shurlock

No option is perfect. Time will tell. But I’m not sure how pointing out challenges, issues and dodgy assumptions amounts to wanting the country to fail or wanting to be proved right. Quite the opposite. By that dodgy logic, one could claim that Brexiters are less interested in success for success sake than the justification it gives them to show how the naysayers were wrong and to gloat over their victory.

Why? Whatever their motives, it doesn’t make them any more honorable or any less selfish: the majority of Brexiteers and a sizeable number of Remainers are more than happy to sacrifice others livelihoods and interests -which is the key point- to achieve their goals.

Think you’ll find that far more Brexiteers would be happy to damage the economy to get their way than Remainers would.

Maybe soggy is thinking about Saturday nights out in Maidstone in 1983 when he was a young’un. http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx

You play with fire, you’ll literally get burnt. Just deserts.

You do realise per the same survey that 70% of the general British public wouldn’t report a terrorist to the police either? They’d stand back and let them do it. By your faultless reasoning, 46 million people would be happy to see you and me dead. That’s like 220x the size of Portsmouth or something Of course, the reality is a bit more complex and a bit less apocalyptic pal. Nowhere does the survey suggest that not reporting someone suspected to be involved with terrorism amounts to doing nothing: thus 46% of Muslims would talk to the person directly about it to dissuade them; 37% would look for help; 27% wouldn’t do anything but only because they don’t think anyone close to them would get involved with people who supported terrorism. Similar attitudes are found among the British public at large. Are there problems within sections of the Muslim community, particularly with respect to social attitudes. Absolutely and they should be called out in unambiguous terms. We should treat every community the same, including affording them similar opportunities, shouldn’t we pal? Therefore, perhaps you’ll show equal interest in the persistent racial (and class-based) inequalities in British life -from education, housing, employment to criminal justice that yesterday’s landmark government audit highlighted.

Following today's Times article by Phillip Hammond and his appearance in front of the Treasury, Jihadists have got the hump that the government's threat of no-no deal is as credible as a child rattling a fence behind a cordon of police at the football. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/philip-hammonds-brexit-no-deal-bind/ Some of the reactions on order-order and at the express are hilarious. Complete amateurs

Didn’t that survey get hammered for its lack of rigour? That it only polled areas with very high concentrations of Muslims (>20%) which are typically poorer and more conservative -in short, they’re likely shîthôles- rather than being truly representative of the UK Muslim population.

Nah, a revisionist, at least in the way it’s commonly used, is someone who airbrushes history and pretends they always maintained the after-the-event position.

It is important to differentiate between volume and price growth - the latter is unlikely to be ‘good’ if it just reflects inflationary pressures from a weaker pound. There’s also uncertainty whether purchases are being driven by essentials or big ticket items - the latter would imply greater confidence in the UK economy (ONS and BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor are in disagreement here). Surveys like YouGov certainly suggest consumer confidence is up, though it is still lower than before the referendum.

Well according to the IFS (latest available figures) the UK’s net contribution -in per capita and overall terms- is still lower than that of France, even after taking account of all these adjustments.

They add up: the UK has a larger population, so while it pays less in per capita terms, it’s overall contribution is bigger. Needless to say that contribution is tiny in the grand scheme of things i.e. relative to the size of these countries economies and national governments budgets. Any shortfall left by the UK’s departure will not be difficult to meet: whether the EU is prepared to cede on this out of principle is another matter, however. And to repeat: net and gross contributions do not lead to the ‘same percentage or size’. This assumes every country gets proportionately the same deduction. They don’t. The UK is virtually unique in terms of the generosity and the safeguards attached to the rebate it receives.

You love your general equilibrium effects, don’t you?

