK is a vastly bigger economy than Italy
I remember it well. Along with predictions that Japanese incomes per head would soon surpass Americans’.
Yes. I recall the Yellow Peril stuff about how, real soon now, the Japanese would take over the whole Western World.
The analogy I like is digging a hole in the sand. When the tide comes in the water pours into the whole very rapidly. But ultimately reaches the same level everywhere.
When conditions are right - law, stability, economy, education etc - a country that is behind others can suddenly takeoff. This doesn’t mean that it will end up twice as rich as Monaco per capita or something. Just that it will catch up with its peers.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
Swiss people are the archetypal Europeans - a third of them speak German, a third French, a third Italian. I don't think their sense of European-ness is diminished by being independent from the political structures of the EU, and I have always found this one of the sillier (but for some, one of the most potent) arguments for remain.
62% of Swiss are native German speakers, 22% French speakers, and 8% Italian. Modern Switzerland is a European creation, with the French cantons added after the Napoleonic period.
How very dare you quote actual statistics? Haven't you ever heard of free speech, FGS?
I think the moment Polish GDP PP surpasses the UK will be a psychological shock that helps secure consensus for Brejoin.
Polish GDP by PPP is $1.7 trillion, UK GDP by PPP is $3.85 trillion, so the ‘moment Poland surpasses the UK’ exists either in the 22nd century, or in your deluded and tiny brain, or, more likely, it won’t ever happen before the aliens invade
Per capita on current projections the average Pole is better off than the average Briton by 2030.
I remember in the late 1980s when the Italians celebrated ‘sorpasso’ - the moment Italy’s GDP overtook the UK for the first time in several centuries. There was actual celebration in Rome, and much lamenting in the British press, especially from the Left, as the Tories were in office, and further decline was eagerly expected
Today?
Italy’s nominal GDP is $2.1trn
UK’s nominal GDP is $3.1trn
The UK is a vastly bigger economy than Italy
Membership of the Euro has been seriously unkind to Italy. And its really not getting any better.
It also turned out that British economy in 1985-90 grew at about twice the rate that was estimated at the time.
Though Streeting has promised to double the size of our Medical Schools, he doesn't seem to have considered how that will be physically possible in terms of space and placements. So far as I can find out there has been no discussion with our Medical School.
Then there is the small matter of finding time to have more postgraduate training places ("junior doctors") in appropriate specialities and enough grognards like myself with enough protected time to actually train these rookies.
My understanding - which may be out of date - is that c. 20% of those at medical schools are foreign students. Why not, at a start, put a cap at 10%? Yes, there are revenue implications for universities but not insurmountable.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Yes. I think that's correct. I would have expected far more settling of scores in Eastern Europe, after 1989, than turned out to be the case.
Only in Yugoslavia did ethnic hatrd spill over into civil war, and only in Romania was the revolution (a little bit) bloody. The speed with which the Ceascescus went from lording it over the country to facing a firing squad shows just how rapidly their inner circle turned on them.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
Swiss people are the archetypal Europeans - a third of them speak German, a third French, a third Italian. I don't think their sense of European-ness is diminished by being independent from the political structures of the EU, and I have always found this one of the sillier (but for some, one of the most potent) arguments for remain.
62% of Swiss are native German speakers, 22% French speakers, and 8% Italian. Modern Switzerland is a European creation, with the French cantons added after the Napoleonic period.
How very dare you quote actual statistics? Haven't you ever heard of free speech, FGS?
Any minute now you'll be accusing 'LuckyGuy' of claiming that the age of Romansh is dead ...
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
and then France and Germany took the actual decisions
One problem was the farcical behaviour of British foreign policy within the EU.
Giving up the rebate for a vague promise to reform the CAP was demented. French domestic policy being what it is. What should have been done was offer to reduce the rebate in conjunction with CAP reform.
Another farce was the U.K. foreign office bribing the Anguilla government to turn down the Beal Aerospace request to launch from Sombrero Island. This was an out right illegal action, conducted to curry favour with the French (competition with Ariane). It was done without securing any quid pro quo in advance.
It fucked in the U.K. reputation in Anguilla - got nothing.
I’d have done the following
- made the French pay the bribe, in French money. So their finger prints are all over it. - Got some explicit agreements about ESA work share. First.
That Times article on Brexit and the services industry is bloody grim.
As it proceeds through a litany of self-inflicted wounds, it notes that the reform of Solvency II - supposedly a rare Brexit win for the insurance industry - is actually happening “further and faster” inside the EU!
Brexit, and the way Brexit has happened, has totally fucked the UK.
The problem with Brexit now is that anyone who wants to try and improve it is accused of taking us back in.
So if that is the position from which people start, how will this situation ever get better? The people who wanted it have failed to deliver it but are incapable of letting anyone else have a go and instead accuse them of being Remainers or traitors - Remainers no longer exist since we left last time I checked and having an opinion does not make you a traitor. We do not live in North Korea.
I don’t think this is so much of a problem anymore. People like @another_richard are increasingly a fringe minority who are literally dying off.
I hope to be around for a few decades more.
And to continue with the full employment it has brought.
Has it?
Full employment was there before Brexit, and the mass immigration of the post Brexit years would suggest that full employment is unrelated to Brexit.
Full employment and labour shortages seem to be a post covid phenomenon in a lot of other countries too, in EU or out of it. I think mostly due to demographic shifts in population structure, mass unemployment in developed countries is history.
Unemployment seems to be:
UK 3.9% Germany 5.6% France 7.1% Italy 7.8% Spain 13.2%
So significantly higher in comparable European countries.
We're not in the world of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' anymore - another 1980s unemployment reference (see my previous post).
You're right that there are various reasons for it - I'd add a shift to lower productivity servicer sector jobs as well - but its certainly not what was predicted in 2016 or, looking further back, to those GenX formative years when "there will never be full employment again" was a universal assumption.
Britain had lower unemployment than European peers before Brexit.
Why are Brexiters so stupid?
It's had full employment post brexit.
Another_dickhead claims that Brexit has *caused* full employment.
A few minutes ago you claimed that Brexit had 'totally fucked the UK'.
And when you're making too many abusive comments its usually best to switch off PB and do something constructive and have happy thoughts instead.
Anger tends to diminish a person, being more empathetic can help.
We were right to leave. The Tories have made an arse of it. Hopefully the next government will do a better job of it.
That's where I sit.
I don't think Starmer can polish a turd any more than Sunak can.
Sooner or later one or both PM and LOTO will have to follow the public in their opinion of Brexit.
