BBO Discussion Forums: EU Brexit thread - BBO Discussion Forums

Cyberyeti, on 2016-July-05, 17:46, said:

Does it matter more that Juncker is rude than that Juncker is correct?

This is a critical time in the destiny of the UK, but I wonder if we Brits are ever going to rise above petty squabbles.

• As an example, the consensus of economists is that GBP:USD will reach 1.20 in a few months. And unless the UK does something positive, it could drift lower instead of rebounding. Yet, every day we are told by the media that we broke a 31-year record etc instead of having economists on TV who can tell the audience "get used to it"
  
  
• The probability of a recession (be it a shallow or a prolonged one) are quite considerable. And while monetary policy has already stepped up to face the challenge, fiscal loosening is not yet in sight. Although the Chancellor has said all the right things, the news cycles focused on him "breaking the borrowing rule" rather than "making really meaningful announcements". And there is no guarantee that the next Prime Minister/Chancellor will not revert to "zero deficit" goal.
  
  
• Regardless of the political merits/demerits of the Chancellor, he and the BoE Governor are a formidable team who can easily do many right things that will help the economy in the long run. However, it is quite possible that the Chancellor will be fired once the next Prime Minister arrives. This, in turn, could lead to the premature departure of the BoE Governor, Mark Carney.
  
  
• Most Brits do not track Gilt yields; they are at historical lows. The UK Govt can borrow 10-year funds at <0.8% and 30-year funds at <1.6%!!. This is an outright winning opportunity for the UK Government to borrow heavily in order to invest in infrastructure (and note NHS is not really infrastructure because any rise in NHS costs is typically 'revenue expenditure', not 'capital expenditure')
  
  
• However, should the UK Govt decide to launch/approve infrastructure programmes, all sorts of experts will creep out of the woodwork to denounce the specific projects. We will definitely find a way to stop (i) Heathrow Expansion, (ii) HS2, (iii) Hinckley Nuclear Power, etc.
  
  
• Any of the following will attract huge objections from the NIMBY crowd: new roads, airports, council housing (to hold), rail networks, offshore oil exploration. But if the Govt recklessly invested in 100,000 more nurses, doctors, school teachers etc. everyone will think it's a great investment?!
  
  
• The USA did a "cash-for-clunkers" programme to rid some of the older vehicles off the road. Yesterday, the London Mayor proposed a similar scheme to improve air quality in London. What are the chances of it being adopted by the UK Govt? Zero! Because the idea originated from a Labour guy.

Yes! Juncker may be an idiot, but the substance of his message is not entirely wrong. We don't have a plan to be on our own, and the people who got us here are all running away or are paralysed into inaction.

I wasn't talking about his predictions, I was talking about his comments which roughly translated as "we must make Britain's life as awkward as possible so nobody else leaves, regardless of how badly it messes up EU members".

Al_U_Card, on 2016-July-05, 16:41, said:

If Land A and Land B sign a trade deal that increases business for both, as is the normal case for such an agreement, who is the loser? I suppose you could argue that countries C to ZZ are losers for standing still and not getting any direct benefit but that would be a somewhat strange way of defining things. Similarly, if your country has a region of high unemployment and you put them to work building a new railway that stimulates the local economy, thus getting many times back in tax returns what you paid out for the project, who is the loser? Here's another hypothetical one for you - if your planet is going to be made uninhabitable due to greenhouse gases and by agreeing to control these you are able to save everyone's life, who is the loser now? Believe it or not, not everything is "us against them" and not every conspiracy theory is real!

Sigh! I waste too much time on this thread...

cherdano, on 2016-July-05, 17:31, said:

That is why (financially) appears in the post. Winners in the financial decisions and market manipulations that are the result of casino capitalism result in losers and those losers are almost always the little guy and/or the taxpayer (When the losses are subsidized by bailouts etc.).

Zelandakh, on 2016-July-06, 03:27, said:

Strawman AND Ad hominem in the same post. Point to me.

I have a new theory. It postulates that all "games" are zero sum games. If a game appears to be not a zero sum game then that is because there is "dark matter" that we don't really understand.

So, in what appears to be a positive sum game to some, there actually is dark matter, made up of a bunch of "dark losers" to balance the game to zero again.

The scientific question remains: Where are these "dark losers"? Obviously, this needs proper investigation (perhaps funded by the EU? ), but preliminary results indicate that there is a considerable presence of "dark losers" on internet forums.



Rik

Trinidad, on 2016-July-06, 05:43, said:

And there was me thinking that all users of internet forums are losers!

Judging from some of the feeds in my facebook stream the first week after the referendum, we are heading for doomsday as the referendum proves that 52% of the British people are xenophobes. One film that went viral was an old movie about a top nazi meeting, in which the discussion about how to react to Stalingrad had been subtitled as if it was about brexit.

I think that is old news that most British people have at best lukewarm feelings towards the EU. We didn't need a referendum to show that. Of course parts of this is due to xenophibia, but I don't believe that problem is bigger here than elsewhere in Europe, or the World for that matter. For me, UK has been a good place to be an immigrant. And a good place to be gay, by the way.

I do think that the way it was decided to hold the referendum, the way the campaign was conducted and the developments in both the labour party and the torries afterwards highlight some rather depressing facts.

- The social democratic movement is dying. This is a global phenomena but particularly bad in the UK because we had a two-party system, so we are now left with a one-party system. It doesn't make things better that the one party we are left with is the cleptocratic party, but a one-party state will always become a cleptocracy if it wasn't in the first place.

