Brexit consequences

[Spinflight]

Can't find the old one, despite a search. Hence a year on...

I started it to compare the doom and gloom predictions from people who should know better, especially the treasury, to actual observable facts.

Thus far the treasury predicted our borrowing costs would soar by over 130 points. In fact they're down about 100.

No trade deals possible before (I forget the date they said, was far in the future though) compared to actual negotiations beginning with the USA later this month with the president firmly behind them. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, South Korea and several others I've forgotten have shown a great desire for a deal quickly.

Ftse 100 and 250 are well up, just shy of 7500.

Best of all from a macro economic perspective is inflation touching 3%. When you are £1800 billion in debt rating that away with inflation is far preferable to actually paying it off.

Growth has dropped a bit, though nowhere near the instant recession that was predicted. Bit early to say though this is likely due to the referendum.

External investment is actually nicely up, with several major companies announcing various large commitments.

Things could be rosier, though it would be a struggle to describe them generally as bad, quite contrary to 'informed' opinions. Even the oecd recently ate their pre referendum words.

More word soup there!

We aren't weren't paying more into the NHS for political reasons, and after Brexit we will be paying even less into the NHS because we will have even less from our taxes. Not really rocket surgery.

This is even before we sell it all to the Americans in our desperation to show that we can trade with the rest of the world...

Is Azvedo not one of them there unelected, powerful, overpaid beurocrats we've heard so much about?

"vowed to ensure Britain will not face a .... " does not equal "everything is fine and dandy..." He is saying that there will not be a disaster BECAUSE he will be working very hard ("very intensely") to ensure that there isn't.

From your link, he also says:
"The global economy today is not in the best shape for us to be introducing turbulence." No shit. Almost like part of his job is to maintain confidence in world trade.

"Before the vote, Mr Azevedo was repeatedly warning about the difficulties Britain would face if it left the EU, including raising some questions about its membership of the organisation and its capacity to renegotiate the multitude of trade agreements previously signed on its behalf by the EU.
However, he did add that it was hard to anticipate how long it would take the UK to negotiate its new trade arrangements."

I do hope that there will be a transition period, however - I think this is what Azvedo is basing his "it wont be disaster" prediction on.
A transition period will give us time to negotiate all those wonderful new trade agreements, and I'll bet Azvedo won't be getting much sleep even then. No matter how strong you think our negotiating hand is, we will need time.

Thea do you support paying more into the NHS then? I assumed you would be opposed to it (blah blah something about New Labour Quangos blah bah Venezuela).

Thea:
And the last time I saw the Eurozone inflation rate, it was also around 1.9%.

Maybe those continually saying the Brexiteers have their head in the sand, should actually LOOK at what we are leaving, and in an effort to talk down the UK, ask themselves why they often make up 'stuff' to do it

But the UK is not leaving the Eurozone, Thea.
The UK is not a member of the Eurozone.

Why did you mention the Eurozone inflation rate?

So despite what the European Central Bank has been telling the French and Italians to do in reforming employment laws for years (and their politicians have tried and mainly failed) - or that Germany, France, and Italy tell us they need to reform those laws to accommodate the City employees moving to their countries - all this is 'meaningless'?

So once again, if not labour laws Eurozone employers say restricts their investment/hiring, why has the Eurozone not performed as well as the UK in GDP over the past 3-4 years, why is their combined unemployment level around twice ours despite their recent 'spurt' (in services jobs) - and why is it acceptable for the younger Eurozone workers to increasingly have to accept Temp Contracts??

Why are you so hot and bothered about the Eurozone?
The UK is not in the Eurozone, and never was.

Germany is in both the Eurozone and the EU and has the lowest youth unemployment rate in the Eurozone. Overall German unemployment is extremely low, second only to Czech unemployment in the EU.
How come?
Tell me how labour laws could improve in Germany to facilitate even more hiring.

Addressing Thea ^^

It's not just your grammar, Thea, it's your syntax too. It's especially your syntax.

Syntax is 'the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.'
en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/syntax

This isn't about personal growth. It's about forming sentences in such a way that your readers can understand what you are trying to say. Posting in garbled gobbledygook is a waste of your time.

