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  1. #21926
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hugh Cow View Post
    The only more useless Brit than him I can think of is you.
    I’m astonished that you could have understood what had been said in that clip, given it was articulated intelligently and logically in terms that were expressed in complete sentences which were coherent and syntactically correct.

    John Major won an election despite the best endeavours of his Tory “bastards”.

    He’s a good chap, you are a pillock

  2. #21927
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    Quote Originally Posted by Switch View Post


    SA chooses to highlight Italian manufacturing figures in a gdp comparison. Because that best suits his narrative.

    s.
    Chas, don’t be a silly arse. You in describing the EU’s imaginary fragility cited Italy as a broken down economy of no value.

    I was merely reminding you, in your ignorance, that it is a manufacturing economy considerably stronger than that of the UK. Something that you clearly did not know given you still wear those blinkers concealing the truth Britain is a busted flush. You silly twat, you still assumed Britain made more than those Eyeties, didn’t you.

    Incidentally, Greece is rebounding magnificently from its decade of misery arising from inherent tax evasion and kindred handicaps and its growth projections are encouraging. Clearly, in intellectual terms the Greek electorate is far superior to that of the English given they weren’t so fucking stupid as to quit the wealthiest democratic economic bloc on the planet.

  3. #21928
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    wealthiest
    is it? is it running a collective balance of payments surplus or are its states largely funded through Govt debt?

  4. #21929
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    I’m astonished that you could have understood what had been said in that clip, given it was articulated intelligently and logically in terms that were expressed in complete sentences which were coherent and syntactically correct.

    John Major won an election despite the best endeavours of his Tory “bastards”.

    He’s a good chap, you are a pillock
    And unfortunately you are an angry old irishman desperately trying to show you have risen above your station in life. Sadly your word salads do not fool anyone. Your grip on economics is about as strong as Cyrilles grip on popularity. You seem to have missed the point that many Brits voted to be free of EU regulation. The lack of accountability as evidence with the latest corruption scandal and the fact that everything require a consent by all rather than a majority assures it will all rely on the weakest link to get anything passed. Any further membership will be from even more recipient countries desperate for EU charity. Remind us which was the last country that joined the EU as a donor country. BTW how is the uniform EU immigration policy going.

  5. #21930
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Chas, don’t be a silly arse. You in describing the EU’s imaginary fragility cited Italy as a broken down economy of no value.

    I was merely reminding you, in your ignorance, that it is a manufacturing economy considerably stronger than that of the UK. Something that you clearly did not know given you still wear those blinkers concealing the truth Britain is a busted flush. You silly twat, you still assumed Britain made more than those Eyeties, didn’t you.

    Incidentally, Greece is rebounding magnificently from its decade of misery arising from inherent tax evasion and kindred handicaps and its growth projections are encouraging. Clearly, in intellectual terms the Greek electorate is far superior to that of the English given they weren’t so fucking stupid as to quit the wealthiest democratic economic bloc on the planet.
    Your suppositions are your problem, not mine. I listed countries that are broken, and or unhappy with membership. Your attempt to disabuse others of those facts is disingenuous and therefore irrelevant.

  6. #21931
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hugh Cow View Post
    You seem to have missed the point that many Brits voted to be free of EU regulation.
    Do you really believe that?

    I think you'll find it is more likely many Brits voted for Brexit based on media hype and empty promises.

  7. #21932
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Indeed, he is. He, like all Brexiteers, is really that stupid.
    Let's see . . . MikeTooTsStrglshit, Taxidriver, HC . . . Makes sense.

    Speaking of which . . .
    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    For gods sake man, take off those blinkers, open your eyes, discard your illogical prejudices and see the light.

  8. #21933
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    I was reading on the BBC website about a shortage of veg in Brexit Britain, especially tomatoes, and was wondering why there was no such shortage where I am in deepest Bavaria.

    An answer from the European biased media, "The New European":

    Tomato shortage leaves Brexit Britain red-faced

    Where are all the tomatoes? This is the latest – albeit unexpected – question from the Brexit fallout.
    Recently, people have taken to social media to share photos of empty sections across UK supermarkets. Where tomatoes are usually found, empty trays now reside. It’s the result of a vast shortage in supplies, owing partly to a decision by Morocco – which post-Brexit, provides a quarter of Britain’s tomatoes – to restrict supplies in an attempt to control prices.

