Listen up, plebs
Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist
Chief economist Huw Pill says workers and firms should stop trying to pass on rising costs by hiking prices or demanding better wages

 R_P wrote:

As long as they aren't allowed to stay, right?

U.K. offers thousands of visas to foreign truckers to ease driver shortage.

 miamizsun wrote:

My take is Brexit was made to happen so to break down the economy, break the interdependence of individuals in the EU and UK.
Now people don't know each other and don't trade with each other which suits the big multi-nationals just fine.

similar to how covid restrictions have had the effect of destroying small local business and helping big business, and increasing social isolation and dependence on the government. Pretty clever.

A passage from Fintan O'Toole's "Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain" - a very telling anecdote about Boris Johnson.
OPINION

r/brexit
•Posted byu/outhouse_steakhouse
incognito ecto-nomad 🇮🇪
7 hours ago
Gold
A passage from Fintan O'Toole's "Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain" - a very telling anecdote about Boris Johnson.
OPINION
In 2001, Boris Johnson, then editor of the Spectator, was seeking to launch his political career by being adopted as Tory candidate for the safe seat of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. The selection convention was held in the village hall in Benson where the presence of the members of the South Oxfordshire Conservative Association was made known by ‘the bonnet-to-bonnet array of shiny Jags and Mercs’ parked outside. Johnson wooed them with a homily about toast. His wife Marina, he said, had given birth to one of their children in a National Health Service hospital. The staff had brought her toast but while she slept Boris had scoffed the lot.

And your wife wakes up and says, I say, what happened to that toast? And you say I'm afraid it's not longer with us, or not directly with us ha ha ha; and your wife says, Well, what's the point of you? Why don't you go out and hunt stroke gather some more toast as your forefathers did in the olden days? And you go into the highways and by ways of the maternity hospital, and I tell you, Mr Chairman, there are babies popping out all over the place; and then you find the person who is i/c toast, and you ask for some more, and there isn't any more of course, Mr Chairman, because you have had your ration, and when you move to open your wallet, you find that this is no good either. You can't pay for things on the NHS. It's a universal service free at the point of delivery, delivery being the operative word Mr Chairman, ha ha ha. And the whole point of the saga is that it ought to be possible for a well-heeled journalist, who has been so improvident as to eat his wife's toast in the middle of the night, to pay for some more... And this is not as trivial as it sounds, because we need to think about new ways of getting private money into the NHS.

This speech sufficiently impressed the members of the South Oxfordshire Conservative Association that they chose Johnson as a worthy successor to their retiring MP, Michael Heseltine, one of the finest political rhetoricians of his time. But though it may not be in the great tradition of Edmund Burke, it is nonetheless worthy of attention for it contains many of the seeds of Brexit. First, there is the naughty-boy roguish charm. It is a (slightly) grown-up version of a Just William story, where instead of stealing a cake at the vicar's tea party, Boris is wolfing his wife’s toast. It is disarmingly childish. It functions as an English version of the famous Stanford marshmallow test, in which children’s capacity for delayed gratification was assessed by offering them a choice between one treat now or two treats a little later. Boris fails the toast test - even his wife's suffering in childbirth is not enough to make him prioritize her needs over his own. Yet even while confessing his sin, he is also evoking the thrills of rebelling against constraint. The none too subliminal message is: screw delayed gratification.

Secondly, the story contains a parable of British politics over the previous half-century. The ‘person who is i/c toast’ is a parody of the officiousness of a wartime economy and of nationalized industry. Johnson evokes the rationing of food and other necessities that characterized Post-war austerity in Britain: ‘you have had your ration’. This austere egalitarianism ought to have been banished by the Thatcherite market revolution. But the rights of the wealthy are being denied: it ought to be possible for a well-heeled journalist to open his wallet and command the anonymous minion to obey the laws of supply and demand. Only the hangover of socialistic regulation stands in the way of our hero’s attainment of his goal of more toast. We almost forget - as we are meant to - that the blame for poor Marina’s famishment lies, not with toast-withholding socialism but with the selfish oaf who ate her bread.

 miamizsun wrote: 

didn't the people vote to leave the eu already?

or was that fake news?

Brexit: chants of 'shame' as suspension of parliament descends into chaos
Five-week suspension begins with shouts, singing and signs reading ‘silenced’

 miamizsun wrote: 
I'd say you're wrong (or I misled you) on almost all points.

