We can all cherry pick!
Incidentally I've won my bet and just proven that we Brexiteers cannot post a simple positive post withour it being challenged hence,in answer to Lloyds post why we just don't bother anymore!
Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
JimB My post was in answer to Lloyds post challenging us for positive news hence my post. You and Lloyd are very good at posting the doom and gloom so my post perhaps gives a more balanced picture?
We can all cherry pick!
Incidentally I've won my bet and just proven that we Brexiteers cannot post a simple positive post withour it being challenged hence,in answer to Lloyds post why we just don't bother anymore!
We can all cherry pick!
Incidentally I've won my bet and just proven that we Brexiteers cannot post a simple positive post withour it being challenged hence,in answer to Lloyds post why we just don't bother anymore!
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Poppy
Well said, I like !
Jackie
Well said, I like !
Jackie
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
An excellent article in today's Times by Matt Ridley. I highlighted in red a section that reminded me of at least one Remainer (who shall remain anonymous - as long as he is Happy with that). 
I have also highlighted in blue some of the 'good news' being requested by someone (who shall remain anonymous but I can confirm that he is In Cyprus).
I have also highlighted in blue some of the 'good news' being requested by someone (who shall remain anonymous but I can confirm that he is In Cyprus).
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-am ... -2hnpbhqrvMore than a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, I realise we who ended up on the Leave side have probably made a mistake. No, not that we should have voted the other way, but that we thought we had won the argument last year during those weeks when we lived and breathed every detail of the debate. To some extent we then stopped making the case. The Remainers didn’t.
True, they have a few new arguments to deploy, such as that Michel Barnier is a wizard negotiator who will run rings round us and that everything he says is gospel, while everything David Davis says is nonsense; even that it is now obvious that “the job can’t be done” (in Lord Heseltine’s words). The argument that leaving the European Union is not just foolish but somehow against the laws of physics or something seems to be growing more common. There are just too many treaties to disentangle and too many laws to rewrite, so after a few years of trying we will give up.
I happen to be reading Maya Jasanoff’s magnificent book Liberty’s Exiles on what happened to the loyalists after American independence. Much the same complexity argument was made in 1782 during the two-year negotiation to leave the British Empire: it was a “huge task [that] required deconstructing the apparatus of an empire from the bottom up”. What a shocking indictment of our civilisation if, after inventing so much automation, knowledge and wealth, it is even harder to disentangle a country from an empire today.
The most eye-catching result of last month’s YouGov poll on “Brexit extremism” was that one in five Remain voters thinks “significant damage to the British economy after leaving the European Union to be a price worth paying to teach Leave politicians and Leave voters a lesson”. Yikes. How spiteful can you get? Liam Fox was apparently not wrong when he said the media is full of people who “would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed”.
I, for one, am more sure now than I was on June 24, 2016 that the British people did the right thing. My one anxiety as I placed my cross on the paper was that Project Fear might be half right if only for self-fulfilling reasons, and that I might be helping to inflict severe short-term pain for slight long-term gain. Yet instead of an emergency budget and an immediate and profound shock to the economy, a loss of confidence, a drying up of inward investment, a plunge in house prices, a surge in inflation and a collapse in the stock market — all of which we were promised if we voted Leave — there has been almost unremitting good news on the economic front.
Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To those who say “That was only the vote; once we actually leave, then we’ll be proved right,” I reply: “Why did you not say so at the time?”
There is a second reason I feel more Leave-inclined than a year ago: the behaviour of the European Commission. I don’t much mind the scorn and petty point-scoring. I expected that, don’t believe a word of it and find it reassuring, not least because it lowers expectations. When you’re taking flak, you know you are over the target.
No, it’s that they clearly mind more about the budget for their bureaucracy (the “bill”) than the economic future for European citizens. We are told we must settle the officials’ demands for money for officials to spend on officials’ priorities, before we even talk about future trade arrangements between ordinary people.
Jasanoff reports that when Britain’s negotiators agreed to the terms of American independence in Paris in 1782, “many contemporaries were surprised by Britain’s generosity towards the former colonies”. The reason was that Lord Shelburne, the prime minister, wanted to try to secure the United States in Britain’s sphere of influence.
Where is the same ambition in today’s Brussels? Has there been a single speech from within the commission (rather than the continent) about how the future prosperity of all Europeans, including Britons, depends on maximising innovation, trade and trust among us? Or saying that, given the continent’s huge trade surplus with us and the huge numbers of its citizens that we have created jobs for, let alone our net contribution to the budget being the second biggest, we might deserve a little co-operation, even thanks. I know nobody in Britain who wants us to stop being friends, allies and trade partners of European countries.
