Brexit, The Economy and House Prices (Part 2)

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Tromking wrote: »

It may be a cliche, but one of the reasons I voted leave was to give the political 'establishment' a kick up the backside. No one can deny that my wish hasn't come true, the cosy world they used to inhabit is gone and they are at last having to work for a living.

At the cost of making us all poorer.

We've gone from real terms pay increases before the Brexit vote to real terms pay cuts today thanks to the instant and savage devaluation of the pound within seconds of the results coming in.

Our essentials cost us more to buy, foreign Vulture Capitalists are snapping up our assets, and our economic growth has gone from first in the developed world to dead last.

That's nothing but an act of economic vandalism.

Hurting ourselves to prove some point to 'the establishment' is just as irresponsible and petty as those rioting thugs that smash up their neighbours cars and burn down their own houses to prove a point to 'the establishment'.

always_sunny

Tromking wrote: »

I agree.
The Brexit vote last year needed to have been backed up with an unequivocal pro-Brexit election last month. The fact that it wasn't has made Brexit as envisaged by leave voters like me, now highly unlikely.

I am afraid there will never be an 'equivocal pro-Brexit' election because Brexit itself has different meaning and connotations to the electorate.

What is Brexit? Brexit means Brexit but really what is it?
Once such status is attained, what does it mean?

Brexit might have made more sense in the 70's or early 80's when the EU was [essentially] Western Europe.
Brexit can't detach the UK from the continent geographically and outside this island the continent is [mostly] EU.

kabayiri

always_sunny wrote: »

I don't know, to have such democracy the electorate must be equipped with true facts to make an informed decision otherwise they're in a dictatorship. Propaganda isn't truth.
...

This isn't true though.

At best we can say that nobody had a complete handle on all the relevant information.

Some things the voters did not know :

- the master plan for the EU was not discussed really, and who supported/opposed the plan
- the preparedness of the government in case of a Leave vote was never covered
- the idea of the PM leaving office was never ever discussed
- nobody suggested that 9 months would elapse before A50 was invoked
- nobody really levelled with the voters about the unproven nature of something like A50

This is evidence of a poorly thought out referendum, with some inept handling. That's not really propaganda.

kabayiri

ilovehouses wrote: »

What you should notice is that when it comes to consumers logic can sometimes be absent

i.e. someone driving to Aldi in an Audi Q7 to save £5 on posh nibbles.

Isn't it more to do with changing shopping habits?

The UK majors pushed and pushed on the one-stop-shop concept : the hyper store.

But now people like my better half; she does a major and minor shop. The Aldi shop is for things she knows are cheaper without any real quality drop.

Shoppers are more mobile, and they can easily plan where and when to shop to suit.

A_Medium_Size_Jock

ilovehouses wrote: »

In terms of areas where sovereignty is pooled shared standards is one of the most cost-effective.

However, as I've said, noting that we currently share standards isn't that enlightening. The question is what happens next?

The most pragmatic thing to do is to continue to share the same standards to prevent trade difficulties. The pragmatic solution comes with political difficulties; one is that UK competent authorities would still be subject to EU inspections to ensure they remain competent to declare factories/ products meet EU standards. The second difficulty is dealing with the fact that standards would still be dictated by the EU with reduced, at best, input.

Nice try at backtracking and attempting making this all sound like something new - but it isn't, is it?
As you should know only too well given what you have said you do for a living, or are you just trying to be disingenuous?

What happens next you say; the UK will have to declare factories/products meet EU standards you say ................. without any consideration that the same happens every time anything is exported from the UK to anywhere on the planet and will continue that way whether as members of the EU or not.

Do the cars we export not need to meet the standards applicable to the country they are being exported to?
Do the pharmaceuticals not similarly need to comply?
You are trying to manufacture problems where none exist; implying that the EU may change standards and that the UK will have no say in those standards is of little relevance.
Not only because the UK can do the same and alter requirements for goods we require, but because we already continually adjust products to meet the standards for whatever we export.