The problem for the Conservatives and Labour is that, at the moment, 31% thinking Brexit was the right decision is still higher than most estimates of Conservative support. It's a problem for the Conservatives because of the huge overlap between the Brexit 31 and the Conservative support; they can't afford to lose anyone by apostasy on Brexit. It's a problem for Labour because their moving faster on Brapprochment would help Sunak get the old gang back together and Starmer can't risk a "Brexit is in peril" election.
The interesting bit is if (and I emphasise if) the numbers continue to drift. Labour are reasonable to fear 30% of the electorate, especially with FPTP. But there's some threshold where the democratic thing is to ignore the minority. Twenty percent? Fifteen percent?
And then, if Norwayish is the next thing to try... What aspects of life is the UK going to tag along with the EU on, and where are we taking a different path? And if nearly all the rest of the continent is involved in one political setup, do we really want to be outside that? You might say "we don't want the politics", but how do you get democracy without politics?
After the inevitable disruption of our departure from the EU there is a lot of room to improve relations and cooperation with them again where we have common interests. That will happen under Labour or Tory governments. It started with this government with the Windsor accords.
The EU will also change. Poland is a coming power in the EU and will build a group that will shape the EU more to their liking. Our good relations with Poland over the Ukraine will make this another opportunity. The French will be unhappy about how things are going but we might just cope with that as well.
I’ve had comments from French and German friends having second thoughts about Ukrainian membership of the EU - a block consisting of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics would be a major power its own right.
Given the rapidity of the growth of Poland and the Baltics, if Ukraine can replicate that, it would be challenging for a top spot in the EU economies in a decade or 2.
This would transform the dynamics of Eastern Europe in the EU.
Would it really?
The original six members - Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg - currently have a combined population of ~240 million, out of the total EU population of 447 million. I guess if you add Ukraine to the EU then the original founder members would no longer have a majority of the population, but that was also the case when the UK was still a member, and it didn't seem all that significant then.
There are also a lot of other western/northern European countries to add to the founding core. And that all presupposes that the countries of Eastern Europe would all have common interests and policy when it came to the EU. Certainly we would expect that to be the case in terms of security policy - with the notable exception of Hungary - but it doesn't seem to be the case in other policy areas, otherwise we might expect the existing eastern European members of the EU to have made a bigger impact.
I dont know whether brexit has anything to do with it but my car ins policy has increased by 20.pc (LV) and other quotes from other insurance sites such as Confused, Compare the market, Money supermarket etc are all infinitely and shockingly worse. Wtf is going on?
This is the most ineffective large majority Government in British political history. They have achieved absolutely sod all, quite extraordinary really. That is because the intelligent Tories have either quit or been removed. What is left is the people that were always in a box in previous times. Not anymore.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
If you visit Warsaw there's a real dynamism and it's not as free from immigrants as you might think - not only because of the huge number of Ukrainians but also people from South-East Asia. I wouldn't be surprised if Poland does overtake some of the major Western European economies.
I never used to think Britain would Brejoin, but now I think it increasingly likely.
Part of the reason is the utter intellectual void in the Brexit side. There’s nothing there, no vision for the future, no credible policy making, no smart young things in Brexity think-thanks.
No Brexitist hegemony can hold without it.
Brexit is over, it’s just now a clean-up job.
But, you never even liked the EU when we were in it.
And, that's what I find so odd about so much of the bewailment about leaving it here. Hardly anyone enjoyed being a part of it. It's just, they like the current government even less, but the current govenrment won't be in office for much longer.
Its yearning for a magic wand.
Leave the EU and all our problems will go away. Rejoin the EU and all our problems will go away.
Neither is true and nor is any other magic wand solution.
The solution IMO involving:
More work and more effective work. Better training and investment. Supporting aspiration and affordable housing.
And more responsibility being shown by those in charge.
The Conservative party had the opportunity to do the last - that was after all part of 'taking back control' - but they messed up with the greed and laziness and arrogance.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Does this mean that immigration is actually a 'good' thing?
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
A few minutes ago you claimed that Brexit had 'totally fucked the UK'.
And when you're making too many abusive comments its usually best to switch off PB and do something constructive and have happy thoughts instead.
Anger tends to diminish a person, being more empathetic can help.
I think Brexit has fucked the Tory Party and by extension the Government, yes
I'd say that Conservative politicians have fucked the Conservative party.
Conservatives are supposed to believe in people taking some individual responsibility so they can add hypocrisy to their other failings of greed, laziness and arrogance.
We were right to leave. The Tories have made an arse of it. Hopefully the next government will do a better job of it.
That's where I sit.
I don't think Starmer can polish a turd any more than Sunak can.
Sooner or later one or both PM and LOTO will have to follow the public in their opinion of Brexit.
The problem for the Conservatives and Labour is that, at the moment, 31% thinking Brexit was the right decision is still higher than most estimates of Conservative support. It's a problem for the Conservatives because of the huge overlap between the Brexit 31 and the Conservative support; they can't afford to lose anyone by apostasy on Brexit. It's a problem for Labour because their moving faster on Brapprochment would help Sunak get the old gang back together and Starmer can't risk a "Brexit is in peril" election.
The interesting bit is if (and I emphasise if) the numbers continue to drift. Labour are reasonable to fear 30% of the electorate, especially with FPTP. But there's some threshold where the democratic thing is to ignore the minority. Twenty percent? Fifteen percent?
And then, if Norwayish is the next thing to try... What aspects of life is the UK going to tag along with the EU on, and where are we taking a different path? And if nearly all the rest of the continent is involved in one political setup, do we really want to be outside that? You might say "we don't want the politics", but how do you get democracy without politics?
After the inevitable disruption of our departure from the EU there is a lot of room to improve relations and cooperation with them again where we have common interests. That will happen under Labour or Tory governments. It started with this government with the Windsor accords.
The EU will also change. Poland is a coming power in the EU and will build a group that will shape the EU more to their liking. Our good relations with Poland over the Ukraine will make this another opportunity. The French will be unhappy about how things are going but we might just cope with that as well.
I’ve had comments from French and German friends having second thoughts about Ukrainian membership of the EU - a block consisting of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics would be a major power its own right.
Given the rapidity of the growth of Poland and the Baltics, if Ukraine can replicate that, it would be challenging for a top spot in the EU economies in a decade or 2.
This would transform the dynamics of Eastern Europe in the EU.
Would it really?
The original six members - Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg - currently have a combined population of ~240 million, out of the total EU population of 447 million. I guess if you add Ukraine to the EU then the original founder members would no longer have a majority of the population, but that was also the case when the UK was still a member, and it didn't seem all that significant then.
