Vortexes around the wings as I recall.

I’ll let you decide if that’s bees or HoL

Actually I think your design flaws comment is interesting.
The US was designed – by constitution – and it was a good enough design that it has lasted pretty well.
Westminster was less design and more evolution. Evolution roots out flaws that are a real problem but leaves those that are, most of the time, merely interesting.

Carefully the thought police won’t approve of flattery!

A lot of what the US do is a bad copy IMO – look at the inauguration versus a coronation.

Indeed.
And I prefer evolution too.

A Holyrood speech worth listening to 😉 Who is representing the 1m
Scots who voted to Leave the EU ? More people in the NE of Scotland voted to Leave the EU than voted for the SNP. The Indy White paper made it clear the UK may hold an in/out Referendum – with implication that voters should take that into account in their Yes/No choice

Ross Thomson MSP: 1m Scottish leave voters have been left tota…

"In both this Parliament and at Westminster, 1m Scottish leave voters have been left totally unrepresented," Ross Thomson MSP tells the Scottish Parliament

Posted by BrexitCentral on Thursday, February 9, 2017

Who’s representing the 1m Scots who voted out?

WTF is representing the 16m Brits who voted in?

Well jamba, if you are going to be subdividing like that, my ward should be staying in the EU.

My house should certainly stay in. Hopefully the EU citizen/passport thing will go ahead anyway.

Someone should watch – BBC Two “After Brexit: The Battle for Europe” then smell the nice Italian coffee. The Italian debts are so very toxic … 😆

So Italian debts being toxic is good chewkw? Fool.

igm – Member
So Italian debts being toxic is good chewkw? Fool.

Do you object to the Italian toxic debts as facts? 😆

Let me give you a suggestion by hammering the EU system until it breaks and in complete pieces then everyone can live happily ever after. 😛

yeah, great. Another major global financial crisis. That’ll really make everyone’s lives so much better.

Well we have hardly tackled de-leveraging yet, instead relying on stealing off savers to cover up the reality of the situation. Impotent monetary policy but at least we have a relatively loose fiscal policy in the UK. Good job they were only pretending about austerity.

Coming down from the QE high will be painful especially if inflation starts to accelerate. Hold on….

Coming down from the QE high will be painful especially if inflation starts to accelerate. Hold on…

Technical question for you… As QE is inflationary, will it have to come to a stop when inflation kicks in, to avoid hyper-inflation, even whilst keeping interest rates low to prevent a debt reckoning? ie: a period of inflation will force the BoE’s hand into halting QE?

Only one Scottish MP voted in favour of A50, against the wishes of the majority of his constituents. Do you want to take a guess at who it was?

Wow brooess, there is a lot there. Tbc in my comments I was thinking about the immediate impact of £ deval on inflation rather than stimulus provided by QE

In short (might come back on this tomorrow)

QE is an unorthodox and extreme type of policy. If the root problem goes away so does the need for QE

I don’t think that there is danger of hyper inflation

Inflation is a double edged sword: it erodes the debt (good) but makes the cost of servicing debt higher (bad). Like most things it’s a balance act.

I hope QE ends soon for the simple reason that it’s the wrong solution to the wrong problem. A double negative.

Economic growth and inflation returning to target levels should bring and end to this stupidity. But there is a lot more behind this.

HTH

So THM – if the Tories start actively managing the economy with industrial policies, rather than letting the bankers fill their boots, will our economy grow more? It would perhaps end up better structured?

Very doubtful mol. Gov’s have a very poor record in actively managing the economy. I would prefer them to keep out of the way as much as possible and let the rest of us get on with managing businesses/the economy.

Industrial policies in particular have a weak track record, but there is certainly scope for providing incentives to investment, training and possibly relocation. If they focused on helping to improve productivity they would get my vote!

At the moment, the one thing that the Tories are doing correctly goes against all the rhetoric and the perception of them. They are running one of the loosest fiscal policies in the developed world, hence my rejection of the idea of austerity. They continue to spend more than they earn at a rate that is greater than peer economies. At a time when households and corporates are deleveraging, THAT is the correct thing to do. They should stop this when, and only when, the private sector stops deleveraging. This is one reasons by the UK economy is performing relatively strongl, but goes against the common austerity narrative. Odd that!!

FWIW, and it’s a technicality, QE does not involve “giving”money to the banks or letting them fill their boots.

Finally, the low tax Tories will ensure the HIGHEST tax burden on the UK economy since the mid 80s.That is another thing that needs to be addressed. Bloody Tories…… 😉

Who is representing the 1m
Scots who voted to Leave the EU ?

Little englanders like you?

Let me give you a suggestion by hammering the EU system until it breaks and in complete pieces then everyone can live happily ever after. [/I]

Which is the equivalent of living in a middle terrace and hoping that both you neighbours’ houses get destroyed by a gas explosion…

They are running one of the loosest fiscal policies in the developed world, hence my rejection of the idea of austerity.[/I]

+1 and have since the word ‘austerity’ came onto GO’s lips.

Industrial policies in particular have a weak track record, but there is certainly scope for providing incentives to investment, training and possibly relocation.

Well that’s more or less what I am talking about. There’s talk of promoting certain industrial sectors, investing in busiesses and startups and so on. Either by giving money directly, paying for infrastructure or via legislation etc. Surely this is a sensible idea?

Industrial policies in particular have a weak track record, but there is certainly scope for providing incentives to investment, training and possibly relocation.

