OneGuyFromBarlick

I agree absolutely Tiz. That's why I bore you all by quoting Nye Bevan on 'the commanding heights of the economy', an inspired phrase which describes them perfectly. He did right also in putting it in the context of warfare, Economic Imperialism is by no means dead!
I'm not too sure about your suggestion of a 'Super Regulator'. We have stripped out the brains and resources from the Civil Service to the extent that I doubt if they could run such a body. How well resourced are they to manage the Brexit negotiations? There was a time when the UK CS was the envy of the world. For instance, in the 1930s we had the best qualified experts on the Middle East in the world, expert translators, historians and people who had worked on the civil administration of the area. We also had an enormous middle rank of administrators from the days of the colonies who understood how 'foreign' worked and thought. As Baer commented in his book 'See No Evil', one of the biggest shortfalls in the early days of the Middle East problems was this lack in the West of Middle East experts and translators.
Add to this the general move in government to adopt a 'hands off' approach to finance and industry, Partly the Tory Party's rabid antipathy to public ownership but also all parties seeking to devolve responsibility away from central government and you get a situation where not only regulation, but to a large extent ownership, has left not just government but national control. It looks as though the reason at the root of this is so that the government has the ability, when a bad situation arises, to use the 'not me guv' argument. Take the railways as an example. A blind eye is turned to the indisputable fact that every time control of a rail franchise is taken in house the service improves but then worsens as blind political dogma insists on re-franchising. Look at the mess our energy is in, now almost completely foreign owned and run. Look at Heathrow, one of the largest and most profitable airports in the world but the tax take of the UK government is minimised by the simple cunning wheeze of taking a large loan at exorbitant interest rates (hidden by our old friend 'Commercial Confidentiality) from the parent company abroad and shipping out the profits to a low tax regime as 'interest payments'. I could go on in this vein for hours, think of more examples for yourselves.
There is a deeper problem as well which is leading to the erosion of business ethics. The UK makes it easy via 'Brass Plate Companies' and LLPs to enable anonymous companies to be set up based abroad which are, in effect, an easy route to tax avoidance and money-laundering. Look at the PE campaign to highlight the extent to which not only commerce but even property and land ownership is slipping out of the UK. Hence the government's moves to make it harder for investigative journalists and other interested parties to get free public access to Land Registry records. The result is that this encourages an ethos where manipulation of the system rather than adding value is seen as the easiest route to personal gain. In my head this is fraud but in the city it is seen as 'normal practice'. Is it any wonder that Remuneration Committees are manipulated to make sure that the various Lords of the Universe get obscene salary and benefits deals?
I must stop. you've triggered this old social democrat off and he is depressing himself! How the hell did we get in this position? Is there any way out other than massive public protest? Was Thomas Piketty right? Was Marx right? After all he forecast all this 150 years ago in Das Kapital......

‘’I'd start canvassing other countries now for setting up a new, alternative, slimmed down EU’’

I’m not sure you’d get many takers, for a number of reasons. In my admittedly limited experience, I detect no desire for an ‘alternative EU’. Sure, many if not most folk know the EU has faults but in the other 27 this is seen either as a natural consequence of a least worse option, or a matter that is best tackled from the inside. The benefits the EU has brought is well-known and understood; it’s institutions and their operations are also well-known and understood. The genesis of the EU in a war-ravaged continent destroyed in many cases beyond comprehension and its peoples brutalised, traumatised, exterminated, raped and murdered is known and also, well-understood. Brexit by contrast was a result to quite particular circumstance – ignorance, loss, entitlement, exceptionalism, suspicion, etc. etc., that are simply not present to the same extent across the EU. That’s not to say these circumstances could not or might not raise their heads across the other 27, but I think we must acknowledge them as particular to us.

Take freedom of movement. We’ve mentioned this earlier. Arguably, this was the main reason for folk voting leave here. But freedom of movement is simply not seen as a problem across the rest of the EU; it is not a problem that cabbages and tomatoes are picked by other nationals; or that your coffee is poured by similar or your Dr is Polish. Migration from outside the EU yes, this is a problem and this does explain in part the rise in the populists of the right. But freedom of movement of EU nationals? No. Hence the EU insisting, consistently, individually and as one, that this is non-negotiable. They are simply sticking to their principles.