- We have virtually no news media. Just propaganda machines. The Guardian tries to compensate for the bias in the Murdoch press by spewing out almost equally biased antidotes. The BBC is toothless, maybe because they are afraid of the consequences of being critical towards the government. Again, I believe the situation is worse in the UK than elsewhere.

Then there is the astonishing lack of preparation for brexit by the conservative party. I don't know what to make of it. I know, never attribute to malice .... maybe they were really naive enough to think that remain was in lock. I am cynical, though.

I don't think that xenophobia is the big cause of all this.

What I observed in the past 30 years is a decline in respect for authority, politics and facts.

There is no respect for politicians: "They just sit there to get a good salary."
There is no respect for scientists: "They only know how things are in theory, they are so naive."
There is no respect for facts: "The facts may say [fill in whatever, e.g. crime rates are declining] but we know it's not true, since my neighbor's cousin..."

People who do want to make decisions based on knowledge (seems like the only sane way to make (non-panic) decisions to me) are framed as "elite".

Obviously, I don't know any big politicians in person. But when I watch the (Dutch) politicians on TV, I do not get the impression that they are all just sitting there to get a good salary. The vast majority, particularly those from the "Old Political Parties", are sincerely trying to make the country better. They just have different ideas about what is better and how to get there. That makes things complicated, but that is what politics is all about.

The fact that sincere politics is too complicated for many in society has been masterfully used by some "New" politicians. They have translated the people's "I don't understand what politicians are doing" into "If I don't know what they are doing, what they are doing is probably in their own interest." You hear phrases like: "He probably already has a job on a Board of Directors/Trustees/Governors/somewhere in Brussels."

Each time a politician leaves and is successful in a new career, this is reinforced. And if he is not successful (and unemployed) then he is profiting from a very nice amount of money from the government (/tax payer/ us all) without doing anything for it! You see, they are all profiteers!

Of course, somebody needs to stop this nonsense. But who?
It should be the politicians' job, but they are caught in a Morton's fork coup: If they expose the nonsense, then the populist response is: "You see what he is saying. He is clearly part of the system!" And if they don't expose the nonsense, it slowly "becomes the truth".
How about the press? Get real, who listens to these elitist guys when the truth is out on the internet?

The sad conclusion about modern politics is: "Nonsense rules, facts are irrelevant." The Brexit referendum is only an example of this, but it is going on in the entire Western world.

Rik

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I don't know how these people are described in Europe but as far as the U.S. you describe perfectly the Religious Right or Far Right.

To each their own. Seeing beyond personal prejudices and perspectives requires an open mind rather than pre-conceived notions. Despite an inability to analyze complex factual information, most people have an innate sense of justice and ethics. Avoiding the anecdotal and the inconsequential is the hard part. What is actually happening is verifiable with time and effort but where it is headed is crystal ball territory.

Al_U_Card, on 2016-July-07, 09:18, said:

The funny thing is that the majority of people that I see saying this are themselves locked into their own personal prejudices and perspectives. For example, a colleague of mine said this to me regarding his belief that the world is flat and also when advancing the theory that the vast majority of news interviews with the public are conducted by a small group of actors (there was plenty more to this conspiracy theory). What people really mean is that the person they are speaking with should change their perspective to match their own, irrespective of how ridiculous that position might be.

As it happens, I investigated each of these claims personally, as I have done with many others. I would like to be think that I do indeed have an open mind about things. That does not necessarily mean that I will agree with you about anything though! If you only ever consider evidence from one side, you most certainly are not keeping an open mind, regardless of how ridiculous you feel the arguments from the other side happen to be.

So now the Conservative party leadership contest is between someone who wants to use EU nationals living in the UK as bargaining chip (May), and someone who tries to launch her campaign by saying she wants to roll back gay marriage to undo the "hurt" done to Christians.
In 10 years from now, Lin-Manuel Miranda will launch a musical about the events around Brexit, and noone who goes to see it will believe this ***** actually happened.

cherdano, on 2016-July-08, 17:05, said:

You're somewhat misrepresenting Leadsom's views. She didn't like the law as drafted but is pro gay marriage in principle, emphasis mine.

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Source http://www.standard....s-a3290621.html

Cyberyeti, on 2016-July-08, 17:43, said:

Ok I may have overstated the position, but I don't think her statement can be characterised as "pro gay marriage" either - even though she claims so herself. She clearly puts the interests of Christians who don't want same-sex partnerships called "marriage" above the interests of those who want it to be called "marriage".

Meanwhile, wtf is this???
https://twitter.com/...551212495986688
I honestly can't believe someone like this is in serious consideration to become prime minister of a 21st century western democracy. All the worst cliches and prejudices about women who aren't mothers packaged neatly. What a disgrace.

Cyberyeti, on 2016-July-08, 17:43, said:

She has said this morning that the article does not reflect her views more generally and asked The Times for a retraction.

cherdano, on 2016-July-08, 18:49, said:

As Zel said, she considers the second article as a gross misrepresentation of the interview she gave.

Her objections to the gay marriage bill seemed to be that she didn't want anything that went towards forcing anybody to allow "religious" gay marriage, civil gay marriage was fine.

Zelandakh, on 2016-July-09, 01:32, said:

What I linked to (on motherhood) was a transcript of part of the interview, not quotes from the article. Blaming the Times for what she said just makes it worse IMO.

I guess the most charitable thing you could say about Leadsom is that she is very bad at expressing her thoughts and opinions. Too bad that's sort o part of the job description of the job she is applying for...