The ‘one interest rate and currency fits all’ Eurozone contains the original, more mature, and largest economies, that are both comparable to the UK, and apparently a guide to what we will be ‘missing’. Thea

Again, here is the list of Eurozone countries:
Austria,
Belgium,
Cyprus,
Estonia,
Finland,
France,
Germany,
Greece,
Ireland,
Italy,
Latvia,
Lithuania,
Luxembourg,
Malta,
Netherlands,
Portugal,
Slovakia,
Slovenia,
Spain.

The UK will be leaving the EU, not the Eurozone.

Czechia is in the EU and not the Eurozone and has a lower unemployment rate than Germany, which is in both the Eurozone and the EU. Germany has enviable labour relations.

If ‘one interest rate and currency fits all’ is meant as a criticism, it could equally be used to criticise the fact that all regions of the UK share one interest rate and currency, despite enormous regional differences in their economic situations.

fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk-europe/
Hopefully, this article will tell you all you need to know about
(1) zero hours contracts around Europe, and
(2) the difficulty of comparing apples with oranges.

There is a table in yellow that shows where zero hours or broadly comparable terms of employment are 'allowed', 'allowed but heavily regulated', 'not generally allowed', and 'not used/rare'.

Despite the difficulty of comparison, the article concludes:
Not all have an explicit ban, but it’s correct that most EU countries outlaw these contracts, heavily restrict them, or don’t see them widely used. The UK is one of around half a dozen European countries where zero hours contracts are both legal and fairly common.

experts schmexperts - Former Bank of England policy maker, economist and PIIE (Peterson Institute for International Economics) president Adam Posen talks about impact of Brexit

Squishy

Re your obvious deflection ”Thea do you support paying more into the NHS then? I assumed you would be opposed to it”

Based on a couple of your posts, I’m now realising why I possibly don’t answer all your posts as accused, as firstly when challenging the obvious Remainer politicking mantra ‘where is the NHS money’ when the UK is still contributing to the EU for years to come – you change the (thread) subject, currently to my thoughts on the NHS and UK domestic policies.

Secondly, if you don’t address your posts requesting answers like the one below, how can another poster know that you are referring to them, as I for one do not recollect talking about an Azvedo, or can think why relevant to one of my posts.
”Is Azvedo not one of them there unelected, powerful, overpaid beurocrats we've heard so much about?”

FYI on the NHS, the UK will never be able to pay enough into the NHS, as firstly, although a necessity its an unwieldy beast with 1.5 million employees, and ‘the people’ put ever more demands on it i.e. our INCREASING booze, obesity, drugs, cosmetic surgery, and increase age (baby boomer) etc, often personal choice, problems.

So all the more reasons to pay our £10-£13 billion a year into a UK exchequer and local authorities, currently spending nearly £790 billion a year in keeping all our services going, rather than someone else services or subsidies.

Thea Roberto Azevedo is the head of the WTO, named and interviewed in the article you linked to.
hth.

I don't think the NHS comment was a deflection - you brought it up before me. I was not asking where the money is (I know we have not left yet), I was asking if you wanted to see that money diverted into the NHS (forgetting for a moment that the potential lost tax revenue would eclipse the amount saved). Because it would be deeply disingenuous for you to complain about too much money being spent on public services at some times, then calling for more money to be spent on public services at others.
As for me not always pasting the pp I'm referring to - why? Surely you can remember your own posts and realise what I'm referring too? It might be a bit confusing for a lurker dipping into the thread on the last page, but tbh I pity them anyway.

So all the more reasons to pay our £10-£13 billion a year into a UK exchequer and local authorities

As previously pointed out - when we crash out of the single market and customs union, our tax take will be down by considerably more than that, so there is even less likelyhood of any extra money for the NHS than there is under the current Tory administration which seems to want to privatise it anyway.

CardinalSin

Please read my 'previously pointed out' trade is not going to crash, no matter what - and there is always far more affordable money for the NHS under a Tory government - especially when the next Labour government isn't even pretending to be business friendly, as it can perpetually tax our economy and public services to 'growth'.

Mathsanxiety
Regarding your ideologically frustrated postings of EU economic denial, Eurozone s-p-a-c-e f-i-l-l-e-r-s and personal need to attack others opposing input, starting with;

”Why did you mention the Eurozone inflation rate?”

”Why are you so hot and bothered about the Eurozone?”

Generally speaking, as I explained with the following paragraph posted on the previous page, I often use the Eurozone for similarity to the UK economy and for someone of my apparent limited ability, the data (under one central bank) is easier to access.

