Brexit matters

[davetheguard]

I shall do my very best to support him at this difficult time by continuing not to drink in his pubs.

Me & you both.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

As a country we would be better off having a reasonable immigration system, one where there are no big hoops to jump through, no stupid minimum requirements. Just encourage people to register. That would eliminate 99.9% of the trips in dodgy boats where good people put their lives at risk.

What are your views on the recent Danish immigration legislation compared to the one in Britain?

Now that Brexit has come to pass, these long-distance immigrants now find Britain is no longer part of the EC, which might not have been the case when they first set off.

 

[najaB]

Now that Brexit has come to pass, these long-distance immigrants now find Britain is no longer part of the EC, which might not have been the case when they first set off.

I doubt any of them have been in transit for 12 years...

 

[jon0844]

I doubt any of them have been in transit for 12 years...

To be fair, that's about the same time it takes for Cross Country to get from the south west to Scotland...

 

[Annetts key]

To be fair, that's about the same time it takes for Cross Country to get from the south west to Scotland...

I once heard the automated computerised announcement system say that the XYZ service was 23 hours and 55 minutes late. It was actually 5 minutes early! I can’t remember if this was a XC service though...

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I doubt any of them have been in transit for 12 years...

I was wondering about those from sub-Saharan Africa who were unfortunately trapped for a number of years when the South Sudan scenario developed and then also by the civil war there that occurred after that country gained independence.

 

[brad465]

Saw someone today describe Brexit as a "English post-Empire midlife crisis".

 

[class ep-09]

Saw someone today describe Brexit as a "English post-Empire midlife crisis"

And divorce at this same time .

 

[najaB]

Saw someone today describe Brexit as a "English post-Empire midlife crisis".

And divorce at this same time .

If this is a midlife crisis, where's my red sports car? Obviously it can't be a Lambo, Ferrari, Porsche or BMW - I guess it's a classic British brand like Jaguar... what, owned by Indians... or Bentley ...Germans?!... I guess Lotus? Chinese? Really?

 

[alex397]

If this is a midlife crisis, where's my red sports car? Obviously it can't be a Lambo, Ferrari, Porsche or BMW - I guess it's a classic British brand like Jaguar... what, owned by Indians... or Bentley ...Germans?!... I guess Lotus? Chinese? Really?

Is the nearest we can get a JCB digger? It comes with free luxury hampers I believe.

I think the superyacht planned to be built is the red sports car

 

[XAM2175]

I think the superyacht planned to be built is the red sports car

Yeah, so about that:

Boris Johnson’s trade yacht plan could break World Trade Organisation rules

Prime minister accused of ‘copper-bottomed, ocean-going incompetence’

www.independent.co.uk

In May the prime minister said he wanted a domestic shipyard to build the £200 million vessel to promote British trade and industry around the world.
But under the WTO's government procurement agreement signed by trade secretary Liz Truss just eight months ago the ship must be open to global competition.
Ms Truss says she signed up to the agreement so UK companies could keep bidding for contracts around the world, which might help offset trade lost from leaving the EU.
But it also requires British public contracts to be offered to global companies in a fair contest.
The UK's schedule to the GPA explicitly says “ships, boats and floating structures, except warships” must be advertised internationally and awarded without discrimination, the Financial Times first reported.
The UK's implementation of the GPA goes further than other countries like the US and Canada, which both excluded civilian shipbuilding.
...

 

[WelshBluebird]

The UK's implementation of the GPA goes further than other countries like the US and Canada, which both excluded civilian shipbuilding.

Oh what a shock. Once again the UK government "gold plate" some agreement which then comes back to bite them, and no doubt instead of blaming themselves for it, they will blame the other organisation. It was exactly the same with EU regulations too.

 

[edwin_m]

They could probably designate it as a warship, which would be exempt under the quoted text. It's already being crewed by the Royal Navy and could have some alternative military purpose (Britannia was convertible to a hospital ship, although I don't think it was ever used as such).

That only leaves the name - I suggest HMS Pinafore.

