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- #21
I thought we might be able to sign Tomer Hemed from Mallorca.
There is absolutely no way UKIP is on par with the BNP. This is where I think people have got it so wrong. All UKIP want is a halt on immigration which I think is fair enough. There is nothing wrong with saying it, and there is nothing racist about it. Calling someone a name because of the colour of their skin makes you a racist.
You need to look at the size of this country and amount of people who have come to live and work here. That's fine but you need the houses, jobs, schools, doctors, hospitals to back it up, which we don't.
There was economic integration before the Euro.
Before the Euro I agree. I was really thinking of the EU as a whole rather than the currency. It maybe that the Euro has proved to be a step in economic integration too far.
Look more closely at UKIP policies. If the BNP published the same there would be the usual anti right outrage. It is no coincidence that UKIP are looking to get votes from the disenchanted extreme right wings Tories.
To be fair, unlike Greece, Spain kept their house in order and didn't overspend during the good times. The property bubble burst and the shit hit the fan!
I think you've just neatly encapsulated why it IS the fault of the Euro. Where was the central fiscal policy? Why wasn't this dealt with when the Euro has launched? I know the answer btw.
I disagree. The Euro had its faults but these are now being addressed.
Spain was an economic basket case for YEARS leading up to the latest crisis. They routinely ran a budget deficit of 4, 5, even 6% throughout the 90s before managing a small surplus in the three years prior to 2008.
I thought we might be able to sign Tomer Hemed from Mallorca.
Your really upset that your OP has been lost in this economic debate haha. Any way outside the top 10 in La liga wages are relativity low I think in the future the Championship would look like a good way of younger Spanish prospects a route into English Football. The problem would be the weather some continentals would just go missing in the winter months.
Footballers in Spain get massive tax breaks. They're in their own economic bubble - although, of course, the clubs aren't.
Not quite the debate about us cherry picking more Spanish stars, I was expecting, but hey that's NSC.
Yes and the deficit would've been way higher without all the EU (German, Uk and Dutch taxpayers') cash poured into Spanish regional coffers. Much of the cash was used pretty well, and turned some parts in the east and south around from the 3rd world positions they were in post-Franco, but the over aggressive growth plans and over-protectionism of the Spanish government has stored up the massive problems they have now.
1. Weak, under-developed banking system that concentrated on buying cheap assets abroad with taxpayer bungs (Spain only country in Europe that allows goodwill to be tax-deductible as a general rule). World financial crisis has shown up the issues clearly.
2. Loss of €bns of EU money to the eastern expansion countries. C de Valencia lost over €3bn pa alone and is now a complete basket case without it, as the only industries it has are a) tourism and b) rice production of which 90% stays inside Spain.
3. Recession and house price collapses in Northern Europe whipped the legs away from the Spanish property market, which was basically fuelled by UK, German and Scandinavian investment in 2nd homes as middle aged people leveraged the capital increases in their first homes to draw down cash and invest overseas.
4. Spanish economy uniquely exposed to its own construction industry. At the peak of EU funding and Northern European house buying, c 25% of GDP was in construction (probably way more than that if you looked at the black economy as well). Average values for northern europe would be something like 12%-18%. This was accentuated by protectionist laws meaning you had to be Spanish domiciled to be first or second contractor in any major construction schemes. So when the merry-go-round stopped, the sh1t really hit the fan everywhere other than Barcelona, Madrid and the big Basque industrial cities that want F-all to do with Spain anyway.
5. Size of black economy coupled with inter-regional competition for central / EU funds leading to mass-scale corruption has leaked €bns from the economy.
6. Tax enforcement has been weak, other than when applied to non-Spanish nationals and companies.
7. Tourist economy has nose-dived with the Northern Europeans travelling to the South, East and islands less frequently, not staying as long and spending way less cash when they do go.
Spain is a basket case. It was a 3rd World country in 1975 and has sucked in €bns to try and rectify that, but the growth that cash fuelled could not have transformed the economy to be ready to stand on its own feet yet. Spain produces no more 'stuff' than we do, and the increase in living standards there have been driven by EU cash, private inflows from Northern Europe and massive borrowings. The people are on the streets as they have very short memories - half a generation ago the quality of state-provided infrastructure, overall employment levels, average salaries, working conditions, pensions and welfare state that they achieved in the Noughties would not even have been a pipe dream. Now they are still hugely better off on average than they were in the seventies, eighties and early nineties, despite the crisis etc.
Having said that, if a few more of their flair soccer-ballists want to come and live and work in Brighton to escape what's happening at home, then I'm gonna be there with a Spanish flag and a few hearty "bienvenido's"....
In summary then:
The Spanish economy relied in rich northern Europeans buying a place in the sun and leveraged huge debt to fund a behemoth public sector on the back of Northern European fiscal discipline and low borrowing rates.
Sounds like they were taking the piss and relying on others to pay for their ridiculous economy.
there are......lazy nations.