[Politics] Brexit

Triggaaar said:

No problem. But you said the public want a second referendum, and they want to remain in the EU, and the link you've given says that people would rather stay in the EU than have a hard Brexit (which is an opinion I've always maintained).

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Plooks said:

What we need is an anti-brexit prime minister and party who will undo all this bullshit.

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Triggaaar said:

Er, we already have an anti-Brexit PM and party.

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Triggaaar said:

If that's what they're saying, they're wrong. Just like this guy:

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melias shoes said:

I'm sorry but it is a betrayal of the will of the people.

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WATFORD zero said:

Sorry Trig, you may not have seen the poll I did last week that about 500 voted on. (It's now been merged into this thread, so don't have exact figures but)

Results were

NSC Poll July 2018 How would you vote in a referendum? - 75% remain, 21% leave (17% no deal, 4% TM's negotiated deal)

and for comparison the last NSC poll before the original referendum

NSC Poll June 2016 How would you vote in a referendum? - 56% remain, 38% leave

So NSC has always been more pro EU than the general electorate, but that is still some swing.

*Disclaimer* I wouldn't trust any of the swivel-eyed loons who vote in polls on NSC in any way whatsoever

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melias shoes said:

Yeah. That poll is going to carry a lot of weight. I mean really Watford an NSC poll was always going to end like that. If it makes you feel better carry on.

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Thunder Bolt said:

New graphics on the screen
Numbers in yellow
Markers by a substitute
Different graphics when subbed on and off
Introduction at the start updated too

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Raleigh Chopper said:

I am trying to think of something smart and clever and tie it in with Brexit, but I can't.

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Thunder Bolt said:

Ooopps. Obviously the wrong thread, but my phone only has a small screen.

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WATFORD zero said:

No, it just confirms what the majority on NSC think.

That although the swivel-eyed loons on NSC make a disproportionate amount of noise, you - sorry they - are very much in the minority

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melias shoes said:

Swivel eyed loons in the minority? Maybe on here but not when it mattered.
I'm a swivel eyed loon for voting leave? Some may say the racists are the remainers for wanting to stay in an exclusive community where as the Leavers want to go out in the big wide world and trade. Just saying.
It's all getting very personal with the digs Watford I thought it was frowned upon by the mods or is it selective? Wanting to leave the corrupt, protectionist ,bullying mafia like organisation that is the EU does not make me a swivel-eyed loon. Have a good day and up the Albion.

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melias shoes said:

Swivel eyed loons in the minority? Maybe on here but not when it mattered.
I'm a swivel eyed loon for voting leave? Some may say the racists are the remainers for wanting to stay in an exclusive community where as the Leavers want to go out in the big wide world and trade. Just saying.
It's all getting very personal with the digs Watford I thought it was frowned upon by the mods or is it selective? Wanting to leave the corrupt, protectionist ,bullying mafia like organisation that is the EU does not make me a swivel-eyed loon. Have a good day and up the Albion.

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carlzeiss said:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/polit...r.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

Labour MP Jess Phillips warns Love Island could be axed because of BREXIT .

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larus said:

Before someone 'tries' to be clever as point out that I said I would be out of here for a few days, I'm just adding this which disproves some of the 'FACTS' certain posters like to go on about.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/08/03/lies-damned-lies-mark-carneys-statistics-brexit/

Paywalled


The Governor of the Bank of England made two Pinocchio assertions on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. One was categorically false; the other was sophistry dressed in pseudo-science.

Both give credence to Remainer canards. They therefore become political instruments.

Mark Carney has been a good Governor. I do not share the widespread view among Brexiteers that the Bank disgraced itself two years ago as a supporting chorus for Project Fear. It is the guarantor of financial stability. It had to plan for the worst.

This is in sharp contrast to the Osborne Treasury, which misused the full power of the British state to propagate serial lies. George Osborne then threatened a pro-cyclical punishment Budget that would have set off a recessionary downward spiral. This would have been a deranged and irresponsible policy in such circumstances.

