On 23 Mar 2016 at 9:23pm Katie Cornish wrote:
The true "project fear" is run by those who lead the call for us to leave. They play on fears about immigration (including exaggerating the effect of inward migration on wages) and they try to ramp up fears about an EU "super-state". They claim Margaret Thatcher as one of their champions, but ignore her maxim; "you cannot buck the market". The market is already suffering as a result of uncertainty about the UK leaving the EU and all the reliable indicators show that we would be worse off out of the EU than in it. Farage has admitted as much, but would happily trade that for "sovereignty". I have yet to meet someone who can eat sovereignty. Blackrock, the world's largest analyst of economic risk, has concluded that the UK out of the EU would be more of a risky investment than the UK in the EU. Do you trust them or Boris (his wife trusted him and the honesty of his marriage vows...) or perhaps you prefer to trust IDS (he of the dodgy CV). Much has been made of the intelligence of Michael Gove (who I am sure is very erudite) and therefore we should trust his decision, after much "soul-searching", over the EU. First of all he has been a lifelong visceral opponent of the EU, and yet even he had to pause and think when faced with the evidence for remaining. Then he did what he has always done - ignore the objective evidence and go with his prejudices (just as he did with iGCSEs, which he claimed are more rigorous in the same breath as pointing out that schools which adopted them experienced increases in pass rates!). The UK economy has only been (moderately) successful because of inward migration. GDP per head is stagnant; only population increase has lifted us out of recession. Migrants are more likely to be in work than the "indigenous" population and they contribute more in taxes than they take out. If central government shared the proceeds of this increased economic activity and increased tax take with local councils and the NHS we would have much less of a problem with school admissions and hospital waiting lists (the former difficulties are a result of Gove's stalinist decision to ban councils from building new schools, and the latter is the result of yet another top-down reorganisation and a campaign to build a 7 day NHS without any extra money and built on dodgy data). Doubtless some Brexit supporters believe that wages will go up when we leave and that we will be able to afford to pay these increased wages from what will probably be a weaker economy. Doubtless they would rejoice when the price of goods went up in the shops as a result of lorry drivers being in short supply and would hold street parties as the economy suffered and we struggled to make ends meet. They would put their fingers in their ears and sing "la, la, la" when we reminded them that they let their childish fears of foreigners drive them to live in a true "little England" - poorer, meaner and trying to come up some way of using "sovereignty" for nourishment.
On 23 Mar 2016 at 9:26pm Hmmm wrote:
Do be quiet you silly woman
On 23 Mar 2016 at 9:54pm boring wrote:
Actually it's being run by remainers with money from Goldman Sachs as the Independent points out in the link.
Check it out here »
On 24 Mar 2016 at 5:19am Much abides wrote:
I don't think wages are a key reason for " outers" to support leaving. I am quite happy for Britain to be poorer and develop more slowly if we can just resist turning into Belgium. It might be too late of course. Culture is more important than economy. That's the weakness in the Tories. They have abandoned the traditional virtues for mercantilism and international finance which is rootless cosmopolitanism personified. We have nothing to fear from leaving if we are honest providers of value.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 9:08am Paul Newman wrote:
There is nothing Katie say that is not entirely valid, I would only add that for Gove Boris and so on the waters are a bit murky. Boris has, on many occasions, and despite railing against EU bureaucracy , opined that on balance we must stay in the EU
Nothing has changed except the level of silliness within the Conservative Party ranks (perhaps jealous that the Parry generally and wisely ignores them…see Labour ).As we know Boris is mounting a leadership bid and in this context to actually support David Cameron and Osbourne would be very difficult . Thus far his Brexiting has been lukewarm factually inaccurate and generally embarrassed and embarrassing.
Its good to read a sensible post on this subject. Well done Katie
On 24 Mar 2016 at 9:30am Not fooled wrote:
You agree with it because you wrote it.
How many times do we have to read this guys rubbish
On 24 Mar 2016 at 9:37am Disraeli wrote:
I fear Paul N can never write succinctly when a 50,000 word dissertation will do.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 9:58am pn wrote:
I`m rather flattered at being compared to the articulate and wise Ms Cornish but no, not me.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 12:23pm Clifford wrote:
Kate Cornish, do you really think it's wise to play the 'look who's an outer' card? I'm not sure i'd be happy about being in the company of Peter 'Sacked twice as a minister' Mandelson, Tony 'WMD' Blair, Gordon 'No more boom and Bust' Brown, Alan 'I'm not smart enough to be shadow chancellor' Johnson... Not to mention Cameron, Clegg, the bankers... The list of your allies must give even you a moment's thought.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 3:05pm Earl of Lewes wrote:
@Much abides - I completely agree. What's the point of becoming an economic powerhouse if we lose our sense of identity and cohesion? Anyone who has been to London during the last few years will see the fate that awaits the rest of us. It's wealth for the few at the expense of the many.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 4:52pm Corbynista wrote:
Anyone that thinks that this country would be any less unequal post Brexit, under Boris,Grayling,Patel,Redwood,Gove,and the rest of the Tory ghouls is deluded.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 5:02pm Katie Cornish wrote:
Exactly,it was Bojo who oversaw and indeed encouraged the grossly unequal distribution of wealth and property in our capital city.Why any one would want to leave Europe and guarantee this dangerous clown the prime minister`s job is beyond me.Cameron is bad enough.
