Brexit, the economy and house prices part 5

Thrugelmir

wunferall wrote: »

Look!
Proof positive that wages will rise faster this year.

Simply look at the increases in Minimum Wage that come into effect from April 2018. Also the 1% increase in employers pension contributions from the same date.

Pay is increasing at above inflation rates at the lower levels.

Herzlos

wunferall wrote: »

These things have been posted and discussed frequently in this very thread. It seems that despite your requests for this information, what there is available to date has already been given. The only logical explanation is that you are choosing to ignore it.

Just one example being that it is far easier to make a trade deal nation-to-nation than a trade deal nation-to-27-disparate-countries-in-a-union. That's a major part of why CETA took eight years. EIGHT YEARS! Or do you not recall the Belgian spoke in the wheels?

I think that largely proves my point. It's never been in dispute that Britain can close on trade deals more quickly when it doesn't need an ok from the other 27 nations.
What's never been addressed is who we haven't been able to get a deal with or what deals we'd change. There's been lots of talk of duplicating eu deals but are we really leaving the eu to copy it?

Where are these new markets the eu us too slow to exploit?

Arklight

wunferall wrote: »

If what you say is true that would place this at the door of Barack Obama. Yet Donald Trump to many is supposedly the devil incarnate?
Yeah right.
Also you appear to forget that it was the EU who sided with the USA, plus imposed sanctions on Russia, AND were the ones offering Ukraine the "agreement" with the EU which began the whole sorry mess.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10853278/The-EUs-to-blame-for-the-crisis-in-Ukraine.html

It does place it at the door of Obama. Old Mr Nobel Peace Prize had no problem with enforced regime change, or authorising the odd drone strike or 542 on civilians. But then the presidents will authorise what they're told to. Trump is just a change of face.

https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data

Europe (including the UK) is still too weak to do much other than what the US tells it to. The thing Brexiters don't understand is that the EU uses treaties to project soft power because it has no alternative.

France and Britain are the only two military states and neither of them can project any power outside the EU. After next year the UK won!!!8217;t even be able to project power inside the EU.

As the EU develops things may well change. If it does turn into a superpower hopefully it will choose a better path than the US and the UK before it. But of course, we'll have no influence over that now.

Herzlos

wunferall wrote: »

How is that going, Moby?
Crimea and Ukraine are in Europe and the EU bears no small part in causing that.
Trade? TBH all that the EU have done is introduce protectionism. There are many examples and I would be happy to provide some.

Please do.

Herzlos

Matt_L wrote: »

A list of areas and industries that may be affected in a Positive way after or during Brexit. Updated 21 February 2018

Lower roaming charges

The scrapping of roaming charges was an eu thing. Why do you think they'll become lower after Brexit?

Thrugelmir

Herzlos wrote: »

The scrapping of roaming charges was an eu thing. Why do you think they'll become lower after Brexit?

Companies have above inflation rises planned in monthly contract fees. More than one way to skin a cat. In the end there's only the customer to foot the bill.

vivatifosi

I've learned a new word today, courtesy of Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador, or @sirsocks as he's know on Twitter.

Apparently a "pragmateer" is the person, on either side of the debate, who accepts the result and now just wants Britain to get on with it.

Link to Twitter
https://mobile.twitter.com/SirSocks

Thrugelmir

Guh_Guh_Gok wrote: »

The trade deficit over the year narrowed by £7 billion, so not a bad story exactly. Yes it is still too much but it's heading in the right direction and reading too much into any one month is not advisable.

One month? Sometimes there's no need to reply to an obvious troll account.

Thrugelmir

vivatifosi wrote: »

Apparently a "pragmateer" is the person, on either side of the debate, who accepts the result and now just wants Britain to get on with it.

Isn't that the British entreprenurial way?

Moby

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/21/world-clear-eyed-brexit-reversed-eu

Sometimes it's useful to try and see ourselves as foreigners see us:-

What about foreigners views of Britain? What do their eyes see that we too often miss? Here are three examples, all garnered from just the past few days. They are widely representative.

First, politely, Wolfgang Ischinger at the Munich security conference last weekend. Ischinger is an anglophile, a global thinker, a former German ambassador to Britain. As chairman of the Munich conference, he interviewed Theresa May the weekend, very deliberately saying to her that Brexit was highly regrettable and that Things would be so much easier if you stayed; May smiled icily at this, like the political hostage she is, as the letter from Jacob Rees-Moggs deregulatory fanatics this week so cockily confirms.

Second, frustratedly, in a bar in central London this week, one of my oldest friends. He's a Canadian, with lots of British roots and experience, just back from a trip to Asia and passing through London. He suddenly pushed back in his chair and said of Brexit: This just has to be the stupidest decision that any democracy has ever taken.The accent made it specially eloquent and damning;the stoopidest decision.

And third, angrily this time, there is Fintan OToole in the Irish Times this week with a blisteringly sarcastic column. Britain is a cat up a tree, he writes. It needs to climb down but it hisses and claws at those who clamber up ladders to offer a hand. Its time for the EU to cajole the hissy cat out of its tree with 15 exasperatedly contemptuous concessions to England yes, OToole gets it that Brexit is mainly about the English. Things such as being allowed to win penalty shootouts, compelling Spanish-language atlases to call the Malvinas the Falklands, and sending children up chimneys.