Brexit negotiations thread

[Another Surrey Shrimper]

That's strange. I have and continue to do 'all right' by this uncontrolled capitalism you speak of. Certainly a lot better than my mother and father did back in the days of a Socialist left wing UK government.

I think it's fair to say the majority of people under 30 are the first generation in generations to be worse off than their parents.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I remember the 70's much better than the 60's, since I came of age in 1970, when I voted for Labour for the first time while in the 6th form at WHS.

I certainly don't remember"the unions systematically destroyed the production side of the economy through militancy and pseudo communism."

You don't remember the endless strikes, flying pickets, the relentless focus on defending existing jobs or existing pay/conditions/working practices in industries which were changing (e.g. innovating in other countries leaving us behind in terms of production efficiency and finished product quality) or dying (e.g. the printing presses, deep shaft coal mining) rather than focussing on what could advance the products, maintain competitive edge, diversify and succeed and therefore deliver the retraining, restructuring etc that was needed and then yes also retain and improve pay and conditions.... You didn't notice any of that happening?

 

[BILLERICAY BLUE]

Harold Wilson most certainly did not bail out of office.He had a serious medical condition which he knew would only get worse with time,which is precisely why he retired..This is a matter of public record.

Fair enough, I couldn't remember why he quit (I was only 8 at the time ), but the point still stands

 

[Another Surrey Shrimper]

While I tend to agree I also think that even a bad deal (ie May's deal) would be better than no deal.

I really don't believe that is the choice on offer - even May introduced an 'or Remain' option recently. I think that was supposed to add to the scare tactics but didn't seem to have any impact.

 

[blues exile]

Are you for real!!? London was one big bomb site during the 60's/70's, while the rest of the country was flat on it's arse. How can you possibly say it was a time of hope under Wilson or any other so called leader back then. You do know what the rest of the world was calling us then right?

The poor man of Europe. Where was the hope?

Were you around then? A complete travesty of reality, did you read it in the Sun? A time when young people could go to university, buy a house or rent knowing there were controls on unscrupulous landlords. An era of genuine full employment and rising wages, not the bogus zero hours economy the Tories have deliberately created. Plenty of social housing compared to now, although never enough. Prices and Incomes Board. Abolition of capital punishment, homosexuality legalised, abortion too. No foreign adventures interfering in other countries at America's behest. All complete anathema to rednecks and rightwingers of course.

 

[blues exile]

What personal abuse? I haven't abused you! I pointed out that despite many discussions and evidenced responses you are the one person who never seems to acknowledge anything unless it was your opinion to start with. That is not abuse, it is an observation and a fair one - which was not delivered in an abusive way.

Furthermore, any objective analysis of this thread would not (in my view) assess a paucity or lack of research, knowledge and understanding through my contributions when compared to yours.

Actually, I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in your hatred of markets. The market economy is a wide concept that encompasses everything where choices are made about purchases or transactions for goods and services. Why would anyone hate having two comparable products to choose between? That is different from what I think you really hate, which is the financial markets. Those folks who make decisions about where to lend, who lend to, how risky that lending would be etc. This is a long subject for which I don't have the time to go into all the ins and outs here, but the upshot is that governments need money. You can tax for it, or you have to earn it through charging for services, and if neither of those provide enough you have two options - borrow or print. Is it not fair that lenders assess whether they think you can afford to repay? Who has money that governments could borrow? Surely only banks or large funds. Which large funds are out there? Sovereign wealth funds and pension funds. Do you hate or object to either of those? IF you object to all that, do you advocate printing money each time we need some? Can you think of any implications that that might have for the value of money? I'm not sure you've really thought this through much beyond a fairly standard 'it must be wrong as they've got more than me and I am not in charge of the decisions' naivete.

To talk about having tin ears is abuse in my book.
Your analysis of the free market economy fails to mention the damage that uncontrolled rapacity by the banks has caused as a result of deregulation. On a personal level, as a branch manager of one of the largest banks back in the 80s and 90s I was well aware of fhe iniquities of the sales culture, the misselling of insurance products such as endowment mortgages and pensions, by staff under pressure to deliver. I saw many businesses go to the wall through no fault of their own by the immoral behaviour of outfits like M & S not settling their bills on the due date. I saw honest working people suckered into trying to speculate on property development to their detriment. The utter immorality of the whole Thatcher project legitimising greed was disgusting. The list is endless. You fall back on the old 'politics of envy' argument. I have no personal interest in making money or acquiring a fortune and never have, there are far more important things in life, but the sheer injustice of the monstrous gap between executive and worker pay is something any decent person should be outraged about.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

