M0nica - guessed where you are. It's a beautiful part of France. Enjoy the rest of your holiday.
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News & politics
Johnson’s Government
(896 Posts)I can imagine we will be horror struck as next week plays out. The cabinet will be a sight to behold.
monica that is my idea of heaven. Especially the Grace Kelly exhibition.
I wouldn’t bother to come back.
Don't Boris and Rees-Mogg, side by side, look like Jack Spratt and his wife!
I came to France on holiday with DS and family on Monday and I have only just found the time to plug in my pc, what is more my mobile is on the blink.
So for the first time in nearly a week I am catching up with the great big world. The week without news has been bliss. I didn't know (or care) who the PM is/was/might be, I didn't care who was in the cabinet. I haven't had to see one picture of Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg, neither of whose looks enhance the view.
All I have done is gone to the beach, wandered round the garden, talked non-stop to DGC, eaten well and been to an exhibition of the dresses Dior made for Grace Kelly.
In fact the week has been so enjoyable, and the news so depressing, I am thinking of turning my computer off for the rest of the holiday. Why ruin such an idyllic (news-free) break
An example of Johnson’s advisor and his behaviour
twitter.com/jdportes/status/1153948902418239490/photo/1
Why is John Redwood's opinion of any significance? [Sat 27-Jul-19 19:27:32]
I have been asking questions Growstuff but they are noticeably not being answered. Presumably Yorath0 sees J Redwood as some sort of guru. Personally, I see cut and paste to this extent as very, very boring.
Forget £39bn, the EU’s bill could be 10 times larger – Shock report
Without a quick & clean Brexit, UK is on the hook for up to £394bn of EU’s debts
The failing Eurozone could plunge the UK into 10+ years of austerity, unless it leaves now
A Brexit Facts4EU.Org explainer – the hidden menace of failing to leave on 31 October 2019
Mention money markets and global finance and most people’s eyes glaze over.
We ask readers to stay with us for a couple of minutes while we summarise in layman's language the very real risk of a long period of austerity, caused by the EU’s out-of-control financial system.
A new 40-page study published by Global Britain makes the EU’s claim for a £39bn divorce payout from the UK seem like small change. It could be 10 times that amount.
What’s the problem and why haven’t you heard about it?
Firstly, readers will know that the UK is not in the Eurozone, despite all the ‘experts’ telling us we had to join in 1999 or become an economic basket case.
Unfortunately, thanks to successive UK Government decisions, being out of the Euro has not meant that the UK is exempt from financial liabilities for the EU’s attempt to create one currency for the whole of the European Union.
BREXIT FACTS4EU.ORG SUMMARY
Short layman’s summary of the Global Britain report
Many Eurozone countries have excessive public debt and their banks have huge non-performing loans
The Euro was a political project, not underpinned by sound principles required for a currency to work
20 years of the Euro have resulted in a black hole of €1 trillion
Under Theresa May’s ‘deal’, we do not cease to be a shareholder in the European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank for at least 20 years
With a new Euro crisis pending, the UK could be called on to bail out all the countries who can’t pay
The ‘transition period’ could cause the UK’s liability to rise from the current figure of £185bn to £394bn
Only a quick and clean Brexit on 31 October would prevent the UK’s liability rising by £209bn
Please scroll down to download the full report.
Note: We have converted figures to pounds at £1=€1.12.
Full article
htTps://facts4eu.org/news/2019_jul_huge_eu_bill
Best to LEAVE and WTO
Nadine Norris to be a Health minister.
Blimey she makes Grayling look intelligent. I bet he’s pleased.
The final piece in the jigsaw of liars and clowns
Why is John Redwood's opinion of any significance?
Why we will be better off out of the EU
ByJOHNREDWOOD|Published:FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Prosperity, not austerity.
That must be our aim.
The £12bn we send every year to the EU and do not get back is lost money to the UK. Worse still it is a large drag on our balance of payments every year. To pay that bill we either have to borrow more money from abroad to pay it or we have to sell more of our assets to overseas buyers, cutting the investment income we earn on those assets.
