The yellowhammer documents

Right. I see you were responding to the idiotic tweet of some lunatic MP.

Not trotting out the "Let's be patient and all will be well" mantra, *lemon?
Ooops, sorry! You've simply reworded it!
Fat lot of good that advice has been.
Do us all a favour and take a leaf out of dilly's book.

The yellowhammer documents are outlining a possible worst case scenario in the event of a no deal Brexit

Er, no, they're not. The worst case scenario is apparently a document named Black Swan. Yellowhammer is the optimistic scenario.

When the Yellowhammer documents were first leaked it was described as a "base scenario" which is civil service speak for "most likely" .

A "worst case scenario" would by implication be much worse., so it is time the BBC and others stopped repeating this lie.

Andrea Leadsome said when she tried to justify witholding information that if people were told the truth it might frighten them but they should be told the truth and they should be frightened.

Lemon, at least Dilly had the courage to admit she had been misled and bitterly regrets it, you meanwhile trot out the same old feeble defence and seem to seriously believe that it will all be alright in the end. Still, I thank you for being the only one so far to pop their head up, your friends and allies are in short supply this morning.

When Johnson gets his way and Brexit happens all will be well as the good old British fighting spirit will mean volunteers and churches will help the old, the sick and the feckless.

On the other hand, now that natural resources including even water are dangerously depleted, is fascism inevitable?

Businesses who export to EU countries will have their cash flows affected because of VAT. At the moment UK businesses do not charge VAT on sales to the EU (assuming that they have the correct paperwork) . If and when we leave the EU they will have to charge VAT at 20%. Most businesses have agreed with their customers periods of credit (ie the length of time before the customer must pay up). However VAT is due in the quarter during which the invoice is raised. So they could find that they have to pay over the VAT to HMRC before they have been paid by their customer. Not good news.

Dilly; I'm so sorry to hear that your family are emigrating. Mine have talked about it but it isn't [thus far] because of their work, they just don't like what this country is turning into. On the [ok they're biased] remain facebook pages there are thread after thread of people having to leave the country/losing family member etc because of Brexit. And this is on top of the fact it has split friendships and families. It's like a countrywide version of the miners strike, and from what I've read those communities are still split. And, even if the country comes to it's senses and reverses the worst economic decision a country has ever made, those families won't return/those businesses will not relocate back to this country. It's all very sad .

Rosamund Urwin, the Sunday Times journalist who first published the leaked Yellowhammer report tweets-

"Here is Michael Gove contradicting himself before the exiting the EU select committee last week - admitting Yellowhammer does say “base scenario” after denying it first"

twitter.com/RosamundUrwin/status/1171926496367300609

Rosamund Urwin
‏ @RosamundUrwin

"This is not Project Fear — it’s what we face after no-deal Brexit". Operation Yellowhammer is not the worst case scenario (that's Black Swan), this is the government's "base" scenario

Even if we awake from our collective madness and revoke Article 50, this country will never be quite the same. Apart from the billions of money wasted by the public and private sector in preparations, the damage done to the public trust in politicians is broken beyond repair. Brexiteers will feel let down, they were told that they would be listened to and that everything would be just great, easiest trade deals in history blah blah blah, unicorns blah blah blah, sunlit uplands etc. Meanwhile, remainers have been lambasted, accused of spreading Project Fear, of being unpatriotic, of being traitors of being marxists blah blah blah. And all for absolutely nothing.

Wikipedia on Black Swan theory. Whoever named the worst-case-Brexit scenario Black Swan had a great sense of irony!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Thanks for that. However a main premise of the theory seems to hinge on unexpected major event.
What about a self-inflicted major event?

It will all have been for nothing for the vast majority of people. If they're lucky, they'll be no worse off, but some will most definitely suffer - and not just for a few days and weeks.

However, for a handful it will not have been for nothing. Some people have already become rich and some are set to become even richer. They are the ones whose money has been behind Brexit all along. They will benefit from deregulation, not having to disclose tax information and "shorting" currency.

A very small group of people understood how to persuade the majority to vote for something to legitimise their aims. That's how they can claim the "will of the people". Of course, it's nothing of the sort.

mcem I think the theory could apply, using the third criterion:

"The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs."

It certainly does seem to be the case that there is a massive amount of cognitive dissonance, which blinds people to seeing rational argument.

People are so ideologically committed to Brexit now that they are blinded to reality.

I don't suppose for one minute that the vast majority of people who voted for Brexit foresaw what has happened and what will happen, so it is an unexpected major event. They didn't inflict it deliberately.

This is what happens when you put the majority of your "eggs in one basket", we are advised not to put all our investments and savings with one fund/isa/savings account.

We are leaving a trading block not The continent of Europe, of course the Civil Servants and Government needs an emergency strategy, I think we would all be up in arms if they hadn't got one!

And your point is ... GrannyGravy?

What point are you making?

Fair point growstuff.
Do you think there might be an 'Ooops' element?
A lightbulb moment due to hindsight? (for those who weren't already well aware of the likely consequences)
A demand to rethink and pull back from disaster?

GG13 brave attempt

Jo Coburn on the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation has just repeated the lie about Yellowhammer being a worst case scenario.

It's hard to believe she doesn't know that it is not, so is she just following the BBC party line?

She also has a Brexit MEP who goes on about leave voters being furious.

I'm furious. Every Remain voter I know is furious about this brexit nonsense and what it has already done to our country, but you never hear that said on the BBC.

growstuff.........my point being that the UK has been to reliant on the EU, unable due to EU regulations to look elsewhere for better trade deals.

But there aren't any better trade deals.

* sigh *

I wish mcem, but I'm not optimistic. I don't know.

Sorry to return to Nazi Germany, but I do remember seeing a "lightbulb moment". When the concentration camps were liberated, the Americans insisted on taking groups of Germans to witness what was in the camps. I've read some of the accounts by real people, who were horrified by what they saw.

I suspect the results of Brexit will be more gradual. People will be worse off, as prices rise and people lose their jobs. Families will be dispersed and the UK will lose its position in the world. That's what happens when great powers lose their influence and empires die.

Of course, the government will try to hide the effects by lying and will prop up the economy with debt, so that the majority won't accept what's going on.

By the time the results are really noticeable, many of the people who voted for it will be dead.

GrannyGravy If the UK is so reliant on the EU, how come we do trade with the US and China? Of course, we can trade with people outside the EU. Why do you think otherwise?