There are also a lot of other western/northern European countries to add to the founding core. And that all presupposes that the countries of Eastern Europe would all have common interests and policy when it came to the EU. Certainly we would expect that to be the case in terms of security policy - with the notable exception of Hungary - but it doesn't seem to be the case in other policy areas, otherwise we might expect the existing eastern European members of the EU to have made a bigger impact.
There is already the beginnings of a security grouping, with arms factories for the use of both Ukraine and Poland being built in Poland.
The equivocation at the beginning of the war has had people wondering if they might be the price of future RealPolitik in the area.
Such a grouping - countries with a population of 70 million+ people, with enormous potential for growth, relative to the more established economies - would inevitably be a major power within Europe
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
The fact that some of those economies have seen incredible growth while also experiencing shrinking populations is a major challenge to the idea that immigration is always and everywhere the best solution.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
If you visit Warsaw there's a real dynamism and it's not as free from immigrants as you might think - not only because of the huge number of Ukrainians but also people from South-East Asia. I wouldn't be surprised if Poland does overtake some of the major Western European economies.
I’ve no doubt Warsaw is dynamic. Poles are indeed getting richer. But you can’t avoid those population stats
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Yes. I think that's correct. I would have expected far more settling of scores in Eastern Europe, after 1989, than turned out to be the case.
Only in Yugoslavia did ethnic hatrd spill over into civil war, and only in Romania was the revolution (a little bit) bloody. The speed with which the Ceascescus went from lording it over the country to facing a firing squad shows just how rapidly their inner circle turned on them.
It is ironic that the best thing we did in the EU, and possibly the most unequivocally positive thing done by the EU ever is the thing that precipitated Brexit.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Yes. I think that's correct. I would have expected far more settling of scores in Eastern Europe, after 1989, than turned out to be the case.
Only in Yugoslavia did ethnic hatrd spill over into civil war, and only in Romania was the revolution (a little bit) bloody. The speed with which the Ceascescus went from lording it over the country to facing a firing squad shows just how rapidly their inner circle turned on them.
It is ironic that the best thing we did in the EU, and possibly the most unequivocally positive thing done by the EU ever is the thing that precipitated Brexit.
There wouldnt have been a problem if Blair had put restraints on immigration as Germany and France did.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
The fact that some of those economies have seen incredible growth while also experiencing shrinking populations is a major challenge to the idea that immigration is always and everywhere the best solution.
However Latvians themselves are deeply concerned by their plunging population and they are desperate to reverse it
‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries’
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
and then France and Germany took the actual decisions
One problem was the farcical behaviour of British foreign policy within the EU.
Giving up the rebate for a vague promise to reform the CAP was demented. French domestic policy being what it is. What should have been done was offer to reduce the rebate in conjunction with CAP reform.
Another farce was the U.K. foreign office bribing the Anguilla government to turn down the Beal Aerospace request to launch from Sombrero Island. This was an out right illegal action, conducted to curry favour with the French (competition with Ariane). It was done without securing any quid pro quo in advance.
It fucked in the U.K. reputation in Anguilla - got nothing.
I’d have done the following
- made the French pay the bribe, in French money. So their finger prints are all over it. - Got some explicit agreements about ESA work share. First.
It's almost as if you think the FO was there to promote UK interests. Astonishing idea.
One of the big future challenges for the EU is that Germany hasn't put anything like as much effort into reconciliation with Poland as it has done with France. There's still an attitude of cultural superiority towards Poland that will make their growing power and influence harder to stomach.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
If you visit Warsaw there's a real dynamism and it's not as free from immigrants as you might think - not only because of the huge number of Ukrainians but also people from South-East Asia. I wouldn't be surprised if Poland does overtake some of the major Western European economies.
I wonder how much that is a counter to the decades of communism they had to endure.
Certainly there would have been 'easy catch ups' to be made after 1990 as they moved to a free market economy.
But has the success of that and resulting increase in living standards encouraged further free market dynamism compared with the 'stuck in their ways' western and southern European countries ?
Similarly Italy prospered in the 1950s and 1960s and Spain in the 1960s and 1970s but both then trailed off economically.
Though Streeting has promised to double the size of our Medical Schools, he doesn't seem to have considered how that will be physically possible in terms of space and placements. So far as I can find out there has been no discussion with our Medical School.
Then there is the small matter of finding time to have more postgraduate training places ("junior doctors") in appropriate specialities and enough grognards like myself with enough protected time to actually train these rookies.
The Conservatives opened five new medical schools, so it cannot be that hard. There are already two more ready to go for whom the government has declined funding for home students.
We would be in a far better position on this if the BMA membership had not voted to stop the opening of new Medical schools 15 years ago.
Have they changed their position on this since? I assume so but I can't find any reference to votes in favour at subsequent conferences.
The BMA has no role in determining the number of medical school places, as this is set by the GMC, which is an organ of the government.
So why did the BMA vote to oppose the expansion of medical school places and why did the Government at the time comply with them?
This is the most ineffective large majority Government in British political history. They have achieved absolutely sod all, quite extraordinary really. That is because the intelligent Tories have either quit or been removed. What is left is the people that were always in a box in previous times. Not anymore.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
Very good question. Normally you could point to someone on the backbenches, 2019 intake say, with something about them. Not ready yet, but the leader after the next leader. The sort of person Michael Howard hung around to give time for them to grow.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
82% of Latvians support EU membership, and they now have a GDP per capita 70% of the EU average, up from 45% when they joined.
Not problem free, like any other country, but when looking at Belarus or Russia next door, a resounding success backed by their electorate.
Though Streeting has promised to double the size of our Medical Schools, he doesn't seem to have considered how that will be physically possible in terms of space and placements. So far as I can find out there has been no discussion with our Medical School.
Then there is the small matter of finding time to have more postgraduate training places ("junior doctors") in appropriate specialities and enough grognards like myself with enough protected time to actually train these rookies.
The Conservatives opened five new medical schools, so it cannot be that hard. There are already two more ready to go for whom the government has declined funding for home students.
We would be in a far better position on this if the BMA membership had not voted to stop the opening of new Medical schools 15 years ago.
Have they changed their position on this since? I assume so but I can't find any reference to votes in favour at subsequent conferences.
The BMA has no role in determining the number of medical school places, as this is set by the GMC, which is an organ of the government.
So why did the BMA vote to oppose the expansion of medical school places and why did the Government at the time comply with them?
You're confounding wants with decisions, surely. I can campaign for the introduction of capital punishment for cruelty to kittens, but it is the relevant Governments in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and (sometime) NI which decide.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
It would make the Tube less crowded! (Just Kiddin')
This is the most ineffective large majority Government in British political history. They have achieved absolutely sod all, quite extraordinary really. That is because the intelligent Tories have either quit or been removed. What is left is the people that were always in a box in previous times. Not anymore.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
Very good question. Normally you could point to someone on the backbenches, 2019 intake say, with something about them. Not ready yet, but the leader after the next leader. The sort of person Michael Howard hung around to give time for them to grow.
