OV9

Unrelated, but I'm repeatedly irritated by threats of civil insurrection if the brexit lot don't get their way.
No.1 - since when was government policy made based on the notion that we should pander to the views of those least willing to engage in civilised debate?
No.2 - the act of the media repeatedly stating that failure to deliver a sufficiently hard brexit will lead to rioting in the streets will in itself embolden the relevant abschaum to do exactly that.

As if the coffin dodgers are going to riot. You’ll have a handful of thick necked bald twats having a bit of a scuffle and that’ll be it.

NotoriousREV wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:34 pm As if the coffin dodgers are going to riot. You’ll have a handful of thick necked bald twats having a bit of a scuffle and that’ll be it.

Well exactly. They purple rinses aren't even going to stop voting tory, so it is literally the imagined fear/threat of a mini pikey uprising that is the justification for taking the current least-worst option off the table.

NotoriousREV wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:34 pm China is leading the way into recession and Apple and JLR are the first public casualties of that.

Finally, some sense. No one else can seem to see this.

Productivity Growth in the last quarter for Germany, Italy and Spain were all negative (-1.5% or worse). Germany may already be in technical recession.

Also, economists studying the 2008 crash and aftermath say that countries that followed the path of austerity did permanent damage to their economies. Austerity cost the EU28 the equivalent of Spain’s entire economic output.

NotoriousREV wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:19 am Productivity Growth in the last quarter for Germany, Italy and Spain were all negative (-1.5% or worse). Germany may already be in technical recession.

Also, economists studying the 2008 crash and aftermath say that countries that followed the path of austerity did permanent damage to their economies. Austerity cost the EU28 the equivalent of Spain’s entire economic output.

Austerity is banded about as the root of all evil, and there are tragic stories but it comes back to fundamentally attempting to balance the books.. there isn't a never ending pot of money out there!

Foz wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:35 am

NotoriousREV wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:19 am Productivity Growth in the last quarter for Germany, Italy and Spain were all negative (-1.5% or worse). Germany may already be in technical recession.

Also, economists studying the 2008 crash and aftermath say that countries that followed the path of austerity did permanent damage to their economies. Austerity cost the EU28 the equivalent of Spain’s entire economic output.

Austerity is banded about as the root of all evil, and there are tragic stories but it comes back to fundamentally attempting to balance the books.. there isn't a never ending pot of money out there!

There's a difference between being prudent and politically/ideological austerity though. And whatever else it has achieved, it has laid the roots for decades of future problems, because what didn't happen was a renegotiation of what services the nation wants to deliver from the public sector.

Foz wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:35 am

NotoriousREV wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:19 am Productivity Growth in the last quarter for Germany, Italy and Spain were all negative (-1.5% or worse). Germany may already be in technical recession.

Also, economists studying the 2008 crash and aftermath say that countries that followed the path of austerity did permanent damage to their economies. Austerity cost the EU28 the equivalent of Spain’s entire economic output.

Austerity is banded about as the root of all evil, and there are tragic stories but it comes back to fundamentally attempting to balance the books.. there isn't a never ending pot of money out there!

Well, technically there is. That's where the money for QE came from. The BoE can just print more currency. It's not without its problems, but it's an option. Arguably, there are more way to balance the books than just cutting spending. Creating more economic activity is another way to do it, and one way the government can control this is by spending more on infrastructure projects, creating jobs etc.

I don't think either is an absolute binary right or wrong, there's just some differences in outcome, but we owe it to ourselves to learn the appropriate lessons from history, right?

NotoriousREV wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:13 am

Foz wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:35 am

NotoriousREV wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:19 am Productivity Growth in the last quarter for Germany, Italy and Spain were all negative (-1.5% or worse). Germany may already be in technical recession.

Also, economists studying the 2008 crash and aftermath say that countries that followed the path of austerity did permanent damage to their economies. Austerity cost the EU28 the equivalent of Spain’s entire economic output.

Austerity is banded about as the root of all evil, and there are tragic stories but it comes back to fundamentally attempting to balance the books.. there isn't a never ending pot of money out there!

Well, technically there is. That's where the money for QE came from. The BoE can just print more currency. It's not without its problems, but it's an option. Arguably, there are more way to balance the books than just cutting spending. Creating more economic activity is another way to do it, and one way the government can control this is by spending more on infrastructure projects, creating jobs etc.

I don't think either is an absolute binary right or wrong, there's just some differences in outcome, but we owe it to ourselves to learn the appropriate lessons from history, right?

The govt spending more on infrastructure projects will not stimulate the economy, it relies on additional tax revenues, and we are now taxed at the highest rates in history.

Yes its not binary, but the ever increasing tax burden is extremely tiresome!

Foz wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:46 am The govt spending more on infrastructure projects will not stimulate the economy, it relies on additional tax revenues, and we are now taxed at the highest rates in history.

Yes its not binary, but the ever increasing tax burden is extremely tiresome!

Not true. If, instead of using QE to buy corporate debt, you use it to build stuff, you stimulate a lot of economic activity. I reckon just filling in the potholes in Cheshire would add about 40% to GDP.

NotoriousREV wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:49 am

Foz wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:46 am The govt spending more on infrastructure projects will not stimulate the economy, it relies on additional tax revenues, and we are now taxed at the highest rates in history.

Yes its not binary, but the ever increasing tax burden is extremely tiresome!

Not true. If, instead of using QE to buy corporate debt, you use it to build stuff, you stimulate a lot of economic activity. I reckon just filling in the potholes in Cheshire would add about 40% to GDP.

It’s easy to predict crashes, you just say it’ll all come crashing down soon (be vague on timings), then if it comes true then you say “I told you so.” And if it doesn’t you say “well done for listening to me and averting it.

h'ok.

NotoriousREV wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:32 pm The healing can’t start until we have a specific way forward. At the moment there is still a chance of No Deal, Deal or No Brexit, with very passionate arguments for and against each of them. Those arguments won’t stop until one of the options is carried out. Then the recriminations will come. Then the healing will start. Can’t shortcut that process, unfortunately.

Pretty much what a Cambridge Uni Politics Prof said one night last week on Newsnight. His view was that everyone believes it will take a big seismic event to see UK politics start to settle back down and see unity again. But as the issue of the EU is a cross-party divisive topic that's not necessarily true. He then went on to say it will more likely be the taking of an option, whichever one it is, that sees everyone start to settle down a bit before uniting to move things forward. Essentially it's the unshifting status of not knowing that we're currently in that's the root cause.

I thought this thread, currently doing the rounds on Twitter was really interesting:

Rev, it really is interesting - and it is almost certainly too late for any of the lessons from that to be put into action now, sadly.

The current MPs seem to learn nothing from the past.

The statement by the Tory Brexiteers (BoJo et al) is also quite telling when they talk about doing the best thing for "the party, the country, and it's people". The order of those words is no accident.

GG, I think you may have accused David Allen Green of being a remainer previously. A very sensible tweet from him this morning (and I am a remainer; I just can't see how we could get back to a stable state of being in the EU now so I am pretty resigned to leaving):

I think that is just stating his position now given the available options.

He had previously tweeted that he was a "Bruges era" (I'm not clear what that means?) Brexiteer but had subsequently decided it was not worth the potential downside of leaving. That sounds pretty clear that he would've voted remain in 2016 (though a soft/pragmatic rather than ideological remain, clearly).

ETA: I'm misquoting him slightly he said he was a "Bruges speech Eurosceptic" referring to Thatcher's speech in Bruges in 1988 but that "leaving the European Union would not, in practice, be worth the effort has been obvious since the Maastricht treaty".

The Bruges group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges_Gr ... d_Kingdom)