The inhabitants of the commission (and the parliament) exemplify public choice theory at its finest: they mistake official self-interest for the public interest. They are interested in making sure their integrationist bureaucracy thrives, rather than looking after the economy of the continent.
True, there are Europeans making better noises, within Germany and elsewhere. Yet that only reinforces the point: if the European Union were an intergovernmental arrangement, I would be all for staying in it. It is not, as I keep pointing out to American friends who think it is some kind of economic Nato. It is an experiment in building a top-down, centralising, supranational government, with a bureaucratic surplus and a democratic deficit. Compared with most of the rest of the world it is a failure, as its economic growth rate, unemployment rate and innovation record demonstrate.
Putting aside the negotiating bluster, I am also encouraged by the fresh thinking already emerging on policy. In recent months I have had conversations about immigration policy with Australians, fishing policy with Icelanders, farm subsidies with Swiss, environmental policies with Americans and tobacco control with Canadians. These conversations no longer end in that despairing realisation that reform is impossible because it requires persuading 27 other nations and a lobby-fodder commission to come to some sort of compromise. Suddenly anything is possible.
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
An interesting article on Brexit from across the pond. Sums up what a lot of people are saying on here.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/o ... pean-union
LONDON — On July 24, trade talks began between Britain and America. All right, they weren’t formally called trade talks: As long as Britain is still in the European Union, it is supposed to contract out all its commercial decisions to Brussels. Officially, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and the British trade secretary, Liam Fox, met for broad discussions about what might happen when Brexit takes effect in 2019.
Still, both sides can see the prize. For decades, there have been fitful negotiations between Washington and Brussels on trade liberalization, but they have always run up against the protectionism of France and some southern European states.
Between Britain and America, there are few such problems. Each country is the other’s biggest investor: About a million Americans work for British-owned companies, and a similar number of Britons work for American-owned companies. A liberal trade deal, based on mutual recognition of standards and qualifications, will bolster both economies.
Prime Minister Theresa May keeps saying she wants Britain to be a “global leader in free trade.” In parallel to the talks with Washington, Britain is starting discussions with China, Japan, India, Australia and others. Global trade deals should supplement rather than replace Britain’s economic relationship with the remaining 27 European Union states. The nonmember Switzerland, for example, exports nearly five times as much per head as Britain does, mostly to the European Union, while simultaneously having bilateral trade deals around the world.The idea of a more global Britain emerging from the European Union may strike you as jarring. Much of the commentary over the past year, at least outside Britain, has portrayed Brexit as a nativist and protectionist phenomenon. I keep reading — often in the pages of this newspaper — that the vote was overwhelmingly about immigration.
In fact, opinion polls before and after the vote concurred that the main issue for Leavers was democracy. An exit poll of 12,369 people, for example, found that 49 percent of Leavers had been motivated by the desire to bring decision making back to Britain, and only 33 percent by wanting more control of immigration.
I’ve learned in politics that almost no one listens to the other side. Rather than going to the source, people read allies’ reports of what the other side is supposed to have said. If a British person tells you that the vote was “all about immigration,” I can almost guarantee that you are talking to a Remainer. Those among my friends who voted to stay in the European Union didn’t weigh and then dismiss the economic and democratic cases against membership; they never heard them.
The same confirmation bias can be seen in their determination to find bad economic news. Here is a selection of British reports from the past two weeks: Unemployment fell again, as every month since the vote, to 1.49 million (from 1.67 million in June of last year); manufacturing orders are at their highest level since August 1988; retail sales, official figures show, are up 2.9 percent on this time last year.
Exports were up 10 percent year-on-year in May, helped by the long-overdue correction of the exchange rate. Remainers like to point to the fall in sterling, but rarely mention that, before the vote, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England agreed that Britain’s currency, seen as a haven from the travails of the euro, was artificially expensive.
Continental Europeans evidently still regard the British economy as attractive; more of them are working in Britain than ever before. As for the supposed decline of London, a number of European banks, including Deutsche Bank and ING, have grown their operations here since the referendum. Last year, Wells Fargo spent £300 million (about $392 million) on its new European headquarters — in London. The latest survey from the Robert Walters City Jobs Index, for July, reported that hiring in financial services was up 13 percent year-on-year.