The Bank of England, of course, did the exact opposite after the Brexit referendum. It cut interest rates and doubled down on quantitative easing (QE). It built up a shock absorber. This was a well-advised insurance policy. I would support Mr Carney’s reappointment as Governor (should he wish it), but he needs to rein in his emotional bias on Brexit.

Mr Carney stated - perhaps unconsciously lapsing into a Kensington dinner party view - that the UK had fallen to the bottom of the G7 growth league. This claim is repeated so widely, and so often, that it has taken on the status of established fact. Many Brexiteers assume it must be true. It is not true.

The early evidence so far this year is that Brexit Britain is growing faster than France under Emmanuel Macron, the Gallic wunderkind supposedly reviving animal spirits and unleashing the floods investment. Would you ever have any inkling of that reading a certain pink newspaper or listening to our national broadcaster?

Britain grew 0.2pc in the first quarter, the same as France (revised data in both countries). Japan contracted by 0.2pc.

We do not yet have the UK figures for the second quarter but the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NESR) said its GDP tracking monitor suggests 0.4pc growth. France and Italy have already published. They are both on 0.2pc.


Broadly speaking, the UK is puttering along in step with the sluggish eurozone. If NIESR is right it may even sneak ahead in the second quarter. I would certainly accept that the British economy has slowed a bit as a result of Brexit but it is less than I feared. Descriptions of a crippled economy spinning into crisis that pervade the European, American, and global press coverage of Britain have degenerated into caricature.

Ah, but what about last year? It was indeed a poor year for the UK in relative terms. Yet the economy still grew 1.7pc, the same as Japan. Italy grew 1.5pc. Last time I looked, Italy was still in the G7.


Britain’s lacklustre performance in 2017 needs context. The low-hanging fruit of the post-Lehman expansion had been picked. The UK had closed the "output gap". It was running into capacity constraints and hitting its speed limit. (Too low unfortunately, but that is a story of stalled productivity that occurred during EU membership and has nothing to do with Brexit.)

By contrast, the eurozone still had slack. It had yet to complete a V-shaped catch-up phase after its Lost Decade. The output gap was enormous in the South. The stars were aligned in 2017: EMU fiscal austerity ended; the European Central Bank was printing money with gusto; commercial banks finally had emerged - stunned but alive - from idiotic regulatory overkill.

Meanwhile, the UK was still in the grip of austerity. The Chancellor carried out net fiscal tightening of 0.6pc of GDP last year. I base this loosely on the "cyclically adjusted" budget balance in the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor. The G7 as a whole was basking in net fiscal stimulus. The US let rip. The eurozone was roughly neutral. If you adjust for all the variable, there is no Brexit slump. It is propaganda.

Mr Carney made a second claim. He began by stating that the direct loss in GDP due to Brexit has been 1pc. Then he added that the synthetic loss is nearer 2pc once you take account into the remedial actions of the Bank of England.

Excuse me. What is this extraordinary concept dished out at our breakfast table, a hideous twisting of the counterfactual? The Governor is surely pulling our leg.

Britain’s unemployment rate is the lowest in 42 years. The economy is at full capacity. If it had been growing a full percentage point faster over each of the last two years, overheating would have run rampant.


The Bank of England would have had to raise rates much faster. The pound would have been much stronger (not good). The UK might have stolen a bit of extra growth from the future by running the economy hot but once you do all the arithmetic, the flattened figures over the medium term would have been more or less the same. There has been no 2pc loss in GDP. It is self-evident rubbish.

As a matter of pure science, nobody at the Fed, the ECB, and Bank of England knows how to calculate the potency of QE, or even how the mechanism works. An intense debate is under way in academic and central banking circles over the exact effects of bond purchases once long-term yields are already nailed to the floor. Many think that the Fed’s QE3 was a blank.

What struck me about the Governor’s remark is that it smacked of spin. The Biblical script in hard Remainer circles is that Brexit has lopped 2pc off GDP. He went out of his way to validate it.

The pro-EU Centre for European Reform (a worthy body, but not on this occasion) has been making the running with a study based on a macro-economic algorithm. It concludes that the “cost of Brexit so far” has been 2.1pc of GDP. This claim has been repeated all over Europe as if it were hard fact.


