Britain's May seeks to cut deal on future EU ties in Brussels

[IssanMichael]

11 minutes ago, nontabury said:

“All the international respected????economic assessment bodies”

 would these be the same people who failed to see the 2008 economic crash, or the people who predicted the complete crash of the U.K economy, including mass unemployment should we vote to leave the hated R.u.

 

 

OK so what do we get for our 275m a week investment to the EU?

[nahkit]

1 hour ago, Nigel Garvie said:

Andrew Neil " You mean we would get rid of our tariffs, even if other countries kept theirs against us."

Professor Minford "Exactly................etc etc

My god this Minford man is a total idiot, no wonder Clegg and to some extent Neil are too gobsmacked to challenge a lot of his absurd assertions, where do you start!

 

BREXITERS keen on leaving the EU with no deal have been told to try walking away without a deal in their personal transactions. 

Tory MPs, Daily Telegraph writers and ordinary Leave voters have agreed to threaten shopkeepers, train conductors and energy providers with walking away deal-free, which they are certain will be brilliant. 

Nathan Muir, from Birmingham, said: “The deal at Starbucks this morning was not in my interests, so I told them they needed me more than I needed them and left. Kept my money. Didn’t get a coffee though. 

“It was much the same story at lunchtime at Subway, and at Pret, and at Greggs. The woman there said to me ‘You’re not our only customer,’ which I felt was rude like the EU but I was too hungry to argue. 

“The bus driver wouldn’t even let me on. Even though I told him ultimately he would be hurting the viability of his bus if I walked away. ‘Go on then, <deleted>#k off,’ he said. 

“So it’s 7pm, I’m still in the city centre, I’m starving, I don’t know how I’m going to get home but I’ve still got some pocket change. If this is some kind of a metaphor then I don’t get it.” 

Should have had breakfast before you left home and made some sandwiches for lunch.

[nahkit]

3 hours ago, Nigel Garvie said:

A bit of effort required to read this, just try hard to concentrate.

 

http://theconversation.com/no-deal-seven-reasons-why-a-wto-only-brexit-would-be-bad-for-britain-102009

How patronising is that?

[nahkit]

6 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Why is that unfortunate? Should the EU do what little UK demands only to make Brexiters happy?

Little UK?  60% of the EU budget comes from four of the 27 countries, the UK is one of the four.

[JAG]

2 hours ago, Brunolem said:

You are quoting Andrew and yet referring to me?

And what has Germany (reich) got to do with this?

 You raised the suggestion of towing the UK to North America, to become a state of the USA. I suggested that , unpalatable as it is, is perhaps preferable to being a vassal state in a German dominated EU. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, IssanMichael said:

Think Oxford should sack him then if he is such an idiot.

That guy was hired by Oxford? 

 

My expectations about UK's academic and overall intelligence performance was not high to start with, but this is just too much. 

 

He was from Oxford? Well, good luck to UK if the best people you can offer are like him. 

 

Good night Britain. 

[Basil B]

Lets hope this is the final endgame.

 

After last weekends Tory Wreaksiteers attempted coup which achieved nothing more than a unpleasant fart, it is clear she has the support of of most of her MP's even if reluctantly.

[Brunolem]

9 hours ago, JAG said:

 You raised the suggestion of towing the UK to North America, to become a state of the USA. I suggested that , unpalatable as it is, is perhaps preferable to being a vassal state in a German dominated EU. 

I would agree with that...

 

Like chosing between losing the right leg or the left leg...

[IssanMichael]

9 hours ago, oilinki said:

That guy was hired by Oxford? 

 

My expectations about UK's academic and overall intelligence performance was not high to start with, but this is just too much. 

 

He was from Oxford? Well, good luck to UK if the best people you can offer are like him. 

 

Good night Britain. 

No.

Based on what.

Yes.

Thanks.

good night, where do you hail from?

[Nigel Garvie]

14 hours ago, IssanMichael said:

Think Oxford should sack him then if he is such an idiot.