When Mr Cameron was plodding the well-worn path of a UK PM looking for a special deal from Europe, his calls for something on freedom of movement was heard by an EU that a) had no problems with it as noted but b), were battling with the greatest gathering on and flow through its external borders of refugees and other migrants from war-zones and failed states since the 1940s. A situation the UK seemed at once to criticise and do little if anything to help. Hardy surprising the EU gave him a crumb and nothing more.

I say again, I think the EU has had enough of us. I’m saddened by that, but there we go. The sooner we get out, the better for them. They have seen us for what we largely are. Now we’re gone, they can get on with things and not be distracted.

While we’re on that matter of our leaving, anyone get the feeling we are being softened up to point the finger of blame at anyone and anything but ourselves for the difficulties that will arise? Certainly, I seem to hear and read more and more about how the EU is being unreasonable whether this is the status of EU/UK nationals; post-Brexit trade relationships; when this can happen, when that can happen. So for those of us who held out some hope that the whole exercise would so to speak, teach us a damn good lesson, it seems the stage is being set for our continuing blaming of anything and anyone other than ourselves for our circumstance(s). Desperate.

Richard Broughton

Splendid post Richard..... I agree with everything you say and in particular your final paragraph. It's a very hard thing to identify and prove but I detect a general trend in society and politics to avoid blame and find a scapegoat.
I listened to Chris Grayling 'defending' his position on SE Rail by stating explicitly that this problem is nothing other than a politically based action by the rail unions (with the hint that he was considering making rail strikes illegal). The truth is that it is the culmination of the flawed political dogma of the Tory party in 1996 when John Major rushed through rail privatisation in the closing days of an exhausted Tory government and absolutely incompetent management who have routinely failed to provide a reasonable service at any time during their franchise. I do not hold the rail unions to be totally blameless but I do recognise the complete lack of trust in relations between them and the management and the DOT. Add the dead hand of a proven incompetent like Grayling and you have all the elements for a disaster.
Remember Godron and 'Not me Guv'. Add the ridiculous insularity and xenophobic attitudes that are all to common in the UK and as you say, who can blame the EU when all they are doing is maintaining principles, which whilst they might not be perfect, are the outcome of many years of cooperation between parties who freely signed up to the Project and are determined to protect it.
I always averred that the decision to support the US in Iraq and Afghanistan was one of the biggest political mistakes ever. I sincerely believe that Brexit eclipses this.
One further matter. I said during the referendum campaign that what saddened me was the complete absence of any element in the debate which took account of the wider principle of cooperation and friendship with other nations to try to make a better world. On this basis alone, some local disadvantages are to be accepted in the pursuit of the greater and more noble aspiration to make the world a better place. Unfortunately this is too long term for our politicians. We no longer have visionary statesmen and women.

Later, I note that our ambassador to the EU has torpedoed the timetable of 2 years, he says nearer ten. He also says that it's possible that we shall never get ratification from all the 27 members. It just gets worse doesn't it.....

...and more complicated too, as shown by this news in the Guardian:
`Article 50 could be reversed, government may argue in Brexit case' LINK
"Government lawyers are exploring the possibility of arguing in the supreme court that the article 50 process could be reversed by parliament at any time before the UK completes its exit from the European Union. Prominent academic experts have told the Guardian they know the government’s legal team has sounded out lawyers about the potential change of tack, which some argue would lead to a victory in the case brought by Gina Miller and other campaigners."...

No one really knows how long it’ll take to negotiate a future trade deal - could be two but might very well be ten (I’d be hedging to the upper-end of that range). The reason for this is that what the UK has just done is absolutely unprecedented. No country has ever voluntarily decided to cut itself loose from each and every single trade agreement to which it is party, or walk away from a major trading partner. Not one. Unprecedented as I say.