    The supply shortage has been caused by what agriculture produce-focused media outlet Fruitnet is calling a “perfect storm”. Extreme weather conditions in Spain and Morocco, flooding and cold temperatures have all added to the decline in tomato supplies to the UK. Ferries cancelled due to these conditions have also had an impact.
    As a result, prices have soared, rising to three times the normal rates, which explains Morroco’s decision to restrict its exports to the UK.
    As ever, this new embarrassment for Britain comes with a Brexit angle. Because for every shared social media photo of empty shelves here, there’s one of tomatoes on sale in EU countries. If they’re in such short supply, why?

    The crisis has coincided with the start of the National Farmers Union conference in Birmingham, and one farming group is partly blaming you-know-what.

    In a video, Save British Farming chair Liz Webster said: “The reason that we have food shortages in Britain, and that we on’t have food shortages in Spain – or anywhere else in the European Union – is because of Brexit, and also because of this disastrous Conservative government that has no interest in food production, farming or even food supply.”

    Although Britain did sign a trade deal with Morocco in October 2019 – hence all those tomatoes in times of plenty – it’s not as valuable much to the North African country as the EU-Morroco Association Agreement, which was signed in 1996 and came into effect on 1 March 2000. This set up a free trade area between Morocco and 27 EU countries, and was built on with an extra trade agreement in October 2012.

    It all makes the EU Morocco’s largest trade partner, accounting for 56% of its goods and trade in 2019. It’s an essential relationship, one not to be toyed with. Hence the country’s surplus tomatoes will be supplying the EU’s 27 independent countries – closer to home, after all, before the UK.
    Yet there should have been a saving grace for Britain – the large polytunnels in Kent which supply many supermarkets with fruit and vegetables. Why aren’t they delivering?

    A government decision to exclude them from help with energy bills has meant that the heaters have not gone on this year, while staffing levels are also lower because EU workers have gone home.

    While acknowledging the impact of poor weather, former Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King told LBC: “North Kent, in Thanet, [had] the largest greenhouses in Europe, which used to be full of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. But those greenhouses have suffered, really, from two big things. I hate to say it… but it’s a sector that’s been hurt horribly by Brexit.”
    It looks like it’s another case of rotten (or rather no) tomatoes for Brexit Britain.

    https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/tomato-shortage-leaves-brexit-britain-red-faced/



    Brexit just keeps on giving...



  9. #21934
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    Do you really believe that?

    I think you'll find it is more likely many Brits voted for Brexit based on media hype and empty promises.
    Hugh has no idea wtf he's talking about, as he has repeatedly proven.

  10. #21935
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    will they won't they?

    Sunak could announce Northern Ireland protocol deal on Monday

    Move would come after four months of intense negotiations and mark an end to two-year standoff with EU

    Rishi Sunak is poised to announce a deal to end the protracted row over the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol as soon as Monday, the Guardian has been told.


    The move would come after four months of intense negotiations and mark an end to a two-year standoff with the EU. But in a huge political gamble for the prime minister, it may trigger a fresh battle with pro-Brexit Conservative backbenchers in the European Research Group (ERG) and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP).


    Tentatively said to have been named the “Windsor agreement”, the deal would overhaul post-Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland. No 10 hopes it will also pave the way for the re-establishment of an assembly in Stormont given power-sharing has been suspended since the DUP’s first minister resigned over the protocol in February 2022.


    According to reports on Friday night, Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, was scheduled to meet King Charles on Saturday as a final flourish in sealing the deal but that was cancelled earlier in the day.


    MPs have been put on a three-line whip to attend parliament on Monday and cabinet ministers are braced for a potential conference call over the weekend. Discussions are still under way in Downing Street about inviting Von der Leyen to the UK for a handshake to seal the deal.


    Von der Leyen and Sunak spoke on Friday afternoon – their third meeting in a week – fuelling speculation that a deal was at the “presentation” stage.


    Downing Street sources did not confirm whether a deal would be announced in the coming days, but stressed talks were continuing and that any discussion of timings was “purely speculative”.


    Earlier this week, prominent MPs in the ERG, including its deputy chair, David Jones, warned that if Sunak’s deal involved a tweak of the existing arrangements it would amount to nothing more than a “glossary on how to implement the protocol”.