This earlier post clearly indicates that you think/though that he was employed by Oxford. No he was a student there, he is employed by Cardiff University, so I read. No problem, easy mistake to make.

 

This analysis of Minfords economic theory regarding Brexit comes from the Economist, hardly a "left wing rag"

Most economists say Brexit will hurt the economy—but one disagrees

Patrick Minford thinks that GDP could increase by 6.8%

IT is rare to find economists united, but on Brexit most are: leaving the European Union will reduce GDP, and quitting the single market and customs union (a hard Brexit) will make the loss bigger. Yet a group called Economists for Free Trade, led by Patrick Minford of Cardiff University, disagrees. Mr Minford forecasts that a hard Brexit followed by the unilateral abolition of all trade barriers and much EU regulation would boost Britain’s GDP by 6.8%, or £135bn ($175bn).

This was enough to persuade the BBC, perhaps mindful of criticism of anti-Brexit bias, to make Mr Minford’s claim its lead story and give him much airtime. His analysis contains a kernel of truth.

Unilateral trade liberalisation is beneficial even if other countries do not reciprocate by cutting their own tariffs, as David Ricardo demonstrated 200 years ago. Yet as Monique Ebell of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a think-tank, points out, tariffs now matter less than non-tariff barriers, especially for services but also increasingly for goods. It is doing away with these that gives the single market its value. Mr Minford ignores them.

Moreover, Mr Minford’s calculations are based on dubious assumptions. He also ignores the “gravity” effect, whereby close neighbours trade more with each other. He reckons any fall in trade with the EU will automatically be made up elsewhere. He attributes all the rise in Britain’s trade with the EU since it joined in 1973 to trade diversion, not trade creation, ignoring evidence to the contrary. And he says all price differences are caused by protection, whereas most reflect differing quality or regulatory standards. Swati Dhingra and her colleagues at the London School of Economics have used their Brexit model to recalculate the gains of unilateral free trade. It reduces the loss from a hard Brexit, but only slightly, from 2.6% of GDP to 2.3%.

If Mr Minford’s economics are dubious, his political judgment is worse. Scrapping trade barriers unilaterally would draw howls from British farmers and manufacturers, just as abolishing much EU regulation would rile environmentalists, unions and consumers. Theresa May, whose Tory party manifesto criticised untrammelled free markets and promised to keep and even improve workers’ rights, is unlikely to adopt either course. And he ignores modern trade talks, which rely on mutual concessions. If a post-Brexit Britain unilaterally scrapped its barriers, it would lose all its bargaining clout. It is perhaps as well that Mr Minford is an economics professor, not a trade negotiator.

[Nigel Garvie]

13 hours ago, nahkit said:

How patronising is that?

You are correct, it is, I apologize. Although statistics clearly suggest that had the electorate been better educated the referendum result would have gone the other way (See below), that does not justify my extrapolating from the general to the individual.

 

Researchers at the University of Leicester say that had just 3 per cent more of the population gone to university, the UK would probably not be leaving the EU.

Britain would have likely voted to remain in the European Union were its population educated to a slightly higher level.

The researchers looked at reasons why people voted Leave and found that whether someone had been to university or accessed other higher education was the “predominant factor” in how they voted.

Age and gender were both significant but not as important as education level, the researchers found. Income and number of immigrants in an area were not found to be a significant factor in how people voted.

[Kiwiken]

On 11/21/2018 at 9:33 AM, the guest said:

The Brits still don't get it, they chose to leave EU and now they are groveling back realizing that without Europe UK is stuffed.

 

Unfortunately it's the EU way or the highway!

Britain will be ok. When a child lets go of its mothers apron the World may seem scarey. The EU is a system of overburdened bureaucracy.

When the UK abandoned NZ in the 1970's we thought we would sink. But We flourished and grew. Being comfortable and controlled has too high a price. Pain and then gain. Britain will prevail but she must be steadfast.