Be Excellent To Each Other

Trade deals that they wouldn’t be able to do if they were part of the UK given the UK/EU spotty relationship with Russia maybe?

It’s all about money, right? Surely that’s the only reason they’d want to interfere in any politician wrangling.

More disruption. If countries are running around trying to sort themselves out, if existing alliances and supranational organisations are made weaker, there's more opportunity for Russia to display its own power and influence because it won't face as much resistance as it would otherwise have had.

Making any ally of the US weaker has to be a strong goal.

http://www.cityam.com/272260/british-ma ... gest-world



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41831945

FTSE100 and FTSE250 both at record highs this morning, and both sharply up. Again. Highest employment levels ever and still rising. Lowest unemployment for 40 years and still falling. Historically low inflation and interest rates. Manufacturing on a high, with 15 consecutive growth periods, trending still further upwards.

Still, snarky comments about year-old Daily Mail cartoons, and deep concern that the spivs and bankers might (finally) mess off. (Here's hoping) Yup, that's what I call the Big Picture here.

DOOOOoooom.

I'll get my own cherry picker out today too then:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/busi ... 28891.html

Already covered that Myp. The Eurozone "growth" is from a very low base and double-digit unemployment, and is in any case comparable.
Not sure it's a cherry picker you need mate, just a barrel to scrape

Are you going to ignore the chaos in the Tory party too? It feels like the end of the Major years

It really bothers me that you continue to bang this particular drum when there is overwhelming evidence that even despite all this, poverty is at record highs and the cuts that have been made (and are continuing to be made) are making matters for people worse still.

I mean, for fuck's sake, food banks have had to start handing out "cold boxes" of food that don't require cooking because people (even those with good jobs that just don't pay enough to live on) are having to choose between heating and eating.

Also, how is big corporations doing well related in any way to the wellbeing of the average man on the street?

Yeah, that too.

Just keep waiting, the wealth will start trickling down any day now. Aannnnnyy day.

It's like one of those champagne towers. The ones with all the glasses piled up in a pyramid. Except the top glass is fucking skip.

I'm no economist but if manufacturing is up because the pound has nose dived then surely all we need to do is get it down until it's worth like ten cents or something and then we'll all be rich, right?

If Russia thinks Scottish dissatisfaction with a tory government is something that needs to be provoked then they're clearly not the master manipulators they think they are.

An independent Scotland with its own foreign and defence policy might open up the GIUK gap too.

I don't think it's that well-formed or aimed. It's just: foment dissent, create distrust, make a lot of noise; wherever the opportunity presents itself. At the very least, it'll sap the energies of those who may otherwise spend their time opposing Russian political goals eg. getting away with invading Ukraine.

The same interview says the Russian operators running these troll accounts were "trained" by watching House of Cards. This isn't a precision targeted operation. It's creating chaos and confusion at scale.

Unless, of course, the Scots would be perfectly happy with the Tories if it weren't for the Russian involvement. Conspiricy!

"Bang this particular drum"
What "drum" would that be, Gaz?



I know this comes as a surprise, but all of the above measurable, quantifiable, very important metrics MATTER. It matters a lot more that we have nearly 4 million people more in work than 2010; that we have 4% unemployment (the lowest for more than four decades, almost as long as I've been alive). It matters we have sub-3% inflation and 0.5% interest rates. It matters that manufacturing confidence and output is on a massive high, with 15 consecutive growth periods & overtaking France as a global manufacturer, rebalancing our economy. "Banging this particular drum"..... give me strength. More like an entire fucking drum kit, I'd say.

Yes, food bank use is terrible (and I'm personally doing a lot about it, a lot more than many people here I would wager, and I mean in time, as well as money terms) - but do you honestly see lower levels of deprivation in Europe, or the USA? Bullshit you do, and Germany excepted, the former has 10-22% unemployment, not 4%. I travel widely in Europe on business, and I see massive levels of deprivation, breaks my heart! Open your eyes, eh?

I love the way people are lamenting what the Bankers *say* they are going to do post-Brexit, as if this has anything whatsoever to do with the welfare of 'the average man on the street', and yet simultaneously criticising me for daring to be positive about the top 350 corporations in the UK being worth more than four times as much as they were in 2010 and the markets rocketing (among a whole bunch of other objective indicators like manufacturing output, employment levels, unemployment levels etc.).

