Investment

Kim18035

DairyQueen , I respect other people's opinions I try not to offend others because of this. What's more, I try to understand why they think differently than me because sometimes I can learn from them. I may be wrong, but the way you responded to my post indicates that you are criticizing anyone who has a different opinion than you. This is a free country so do not take someone's right to express opinion. When it comes to Brexit, let's focus on the facts. The referendum campaign was based on lies so I do not understand on what basis the result of the referendum should be an argument for politicians to conduct brexit? Since you are an educated person, I do not have to explain that a decision made on the basis of lies is another lie and that is the result of the 2016 referendum. Is the loan taken by the customer, based on false bank information, a fraud or is it not ? Since then, neither conservatives nor labour's have presented any clear way how to make success with brexit. Since, according to you, it is so obvious why is it so difficult? Do not you think that PM as a person who supported the remainers camp and now explains that brexit will be successful is two-faced? How can people trust such a prime minister and government in such an important matter? The government is counting on the whole union falling on its knees in front of the UK and giving us everything we want. That will not happen, we have not lived in colonial times for many years.

Malthusian

The referendum campaign was based on lies so I do not understand on what basis the result of the referendum should be an argument for politicians to conduct brexit?

Well, the side that claimed that a Leave vote would result in an Emergency Budget with 4p being added to the rate of income tax and real cuts to public services, alongside an immediate recession and mass unemployment, lost. It seems rather moot to go on about how the campaign was based on lies when the lies lost.

Only a churlish person moans about how many fouls the opposition committed when they've won 2-0.

Kim18035

Malthusian wrote: »

Well, the side that claimed that a Leave vote would result in an Emergency Budget with 4p being added to the rate of income tax and real cuts to public services, alongside an immediate recession and mass unemployment, lost. It seems rather moot to go on about how the campaign was based on lies when the lies lost.

Only a churlish person moans about how many fouls the opposition committed when they've won 2-0.

As far as I remember the data provided by the remainers were for the brexit situation and we are still in EU.On the other hand since the referendum everything is more expensive due to pound loss so the rise in the living costs is more than 4 p for every pound. This is closer to 25p. Leavers said that the EU is not needed at all and today they want customs and the common market for what we will have to pay , as Norway does without having any voting right. Another reason was the imigration which we will have to accept anyway if we want close relation with EU. So where is the gain because I can't see it ?

RG2015

Please can everyone stop posting about Brexit on this thread which is about savings and investments on a savings and investment board!

There are threads about Brexit on other more appropriate boards.

bowlhead99

Kim18035 wrote: »

. When it comes to Brexit, let's focus on the facts. The referendum campaign was based on lies so I do not understand on what basis the result of the referendum should be an argument for politicians to conduct brexit?

As with any political campaign there were projections and truth bending on both sides, with both sides saying confidently what they could achieve in each scenario and anyone listening to them having to decide for themselves how much they believed it and where their instinct lay.

The average man on the street does not have anything like enough information or education to be able to figure out whether it would be a net positive or negative over their children's lifetime. However, government said they would canvass opinion of the people, because the people would think it was a pretty big issue, and the people would demand to have their voice heard even if it was an ill-educated voice focussing just on a soundbite or headline they liked. On an issue of this magnitude the people didn't want to leave it to the person they had voted in as their local MP to reflect their view in parliament, because those votes would have focused on a wide variety of issues and two neighbours might have two opposite views on Brexit but share an MP. He can't represent them proportionally in a Commons vote.

So, an advisory referendum was taken which said that on the whole, people who expressed a preference would prefer to leave. The poll did not capture the reasons why Leave was selected nor what the priorities should be for negotiation among all the competing objectives during a Leave. It just said that on balance, the people wanted to leave. Whether that's because they are idiots and misled by false advertising, or because they are smart cookies who know that on balance they don't want a particular negative factor that comes from EU membership. If you disregard the opinions of the 52% because they are not all top economists, you would also have to disregard the opinions of the 48% because they are not all top economists either. So, the main parties said they would respect the will of the people on this matter rather than worrying about which camp had the most clever people or most accurate facts.

