No Deal Brexit and Savings

ValiantSon

Glen_Clark wrote: »

I did not claim 'the EU is some bastion of democracy', just pointed out its more democratic than the British Government that vested interests want to keep all the power in. (like the 'newspaper' owners domiciled in HM tax havens and fearing an EU wide tax treaty)

Yeah, you kind of did:

Glen_Clark wrote: »

So would a little power in the far more democratic EU be such a bad thing?

No, the EU is really not more democratic than the UK. Certain member states may be more democratic, but the EU? No.

AnotherJoe

eskbanker wrote: »

Only 46 posts in seems a bit early to be invoking Godwin's Law....

yeh I should have put a comment in, i did realise i was vunerable to that as i wrote it, but to be fair i dont think it is GL. I'm not comparing anyone to a Nazi, I'm just pointing out, perhaps extremely, that its not just about the economics which is pretty much all remainers focus on.

AnotherJoe

ValiantSon wrote: »

Which offer would that be then?

In 1939, Hitler made no offer to the UK. The UK (and France) delivered an ultimatum to him following the invasion of Poland and it was ignored.

Perhaps you are confusing Hitler with Stalin, who did repeatedly make overtures to the UK and France to form an alliance against Germany, but ultimately grew tired and mistrustful of their coyness. This lead to the formation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939, which allowed Hitler to attack Poland without fear of Soviet reprisal.

I'm not confusing it at all, I think its well established there were "back door negotiations" with Germany whereby the UK would be left alone if it didn't intervene, but it doesn't really matter, its a thought experiment to point out that its about far more than the economics, which I'm sick and tired of people quoting every time as if "thats it, no argument, now shut up"


There are plenty of other arguments for the EU, which you can take a viewpoint on, but no, pretty much every post its onky about jobs and the economy and nothing else as ifnothing else matters.


As i said, if the same set of people that compiled that table added a row for the UK as 51st state and that was bigger (I was going to say trumped ) the Euro economic case, is it slam dunk for that instead?

ValiantSon

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I'm not confusing it at all, I think its well established there were "back door negotiations" with Germany whereby the UK would be left alone if it didn't intervene, but it doesn't really matter, its a thought experiment to point out that its about far more than the economics, which I'm sick and tired of people quoting every time as if "thats it, no argument, now shut up"

Nope, not in 1939. Perhaps instead you are getting confused with some of the unofficial approaches that were made after 1940 to settle an indpendent peace without regard to the other Allies? Trust me, I'm a historian.

As a "thought experiment" it doesn't hold up, because it is not based on reality, and even if we accept the fallacy of the premise, it is so divorced from the current situation that it is simply worthless.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

There are plenty of other arguments for the EU, which you can take a viewpoint on, but no, pretty much every post its onky about jobs and the economy and nothing else as ifnothing else matters.

I don't disagree with that, but then it is perhaps to be expected on a savings and investments forum. Indeed, I have seen many complaints in previous threads about posts being off-topic when they veer elsewhere,

AnotherJoe wrote: »

As i said, if the same set of people that compiled that table added a row for the UK as 51st state and that was bigger (I was going to say trumped ) the Euro economic case, is it slam dunk for that instead?

Hmmm. That's a logical fallacy: the one idea does not automatically follow on from the other.

AnotherJoe

ValiantSon wrote: »

Hmmm. That's a logical fallacy: the one idea does not automatically follow on from the other.

I posed it as a thought experiment, and i disagree its a fallacy because where did i say it "automatically followed on". However as it happens i do think there is a reasonable case it does automatically follow on.



The proposition (from that table) is that we should stay in the EU because economically its better across a given range of exit scenarios.



I dont think its at all a logical fallacy to say that therefore if another outcome not in the table currently was better than any EU exit outcome, should we not (if the argument is solely about economics) go for that scenario? And therefore its not unreasonable should explore other scenarios.



BTW, yes you are correct i believe i was thinking of Ribbentrop and 1940. And I dont think a one year mistake invalidates the general premise as a thought experiment to make the point its "not just the economy stupid".

ValiantSon

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I posed it as a thought experiment, and i disagree its a fallacy because where did i say it "automatically followed on". However as it happens i do think there is a reasonable case it does automatically follow on.

You don't have to say so for it to be a logical fallacy! And no, it doesn't logically follow.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

The proposition (from that table) is that we should stay in the EU because economically its better across a given range of exit scenarios.