Yeah the average man on the street and trickle down.... that's what the fucking bankers are all about huh guys. Priceless. Bloody trickle UP more like.

So how come the leaders of most of those corporations seem by and large to be fairly gloomy about the likely effects on business of Brexit?

Even if the work they're doing is paying so little that they can't afford to live comfortably?


Good for you - you almost certainly do more than I do about it, and for that you should be applauded, of course. The point is, however, is that there shouldn't need to be any food banks. It's 2017, we're (supposedly) one of the world's greatest economies, and you continue to "bang the drum" about how well the country's doing.

So when are the little people going to start seeing some of that benefit? Because I see and hear about an awful lot of situations where those who need help are not getting it, while those who don't need help continue to get richer.


Why is any of this relevant? I don't mean this to sound heartless, as obviously deprivation is horrible wherever you go, but of course I don't see deprivation elsewhere - I rarely leave the UK except on holiday jollies where, by definition, I'm unlikely to come across that stuff. I'm one of the lucky ones.

*BUT*, what I do see in this country is a rapidly increasing amount of homelessness, food bank usage, massive strain on public services and just general shittiness. But woop-de-do, the rich corporations continue to get richer and are confident about the future.

To put it another way, let's say you volunteered to hand out food at a local food bank - you may do this already, and again, more power to you if you do. Would you try and convince people using the food bank that actually, things are alright because the FTSE100/250 is at record highs, we have the highest employment rates and lowest unemployment rates (not sure why you separate those out when one implies the other, but whatever) and our manufacturing output is booming?

Didn't think so.

//edit: 37% percent of children will be brought up below the poverty line.

There is little to no link between "companies listed in the FTSE 350" and "companies potentially affected by Brexit." Take Nissan or Ford: clearly, customs inspections on inbound and outbound goods to their factories in Sunderlund and Dagenham will wreck their carefully optimised just-in-time supply chain. An investor would be concerned about that, but they're not listed on the FTSE, they're in the Dow Jones and Nikkei indices. So no affect there.

Meanwhile, take a UK-based company that manufactures and sells mostly overseas (I think Dyson is in this bracket.) They actually see a boost; the weak pound means their accounts are worth more now because they're selling for the same price in dollars or whatever but that's worth more pounds that it used to be. The larger the firm, the further up the FTSE 250 or 100 it us, the more likely it is to be in this bucket, simply because most firms that large are doing substantial business internationally.

There are plenty of exceptions but the above factors are enough to muddy the waters at the macroeconomics scale.

Additionally, don't forget Brexit hasn't happened yet. It's almost six quarters away. That's plenty of time to get out of those stocks if May looks like she's choosing a hard brexit.

Oh? At record highs this morning because the pound dropped yesterday after the BoE announcement

From the bottom of that article:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/s ... l?referer=

NYT opinion piece on Brexit. Always interesting to see another country's externalised view of one's own.

But it's all fine because FTSE100.

Stop all the doom-mongering please. Be more patriotic

I am a patriotic European.

Not for long!

I bet you don't even know the anthem

"Oh, so you say you like Europe? Name three albums by them, then."

I think we can all agree that is the very best metric to judge a country by and much more important than irrelevant piffle like the child poverty rate or number of people who have to use a food back so they can eat dinner. Far more important to optimise for board members and shareholders of the biggest companies so their table has more crumbs to spare for the 99%.

I'm sorry, whether by wilfully perverse choice or simply an inability to assimilate and absorb information that's contrary to your deeply seated belief-system, Gaz, you're simply not getting it, and I find myself repeating myself for the umpteenth time, man it's so tedious.

You talk about food banks (and at least graciously concede that I personally do far more about them than you do, and probably pretty much everyone else here), and their tragically rising use as if in some ridiculous vacuum, and as if:-

(1) Similar levels of deprivation (much worse actually, with massively higher - at least double - levels of unemployment) aren't happening in *Europe*, i.e. within the EU (the very organisation you espouse, and our leaving it is somehow removing some safety net when manifestly none exists now, here as elsewhere)

(2) Things were somehow so much better in either the distant or indeed recent past; as if somehow there was some Golden Age where poverty and gross inequity did not exist in the UK (2008, 2009, 2010 under Labour ring any bells?), or indeed in Europe or the US.