1. The final decisions are still made by elected representatives who are accountable.  The bureaucrats are there (like in every government around the world) to hammer out the nuts and bolts and do the leg work
2. You can say no to destructive EU policy but you might not want to. For example, many left wing voters, particularly in Greece and other southern nations, think fiscal prudence (austerity) is a destructive policy and nearly left the EU on account of it, but decided not to as they realized they are better off in than out.
3. This is centralized government, not centralized planning which smacks of a command economy. The private sector is very robust in many European countries and boasts manyl world-beaters in their respective fields.
4. The central legal framework has actually freed up some border zones from oppressive national governments. The Irish problem disappeared in large part due to the open border. The Basques and Catalans can entertain the thought of independence in a way that they wouldn't be able to if Spain were not part of the EU.  I wouldn't be surprised if Scotland leaves the UK and returns to the EU.
5. As I stated, what saves the EU is the pluralism and consensus politics. Too many people are involved for nepotism or other forms of corruption.
6. The EU involves huge transfers from the net contributors (high GDP nations) to net takers (low GDP nations). It is the opposite of debt bondage. 

The one point that does have some validity is that the one currency benefits net exporters like Germany whose national currency would otherwise appreciate in response to their trading surplus to the detriment of net importers. This is offset to some extent by the system of transfers. 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 

busy day for me

a few coffee thoughts

handing over power and giving up control to (unaccountable and unelected) bureaucrats sounds like a really bad idea

a recipe for high powered political capture and corruption

how does one disagree or say no to destructive policy?

top down centralized planning has a dark side

top down centralized force

can't these countries come up with a basic trading framework without sacrificing sovereignty?

in a sense it reminds me of what china is doing or accused of doing 

forging some sort of alliance in the name of progress that commits them (via political agreements) to china through debt

controlling currency and debt is a way for a banking entity to take over a country without firing a shot

peace

 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
 
Thanks Noenz!  Gives us an objective on the ground synopsis!

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

He/they know(s). (May '18)

Profit Over People^†.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Being a boilerplate for internationalism is only half the story. The other half is the amazing strength of the often unseen institutions that make that international cooperation function. 

There is a lot of antagonism towards the EU from neoliberals, like Rees-Moog who view the EU as some gigantic protectionist racket. The unfortunate thing is that such charges are not entirely without justification. 

As a governing institution, the EU is a huge behemoth of civil servants and politicians who come together to hammer out generally rational comprises about how they can create consensus and then put this into law. In each case multiply this with the complexity of about twenty different languages and the plurality of views and national interests and factor in the doctrine of at least trying to find consensus on every issue and you'll get some idea of how complex this is.

And given that most national law is ultimately made by EU political institutions, it is astonishing how little of it enters the public discussion until it gets passed down to the various national assemblies who enact "implementing regulations" that basically translate EU law into national law, quite often after the horse has bolted.

However, after dissing it like this, I actually think living in the EU is fantastic, precisely because of the plurality of views and the consensus-driven politics.. There is an awful lot of really good law that sets out to protect individuals and consumers, the general data protection regulation, being perhaps the most visible recent example. 

Other laws are a ban on genetically modified produce. The EU does not allow hormone-treated beef to be imported, from Australia for instance, or chlorinated chicken from the States, etc. 

Whether you see these as protectionist rackets to shore up vested EU interests or genuinely good laws to protect your average consumer is often just a matter of personal opinion and/or political affiliation.

Without a doubt, large companies (not just US companies) would like to break into the EU market, a) because it is huge and b) because they can easily undercut EU prices due to the various practices they have to raise yields/lower costs etc. that are banned here. But to do this, they need someone to come along and break open the massive amount of legislation that keeps the whole thing intact. Hence Brexit.

No wonder this is a highly charged issue. Trump put his foot in it this week, by saying the NHS would also be on the table in any trade deal between the US and the UK, although there is evidence he didn't actually know what the NHS was at the time. Nevertheless, that slip of the tongue made many people realize what is actually at stake here.

 

steeler wrote:

I think we do have a dog in that fight, it's just that Trump is rooting for the other dog.

The EU is the flagship project of internationalists, and they have become everybody's favorite booggiemen. Until Trump got elected your political party paid at least lip service to supporting trade barriers and such; NAFTA passed over strident Democratic opposition, as did fast-tracking the TPP negotiations. At least as long as a Republican was in the White House.

Don't look for rational reasons here, this is chest-thumping demagoguery.

 steeler wrote:
 
The easy answer is tribalism.  Pure and simple.   Ethno-nationalism might be a more accurate label.


Though, frankly, most of us should be familiar with the Trump persona by now.  Brexit means a weaker isolated UK and thus a partner that can be bullied and intimidated in trade negotiations for the apparent benefit of Americans.

A united EU including Britain is simply too formidable.

 steeler wrote: 

if i were trying to figure out what may be behind trump's interest in brexit , i'd probably start with influences like steve bannon

or any other people around trump (or in his circle) that shape policy and/or philosophical position

i suspect bannon is hugely influential in the china negotiations as well

regards

 steeler wrote:
 
Because weakening Europe is a priority of Putin and he has convinced Trump it is a good thing