And this is why folk are scratching their heads. Free trade deals are about removing trade barriers and developing closer economic ties. This is obvious. What the UK has just done is the absolute opposite. So any future trade negotiation with the EU will operate arse about face, if you pardon my French. That is, it will not look to remove barriers or develop closer ties it will look to resurrect them. It has to. The vote was a rejection of the current arrangement and so any future arrangement will have some barriers. I can’t recall any trade negotiations starting from this point for the obvious reason that it's not their intended purpose.

And then we get folk like the leading Brexit MP Dominic Raab on the Today programme saying it would not be in the EU’s interests to impose tariffs once we had left. For goodness sake! The EU has no choice under WTO rules! They have to impose the tariffs as they would for any other non-EU member or country without a trade deal. This is not some technical obscurity. This is basic. Why does Raab give the impression he does not know this? Well the reason is hinted above: I suspect it’s a part of duping folk to blame the EU when the tariffs come. And the likes of the Mail and Express will blast it all over the front page. The WTO-reality will be lost in the noise….

Richard Broughton

I heard Raab as well Richard and did a double take. In addition the overall tenor of his opinion was that all the talk of difficulty is overblown. I concluded that the man must be living in a fantasy world!
Did you ever see anything quite as forlorn as Theresa May in Brussels yesterday. She may be the most powerful woman in Britain but she was almost totally ignored. I liked the shots of her ambassador to the EU trying to slip away from the pursuing hounds of the press corps.... Not quite in accord with Mr Raab's encouraging words..... (They didn't invite her to dinner either because one of the subjects to be discussed was Brexit. This is a foretaste of what is going to happen after Article 50.)
Have a look at THIS Guardian report of an accident in October. It would appear that Mr Grayling is deficient in more ways than I suspected. Note the sneaky way identity tags were concealed, bit shifty that and why do it?

Have a look at THIS for news that George Osborne appears to have finally seen some of the light. He says he got Brexit and the needs of the electorate wrong. Bit late for this Ossie, we warned you but you didn't listen. You haven't mentioned austerity really...... that was the biggest goof and I am afraid the affects will outlive you.
See THIS for another case where the government has ignored years of good advice and lately, warnings. Winson Green prison has suffered the worst riots since Strangeways. Time to review some of the other warnings? Or just wait until the different areas of underfunding and ill advised policies blows up in your face.

I was listening to a psychologist describing how they deal with people's mental problems using methods such as cognitive therapy. For example she was saying that if you keep exposing them to spiders and telling them that they won't be harmed they will eventually believe it and lose their phobia. My first thought was that it seemed to consist of what we've long called `brainwashing'. My second thought was that psychologists must have lots more evidence these days to prove that we are being brainwashed by advertisers and by the news media. The advertising business has been ridiculed in the past but isn't it time we took the same approach to the news media, particularly the more tabloid end of the spectrum? Every day we are being brainwashed, misled and even told lies by them. It's time we saw more criticism of the news media and targeting by satirists and cartoonists - or are all the critics, satirists and cartoonists in the pocket of the media now? (Except Private Eye, of course, but then PE's readership is very restricted.)

Thought

He rages against unsustainable levels of personal debt, but criticises George Osbourne when he tries to reduce similar unsustainable levels of Government debt.

Discuss. . . .

Tizer "My second thought was that psychologists must have lots more evidence these days to prove that we are being brainwashed by advertisers and by the news media."

This brings us back to George Orwell and 1984. Room 101 was where they broke a man’s will power by exposing him to his most extreme fear. A constant drip of negative propaganda has the same affect. In today’s news media we can see a constant flow of ‘blacks – white’ from the ministry of truth with less than flattering images, specially chosen for their negative impact, placed along side or within the script. In Corbyn’s case, even where a speech or statement is well received by everyone, there will be a series of negative cartoons placed at intervals through it. It was said recently by a conservative that when you get a couple of the national papers against you it is impossible to get your point across. Just think of what Corbyn is up against with all the papers and the majority of Blair’s New Labour party against him.

