Webbo Posted 11 August 2017 Posted 11 August 2017 3 minutes ago, toddybad said: I love lidl tbf. If you can find me saying that good luck to you. Only a small % did and as you know it wasn't even considered my most shoppers due to its discount status It's been popular for 10 to 15 years now. You don't have be in poverty to want to pay less, as you know.
Guest Posted 11 August 2017 Posted 11 August 2017 So you see no possible link between the rise of budget supermarkets and people having less money? Bizarre. Interesting how you're happy to get into a pointless debate about this rather than answer earlier posts about the latest nhs figures isn't it?
Webbo Posted 11 August 2017 Posted 11 August 2017 8 minutes ago, toddybad said: So you see no possible link between the rise of budget supermarkets and people having less money? Bizarre. Interesting how you're happy to get into a pointless debate about this rather than answer earlier posts about the latest nhs figures isn't it? So if you don't shop at Lidl or Aldi you're doing okay? Aldis and Lidl are opening more and bigger shops, there's a fairly new Lidl in town and a new Aldis on Abbey Lane, good luck to them, the more competition the better. There are all sorts of reasons why people shop where they do. I can't say nobody is shopping there for the reason you say anymore than you can prove what you're saying is true. As for the NHS thing, I haven't seen it. If it's a Guardian link, I don't usually bother.
Guest Posted 11 August 2017 Posted 11 August 2017 1 minute ago, Webbo said: So if you don't shop at Lidl or Aldi you're doing okay? Aldis and Lidl are opening more and bigger shops, there's a fairly new Lidl in town and a new Aldis on Abbey Lane, good luck to them, the more competition the better. There are all sorts of reasons why people shop where they do. I can't say nobody is shopping there for the reason you say anymore than you can prove what you're saying is true. As for the NHS thing, I haven't seen it. If it's a Guardian link, I don't usually bother. Put it this way, government nhs figures were released today but yet the normally health obsessed daily mail have got nothing about this anywhere near the headlines (possibly at all- im losing the will to live checking their clickbait infected website). The figures are not good at all.
Strokes Posted 11 August 2017 Posted 11 August 2017 3 hours ago, toddybad said: I knew that was coming. It isn't the reason asda or the others gave. But that's okay, you point elsewhere while jobs go under your choice of government. Asda posted £790m profit, they are restructuring due to a more competitive market. These supermarkets were turning into large American type malls and the consumer market has changed. Tesco had the same problem 18 months back.
Lionator Posted 13 August 2017 Posted 13 August 2017 I see Jacob Rees-Mogg keeps pushing his name forward to be the next Conservative leader. Given his voting record and general background, I'd imagine he'd get absolutely slaughtered in a general election. 1
davieG Posted 13 August 2017 Posted 13 August 2017 On 8/11/2017 at 17:35, toddybad said: You try online shopping at lidl and see how fdar you get. Aldi and lidl hsve increased their market share by over 80% in the last four years after seeing only tiny rises over years and years. The idea that this has nothing to do with squeezed incomes - when we know income and debt are significantly squeezing households - is ludicrous. Well if it is squeezed incomes it must be severely affecting those driving top of the range BMWs, Audis and Lexus cars because that is the biggest change i've seen since I use stroll around the shop with only a couple of other customers there. Aldi are obviously aware of this because the food on offer has also changed with more so called upmarket products at higher prices than their previous offerings. I go there rarely now as they're overcrowded and don't offer the foods I tend to buy anymore. In many respects it's just become fashionable and acceptable to be seen there, people are very sheep like.
Rincewind Posted 13 August 2017 Posted 13 August 2017 12 minutes ago, Lionator said: I see Jacob Rees-Mogg keeps pushing his name forward to be the next Conservative leader. Given his voting record and general background, I'd imagine he'd get absolutely slaughtered in a general election. But he has a nice speaking voice.