The ‘one interest rate and currency fits all’ Eurozone contains the original, more mature, and largest economies, that are both comparable to the UK, and apparently a guide to what we will be ‘missing’.

In answering another posters negative Brexit comment on UK inflation, I used a recent Eurozone inflation rate, and so in a mature debate, rather than list the Eurozone list of countries space filler, you could have either challenged the Eurozone inflation rate, or provide the EU’s inflation rate.

Taking your other points in such beautiful English, one by one;

1. Germany; why I don’t ‘mention them’ and their labour laws, obviously the economy a Conservative government aspires to, rather than the 2nd or 3rd largest economies France and Italy, now shown up by recent labour reforms in Spain – but as this article closing with, for some un social - economic reasons, the French and Italians in the main, prefer security ina job than worrying about those without a job. Nice.

Well the answer is now clear, the German economy is structurally very different to every other economy in the Eurozone, and the other key original Common Market members/voices apparently don’t want to change, so hardly representative in an EU or Eurozone vs UK debate – until at least France and Italy move closer to the UK structure, never mind Germany.

Clearly now the European Central Bank multi-year project to flood QE type money into the Eurozone is baring some fruit, its only NOW we hear from the Europhiles how ‘strong’ the Eurozone economy is becoming vs the UK, but feel free to use the UK similar economies of Czech stats when analysing the two e.g. unemployment.

On German labour laws, the Germans have said that they will need to loosen their current laws to facilitate their desire to receive City institutions in Frankfurt, so clearly not ‘perfect’, and if not somehow ring fenced, lets see what that opens up for other industries within Germany wanting the same treatment.

more

Mathsanxiety

1. Your apparently serious comparison between the ‘economies’ of the UK regions and 19 Eurozone members, once again I would suggest that your EU political ideology is seriously interfering with your economic common sense.

Firstly a more flexible UK central bank has the power to currency and interest rate act for 65 million citizens, versus the ECB’s 341 million in the 19 Eurozone non tax etc harmonised countries WITHOUT even a common language – and if you try to tell me that the a one currency and interest rate in such a staunch anti-inflation Germany will always suit France and Italy, never mind the more ‘deck chair’ economies, you will need to qualify that statement

1. The UK Zero Hours comparison with EU high unemployment and Temp Contract employment, within your link comparing Zero Hours here and in Europe, are you trying to say that a significant some, or all of the Temp Contracts, that apparently over 50% of the Eurozone youth are currently on, are ZERO HOURS – or is that a rather tricksy attempt to brush over a significant Eurozone problem?

• How can any Europhile not see the huge social problems of both a high unemployment rate and such widespread insecure Temp employment with their young penalised the most – never mind that the worst offenders are also some of the largest economies – and so will need to annually pay into the EU billions of Euros more (NET), to keep the project going?

• How can a so called large united trade block in the 21st century exist, never mind prosper, if its labour laws discourages companies to ‘risk’ investing and employing workers, when the social “priority is to defend the already protected at the expense of the rising number of excluded”?

“If a Eurozone financial crisis is to be avoided, Italy and France need structural reforms - and quickly”

”In Italy, 15 million people out of a population of 60 million now live in some form of deprivation, including over 8 million in a condition of serious economic hardship. In France, millions of long-term unemployed and young people especially those without qualifications face little prospect of employment.”

"trade is not going to crash, no matter what"

No, but it will be severely more costly, and reduced, leading to considerably less tax take.

"and there is always far more affordable money for the NHS under a Tory government"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Feeling slightly dizzy now, Thea.

I honestly have no idea what you are going on about. I have read your post of Sun 30-Jul-17 17:21:32 that was addressed to me several times now, and quite honestly, life is too short to waste time trying to decipher it all.

If you want me to respond to you, you are going to have to post in coherent English.

Not this:
Firstly a more flexible UK central bank has the power to currency and interest rate act for 65 million citizens, versus the ECB’s 341 million in the 19 Eurozone non tax etc harmonised countries WITHOUT even a common language – and if you try to tell me that the a one currency and interest rate in such a staunch anti-inflation Germany will always suit France and Italy, never mind the more ‘deck chair’ economies, you will need to qualify that statement

Brexit border chaos will cause huge delays and cost £1bn a year

FYI on the NHS, the UK will never be able to pay enough into the NHS, as firstly, although a necessity its an unwieldy beast with 1.5 million employees, and ‘the people’ put ever more demands on it i.e. our INCREASING booze, obesity, drugs, cosmetic surgery, and increase age (baby boomer) etc, often personal choice, problems.
[Thea]

www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2016/01/how-does-nhs-spending-compare-health-spending-internationally
On the UK's NHS spending:
(It's less than most other western EU member states).