The algorithm compares UK growth with three main control countries. One is Hungary, currently in the grip of a blow-off boom driven by loose policies. A second is the US, currently in the grip of a disgraceful, reckless, ‘Peronist’, late-cycle blast of debt-driven fiscal stimulus that will come back to haunt. These are the controls? It is not analysis. The algorithm is pastiche.

The Governor is certainly right that a no-deal is “highly undesirable”. Even a British assertion of full self-government on WTO terms requires a deal to avert cliff-edge stupidities. The £39bn exit fee should be made contingent on civilized behaviour by Brussels over landing rights, medicine, Euratom, visas, etc. This would still be a deal.

If the EU refused to recognise our legal right to trade on WTO terms, it would be an act of international piracy and a declaration of economic and political war. Should that happen, it really would be the end of Europe as a relevant civilisation in the world.

I hope the Chequers deal breaks down since it locks us into the EU’s legal and regulatory regime in colonial settlement, and does so on economic terms that are not even appetising.

Should it happen, either because the EU rejects it or because of a change of British leadership, the UK would most likely have to grasp the nettle of unilateral free trade and tear down all barriers in the initial phase. This would remove the immediate need to impose any restrictions at the Irish border, leaving Brussels with the invidious choice of either compelling the Irish to raise border barriers on their own territory (a political disaster for the EU) or coming to the table with a new post-Brexit plan.

In such a case, prices in Britain would fall, ceteris paribus. There would be no net rise, contrary to what the Governor claimed on the Today programme. We are being taken for fools.

Apart from that, Governor, keep up the good work.

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larus said:

Before someone 'tries' to be clever as point out that I said I would be out of here for a few days, I'm just adding this which disproves some of the 'FACTS' certain posters like to go on about.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/08/03/lies-damned-lies-mark-carneys-statistics-brexit/

Paywalled


The Governor of the Bank of England made two Pinocchio assertions on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. One was categorically false; the other was sophistry dressed in pseudo-science.

Both give credence to Remainer canards. They therefore become political instruments.

Mark Carney has been a good Governor. I do not share the widespread view among Brexiteers that the Bank disgraced itself two years ago as a supporting chorus for Project Fear. It is the guarantor of financial stability. It had to plan for the worst.

This is in sharp contrast to the Osborne Treasury, which misused the full power of the British state to propagate serial lies. George Osborne then threatened a pro-cyclical punishment Budget that would have set off a recessionary downward spiral. This would have been a deranged and irresponsible policy in such circumstances.

The Bank of England, of course, did the exact opposite after the Brexit referendum. It cut interest rates and doubled down on quantitative easing (QE). It built up a shock absorber. This was a well-advised insurance policy. I would support Mr Carney’s reappointment as Governor (should he wish it), but he needs to rein in his emotional bias on Brexit.

Mr Carney stated - perhaps unconsciously lapsing into a Kensington dinner party view - that the UK had fallen to the bottom of the G7 growth league. This claim is repeated so widely, and so often, that it has taken on the status of established fact. Many Brexiteers assume it must be true. It is not true.

The early evidence so far this year is that Brexit Britain is growing faster than France under Emmanuel Macron, the Gallic wunderkind supposedly reviving animal spirits and unleashing the floods investment. Would you ever have any inkling of that reading a certain pink newspaper or listening to our national broadcaster?

Britain grew 0.2pc in the first quarter, the same as France (revised data in both countries). Japan contracted by 0.2pc.

We do not yet have the UK figures for the second quarter but the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NESR) said its GDP tracking monitor suggests 0.4pc growth. France and Italy have already published. They are both on 0.2pc.


Broadly speaking, the UK is puttering along in step with the sluggish eurozone. If NIESR is right it may even sneak ahead in the second quarter. I would certainly accept that the British economy has slowed a bit as a result of Brexit but it is less than I feared. Descriptions of a crippled economy spinning into crisis that pervade the European, American, and global press coverage of Britain have degenerated into caricature.

Ah, but what about last year? It was indeed a poor year for the UK in relative terms. Yet the economy still grew 1.7pc, the same as Japan. Italy grew 1.5pc. Last time I looked, Italy was still in the G7.


