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The Political Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 09 April, 2010, 03:59:03 PM

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Old Tankie


Goaty


Steven Denton

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 10 January, 2017, 09:43:46 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 10 January, 2017, 09:07:35 PM
Quote from: Old Tankie on 10 January, 2017, 07:45:53 PM
I didn't say anything about evil European dictators either.

Oh forget it. I've obviously misinterpreted every one of your pearls of wisdom and can't be arsed trying to wheedle out what you actually ARE saying. Easier to just post snarky comments about what infrastructure and regeneration have been provided rather than actually discuss the subject constructively. I was trying to encourage some ideas about what SHOULD be done to regenerate south Wales, whether in or out of Europe, but let's have a traditional Brexit pedantry contest instead..
Tanks doesn't debate. He takes a hit and run technique that reveals nothing about what he thinks and very little about what he doesn't think, then plays the victim card. Rinse and repeat, none of us will ever be any the wiser.

It's not a great debating technique but at least he's brief and too the point. It's been my impression that Old Tankie is further right than most on this thread and no one wants an echo chamber.

Hawkmumbler

Quote from: Old Tankie on 10 January, 2017, 09:49:25 PM
Victim card  :lol:
I'd rather have a typo to my name than have the shame of eating out of Nigel's hand as my reputation, Tonker.

Theblazeuk

Good use of the card there I must say.

COMMANDO FORCES

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Saint Corbyn and his excellent work today.
I thoroughly enjoyed his interview on breakfast telly before I went to bed and luckily after I got up, he was giving his reboot speech.

Very enjoyable and now we all know where he stands, just a pity it's a wee bit muddled. Never mind, I'm sure that when he's the PM he'll have sorted out all his ideas by then.

Leigh S

Quote from: Steven Denton on 10 January, 2017, 06:44:58 PM
Quote from: Leigh S on 10 January, 2017, 06:38:02 PM
Quote from: Old Tankie on 10 January, 2017, 06:25:52 PM
The UK is a net contributor to the EU.

I beleive we would get £6.66 back from our £10 (or thereabouts)

Is that taking into account the cost of the EU services we use and the funds we could access but don't?

Well yes there is that on top -

We give them £10 (probably diproportionately gathered from teh richer parts of the country such as London -well, lets just say London!) and they spend £6.66 directly back on projects that benefit the poorest (hopefully)

On top of that, the removal of barriers to trade and movement reduce other costs by a less quantifiable amount, but arguably at least as much as the £3.34 being quibbled about, possibly a bit more.  Anyone who thinks operating outside a single market is going to reduce costs is just deluded.

We can keep our £10 and maybe we could spend all that £6.66 on the poor just as well or better than the EU.  But then we have lost the £3 or £4 or £5 quid benefit we had from co-operating, so we are down overall.  So the extraa 3 or 4 quid goes to covering those costs and at best we are no worse off.  Chances are a lot of this money will end up being used as bribe money come the next election and will benefit neither the poor, or those trying to trade with Europe

Professor Bear

Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 10 January, 2017, 11:27:06 PM
Very enjoyable and now we all know where he stands, just a pity it's a wee bit muddled. Never mind, I'm sure that when he's the PM he'll have sorted out all his ideas by then.

Amusingly, even Alastair Campbell couldn't find a copy of Corbyn's speech anywhere in the media as of 6 hours after it was delivered, and so took to Twitter to ask for a link to it.  Considering Corbyn was the big story to keep the NHS humanitarian disaster out of the news, you'd think the speech would have been a bit easier to come across.

Modern Panther

QuoteNever mind, I'm sure that when he's the PM he'll have sorted out all his ideas by then.

Luckily that's not a requirement for the job.

Goaty


Hawkmumbler

I knew Trump would take the piss but this is ridiculous.

Jim_Campbell

#11726
Brexit is going to be a disaster*. I have yet to find any Leave supporters who have even been prepared to engage with the issue of sterling, never mind offer any course of action which will prevent or mitigate that disaster unfolding. Everything in the top part of this post is fact. It's not controversial, it's not disputed by any credible economist.

The sterling is massively over-valued. It's over-valued in relation to the fundamentally weak UK economy. The economy staggers on funded by huge levels of consumer debt, built on the foundation of an over-valued housing market. The UK runs a massive trade deficit — we hardly make anything, and what we do make is made from imported raw materials, using imported energy.

(Here's a handy graph of the UK balance of trade over the last ten years. Note that the top of the graph is zero. Every point on that graph is a negative trade balance, the only difference is how big the deficit has been.)

Sterling maintains its largely undeserved value due to two factors: 1) the deficit is masked by the UK's disproportionate financial services market, and 2) by virtue of being in the EU, but outside the Euro, it has become the de facto reserve currency of Europe.

If you're going to reject the following, you have to address the above.
_______________________________

Come Brexit, at least one of those factors will cease to be true — we'll leave the EU. Judging from the current noises emerging from the government, it's hard to see how we'll retain City of London passport arrangements for financial services, so in all likelihood both will cease.

Deprived of those two props, sterling's natural level will be less than parity with the dollar. There is simply no way to look at sterling's value solely in terms of the UK economy and conclude it's worth more, we're easily looking at a further 25% fall in the value of the pound.