Compared to OECD countries there is also a gap. Omitting the United States (which heavily distorts the weighted average due to its relatively high health spend and its very high GDP), the OECD spend is 9.1 per cent[4]. For the UK to match this would require total spending to reach £163 billion – an additional 15 per cent or £21 billion – by 2020/21 over current spending plans...

...Whatever the flaws of international comparisons, it’s clear the UK is currently a relatively low spender on health care – as the Barker Commission pointed out – with a prospect of sinking further down the international league tables. The question is increasingly not so much whether it is sustainable to spend more – after all, many countries already manage that and have done for decades. Rather, it is whether it is sustainable for our spending to remain so comparatively low, given the improvements in the quality of care and outcomes we want and expect from our health services.

The term 'personal choice' is problematic.

Squishy

Re your ”Because it would be deeply disingenuous for you to complain about too much money being spent on public services at some times, then calling for more money to be spent on public services at others.”

Once again putting words in other posters mouths to create a negativity, as I just remind people how much the UK currently spends a year (£790 billion with currently £47 billion a year of that total via budget deficit spending) and how that has to be earned each year via the private sector – and for those worried about what Brexit could do to our finances, there are far more knowledgeable people worried what the ‘alternative’ UK government policies will do to bugger THOSE tax receipts up – with the huge increased cost of the State already announced, no cuts mentioned, and tax rises that will reduce out private sector investment/employment/tax take.

Potential Brexit ‘costs’ are clearly an additional issue, but as both main parties are committed to Brexit in their last manifesto, the ADDITIONAL risk on sustainable public sector spending, are not with the current government.

Mathsanxiety

Regarding your posts;
”Feeling slightly dizzy now, Thea.”

”I honestly have no idea what you are going on about. I have read your post of Sun 30-Jul-17 17:21:32 that was addressed to me several times now, and quite honestly, life is too short to waste time trying to decipher it all.”

”If you want me to respond to you, you are going to have to post in coherent English.”

How curious that you cannot read my use of the English language when DIRECTLY taking on YOUR EU points, but you can when you want to attack the UK or its government ANOTHER way, via the NHS, which clearly shows ignorance, your agenda, possibly both.

On the NHS, I get your point that (without looking into too much detail) that other countries spend more on their health service than the UK, but current (rising) NHS spending can neither be immune from the mistakes, or lessons, of the recent past.

Where annually increased annual budgets, and the expensive additional debt encouraged via Private Finance Initiative (PFI) borrowing – will impact annual spending/services for DECADES to come - often failed to get to ‘front line’ services.

As mentioned earlier this is a Brexit, not an NHS deflection thread, but I’ll use other English to make my case and leave it there, as there is little upside debating with you when rather than acknowledge the facts, you prefer the discussion board equivalent of upsetting the chess pieces before the game reaches a conclusion.

“Blair's Legacy - Health"

“No government has ever invested more in the health service than Labour under Blair and yet the NHS is mired in deficits with patients taking to the streets to prevent the closure of their local hospitals.”

“Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern, said: "I feel sorry for Blair, but the money has been wasted."

“This seems to be the crux of the issue. The public was promised record amounts of money would flow into the NHS. And so it has.”

“But the problem is it has not necessarily gone where many would expect.”

“Once pay hikes - consultants and GPs have both received lucrative increases - covering for deficits and rising drug costs are taken into account, the 7% budget increases actually equate to about 2% for services, according to the King's Fund.”

”Surveys have repeatedly shown that when asked what they think of the NHS people reply it is in crisis.”

“Private Finance Initiative where did it go wrong?”

“Tony Blair has defended the spread of private finance initiatives under Labour as seven NHS trusts face administration as they struggle to repay large debts from PFI deals.”

