[Politics] Brexit

[beorhthelm]

Sure, to encourage growth and investment to compensate for the negative effects of Brexit.

because interest rate at 0.5% had been so productive. no, he done it to be seen to something, and weakening the £ would it is hoped boost exports. it isnt an exact science and the reaction was more than expected/intended.

 

[GT49er]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37639307

Using royal prerogative powers, so much for deomcracy.

If we are going to do Brexit, we need to do it properly

So much for democracy? What about the 'so much for democracy' when parliament tries to overturn the democratic will of the people, as a majority of MPs would like to do?

 

[Lincoln Imp]

well its hardly an emphatic endorsement, is it? its saying if the EU was different, it would be OK.


the PMs deal wasn't in a treaty and there was little prospect of it being. many of the consessions were immediatly challenged and the package went against the principles of the EU. if they'd really want to, they could have accelerated some form of mini-treaty to enshrine the consessions into EU law - and create a two tier EU at a stroke.



and that's the conclusion on the EU and "deal": a bit of bud.

I'm afraid you're clutching at straws. The "entertainer-politician" who clinched it for many voters was clearly swinging in the wind. Perhaps he tossed a coin in the couple of hours between writing this and coming out for coming out. On such narrow calculations does the future of our country rest. England's destiny seems a mere bauble for Conservative politicians to toy with.

 

[The Merry Prankster]

The trouble is you are making the assumption that British workers have always benefitted by us being members of the EU, but this is patently not the case.

Tate and Lyle for example have had to lay off thousands of workers from its refineries as the EU limits the amount of sugar cane the U.K. can import, as it favours sugar beet which is largely grown and refined in France and Germany.

Then there are even more dubious investment and political decisions which are made in shady deals......

http://www.dailysabah.com/money/201...-about-its-40b-euro-share-in-the-eus-own-bank

Why the f*** are the EU funding developments from EU taxpayers in concert with global multinationals that will ultimate lay off workers in the EU?

You sound angry about the laying off of workers because of Brexit, but that doesn't mean it was any better before.........so, dry your eyes and go speak to those ex Ford workers in Southampton and Dagenham.

I'm not making that assumption but then if you were interested in what I said rather than your own agenda you'd see that. I am merely heartbroken for those in my own personal sphere who have had their lives ruined by Brexit. This the micro rather than the macro, the personal not the impersonal.

 

[beorhthelm]

I'm afraid you're clutching at straws. The "entertainer-politician" who clinched it for many voters was clearly swinging in the wind. Perhaps he tossed a coin in the couple of hours between writing this and coming out for coming out. On such narrow calculations does the future of our country rest. England's destiny seems a mere bauble for Conservative politicians to toy with.

what straw am i clutching? i've read the piece, and said its not a ringing endorsement for EU membership. if i missed something please point it out. he may well have decided on toss of a coin, which only goes to show how unconvinved he was with the proposition EU offers.

 

[larus]

Sure, to encourage growth and investment to compensate for the negative effects of Brexit. Quite frankly, Mark Carney was one of the only people in power to come out of Brexit with their reputation slightly intact. Changing the interest rates isn't a perfect science as there are always negative and positive consequences whichever way you go - he's clearly decided, probably rightly, that the pound was always going to take a hit anyway, so he may as well continue to encourage investment.

Raising interest rates supports the currency, There was no need to act when he did, but he's more of a politician than a central banker. Another of the Golman Sachs cronies IMO.

The sensible thing to do was to wait and see what the real impact to the vote was; but no, Mark "the economy will tank if you vote brexit" Carney wanted to be proved right. Well, he ****ed up. There was no need to lower interest rates and weaken the currency.

However, the main issue is that the advanced economies of the world are screwed. We're reliant upon QE (Money Printing) to generate "growth". We're supposedly 8 years into an expansionary phase (since the 2008 crash), and the only growth is in asset prices exacerbated by cheap credit which favours the elite as they own so much and screws the general population.