Any ideas, anyone?
Bearing in mind that half of current Tory MPs will be getting their P45's shortly, best to look only at the safest of majorities.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
That is just propaganda. Yes the UK keen was on promoting Eastern expansion of the EU but so were every other major country in the EU and so was the EU itself. It would have happened with or without our 'influence'. And bear in mind Thatcher opposed German reunification (to her shame).
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
The fact that some of those economies have seen incredible growth while also experiencing shrinking populations is a major challenge to the idea that immigration is always and everywhere the best solution.
The success of migration, both inward and outward, depends on who the migrants are, why they are migrating and to which parts of a country they are migrating to.
The failing of governments is usually because they consider only the gross total and not the details.
Though Streeting has promised to double the size of our Medical Schools, he doesn't seem to have considered how that will be physically possible in terms of space and placements. So far as I can find out there has been no discussion with our Medical School.
Then there is the small matter of finding time to have more postgraduate training places ("junior doctors") in appropriate specialities and enough grognards like myself with enough protected time to actually train these rookies.
The Conservatives opened five new medical schools, so it cannot be that hard. There are already two more ready to go for whom the government has declined funding for home students.
We would be in a far better position on this if the BMA membership had not voted to stop the opening of new Medical schools 15 years ago.
Have they changed their position on this since? I assume so but I can't find any reference to votes in favour at subsequent conferences.
The BMA has no role in determining the number of medical school places, as this is set by the GMC, which is an organ of the government.
So why did the BMA vote to oppose the expansion of medical school places and why did the Government at the time comply with them?
That vote was in the aftermath of the catastrophic MMC programme that led to many junior doctors losing their jobs, and swiftly reversed a few years later.
By and large the government continued its policy of importing doctors that had existed since the NHS was created.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
82% of Latvians support EU membership, and they now have a GDP per capita 70% of the EU average, up from 45% when they joined.
Not problem free, like any other country, but when looking at Belarus or Russia next door, a resounding success backed by their electorate.
You called it an ‘unequivocal’ good. I pointed out that ‘unequivocal’ was wrong. I’m right. That is all
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
Did you mean still, sober, or did you intend to write still sober?
"Pensioner forced to retire from tennis because of cashless society Leisure centres could not take cash despite many older people still unable to use the internet" (£)
BUt.. it's nothing to do with the internet. According to the article, she was told she can pay with a debit card - which she has, but doesn't want to use. For a membership, she needs an email address, but she doesn't want to be a member, just a casual user. But she is refusing to pay with a method she has access to, which they are offering.
If that is so then it's just her choosing to be difficult and the paper has lapped it up.
Next week it'll be a story about how she was forced to look at a bottle marked as 2 litres rather than proper measurements.
This is the most ineffective large majority Government in British political history. They have achieved absolutely sod all, quite extraordinary really. That is because the intelligent Tories have either quit or been removed. What is left is the people that were always in a box in previous times. Not anymore.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
Very good question. Normally you could point to someone on the backbenches, 2019 intake say, with something about them. Not ready yet, but the leader after the next leader. The sort of person Michael Howard hung around to give time for them to grow.
Any ideas, anyone?
Bearing in mind that half of current Tory MPs will be getting their P45's shortly, best to look only at the safest of majorities.
I suspect that might make the situation even worse for the Tories. It is the newer Tories in the most vulnerable seats who seem to be the most reasonable and they are likely to be swept away.
This is the most ineffective large majority Government in British political history. They have achieved absolutely sod all, quite extraordinary really. That is because the intelligent Tories have either quit or been removed. What is left is the people that were always in a box in previous times. Not anymore.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
Very good question. Normally you could point to someone on the backbenches, 2019 intake say, with something about them. Not ready yet, but the leader after the next leader. The sort of person Michael Howard hung around to give time for them to grow.
Any ideas, anyone?
I think Brexit is the problem here as well. Remain was the informed and sensible vote in 2016. It's a single data point. No-one is sensible all the time, nor would you want to be. You might normally be sensible but vote Leave on this occasion. But as a first cut, the wrong people are in government as being a Leaver is the main qualification.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I think it very likely that Poland will catch up with British GDP per capita, as indeed when looked at by region some parts of Eastern Europe already have with many UK regions.
It doesn't bother me though. I am not troubled if my neighbour earns more than me, so why should I be bothered if citizens of other countries do?
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I can't believe it either - I think this is the equivalent of a canary in the coal mine.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
If you visit Warsaw there's a real dynamism and it's not as free from immigrants as you might think - not only because of the huge number of Ukrainians but also people from South-East Asia. I wouldn't be surprised if Poland does overtake some of the major Western European economies.
I’ve no doubt Warsaw is dynamic. Poles are indeed getting richer. But you can’t avoid those population stats
I think Brexit is the problem here as well. Remain was the informed and sensible vote in 2016. It's a single data point. No-one is sensible all the time, nor would you want to be. You might normally be sensible but vote Leave on this occasion. But as a first cut, the wrong people are in government as being a Leaver is the main qualification.
Your point would carry greater weight if it was even vaguely comprehensible. It is not
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
If you visit Warsaw there's a real dynamism and it's not as free from immigrants as you might think - not only because of the huge number of Ukrainians but also people from South-East Asia. I wouldn't be surprised if Poland does overtake some of the major Western European economies.
I’ve no doubt Warsaw is dynamic. Poles are indeed getting richer. But you can’t avoid those population stats
I think Brexit is the problem here as well. Remain was the informed and sensible vote in 2016. It's a single data point. No-one is sensible all the time, nor would you want to be. You might normally be sensible but vote Leave on this occasion. But as a first cut, the wrong people are in government as being a Leaver is the main qualification.
Should add the same problem applies to the Scottish government and it shows in the quality of that government.
Just to confirm, the immigrants we hated between 2010 and 2016, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, they're good immigrants now are they?
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
I very much doubt it's Indians 'we' don't like now. Probably the strategy is to keep it vague, so that xenophobes can picture the bad ones as whichever foreigners they don't like, and non-xenophobes can (maybe) imagine it's not based on foreignness.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I think it very likely that Poland will catch up with British GDP per capita, as indeed when looked at by region some parts of Eastern Europe already have with many UK regions.
It doesn't bother me though. I am not troubled if my neighbour earns more than me, so why should I be bothered if citizens of other countries do?