Then, we had a new general election, in which people voted for their local MPs and manifestos of the parties. A party who had 'leave EU' as a promise, formed a majority government, and their main opposition did not block them from instigating the leave process through Article 50. The opposition didn't block the EU withdrawal bill either - they didn't have enough votes because they didn't have enough MPs because the public had voted for fewer opposition members than government members in the general election

So, that is how you end up with Brexit being conducted. Starting with a referendum and going through the process of government. You might not like it because you believe that people were persuaded by 'alternative facts' as Trump would call them. However, the public don't like to be told that they are idiots, so it would have been political suicide for the parties to say "we will not hold a referendum because you're all idiots who might be easily led into a wrong decision", and it would also have been unpalatable to say, "OK we did a referendum and the people want X but we are going to do Y because the opinion of the people are wrong because they are idiots misled by lies, we don't really need to do what they want".

Since then, neither conservatives nor labour's have presented any clear way how to make success with brexit. Since, according to you, it is so obvious why is it so difficult?

Nobody suggested that driving a huge consititutional change and negotiating with member states whose interests oppose our own, would be easy. Some made it sound easier than it will be. But difficulty, in itself, is not a reason not to do something.

Do not you think that PM as a person who supported the remainers camp and now explains that brexit will be successful is two-faced?

She said that it would be better not to exit. But the public said they wanted to exit. The public wanted her party to lead the country. Her party wanted her to lead the party. You have to make the best of what you have. Even if she would prefer to remain, the population at large told her they didn't want that, they wanted something else, so her objective now is to try to deliver that 'not what she personally wanted, if all options were open' within the confines of what options are open. Telling over half the population who expressed a preference that they were wrong and she prefers not to exit, is not really an option, no matter whether you or I think it should be.

How can people trust such a prime minister and government in such an important matter?

Well, what you believe is that you can't trust the *people* because the people are not qualified to make a decision because they might be taken in by lies and misstatements and truth bending. So you don't think you can trust the man on the street. So, that leaves elected officials, supported by experienced civil servants, as the people you can trust. QED.

The government is counting on the whole union falling on its knees in front of the UK and giving us everything we want.

They are not really counting on that. However if you go into a negotiation saying 'well I won't get what I want, so please just give me the bare minimum I would be willing to put up with, that's what I now want', you will probably not get that bare minimum level "x", as the other side will just tell you they will give you zero so if they want 0 and you want x, the best you can hope for is to split the difference and meet half way. Which is a poor result.

Having said all that, in response to the questions posed, I must say I tend to agree with DairyQueen that this isn't really a forum to talking about if or why the government is wrong in its negotiation stance or who is the best person to be prime minister, or whether the population who expressed a preference were misled about it being an easy and sensible choice when they voted L instead of R. Such political fun and games is not much to do with whether we should change our personal investment strategies to accommodate the wide range of potential Brexit effects on markets.

RG2015 wrote: »

Please can everyone stop posting about Brexit on this thread which is about savings and investments on a savings and investment board!

There are threads about Brexit on other more appropriate boards.

Sure, just as soon as I've got the last word in.

Kim18035

I will have the last word as an OP and say that RG2015 is completely right. I have made mistake by mentioning Brexit as did not realise there is place on this forum to discuss it.

bowlhead99

Kim18035 wrote: »

I will have the last word as an OP and say that RG2015 is completely right. I have made mistake by mentioning Brexit as did not realise there is place on this forum to discuss it.

Well, what you said in your OP was quite an open-ended request: "grateful on ALL ideas what could I do with money I would like to invest ?"

One of the things you could do with the money you would like to invest is contribute to one of the various lobbying groups or petitioners which are campaigning for the Brexit to be abandoned.

The upside to the investment is, potential improved economic prosperity from better laws and relationships with other countries. The downside is loss of your funds due to the effort being unsuccesful and the members of parliament doing whatever they see fit with the powers we gave them.