Guest Posted 13 August 2017 Posted 13 August 2017 Half of landlords in one London borough fail to declare rental income https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/13/half-of-landlords-in-one-london-borough-fail-to-declare-rental-income?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard Need to roll this out nationwide and absolutely fleece anybody caught playing the system. They won't though, of course.
Guest Foxin_mad Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 As I have many times predicted. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40853467
Nick Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 4 minutes ago, Foxin_mad said: As I have many times predicted. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40853467 I've also noticed a demand for higher wages to recruit staff has increased significantly over the past couple of years... the 22K is the new 18K all f a sudden - lots of factors influencing this though.
Strokes Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 I moved jobs in march and the same jobs that were being advertised then are still being advertised but the wage has risen by around 3-4K. Might be knocking on the managers door soon, I'm still shopping at aldi.
Webbo Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 5 minutes ago, Strokes said: I moved jobs in march and the same jobs that were being advertised then are still being advertised but the wage has risen by around 3-4K. Might be knocking on the managers door soon, I'm still shopping at aldi. I feel your pain. Can I send you a food parcel or something? 1
Guest Kopfkino Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 Matt Ridley https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/i-am-more-confident-than-ever-about-brexit-2hnpbhqrv More than a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, I realise we who ended up on the Leave side have probably made a mistake. No, not that we should have voted the other way, but that we thought we had won the argument last year during those weeks when we lived and breathed every detail of the debate. To some extent we then stopped making the case. The Remainers didn’t. True, they have a few new arguments to deploy, such as that Michel Barnier is a wizard negotiator who will run rings round us and that everything he says is gospel, while everything David Davis says is nonsense; even that it is now obvious that “the job can’t be done” (in Lord Heseltine’s words). The argument that leaving the European Union is not just foolish but somehow against the laws of physics or something seems to be growing more common. There are just too many treaties to disentangle and too many laws to rewrite, so after a few years of trying we will give up. I happen to be reading Maya Jasanoff’s magnificent book Liberty’s Exiles on what happened to the loyalists after American independence. Much the same complexity argument was made in 1782 during the two-year negotiation to leave the British Empire: it was a “huge task [that] required deconstructing the apparatus of an empire from the bottom up”. What a shocking indictment of our civilisation if, after inventing so much automation, knowledge and wealth, it is even harder to disentangle a country from an empire today. The most eye-catching result of last month’s YouGov poll on “Brexit extremism” was that one in five Remain voters thinks “significant damage to the British economy after leaving the European Union to be a price worth paying to teach Leave politicians and Leave voters a lesson”. Yikes. How spiteful can you get? Liam Fox was apparently not wrong when he said the media is full of people who “would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed”. I, for one, am more sure now than I was on June 24, 2016 that the British people did the right thing. My one anxiety as I placed my cross on the paper was that Project Fear might be half right if only for self-fulfilling reasons, and that I might be helping to inflict severe short-term pain for slight long-term gain. Yet instead of an emergency budget and an immediate and profound shock to the economy, a loss of confidence, a drying up of inward investment, a plunge in house prices, a surge in inflation and a collapse in the stock market — all of which we were promised if we voted Leave — there has been almost unremitting good news on the economic front. Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To those who say “That was only the vote; once we actually leave, then we’ll be proved right,” I reply: “Why did you not say so at the time?” There is a second reason I feel more Leave-inclined than a year ago: the behaviour of the European Commission. I don’t much mind the scorn and petty point-scoring. I expected that, don’t believe a word of it and find it reassuring, not least because it lowers expectations. When you’re taking flak, you know you are over the target. No, it’s that they clearly mind more about the budget for their bureaucracy (the “bill”) than the economic future for European citizens. We are told we must settle the officials’ demands for money for officials to spend on officials’ priorities, before we even talk about future trade arrangements