I don't mind if my neighbour earns more than me exactly, but if I am actually struggling and they are not (despite struggling before), then I'd have some questions about what happened here.
I dont know whether brexit has anything to do with it but my car ins policy has increased by 20.pc (LV) and other quotes from other insurance sites such as Confused, Compare the market, Money supermarket etc are all infinitely and shockingly worse. Wtf is going on?
Yeah, mine went up quite a bit too.
Inflation, innit.
No.its way over inflation rate
I think it's another hidden cost from the electrification of vehicles. Damage the battery pack even slightly (it's quite a lot of the underside of the car) and the car is probably a write off. And that's before getting into the way that Tesla are really evil about preventing 3rd parties repairing their cars - that's a cost that's being borne by someone too.
The tend towards filling cars with tech won't be helping either - a minor bump in the supermarket carpark has gone from being a plastic bumper at a few hundred quid to a load of expensive senors and wiring. Even clobbering a wing mirror on something has now means you've probably smashed a camera, a light unit, possibly some lidar sensors and a heated mirror glass, instead of a £50 bit of plastic and glass.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
82% of Latvians support EU membership, and they now have a GDP per capita 70% of the EU average, up from 45% when they joined.
Not problem free, like any other country, but when looking at Belarus or Russia next door, a resounding success backed by their electorate.
That 25% was the easy gain:
Replace communism with free markets Teach English instead of Russian Receive fiscal transfers from the EU Improve a backward infrastructure
Just to confirm, the immigrants we hated between 2010 and 2016, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, they're good immigrants now are they?
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
I very much doubt it's Indians 'we' don't like now. Probably the strategy is to keep it vague, so that xenophobes can picture the bad ones as whichever foreigners they don't like, and non-xenophobes can (maybe) imagine it's not based on foreignness.
PS But Albanians are fair game. Not many voters have Albanian blood.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Does this mean that immigration is actually a 'good' thing?
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
If you visit Warsaw there's a real dynamism and it's not as free from immigrants as you might think - not only because of the huge number of Ukrainians but also people from South-East Asia. I wouldn't be surprised if Poland does overtake some of the major Western European economies.
I’ve no doubt Warsaw is dynamic. Poles are indeed getting richer. But you can’t avoid those population stats
I think Brexit is the problem here as well. Remain was the informed and sensible vote in 2016. It's a single data point. No-one is sensible all the time, nor would you want to be. You might normally be sensible but vote Leave on this occasion. But as a first cut, the wrong people are in government as being a Leaver is the main qualification.
Your point would carry greater weight if it was even vaguely comprehensible. It is not
This is the most ineffective large majority Government in British political history. They have achieved absolutely sod all, quite extraordinary really. That is because the intelligent Tories have either quit or been removed. What is left is the people that were always in a box in previous times. Not anymore.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
Very good question. Normally you could point to someone on the backbenches, 2019 intake say, with something about them. Not ready yet, but the leader after the next leader. The sort of person Michael Howard hung around to give time for them to grow.
Any ideas, anyone?
Bearing in mind that half of current Tory MPs will be getting their P45's shortly, best to look only at the safest of majorities.
I suspect that might make the situation even worse for the Tories. It is the newer Tories in the most vulnerable seats who seem to be the most reasonable and they are likely to be swept away.
Its a problem within our electoral system.
Those who are well connected get given a safe seat early and then get pushed up the ladder quicker.
Outsiders get more marginal seats which means that their time in Parliament can come to an end, or never begin, depending on the electoral cycle. They're also likely to have slower advancement after being elected than those who are better connected.
Just to confirm, the immigrants we hated between 2010 and 2016, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, they're good immigrants now are they?
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
I very much doubt it's Indians 'we' don't like now. Probably the strategy is to keep it vague, so that xenophobes can picture the bad ones as whichever foreigners they don't like, and non-xenophobes can (maybe) imagine it's not based on foreignness.
PS But Albanians are fair game. Not many voters have Albanian blood.
Albanians are the latest fad in the cheap, cash in hand, building trade.
One company owner was quite open about how it was done - he owns a huge, rambling house, with outbuildings, not far outside London. Which he turns into a barracks for his guys - 4 to a room. Which they pay him for. They bus them into London for the jobs, in vans.
If he needs more, he just gets some more cousins….
So treat them like shit and pay less than minimum wage. Plus rip them off on accommodation. Nice.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
82% of Latvians support EU membership, and they now have a GDP per capita 70% of the EU average, up from 45% when they joined.
Not problem free, like any other country, but when looking at Belarus or Russia next door, a resounding success backed by their electorate.
That 25% was the easy gain:
Replace communism with free markets Teach English instead of Russian Receive fiscal transfers from the EU Improve a backward infrastructure
The next 30% gain gets increasingly harder.
I agree. Also:
Add in a stagnant or falling population and that first 25% gets easier still. You don’t need to spend so much on infrastructure, schools, health, and you’ve got millions of citizens abroad in richer countries now sending money home
You will grow fast in that situation - added to the factors you mention
However at some point the easier growth slows, and then a falling population becomes an issue, very probably a big negative
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
For me, EU membership was always about more than just economics; it was an attitude of mind. Were we at one with our neighbours or were we ourselves alone? In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim! So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
In that sense it was always going to be a total failure for you no matter what happened. That is hardly an argument one way or another in terms of this thread.
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
That of course, in a nutshell, is why we differ. In spite, perhaps, of my genetics showing me to be almost entirely from England and Wales, I’ve always thought of myself as a European. And I don’t think the EU is ‘undemocratic’; it could be, and one day will be, better but it’s on the right track. And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
We tried to be a force for good (as we saw it) for 40 years and failed. The old saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results springs to mind.
That’s not right, is it. We encouraged, promoted, supported all sorts of things.
Not least we led on eastwards expansion of membership, and modernising the post Communist economies there. These countries could have become failed states like Belarus, but instead are modern liberal democracies.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Eastwards expansion of the EU was definitely a good thing, but I’m not sure about ‘unequivocal’
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
82% of Latvians support EU membership, and they now have a GDP per capita 70% of the EU average, up from 45% when they joined.
Not problem free, like any other country, but when looking at Belarus or Russia next door, a resounding success backed by their electorate.
That 25% was the easy gain:
Replace communism with free markets Teach English instead of Russian Receive fiscal transfers from the EU Improve a backward infrastructure
The next 30% gain gets increasingly harder.
I agree. Also:
Add in a stagnant or falling population and that first 25% gets easier still. You don’t need to spend so much on infrastructure, schools, health, and you’ve got millions of citizens abroad in richer countries now sending money home
You will grow fast in that situation - added to the factors you mention
However at some point the easier growth slows, and then a falling population becomes an issue, very probably a big negative
Assuming you don’t switch to climbing the productivity ladder.