Been to games in Baltimore, Denver, New Orleans and San Francisco. The plan had been to go to Lambeau Field this November; but other things have got in the way. From a purely technical perspective (i.e. leaving out the atmosphere), the NFL is much better suited to TV than football. Each play is like a burst of gun fire and is over in a blink of an eye. While you get some sense how a play might develop from the different formations and coverages that the offense and defense shows, the whole point is to confuse and misdirect. TV gives you the benefit of multiple angles, instant replays (esp for penalties), close ups (f**k knows who’s winning what along the offensive and defensive lines when you’re up in the gods) and of course analysis - all of which allow you to understand the anatomy of a play and how it’s elements fit together. Arguably NFL becomes more exciting in person when it becomes more like football, when it goes off script -for instance when a coverage is blown or a QB is forced out of the pocket. There have been some excellent NFL games this season (though the irony is that viewing figures have been falling, probably due to technology as much as anything). The same can’t be said about football: how much this is due to the quality of our play and the dire atmospheres is unclear; but the lack of real competition, the sheer amount of football and the funny times haven’t helped. This was perhaps tolerable as long as the authorities and media could claim that the PL was the best league in the world; but watching us to play s**t in Europe and the fate of the national team have shattered that myth. That just makes the overhyping of players and managers feel patronising and manipulative. The pulling away of the top six also flies in the face of the PL’s alleged parity and unpredictability. The only reason games appear closer than they are is that they have become more predictable as underdogs set up more rigidly while the top teams are afraid to lose to each other.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen - or in Misselbrook’s case, whine and bîtch and put you on ignore. Even when he’s furiously copying and pasting a new article to distract from his last f**k up, he’s still all over the place. The Council of Europe, part of the EU? The bloke is an absolute mess - even fellow Brexiteers on here are embarrassed by him.

Clearly not everyone in Germany is pro-EU, though support for it is at a 25 year high. Ultimately it's all relative. How many people are genuinely satisfied with their own domestic political arrangements? To repeat, the rise of AfD is largely attributable to Germany's refugee intake - see just today Merkel's announcement of a cap that will not let in more than 200,000 refugees a year, except in emergencies. There's a blatant hypocrisy among brexiteers. On the one hand, they're happy to bash the EU for being inflexible and punitive when it insists that counties like Greece repay the debt they owe and push through structural reform in order to protect taxpayers in Northern Europe. Yet when proposals for risk-sharing and debt forgiveness are raised, the EU gets slaughtered for sacrificing member states interests (which of course is debatable). Like everything else, the Brexit loons want to have their cake and eat it. As I said elsewhere, sections of German society, notably exporters have benefited handsomely from an undervalued euro and frictionless access to markets in Southern Eurozone whose companies cannot compete with German imports. That those benefits are not shared as widely as some might hope has little to do with the EU -and everything to do with the configuration of domestic politics and policies.

Oh dear - another schoolboy howler there John. The Council of Europe is totally distinct from the EU. You're like the same Brexit clowns who confuse the ECJ and the European Court of Human Rights. Indeed their hatred of the former is largely derived from their hatred of the latter. The referendum result has no implications whatsoever for the UK's relationship with the Council of Europe or the European Convention of Human Rights. You really are a special little guy.

Throwing about my post count yet taking comfort from someone who’s posted 22,000 times - how does that work, little man

Of course it makes a difference, though it depends what exact point you’re trying to make. It clearly matters if you’re making statements about how much money the UK will have to spend on the NHS and other items upon leaving the EU - unless you’re claiming that the EU will continue to pay the rebate to the UK and benefit from EU funding of research and structural and rural development It also matters if, as Jihadi John, you’re claiming the EU is some bloated and extractive leviathan (and frankly it’s irrelevant where the staff comes from - so much as who benefits from EU policies such as the single market. Never mind that Belgium and Luxembourg which are heavily represented on EU staff pay disproportionately more in gross terms to the EU budget for that privilege). In per capita terms, the UK makes a much lower net contribution to the EU budget than Germany, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Austria (latest available figures). In gross per capita terms, the disparity between the UK and these countries isn’t as large, though it is still favourable to the UK. Hence differences between gross and net matter proportionately. And if your point is that the UK’s negotiating position is stronger because the UK’s departure will leave a gaping hole in the EU budget, then, yes, the UK is one of the largest overall net contributors to the EU behind Germany and France and historically Italy. But let’s keep things in perspective instead of wetting the bed or mindlessly copying and pasting pie charts with little understanding of the size of the pie: the EU budget is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. No country pays more than 1% of gross national income (GNI) net to the EU budget (GNI and GDP are slightly different concepts but in practice, there’s little difference between the two). In 2014, the UK’s net contribution was 0.22% of GNI - that’s significantly less than the amount that the UK spends on foreign aid, for example (a good thing). The EU will break little sweat in covering the shortfall left by the UK’s departure. Some member states may have to contribute a bit more while others may have to receive a bit less, leading to some grumbling but the overall amounts are tiny relative to the size of these countries economies. Ultimately the issue is about fairness and procedural integrity.

A f**king moron, if reports are to be believed.