And as for encouraging investment - if moving from 4-5% over the last few years to 0.5% hasn't encourages investment, do you really think that a reduction to 0.25% is going to change that. We need to get back to "sensible" monetary policy. The West needs to adjust to the new reality of the world - the days of privilege funded by cheap third world labour and exploitation are coming to an end.

 

[JC Footy Genius]

I'm afraid you're clutching at straws. The "entertainer-politician" who clinched it for many voters was clearly swinging in the wind. Perhaps he tossed a coin in the couple of hours between writing this and coming out for coming out. On such narrow calculations does the future of our country rest. England's destiny seems a mere bauble for Conservative politicians to toy with.

Clinched it for many voters? I wonder how many people with the pencil hovering above the ballot paper were thinking, future of my country , what's best for me and my family, can't quite decide .... mmmmmmmmmm trust in Boris.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

There was no need to lower interest rates and weaken the currency.

Spot on mate. Yet another case of the Brexiteers being right and absolutely everyone else wrong.

 

[pastafarian]

First it was being offered complimentary pre-flight Prosecco instead of champagne. Now the price of lobster has rocketed. Brexit is starting to bite hard.

I feel your pain. No one wants to pay excessive amounts for lobster.
You have been fed duff info though that the price rise of lobster is due to brexit.
Id be interested if you could share the link of where you read this and see who it was that has made this claim that hoodwinked you. Was it a german publication?

 

[cunning fergus]

I'm not making that assumption but then if you were interested in what I said rather than your own agenda you'd see that. I am merely heartbroken for those in my own personal sphere who have had their lives ruined by Brexit. This the micro rather than the macro, the personal not the impersonal.

I was interested in what you said, that is why I responded.

You are understandably heartbroken with those you know who losing their jobs post Brexit, which is fine.

I am merely highlighting that others lost their jobs pre Brexit as a direct consequence of EU policies.

If you think that is irrelevant in comparison to your own sentiment, so be it..........but you are being woefully and manifestly one-eyed.

You are the one wanting to punch Brexiters............we know what you are.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...uropean-union-remain-manchester-a7362956.html

 

[Soulman]

You're the only idiot who bit

Really, and you are the idiot that keeps butting in and trying to wind up the people here, your smarmy i am living in the fatherland(i am ok Jack) comments

 

[larus]

Spot on mate. Yet another case of the Brexiteers being right and absolutely everyone else wrong.

Hey, go back to sobbing in your sauerkraut, making more wonderful predictions and constantly running down the country where you don't live.

But I suppose an idiot like you would say that the country needed lower interest rates, without any evidence to the contrary. Bloody sheep some people; no independent thoughts.

 

[daveinprague]

Knowing the unemployed will be able to come off benefits as they all rush to take advantage of the unskilled labour market will make it worthwhile. I can see thousands rushing to give up benefits when given the opportunity to take up unskilled, physical labour, with no prospects in the open air. A fitter, more healthy nation

 

[BigGully]

Knowing the unemployed will be able to come off benefits as they all rush to take advantage of the unskilled labour market will make it worthwhile. I can see thousands rushing to give up benefits when given the opportunity to take up unskilled, physical labour, with no prospects in the open air. A fitter, more healthy nation

As a serious question, do you think that unskilled/skilled people on benefits shouldn't work ??

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Hey, go back to sobbing in your sauerkraut, making more wonderful predictions and constantly running down the country where you don't live.

But I suppose an idiot like you would say that the country needed lower interest rates, without any evidence to the contrary. Bloody sheep some people; no independent thoughts.

Whatever

 

[daveinprague]

As a serious question, do you think that unskilled/skilled people on benefits shouldn't work ??

Less benefits if working? I dont know. What is the Brexit plan? I think they should work, but am realistic to realise it ia unlikely. Do you think the unemployed will be rushing to take up the jobs that are required in agriculture for example?

 

[jakarta]

Ironically it could result in the UK not governing the economy.

No access to single market, no trade deals signed for some years. tariffs imposed, exodus of firms to the EU, GBP remains low, all resulting in higher inflation, higher unemployment, lower tax revenues, Government borrowing increases, interest rates rise higher mortgage defaults, higher balance of trade deficit, all result in the UK effective becoming bankrupt.