between ordinary people. Jasanoff reports that when Britain’s negotiators agreed to the terms of American independence in Paris in 1782, “many contemporaries were surprised by Britain’s generosity towards the former colonies”. The reason was that Lord Shelburne, the prime minister, wanted to try to secure the United States in Britain’s sphere of influence. Where is the same ambition in today’s Brussels? Has there been a single speech from within the commission (rather than the continent) about how the future prosperity of all Europeans, including Britons, depends on maximising innovation, trade and trust among us? Or saying that, given the continent’s huge trade surplus with us and the huge numbers of its citizens that we have created jobs for, let alone our net contribution to the budget being the second biggest, we might deserve a little co-operation, even thanks. I know nobody in Britain who wants us to stop being friends, allies and trade partners of European countries. The inhabitants of the commission (and the parliament) exemplify public choice theory at its finest: they mistake official self-interest for the public interest. They are interested in making sure their integrationist bureaucracy thrives, rather than looking after the economy of the continent. True, there are Europeans making better noises, within Germany and elsewhere. Yet that only reinforces the point: if the European Union were an intergovernmental arrangement, I would be all for staying in it. It is not, as I keep pointing out to American friends who think it is some kind of economic Nato. It is an experiment in building a top-down, centralising, supranational government, with a bureaucratic surplus and a democratic deficit. Compared with most of the rest of the world it is a failure, as its economic growth rate, unemployment rate and innovation record demonstrate. Putting aside the negotiating bluster, I am also encouraged by the fresh thinking already emerging on policy. In recent months I have had conversations about immigration policy with Australians, fishing policy with Icelanders, farm subsidies with Swiss, environmental policies with Americans and tobacco control with Canadians. These conversations no longer end in that despairing realisation that reform is impossible because it requires persuading 27 other nations and a lobby-fodder commission to come to some sort of compromise. Suddenly anything is possible.
Innovindil Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 30 minutes ago, Foxin_mad said: As I have many times predicted. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40853467 Pretty much what everyone was predicting. Supply and demand isn't rocket science. Great news nonetheless.
Nick Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 4 minutes ago, KingGTF said: Matt Ridley https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/i-am-more-confident-than-ever-about-brexit-2hnpbhqrv More than a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, I realise we who ended up on the Leave side have probably made a mistake. No, not that we should have voted the other way, but that we thought we had won the argument last year during those weeks when we lived and breathed every detail of the debate. To some extent we then stopped making the case. The Remainers didn’t. True, they have a few new arguments to deploy, such as that Michel Barnier is a wizard negotiator who will run rings round us and that everything he says is gospel, while everything David Davis says is nonsense; even that it is now obvious that “the job can’t be done” (in Lord Heseltine’s words). The argument that leaving the European Union is not just foolish but somehow against the laws of physics or something seems to be growing more common. There are just too many treaties to disentangle and too many laws to rewrite, so after a few years of trying we will give up. I happen to be reading Maya Jasanoff’s magnificent book Liberty’s Exiles on what happened to the loyalists after American independence. Much the same complexity argument was made in 1782 during the two-year negotiation to leave the British Empire: it was a “huge task [that] required deconstructing the apparatus of an empire from the bottom up”. What a shocking indictment of our civilisation if, after inventing so much automation, knowledge and wealth, it is even harder to disentangle a country from an empire today. The most eye-catching result of last month’s YouGov poll on “Brexit extremism” was that one in five Remain voters thinks “significant damage to the British economy after leaving the European Union to be a price worth paying to teach Leave politicians and Leave voters a lesson”. Yikes. How spiteful can you get? Liam Fox was apparently not wrong when he said the media is full of people who “would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed”. I, for one, am more sure now than I was on June 24, 2016 that the British people did the right thing. My one anxiety as I placed my cross on the paper was that Project Fear might be half right if only for self-fulfilling reasons, and that I might be helping to inflict severe short-term pain for slight long-term gain. Yet instead of an emergency budget and an immediate and profound shock to the economy, a loss of confidence, a drying up of inward investment, a plunge in house prices, a surge in inflation and a collapse in the stock market — all of which we were promised if we voted Leave — there has been almost unremitting good news on the economic front. Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To those who say “That was only the vote; once we actually leave, then we’ll be proved right,” I reply: “Why did you not say so at the time?” There is a second reason I feel more Leave-inclined than a year ago: the behaviour of the European Commission. I don’t much mind the scorn and petty point-scoring. I expected that, don’t believe a word of it and find it reassuring, not least because it lowers expectations. When you’re taking flak, you know you are over the target. No, it’s that they clearly mind more about the budget for their bureaucracy (the “bill”) than the economic future for European citizens. We are told we must settle the officials’ demands for money for officials to spend on officials’ priorities, before we even talk about future trade arrangements between ordinary people. Jasanoff reports that when Britain’s negotiators agreed to the terms of American independence in Paris in 1782, “many contemporaries were surprised by Britain’s generosity towards the former colonies”. The reason was that Lord Shelburne, the prime minister, wanted to try to secure the United States in Britain’s sphere of influence. Where is the same ambition in today’s Brussels? Has there been a single speech from within the commission (rather than the continent) about how the future prosperity of all Europeans, including Britons, depends on maximising innovation, trade and trust among us? Or saying that, given the continent’s huge trade surplus with us and the huge numbers of its citizens that we have created jobs for, let alone our net contribution to the budget being the second biggest, we might deserve a little co-operation, even thanks. I know nobody in Britain who wants us to stop being friends, allies and trade partners of European countries. The inhabitants of the commission (and the parliament) exemplify public choice theory at its finest: they mistake official self-interest for the public interest. They are interested in making sure their integrationist bureaucracy thrives, rather than looking after the economy of the continent. True, there are Europeans making better noises, within Germany and elsewhere. Yet that only reinforces the point: if the European Union were an intergovernmental arrangement, I would be all for staying in it. It is not, as I keep pointing out to American friends who think it is some kind of economic Nato. It is an experiment in building a top-down, centralising, supranational government, with a bureaucratic surplus and a democratic deficit. Compared with most of the rest of the world it is a failure, as its economic growth rate, unemployment rate and innovation record demonstrate. Putting aside the negotiating bluster, I am also encouraged by the fresh thinking already emerging on policy. In recent months I have had conversations about immigration policy with Australians, fishing policy with Icelanders, farm subsidies with Swiss, environmental policies with Americans and tobacco control with Canadians. These conversations no longer end in that despairing realisation that reform is impossible because it requires persuading 27 other nations and a lobby-fodder commission to come to some sort of compromise. Suddenly anything is possible. As a pro remainer I find this article encouraging. If a success is made of Brexit based on foundations of prosperity and inclusion, I'm all for that but it'll take some convincing me that these are both real motivations for leave votes or real outcomes for the future. On an aside, I'm putting off buying property right now as I genuinely suspect the UK market to drop significantly post brexit and don't want to be in negative equity from year 2.
leicsmac Posted 14 August 2017 Posted 14 August 2017 3 hours ago, KingGTF said: Matt Ridley https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/i-am-more-confident-than-ever-about-brexit-2hnpbhqrv More than a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, I realise we who ended up on the Leave side have probably made a mistake. No, not that we should have voted the other way, but that we thought we had won the argument last year during those weeks when we lived and breathed every detail of the debate. To some extent we then stopped making the case. The Remainers didn’t. True, they have a few new arguments to deploy, such as that Michel Barnier is a wizard negotiator who will run rings round us and that everything he says is gospel, while everything David Davis says is nonsense; even that it is now obvious that “the job can’t be done” (in Lord Heseltine’s words). The argument that leaving the European Union is not just foolish but somehow against the laws of physics or something seems to be growing more common. There are just too many treaties to disentangle and too many laws to rewrite, so after a few years of trying we will give up. I happen to be reading Maya Jasanoff’s