To talk about having tin ears is abuse in my book.
Your analysis of the free market economy fails to mention the damage that uncontrolled rapacity by the banks has caused as a result of deregulation. On a personal level, as a branch manager of one of the largest banks back in the 80s and 90s I was well aware of fhe iniquities of the sales culture, the misselling of insurance products such as endowment mortgages and pensions, by staff under pressure to deliver. I saw many businesses go to the wall through no fault of their own by the immoral behaviour of outfits like M & S not settling their bills on the due date. I saw honest working people suckered into trying to speculate on property development to their detriment. The utter immorality of the whole Thatcher project legitimising greed was disgusting. The list is endless. You fall back on the old 'politics of envy' argument. I have no personal interest in making money or acquiring a fortune and never have, there are far more important things in life, but the sheer injustice of the monstrous gap between executive and worker pay is something any decent person should be outraged about.

I didn't analyse the market economy, I described some facets of it. You are describing micro level anecdotal bad practice (in your own work environment where you were in the leadership position) and various other examples of bad practice. Are you saying that bad people dont exist and bad things dont happen if you dont have a market economy? Bad people, bad choices, criminals - they will always be there. Saying 'this and that were bad' doesnt make the system the bad thing, it makes some of the people in the system incorrect or illegal in how they have behaved.

I also want world peace and freedom for kittens and unicorns. I believe that pay should be commensurate with value added by someone. It should be justifiable. There does not need to be pay above a certain level, in my opinion, but I don't want it given to Corbyn and McDonnell to squander on their vanity projects I would rather those who have earned that extra (if it is justified that they have created value above the arbitrary moral pay ceiling we both feel there should be) decide how to invest it for the good of the community. Build an extra hospital - donate to an educational or NHS trust so that they can invest in wages and facitilies... or other innovative ways to add value.

 

[blues exile]

I didn't analyse the market economy, I described some facets of it. You are describing micro level anecdotal bad practice (in your own work environment where you were in the leadership position) and various other examples of bad practice. Are you saying that bad people dont exist and bad things dont happen if you dont have a market economy? Bad people, bad choices, criminals - they will always be there. Saying 'this and that were bad' doesnt make the system the bad thing, it makes some of the people in the system incorrect or illegal in how they have behaved.

I also want world peace and freedom for kittens and unicorns. I believe that pay should be commensurate with value added by someone. It should be justifiable. There does not need to be pay above a certain level, in my opinion, but I don't want it given to Corbyn and McDonnell to squander on their vanity projects I would rather those who have earned that extra (if it is justified that they have created value above the arbitrary moral pay ceiling we both feel there should be) decide how to invest it for the good of the community. Build an extra hospital - donate to an educational or NHS trust so that they can invest in wages and facitilies... or other innovative ways to add value.

The 'bad practice' was and as far as I am aware still is endemic because of the pursuit of obscene levels of profit. That's systemic and an inevitable consequence. That's why it needs regulation and control.
Disregarding the rather silly kittens and unicorn comment, what exactly are the 'vanity projects' you mention? Surely you are not against renationalisation of public services after all these years of the consumer being ripped off by private companies and their shareholders?

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

You don't remember the endless strikes, flying pickets, the relentless focus on defending existing jobs or existing pay/conditions/working practices in industries which were changing (e.g. innovating in other countries leaving us behind in terms of production efficiency and finished product quality) or dying (e.g. the printing presses, deep shaft coal mining) rather than focussing on what could advance the products, maintain competitive edge, diversify and succeed and therefore deliver the retraining, restructuring etc that was needed and then yes also retain and improve pay and conditions.... You didn't notice any of that happening?

I can certainly remember going on a lot of demos at the time and picketing for workers' rights at Satley and Grunwick.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Fair enough, I couldn't remember why he quit (I was only 8 at the time ), but the point still stands

Not really.Wilson was a better PM than most people give him credit for.Have a look at Ben Pimlott's excellent biography.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

[QUOTE="Another Surrey Shrimper, post: 2113643, member: 9913"]I really don't believe that is the choice on offer - even May introduced an 'or Remain' option recently. I think that was supposed to add to the scare tactics but didn't seem to have any impact.[/QUOTE]

I sincerely hope you're right.Nervous.Sant Cugat.

 

[Bielzibubz]

The 'bad practice' was and as far as I am aware still is endemic because of the pursuit of obscene levels of profit. That's systemic and an inevitable consequence. That's why it needs regulation and control.
Disregarding the rather silly kittens and unicorn comment, what exactly are the 'vanity projects' you mention? Surely you are not against renationalisation of public services after all these years of the consumer being ripped off by private companies and their shareholders?

And yet that is exactly what the Bundesbank, the ECB, the IMF, The Banque de France and the Deutsche Bank are all about. Making obscene amounts of money and then lending it to other deficit heavy members states at exorbitant rates of interest knowing full well it'll never be paid back and at the same time forcing even more austerity on them purely because the can't pay it back. Wonderful thing this EU huh.

