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Jools

The Positive Brexit Thread

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5 hours ago, T said:

Oxymoron. I’ve requested numerous times for a logical practical evidence based justification for Brexit and all I get from brexiteers is Inane idealology racism islamophobic and nationalism. You would have thought they would realise that if they can only construct slogans not arguments after three years then they don’t have a good argument but clearly not. They will now have to live with the consequences and the subsequent failure of all populist and nationalist regimes that face the reality of globalisation. 
 

it will not be the end of the world but they will have cost the UK more time and money than petty criminals who like them have low morals and are liars cheats and frauds only the Brexiteers with their relatively comfortable privileged lives have less excuses for their moral turpitude.

There could at least be the poor comfort of Schadenfreude but they will no doubt blames others for their decision and costing householdsGBP 1000 a year and risking half a million jobs will not be enough for them to see the error of their ways. Their children will not thank them but everything is a cycle and Brexit will inevitably be the last gasp of a dying generation which will bring nothing least of all for those who voted for it. 

I was going to post something about the decade just ending (unless you are French and rightly regard that as happening this time next year) but this post refers to at least part of what I was going to say.

There is an irony here. In short, a western world order was created or arguably formalised at the end of world war two, based on liberal social democracy (roughly speaking in the actually pretty narrow spectrum from the Tory party and the CDU on the soft right to Labour and the SPD on the soft left) allied to a caring (only up to a point) capitalism. In part this was engineered by the US as a way of undercutting support in continental Europe - particularly France and Italy - for the local Communist parties. This was the paranoid era of the Cold War, after all.
 
This was remarkably successful, in its own terms. The US cemented its position as the leading power, most of western Europe not only recovered from the ravages of war but prospered under stable governments (Italy not so much, but even it muddled through) pursuing consensus social democratic policies, the Cold War threat diminished and eventually fell away, and the process of globalisation, in effect spreading this only-up-to-a-point caring capitalism, gathered pace.
 
Provided you are prepared to accept that capitalism, with its faults, is here to stay, then all is surely good? Globalisation has taken hundreds of millions out of poverty, the statistics for which are at a record low (still too many, of course).
 
Enter the irony. Those western democracies that willingly spread globalisation (not least as part of the effort to undermine the Soviet empire) are now suffering from it, with their industries increasingly unable to compete with those in second- and third-world countries. Hence the rise in these old-economy countries of nativist/nationalist movements, attracting those dispossessed by globalisation but also, thanks to global cyberspace, able not just to articulate their anger but get organised. And win power, or come close to it.
 
But in general (there may be exceptions, although I cannot think of one offhand) these parties are being voted for on the back of an inchoate rage against, just against - against the recent past and the status quo - and a vague vision of a return to a supposed golden age (often, oddly, with fewer immigrants) rather than any plan to alter things for the better that would stand up to a moment's serious scrutiny.
 
Trump, although there are some uniquely freakish elements to him becoming president, speaks almost exclusively to a white, christian audience about a return to American exceptionalism (when exactly, and in what ways, did it stop being great?) and reviving the old-economy, but manufacturing jobs in those rustbelt communities are disappearing. His one real achievement (mainly thanks to Mitch McConnell) has been to create a clear long-term right-wing bias on the Supreme Court. Italians elected an anti-immigration and anti-establishment duopoly. An angry vote against, a negative, harvesting the understandable rage of the dispossesed, but for what positive? I doubt those electors or those elected could coherently say.

Yet they are not the best example. The particular point for the UK about that post-world war two settlement was that, as a US statesman said, Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. Except by the time he said it, in 1962, the UK had decided what its role should be. To be realistic and accept it was no longer a world power and instead join what would become the EU, to keep as much influence as possible and help the economy. So much so that it applied in 1961, only to be vetoed by de Gaulle. And then again, until 1973, when we were allowed in.
 
So Brexit was not just a vote to return to some imagined golden age, although that was one of the vague promises. Freed from the ties of the EU our business leaders would roam the world like the plundering freebooters and merchant venturers of the first Elizabethan era.

It was also a vote to return to a specific pre-EU era, with a specific politico-economic situation (only a churl would point out that many who voted for going back to that time had not been alive back then, and that many who were must have forgotten just why joining the putative EU was thought such a good idea. Of course the EU is more now than it was then, but its growth has undeniably been good for the  UK economy - check out all those Leave promises about the single market! - and there has never been a significant development the UK could not either veto or get an opt-out from).
 