magnificent book Liberty’s Exiles on what happened to the loyalists after American independence. Much the same complexity argument was made in 1782 during the two-year negotiation to leave the British Empire: it was a “huge task [that] required deconstructing the apparatus of an empire from the bottom up”. What a shocking indictment of our civilisation if, after inventing so much automation, knowledge and wealth, it is even harder to disentangle a country from an empire today. The most eye-catching result of last month’s YouGov poll on “Brexit extremism” was that one in five Remain voters thinks “significant damage to the British economy after leaving the European Union to be a price worth paying to teach Leave politicians and Leave voters a lesson”. Yikes. How spiteful can you get? Liam Fox was apparently not wrong when he said the media is full of people who “would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed”. I, for one, am more sure now than I was on June 24, 2016 that the British people did the right thing. My one anxiety as I placed my cross on the paper was that Project Fear might be half right if only for self-fulfilling reasons, and that I might be helping to inflict severe short-term pain for slight long-term gain. Yet instead of an emergency budget and an immediate and profound shock to the economy, a loss of confidence, a drying up of inward investment, a plunge in house prices, a surge in inflation and a collapse in the stock market — all of which we were promised if we voted Leave — there has been almost unremitting good news on the economic front. Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To those who say “That was only the vote; once we actually leave, then we’ll be proved right,” I reply: “Why did you not say so at the time?” There is a second reason I feel more Leave-inclined than a year ago: the behaviour of the European Commission. I don’t much mind the scorn and petty point-scoring. I expected that, don’t believe a word of it and find it reassuring, not least because it lowers expectations. When you’re taking flak, you know you are over the target. No, it’s that they clearly mind more about the budget for their bureaucracy (the “bill”) than the economic future for European citizens. We are told we must settle the officials’ demands for money for officials to spend on officials’ priorities, before we even talk about future trade arrangements between ordinary people. Jasanoff reports that when Britain’s negotiators agreed to the terms of American independence in Paris in 1782, “many contemporaries were surprised by Britain’s generosity towards the former colonies”. The reason was that Lord Shelburne, the prime minister, wanted to try to secure the United States in Britain’s sphere of influence. Where is the same ambition in today’s Brussels? Has there been a single speech from within the commission (rather than the continent) about how the future prosperity of all Europeans, including Britons, depends on maximising innovation, trade and trust among us? Or saying that, given the continent’s huge trade surplus with us and the huge numbers of its citizens that we have created jobs for, let alone our net contribution to the budget being the second biggest, we might deserve a little co-operation, even thanks. I know nobody in Britain who wants us to stop being friends, allies and trade partners of European countries. The inhabitants of the commission (and the parliament) exemplify public choice theory at its finest: they mistake official self-interest for the public interest. They are interested in making sure their integrationist bureaucracy thrives, rather than looking after the economy of the continent. True, there are Europeans making better noises, within Germany and elsewhere. Yet that only reinforces the point: if the European Union were an intergovernmental arrangement, I would be all for staying in it. It is not, as I keep pointing out to American friends who think it is some kind of economic Nato. It is an experiment in building a top-down, centralising, supranational government, with a bureaucratic surplus and a democratic deficit. Compared with most of the rest of the world it is a failure, as its economic growth rate, unemployment rate and innovation record demonstrate. Putting aside the negotiating bluster, I am also encouraged by the fresh thinking already emerging on policy. In recent months I have had conversations about immigration policy with Australians, fishing policy with Icelanders, farm subsidies with Swiss, environmental policies with Americans and tobacco control with Canadians. These conversations no longer end in that despairing realisation that reform is impossible because it requires persuading 27 other nations and a lobby-fodder commission to come to some sort of compromise. Suddenly anything is possible. 10 Encouraging piece. Though it says rather a lot about the economic and political reasoning...and precious little about the scientific side, which I'd be interested to hear the views of the author on. Also the bolded bit - discussing environmental policies with Americans ...wonder which Americans he was talking to? Hopefully not the ones setting the policy right now.