There is no need for a Transition or Implementation period if there is no good deal to transit to.
We know we can trade well under WTO rules and with WTO tariffs, as that is what we do today with most countries outside the EU.
We can remove VAT from green items ranging from boiler controls to draught excluders.
When the UK joined the EU we had a 45 million tonnes a year steel industry. Today we are battling to save an 11 million tonnes industry.
When we joined the EU we had a 400,000 tonnes a year aluminium industry. Today we have just 43,000 tonnes of capacity left.
When we joined the EU we had 20 million tonnes of cement capacity. Today we have 12 million tonnes.
Just before we joined the EEC in 1971 we had a 1 million tonnes a year fishing industry. Today we have 600,000 tonnes.
The October 2013 government “Future of Manufacturing” Report shows that between 1951 and 1973 metals output rose 3% a year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has declined by more than 6%
Between 1951 and 1973 food and drink output rose by 5.6% per year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has fallen by 1% a year.
Between 1951 and 1973 textiles output expanded at 2.6% a year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has fallen by more than 6% a year.
hTtp://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/02/23/21448/
hTtp://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2016/06/16/how-joining-the-eu-led-to-a-big-decline-in-uk-industry/
Last para - how does he suppose that "the right tax cuts" are going to enable public sector improvements?
There is always a lot of talk about people leaving the country because of the high taxes. When Mrs T's government reduced the top rate from 83% to 60% in the first budget after the 1979 election. a certain William Rees Mogg, in a Times editorial, thanked Mrs T for the gift but said he didn't think he or his friends/colleagues would work any harder than they already did. They would just sit back and accept what they had been given.
Do you think PP has no knowledge of British/Irish history or is she really as bad as it sounds?
We seem to have been joined by a big fan of JOHN REDWOOD on several threads.
Pritti Patel is even more callous than I thought.
A many deals but no Withdrawal Agreement Brexit can make us better off
By JOHNREDWOOD | Published: MAY 29, 2019
The government should announce a boost to the UK economy in the event of us leaving the EU soon without signing the Withdrawal Agreement. The public wants some sensible optimism about our economic prospects based on the opportunities Brexit presents. The aim of policy should be to ensure a growth rate a little higher in our first year as an independent country than the present estimated growth rate assuming we stay under EU rules and making EU payments for another year. The present government has been persistently gloomy about Brexit for no good reason, and got all its post Brexit vote forecasts wrong by being too downbeat. There are already deals on customs co-operation, transport and government procurement available for an early exit.
A number of leadership candidates have been kind enough to ask for my thoughts on the economic impact of Brexit and the current state of the UK economy. In the interests of fairness I thought it best to set them out on this public forum for those who are in practice interested.
The policy of a combined fiscal and monetary squeeze which the authorities have followed since the spring of 2017 has had the predictable effect of slowing the UK more than is desirable. Two interest rate rises, the ending of Quantitative Easing, the withdrawal of special facilities to encourage bank lending, advice against car loans and top end mortgages, the overshoot in deficit reduction last year through much higher tax revenues, the continued impact of the last Chancellor’s decision to slash buy to let investment through tax changes and increased Stamp Duty, and the decision to cut new car sales by a large hike in Vehicle Excise Duty have had a marked effect on the housing and car markets and more generally on demand and output.
The Treasury seem to think leaving soon would be an adverse shock to the UK economy. I think this is wrong. The Treasury has a habit of wildly inaccurate forecasts over the EU. They got the impact of the Exchange Rate Mechanism hopelessly wrong by failing to see the recession it would cause, and got the likely impact of voting to leave in the first place wrong by forecasting a recession with big job losses which did not happen. However, given that is the Treasury view, it means there is an even better case for taking some reflationary action in an exit budget. You should spend £20bn extra in 2019-20 on a mixture of higher public spending to improve public services, and tax cuts to promote business investment and growth. This would use up the £12bn saved on no more net contributions to the EU and offset some £8bn of unplanned additional fiscal tightening from increased tax revenues. The aim is not to borrow more but to reduce borrowing further as economic growth picks up and as tax revenues expand in response to lower tax rates which maximise revenue.