Superficially a promise of a return to a specific recent  past seems more realistic and coherent than a vague evocation of a long-gone golden age. But that past was then and this is now, and the world, as outlined above has very much moved on.  To promise to return to that is nonsensical. If there was (and is) a unified Brexit vision it has very little connection to the three immediate postwar decades. The reality is that if being in the EU made sense back in the sixties and seventies it makes more sense rather than less in this era of expanding globalisation.

At bottom the Brexit vote was fuelled by the same two factors as prevalent elsewhere in the western world - an understandable anger (hospital waiting lists and food banks are two of the UK's few growth areas) at what life is like for many, and by promises that were  cleverly seductive but at best unsubstantiated and at worst quite unsustainable.

 

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Indeed. You would have to very naive to believe Brexit is the solution to brexiteers concerns but people have a strong tendency to have undying belief in what they want to believe regardless of reality as demonstrated by the Brexiteers on here on a daily basis. 

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46 minutes ago, T said:

Indeed. You would have to very naive to believe Brexit is the solution to brexiteers concerns but people have a strong tendency to have undying belief in what they want to believe regardless of reality as demonstrated by the Brexiteers on here on a daily basis. 

When it comes down to it the Brexiteers wanted to believe the lies they were sold. But what is in it for the liars? Obviously, Farage has made Brexit a nice little earner and the owners of most of our media are either foreigners or tax exiles. Is the UKs future really some kind of cold and rainy Singapore-authortarian on people, libertaraian on corporations? Who benefits from that?

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6 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

That money is simply for now replacing what farmers got from the EU. What the NFU, understandably, is worried about is the future:

"To ensure a positive outlook for UK farming after we leave the EU the government will need to couple this financial guarantee of support for our industry with a clear-cut commitment that domestic producers will not be unfairly undermined by imports from overseas produced to standards that would be illegal here. We are still waiting for the introduction of a council on trade and standards that can advise ministers on our future trade policy and scrutinise the forthcoming negotiations to ensure our high farming standards are not undermined by substandard imports.''

The money that they previously received from the EU was OUR money anyway as we were net donors to the ponzi scheme.  We are simply taking back control and will now have our own policies on agriculture, fisheries etc without EU interference, and will thrive as our own industries expand, free of the EU straitjacket, while the French suffer without the golden goose subsidising their inefficient farming via the common agricultural policy. 

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Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest banking group...

Its share price: 159.59 on 11 May 2007

7.72 on 30 Dec 2019 😯😀

 

MacroTrends

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5 minutes ago, paul moy said:

The money that they previously received from the EU was OUR money anyway as we were net donors to the ponzi scheme.

So leaving aside the fact that you clearly have no idea what a ponzi scheme is, you are admitting that Remainers were right all along in saying that the '£350 million a week spent on the EU' claim was a total lie.

Well its taken three and a half years and its a lie that you yourself have trotted out endless times during that period but I suppose it's progress of a sort that you've now done a u-turn. 

Of course there's still the small matter of all the other lies.........🙄

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14 minutes ago, Jools said:

Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest banking group...

Its share price: 159.59 on 11 May 2007

7.72 on 30 Dec 2019 😯😀

 

MacroTrends

The value I´ve seen for May 2007 on MacroTrends is about $75, and the current value is $16

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DB/deutsche-bank-aktiengesellschaft/market-cap

Not sure what your 159.59 are?

Edit - I´m looking at the Market Cap, rather than the share price, the share price is as you´ve stated. The Market Cap is stated by MacroTrends as "the most commonly used method of measuring the size of a publicly traded company"

Edited by How I Wrote Elastic Man

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20 minutes ago, Jools said:

How Britain can prosper after it leaves the EU

https://www.ft.com/content/05e5fcf0-176a-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6  👍

 

The Financial Times has changed its tone somewhat 😀

 

Unless one actually reads the leader, which makes clear it still thinks Brexit is a mistake, as any sane person who knows anything about economics does, and is especially worried about manufacturing, but rather than just repeat that is trying to be positive and suggest ways in which the undoubted damage can to an extent be alleviated.

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26 minutes ago, Jools said:

Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest banking group...

