Exit before Brexit [CNN Article on foreigners leaving UK]

Everyone who paid slight attention is aware most economists expect a hit of around 4% to GDP. That’s a really very big price. I don’t think it will be that big but it is what it is - people didn’t vote for economic reasons.

It’s the economics of the thing that will bite them though. That’ll no doubt be the fault of the immigrants too, mind you.

Maybe, maybe not; the Tories ideologically driven class war dressed up as necessary ‘austerity’ has gone, so ‘hard working families’ are already somewhat up.

New investment in the NHS, schools and housing and the job’s a good 'un.

Did you see the Tory Party conference at all? The rhetoric about foreign-born doctors?

That’s not what “sour grapes” means. It means pretending not to be upset at losing.

Remind me how accurate the economists have been so far.

Odds of another Referendum before 01 March 2017?

Now that just about everyone has gotten the message that “Keep access to Market; Lose having to take in brown people!” was a lie, and the price of
“Controlling Our Borders, as a Sovereign Country Must!”
is
“Paying Tariffs to Sell Our Stuff, and, maybe, The Big, Multi-National Finance Companies Leaving”,
Will there be a vote to, essentially say: “Nevermind”?

I though the idea of a “United States of Europe” was about 4-5 generations too soon.
But there was nothing wrong with the ECC and such economic/trade association(s).
Pulling the plug on the economic side was suicidal.

And yes, you Leave voters will have to get used to the idea that you will be blamed for backing the racist fringe.
I have heard more about UKIP in the last 6 months than in the 6 years before the vote.

I’m sure there were Germans who supported the NAZI Party even though they didn’t like the anti-Jew, anti-communist, anti-gay, anti-everybody parts of the Party.

Most of what I have heard about UKIP lately seems to be how they are in total disarray, now that much of their raison d’etre has evaporated.

And excellent Godwinning there, by the way. Leavers are kind of like Nazis.

Anyway, there’s too much talk of tariffs. One of the big economic developments in recent decades has been a large decrease in tariff levels globally. No, a bigger issue is non-tariff measures, such as national or supra-national regulations governing types of products. Inside a bloc such as the EU you are generally trusted to comply with such regulations. Exporting to that bloc from outside, you have relatively few point of entry and must jump through more hoops. The UK would have to set up such mechanisms for EU exports, PDQ.

This guy is worth reading (no affiliation etc.). He is a long-time pro-Leave blogger but a harsh critic of most of the Leave campaigners.
http://www.eureferendum.com/default.aspx

Let me remind you serious people understand it is far too soon - and i mean years, not months: do you think a business makes a decision instantly and just moves 5,000 employees to Paris in a couple of months?

You might need to reconsider your faith in mainstream media - fwiw, journalists are unqualified to tell us anything in an infinite number of subjects, they only know how to fill a couple of columns with meaningless conjecture to order.

It’s such a predictable narrative: ‘we’re doomed’.

Meanwhile the ONS is reporting record employment and wages outstripping inflation.

No, we were promised doom and disaster simply for voting to leave. The exchange rate has dropped significantly, but life is going on pretty much as normal.

That is true; Lynton Crosby’s ‘Project Fear’ - personified by George Osbourn’s press conference announcing a £30 billion emergency budget if people dared to vote freely.

But, still, more serous people understand it takes years for decisions to work through.

Absolutely. The UK hasn’t actually left the EU yet. We haven’t even invoked Article 50.

However, many did predict a recession or downturn purely due to the Brexit vote.The immediate aftermath was to lead to a recession. It’s misleading for Remainers to now single out George Osborne on this. He was only one of a number who made these dire warnings. The “uncertainty” over the future direction of Brexit Britain was going to hammer investment, spending and orders. Sure, I agree that the most dangerous phase of Brexit is yet to come, but these predictions from the IMF, CBI and many, many others have not come to pass. If I can agree that it’s still too early to declare Brexit a success I think it reasonable to expect some humility from Remainers. Their short term economic predictions look to be wrong so far.

I’m not sure ‘wrong’ is the appropriate description, the plan was for Project Fear to influence voters enough to scare them off Leave. Again, anyone with a mature grasp of the realities understood it would take years for an effect to manifest. Right now, business is taking stock and waiting.

Whether the UK actually leaves the single market is still a very open question.

Did the NHS fix it’s budget problems?

BBC: Financial problems ‘endemic’ in NHS

It wasn’t a ‘budget’ it was class warfare cunningly disguised as fiscal policy aka ‘austerity’.

Nonsensical and bogus.

Perhaps. I believe I have a mature grasp of the realities. This mature grasp leads me to suspect that the overall economic consequences of Brexit will probably be quite muted. Economically we’ll either marginally benefit or marginally suffer from leaving the EU. Some sectors of the UK economy will suffer whilst some will benefit. Project fear was almost entirely the result of the political fears of those wanting further(or to maintain) EU integration. You seem to agree with me to an extent on the political fears becoming conflated with economic fears. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see who is correct long-term.

Yes, a 15% devaluation can have a wondrous effect on economic outlook.

You’re right. it wasn’t a “budget”. It was however, a budget.

In a somewhat cynical moment of thought, the trade off for getting rid of Cameron, Gove and Osbourne was to also get out of Europe, seems like a fair trade to me.

Right now I see specific horrendous decisions about cuts in prisons starting to be re-valuated. The cuts that these idiots put in place have increased the numbers of violent attacks on staff, increased the numbers of suicides.

There have been reductions of around 30% to prison officers, and a subsequent increase in the number of prisoners that staff must deal with - the ratios of prisoners to staff has gone up.

I know this article is from the Grauniad (sp), however unfortunately the reporting actually underplays what has been going on for the last 3 years of austerity cuts

This increase in the number of prison murders and suicides is against the background of a fairly steady prison population, and the cuts we have felt aligns exactly with that increase, hardly surprising given the fall in staffing levels.

All this was cuts due to austerity, which was a reaction to the failures of the previous administration, plus the financial turmoil because of the failures to manage the Euro and also a political philosophy of neoliberalism that sees the use of the public sector as being bad, and the private sector as being good, and yet in the US there have been announcements that the private sector is to be phased out in their prisons because public sector does it better.

Right now you may be surprised, or not, to know that following these cuts, with lots of staff taking early retirement, they are about to recruit 400 extra staff - however when you add up all that retirement money , that’s money that could have been put into the service, remember that recruiting staff is incredibly expensive in this game and training them is also incredibly expensive, its likely going to cost something well north of £30 million.

The people who implemented these cuts are the very same who tried to fear us into voting remain - I would not take their word if they told me that Christmas day falls on25th December. According to them, the prison cuts would make us more efficient, we had a program called ‘transforming justice’.

With hundreds of courts closing, and prison murders, suicides and assaults up by magnitudes across the last 3 years, you certainly cannot deny that Justice has indeed been transformed, not sure its the sort of desirable direction that we had been sold.