This would produce a 1% gain to UK output and incomes, all things being equal. It would offset any reduction in exports from moving to tariffs on product sold to the EU, which on a net basis should be considerably less than 1% of GDP. Any loss of exports to the EU from tariffs and other frictions would be also partially set off by the likelihood of substituting more home production, by cheaper imports from non EU replacing some of the large import bill we experience from the EU and by additional exports to non EU. If we assume we cut our external tariff to the rest of the world in ways which encourage more trade and reciprocation as we sign new trade deals the outcome will be better. A fiscal boost now of 1% of GDP should mean after all positive and negative effects of leaving our GDP will perform better in 2019-20 than if we stayed in. There would be a clear favourable confidence effect once we were out, with businesses able to make decisions knowing exactly what our trading and other arrangements are. We may well be able to agree trade talks with the EU to start on exit, which would allow them and us to avoid new tariffs and trade barriers under Article 24 of the GATT.
The government should reverse the damaging increases in vehicle Excise Duty and create a more favourable tax regime especially for clean and low emission vehicles. It should remove all VAT from green products to encourage everything from better heating controls to insulation. It should remove VAT from domestic heating fuel to tackle fuel poverty and cut inflation further. The UK has not been able to do this as members of the EU. It should take the rate of Stamp Duty down to the levels that applied prior to the 2016 budget, as the government has experienced disappointing receipts from the higher rates. They have hit turnover and therefore tax revenues by being too high. The government should review buy to let investment taxes to allow more investment in the sector. It should make a further reduction to business rates especially for shops given the problems on the High Street.
Spending priorities should include more money for schools, the police and social care. As I know from my experiences in the Wokingham and West Berkshire Council areas, the lowest financed parts of the country like ours are struggling with low budgets for these crucial services. We also need an accelerated programme of transport investment. The government has recently announced substantial extra sums for the NHS which is welcome but now needs careful direction to ensure the money is spent on the service improvements and the extra medical staff we need.
Many Leave voters see Brexit as a great opportunity. With the right budget the UK economy could perform better. Now is the time to stop the monetary and fiscal squeeze, to back private sector growth with the right tax cuts, and to back public sector service improvements and investment growth where it is needed. The sooner we have a stimulus budget based on the Brexit bonus the better. World economies are slowing. Now is a good time to give things a boost.
GillT57 I'm not saying you are wrong but my understanding is that the average stay in a Care Home is 2 years.
Did you see Jonathan Pie on the matter?
As Johnson continues on his “we are not going to have an election”pre-election tour he has promised more spending of £3.6bn. for a towns fund, to jolly along northern towns.
His speech seems to have come straight out of a Labour book of speeches.
Getting close to or at about £100bn, that’s without stuff like social care etc.
I know someone who was having a house built in Morocco. He gave the room sizes he wanted in feet. The builders built it in metres. The rooms were huge!
Estate agent's particulars tend to put room size, in feet, I have occasionally seen metres being used, I have to do a mental calculation when that's the case, I'm far more familiar with feet and inches.
Our business deals with building companies large, small, sole traders, architects, surveyors, electricians, plumbers etc and they all use a mixture of imperial and metric.
Nothing to do with age groups.
"Fusion measures" are still common in the construction industry which was supposed to have become metric more than fifty years ago. On site it is quite common for a chippy to ask for "1.5 metres of the 2 by 4" (meaning 2 inch by 4 inch timber).
Care home costs around here are between £800 and £1500 per week depending upon the needs. I believe the average stay is 6 months? So, between £20800 and £39,000 for how many people? Fantasy. Going back to measurements; my children born in the mid 90s, their weight was in lbs and ounces but their length in centimetres. Fusion measures I suppose!
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