Captain... Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 On 8/14/2017 at 11:53, KingGTF said: No, not that we should have voted the other way, but that we thought we had won the argument last year during those weeks when we lived and breathed every detail of the debate. To some extent we then stopped making the case. Lived and breathed every detail? There was no detail on the leave side, just speculation, you didn't stop making a case you realised you had to actual start making a case and suddenly went very quiet except for going back on the lies that had one the debate. On 8/14/2017 at 11:53, KingGTF said: Yet instead of an emergency budget and an immediate and profound shock to the economy, a loss of confidence, a drying up of inward investment, a plunge in house prices, a surge in inflation and a collapse in the stock market — all of which we were promised if we voted Leave — there has been almost unremitting good news on the economic front. It wasn't promised it was warned, promises are spending an extra £350million a week on the NHS. There hasn't been unremitting good news on the economic front the pound hasn't recovered and it is significantly weaker than it was 2 years ago. On 8/14/2017 at 11:53, KingGTF said: Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To those who say “That was only the vote; once we actually leave, then we’ll be proved right,” I reply: “Why did you not say so at the time?” Low unemployment isn't surprising due to the immigrant labour market shortening, it is not a sign of success, we have used that immigrant labour to grow over the last decade. Investment is a new argument, one I hadn't heard and it seems positive, but why are we getting lots of foreign investment when we have a weakened pound and economic and political instability. I doubt anyone is looking to exploit the situation. Not all that positive, I would like to know more about what investment by who and into what.
Innovindil Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 48 minutes ago, Captain... said: Lived and breathed every detail? There was no detail on the leave side, just speculation, you didn't stop making a case you realised you had to actual start making a case and suddenly went very quiet except for going back on the lies that had one the debate. It wasn't promised it was warned, promises are spending an extra £350million a week on the NHS. There hasn't been unremitting good news on the economic front the pound hasn't recovered and it is significantly weaker than it was 2 years ago. Low unemployment isn't surprising due to the immigrant labour market shortening, it is not a sign of success, we have used that immigrant labour to grow over the last decade. Investment is a new argument, one I hadn't heard and it seems positive, but why are we getting lots of foreign investment when we have a weakened pound and economic and political instability. I doubt anyone is looking to exploit the situation. Not all that positive, I would like to know more about what investment by who and into what. www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/27/foreign-investors-back-brexit-britain/amp/ Not sure how accurate the information is, but they have some weird funky chart on investments that you might find interesting. The lower pound does look attractive to investors, if it bounces back they've made the easiest profits of their lives tbh. (not saying it will, just that it could) 1
Captain... Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 27 minutes ago, Innovindil said: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/27/foreign-investors-back-brexit-britain/amp/ Not sure how accurate the information is, but they have some weird funky chart on investments that you might find interesting. The lower pound does look attractive to investors, if it bounces back they've made the easiest profits of their lives tbh. (not saying it will, just that it could) Mostly looks like companies bringing forward plans to take advantage of the low pound. One that I would be concerned about is the £5bn Qatar is looking to invest in our country: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39410075
Guest Kopfkino Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 51 minutes ago, Captain... said: Lived and breathed every detail? There was no detail on the leave side, just speculation, you didn't stop making a case you realised you had to actual start making a case and suddenly went very quiet except for going back on the lies that had one the debate. It wasn't promised it was warned, promises are spending an extra £350million a week on the NHS. There hasn't been unremitting good news on the economic front the pound hasn't recovered and it is significantly weaker than it was 2 years ago. Low unemployment isn't surprising due to the immigrant labour market shortening, it is not a sign of success, we have used that immigrant labour to grow over the last decade. Investment is a new argument, one I hadn't heard and it seems positive, but why are we getting lots of foreign investment when we have a weakened pound and economic and political instability. I doubt anyone is looking to exploit the situation. Not all that positive, I would like to know more about what investment by who and into what. This is completely false. There were many many people like Dan Hannan, Tim Montgomerie, Matt Ridley, and others, or organisations like Business for Britain that made the case with plenty of vigour and outlined some of what the future might look like. Now if you wanted a step by step plan whereby you