Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

The "very little room" is that they've painted themselves into a corner - and aside from "jumping out the window" of a trade war with the EU, they have difficulties trying to make the NIP an ongoing issue. Aside from the ECJ, we are on to really silly stuff now like "we want to be able to sell food in pounds and ounces but not have kilogram weights indicated" at this stage.

This is the utter nonsense that was coming from QT on Thursday. Worryingly, there wasn't anyone to challenge him.

There's a huge amount of denial around Brexit. One of the main reasons it is doomed to abject failure is because it is so toxic, polarising and divisive. The idea that the UK will be able eventually able to rally around it and support it is nonsensical (and two countries in the UK flatly rejected it from the outset and wanted nothing to do with it).

Very few posters have made those claims. Many posters have stated that the UK financial sector will be negatively impacted, and that is backed by some very senior people within the sector and the movement of jobs (albeit relatively small so far). But regardless of the final impact, Brexit will not be a positive.

In terms of energy, the facts are that by removing themselves from the collective purchasing of the EU, the UK faces bigger pricing risks. Just as they claimed that removing themselves from the EU was the reason for their early vaccine success.

But why worry about what a few posters may be saying on a discussion board. Brexit is clearly causing massive, long term negative effects on the UK for no positive reason. But seemingly it must be continued because of...well fear of being made accept that people were wrong (the MP's & Farage etc I mean). That is quite the price the average punter in the UK is going to end up paying to avoid the likes of JRM and Johnson from accepting they were wrong.

If you are going to assert that posters have these views then you will need to post the quotes. I can remember the regulars saying it will be death by a thousand cuts rather than a sudden backwater, Mad Max style decline. This is maybe what you think people said, but it is most certainly no the mainstream view on this thread. You have been here long enough to know this so please stop posting as if this is true.

For national outlook I keep thinking of Argentina and it's downward trajectory from 5th wealthiest nation after WWII. It was gripped by a populism that believed that the world needed Argentinian beef more than it needed the products of the world.

It embarked on an industrial protectionism that overlooked that countries that had its products shut out of Argentina would retaliate with tariffs on beef!

Once their doctrine of self importance collapsed the country descended into reactionary juntas, but even today there's a belief amongst many that Argentina would be wealthy again if it weren't for the non believers.

GDP is the total market value of all goods and services produced by a country in a defined time period (nearly always a year).

It's generally a useful metric for comparing the size of different economies, but there are some cases where it's considered to be misleading. Ireland, as it happens, is one of these cases - the presence of a large number of multinationals in Ireland, who are routing transactions that take place throughout the world through their Irish subsidiaries means that, using conventional statistics-gathering methods, a lot of goods are services that are not, in fact, produced in Ireland are turning up in Ireland's GDP. To address this problem the Central Bank has come up with a measure called GNI* (pronounced "GNI star") that more accurately measures the value of goods and services produced in Ireland.

But in the present context this doesn't matter greatly. For comparing the UK with most other national economies, GDP works fine.

But note that it only measures the overall size of a country's economy. It's not a measure of growth, or prosperity, or standard of living. It tells you nothing about, e.g., how wealth is distributed within a country. It's not even much of a measure of overall economic health; the Soviet Union was the largest economy in Europe by GDP right up until the year it disintegrated. Among developed countries, the single biggest factor in determining GDP size is population. As Rob pointed out, the UK is currently the second largest economy in Europe (after Germany), but the main reason for this is that it has the second largest population in Europe (after Germany). If you rank countries by productivity (value of goods and services produced by each worker) or household income (goods and services consumed - a measure of standard of living) or income distribution (how equally or unequally are the benefits of the economy shared?) the UK's position tends to look a bit less enviable.

He also demanded of the British a return of all tax collected in Ireland between 1800 and 1922.

We are still waiting.

That is no way comparable. The country had endured centuries of asset stripping and the ground rent stance was entirely justified. It was basis for building capital rather than continuing to be sucked by offshore landlords.

So much for the predictions farmland falling 20%.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/07/brexit-end-boom-in-farmland-prices-forecasts-say

I am misreading the article, it is saying that farmland prices are falling.

Now, of course there is an argument that the EU subsidies were artificially keeping farming profitable, but that was never part of the Brexit argument.

No doubt if prices continue to fall the Brexiteer argument will be that it was always part of the plan and they were actually always against the price of land increasing and this is about giving land back to the people!