Kim18035

Thank you for your "clever" advice . As an other possibility I could invest by paying a law student ( will cost me much less ) who could quickly explain the leavers and politicans that pound already lost 25% and EU is not willing to accept any UK demands. If we don't need EU market , workers why do we address any requests ? Build the wall like Trump wanted and set mine fields around Britain. This is my last input as carrying on this conversation is pointless.

ValiantSon

bowlhead99 wrote: »

As with any political campaign there were projections and truth bending on both sides, with both sides saying confidently what they could achieve in each scenario and anyone listening to them having to decide for themselves how much they believed it and where their instinct lay.

The average man on the street does not have anything like enough information or education to be able to figure out whether it would be a net positive or negative over their children's lifetime. However, government said they would canvass opinion of the people, because the people would think it was a pretty big issue, and the people would demand to have their voice heard even if it was an ill-educated voice focussing just on a soundbite or headline they liked. On an issue of this magnitude the people didn't want to leave it to the person they had voted in as their local MP to reflect their view in parliament, because those votes would have focused on a wide variety of issues and two neighbours might have two opposite views on Brexit but share an MP. He can't represent them proportionally in a Commons vote.

That its the case with any vote facing an MP. There will always be a difference of opinion amongst their constituents, but that is irrelevant. They are representatives (not delegates) and are mandated to make the decision.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, an advisory referendum was taken which said that on the whole, people who expressed a preference would prefer to leave. The poll did not capture the reasons why Leave was selected nor what the priorities should be for negotiation among all the competing objectives during a Leave. It just said that on balance, the people wanted to leave. Whether that's because they are idiots and misled by false advertising, or because they are smart cookies who know that on balance they don't want a particular negative factor that comes from EU membership. If you disregard the opinions of the 52% because they are not all top economists, you would also have to disregard the opinions of the 48% because they are not all top economists either. So, the main parties said they would respect the will of the people on this matter rather than worrying about which camp had the most clever people or most accurate facts.

The referendum was called purely for the political benefit of the prime minister at the time. He gambled that the vote would be to remain and he could shut the right wing of his party up because they had been a thorn in the side over this issue since at least the Maastricht Treaty. The decision to offer a referendum had nothing to do with whether the issue was too big or too important for parliament to make: that is ridiculous and undermines the very nature of parliament. Parliament is sovereign and expresses the will of the people. That is the nature of our constitution.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Then, we had a new general election, in which people voted for their local MPs and manifestos of the parties. A party who had 'leave EU' as a promise, formed a majority government,

No they didn't! We have a minority Conservative government who have a supply and confidence deal with the DUP.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

and their main opposition did not block them from instigating the leave process through Article 50. The opposition didn't block the EU withdrawal bill either - they didn't have enough votes because they didn't have enough MPs because the public had voted for fewer opposition members than government members in the general election

No. Your electoral maths is completely up the wall. The government have a minority of seats in the House of Commons. If they had wanted to the collective opposition could have voted to oppose the government and forced a defeat. This did not happen, however, because the DUP had agreed to supply and confidence, which gave the government the votes they needed (if all Conservatives voted with the whip). Furthermore, the majority of the Labour Party have taken the position that they must abide by the referendum result (although this is not a requirement). Parliament has, since the referendum, abnegated its constitutional responsibility to act and deferred to a populist vote. There are, potentially quite wide-ranging consequences of such behaviour for the continuance of representative democracy.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, that is how you end up with Brexit being conducted. Starting with a referendum and going through the process of government. You might not like it because you believe that people were persuaded by 'alternative facts' as Trump would call them. However, the public don't like to be told that they are idiots, so it would have been political suicide for the parties to say "we will not hold a referendum because you're all idiots who might be easily led into a wrong decision"

The referendum was a political choice made by a Conservative Party leader. It had nothing to do with genuinely consulting the people, and nor should it. Referenda have not been a part of the constitution and are, generally, a poor mechanism within representative democracies as they conflict with the sovereign right of the legislature and act to undermine and weaken that right.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

and it would also have been unpalatable to say, "OK we did a referendum and the people want X but we are going to do Y because the opinion of the people are wrong because they are idiots misled by lies, we don't really need to do what they want".