Now, there is a gung-ho corner of the Brexit camp that asserts that it will be a good thing if the pound finds its natural value, but that simply ignores the catastrophic balance of trade deficit. It only makes 'exports more competitive' for the short period of time before the increased input costs of raw materials and energy feeds into the cost of manufacture.

Add to that, the fact that we import about 40% of our food. UK farmers are going bankrupt up and down the length of the country due to the supermarket cartels forcing the wholesale prices down below the cost of manufacture. Either we accept that the imported food will cost more due to the exchange rate, or we try to increase domestic food production, which will of necessity cause prices to rise on the shelves.

(Note: none of this takes into account changed trading relationships with the countries we import all that stuff from. I'm personally sceptical that any of those sweetheart trade deals we were promised will ever materialise, and this will make imports yet more expensive.)

So... we're looking at literally everything becoming more expensive, in an economy where real-term wages have stagnated or fallen. Add to that a hit to the financial services sector, which contributes 12% of GDP (for comparison, the banking crisis contracted the UK economy by about 8%).

If the Bank of England wants to try and defend sterling's value, it only has two options: it can spend billions of pounds of public money propping up the currency (which, historically, has never worked) or it can put up interest rates. At which point, I refer you to the horrendous levels of private debt in the UK.

Sovereignty never put food on anyone's plate but, still, those immigrants, eh?

*Irony alert: as someone whose income is 80%+ US dollars, with a relatively small amount of personal debt and reasonable chunk of savings currently earning as close to nothing as makes no difference, a scenario in which sterling's value plummets and, potentially, interest rates increase is literally the best thing that could happen for me financially. Depending on exactly how that plays out, I could be thousands of pounds a year better off, and I still don't want this to happen, because I'm in a tiny minority and the people it will hit will suffer terribly. Doubly ironic, the vast majority of Leave voters are in group that will be affected by this.
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TordelBack

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 January, 2017, 10:05:19 AM
I knew Trump would take the piss but this is ridiculous.

Come now, this is just locker-room watersports. You're naive if you don't think all real men have multiple teen prostitutes pissing on hotel beds whenever they're away on business: only an elite libtard cuck would even raise an eyebrow.

Caveat: burden of proof goes both ways.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 10 January, 2017, 11:27:06 PMVery enjoyable and now we all know where he stands, just a pity it's a wee bit muddled.
It's astonishing. We have a PM with clear ideas, but not wanting to admit to them, given that said ideas will derail the economy. And we have the leader of the opposition flip-flopping around, to the point legal experts I follow on Twitter have no bloody idea what Labour's actual position is. (The current thinking: Labour's now probably hit on what it should have gone for in the first place: some kind of EEA-style deal, either as an interim position or a possible destination. Which means single market 'full access' and retaining freedom of movement while attempting to reform it in some way – although EFTA members do have an emergency brake there.)

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 11 January, 2017, 10:25:43 AMI have yet to find any Leave supporters who have even been prepared to engage with
Anything, in my case. OK, that's not entirely fair, but I can count those who have so far on one hand, versus those who have insulted me online or made outright threats – of which there have been more than five this month alone. (And while I have a social media presence, I'm not that prominent.)

What the more moderate Leavers have shown me, though, is that there is no crossover. They champion EFTA, but only as a stop-gap, not as a destination. So that can't work.

As for your other points, Jim, they just get hand-waved away. Any attempt to meet most Leavers with actual facts is dismissed as you "talking down the UK" or them saying: "Why don't you go and live in the EU if you love it so bloody much?" (Well, I might have, but you just removed my ability to do so longterm.)

Even a basic grasp of the way the modern world works showcases the benefits to be few in number at best. People cite exports growing under a weak Sterling, but there's little evidence of this, and much of manufacturing relies on imported components anyway. Worse: when we leave the EU, the UK will be removed from the 'network' within which many goods and components are made. We will no longer be a 'just in time' economy. Instead, our goods will sit in customs, and manufacturing and export costs will rise. Great.

QuoteSo... we're looking at literally everything becoming more expensive, in an economy where real-term wages have stagnated or fallen. Add to that a hit to the financial services sector, which contributes 12% of GDP (for comparison, the banking crisis contracted the UK economy by about 8%).
Some commentators suggest this is in part why Brexit is being rushed through. Sooner or later, all this is going to bite. Even many of those who voted to Leave will about-face and be angry at the outcome. But by then it will be too late – unless the EU itself is canny enough to let the UK teeter on the brink and then chalk the entire adventure up to being a stupid waste of time and the destruction of much goodwill towards the UK and our standing in the world. Certainly, those I'm hearing from both sides suggesting we could always rejoin if everything goes to shit seem to miss the fact that the UK is already positioned in a kind of soft Brexit anyway – we do not use the Euro and are not part of the passport-free zone. In other words, we have full control over our own currency and borders – not that many people on the Leave side seem to understand that.

Steven Denton

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 11 January, 2017, 10:54:58 AM

Some commentators suggest this is in part why Brexit is being rushed through. Sooner or later, all this is going to bite. Even many of those who voted to Leave will about-face and be angry at the outcome. But by then it will be too late

I don't think the leave voters will change their mind on mass. Even if they directly suffer it will still be the EU's fault for punishing us for leaving, or remain voters fault for not pulling together and making it work. Leave based it's campaign on lies, lots of leave voters bought those lies. reality hasn't troubled them so far and I have no doubt it won't start troubling them any time soon.