    The group has said it is in “lockstep” with the DUP, which has indicated it will not support the deal unless it ends the application of EU law in Northern Ireland, which is the bedrock of the protocol and highly unlikely to happen.


    Government sources claimed the prime minister was relaxed about the threat of a backlash from the ERG and the DUP because he believed the deal would address all their concerns including checks on goods and food produce entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain and the constitutional right to be treated the same as any other country within the UK on trade matters.


    The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, held an unscheduled meeting with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, on Thursday, according to one insider. They said Heaton-Harris was determined to go for the face-to-face summit to reassure Brussels the UK government was “fully aware” of the ERG’s anxieties and would be pressing ahead despite the backlash. “This was a reassurance mission, not a rescue mission,” the source said.

    more: Sunak could announce Northern Ireland protocol deal on Monday | Brexit | The Guardian

  11. #21936
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    well its taken a while and may yet fall foul of the DUP

    Brexit latest news: Sunak 'confident' deal addresses DUP's concerns as he arrives in Northern Ireland

    Rishi Sunak said he is "confident" his new Brexit deal addresses the concerns of the DUP as the Prime Minister travelled to Belfast to sell his agreement to the people of Northern Ireland.


    The Prime Minister said that his so-called "Windsor Framework" represented a "huge step forward" and he now intends to give people the "time and space" to digest the legal text of the agreement.


    Asked about the DUP, Mr Sunak told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I have spent a lot of time listening to unionist communities from Northern Ireland indeed all parties that I have engaged with because this is about everybody and I have taken the time to understand their concerns.


    "I am confident that the Windsor Framework addresses those concerns. But I also respect that everybody including unionist representatives of all parties will need the time and the space to consider the detail."


    The Prime Minister's comments in Belfast came after Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, said this morning that his party will not be rushed into making a final decision on whether to support or oppose the deal and "we will take our time".


    He said the DUP must "ensure that what the Prime Minister has said is matched by what is actually in the agreement itself".


    Mr Sunak unveiled his deal to improve the Northern Ireland Protocol at a press conference in Windsor yesterday alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. He said it will deliver smooth flowing trade and protect Northern Ireland's place in the UK.

    Brexit latest news: Sunak 'confident' deal addresses DUP's concerns as he arrives in Northern Ireland

  12. #21937
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    The EU has discovered that it needs Britain more than it thought


    Brussels faced a revolt over its scientific alliances

    AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD

    28 February 2023 • 3:56pm
    Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

    Vladimir Putin is the Godfather of the Windsor Framework. Full-scale war in Europe for the first time since 1945 is what has made it possible to detoxify the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    Few people are aware that the UK extended its world-class cyberwarfare deterrent to the whole of Eastern and Central Europe at the outset of the conflict, raising the stakes for the Kremlin if it tried to take down their critical infrastructure with cyber attacks.

    Nor are they aware that the UK extended a solidarity guarantee to Sweden and Finland very early and at a critical juncture, offering de facto Article 5 protection even though they were not in NATO. But the significance of this was not lost on the governments of these countries, and they have a voice in EU affairs through multiple channels.

    Commission pettifogging over the trade of seed potatoes and sausages from one part of the UK to another had become surreal. “Only Putin will be happy,” said Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki last year, calling for an end to the distraction.

    Events vindicated the British view that Putin could be checked and that Ukraine should be backed to the hilt. That put us in tight alignment with front line states, the Nordics, and Holland. The divide was not between the UK and the EU: the line of cleavage is and was within the EU.


    Much wishful thinking in Paris, Brussels, and the Monnet nexus of integrationist think-tanks has been ruthlessly exposed. The war has dashed hopes of a European defence and foreign policy “superpower” emerging now that the EU is no longer held back by Britain, acting in eternal character as de Gaulle’s Trojan Horse for the Americans.

    Little has come of Emmanuel Macron’s “European sovereignty” or his defence condominium with the Germans. As soon as matters became serious, Berlin turned to Washington. Olaf Scholz is buying new F-18 fighter jets from the US, undermining the Franco-German FCAS joint fighter project. The Italians are working on a new combat aircraft with the UK and Japan.