It's just all so naive, and no matter how many times stuff gets pointed out like this, there's this dumbassed, unyielding, default "well your just an evil [toree/capitalist scum] who doesn't care people are using food banks111", like as if very moderate Centrists and Patrician Tories like me, who by even your own admission get off our armchairs and into Round Table, Church and/or other charity actions to make a huge financial and more importantly human kindness improvement for people, directly at the coal face as it were.

You're also catastrophically missing the point I am making. I am NOT (repeat, NOT) suggesting that Brexit, even as it is currently unfolding, is good, merely that it is nowhere near as bad, so far, as has been predicted, and actually - by any measurable metric (number of people working, number of unemployed, business confidence, manufacturing output and investment, GDP growth, inflation, interest rates, FTSE100, FTSE250 etc.) - the UK is doing *well*, and therefore in no sense deserving of all the increasingly absurd, bitter, supremely resentful doom merchant/grievance-chimpery crap that's repeated here and elsewhere, like somehow people are willing things to go wrong. Well, sorry, mock me all you like (just as I assuredly mock you), but that's not where I am at; I like to look at realtime information and I reserve the right to amend or outright change opinions where this is appropriate, in the face of actual facts unfolding and hard data. There are no sacred cows for me, I have absolutely no time for it.

Your argument, aside from its frankly dishonest dual premise that things are somehow better and more socially equitable across the Channel in most of our comparably sized EU peer States (or indeed in the US), or that there was hitherto some Golden Age in the UK for that matter, also totally ignores the fact that things ARE getting much better for a huge proportion of the working population. Instead of endlessly looking at extremes and outerliers as those of your ilk obsessively - and exclusively - do, presumably in ever more desperate attempts to fuel eons-held, unyielding political grievances, may I invite you to remove the blinkers just for a minute and understand that, with 4 million more people working and an economy that's grown every quarter pretty much for 7 years, with the value of British business increased four-fold and manufacturing in rude health, the best for a generation, this IS going to mean improved prosperity for median and upper quartiles in particular. I cannot even recognise the business climate now, as compared to even 5 years ago, and in fact I would go so far as to say "we've never had it so good". Bear in mind, that we are a tiny little Engineering consultancy (In the North of England), hardly some giant PLC. If you're prepared to work, the work is there, now, where there was precious little before.

Of course, though, it's just so much easier to ignore the inconvenient truths of all those economic parameters that I mention, whether it's manufacturing output, levels of investment or confidence, unemployment lowest for more than four decades, employment highest ever, FTSE100 and FTSE250 etc., just because there ARE still bad things which must be dealt with (social inequity, but ignoring this has always been there) - and just cling ONLY to the bad stuff, totally ignoring all the good, at all costs. Apart from being absurd, it must be so miserable. If your benchmark for success is a never before achieved economic and social Utopia, then guess what Gaz: you are going to have one disappointed political outlook my son. (Guess what also: if you're so, so disappointed with all this manufacturing renaissance, record unemployment and GDP/FTSE growth etc., well, my word, you would be REALLY PISSED with a few years of Corbyn.... or would you? Maybe you would do what you do now in reverse; refuse to see the sacking of Rome as it were, because, heck, such swivel-eyed Socialism is *your* football team? )

As for your final point about me saying stuff about the FTSE100/250 in the food bank, and my not doing so somehow proves jack shit, well that's a very weak effort. No, I wouldn't talk about why I think people resort to using food banks to those people, I just lend them a helping hand and tinned goods, stuff that they need. But I *do* talk about this kind of thing in the Politics debate thread on Beex, because you know (and difficult as it is to believe), I have some vain hope that amongst all the snarking and years out of date cut and pasted graphs idiocy etc., there may yet be decent, intelligent discussion to be had, like back in the day. But then that's me I guess: an optimist...

You know I hate to spoil the grievance-fest here, but actually the Pound was rock solid steady the entire day, the FTSE100 rose and the FTSE250 positively rocketed nearly 100-points by Friday close, so quite where all this sits in your whining 'analysis' is anyone's guess.

I'm no photographer, but it's like one of those light filters those guys use. Not some much 'rose tinted' as 'shit tinted', where even hard, irrefutable economic facts such as record low unemployment, soaring markets, rampant manufacturing must appear completely different, or not at all. It's really weird!