Tripp’s ‘Thought’. Reflecting back to events after WW1 when the coal mines couldn’t compete against the Germans the first thought was not to modernise our own industry but to cut wages and work longer hours. Austerity was the name of the game. Later in the 30’s when the heavy industries of steel and shipbuilding were in the same position it was the same medicine. Less wages and longer hours. Austerity strikes again. With two disastrous attempts at austerity under our belts for some mysterious reason our conservative government chose to go down this road again. The opinion of the current top economists is to quote …”Economists Kenneth S. Rogoff and Carmen M. Reinhart wrote in April 2013, "Austerity seldom works without structural reforms – for example, changes in taxes, regulations and labour market policies – and if poorly designed, can disproportionately hit the poor and middle class. Our consistent advice has been to avoid withdrawing fiscal stimulus too quickly, a position identical to that of most mainstream economists". Link. The inability to see that the only way forward is constant investment and modernisation is typical of today's renting classes. Those days are gone when you could run an industry into the ground and then hope to revive it by cutting wages. Unfortunately, we have also developed a system where scientific and technical breakthroughs made by British scientists in British laboratories are highjacked by foreign owners such that the intellectual property, patient rights, brand names, marketing rights and profits are hived off via tax havens and offshore avoidance scams to such a degree that virtually none of the benefits are seen back in the UK.
Remembering that George Gideon Oliver Osborne has had eight years of austerity on the go with the promise of four years + with no sign of it working its time to repeat Oliver Cromwell’s speech “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”.

Tripps wrote:Thought

He rages against unsustainable levels of personal debt, but criticises George Osbourne when he tries to reduce similar unsustainable levels of Government debt.

Discuss. . . .

Because individuals generally have fixed incomes that may get windfall gains from asset sales or improving gross earnings (though the problems of price changes, taxation policy may impact seriously on individual forecasts of future expectations)

For Govt Debt, rather depends what is causing the change in it. Is it investment in assets that do produce a marginal financial rate of return. Also debt today can be from expenditure that with a multiplier can bring in a tax take that will reduce that debt down, additionally cutting expenditure short term may actually increase debt medium term. Quite simply what is always needed is not always more (Gordon Brown) or less ( Ossie ) , expenditure , but smart govt spending (or taxation, or reduction of taxation). Of course , with spin, one is never quite certain what is committed spend anyway.

Tizer wrote:I was listening to a psychologist describing how they deal with people's mental problems using methods such as cognitive therapy. For example she was saying that if you keep exposing them to spiders and telling them that they won't be harmed they will eventually believe it and lose their phobia. My first thought was that it seemed to consist of what we've long called `brainwashing'. My second thought was that psychologists must have lots more evidence these days to prove that we are being brainwashed by advertisers and by the news media.

Drip media manipulation is quite dangerous.

I'm surprised re spiders our Australian friends have not been round to tip a bucket of poisionous spiders on the researchers.

David, I don't 'rage', I advise, I draw a distinction between advising people to avoid personal debt if possible and governments trying to reduce public debt by imposing austerity on the poorest members of society whilst pursuing vanity projects and engineering a transference of wealth to the upper echelons who fund them. The former does nothing but good, the latter actually makes personal debt worse. Osborne's 'economic miracle' is founded on the latter form of debt. One of his main arguments for the social spending cuts was to make the false comparison with personal debt. Thatcher used the same trick with her 'basket of groceries'. It's an old ploy, in the 1920s the Governor of the Bank of England used as an example the fact that you can't take more hats and umbrellas out of a cloak room than you put in to support the austerity imposed then. National economics is a bit more complicated than this!
Tiz, you are quite right and I often note the ambiguous and misleading statements used by advertising copy writers. My pet hate at the moment is Pepsi; 'It tastes as good as it looks'. Then there is 'guaranteed for life'. Both statements quite meaningless if you examine them. The copy writers, weasel journalists and politicians use the same tools, ambiguity and outright lies justified by repetition. Think back to Herr Goebbels and 'The Big Lie'.
Later.... See THIS for what I regard as the latest piece of nonsense to come out of the government. All public office holders to swear an oath to uphold 'British Values'. One is reminded of Major's ill fated initiative on 'family values. For a start, what exactly are 'British Values'? I note that veracity isn't included in the list. Will politicians be expected to embrace it? What sanctions will there be in cases where the 'values' have been disregarded. This is nothing but a straw thrown up in the wind and shows that the government has lost its way.
Also, see THIS for the latest self-promotion attempt by Nigel Farage. He reminds me of an attention seeking child tugging at you. It would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous. We laughed at him and UKIP and look where that got us.