    “Of the momentum that Brexit was expected to give EU security and defence policy, not a peep can be heard,” said Le Monde Diplomatique.

    Mr Macron has drawn the inevitable conclusion and buried the hatchet over Brexit, something easier for him to do with the calm and amenable Rishi Sunak. The Entente is back. The French and the British are destined to be comrades, as they have since the 1850s in the great questions of diplomacy.

    Personally, I am stunned by Mr Sunak’s deal on the Protocol. As Lord Mandelson said, it is “as good as it gets”. David Davis on the other side of the Brexit bench called it a “spectacular negotiating success”. Indeed it is.

    It settles a bone of contention with the Biden White House. It should unlock pent-up business investment by foreign firms, although the Government could unlock a great deal more if it abandoned the coming rise in corporation tax to 25pc and acceded to the CBI’s plea for full expensing.

    Yes, the European Court remains in the shadows, but governing a reduced sliver of the Acquis, with no “reach-back” into British economic policy through state aid rules. The larger political point is that Brussels no longer wishes to use the Protocol to demonstrate hegemonic power. That episode is over.


    The deal clears the way for Britain to rejoin Horizon Europe for science and research, and the nuclear Euratom programme.

    Or, put differently, it allows the EU to extricate itself from a destructive policy that was doing serious harm to European science and was leading to a generalised revolt by research institutions and universities against the Commission itself. Brussels discovered that in sanctioning the UK, it was sanctioning Europe.

    Let us be clear what happened. Horizon is a genuinely pan-European scheme. British participation is written into the original Brexit text. Until yesterday, the EU was refusing to fulfil its legal commitment.

    It has been holding science hostage, using it as a political pressure tool. It has done the same to Switzerland, kicking the Swiss out of EU science in order to punish them for other sins – a move described as “absurd” and “almost spiteful” by one leading figure in European research.

    Was it Moscow-educated Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission’s Brexit enforcer, who chose to weaponise science? Whoever it was, he or she did not understand the nature of cross-border cooperation in research, or the pivotal role of British and Swiss institutions in Europe’s scientific ecosystem.

    “It’s a punishment for all of us, a punishment for Europe, a sadomasochistic decision,” said Professor Antoine Petit, head of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a member of the Stick to Science campaign that includes ten Nobel laureates from across Europe.

    He says CNRS alone was involved in over 1,000 projects with UK or Swiss researchers under the last round of the Horizon scheme. “Every domain will be impacted by this decision,” he said.

    Grants have been blocked. Projects are in limbo. Suddenly, scientists on the Continent find themselves on the wrong side of a political barrier when dealing with the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge or the Torus fusion labs in Culham.

    The European University Association said EU research policy had become "arbitrary and obscure: the Commission can no longer claim to be the adult in the room”. The universal cry from European science has been to stop this folly immediately.

    Britain is not a poor relation in this domain. It has the highest ranking universities in Europe by far. It has big beasts of funding research such as the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK. Without British (and Swiss) participation, Europe risks being relegated to a second-tier backwater in global science.

    Michelle Donelan, the UK’s Science and Technology Secretary, upped the ante earlier this month, letting it be known that this country was preparing (reluctantly) to activate its “Plan B” and switch to new scientific alliances.

    “We are more than ready to go it alone, working with science powerhouses like the US, Switzerland and Japan. I will not sit idly by while our researchers are sidelined,” she wrote.

    Horizon is an excellent programme – the sort of Europe that the British always wanted – but it is excellent for a reason. European scientists were so disenchanted with the Commission’s research directorate – top-down, bureaucratic, glacially slow, and run by ideologues who micromanaged the use of funds – that they drifted away in the early 2000s and formed their own cross-border network. It became the European Research Council.

    The Commission learned a hard lesson. It changed its fundamental approach to science and brought the dissidents back into the EU family. The ERC and Horizon have together evolved into a European success story precisely they are sui generis.

    It is entirely desirable that Britain should retake its place in this structure. This is not because it needs hand-outs from Brussels. The Government has pledged to match the pre-Brexit levels of research grants whatever happens. Horizon is valuable because it is the glue that holds everything together in European science collaboration.

    The moral of the Horizon saga is that the EU needs the UK more than Brussels supposed in the first flush of post-Brexit triumphalism, just as it needs the UK more than it ever imagined to prevent Putin reconstituting the Russian tsarist empire.