 

[jon0844]

If this is a midlife crisis, where's my red sports car? Obviously it can't be a Lambo, Ferrari, Porsche or BMW - I guess it's a classic British brand like Jaguar... what, owned by Indians... or Bentley ...Germans?!... I guess Lotus? Chinese? Really?

All that's on offer now is an old red bus, with paint covering up something about £350m a week for the NHS.

 

[class ep-09]

All that's on offer now is an old red bus, with paint covering up something about £350m a week for the NHS.

…. and its destination is Sunny Uplands

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

All that's on offer now is an old red bus, with paint covering up something about £350m a week for the NHS.

As it turned out, with the Covid-19 pandemic, a rather larger sum than £350m a week went to the NHS.

 

[XAM2175]

As it turned out, with the Covid-19 pandemic, a rather larger sum than £350m a week went to the NHS.

As I imagine would have happened regardless of Brexit, so it hardly counts toward fulfilling that "suggestion".

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

As I imagine would have happened regardless of Brexit, so it hardly counts toward fulfilling that "suggestion".

Even so, that "promise" was more than fulfilled money-wise.....

 

[edwin_m]

The bit people were annoyed about was the false claim of sending £350m a week to the EU, which was disputed by the impartial statistics authority but not withdrawn by the campaign. Then or now the government could easily have found £350m a week to send to the NHS if it had wanted to.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The bit people were annoyed about was the false claim of sending £350m a week to the EU, which was disputed by the impartial statistics authority but not withdrawn by the campaign. Then or now the government could easily have found £350m a week to send to the NHS if it had wanted to.

Ah yes, but that was prior to the Damascene moment when Treasury eyes were opened and "Austerity" was seen to be "the work of Satan and all his works".

The Lord appeared in a vision to the Treasury and the location of the "Money Tree" that the Labour Party knew of, but not its location, was revealed and great joy and rejoicing was heard in Whitehall.

This ends the Lesson for Today.

 

[Typhoon]

Ah yes, but that was prior to the Damascene moment when Treasury eyes were opened and "Austerity" was seen to be "the work of Satan and all his works".

The Lord appeared in a vision to the Treasury and the location of the "Money Tree" that the Labour Party knew of, but not its location, was revealed and great joy and rejoicing was heard in Whitehall.

This ends the Lesson for Today.

Who would have thought that Gideon would turn out to be a false prophet? Mind you, he does seem to have found his very own Magic Money Tree - and Johnson's government has found a whole plantation of them.

This article got my interest, as Canterbury is mentioned. A city (although the size of a large town) well known for becoming very busy with foreign tourists, largely school groups, in the summers. The coach park was often overflowing with mostly foreign registered coaches (I often saw this myself). I do worry about the local economy around here, and how Covid and Brexit is going to affect it in relation to foreign visitors. There are already large amounts of empty shops for example.

I missed this earlier. I quite like the school groups, they are almost inevitably polite and seem to tolerate being given the most mundane of tasks (finding inscriptions on buildings which are twelve foot up, for example) for no obvious educational benefit, they usually do want to know where McD's is though. It is the tourist groups that swarm around a resonant-voiced mature person, holding aloft a gaily coloured umbrella or pole that annoy me. Mind you they bring the money in; the kids head to the tacky shops that sell guardsman dolls, pictures of the Queen (and Diana) and I <heart> London stickers.

…. and its destination is Sunny Uplands

It's actually 'Sunlit Uplands', Johnson pinched it from Churchill's 'This was their finest hour' speech (its too good to be a Johnson original). When I used to go walking in the places like the Lake District or Snowdonia, I always found that when I reached what I thought were the Sunlit Uplands there was still some way to go. I suspect it will be the same with Brexit.

 

[Annetts key]

… the "Money Tree"

I know I keep asking this question, a question that no one appears to know the answer to… but when was the last time that a U.K. government was not in debt?

And so actually, in practice, borrowing = the "Money Tree". And when that is not practical, get the Bank of England to print money for the government to borrow against.

Wait, isn’t that the kind of thing the Con-servatives attack Labour on?