You demean yourself, sir.
I expect this from some quarters, but not you.

... Whereas conversely, at least with trolling, there are no pesky graphs to cut and paste.

Sorry, but where did you find that it was "rock solid"? From what I've seen the pound dropped substantially on the 2nd of November, the day before the FTSE opened at "record highs", as can be seen here.

Am I misunderstanding the graph? If I am incorrect then I apologise, as that was not my intention.
I suppose if you are referring to its stability on the 3rd, surely the rise of stocks over the day can be attributed to the market re-balancing after the sharp drop of the pound the day before?

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/ ... 6300947457

BT CEO Patterson tells Cbi conf if transition Brexit deal isn't agreed by Jan, businesses like his will start activating "hard Brexit" plans

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) November 6, 2017

Reminder that Brexit hasn't happened yet.

You appear to be missing my point, Cavey. I'm not suggesting that all of the stuff you're talking about is bad, that's obviously not true - unemployment being at it's lowest in ages is obviously a good thing, and economic growth and stockmarket growth is obviously good as well.

The problem is that, as Doc alludes to above, is that that's a fucking shit way of measuring relative prosperity. It might be the only way, although I find that hard to believe, but it doesn't stop it being any less shit. More people being in work doesn't mean a thing if more and more people aren't able to find two pennies to rub together. The problem, as always, is that the rich get richer and the poorer get poorer. Interest rates going up might be good for some people, but for many (possibly a majority?) it's going to cause no end of problems and increase poverty further.

I've deliberately avoided bringing party politics into it as much as possible as it's not really a party issue, it's a systemic issue really, I think (and I thought this was the politics thread when I posted above, didn't realise it was the Brexit thread - I'm not blaming any of this on Brexit)

The Tories certainly aren't helping matters, but I'm not convinced that it'd be all sunflowers and rose petals if it had been Labour in charge for the last 7 years either.

I don't know what the answer is either, but it just rubs me up the wrong way when you (and other people I talk to, don't think I'm singling you out ) use metrics like that when those metrics really are, in my view at least, missing the bigger picture.

Looks like the government are churning out all the classic excuses for not handing in their homework:


Link

The Speaker's given them until tomorrow night to either come up with the goods or a decent excuse.

Oh David Davis. You used to be a fiery champion of freedom of information, civil liberties, and opponent of poor administration.What a disappointment.

The most interesting thing about this farrago, other than watching a government and country undergo an intense and lengthy session of BDSM, is that we're learning so much about all aspects of government and running a country or modern economy that most of us wouldn't have even considered or given a moment's thought on.

Yesterday the House of Lords held a short exchange on how the UK's territorial seas and how they might be patrolled come the glorious day. Admittedly, the former First Sea Lord wasn't particularly optimistic:



The Commons, meanwhile, had a short debate on the EEA/EFTA option, with Stephen Kinnock and Anne Soubry both making interesting speeches

I see today that David Davis has moved on from his assertion that studies have been performed that cover 85% of the economy, to admitting that they haven’t actually done that and they just lied and hoped nobody would ask.

The City is currently operating with cautious optimism as it expects that there will be a deal made that looks something like Norway, but at this point the government is looking so hopelessly incompetent that I just don’t know.

As someone on Twitter put it, there are so many cabinet members who should resign today, but they keep getting in the way of each other like the Three Stooges trying to get through a door.

This is a joke, right? Whenever I re-read this thread I find it hard to tell when I was being sarcastic and when I was being serious. So we have a referendum with no plan for leaving, activate the leaving protocol with no plan, have an election with no plan, and now don't even have the plans we said we had? Does nobody in this administration feel the slightest bit of shame?

These ones weren't done?

They're with Lord Lucan.

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/statu ... 3615109127

Davis 12/16: "We are prepared. That is why our 57 studies cover 85% of the economy."

Davis 11/17: "It is not the case that [they] exist." pic.twitter.com/ODbiyjhRbh

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) November 7, 2017

Incredible, right?

Fucking hell

"57 varieties? Who do they think we are, Heinz ketchup?"

(c) the Now Show, this Friday. Probably.

It always amazes me that they just adopted that as a slogan/marketing device in the late 1890s, despite already having more than 57 varieties of product at the time, because the dude in charge liked how it sounded.

Obv they now have thousands of varieties.