were given a date that we would sign an FTA with New Zealand, then you were admittedly disappointed. But given that Vote Leave (I didn't really back their campaign despite Hannan being a part of it) was not in charge of Brexit, it was very difficult to put forward concrete plans. And there are still people out there putting forward some good idea for the negotiations and continuing to make the case. Problem is, James Chapman sprouts whatever on Twitter and it gets plenty of attention, the same can't be said on the other side. This was not quite a promise. Maybe it was implicit but the idea was to draw people's attention to our payments into the EU and where else that could be spent. I didn't support that method of campaigning because it played on the fact people are stupid but I see it as no worse than the government using taxpayers money to distribute a leaflet to everyone or the treasury putting out complete economic nonsense whilst also making sure to hide its previous reports suggesting the single market had no benefit for the UK. The pound is weaker, correct. That's not bad economic news. The IMF said in February 2016 that the pound was between 5-20% overvalued in 2015 and they said similar about 2014. The Bank of England agreed as did its former governor Mervyn King. So, in reality a market shock has delivered a pound that is now closer to its value. I will admit that it's undesirable how it has turned many of our firms into takeover prey, Worldpay being a sad example. I'm not sure how low unemployment, in fact record employment, is not a sign of success especially as we were told otherwise would happen. As foxin_mad posted, wages are set to rise too. Jobs in the City are up 18% despite the mass exodus we are warned of. Again, are you suggesting the highest FDI in Europe is a bad thing? The weakened pound is an obvious reason for the increased investment, and firms probably actually see an opportunity in the UK that.
Jon the Hat Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 I still believe after a few bumps BREXIT will be a success. The EU is on a downward trajectory, and we are better off looking outwards to the world.
Captain... Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 4 minutes ago, KingGTF said: I'm not sure how low unemployment, in fact record employment, is not a sign of success especially as we were told otherwise would happen. Because it is a false figure, the Labour market contracted due to Brexit with immigration falling significantly. If you cut the number of people available to work and yet you have a similar number of people in work, then percentage unemployed goes down, but the number of jobs doesn't go up. If we end up with a labour shortage then that is going to have a greater impact on the economy than a couple of % extra unemployed. (Not to mention the number of zero hours contracts skewing the employment figures). The weaker pound is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has not been deliberately weakened to give the UK an advantage, it has fallen because the market saw Brexit as a huge disadvantage to us economically.
Webbo Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 19 minutes ago, Captain... said: Because it is a false figure, the Labour market contracted due to Brexit with immigration falling significantly. If you cut the number of people available to work and yet you have a similar number of people in work, then percentage unemployed goes down, but the number of jobs doesn't go up. If we end up with a labour shortage then that is going to have a greater impact on the economy than a couple of % extra unemployed. (Not to mention the number of zero hours contracts skewing the employment figures). The weaker pound is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has not been deliberately weakened to give the UK an advantage, it has fallen because the market saw Brexit as a huge disadvantage to us economically. There are record numbers of people in work so that doesn't square with the fall being due to people leaving or not coming here.
Guest Kopfkino Posted 15 August 2017 Posted 15 August 2017 5 minutes ago, Captain... said: Because it is a false figure, the Labour market contracted due to Brexit with immigration falling significantly. If you cut the number of people available to work and yet you have a similar number of people in work, then percentage unemployed goes down, but the number of jobs doesn't go up. If we end up with a labour shortage then that is going to have a greater impact on the economy than a couple of % extra unemployed. (Not to mention the number of zero hours contracts skewing the employment figures). The weaker pound is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has not been deliberately weakened to give the UK an advantage, it has fallen because the market saw Brexit as a huge disadvantage to us economically. That's not what's happened. The size of the labour pool is still growing, net migration isn't now negative, it's lower but not negative. The total number of people in employment (16-24 and seasonally adjusted, as they're normally headline figures) before the referendum was 30527000, it is now 308150000. Similarly, that population has increased from 41003000 to 41125000. The PMI survey for June showed the strongest growth in job creation since April 2016 in London (don't know the figures for elsewhere) and the CIPD survey showed a rise in firms expecting to add to their workforce in the next 3 months. We will see what the latest unemployment figures are tomorrow
Recommended Posts