One thing that “AI” and robots can do is being in the automation revolution that was promised in the 80s. Smart cognition of environment, responsive grip and a number of other things add up to being able to automate a jobs like much of warehouse work. Or the old favourite, fruit picking.
Just to confirm, the immigrants we hated between 2010 and 2016, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, they're good immigrants now are they?
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
I very much doubt it's Indians 'we' don't like now. Probably the strategy is to keep it vague, so that xenophobes can picture the bad ones as whichever foreigners they don't like, and non-xenophobes can (maybe) imagine it's not based on foreignness.
PS But Albanians are fair game. Not many voters have Albanian blood.
Albanians are the latest fad in the cheap, cash in hand, building trade.
One company owner was quite open about how it was done - he owns a huge, rambling house, with outbuildings, not far outside London. Which he turns into a barracks for his guys - 4 to a room. Which they pay him for. They bus them into London for the jobs, in vans.
If he needs more, he just gets some more cousins….
So treat them like shit and pay less than minimum wage. Plus rip them off on accommodation. Nice.
Why is that their fault? Isn't it the guy doing the stuff we should be going after?
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Does this mean that immigration is actually a 'good' thing?
Demographically? Certainly.
The problem is that nobody is really prepared to say immigration is good, which is depressing.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Does this mean that immigration is actually a 'good' thing?
Demographically? Certainly.
The problem is that nobody is really prepared to say immigration is good, which is depressing.
If every country is competing to increase their population, how do you expect to solve climate change?
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I'm perfectly calm. Actually I don't see any reason why we should be surprised or upset if Poland does become richer than the UK. Ireland already has, for much the same reasons as Poland will do, if it does.
Incidentally a large organisation I know was looking at where to set up a base for highly skilled analytical work with the choice being Poland and the UK. They chose Poland, and it wasn't close, for a. better availability of numerate graduates b. Poland in EU Single Market c. lower salaries. Obviously.c will disappear over time but that doesn't help the UK in being richer.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation” - Adam Smith.
Meanwhile, in a neat inversion of "no British PM would be mad enough to have a General Election campaign running over Christmas", the Spanish PM has called an election for July 23rd.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Does this mean that immigration is actually a 'good' thing?
Demographically? Certainly.
The problem is that nobody is really prepared to say immigration is good, which is depressing.
If every country is competing to increase their population, how do you expect to solve climate change?
By investing in renewables and becoming a global leader.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I'm perfectly calm. Actually I don't see any reason why we should be surprised or upset if Poland does become richer than the UK. Ireland already has, for much the same reasons as Poland will do, if it does.
Incidentally a large organisation I know was looking at where to set up a base for highly skilled analytical work with the choice being Poland and the UK. They chose Poland, and it wasn't close, for a. better availability of numerate graduates b. Poland in EU Single Market c. lower salaries. Obviously.c will disappear over time but that doesn't help the UK in being richer.
Ireland hasn't. If you look at actual individual consumption instead of GDP, which is heavily distorted by multinational tax planning, then Ireland is some way behind the UK, France and Germany.
I think you have to travel a lot, consistently, to realize how comparatively UNfucked Britain is
In the last 18 months I’ve been to
USA (three times, all over the country) Spain (three times, all over) Italy Germany Turkey (three times, all over) Egypt Greece (twice, all over) Thailand (thrice) Vietnam Cambodia Montenegro Armenia Georgia Portugal Iceland Mexico
Everyone of these countries has major problems in different ways, with the possible exception of Iceland
Just to confirm, the immigrants we hated between 2010 and 2016, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, they're good immigrants now are they?
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
I very much doubt it's Indians 'we' don't like now. Probably the strategy is to keep it vague, so that xenophobes can picture the bad ones as whichever foreigners they don't like, and non-xenophobes can (maybe) imagine it's not based on foreignness.
PS But Albanians are fair game. Not many voters have Albanian blood.
Albanians are the latest fad in the cheap, cash in hand, building trade.
One company owner was quite open about how it was done - he owns a huge, rambling house, with outbuildings, not far outside London. Which he turns into a barracks for his guys - 4 to a room. Which they pay him for. They bus them into London for the jobs, in vans.
If he needs more, he just gets some more cousins….
So treat them like shit and pay less than minimum wage. Plus rip them off on accommodation. Nice.
Why is that their fault? Isn't it the guy doing the stuff we should be going after?
He is, of course, Albanian himself. Just more established and speaks idiomatic English.
The people who abuse migrant workers like this, nearly always come from their own community.
This happens, time and again, round the world. The main feature is hiring people who don’t speak English. Easier to control.
I find it surprising that most people still don’t realise this. Then again, when prosecutions are reported, the ethnicity of the perpetrators is always left out of the reporting.
Dig a little deeper into these Polish stats, let’s look at Polish demographics
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Does this mean that immigration is actually a 'good' thing?
Demographically? Certainly.
The problem is that nobody is really prepared to say immigration is good, which is depressing.
If every country is competing to increase their population, how do you expect to solve climate change?
By investing in renewables and becoming a global leader.
Regardless of how much you invest in renewables, there's a relationship between environmental sustainability and population size.
I dont know whether brexit has anything to do with it but my car ins policy has increased by 20.pc (LV) and other quotes from other insurance sites such as Confused, Compare the market, Money supermarket etc are all infinitely and shockingly worse. Wtf is going on?
Yeah, mine went up quite a bit too.
Inflation, innit.
No.its way over inflation rate
I think it's another hidden cost from the electrification of vehicles. Damage the battery pack even slightly (it's quite a lot of the underside of the car) and the car is probably a write off. And that's before getting into the way that Tesla are really evil about preventing 3rd parties repairing their cars - that's a cost that's being borne by someone too.
The tend towards filling cars with tech won't be helping either - a minor bump in the supermarket carpark has gone from being a plastic bumper at a few hundred quid to a load of expensive senors and wiring. Even clobbering a wing mirror on something has now means you've probably smashed a camera, a light unit, possibly some lidar sensors and a heated mirror glass, instead of a £50 bit of plastic and glass.
In this case, it wasn’t the battery pack, but the extreme difficulty of replacing that part of the vehicle, which involved stripping the headliner from the cab!
A lot of these modern vehicles are designed like iPhones: optimised for ease of construction above all else, with no consideration of repair (or even redesign) costs whatsoever. Sadly it makes sense from a corporate POV: anything that lowers the up front price is worthwhile, regardless of the net costs.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I'm perfectly calm. Actually I don't see any reason why we should be surprised or upset if Poland does become richer than the UK. Ireland already has, for much the same reasons as Poland will do, if it does.
