The EU: IN or OUT?

JohnRo

That's very rich. The pound has just devalued, you can be as obtuse as you like.

bigadaj

JohnRo wrote: »

You're assuming in this convoluted analogy that the unit cost of electricity is not going up...

Well if Hinckley point doesn't go ahead then electricity should be cheaper.

teddysmum

EnglishMohican wrote: »

Rubbish. The records will demonstrate the effect of the sum of all events over whatever timeframe. One of those events will be Brexit. There will be many others. You will not be able to distinguish changes caused by one major event from another major event and all the minor events add further confusion to any analysis.

I was thinking the same, as many countries are in a mess or are doing well, because of a multitude of different global events/situations, which interact and cannot be separated.

teddysmum

As even £1million is impossible for most of us 'ordinary' people to visualise ,the actual figure of £350 million isn't that important. They could just as well have said £240 million or £500million and without having two figures for comparison ,to most it would just be a huge amount of money.

EnglishMohican

JohnRo wrote: »

OK so nothing can ever be quantified then...

Two points.

The same event can be good for some and bad for others. My daughter has worked in France and is moving back to the UK to buy a house with her French earnings. Brexit has done her a favour. For somebody moving the other way it is a disaster. Depending on who is telling you about the event you can receive a totally different view.

At this moment, I feel reasonably safe in attributing the large increase in the pound value of my portfolio to Brexit. However even only one week after a major event, that conclusion is clouded by commodities increasing in value plus a multitude of other minor-ish events. The Swiss judgement that they have to re-run the recent election will have an effect, the Spanish elections will already have had an effect. Some positive and some negative.

Two or three years down the line when we finally exit, there will have been lots of other major events and picking the effect of Brexit out will be a matter of judgement (guesswork?) What conclusion is reached will depend on the bias of the person making the judgement. If you want Brexit to be a disaster, I am sure you will find evidence to back that up. But there will inevitably be contrary views and evidence to demonstrate that those contrary views are also correct.

teddysmum

Ballard wrote: »

the age group that voted in highest numbers to leave the EU are the ones most likely to lose out in the short term.

This can only be supposition ,based on polls, many of which, we know, are wrong (probably as they are biased and based on samples which are too small for meaningful indication).


I upset the 'statistics', as I am a pensioner, but am also a graduate (First class honours in maths and not a Mickey Mouse degree),so must have voted both 'in' and 'out'.

EnglishMohican

JohnRo wrote: »

That's very rich. The pound has just devalued, you can be as obtuse as you like.

Devalued or not, it still has no relevance to my analogy or to a discussion of the £350M.

Ballard

Vote leave have be banging on about giving £350m per week to the NHS since they started campaigning. In fact it formed a central part of their campaign. To my knowledge they never mentioned how they'd make up the shortfall each week. I can't see anything other than this being a downright lie.

JohnRo

EnglishMohican wrote: »

Devalued or not, it still has no relevance to my analogy or to a discussion of the £350M.

Of course it does. The cost of electricity is going up if nothing else changes. When the £90 you had been paying doesn't cover the bill because the unit cost is higher, and you're cold and hungry, what are you going to do? Where is the rebate going to go?

EnglishMohican

Ballard wrote: »

Vote leave have be banging on about giving £350m per week to the NHS since they started campaigning....... To my knowledge they never mentioned how they'd make up the shortfall each week. I can't see anything other than this being a downright lie.

Semantically, I think a lie has to be a fact that is incorrect (my opinion). So if the £350M was in fact only £10M (exaggerating to avoid confusion) then claiming it was £350M would be a lie. The true gross figure changes from year to year but it is near enough to £350M currently to be true enough not to be a lie.

If you are complaining about the placard behind Boris that suggested it is possible to use all of the £350M for the NHS, then I have more sympathy for your view. Even then, it is not a lie by my definition as it is a suggestion for the future not a fact. So it cannot be a truth or a lie, though the person who thought it up should never be let near a placard again ever.

Placards have to be powerful but brief - look at any placard and that truth is self-evident. They are a headline and you have to read the story behind the headline to understand it. If you watched some of the TV debates you had the opportunity to do that.

I watched Michael Gove do two TV programmes where he was questioned on this and he gave very much the same explanation as I have (minus the electricity!) and said in one of them at least that how the money was spent would be up to the government of the day but that giving £350M to the NHS was conceivable but unlikely. Others had needs as well. (All my paraphrasing) Both were prime time TV as I recall.

I, on the other hand, tended to switch off when Osborne appeared as to my mind, he was determined to present the bleakest possible picture of brexit, ignoring the confidence factors around any competent forecast and ignoring forecasts that he disagreed with. To rejoice about the accuracy of the IMF after slagging them off when they disagreed with him some time before was farcical. While I would not accuse him of lying, I believe he exaggerated hugely, putting himself on a par with the worst exaggerations of the brexiters.

If you would like all politicians to start behaving as grown-ups and tell us the whole story, not just the part that suits them, then I am totally in agreement with you. I do not like exaggerations any more than you like lies.