Be Excellent To Each Other

I literally haven't the first clue what people are going on about here. My position is that Cornwall was stupid enough to very strongly vote for Brexit, so I have zero sympathy. No idea what this other shite is all about. You do know I voted against Brexit, right?

Then again, Mrs C and I got trollied last night, so I'm not at my best right now to be frank.

It was a chunk lower last year (it's measured Sep-to-Sep for some reason.) Faisal Islam had some analysis suggesting it most mostly down to reduced intake of students, in particular from Asia; with other demographics being close to flat.

But let's still celebrate the numbers, eh? Idiot British red top press.

What about the 140000 who didn't vote for it?

Democracy huh? It's a bitch.
I suppose I'd be more sympathetic if the Cornish Brexit vote wasn't some 12+ points ahead of its Remain vote - but it was, so frankly, I'm not.

As for all this stuff about it being the Tories' fault we had the Brexit referendum, that's quite true, I do concede. But seriously, it was coming to a head regardless; whether it's right, wrong or simply the imagined grievances of our 'marvelous'† Fleet Street journalists, the day of reckoning was coming anyway. Just like it is for much of Northern Europe, and the Euro itself; IMO the Tories just hastened the inevitable by a couple of years, that's all.

I'm still waiting for an acknowledgement of Labour's catastrophic failures in office, even 'just' the big ones i.e. their lack of banking regulation

Come on, man. I've never voted labour a day in my life, I'm anything but an apologist. I'd suggest that I am most likely to be the forum's best informed person (dubious honour though that is) on financial regulatory matters, however. There is no such thing as a UK financial regulatory environment. There hasn't been a UK financial regulatory environment since the eighties. Every single piece of regulation is agreed by every regulator. The reasons for this should be obvious - the minute one place becomes overly onerous to operate in, banks will shift operations elsewhere. That's why we never ended up with the 'Robin Hood Tax', or similar. The UK makes too much from the City to enforce any punishing level of regulation, and most other countries are in the same boat.

So what you have is effectively a cartel. A global group of banks, and a global group of regulators. Now the regulators do a decent job of tightening up the rules - Basel3 is a great example of something done post-crash to greatly improve the survivability of financial institutions by enforcing higher capital reserves - but everything they do is agreement by committee. If the UK wants to triple capital reserves and the US doesn't, it flat out doesn't happen.

So the light-touch banking regulation absolutely cannot be put at New Labour's door. It just can't. Literally the only thing they could have done is stood up, said 'fuck banking', implemented entirely their own UK-specific regulatory environment, and gutted the country's economy overnight.

Now, how the crisis was handled, you can absolutely blame Labour for, if you like. The response to it was entirely within their own control. Should they have bailed out the banks? I say yes, but of course that's motivated in no small measure by self-interest. Even without self-interest, of course, you're talking about a huge number of jobs and a massive impact to customers if the businesses go under. A lot of the choices that were made were excellent ones - the Special Liquidity scheme, as well as underwriting the FSCS to make sure that customers didn't lose their money when the banks did. There's plenty of arguments to be made on both sides there, of course.

Oh, we're back on this.

Gordon Brown has admitted he made a "big mistake" over the handling of financial regulation in the run-up to the banking crisis of 2008.

The former prime minister told a US conference he had not realised the "entanglements" of global institutions.
He said: "We set up the FSA [the City regulator] believing the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution. That was the big mistake.
"We didn't understand just how entangled things were."

Mr Brown said he had to "accept my responsibility" but added he was not the only one who had made mistakes.
'Global meltdown'

Conservative Party deputy chairman Michael Fallon said: "These are the first words of contrition Gordon Brown has uttered in his entire political career.

"But he hasn't apologised for doubling the debt, selling off the gold and leaving our children and grandchildren paying the bills for his mistakes."

Ish

I'll take it. Cigar old chap?

Excellent. So we're agreed.

Whatever the demerits of the Brexit referendum, and they're pretty bad to be sure, these pale to insignificance when compared to the Financial Crisis or Iraq/Afghanistan.

Oh, sorry Cras, entirely unintentional - not my style.
Sure you can tell from your mod stuff that the edit was virtually immediate after I posted?

doing tech start ups, etc.

Losing freedom of movement with the EU is very bad for the UK tech startup scene. Startups have a strong requirement to recruit the best people they can, but they don't have time or money to spend on sorting out visas. London has enjoyed some success to date because it can easily pull people from all over Europe; but it was already hampered by being too expensive. Post-Brexit I think it'll become less desirable as a place to set up shop.

Exactly why we should be trying to poach the U.S.people who are hacked off, especially as they will most likely only speak English.

BMW considers making electric Mini outside UK because of Brexit

Move to quit EU sparks uncertainty over where to manufacture battery-driven car

BMW is considering making an electric version of the Mini outside the UK because of the uncertainty posed by Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

The German carmaker has owned the British marque since 1994 and manufactures all but two models in the UK.

But the first battery-powered edition of the car, which is set to go on sale in 2019, may be manufactured on the continent, the company said.


BMW said a final decision would be taken this year, adding “we’ve got to make sure we have the best business case possible”.

Spokeswoman Emma Begley said: “The result of the EU referendum creates uncertainty for the automotive sector in general and for overseas investors in particular. Uncertainty is not helpful when it comes to making long-term business decisions.”

"What's that deal you did with Nissan? We want some of that."

Ditching a whole workforce, building a new car plant and then training another one probably isn't free.

I suppose it partially depends how credible their alternatives are in each case. They aren't all going to automatically be taken seriously if there's any suspicion that they're not. Ditching a whole workforce, building a new car plant and then training another one probably isn't free.

My hunch is that, over the years ahead, the political price of leaving the EU may turn out to be greater than the economic cost.

Many believed this, yet the bitter irony is that the “divorce settlement” – that is, the cost of leaving Europe – may involve paying out much larger sums of money than that.

The EU Chief Negotiator has estimated that our bill for exit may total between €40 billion to €60 billion.

I find this figure very contentious. But the bill will be substantial: billions, not millions, and very unpalatable. It will come as a nasty shock to voters who were not forewarned of this – even in the recent White Paper.

if cars and aerospace were to get favourable deals, why not textiles and widgets? How would the Government soothe the ire of those not receiving preferential treatment?

Bmw to build eMini in Europe, says a man in The Twitter because Brexit

Yeah, but they'll still want to sell them here, won't they? Eh? Eh?