On 24 Mar 2016 at 5:20pm Clifford wrote:
Katie Cornish - I don't know about you, but to me the EU looks like capitalism in action. So why the sudden concern about 'grossly unequal distribution of wealth'? Surely that is what capitalism is for. You aren't under the illusion that the EU is some kind of socialist project, are you?
On 24 Mar 2016 at 7:38pm pn wrote:
The Uk is about average in terms of overall equality in Europe and under the coalition equality increased ( for anyone who cares ). As we know the drop in the top rate of tax netted the treasury an additional £8 bn and inequality increase throughout the Blair period when the state`s share of GDP was increased from 35% to a dangerous 51% .
Equality was greater in the 70s but few people would want to return to that calamitous decade. I thought Ed Milliband was not something interesting when he started to talk about pre-equality . There are countries in Europe where they are significantly more equal than us but there are none with taxes as progressive . Quite why that is and how it might be replicated is not easy to unpick though. So the state confiscating and redistributing does not look like the answer and stronger unions , we tried .
Katie is right about the economy benefiting form EU freedom of movement . In fact there are 2300,000 here and 2,200,000 UK citizens living all or part of the time in the EU . I think in all fairness it should be admitted that immigration form the rest of the world is net cost to the UK exchequer and has in general be much harder to accommodate
Funnily enough in a recent Poll Labour were neck and neck with the Conservative Party. U Gov have issued a strong health warning and the times are unusual but still. ….Imagine being out of the EU and in the clutches of a PM whose long term aim is a planned economy . A chilly old time of it I shall have in the Hebredean Gulag and we shall have to acquire a taste for regimented morning exercise……
On 24 Mar 2016 at 8:05pm John wrote:
The corporate interests that support British membership of the EU are large international law and consultancy firms, including City ones, which make a fortune arguing over every comma of regulations and contracts; large multi-national companies, which use EU regulation to keep small companies out of markets and decrease competition; and international corporations, which use various parts of the EU to avoid paying taxes elsewhere. There are also the political dreamers who fail to see the economic misery the EU has already caused millions of its citizens, not to mention its lack of both democracy and international influence.
Mercifully, Britain’s unemployment rate is half that inside the euro zone, and last year its growth rate was twice as high. Moreover, the prospects for EU growth are not good due to lack of structural reforms and demographic decline. Yet, while Britain’s success causes hundreds of thousands of Europeans from France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria to come to the UK in search of work, its European partners try hard to undermine it by, for example, attempting to ban the City of London dealing in euro-denominated securities. The European courts have just prevented this from happening, although the European Central Bank may still appeal. The EU is also attempting to impose a tax on all financial transactions, another attempt to undermine the success of the City of London. Finally, Britain suffers economically from the fact that member states of the EU—Belgium, Luxemburg and Ireland for example—provide tax havens for multinational corporations who therefore avoid paying tax in the UK. Indeed, the president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has recently been revealed as having abetted these corporate giants to achieve their aims when he was prime minister of Luxembourg. (Corporate lobbyists in Brussels, by the way, are much more influential than MEPs.) Clearly, Britain would be better off economically outside the EU.
The EU has only brought economic problems, not solutions—like membership in the Exchange Rate Mechanism, which cost the country billions; masses of red tape on industry and finance; not to mention the higher food prices caused by the Common Agricultural Policy or the disappearance of Britain’s fishing fleet, fishing communities and fish stocks into the maw of the CFP.
These policies also caused Britain to contribute ever-increasing sums annually to the EU budget (£21 billion gross today), while the overall cost of EU membership has been estimated by a variety of experts to be the equivalent of 4 percent of GDP (rising to 10 percent if opportunity costs are factored in). That is a huge sum of money (£40-100 billion annually).
On 24 Mar 2016 at 8:33pm Paul Newman wrote:
The original of this cut and paste cobblers is on the link. The cost of EU memebership is about £17 million per day as per fact checkers ( net) (3op per perosn). The cost of not being in is potentially limitless but the CBI put it at a conservative £3000 per family pa . That assumes a static economy thohugh and the real danger goes far far beyond that.
Where I do agree with the Prof Sked is that there is evfery reaosn to thinbk the EU would love to take the City within its borders and Brexit could easily be the starting pistol . Christ knows how we fund services after that .
Check it out here »
On 26 Mar 2016 at 8:04am George wrote:
Osborne
On 26 Mar 2016 at 8:05am Ringo wrote:
Paul you're a star. In your own sub atomic galaxy.
On 26 Mar 2016 at 5:15pm Christ wrote:
I don't know Paul. I've got better things to deal with this weekend.