Incidentally a large organisation I know was looking at where to set up a base for highly skilled analytical work with the choice being Poland and the UK. They chose Poland, and it wasn't close, for a. better availability of numerate graduates b. Poland in EU Single Market c. lower salaries. Obviously.c will disappear over time but that doesn't help the UK in being richer.
I'm guessing the language used in the new base was going to be English regardless of location.
@Leon - Why is the fact that Britain speaks English a big advantage? Elites in many countries speak English. There are several sectors too where it's dominant in most of the world, e.g. aerospace, infotech, science. Among decision makers, who cares what language the office cleaner or the man on the omnibus speaks?
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I'm perfectly calm. Actually I don't see any reason why we should be surprised or upset if Poland does become richer than the UK. Ireland already has, for much the same reasons as Poland will do, if it does.
Incidentally a large organisation I know was looking at where to set up a base for highly skilled analytical work with the choice being Poland and the UK. They chose Poland, and it wasn't close, for a. better availability of numerate graduates b. Poland in EU Single Market c. lower salaries. Obviously.c will disappear over time but that doesn't help the UK in being richer.
I'm guessing the language used in the new base was going to be English regardless of location.
@Leon - Why is the fact that Britain speaks English a big advantage? Elites in many countries speak English. There are several sectors too where it's dominant in most of the world, e.g. aerospace, infotech, science. Among decisionmakers, who cares what language the office cleaner or the man on the omnibus speaks?
Just to confirm, the immigrants we hated between 2010 and 2016, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, they're good immigrants now are they?
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
I very much doubt it's Indians 'we' don't like now. Probably the strategy is to keep it vague, so that xenophobes can picture the bad ones as whichever foreigners they don't like, and non-xenophobes can (maybe) imagine it's not based on foreignness.
PS But Albanians are fair game. Not many voters have Albanian blood.
Albanians are the latest fad in the cheap, cash in hand, building trade.
One company owner was quite open about how it was done - he owns a huge, rambling house, with outbuildings, not far outside London. Which he turns into a barracks for his guys - 4 to a room. Which they pay him for. They bus them into London for the jobs, in vans.
If he needs more, he just gets some more cousins….
So treat them like shit and pay less than minimum wage. Plus rip them off on accommodation. Nice.
Sounds like they're in a really ideal position to be made political scapegoats.
Expect the Equality Act to be amended by the addition of the word "except for Albanians" any time, now that Braverman has established that she is unsackable.
Just going by the figures I can find: GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000 France $45000 Italy $42000 Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
Not surprising if Polish incomes do overtake UK ones. Educational standards are very high (especially for machine learning etc - AI woohoo!) and they are also in the Market, unlike us.
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Poland won’t overtake the UK either in GDP or GDP per capita
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
I'm perfectly calm. Actually I don't see any reason why we should be surprised or upset if Poland does become richer than the UK. Ireland already has, for much the same reasons as Poland will do, if it does.
Incidentally a large organisation I know was looking at where to set up a base for highly skilled analytical work with the choice being Poland and the UK. They chose Poland, and it wasn't close, for a. better availability of numerate graduates b. Poland in EU Single Market c. lower salaries. Obviously.c will disappear over time but that doesn't help the UK in being richer.
I'm guessing the language used in the new base was going to be English regardless of location.
@Leon - Why is the fact that Britain speaks English a big advantage? Elites in many countries speak English. There are several sectors too where it's dominant in most of the world, e.g. aerospace, infotech, science. Among decisionmakers, who cares what language the office cleaner or the man on the omnibus speaks?
English is the best language in the world!
I love the English language too, but that's not the point!
Comments
Today?
Italy’s nominal GDP is $2.1trn
UK’s nominal GDP is $3.1trn
The UK is a vastly bigger economy than Italy
While Britain has lower unemployment now than in 2016.
Irrespective of that did anyone predict, on either side, that after years of outside economic turbulence that the UK would now have full employment.
A miracle almost, but perhaps you'd need to grow up in a mining district in the 1980s to appreciate it.
GDP PPP 2021
UK $45000
France $45000
Italy $42000
Poland $35000
So Poland is still some way off. However if Poland is to overtake the UK it's also likely to overtake France and Italy too. The implications for the Euro in that scenario might be an even more pressing question.
The analogy I like is digging a hole in the sand. When the tide comes in the water pours into the whole very rapidly. But ultimately reaches the same level everywhere.
When conditions are right - law, stability, economy, education etc - a country that is behind others can suddenly takeoff. This doesn’t mean that it will end up twice as rich as Monaco per capita or something. Just that it will catch up with its peers.
I think this an unequivocal good that we led.
Poland’s population in 1989 - over thirty years ago, at the fall of communism - was 37.96m. Today it is 37.94m. It has actually DECLINED in the last 35 years, and is falling faster now
It is little wonder that EU membership/investment allied with a stagnant/falling population is leading to an increase in GDP per capita. A nicer pie is being shared by fewer people
In the same period the UK’s population has gone from 57m to 67m, and it is still growing fast
Poland is also aging faster than the UK, and attracts virtually zero immigrants
So, really, these “predictions” are simply cherry-picked nonsense flourished by ageing, middlebrow Remoaners still unable to accept defeat
Only in Yugoslavia did ethnic hatrd spill over into civil war, and only in Romania was the revolution (a little bit) bloody. The speed with which the Ceascescus went from lording it over the country to facing a firing squad shows just how rapidly their inner circle turned on them.
Giving up the rebate for a vague promise to reform the CAP was demented. French domestic policy being what it is. What should have been done was offer to reduce the rebate in conjunction with CAP reform.
Another farce was the U.K. foreign office bribing the Anguilla government to turn down the Beal Aerospace request to launch from Sombrero Island. This was an out right illegal action, conducted to curry favour with the French (competition with Ariane). It was done without securing any quid pro quo in advance.
It fucked in the U.K. reputation in Anguilla - got nothing.
I’d have done the following
- made the French pay the bribe, in French money. So their finger prints are all over it.
- Got some explicit agreements about ESA work share. First.
And when you're making too many abusive comments its usually best to switch off PB and do something constructive and have happy thoughts instead.
Anger tends to diminish a person, being more empathetic can help.
Is it Indians and Afghans we don't like now? I get lost
The original six members - Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg - currently have a combined population of ~240 million, out of the total EU population of 447 million. I guess if you add Ukraine to the EU then the original founder members would no longer have a majority of the population, but that was also the case when the UK was still a member, and it didn't seem all that significant then.
