EU referendum...THE RESULT...and aftermath...

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

Moist_Von_Lipwig wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Moist_Von_Lipwig wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

What you continually fail to comment on is the distain for the EU shown by many of the member states.

Brexit has left the door ajar and be under no illusion other countries will follow.

The German and French elections next year might enlighten you.

I can't speak for France but Germany will be nailed on remainers. Like UKIP, the AfD do "well" in local and state elections but when it comes to the real thing.........

Don't be too confident that other EU member states will follow. They are all watching the UK, at present, a perfect advert for others to remain!

May I remind you that the whole raison d'etre of UKIP was for the country to withdraw from the EU. I think they won the 'real thing' don't you?
(Please don't fall back on the Article 50 excuse again. It's early days).

The German people will not go on accepting the bailing out of Greece and Italy. Add in the occasional terrorist attack and the people's views can change overnight.

You only have to look at Trump to see that anything's possible in today's politics.

I suppose it depends on what a person's definition (meaning) of what "won (what?)" is.

Overall, they will.

More anti immigration of "the wrong sort" or "anti Angie's immigration policy" than anti EU.


As for Trump, yes, but what has he done so far? However, should he get elected, how many of his "promises" will actually be delivered?


As for Article 50, the longer it is delayed, the happier I will be. Yes, a majority voted out. Ok, I accept that.

Probably the most important "politically related" event in most people's lifetime yet the main Brexiters have run away and the rest of parliament have gone on holiday!

Do you really believe that Article 50 will be invoked? And, if so, everything will be hunky dory?

Do you really believe that the people who have the most to lose (the money men) will let it happen?

What I would like to see happen is that a deal is struck over the main issues. Not just for the UK, but for all member states.

I'd also like to see Junker gone (how about him being replaced by Cameron - just a thought).

I think a post on here (I can't find the original post) stated that the problem with sea bass stocks (commercial fishing and limits on shore angler catches) were all the fault of the EU. Now I know it's not so. The ROI have banned commercial fishing (and kept a limit on shore catches) and their stocks are increasing.

Also, the smoking ban (I know there is a difference of opinion between smokers and non smokers regardless). Why can I legally still smoke in some pubs over here whereas you can't?

I would say the main Brexiters have not run away. Johnson, Fox and Leadsom are in the government. Gove has been kicked into the long grass . As for the rest of parliament going on holiday, they always do at this time of year.

Fox thinks his job is to conduct trade talks, but go embarrassingly been told to wind his neck in. Leadsom is a nobody who has already been forgotten about. Johnson isn't even pro leave but saw it as his best chance to become PM in 2019 though.

The deficit was an excuse.

The real game was to reduce the public sector to next to nothing and destroy the welfare state. Every policy worked to those ends but was hung on the "deficit" peg.

Labour did not crash the market. Labour did not crash Iceland. Labour did not crash Freddy Mac. Labour did not crash Fanny Mae. Labour did not crash Lehman Brothers. Labour did not crash AIG. Labour did not destroy Detroit. Labour did not nationalise much of the US car industry (ironically that last one was George W Bush - arch free marketeer that he was) to prevent its complete collapse.

Labour did not overspend. Every Labour spending commitment was matched by Cameron and Osborne in opposition. What happened was the '98 crash caused a collapse in revenue. Labour  should have regulated The City more carefully and stringently but Gordon Brown's "light touch" was routinely criticised by Cameron and Osborne as being too controlling and that regulation should be cut (!) and The City Set Free.

Despite everything it has been cheaper in recent years than ever before to borrow money. Borrowing money in and of itself is not a bad thing. In fact if you can borrow money more cheaply on new than on existing debt then not doing so is actually rather negligent. Some might say incompetent. Others might suggest economically illiterate.

Or the deficit might just have been a huge ruse, swallowed unthinkingly by a largely compliant press and sold to the country by the endless uncritiqued repetition of the "mess that Labour left behind" and "Gordon Brown crashed the economy" mantras to excuse the destruction and sale of everything state run or provided so that it can be sold to the very people who fund the Conservative Party and who will make huge fortunes out of it for decades to come.

Wotevs.

I didn't vote for them

Time for a graph or two.

Graphs are powerful visual representations of data that convey fact extremely quickly so I make no apology at all for posting them.

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Our national debt is not high at all when viewed in an historic context.

Very interesting indeed Frank, I love that, thank you.

Hang on Saint Francis, you're not getting away with this one.

The peaks coincide with the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War and the Second World War.

Our country was bankrupt on all three occasions and had to borrow vast amounts.

You really need to open your mind a bit more.

Indeed they did. No disagreement here.

That only goes to show the massive scale of the '98 crash. If it was thought of as equivalent to a major war (in financial terms) rather than a bit of a market blip then we might be able to start assessing it rather more sensibly.