Listening to Melvyn Bragg's Start the Week programme on `Gin Lane' it struck me that the trillion pounds of personal debt in the UK is our 21st Century version of Gin Lane. Addiction to gin ruined the people and ruined the country...for gin read personal debt.

Stanley wrote:Then there is 'guaranteed for life'

Quite often this is taken to mean 'while the article can be replaced from the manufacturer'. If they no longer make that particular model then that is the end of its guaranteed life.

" I don't 'rage', I advise, "

I was going to write 'rail against' but decided I didn't know its exact meaning. I have now found it's perhaps even a bit stronger than 'rage'. Neither word is really apposite. I'll take 'advise'.

I know that the comparison between household and national debt is simplistic, but applying Occam's razor again - I think I'll stick with it. The effects of one can be delayed and hidden for longer, but nemesis comes eventually. Didn't Dennis Healey once discover that on the aircraft steps.

Occam's razor.
Isn't that a bit like the drunken man looking under the street light for his keys because its the only place he can see?

I like this now famous quote..
Rumsfeld stated:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

David, you are entitled to your point of view, I am not falling out with you!! (Thinking about that buckshee half gallon of L&P.....)
That's a good analogy Tiz.
I don't like Rumsfeld, never did, but I think he was unfairly ridiculed when he made that famous statement. It makes perfect sense to me and is absolutely true.
I see 'The Oath' attracted almost universal ridicule yesterday. Quite right that it should. It is as vapid and ridiculous as any such 'policy' I have ever heard. A sign to me that there is confused thinking inside the government. Very worrying when the general opinion coming from some quite experienced administrators is that, like me, they see no evidence of any clear thinking on strategies for Brexit emerging. Not surprising really, it is a classic Gordian Knot. Quick and clean separation inside two years is impossible and would be even if the opposing side was well-disposed to us which they definitely are not. It's going to be a blood bath. Let us not forget who started this and then scuttled from the scene of the crime..... As Donald would have said, 'there are unknowns that are themselves unknown' and to compound that, they won't even talk to us! You couldn't make up a worse scenario......

I think I need a lie down - I agree with almost everything in the above.

What bothers me most at the moment (and there's a lot to bother about) is that we're heading towards a more extreme, authoritarian form of government control and public behaviour. Labour is still failing to balance out the shift to the right. The Times journalist Janice Turner, a Yorkshire lass, keeps banging on at her readers about how ordinary folk are increasingly favouring UKIP rather than Labour or Tory. She's not talking about the results of polls but what she hears from people on the streets during her travels. She knows what's happening but no-one's listening. So far we've been saved from UKIP by the the antics and attitudes of Nigel Farage and the like but people are getting to the stage of accepting him and UKIP because they've had enough of the rest. If UKIP were to get a more impressive, acceptable leader they could be pulling in a lot more people. And as Turner points out it's not just those abandoning the Tories, there are Labour supporters who are quitting too and heading in the same direction.

Take the example of one of my long-time friends, Connie. She's now in her 80s and she worked alongside me in the 1980s when we had great discussions about politics. She and her husband were strong Labour supporters, she from Bradford and he from Cumbria - he was the trade union rep at the nearby Harrison's banknote printers. We've stayed in touch and and each Christmas would exchange cards with comments about the current political scene. She stayed true to Labour but last Xmas her card said "I've had enough, I'm going to support Trump!" I took this as a joke but I've just received her card for this Xmas. The front is a photo of her wearing a festive Santa hat (and other clothes too, I hasten to add!) and she's now in California with her daughter. She's also wearing a big grin - she's now supporting Trump! She's finished with UK political parties, none of them are any good for people like her and she sees that at least Trump is making big changes, breaking out of the mould, shaking up the `elite' and - whether we like it or not - winning the hearts of the people.