 

[Bielzibubz]

I can certainly remember going on a lot of demos at the time and picketing for workers' rights at Satley and Grunwick.

Nice swerve of the question there Barna.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Nice swerve of the question there Barna.

Not really.I was asked about what I remembered of the 70's.Subjective I know but that's my memory of the time.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

That’s the media’s fault.

Why's it the media's fault for reporting the comments made by our politicians.

Sammy Wilson of the DUP - the government's supply and confidence partner called him "devilish, trident-wielding, euro maniac".

Jeremy Hunt compared the EU to Stalin's Soviet Union

Rees-Mogg called Juncker a pound shop Bismarck

Boris Johnson compared the French President to a Nazi prison guard

Meh, It hasn’t got me riled up, I’m not particularly bothered by the comments to be truthful. All it’s done is make negotiations even harder & push us closer to a No Deal. I’d have thought the remain side would be more annoyed than the leavers tbh.

There are plenty of Leavers who seem bothered by it and it seems to predominantly be Leavers bothered by it.

It doesn't change negotiations. May had a plan. It was a **** one but it was a plan. This isn't directed at her but at her backbenchers and her backers in the DUP and Labour Party.

That was the plan from the very beginning. She knew she wouldn’t be able to appease the country, so had to make the EU look like the bad guys. That way, her & her party could shift blame away from themselves, whenever they needed to. It’s the very reason why she shouldn’t have been elected into that role, in the first place. And.....

So basically we're agreeing the Conservative party was at fault. Not exclusively as Corbyn is a sorry excuse for an opposition leader.

..... Following on from that, Corbyn can take his fair share of the blame aswell. The proverbial wolf in sheeps clothing. He wants out of the EU, and always has done. I’d even go as far as saying, it wouldn’t surprise me if he would be happy to leave with No Deal. All he’s done, is given the Tories the rope they need, and sat back and watched as they’ve hung themselves.

Yep.

Anyway, You make some good points. I don’t agree with them all, but at least they’re thought provoking.

I feel like we’ve digressed. This type of petty jibing - from either side - doesn’t actually help the negotiations progress. And aside from whataboutary, I can’t see any feasible argument otherwise.

I think it does help the negotiations if it forces the UK to face up to the consequences and it's a completely legitimate and indeed helpful tactic to ask why we should now trust the leaders who failed to plan and spot these issues in advance.

Why are we still giving time to the views of Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson and David Davis?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.

 

[blues exile]

And yet that is exactly what the Bundesbank, the ECB, the IMF, The Banque de France and the Deutsche Bank are all about. Making obscene amounts of money and then lending it to other deficit heavy members states at exorbitant rates of interest knowing full well it'll never be paid back and at the same time forcing even more austerity on them purely because the can't pay it back. Wonderful thing this EU huh.

They were doing this long before the EU existed and outside the EU as well. It's the banking system not the EU to blame.

 

[Benfleet A1]

Were you around then? A complete travesty of reality, did you read it in the Sun? A time when young people could go to university, buy a house or rent knowing there were controls on unscrupulous landlords. An era of genuine full employment and rising wages, not the bogus zero hours economy the Tories have deliberately created. Plenty of social housing compared to now, although never enough. Prices and Incomes Board. Abolition of capital punishment, homosexuality legalised, abortion too. No foreign adventures interfering in other countries at America's behest. All complete anathema to rednecks and rightwingers of course.

Yes, I was around then.

 

[Another Surrey Shrimper]

Sky News:
'Leaving Brussels - belief on EU side that Corbyn letter to PM is a “game changer” mentioned to PM directly by Tusk and Verhofstadt. Why? Because the people that matter here are unconvinced that the PM can deliver a majority of Commons having been previously promised one......Turning up in Brussels to try to save a deal with no specific plan, and then being told to look at the “promising” plan of the Leader of the Opposition, the main feature of which you’re on record as calling a “betrayal”.

That probably is a special form of political purgatory.'

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Yes, I was around then.

Please refrain from personal insults mate - thanks.

 

[Bielzibubz]

They were doing this long before the EU existed and outside the EU as well. It's the banking system not the EU to blame.

It was the Budesbank and the Banque de France alone that set this whole sorry Euro experiment in motion with an idea first formed in 1968 and then that idea came more to fruition after 71 when America (Nixon) pulled the financial rug out from under Europe. Yes the banking system has been around for millenia, well done Sherlock for pointing out the bleedin obvious. The EU and more specifically The Troika and it's subservient and compliant minions scattered all across Europe are solely responsible for the crippling austerity measures that have been foisted onto a number of member nation states these past 10 years or so.