Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[Innovindil]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

 

 

@Innovindil

 

 

Business confidence has jumped to an 18-month high, but companies are having trouble recruiting skilled workers, according to a survey.

The Lloyds Bank Business in Britain report's confidence index rose to 24% - double the level immediately following the EU referendum last year.

The index is a measure of expected sales, orders and profits.

A separate survey by the British Chambers of Commerce forecast weak economic growth for the next few years.

Outlook 'mixed'

The Lloyds Bank report surveyed the views of 1,500 UK companies in May, after the general election was called.

The average for the confidence index in the 25 years the report has been compiled is 23%.

The net balance of companies that said they had found it difficult to find skilled labour in the past six months hit a 10-year high of 52%.

Maybe they'll start forking out some of that pie to train our own up as it gets more difficult to attract from abroad. 

 

Fingers crossed the engineering sector is struggling to recruit from abroad, my skills could potentially rocket in value. 

[Kopfkino]

[Sharpe's Fox]

not even funny imo

[Guest MattP]

56 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

not even funny imo

Behave and enjoy the new government. 

 

 

[bovril]

1 hour ago, KingGTF said:

True. If you can't stand being surrounded by young people having a good time, you're probably a Conservative voter.

[Bobby Hundreds]

I knew house prices in London were a joke but paying £1 billion for a house on Downing Street is a pisstake.

[Strokes]

38 minutes ago, bovril said:

True. If you can't stand being surrounded by young people having a good time, you're probably a Conservative voter.

Good advice 

[Guest MattP]

52 minutes ago, bovril said:

True. If you can't stand being surrounded by young people having a good time, you're probably a Conservative voter.

Amen to that, Glastonbury is my idea of the most ghastly weekend one could endure.

 

39 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

I knew house prices in London were a joke but paying £1 billion for a house on Downing Street is a pisstake.

 

I'm stealing that.

[EnderbyFox]

 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, EnderbyFox said:

 

[Sharpe's Fox]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

True. If you can't stand being surrounded by young people having a good time, you're probably a Conservative voter.

Now that's good laughin right there

[Buce]

15 minutes ago, EnderbyFox said:

 

 

 

Brilliant!

[Guest MattP]

Great stuff, let's hope he does release it one day.

 

 

[Strokes]

14 minutes ago, MattP said:

Great stuff, let's hope he does release it one day.

 

 

Like I said right from the start, the rainbow coalition was more than just an idea.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, MattP said:

Great stuff, let's hope he does release it one day.

 

 

Couldn't care less. It was only as issue for TM because of the IRA sympathiser bull***t that they tories were egging on. 

 

I'm quite happy for the government and their Norther Irish cronies to keep worrying about what's happened over the last few weeks as every day they waste on that is an extra little bit on the majority labour will win next time round 

[davieG]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

True. If you can't stand being surrounded by young people having a good time, you're probably a Conservative voter.

From the news reports it looked like there were more hippies from the 60s than young uns.

[Guest MattP]

Just now, davieG said:

From the news reports it looked like there were more hippies from the 60s than young uns.

From what I saw they have some pretty serious problems with diversity as well, barely a black face in the crowd.

 

What can we do to attract more people from ethnic minorities to the event?

[Guest MattP]

11 minutes ago, toddybad said:

Im quite happy for the government and their Norther Irish cronies to keep worrying about what's happened over the last few weeks as every day they waste on that is an extra little bit on the majority labour will win next time round 

I wouldn't get too excite yet, current polls don't even have you winning a majority with a Tory party led by Theresa May. 

[Alf Bentley]

7 hours ago, EnderbyFox said:

 

Just when we thought the magic money tree was extinct, it turns up alive and well and growing in Belfast.... 

 

 

 

What an extraordinary conversion.

One minute we were "all in this together" having to tighten our belts to reduce the deficit.....

Next minute, the government underwent a Pauline conversion to Keynesian counter-cyclical public spending - but only in Northern Ireland.

 

When Theresa was young and innocent, running through the wheat fields, did nobody warn her about the nature of blackmail?

That the blackmailers come back for more? At every moment of vulnerability? Extracting the maximum possible price?

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

Just saw the May / Python mash up on Twitter and immediately came here to see if it had been posted yet...

 

I see @Enderby Fox has done the honours... but come on, only 3 thumbs up? What's wrong with you all!

[Strokes]

2 minutes ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

Just saw the May / Python mash up on Twitter and immediately came here to see if it had been posted yet...

 

I see @Enderby Fox has done the honours... but come on, only 3 thumbs up? What's wrong with you all!

It was posted Sunday by @ozleicester I think.

[Buce]

37 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

Just when we thought the magic money tree was extinct, it turns up alive and well and growing in Belfast.... 

 

 

 

What an extraordinary conversion.

One minute we were "all in this together" having to tighten our belts to reduce the deficit.....