You may think I’m prone to a confirmation bias of my own. But it’s only fair to contrast what has happened since the Brexit vote with what was predicted during the campaign. Remain campaigners told us to expect a recession in 2016; in fact, Britain grew faster in the six months after the referendum than in the six months before. They told us that the FTSE 100 index of leading companies’ share prices would collapse; in fact, British stocks performed strongly after the Brexit vote. They told us that Scotland would leave Britain; in fact, support for separatism has collapsed, and the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has shelved her planned independence referendum.
Most people, whichever way they voted, are celebrating the good news. But a few Euro-fanatics, disproportionately prominent on the BBC and at The Financial Times, are acting like doomsday cultists, constantly postponing the date of their promised apocalypse. First, a Leave vote was supposed to wreck the economy. Then, it became “wait until we begin the disengagement.” Now it’s “wait until you see what a bad deal we get from the European Union.”
It’s odd. The people who are the most pro-union are generally the most convinced that the union will act in a self-harming way out of spite. I have a higher opinion of our European allies. But even if I didn’t, I’d still expect a deal. Adam Smith observed that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” It is not from the benevolence of the European Union that we expect a free-trade agreement: Exchange makes everyone richer.
If you want a picture of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union, think of Canada’s with the United States. Canadians have a type of federation on their doorstep that they decline to join, but with which they enjoy the closest possible diplomatic, military and economic ties. Two years from now, in a similar vein, the European Union will have lost a bad tenant and gained a good neighbor.
Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan), Conservative of South East England, is a member of the European Parliament and the author, most recently, of “What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/o ... pean-union
LONDON — On July 24, trade talks began between Britain and America. All right, they weren’t formally called trade talks: As long as Britain is still in the European Union, it is supposed to contract out all its commercial decisions to Brussels. Officially, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and the British trade secretary, Liam Fox, met for broad discussions about what might happen when Brexit takes effect in 2019.
Still, both sides can see the prize. For decades, there have been fitful negotiations between Washington and Brussels on trade liberalization, but they have always run up against the protectionism of France and some southern European states.
Between Britain and America, there are few such problems. Each country is the other’s biggest investor: About a million Americans work for British-owned companies, and a similar number of Britons work for American-owned companies. A liberal trade deal, based on mutual recognition of standards and qualifications, will bolster both economies.
Prime Minister Theresa May keeps saying she wants Britain to be a “global leader in free trade.” In parallel to the talks with Washington, Britain is starting discussions with China, Japan, India, Australia and others. Global trade deals should supplement rather than replace Britain’s economic relationship with the remaining 27 European Union states. The nonmember Switzerland, for example, exports nearly five times as much per head as Britain does, mostly to the European Union, while simultaneously having bilateral trade deals around the world.The idea of a more global Britain emerging from the European Union may strike you as jarring. Much of the commentary over the past year, at least outside Britain, has portrayed Brexit as a nativist and protectionist phenomenon. I keep reading — often in the pages of this newspaper — that the vote was overwhelmingly about immigration.
In fact, opinion polls before and after the vote concurred that the main issue for Leavers was democracy. An exit poll of 12,369 people, for example, found that 49 percent of Leavers had been motivated by the desire to bring decision making back to Britain, and only 33 percent by wanting more control of immigration.
I’ve learned in politics that almost no one listens to the other side. Rather than going to the source, people read allies’ reports of what the other side is supposed to have said. If a British person tells you that the vote was “all about immigration,” I can almost guarantee that you are talking to a Remainer. Those among my friends who voted to stay in the European Union didn’t weigh and then dismiss the economic and democratic cases against membership; they never heard them.
The same confirmation bias can be seen in their determination to find bad economic news. Here is a selection of British reports from the past two weeks: Unemployment fell again, as every month since the vote, to 1.49 million (from 1.67 million in June of last year); manufacturing orders are at their highest level since August 1988; retail sales, official figures show, are up 2.9 percent on this time last year.
Exports were up 10 percent year-on-year in May, helped by the long-overdue correction of the exchange rate. Remainers like to point to the fall in sterling, but rarely mention that, before the vote, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England agreed that Britain’s currency, seen as a haven from the travails of the euro, was artificially expensive.
Continental Europeans evidently still regard the British economy as attractive; more of them are working in Britain than ever before. As for the supposed decline of London, a number of European banks, including Deutsche Bank and ING, have grown their operations here since the referendum. Last year, Wells Fargo spent £300 million (about $392 million) on its new European headquarters — in London. The latest survey from the Robert Walters City Jobs Index, for July, reported that hiring in financial services was up 13 percent year-on-year.