    Mr Sunak had the personality and good judgement to seize the moment, and so did Ursula von der Leyen. Hats off to both of them.

    This article is an extract from The Telegraph’s Economic Intelligence newsletter. Sign up here to get exclusive insight from two of the UK’s leading economic commentators – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Jeremy Warner – delivered direct to your inbox every Tuesday.




  13. #21938
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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    The EU has discovered that it needs Britain more than it thought
    That really is funny. Thanks, taxidriver.





    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    The ERC and Horizon have together evolved into a European success story precisely they are sui generis.

    It is entirely desirable that Britain should retake its place in this structure. This is not because it needs hand-outs from Brussels. The Government has pledged to match the pre-Brexit levels of research grants whatever happens. Horizon is valuable because it is the glue that holds everything together in European science collaboration.

  14. #21939
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    A Lost Decade Worse Than Japan’s Threatens to Change UK Forever

    Told ya so...

    Crumbling infrastructure and overstretched services are symbols of Britain’s economic stagnation since the 2016 Brexit vote

    As the UK buckles under the strain of anemic growth, strikes, fraying infrastructure and record hospital waiting lists, Jason James thinks back to another economic crisis that dominated an earlier part of his banking career: Japan’s infamous “lost decade.”

    James, 58, spent the 1990s working for HSBC Securities in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi financial district. It was a period that suffered a 60% slump in stocks and a collapse in land values that led to zombie banks and an economy overwhelmed by bankruptcies and bad debt.

    But his conclusion is that Britain in the 2020s feels worse.

    “The system kept working, the trains kept running,” he said. “I don't think you ever had the sense that everything was falling apart in the way you've got here.”

    His perception of economic decay is backed by the numbers. Bloomberg analysis of official data and Bank of England forecasts shows UK growth will average 0.8% a year between 2016 — when Britons narrowly voted to leave the European Union — and 2025. That’s below the average 1% in Japan from 1992 to 2001, the “lost decade” often cited amid warnings of “Japanification” whenever a country endures a prolonged slowdown.

    The UK is on Track for a Worse Decade Than 1990s Japan

    Yet that stigma is only part of the problem in the UK, which faces handicaps including soaring inflation that make it a very different economic environment to 1990s Japan.

    Dire productivity, crumbling public services and a worsening labor supply form the backdrop to Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt’s budget statement on Wednesday, and despite a recent run of stronger-than-expected growth, point to a long-term drag on an economy in which animal spirits are fading. Had the UK maintained the pace of growth it enjoyed before the 2008 global financial crisis, Britons would now have on average about £8,000 ($9,600) more in disposable income. The median salary was £33,000 last year.

    The shift down the gears also risks undermining Britain more broadly, from lost dynamism in London to a lack of sway relative to the US, European Union and China on trade and climate change.

    It won’t be easily reversed. Japan effectively spent its way out of its asset crash and banking crisis, but after the global financial crisis and the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as the market turmoil triggered during Liz Truss’s brief premiership, Hunt is likely to reiterate the UK can’t afford to go down the stimulus route again.

    It means people who experienced Japan’s stagnation and Britain’s troubles today are likely to continue to see a stark difference.

    “Government debt kept rising,” said James, who co-wrote The Political Economy of Japanese Financial Markets in 1999 and is now director general of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London.

    Referring to strikes in the National Health Service and across the UK public sector, he said that in Japan “the hospitals and the ambulances and so on were still operating. In that sense, society kept working and keeps working even now.”

    Missing Out

    In reality, it's already been more than a decade of sub-par growth for the UK. The country's last really vigorous expansion began in the 1990s when Japan was still grappling with a banking crisis.

    Under the Labour government of Tony Blair, which came to power in 1997, Britain extended a stretch of economic growth that would last for 47consecutive quarters and then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown promised that “boom and bust” economic cycles were a thing of the past.

    Instead, the euphoria fed into the global financial crisis, and the collapse of Northern Rock Plc and bailout of other banks put the UK on a different trajectory. The UK has been treading water, initially due to poor productivity and the impact of government spending cuts, compounded by labor supply issues due to Brexit and the pandemic.