Its share price: 159.59 on 11 May 2007

7.72 on 30 Dec 2019 😯😀

 

MacroTrends

In the same time-frame the share price for Lloyds, one of the UK's big banks, also fell off a cliff, going from around 600p in 2007 to a tenth of that now. Could there perhaps have been some event around 2007/2008 that hit financial stocks globally, rather than being a verdict of the German economy alone?

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9 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

In the same time-frame the share price for Lloyds, one of the UK's big banks, also fell off a cliff, going from around 600p in 2007 to a tenth of that now. Could there perhaps have been some event around 2007/2008 that hit financial stocks globally, rather than being a verdict of the German economy alone?

RBS seem to have struggled from  around 2007 too...

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Blimey, is Prison Planet still blathering on? Is he chipping in for Alex Jones's massive court fines?

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How I Wrote Elastic Man quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
9 hours ago

 

Mr Apples quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
11 hours ago

 

BigFish mentioned you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
12 hours ago

 

Creative Midfielder quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
13 hours ago

 

Herman quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread

 

Thanks guys and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all 

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2 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

In the same time-frame the share price for Lloyds, one of the UK's big banks, also fell off a cliff, going from around 600p in 2007 to a tenth of that now. Could there perhaps have been some event around 2007/2008 that hit financial stocks globally, rather than being a verdict of the German economy alone?

So the top seven worst-performing banks in the EU in 2019, are: Erste Group Bank AG, La Banque Postale, Deutsche Bank AG, societe generale SA, Banco de Sabadell SA, Unione di Banche Italiane Societa Per Azioni and Norddeutsche Landesbank - Girozentrale...

And you're trying to counter with the fact that Lloyds have fared better than all of the above? 🤔

I'm adamant you're going to come up with a really convincing argument one of these days 😀

Edited by Jools

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1 minute ago, Barbe bleu said:

Still at it guys? No alternative hobbies yet found?

You're here 😀

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8 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

Unless one actually reads the leader, which makes clear it still thinks Brexit is a mistake, as any sane person who knows anything about economics does, and is especially worried about manufacturing, but rather than just repeat that is trying to be positive and suggest ways in which the undoubted damage can to an extent be alleviated.

👍👍

A lesson for the New Year, especially for brexiters. Read beyond the headline.

 

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8 hours ago, Jools said:

So the top seven worst-performing banks in the EU in 2019, are: Erste Group Bank AG, La Banque Postale, Deutsche Bank AG, societe generale SA, Banco de Sabadell SA, Unione di Banche Italiane Societa Per Azioni and Norddeutsche Landesbank - Girozentrale...

And you're trying to counter with the fact that Lloyds have fared better than all of the above? 🤔

I'm adamant you're going to come up with a really convincing argument one of these days 😀

Oh dear. You haven't quite got the point here.

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9 hours ago, SwindonCanary said:

 

How I Wrote Elastic Man quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
9 hours ago

 

Mr Apples quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
11 hours ago

 

BigFish mentioned you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
12 hours ago

 

Creative Midfielder quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread
13 hours ago

 

Herman quoted you in a topic: The Brexit Thread

 

Thanks guys and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all 

Happy new year, SwindonCanary

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Time for the Country to come together

"We can start a new chapter in the history of our country, in which we come together and move forward united, unleashing the enormous potential of the British people."

👍

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23 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Time for the Country to come together

"We can start a new chapter in the history of our country, in which we come together and move forward united, unleashing the enormous potential of the British people."

👍

Doesn't every new PM of any party say as much? It's just piffle in Johnson speak.

What's been holding them back? 

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14 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Doesn't every new PM of any party say as much? It's just piffle in Johnson speak.

What's been holding them back? 

On 28/09/2019 at 11:53, Jools said:

Britain is full of idle, Lefty indoctrinated mugs who aspire to do nothing because they want everything done for them -- hence their approval of mass immigration.

Enormous potential. 😂

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1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

Doesn't every new PM of any party say as much? It's just piffle in Johnson speak.

What's been holding them back? 

Not grabbed you then 😀

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1 hour ago, kick it off said:

Welcome to Boris Johnson's brave new, outward facing, Brexit Britain.

image.png.e936b01ef2cb0496e46da4305ce2685a.png

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50331687

Point of order,   the stats are for 17/18, so long before  boris took office and exclusions for racism across all schools are down over the recorded period.

No analysis as to the reasons for the statistics appears to be offered

 

 

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