You may think I’m prone to a confirmation bias of my own. But it’s only fair to contrast what has happened since the Brexit vote with what was predicted during the campaign. Remain campaigners told us to expect a recession in 2016; in fact, Britain grew faster in the six months after the referendum than in the six months before. They told us that the FTSE 100 index of leading companies’ share prices would collapse; in fact, British stocks performed strongly after the Brexit vote. They told us that Scotland would leave Britain; in fact, support for separatism has collapsed, and the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has shelved her planned independence referendum.
Most people, whichever way they voted, are celebrating the good news. But a few Euro-fanatics, disproportionately prominent on the BBC and at The Financial Times, are acting like doomsday cultists, constantly postponing the date of their promised apocalypse. First, a Leave vote was supposed to wreck the economy. Then, it became “wait until we begin the disengagement.” Now it’s “wait until you see what a bad deal we get from the European Union.”
It’s odd. The people who are the most pro-union are generally the most convinced that the union will act in a self-harming way out of spite. I have a higher opinion of our European allies. But even if I didn’t, I’d still expect a deal. Adam Smith observed that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” It is not from the benevolence of the European Union that we expect a free-trade agreement: Exchange makes everyone richer.
If you want a picture of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union, think of Canada’s with the United States. Canadians have a type of federation on their doorstep that they decline to join, but with which they enjoy the closest possible diplomatic, military and economic ties. Two years from now, in a similar vein, the European Union will have lost a bad tenant and gained a good neighbor.
Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan), Conservative of South East England, is a member of the European Parliament and the author, most recently, of “What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit.”
Last edited by Jimgym on Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
The tide is turning! More and more positive news each day it seems and finally the media is reporting it!
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Two interesting reports Poppy, making a pleasant change from the usual misery and doom!
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Excellent article Jimgym. I just hope that someone in particular reads it all the way through. He may even recognise himself described in there - somewhere!
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Jimgym
Do you think it's safe to put the suicide pills away ?
Jackie
Do you think it's safe to put the suicide pills away ?
Jackie
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Thanks Royal for your very interesting article,it spurred me on! I think there are one or two who should recognise themselves quite quickly 
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
........... For now
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
More good news:
Excellent news for our economy!UK WAGES AND JOBS DATA RELEASED
Breaking:
Better news for householders, UK average earnings have come in higher than expected.
Average weekly earnings rose by 2.1% year on year in the three months to June, better than the forecast 1.8%. Excluding bonuses the figure was also 2.1% compared to expectations of 2%.
Meanwhile the July claimant count fell by 4,200 and the unemployment rate came in at 4.4%, better than the expected 4.5% and the lowest since 1975.
The Guardian
The sound coming from Aphrodite's Hills is quite deafening isn't it? I think he's desperately searching for more doom and gloom predictions and will totally ignore the good news presented to him.
No surprise there, then…
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Get it right Royal!! I do believe Ha Potomi is Secret Valley not Aphrodite Hills! 
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
Ah! I was ascribing more grandeur than was absolutely necessary!
No surprise there, then...
No surprise there, then...
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
A quote from the Official Treasury prediction of the immediate aftermath of a Leave vote
The reality
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brit ... SKCN1AW0PG
Still, those Brexit liars eh?
- tres report.JPG (86.51 KiB) Viewed 9187 times
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brit ... SKCN1AW0PG
Still, those Brexit liars eh?
Re: Britain faces up to Brexit (source: Economist)
I just thought I'd repost an extract from Royal's excellent posting earlier, for those who chose to ignore it.
The most eye-catching result of last month’s YouGov poll on “Brexit extremism” was that one in five Remain voters thinks “significant damage to the British economy after leaving the European Union to be a price worth paying to teach Leave politicians and Leave voters a lesson”. Yikes. How spiteful can you get? Liam Fox was apparently not wrong when he said the media is full of people who “would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed”.
Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
You're very welcome!
The most eye-catching result of last month’s YouGov poll on “Brexit extremism” was that one in five Remain voters thinks “significant damage to the British economy after leaving the European Union to be a price worth paying to teach Leave politicians and Leave voters a lesson”. Yikes. How spiteful can you get? Liam Fox was apparently not wrong when he said the media is full of people who “would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed”.
Unemployment is now lower than at any time since 1975. Employment, at 75 per cent, is the highest since records began in 1971. But the most striking data are on investment. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that investors are pulling out of Britain. The opposite is true. Britain is currently the most popular destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, which shot up to £197 billion in 2016, compared with £33 billion in 2015, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
You're very welcome!