    The Bank of England doesn’t expect the picture to improve, at least during its current forecast period. It judged in February that potential growth — the economy’s speed limit before activity generates excess inflation — will weaken to just 0.7% in 2024 and 2025, a sharp slowdown from 1.7% in the 2010s and 2.7% between 1997-2007.

    Britons Will Be Left Thousands of Pounds Poorer

    Slower growth, and the poor productivity underlying it, are adding up to huge amounts of lost output. The difference between the pre-financial crisis 2.7% average growth from 1998 to 2007 and the current “lost decade” equates to about £800 billion in lost GDP, and £300 billion a year in lost tax receipts.

    Using more modest growth figures, the average 2.1% from 2010 to 2015, the comparison reveals about £250 billion of lost output. Had that growth trend continued, the average Briton would have about £2,400 more in disposable income.

    “The difference between, say, 2% productivity growth and 0.7% productivity growth doesn’t seem very big if you look at it in isolation. But these things accumulate,” said Kevin Loane, senior economist at Fathom Consulting. “Over time, governments and citizens face fewer choices. Climate versus health or education versus war. So really, this is the defining economic challenge of our time.”

    Growing Pains

    The struggle to get Britain growing has become a political obsession, especially for the ruling Conservatives, who according to polls face a trouncing from voters having overseen a period of national decline. One Tory MP, who asked not to be named, said the party’s focus on Europe and pursuit of Brexit meant it had effectively squandered 13 years in office.

    The UK is the only Group of Seven economy that is still smaller than before the pandemic and appeared to be singled out when the International Monetary Fund handed it one of the biggest downgrades in its latest forecasts. According to EY’s latest annual attractiveness survey, France has taken Britain’s crown as the top destination for foreign investment in Europe, in terms of projects. France also overtook the UK to become Europe’s biggest stock market last year, and London is grappling with companies including Arm Ltd. and CRH Plc opting to list in the US instead.

    For Chris Scicluna, an ex-Treasury official who covered Japan during the 1997 Asian financial crisis and now heads economic research at Daiwa Capital Markets in London, it’s the lack of investment — as well as the strikes and overall feeling that things aren’t working in the UK — that stand out. Just getting on a train underscores the difference, he said.

    Japanese infrastructure “was good and still is good,” he said. “You sense that you're in an affluent economy, which again is not something necessarily you get in this country anymore.”
    Officials in Tokyo responded to stagnation and deflation with huge stimulus, which ultimately made Japan the world’s most indebted country as a share of output at the end of the 1990s, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

    But after Truss’s premiership unraveled at least in part because traders recoiled at the scale of tax cuts in her “growth plan,” her successor, Rishi Sunak, and Hunt have made putting the public finances on a sustainable footing their priority.

    Slow Decline

    Still, despite her dramatic demise, Truss’s warning that the UK faces a managed decline without a dramatic change of course is gaining traction across Westminster, including in the opposition Labour Party.

    “We need growth, and all the main parties are coming forward with plans,” said Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, who worked on the government’s industrial strategy and policy to “level up” poorer areas of the UK. But he said more details are needed on how to meet the goal of closing regional disparities and revitalizing industry.

    A major problem is that what many economists say the UK must do to get back on track — watering down Brexit rules that stifled trade with the EU, planning reforms and more migration — is politically difficult. Double-digit inflation also means monetary policy is stuck on a restrictive setting as the Bank of England seeks to constrain demand.

    But the immediate issue is the government is stuck firmly in firefighting mode. Amid fierce pressure from the bond markets in the fall, Hunt penciled in major spending restraints and tax rises in a belt-tightening that has been dubbed “austerity 2.0,” after the Conservative-led government dramatically cut spending when they came to power in 2010. It’s a legacy the Tories — and the country — have yet to shake off.

    The chancellor left himself just £9 billion of headroom against his fiscal rules and is unlikely to have much more to play with on Wednesday. A long list of expensive demands — including a likely extension of current levels of household energy support — leave little room for growth-enhancing policies such as more funding for childcare.

    Grand ambitions including a planned high-speed rail link from London to northern England have already been scaled back due to costs, undermining the key Conservative “leveling up” agenda. The government is trying to end labor disputes from nurses to teachers, and more than 7 million people are on a waiting list for routine NHS health care.