BTW, I should add that I actually don’t have a problem with governments having debt. But what I don’t like is them pretending that just because occasionally (well, before COVID19) we get a month in which income (taxes) exceeds government spending, all is well with the world and we are in some kind of wonderful economic bliss…

Of course, no government wants to raise taxes, ‘cus they think that will result in them losing the next election… But despite this, the Con-servatives managed to increase VAT more than once!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I know I keep asking this question, a question that no one appears to know the answer to… but when was the last time that a U.K. government was not in debt?

And so actually, in practice, borrowing = the "Money Tree". And when that is not practical, get the Bank of England to print money for the government to borrow against.

Wait, isn’t that the kind of thing the Con-servatives attack Labour on?

Are you forgetting the number of times during "The Austerity" that the Labour opposition kept asking the Conservative government to do just that?

You now cannot decry the Government for actually doing what the Labour opposition asked them to do.

 

[najaB]

You now cannot decry the Government for actually doing what the Labour opposition asked them to do.

I didn't read @Annetts key as decrying anything, other than hypocrisy.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I didn't read @Annetts key as decrying anything, other than hypocrisy.

Sometimes we all appear to suffer from "Nelson's Blind Eye"

 

[Typhoon]

I know I keep asking this question, a question that no one appears to know the answer to… but when was the last time that a U.K. government was not in debt?

Assuming you mean in debt overall, not an individual year then it definitely would be pre-World War I. Every war we enter leaves us worse off, and there were two biggies in the last century (and there was the Crimean and Napoleonic Wars in the previous one). There is a graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_national_debt that shows the interest on the National Debt from 1900 to 2011 as a percentage of GDP; if we are paying interest, then there must be debt! What you cannot tell from this, although it is tempting, is when we were 'best off' as it depends on the Gross Domestic Produc and the interest rate the Government could achieve at the time

(Yes I know that Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source - I've tried to find something better.)

 

[najaB]

Assuming you mean in debt overall, not an individual year then it definitely would be pre-World War I. Every war we enter leaves us worse off, and there were two biggies in the last century (and there was the Crimean and Napoleonic Wars in the previous one). There is a graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_national_debt that shows the interest on the National Debt from 1900 to 2011 as a percentage of GDP; if we are paying interest, then there must be debt! What you cannot tell from this, although it is tempting, is when we were 'best off' as it depends on the Gross Domestic Product and the interest rate the Government could achieve at the time

This also doesn't help with the important distinction between debt and deficit - there may well have been times during that period where the government was in surplus yet the debt payments as a percentage of GDP increased significantly!

 

[Typhoon]

This also doesn't help with the important distinction between debt and deficit - there may well have been times during that period where the government was in surplus yet the debt payments as a percentage of GDP increased significantly!

Quite, in the lead up to World War I or II, perhaps, with manufacturing racing away - but #2602

I know I keep asking this question, a question that no one appears to know the answer to… but when was the last time that a U.K. government was not in debt?

 

[najaB]

So it seems that the outline UK-Australia trade deal has been agreed:

Australia trade deal will not hit UK farmers, says Liz Truss

The trade secretary denies Australian beef imports will flood the UK and says export markets will grow.

www.bbc.co.uk

Is anyone else sceptical that a trade deal agreed so quickly is unlikely to be favourable to to the UK? (Typically, free trade deals take years to agree.)

This comment in the article stands out:

The president of the Australian National Farmers' Federation said it had been very difficult to break into the UK because it was "way too expensive and way too far".

So either this trade deal has rearranged geography or there have been some serious concessions made.

 

[class ep-09]

So it seems that the outline UK-Australia trade deal has been agreed:

Australia trade deal will not hit UK farmers, says Liz Truss

The trade secretary denies Australian beef imports will flood the UK and says export markets will grow.

www.bbc.co.uk

Is anyone else sceptical that a trade deal agreed so quickly is unlikely to be favourable to to the UK? (Typically, free trade deals take years to agree.)

This comment in the article stands out:

So either this trade deal has rearranged geography or there have been some serious concessions made.

I return , UK economy will gain whopping 0.02% ......

While loosing 4-6% because we left Single Market and Custom Union

Not gonna mention the carbon footprint .