Next minute, the government underwent a Pauline conversion to Keynesian counter-cyclical public spending - but only in Northern Ireland.

 

When Theresa was young and innocent, running through the wheat fields, did nobody warn her about the nature of blackmail?

That the blackmailers come back for more? At every moment of vulnerability? Extracting the maximum possible price?

 

once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane.

 

'Dane-Geld' by Rudyard Kipling

Edited 26 June 2017 by Buce

[Guest]

9 hours ago, MattP said:

I think the Tories will be delighted to get out of that, I don't think they realised just how unpopular that would have been.

 

As I've said the Tories should start spending now anyway, likely they'll lose next time around why be so tight with the purse when someone else will just come in and spend, given the way the young voted they shouldn't have any guilt anymore in leaving them with debt.

They absolutely should start spending given that their refusal to spend is what is stopping growth and improvement in everyday lives. 

Edited 26 June 2017 by Guest

[lifted*fox]

[Kopfkino]

An interesting piece in The Times by Dr Graham Gudgin, a modern Keynesian economist and someone I see  has advised the Labour Party in the past. I don't know much about Policy Exchange themselves and cbf to look.

 

"An important context for the Brexit negotiations is what economic impact the UK can expect from leaving the EU. If, like Peter Mandelson, we were to expect that leaving with no deal will lead to a “catastrophic disaster”, then it would be rational to offer a raft of concessions to avoid such a poor outcome. A much milder expectation might lead us to take a harder line in bargaining. The main evidence on what to expect comes from a series of reports published during the referendum campaign last year. Most prominent among these were the reports by the UK Treasury, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

 

A new report published today by Policy Exchange examines these reports in detail. It sets out the logic of their arguments, demystifies the “gravity models” at the core of their analyses, and conducts a parallel exercise to test their reliability. The report concludes that the size of the predicted negative economic impact was considerably exaggerated in each case.

 

The approach used by each of these bodies began by estimating the gains to trade and foreign investment from membership of the EU, with the assumption that much, or all, of these gains would be lost when the UK leaves the UK. This first stage is followed by a calculation of the estimated knock-on fall in productivity as a consequence of the losses to trade and investment. The OECD and IMF, but not the Treasury, also take into account the likely lower level of migration after 2019.

The estimates derived from these analyses were then entered into a macro-economic forecasting model to calculate the final impact on GDP and unemployment in the UK. The most pessimistic predictions in each case were for the scenario in which the UK left the single market and customs union without a free-trade deal or any other replacement arrangement. The Treasury for instance concluded that, without a deal, GDP in the UK could fall in 2030 by 5.4 per cent to 9.5 per cent making each household up to £6,600 per annum worse off.

 

The core of the approach in each case was the use of a “gravity model” to estimate the impact of EU membership firstly on trade between EU members, and secondly on flows of foreign direct investment into the UK. Gravity models are a little-known technique even within economics but have become popular in trade economic studies over the last two decades. By analogy with Newtonian gravity the technique assumes that the volume of trade between two countries depends directly on the size of their economies and inversely on the distance between them, with other factors like common language or borders also playing a role. These factors allow the calculation of an expected volume of trade between countries. The impact of EU membership is calculated as the extra trade which occurs above and beyond this expected baseline.

 

The calculated impact of EU membership on trade implicitly includes the effect of tariff and non-tariff barriers, as well administrative costs of crossing newly-imposed border controls. The Treasury report calculated that EU membership more than doubles trade between EU members. In some scenarios the Treasury report assumes that only part of this EU gain to trade will be lost when the UK leaves, but its worst-case scenario assumes, somewhat implausibly, that 45 per cent of UK trade with the EU will be lost if Britain leaves with no agreement. Moreover it is also assumed that no additional trade will occur outside the EU to compensate for these losses.

Today’s Policy Exchange report replicates the Treasury analysis. The gravity model results are found to vary, depending on whether one includes large numbers of countries with negligible amounts of trade with the UK. Most seriously, it was found that the Treasury used an average trade gain across all 28 EU members, but omitted to say that the gains to the UK alone were much smaller. This vital point was omitted even though an earlier Treasury paper acknowledged its existence.

Another important omission was the potential impact of a sterling depreciation. Since the average tariff facing UK exports into the EU after 2019 is only 4 to 5 per cent, the 15 per cent lower value for sterling offsets the tariff costs for most sectors except for food products where EU import tariffs are very high. Nor was it taken into account that the EU share of UK exports has fallen rapidly in recent years.

 

Our own worst case prediction assumes that it will take 20 years for companies to replace lost EU markets via new free-trade agreements with non-EU countries. The resulting prediction is that per capita GDP would be only 2 per cent lower by 2025. However, a recovery would take place after the initial shock and by 2030 per capita GDP would be higher than it would have been in the absence of Brexit. If UK companies find new markets more quickly than the slow rate we have assumed, the outlook could be more optimistic than this."