    “It's not just what's happened in the economy, it's what's happened for social welfare, the NHS, education,” said Janet Hunter, a professor of Japanese economic history at the London School of Economics who lived there in the 1990s. “You do feel in this country there are so many aspects of it that seem to be falling apart.”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...nge-uk-forever

  15. #21940
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyrille View Post
    Hugh has no idea wtf he's talking about, as he has repeatedly proven.
    Whilst you were an undoubted extreme disapointment to your mother as a man, at least your father got the daughter he thought he would never have.
    Last edited by Hugh Cow; 13-03-2023 at 08:32 PM.

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    How clever, HC . . . in a Brexit thread no less.

    Facts are difficult to dispute and the UK is fucked. Fact. Still whining about the EU, about EU courts, fishing . . . threatening to leave the ECHR - so just leave, fuck off. No-one and nothing is holding you back from the Continent's side.

    Whiny soap-dodging Brexit cretins.

  17. #21942
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    ^^Well that was worth all the work.


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    All of this sorry tale of woe related by Bloomberg was of course forecasted by me seven years ago when I said stagflation, currency devaluation, higher taxes and a curtailment of public expenditure supporting public services were the inevitable consequences of Brexit.

    But then, we remainers all said this but the underclasses, the stupid, the ignorant and the deluded dismissed our concerns to be Project Fear propaganda.

    The irony of course is that the Brexit doctrine was nothing but empty rhetoric spun by charlatans, dinosaurs, eccentrics and snake oil merchants peddling their drivel to a credulous English public.

    In one way I derive satisfaction from seeing the masses in Engerlandia suffer but in the end a £ devalued by 20% for the past seven years hurts us all.

    Ah well, fuck ‘em.

  19. #21944
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    Tax keeps banging that Daily Telegraph drum of how Brexit is a great success claiming the dislocation of trade between NI and UK was nothing but EU pettifogging bureaucracy but he seems to overlook the not entirely insignificant fact, as does his hero the absurd twit Ambrose Fuckchard, that Johnson and his henchman Frost were the architects of the deal.

    The EU are a sound organisation that regrets Britain’s foolishness but is carrying on life without it.

    Britain’s status has been diminished, Putin laughs at it, the world shrugs and continues to value US and EU as superior partners, the financial epicentre that might once have been London is now no more as investment falls away and markets favour the US and EU as centres of greater strategic value.

    Britain as a major player within the EU was a force but outside, it’s now little more than a low dribbling fart in the breeze.

  20. #21945
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    Tax keeps banging that Daily Telegraph drum of how Brexit is a great success
    It would have been a great success for all had a pragmatic and mutually beneficial path been followed by the UK and the EU, however pride, politics, a deluded media and one upmanship have ensured that the benefits have been put on hold.

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    Tax, for the umpteenth time of asking, just what the fuck was a Brexiteer going to sell to the world after Brexit that he couldn’t before Brexit ?

    The sweetest irony of all, particularly when one considers that for the bigoted and prejudiced xenophobic Brexiteer, around 4 millions at the last estimate, Brexit was an end to immigration, is that it is now apparent all the EU nationals who’ve fucked off from Blighty have been replaced by even more coons, wobbleheads and other Asian migrants.

    The good ship Brexitonia struck the rocks years ago but the average English Brexiteer is too fucking dumb to realise he’s fucked.

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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    It would have been a great success for all had a pragmatic and mutually beneficial path been followed by the UK and the EU
    And still whining about the EU . . .

    Here you go, Taxi driver: Fuck off. Fuck off from anything European (sadly you whiny lot are European). Just leave, stop whining and blaming everyone. Simply go away



    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    the average English Brexiteer is too fucking dumb to realise he’s fucked.
    Taxi driver can't be English as he's a Muslim Indian, but he is British.

  23. #21948
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    Tax is not a wog, but I think he has some Polish or such like among his antecedents.

  24. #21949
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Tax is not a wog, but I think he has some Polish or such like among his antecedents.
    I'm quite sure he is hence the self-loathing aspect of his posts.
    Added to which, I have it on good authority that he was never a dentist.

    Simply a bed of lies he covers himself with

  25. #21950
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Tax is not a wog, but I think he has some Polish or such like among his antecedents.

    Getting warmer.

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