Depends what you mean in the past they did not stop machinery as it was cheaper to let children die than stop production- probably good for productivity as well – not suggesting you support such things you do have a moral code – but the second point also shows that even you support intervention as you know the market is far from perfect

The debate is only about what the intervention should be unless we wish to return to serfdom/indentured labour/slavery as the market loves ever cheaper ways of reducing labour costs – everyone will interfere with the market EVERYONE – the only debate is to what extent from the light touch of THM to the stalinist fist of erm Stalin.

Not sure about giving money directly mol, and a national investment bank is off-agneda, but apart from that doing everything you can to facilitate business (legally and with respect to environment, workers righs etc)

Of course, coming back on topic, Brexshit does the opposite. Makes business more costly and more challenging. Only a fool would….

There’s talk of promoting certain industrial sectors, investing in busiesses and startups and so on. Either by giving money directly, paying for infrastructure or via legislation etc. Surely this is a sensible idea?

it could be. unfortunately it tends to turn in to a wizard wheeze to just take that money off the government IME. a few years ago we move in to a new office. we got a quote for fibre broadband. government were offering a grant to help businesses install fibre broadband – £3k. we applied for it and got it. the quote for the install went up £3k. 😐

If the government were to go the investment route the obvious is transport and communications, those things that form basic infrastructure. Problem is that the UK government flogged most of it off, and most to foreign companies. Obviously private companies will try and make as much money as they can, and seems to be the way demand assurances that any loses are covered by the government.

So rather than recycling the money it just gets off shored, and any risk is on the public sector rather than the private.

Throw into the mix WTO rules on subsidies and it gets very messy for many in the UK over the next few years. How much of the farming sector will be left in 10 years?

woah there! just roll back a minute Hoss!
WTO regulate subsidies!?
weren’t we shrugging off the chains of the evil EU so we could do what we damn well please, subsidise who we want where we want!?

the good news just keeps coming. 😆

Pretty much the last person you need to be deciding what industry/business to invest in (ie subsidise) is a politician IMO, they’ve not a great track record on either straight business or subsidising stuff. Example:

August 2016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-36710104

Kieran Donnelly, the auditor general, said there was “no upper limit on the amount of energy that would be paid for”.
“The more heat that is generated, the more is paid,” he said.
In one example cited by the report, a business taking part in the same scheme in Great Britain could collect about £192,000 over 20 years by using a boiler all year round, but a Northern Ireland firm doing the same could earn £860,000.
Mr Donnelly said the scheme had “serious systematic failings from the start”.

a national investment bank is off-agneda

Why so?

Pretty much the last person you need to be deciding what industry/business to invest in (ie subsidise) is a politician IMO, they’ve not a great track record on either straight business or subsidising stuff

where as we all know no business ever makes an error, loses money or ever goes out of business due to poor decisions hence i was unable to cherry pick a link to substantiate this

Humans are fallible ….whatever sector they operate in

Its hardly news is it. Heck even trump declared bankruptcy a number of times ….

where as we all know no business ever makes an error, loses money or ever goes out of business due to poor decisions hence i was unable to cherry pick a link to substantiate this

But they lose their shareholders’ money – not ours.

But they lose their shareholders’ money – not ours.

They won’t be though… Too many deals now come with no risk to the private sector. Guaranteed minimum payments for power, subsidies for transport etc.

blair’s labour did master the art of privatising profits while publicising risk.

But they lose their shareholders’ money – not ours.

Tell that to the bankers

Tell that to the bankers

Their shareholders don’t need telling they have lost huge amounts.

Junky I know many bankers who have lost amounts in the tens of millions on shares in their employers. Just look at bank share prices since say 2006. A very large portion of Lehman Brothers employees held large numbers of shares for example. Didn’t stop the bank blowing up. Also if you look at the share prices of those banks rescued shareholders lost a lot of money.

We have discussed banking before but if you let a bank fail the Govt is on the hook for customers deposts (up to a limit) and if a bank fails small, medium and indeed large business customers will find their overdraft facilities cancelled. It’s not a simple decision.

@zokes yes indeed, in my view the eurozone crises is going to dwarf the credit crises of 2007-9 in terms of impact and severity.

I am surpirsed the Remainers here haven’t commented on today’s “EU exit bill”. France and Germany wanted a bigger figure (€70bn I think) not surprising as they have elections in May and October and they are going to be on the hook for increased contributions to plug the hole we are leaving.

My gut feel is we well pay €10-15bn that being UK MEP’s pensions (so paid out over decades) and Academic projects which the UK has already said it will match (so that’s smoke and mirrors about whether it’s paid to the EU first and then back to the UK or we just pay direct. Also again that’s paid out over a number of years).

The big row is going to be whether the EU will discuss trade before we finalise this “exit bill”, another reason why I say plan A is WTO tariffs with all amounts routed to NHS and let’s just get on with focusing globally.

The point is that both business people and politicians fail and when business fail its not ALWAYS just shareholders who pay out- taxpayers are often left to pay the redundancy payments never mind what happened with bankers where, clearly, it cost the taxpayers a few pence.

Is it coincidence that Jamba is the first post on page 666……………? 😉

The big row is going to be whether the EU will discuss trade before we finalise this “exit bill”, another reason why I say plan A is WTO tariffs with all amounts routed to NHS and let’s just get on with focusing globally used to pay people on the increasing dole queue or fund a cut in income tax for the top earners.

Is it coincidence that Jamba is the first post on page 666……………?

How dare you sully his number! 👿