There are also a lot of other western/northern European countries to add to the founding core. And that all presupposes that the countries of Eastern Europe would all have common interests and policy when it came to the EU. Certainly we would expect that to be the case in terms of security policy - with the notable exception of Hungary - but it doesn't seem to be the case in other policy areas, otherwise we might expect the existing eastern European members of the EU to have made a bigger impact.
Who is going to do a Keir Starmer and fix the Tory Party?
More work and more effective work.
Better training and investment.
Supporting aspiration and affordable housing.
And more responsibility being shown by those in charge.
The Conservative party had the opportunity to do the last - that was after all part of 'taking back control' - but they messed up with the greed and laziness and arrogance.
Look at demographics again. This time, Latvia
The population of Latvia has declined from a peak of 2.7m in 1990 to 1.9m now. That’s a massive fall, in context - a third of the whole country has disappeared- and the main reason is migration to the rest of the EU
The equivalent in the UK would be a fall from 60m in 1990 to 40m now. Would we regard that as an ‘unequivocal good’? I rather doubt it
Conservatives are supposed to believe in people taking some individual responsibility so they can add hypocrisy to their other failings of greed, laziness and arrogance.
The equivocation at the beginning of the war has had people wondering if they might be the price of future RealPolitik in the area.
Such a grouping - countries with a population of 70 million+ people, with enormous potential for growth, relative to the more established economies - would inevitably be a major power within Europe
‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population
Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/latvia-baltic-population-demographic-crisis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
France and Italy also growing slightly faster than us. At the moment.
Certainly there would have been 'easy catch ups' to be made after 1990 as they moved to a free market economy.
But has the success of that and resulting increase in living standards encouraged further free market dynamism compared with the 'stuck in their ways' western and southern European countries ?
Similarly Italy prospered in the 1950s and 1960s and Spain in the 1960s and 1970s but both then trailed off economically.
https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a748
Any ideas, anyone?
Not problem free, like any other country, but when looking at Belarus or Russia next door, a resounding success backed by their electorate.
It’s absurd declinism. Britain is going through a fit of post-Covid manic depression, complicated by the war and made worse by the lingering neurosis of Brexit. Yes, the UK has some major problems - things look a lot tougher than they did in 2013 or 2003, but that is true of many countries on earth, including nearly all the developed western nations
And Britain has multiple advantages which other countries do not. From a still-splendid university system, to the English language, to a world city capital, to a global network of friends and allies
I can’t believe I’m the still, sober voice of sanity on here, but so it is. Calm down, everyone
The failing of governments is usually because they consider only the gross total and not the details.
By and large the government continued its policy of importing doctors that had existed since the NHS was created.
Next week it'll be a story about how she was forced to look at a bottle marked as 2 litres rather than proper measurements.
I think Brexit is the problem here as well. Remain was the informed and sensible vote in 2016. It's a single data point. No-one is sensible all the time, nor would you want to be. You might normally be sensible but vote Leave on this occasion. But as a first cut, the wrong people are in government as being a Leaver is the main qualification.
It doesn't bother me though. I am not troubled if my neighbour earns more than me, so why should I be bothered if citizens of other countries do?
The tend towards filling cars with tech won't be helping either - a minor bump in the supermarket carpark has gone from being a plastic bumper at a few hundred quid to a load of expensive senors and wiring. Even clobbering a wing mirror on something has now means you've probably smashed a camera, a light unit, possibly some lidar sensors and a heated mirror glass, instead of a £50 bit of plastic and glass.
Replace communism with free markets
Teach English instead of Russian
Receive fiscal transfers from the EU
Improve a backward infrastructure
The next 30% gain gets increasingly harder.
Those who are well connected get given a safe seat early and then get pushed up the ladder quicker.
Outsiders get more marginal seats which means that their time in Parliament can come to an end, or never begin, depending on the electoral cycle. They're also likely to have slower advancement after being elected than those who are better connected.
One company owner was quite open about how it was done - he owns a huge, rambling house, with outbuildings, not far outside London. Which he turns into a barracks for his guys - 4 to a room. Which they pay him for. They bus them into London for the jobs, in vans.
If he needs more, he just gets some more cousins….
So treat them like shit and pay less than minimum wage. Plus rip them off on accommodation. Nice.
Add in a stagnant or falling population and that first 25% gets easier still. You don’t need to spend so much on infrastructure, schools, health, and you’ve got millions of citizens abroad in richer countries now sending money home
You will grow fast in that situation - added to the factors you mention
However at some point the easier growth slows, and then a falling population becomes an issue, very probably a big negative
One thing that “AI” and robots can do is being in the automation revolution that was promised in the 80s. Smart cognition of environment, responsive grip and a number of other things add up to being able to automate a jobs like much of warehouse work. Or the old favourite, fruit picking.
You are legitimately the most boring poster here, I've never seen you make a single intelligent contribution.
Incidentally a large organisation I know was looking at where to set up a base for highly skilled analytical work with the choice being Poland and the UK. They chose Poland, and it wasn't close, for a. better availability of numerate graduates b. Poland in EU Single Market c. lower salaries. Obviously.c will disappear over time but that doesn't help the UK in being richer.
Un poco loco, methinks.
In the last 18 months I’ve been to
USA (three times, all over the country)
Spain (three times, all over)
Italy
Germany
Turkey (three times, all over)
Egypt
Greece (twice, all over)
Thailand (thrice)
Vietnam
Cambodia
Montenegro
Armenia
Georgia
Portugal
Iceland
Mexico
Everyone of these countries has major problems in different ways, with the possible exception of Iceland
The people who abuse migrant workers like this, nearly always come from their own community.
This happens, time and again, round the world. The main feature is hiring people who don’t speak English. Easier to control.
I find it surprising that most people still don’t realise this. Then again, when prosecutions are reported, the ethnicity of the perpetrators is always left out of the reporting.
In this case, it wasn’t the battery pack, but the extreme difficulty of replacing that part of the vehicle, which involved stripping the headliner from the cab!
A lot of these modern vehicles are designed like iPhones: optimised for ease of construction above all else, with no consideration of repair (or even redesign) costs whatsoever. Sadly it makes sense from a corporate POV: anything that lowers the up front price is worthwhile, regardless of the net costs.
@Leon - Why is the fact that Britain speaks English a big advantage? Elites in many countries speak English. There are several sectors too where it's dominant in most of the world, e.g. aerospace, infotech, science. Among decision makers, who cares what language the office cleaner or the man on the omnibus speaks?
Expect the Equality Act to be amended by the addition of the word "except for Albanians" any time, now that Braverman has established that she is unsackable.