The whole point of electing representatives to parliament is that we do mandate them to make those decisions. Would you advocate the collective will of the people through referenda as being a good way to settle all issues within the country? If so you would end up with a huge mess. We elect representatives to devote their time to examining the issues and voting on them. Plebiscitary democracy is very different and unlikely to work in any state of any significant size. It was fine in the ancient city state of Athens, but in a country of 66 million people it would be a mess. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of modern government would make it unworkable too.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Nobody suggested that driving a huge consititutional change and negotiating with member states whose interests oppose our own, would be easy. Some made it sound easier than it will be. But difficulty, in itself, is not a reason not to do something.

If the odds are stacked against you then that is actually a pretty good reason not to do it.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

She said that it would be better not to exit. But the public said they wanted to exit.

Did they? It is not unreasonable to assume that abstentions are an indication that the status quo is a satisfactory position. Count the abstentions (the turnout was only 72.21%) in the ballot and you will find a majority who favoured maintenance of the status quo. Furthermore, the vote was incredibly close. There were only 1,269,501 votes in it. That is an extremely close result, representing a majority voting leave of just 1.88% over remain. That is a hair's breath, which could easily have gone the other way on a different day.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

The public wanted her party to lead the country.

No they didn't. By any measure, the majority of the country didn't want a Conservative government. On national vote share, the Conservatives polled 42.4% (well short of the majority you claim), and in seats in the House of Commons, they also fell short of a majority by 9 seats (winning 317 out of 650 available). This resulted in a hung parliament; the people did not want a Conservative government.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Her party wanted her to lead the party.

Maybe, who knows. The leadership election in which she took the leadership never proceeded to the final round due to the withdrawal of Andrea Leadsom. We will never know what the outcome of that election would have been. After the 2017 general election nobody would have challenged Theresa May for the leadership of the party because they had a minority government that would only be further destabilised by a leadership election, and may result in the formation of a Labour minority government. There would also be nobody wishing to challenge for the leadership because in the new political landscape taking office as prime minister would be a poisoned chalice.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

You have to make the best of what you have. Even if she would prefer to remain, the population at large told her they didn't want that, they wanted something else, so her objective now is to try to deliver that 'not what she personally wanted, if all options were open' within the confines of what options are open. Telling over half the population who expressed a preference that they were wrong and she prefers not to exit, is not really an option, no matter whether you or I think it should be.

It is an option. that option is known as "leadership". True leaders take the initiative, even in the face of opposition, and show how their approach is in the best interests of the people. Theresa May has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of leadership ability.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Well, what you believe is that you can't trust the *people* because the people are not qualified to make a decision because they might be taken in by lies and misstatements and truth bending. So you don't think you can trust the man on the street. So, that leaves elected officials, supported by experienced civil servants, as the people you can trust. QED.

No quod erat demonstrandum in what you have written.

The point is that elected representatives have abnegated their responsibilities in deference to the mob's view. This is poor governance.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

They are not really counting on that. However if you go into a negotiation saying 'well I won't get what I want, so please just give me the bare minimum I would be willing to put up with, that's what I now want', you will probably not get that bare minimum level "x", as the other side will just tell you they will give you zero so if they want 0 and you want x, the best you can hope for is to split the difference and meet half way. Which is a poor result.

Their entire negotiating position has been one of, "We will get it because we are so important," and the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (:rotfl:) has proven himself to be a complete idiot and shyster. The bargaining hand of the UK contains no aces; we are at the mercy of the EU, who are roundly peed off with us and in no mood to cut us any slack.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Having said all that, in response to the questions posed, I must say I tend to agree with DairyQueen that this isn't really a forum to talking about if or why the government is wrong in its negotiation stance or who is the best person to be prime minister, or whether the population who expressed a preference were misled about it being an easy and sensible choice when they voted L instead of R. Such political fun and games is not much to do with whether we should change our personal investment strategies to accommodate the wide range of potential Brexit effects on markets.

And I believe that it was perfectly reasonable for the OP to make a comment and that DairyQueen's response was ad hominem attack.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Sure, just as soon as I've got the last word in.

Looks like you'll have to post again, then.