“Labour has duty to resolve 'mess' of hospital PFI deals, says Jeremy Corbyn”

A new administration coming in looks to BUILD upon the spending already baked in to public services, not urgently needing to implement correcting reforms, whether the government’s annual budget was in surplus (as in 2001), or in a still upward trending budget deficit spiral expected to be £167 billion in 2010 – but at least the 2001 former would have given this government from 2010 the spending options Labour had.

math valiant effort but it could be time to give up now. I really doubt anyone is getting anything from this thread (apart from the odd 50 cents here and there!)

Previous to the NHS deflection, we were comparing the employment conditions in the Eurozone to the UK; that for those saying we should remain in the EU (with open borders) should be of interest, if brave enough to take on the points, rather than make silly excuses not to.

Apparently when its shown above that far from the Leavers being sold lies on £350 million coming into the NHS, its the Remainer politicians like Clegg stating that the EU is our children's jobs FUTURE, when its not even working for the CURRENT EU youths, that are the outright purveyors of mis-truths.

So if you mean no one is getting 'the EU is all good, and UK all bad' propaganda from this thread, for once you are right.

Remembering 20-25% of UK City workers will only be moving to Eurozone countries because the EU regulatory changes will be making them do so in order to continue doing business, not because they want to.

As 23 EU cities have a bun fight who should get the relocated EU agencies when told they have to leave the UK;

“UK set to poach top EU staff amid mutiny as 75pc tell Brussels they don't want to leave London after Brexit”

”Britain should poach top EU scientists from the European medicines regulator post-Brexit, Tory MPs have said after it was revealed a majority of its staff want to remain in London.”

”MEPs have been warned in a behind closed-doors meeting in Brussels that three quarters of employees working at the European Medicines Agency do not want to leave Britain after its withdrawal from the bloc.”

How curious that you cannot read my use of the English language when DIRECTLY taking on YOUR EU points, but you can when you want to attack the UK or its government ANOTHER way, via the NHS, which clearly shows ignorance, your agenda, possibly both.

As I said a few times, I have great difficulty understanding your prose. That is, all of your prose. I am not alone in this. If I manage to respond to any of your points it is only because I spend a lot of time attempting to wring some meaning from the garbled sentences.

The one I have C&P'd in this post is by comparison quite easy to understand. You can do it if you try.

I see you referring to the NHS and accusing me of having some sort of agenda - do the authors of the articles I linked also have an agenda? Are you an agenda-free zone?
Once pay hikes - consultants and GPs have both received lucrative increases - covering for deficits and rising drug costs are taken into account, the 7% budget increases actually equate to about 2% for services, according to the King's Fund.
Yes indeed - this is because the situation was so dire when Labour started increasing expenditure that most of the money went to keep doctors and consultants from emigrating, to trusts that were running on fumes, and of course drug prices rose considerably.

Are you suggesting Labour should have spent less money? Are you suggesting that the mythical '£350 million' would be wasted if it magically materialised and was spent, or that any other Brexit windfall would meet a similar fate? Given the current serious staffing shortage, which will be exacerbated when staff move out of the UK after Brexit, how would you go about attracting and retaining staff?

PFI is the natural outcome of the philosophical stance that 'There is no such thing as society'. The reasoning behind PFI was that simply writing a cheque for hospital building and expansion and improvement of equipment and technology was not politically feasible.

PFI has been marked from the start by unbelievable incompetence - an amateurish managerial approach that leaves things to work out by themselves. The fundamental idea itself is a recipe for disaster. It is very tempting to remind Leavers that the same people who ran the NHS onto the rocks, conceived the preposterous 'solution' to the problem, presided over it and continue to do so are conducting the Brexit negotiations and will be navigating the state through the choppy waters of the post-Brexit world. Are you happy to trust your future to such a pack of incompetents?

I see also that you are continuing to insist I haven't answered what I managed to make out to be your points on work conditions in what you insist on calling 'the Eurozone'. If you're having difficulty reading or understanding my posts or any articles, graphs or tables I have linked, please speak up.

It's amusing to see the alleged refusal to move on the part of EMA staff (at this point without any idea where they will be moving, it must be added, so they are clearly smart people) hailed as a major victory for the UK. Perhaps a few hundred EMA staff can work as NHS doctors when EU nationals up sticks and leave in droves as they see their rights and the rights of their spouses and children eroded after Brexit. Or they could take up the jobs vacated by EU nationals leaving university science, medical and tech faculties thanks to the same fears about their futures in a post Brexit UK (but let's not get too carried away here - EU research funding is going to dry up so those research positions may not even exist in a few years).