There is the need to obtain emergency funds from the IMF to try and turn the failed economy round, but loans comes with conditions which the IMF are looking to impose on the UK Government.

So you could say we are still governing ourselves as we called in the IMF, but effectively once the conditions of the IMF loan are accepted are we still governing ourselves.

Still a price worth paying and I'm sure that will be a comfort to those that face unemployment, losing their houses and other hardship that the fallout brings.

Can't post the link but in todays Sunday Times the Dominic Lawson Column says almost the exact opposite to this!

 

[ManOfSussex]

Can't post the link but in todays Sunday Times the Dominic Lawson Column says almost the exact opposite to this!

Exports up, speculators out: if this is a crisis, long may it continue

My wife doesn’t normally show much excitement when poring over her board papers at breakfast (she’s a director of Aurum, the Leicester-headquartered watch and jewellery business that happens to be the world’s largest distributor of brands such as Omega and Tag Heuer). But the other day she almost dropped the marmalade as she studied them.

The only clue was that she exclaimed: “Brexit!” And not as a swearword. She wouldn’t show me the figures: for some reason she thinks that, as a journalist, I cannot be relied upon for absolute discretion. But when I persisted, she suggested I call the chief executive of Aurum, Brian Duffy, “and if he tells you, fine”.

So I did. And Duffy explained that from the very day after the vote to leave the EU — when sterling experienced the biggest 24-hour drop since free-floating exchange rates were introduced in the early 1970s — growth in sales had been “phenomenal”. When I asked him to put a number on “phenomenal”, he said that sales were up by 50% over the equivalent period a year ago. In short, a Brexit bonanza.

There are particular reasons why a sharp fall in sterling should have tremendous impact on the luxury watch business. These are high-cost items, with a transparent global price, so, as Duffy points out, it’s easy for tourists to plan their big spend accordingly: “We are suddenly seeing Americans, who never were our London customers, now buying here in really big numbers.”

Bully for Aurum’s salesmen and shareholders, you might say, but this is hardly a consolation to the less affluent faced with a painful increase in the cost of petrol — an essential rather than a luxury — and without the possibility of going abroad to get a better deal at the pump.

True. But bear in mind that a dramatic switch in profits from foreign-based watch retailers to British ones means a proportionate increase in sales taxes and corporation tax raised here for the British exchequer, which the government can allocate to public goods such as debt repayment and the NHS, to taste, according to economic necessity and public demand.

Last week’s further sharp (and, to some, sickeningly sudden) fall in sterling came, apparently, because it was only after Theresa May’s Conservative Party conference speech that it dawned on the currency markets that Britain really would be leaving the EU.

It is a measure of how hermetically sealed within the predominantly anti-Brexit London bubble such traders are that they should have been surprised the prime minister would respect the verdict of the electorate as a whole — rather than the City’s fervent wish for that non-existent prospect known as “soft Brexit” (outside the EU but inside the customs union, accepting free movement of people, and subordinate to the European Court of Justice).

To judge from almost every report on the BBC, the falling pound is not just a verdict upon Brexit but a political crisis. If the stronger the national currency, the better, then it is. But it isn’t, so it isn’t. Nor, by the way, is this a humiliation for a governing party. This one had never staked its reputation on a fixed measure for sterling (as Labour under Harold Wilson did in the 1960s and the Conservatives under John Major in the early 1990s).

That there is no “policy for the pound” is a good thing. There’s only one thing more stupid than thinking the currency markets have some special insight into the future — and that is for any single government to bet against them with taxpayers’ money.

On Friday’s BBC World at One, Jim Rogers — the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund — was given a credulous interview in which, unchallenged, he said sterling would fall below parity with the dollar, because Brexit would cause Scotland to leave the United Kingdom. “They’re going to take their oil with them, and what does the UK have left?”

Actually, if Scotland were to secede, the effect on the rest of the UK’s balance of payments deficit would be entirely beneficial: it would be the Scots who’d be landed with an instant currency crisis. But if the Singapore-domiciled Rogers wants to mobilise the vast funds at his disposal to bet against sterling, let him.