Tiz, I think that one of the problems is that many (if not most) people align politically to whoever they see as 'flavour of the month' and much of their decision making is based on a degree of self interest. I don't work like that, I look for basic principles and long term progress for the whole of society. One of my arguments for remaining in the EU has always been that no matter what the 'flavour of the month', be it bent bananas or unpopular regulation and law, membership meant we were part of a greater whole and possibly the genesis of greater world wide cooperation, the Star Trek Federation if you will.
On a national level I am a social democrat which naturally inclines me to what is lazily described as 'The Left'. I look for the bedrock principles and in today's terms, only Labour comes anywhere near. On the other hand I said at the time of the Expenses Scandal that I could detect the beginning of a shift in the tectonic plates of politics and I see evidence that this is indeed happening around the globe and in general it is towards the extreme right. The historical evidence is that extremes, whether Left or Right are always destructive and carry within them the seeds of their own downfall but the trouble is that this is a slow process and someone suffers, almost always the poor and disadvantaged. My natural tendency is to favour policies which improve their lot, not destroy them! So, until there is a better solution I shall be constant in my support for Labour in the hopes that eventually they will come to their senses and start to act in the manner which resulted in outstanding improvements for society like the NHS and a humane Social Welfare regime. Simples!
I see that in the process of ratifying the Presidential vote in the US, the Electoral Commission has revised the overall voting totals and credited Clinton with two and half million votes more than Trump. I'm not advocating PR but some element of it which eliminates obvious mismatches like this would be welcome.....

Its been a long established principle in America that money buys votes either by campaign funds or by intense lobbying. As an old quote says. "There are two important things in politics, Number one is money and I can't remember what the second one is." The Brexit fiasco is showing the same trends. Virtually on a daily basis we hear that the investment and hedge fund side of banking will move out of the UK unless some favourable terms are agreed in advance of anything else. Political lobbying on behalf of private firms whose sole interest is one of profit takes president over the mundane concepts like what's best for the people. The current spate of industrial strikes appear to have a common denominator in that services are cut back in the name of modernization until the service they supply is at odds with what the customer expects. A recent American analysis on who the electorate think the politicians listen to most reads..
Special interest groups , Campaign contributors, Party leaders, The media, with the views of their constituents coming way down on the list. Tizer's concerns about listening to ordinary people seems to be taking off in the UK as well.

I suspect that is why there was such virulent opposition from the Right and politicians more interested in personal advancement than their constituents against Corbyn whose view was diametrically opposite, that it was the membership of the party and by extension, the electorate who counted. This is dangerous stuff. Remember “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. (John Lydgate/ Abraham Lincoln) On the other hand Cameron attempted to please the people he thought mattered for his personal survival as Leader, his 'back bench bastards' (to quote John Major) and look where that got him, defeat and political oblivion personally and a nation facing what looks increasingly like a catastrophe.
History teaches us that it is the political policies which are based on firm and just principle that are most effective. Think Lloyd George and the 'People's Budget' of 1910, Think Labour policy in 1945 despite all the economic odds being against them. When did you hear a majority against the NHS, humane Welfare policies and good housing? This is not a policy direction that attracts people who are primarily concerned with self-advancement and personal wealth, they cannot conceive that the electorate are not impressed by these policies and might have higher principles in mind, like caring for society at large and not a privileged minority. Think of the effects of the 'greed is good' syndrome on the financial sector. Once given freedom by deregulation what did they do? Then think who paid......
All right, I am hopelessly old-fashioned but I'll sleep better at night if I am sure my principles are correct.
Later I note that the CBI is calling for tariff free market after Brexit while May makes vapid statements about the 'hard-nosed' negotiating tactics she will employ. The message doesn't seem to have got through that the EU is not going to make us better off than their 27 other members. May will not have any shots in her locker except the threat of retaliatory tariffs and that would be incredibly destructive and contrary to global trading trends which are generally inclined towards free trade. If we display that attitude with the EU what does it signal to other nations we shall be negotiating with? I see nothing to inspire confidence.....

We heard little at the start of this month about the result of the Austrian election. I suppose the news media thought it was too boring as the Far Right man failed to get in and it was over-shadowed by Renzi's predicament in Italy. The Greens won in Austria and the turn out was 74%.