I dont think its at all a logical fallacy to say that therefore if another outcome not in the table currently was better than any EU exit outcome, should we not (if the argument is solely about economics) go for that scenario? And therefore its not unreasonable should explore other scenarios.

Yes, it is a logical fallacy, because the UK is not now, never has been, and no proposal has been put forward, for us to acceed to the United States of America. There is absolutely no proposition that we should apply for statehood within the USA. You are therefore inventing an alternative proposition. This is a logical fallacy.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

BTW, yes you are correct i believe i was thinking of Ribbentrop and 1940. And I dont think a one year mistake invalidates the general premise as a thought experiment to make the point its "not just the economy stupid".

Thank-you.

It does rather blow a massive whole in your argument, however, if you have the wrong date. Funnily enough, we historians get quite hung up about dates because they actually matter. Anyone who knows about the period would be completely perplexed about the claim that Hitler offered the UK a deal in 1939, whereas someone who doesn't know about the period would simply not have a clue what you were on about.

Malthusian

Voyager2002 wrote: »

If anything, a British civil servant might feel jealous and resentful of conditions working for Brussels and so be tempted to be biased in the opposite direction.

In the same way that the clergy in my analogy would say "Well, I suppose getting into Heaven is quite difficult, so I may as well give up and worship Satan".

If you aspire to work in an organisation like the EU all your life then having the doorway to that aspiration slammed shut on you is most definitely not going to result in you saying "This is brilliant, I don't have to think about how I could become a Eurocrat anymore".

Fortunately, civil servants spend their entire careers risking the temptation to be biased.

:rotfl:

Right, and pastry chefs spend their entire careers resisting the temptation to eat the leftover cakes, that's why they're all so skinny.

The life and the lifestyle of civil servants relies on the philosophy that people are too stupid to run their own lives and must have their income forcibly extracted from them, paid as tribute to London and reallocated according to the enlightened decisions of civil servants. The EU ramps this philosophy up to 11 by saying that even having decisions taken in the same country as said idiots is dangerous. Brexit is to the Civil Service what veganism is to the executive of an abattoir. Neutrality ends where one's dinner table begins.

The primary job of a bureaucrat is to further the interests of bureaucracy, not neutrality.

ColdIron

Fuel to the fire, fan the flames etc :cool:

http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/boss-of-rees-mogg-firm-denies-dublin-move-due-to-brexit/a1140796

Voyager2002

ValiantSon wrote: »

Um, not that I am in any way a fan of the aforesaid prime minister (nor of Brexit), but you do know that she became prime minister in 1979, a full six years and four months after the UK joined the EEC, don't you? You do also know, I hope, that she was actually a pro-European (despite what many in the Conservative Party like to think), who was one of the architects of the single market?

Yes, that is true.

What the UK had joined, and what she supported, was then called the Common Market. Brexiteers (of whom I am not one) point out that the EU includes a good deal more than that.

Voyager2002

Malthusian wrote: »

In the same way that the clergy in my analogy would say "Well, I suppose getting into Heaven is quite difficult, so I may as well give up and worship Satan".

If you aspire to work in an organisation like the EU all your life then having the doorway to that aspiration slammed shut on you is most definitely not going to result in you saying "This is brilliant, I don't have to think about how I could become a Eurocrat anymore".

:rotfl:

Right, and pastry chefs spend their entire careers resisting the temptation to eat the leftover cakes, that's why they're all so skinny.

The life and the lifestyle of civil servants relies on the philosophy that people are too stupid to run their own lives and must have their income forcibly extracted from them, paid as tribute to London and reallocated according to the enlightened decisions of civil servants. The EU ramps this philosophy up to 11 by saying that even having decisions taken in the same country as said idiots is dangerous. Brexit is to the Civil Service what veganism is to the executive of an abattoir. Neutrality ends where one's dinner table begins.

The primary job of a bureaucrat is to further the interests of bureaucracy, not neutrality.

You just don't get it! Careers in the EU bureaucracy are not open to UK civil servants. Your comments are a bit like, well, someone who works for Tesco and decides whether to produce an app to enable us to pay using an iPhone, and then is influenced by what it is like to work for Apple.

And you have a very strange idea about the role of the civil service: my work involved assessing evidence about the health effects of adding different chemicals to food, and then advising on which of these chemicals should be prohibited. I don't think that the great British consumer is in a position to do this on an individual basis.