Britain’s lacklustre performance in 2017 needs context. The low-hanging fruit of the post-Lehman expansion had been picked. The UK had closed the "output gap". It was running into capacity constraints and hitting its speed limit. (Too low unfortunately, but that is a story of stalled productivity that occurred during EU membership and has nothing to do with Brexit.)

By contrast, the eurozone still had slack. It had yet to complete a V-shaped catch-up phase after its Lost Decade. The output gap was enormous in the South. The stars were aligned in 2017: EMU fiscal austerity ended; the European Central Bank was printing money with gusto; commercial banks finally had emerged - stunned but alive - from idiotic regulatory overkill.

Meanwhile, the UK was still in the grip of austerity. The Chancellor carried out net fiscal tightening of 0.6pc of GDP last year. I base this loosely on the "cyclically adjusted" budget balance in the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor. The G7 as a whole was basking in net fiscal stimulus. The US let rip. The eurozone was roughly neutral. If you adjust for all the variable, there is no Brexit slump. It is propaganda.

Mr Carney made a second claim. He began by stating that the direct loss in GDP due to Brexit has been 1pc. Then he added that the synthetic loss is nearer 2pc once you take account into the remedial actions of the Bank of England.

Excuse me. What is this extraordinary concept dished out at our breakfast table, a hideous twisting of the counterfactual? The Governor is surely pulling our leg.

Britain’s unemployment rate is the lowest in 42 years. The economy is at full capacity. If it had been growing a full percentage point faster over each of the last two years, overheating would have run rampant.


The Bank of England would have had to raise rates much faster. The pound would have been much stronger (not good). The UK might have stolen a bit of extra growth from the future by running the economy hot but once you do all the arithmetic, the flattened figures over the medium term would have been more or less the same. There has been no 2pc loss in GDP. It is self-evident rubbish.

As a matter of pure science, nobody at the Fed, the ECB, and Bank of England knows how to calculate the potency of QE, or even how the mechanism works. An intense debate is under way in academic and central banking circles over the exact effects of bond purchases once long-term yields are already nailed to the floor. Many think that the Fed’s QE3 was a blank.

What struck me about the Governor’s remark is that it smacked of spin. The Biblical script in hard Remainer circles is that Brexit has lopped 2pc off GDP. He went out of his way to validate it.

The pro-EU Centre for European Reform (a worthy body, but not on this occasion) has been making the running with a study based on a macro-economic algorithm. It concludes that the “cost of Brexit so far” has been 2.1pc of GDP. This claim has been repeated all over Europe as if it were hard fact.


The algorithm compares UK growth with three main control countries. One is Hungary, currently in the grip of a blow-off boom driven by loose policies. A second is the US, currently in the grip of a disgraceful, reckless, ‘Peronist’, late-cycle blast of debt-driven fiscal stimulus that will come back to haunt. These are the controls? It is not analysis. The algorithm is pastiche.

The Governor is certainly right that a no-deal is “highly undesirable”. Even a British assertion of full self-government on WTO terms requires a deal to avert cliff-edge stupidities. The £39bn exit fee should be made contingent on civilized behaviour by Brussels over landing rights, medicine, Euratom, visas, etc. This would still be a deal.

If the EU refused to recognise our legal right to trade on WTO terms, it would be an act of international piracy and a declaration of economic and political war. Should that happen, it really would be the end of Europe as a relevant civilisation in the world.

I hope the Chequers deal breaks down since it locks us into the EU’s legal and regulatory regime in colonial settlement, and does so on economic terms that are not even appetising.

Should it happen, either because the EU rejects it or because of a change of British leadership, the UK would most likely have to grasp the nettle of unilateral free trade and tear down all barriers in the initial phase. This would remove the immediate need to impose any restrictions at the Irish border, leaving Brussels with the invidious choice of either compelling the Irish to raise border barriers on their own territory (a political disaster for the EU) or coming to the table with a new post-Brexit plan.

In such a case, prices in Britain would fall, ceteris paribus. There would be no net rise, contrary to what the Governor claimed on the Today programme. We are being taken for fools.

Apart from that, Governor, keep up the good work.

Click to expand...