In each case it took decades to repair - it needed a long term economic plan, in fact - and nobody in their right mind back alomg promised to sort it all out in the course of one parliament. That Osborne kept on saying that he would and could time and time again is testimony, proof even, to his idiocy and incompetence as a Chancellor.

As it is  the '98 crash has probably cost the country around £1,000 bn (or one trillion quid if you prefer).

And no matter how the debt was run up current levels are still lower than they were between about 1750 and 1825 and 1925 and 1975 and for most of those 125 years it was far, far higher.

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Hang on Saint Francis, you're not getting away with this one.

The peaks coincide with the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War and the Second World War.

Our country was bankrupt on all three occasions and had to borrow vast amounts.

You really need to open your mind a bit more.

A bit like when we had to underwrite the banks in 2008. But no apprently it was labour spending too much money, despite Osborne adding more new debt than every labour government combined

Les Miserable wrote:

Very interesting indeed Frank, I love that, thank you.

Hates a fact does Les Mis

Hugh Watt wrote:

Les Miserable wrote:

Very interesting indeed Frank, I love that, thank you.

Hates a fact does Les Mis

Been on the sauce again Hugh?

Hugh Watt wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Hang on Saint Francis, you're not getting away with this one.

The peaks coincide with the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War and the Second World War.

Our country was bankrupt on all three occasions and had to borrow vast amounts.

You really need to open your mind a bit more.

A bit like when we had to underwrite the banks in 2008. But no apprently it was labour spending too much money, despite Osborne adding more new debt than every labour government combined

This isn't what you maybe want to hear but the economy under Ken Clarke was pretty decent and borrowing was well under control.

Along came Gordon Brown who proceeded to spend a fortune on the Public Services. There comes a point when the debt is irredeemable. It reached a tipping point, around 2006, when you end up chasing your tail. This happened on Labour's watch just as it did in 1978.

As a general rule of thumb, Labour are brilliant at spending taxpayers money. The Tories are brilliant at shrinking the state.

Throw in the deregulation of the Banking system, the selling off of our Gold Reserves at a quarter of their value, and the raid on private pension dividends and is it any wonder we are where we are.

Actual figures for government debt as a proportion of GDP in the Gordon Brown years leading up to the crash.

1997 - 43.3%
1998 - 41.3%
1999 - 39.2%
2000 - 36.4%
2001 - 31.4%
2002 - 30.3%
2003 - 31.5%
2004 - 32.8%
2005 - 34.7%
2006 - 36.0%
2007 - 36.6%
2008 - 36.9%
2009 - Crash!

Gordon Brown/Labour actually spent rather less than Ken Clarke did (the 1997 figure) until the crash.

There was no crazy, profligate, Labour over-spending.

So that's why the Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne left the message " I'm afraid there's no money left".

Have you ever once stopped to consider:

That with all the procedural machinery that government and the civil service can command that the best way convey important and complex information from one administration to the next is not a note hidden in a drawer?

Or

That it was a (bad) joke following an arcane but decades-old parliamentary tradition?

Or

That it was written after the crash when, as I have already stated, income had collapsed compared to what it had been pre-crash and it was this collapse in income rather than over-spending which was the problem?

Or

That whatever the debt was then it is more than double now.

Probably not.

Or it was true.

A few facts required to burst that superior, arrogant, attitude you always display.

Brown inherited from Ken Clarke low inflationary growth and an unemployment level that had dropped from 3 million to 1.6 million.

He was obliged, due to Labour's manifesto commitment, to follow the Tories 5 year plan. So far so good.

However he then started to introduce stealth taxes but keeping direct income tax the same.

He greatly increased the Public Sector by adding layers of unnecessary bureaucracy resulting in productivity falling sharply.

And then we come to the crux of the matter. The main contributor towards economic growth was consumer spending. This was financed by rising house prices and record levels of borrowing.

Brown was very much responsible for neglecting his duty as overseer of the economy and to leave it in a decent state.

"This was financed by rising house prices and record levels of borrowing."

No it was not. See previous posts.

"However he then started to introduce stealth taxes but keeping direct income tax the same."

Geoffrey Howe increased VAT from 8% to 15%.

Norman Lamont increased VAT from 15% to 17.5%.

Lamont also applied VAT to domestic fuel at 8% when previously it was not VATable.

George Osborne increased VAT from 17.5% to 20%.

Consumer spending by rising house prices and PRIVATE borrowing. Didn't think I needed to be that obvious.

Stealth taxes included National Insurance contributions being taxed at 10% of your yearly profits. This on top of normal income tax.
However he kept tax thresholds low so that the less well off would start paying tax on their earnings.
Council taxes rose 70% during his time as chancellor.
Nothing was quite as it seemed with Brown. A truly dreadful chancellor.

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