Easy way to answer this question - Jamie aka Batman, do you want Pelle back?

Of course, I have concerns but there are other things that worry me more. I'm comfortable with complexity - I don't need scapegoats. Yes Macron and Merkel have proposed deeper integration on budget and finance; but the reforms are starting from a very low base. Ultimately public expenditure rests with member states: thus the UK controls more than 98 per cent of its public expenditure whatever the ignorant bluster claim on here. Admittedly things are different for Eurozone countries but the prospect of deep fiscal union, a superstate with extensive tax and spend powers is no more real than the Brexiteet myth of a sunny uplands. I opposed the Euro, in large part because of its inflexibility and lack of fiscal transfer as a stabilisation mechanism. The irony is that these are precisely the flaws that Macron and Merkel's proposals now hope to remedy. As things stand, the EU’s halfway house suits nobody -not a minority who want deeper integration as a political project and not a majority who don’t want to be on the hook for other countries problems in the future. Without fiscal risk-sharing, small and containable country shocks can rapidly become systemic which makes everyone worse off. Don’t get me wrong. Fears that this will just mean more bills are left unpaid as the North props up the South are completely understandable (though the PIGS -Greece included- have shown tentative signs of recovery). The flip side, of course, is that poorer Eurozone countries, as members of the single market, have been required to open their markets to Dutch and German companies which are significantly more competitive. And those companies have benefited from having a currency that is weaker than a stand-alone currency would have been. Perhaps the problem is that these benefits have flowed to these companies and their shareholder rather than shared more widely. If that’s the case, then it’s a failing of national policy and redistribution as much as the EU's fault. We’ve been here before. In the US, the South also had a history of poverty and underdevelopment and was dependent for decades on fiscal transfers from the federal government, causing resentment. However if economic theory says anything, it is that poorer regions and countries have greater room for economic growth and catch-up than those at the productivity frontier. Today the South is the largest generator of both GDP and GDP growth in the US and home to ten of the 15 fastest-growing large cities. Am not saying history will repeat itself. It could all end in messy failure, a risk I don’t discount as I’m generally gloomy about the outlook for the global economy. However, fixing the rules around the Euro, ideally in a gradual manner -along with a renewed commitment from the Southern Eurozone to structural reform (see Spain's efforts) would appear steps in the right direction. I don't think the UK could stay clear of any mess. It is so bound up with Europe that any crisis on the continent would still lead to immense collateral damage. Likewise the sovereignty argument is overstated IMO. Even after the UK leaves the EU, it is very likely that industry will still follow EU rules, even if it’s under no legal obligation, simply in order reduce the need for border checks and other forms of compliance. The car industry has already signalled its intention to do this whatever the government does. This seems a particularly tortuous course of action just to avoid the direct jurisdiction of the ECJ. And while UK industry will still follow rules coming out of Brussels, it will no longer have any say in their formulation. So much for sovereignty. I'm pragmatic sovereignty as I think too much power is concentrated in Westminster and an outmoded electoral system. That’s why in addition to electoral reform, I support both devolution of power to local authorities (downwards) and pooling sovereignty selectively at a supranational level with appropriate accountability (upward). Why the latter? Because the deepening of globalisation creates challenges -regulatory arbitrage, financial instability, tax evasion, protectionism, terrorism, cybercrime, environmental protection and energy security- that no state can resolve on its own. Supranational institutions also amplify the clout and choices of smaller nations, ensuring that the rules of globalisation aren’t simply written for the benefit of the US and China and very narrow economic interests but are conducted on the basis of reciprocity. The notion of taking back control, in this respect, is a hollow victory, if not a cruel oxymoron - something which the UK and the Brexit fundamentalists are going to learn the hard way.

Yahya, 18 months on and you still don't know the elementary difference between gross and net contribution. Sad! Word of advice pal: stop copying and pasting charts you don't understand.

Evidence that they're all dissatisfied with the EU -as opposed to other issues such as the influx of Syrian refugees and fear of Islam which, of course, have nothing to do with the EU?

Don’t compare Pelle and Austin. Different players. I liked Pelle but think Austin is pretty mediocre. While he could be static at times, Pelle always offered more outside the box than Austin in terms of touch, intelligence and holdup play. From memory, one issue people had with Pelle is that he tended to stay central - if a player like Lambert could peel off opposing CBs and find space around the pitch, people wondered why Pelle couldn’t.