Such traders are trying neither to help nor to harm the British economy. They are neither our friends nor our enemies. But, as it happens, it may well be in Britain’s interests that sterling has fallen by almost 20% against the dollar and 14% against the euro as a result of the Brexit vote. The truth is that “hot money” had been hurtling into London, seeing the pound as a safe refuge.

It’s worth listening to Professor Ashoka Mody, a former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who was responsible for constructing the EU-IMF bailout of the Irish economy after Ireland’s banks . . . bankrupted it. Mody argues that “Britain within the EU became a magnet for speculative international financial capital. Silently but damagingly, the finance-property bubble also bid up the value of the pound, causing the pound to become overvalued for all other sectors of the British economy.

“It is true that with an overvalued pound, the British public could command more foreign goods and services. But British producers lost competitiveness at home and abroad. And that led to a large current account deficit. As a simple matter of arithmetic, the people of Britain were not richer before [the Brexit vote]. To the contrary, they were living beyond their means.”

It’s fair to say that the Treasury and the current governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, do not share Mody’s view that “the possible flight of banks and financial companies from Britain should be reason for celebration rather than ongoing hand-wringing”. But that wise old owl in human form, the previous governor, Mervyn King, is definitely not in the hand-wringers’ camp.

He told Sky News, after last week’s sudden further fall in sterling: “This whole thing has generated reactions which are over the top. During the referendum campaign, someone said the real danger of Brexit is that you’ll end up with higher interest rates, lower house prices and a lower exchange rate, and I thought: dream on, because that’s what we’ve being trying to achieve for the past three years and now we have a chance of getting it.”

King, unlike the former Goldman Sachs executive Carney, is a man whose intuitive sympathies are much more with industry than high finance. His chipper demeanour last week will have owed much to the news that British factories are reporting a surge in export orders.

Obviously those factory workers will not be pleased if any resulting benefit in their pay is swallowed up by increases in the cost of food (Britain is a substantial net importer). But here too there can be — in the longer term — benefit from Brexit. The common agricultural policy has the effect of raising food prices within the EU by about 17% above world market prices: outside that customs union the British breakfast could be commensurately cheaper.

What’s happened is bad news for some, of course. Next week the Lawson family is on holiday abroad. The hotel doesn’t look such a bargain after all. But if Mervyn King’s happy, I’m happy.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e...is-is-a-crisis-long-may-it-continue-3z9psw6q7

 

[BigGully]

Less benefits if working? I dont know. What is the Brexit plan? I think they should work, but am realistic to realise it ia unlikely. Do you think the unemployed will be rushing to take up the jobs that are required in agriculture for example?

Therein lies the problem, eastern europeans for instance migrate to the UK to do unskilled work and get paid at a rate 4 times that they would receive back home and it increases considerably more if they are a family of four including some in work benefits, they are not here because they have some unique work ethic, they are here to earn a comparably higher wage than they could ever earn back home.

Our unskilled/unqualified unemployed could never work on say a minimum wage and retain a comparable lifestyle that benefits might deliver.

It has to be challenged, there seems a culture where those on benefits are untouchable and somehow always deemed vulnerable, there needs to be a culture shift, just giving stuff to those that do not work when work is available doesnt make us a more civilised society, its senseless.

 

[pastafarian]

Ironically it could result in the UK not governing the economy.

No access to single market, no trade deals signed for some years. tariffs imposed, exodus of firms to the EU, GBP remains low, all resulting in higher inflation, higher unemployment, lower tax revenues, Government borrowing increases, interest rates rise higher mortgage defaults, higher balance of trade deficit, all result in the UK effective becoming bankrupt.

There is the need to obtain emergency funds from the IMF to try and turn the failed economy round, but loans comes with conditions which the IMF are looking to impose on the UK Government.

So you could say we are still governing ourselves as we called in the IMF, but effectively once the conditions of the IMF loan are accepted are we still governing ourselves.

Still a price worth paying and I'm sure that will be a comfort to those that face unemployment, losing their houses and other hardship that the fallout brings.

i presume this is a typo