You are correct about shared standards being good economics and also that such sharing would be pragmatic; however we must wait and see just how pragmatic the EU really are in the course of Brexit negotiations.

always_sunny

kabayiri wrote: »

This isn't true though.

At best we can say that nobody had a complete handle on all the relevant information.

Some things the voters did not know :

- the master plan for the EU was not discussed really, and who supported/opposed the plan
- the preparedness of the government in case of a Leave vote was never covered
- the idea of the PM leaving office was never ever discussed
- nobody suggested that 9 months would elapse before A50 was invoked
- nobody really levelled with the voters about the unproven nature of something like A50

This is evidence of a poorly thought out referendum, with some inept handling. That's not really propaganda.

Absolutely and asking the electorate to vote on a matter without a complete handle on all the relevant information is dangerous.

There was propaganda though and still is.

kabayiri

ilovehouses wrote: »

A couple of years ago you could buy chicken breast from a Thai factory approved for export for about 110 baht/kg (delivered to another Thai processor but you'd have to buy a truckload for that price). You could walk into Tesco Thailand (and pay an additional margin) and buy fresh chicken breast for about 80 baht/kg.

Anyone importing from a third country will know that export grade raw material costs more. The bigger the difference between local standards and EU standards the bigger the cost differential. It's somewhat anecdotal but I think we can agree higher quality standards aren't free.

We could save money by having a UK chicken standard and we'd have access to much cheaper chicken but I'm not sure we want to go there. Of course, that chicken wouldn't meet EU standards so we wouldn't be able to add value to it by further processing and exporting to the EU.

My mate's family had a long established business originally selling frozen chickens. He used to bend my ear regularly about how many broilers were coming from Thailand.

Clearly, it hurt them, in that they had to eventually get out.

But you know what? The general public don't really know where their chicken comes from, and I'm not sure they even care. We don't value food like the French do. I'm not saying it's right.

If people want to reduce food bills they need to buy less processed. That would make the biggest difference.

I only know about VLSI chip design and embedded onboard services. Compliance in this area is about ISO standards. Being in/out the EU won't change much.

However, I appreciated the example. I wonder how many Remain MPs were properly armed with decent solid examples which had resonance with voters during the campaign. Too much talk was of national averages and percentages, and I don't know if this resonates with people in Bolton.

andrewf75

kabayiri wrote: »

But you know what? The general public don't really know where their chicken comes from, and I'm not sure they even care. We don't value food like the French do. I'm not saying it's right.

That is very true. I think Brexit will see a lot of cheap poor quality meat being imported from the US and elsewhere. Always amazes me how little people in the UK care about quality and buying British (outside the middle class of course where farmers markets etc are very fashionable precisely because local food is such a niche)

kabayiri

andrewf75 wrote: »

That is very true. I think Brexit will see a lot of cheap poor quality meat being imported from the US and elsewhere. Always amazes me how little people in the UK care about quality and buying British (outside the middle class of course where farmers markets etc are very fashionable precisely because local food is such a niche)

They should spend a few weeks working in a frozen food factory, producing these ready meals.

When you see what goes in, and how a food consultant can come in and make one meat taste like another, well it kind of puts you off.

We might be better off eating more insects. My daughter loves fried crickets, I'm mild on them, but I feel guilty because I quite like crickets. You can't deny the protein density of meal worms and fruit flies though.

Herzlos

ilovehouses wrote: »

What you should notice is that when it comes to consumers logic can sometimes be absent

i.e. someone driving to Aldi in an Audi Q7 to save £5 on posh nibbles.

Playing devils advocate - the Q7 could be a company car or on a lease deal where it's prohibitive to get out of. Or it could be pretty old and not actually that expensive.

In saying that, I've certainly seen the Aldi car park fill with more upmarket cars over the last few years, so the trend of people being more careful with money certainly seems to be moving upmarket.