who wants to tell him it’s a mash article?

I was commenting on your Times front page post Mike

Graham a weak pound doesn’t necessarily hurt business confidence, as fourbanger posted the farmer was raising £ prices as he can export more profitably now. Weak £ is great for manufacturing and services

ernie not around?

Do you know, on Jamba’s recommendation I might buy a euromillions ticket this week. Never done it before.

And I’ll let him have a small advice fee if I win.

Health tourism is a bigger issue than many will admit. Its actually worse in France for childbirth as any baby born there is automatically a citizen. Whilst in France you need ID/Carte Vitale (or a credit card !) for treatment a hospital won’t turn away a woman in Labour obviously

It does if its “uncontrolled” 😉

Massive liquidity plus weaker £ – are fuel prices the first of many signs re the return of inflation? Expectations are now >3% I believe. Opps, IR to rise and watch out….we shall see….

“At booking every patient will need to show a form of photo ID or proof of their right to remain (asylum status, visa, etc),” the October trust board papers say.

And presumably they’ll also be training staff in how to understand the various forms of ID and what they are (and aren’t) eligible for…

For those classed as ineligible, will they then refuse treatment?

In other news, on five live at the moment they’re reporting that it looks like its going to have to be a hard border between Northern and Southern Ireland.

Well this is a surprise. Its almost like the EU is letting it to be known where the 3 stooges can stick their cloud-cuckooland fantasy wishlist.

Who’d have thunk it eh? It was impossible to see that one coming!

In other news, on five live at the moment they’re reporting that it looks like its going to have to be a hard border between Northern and Southern Ireland.

As long as the good for nothing lazy gits pay for it. Or is that another thread? 😕

Health tourism is a bigger issue than many will admit.

In the grander scheme of things it isnt – like benefits. But I can see a target markets for the fairy tales

Hmmm. Irish border – disaster waiting to happen?

Weak £ is great for manufacturing and services

Possibly, assuming that manufacturing doesn’t need to import too much!

Overall, as I think you have pointed out yourself, we are an importing nation. The Trade Deficit was sitting at £4.7 billion on the latest figures:

A weak pound means imports cost more and we import a LOT more than we export.

A weak pound means imports cost more and we import a LOT more than we export.

Shhhhhh. Didn’t you know that freed from the shackles of EU imperialism we’re going to become an exporting powerhouse?

Graham – that’s not fair. The weaker pound should improve our trade deficit in time. Of course, in the ST it makes it worse (j-curve effect) but should boost UK aggregate demand in the medium term

AD = Consumption + Investment + Gov spending + (Exports-Imports ie net exports)

At the same time, it is true that Import price eg fuel are going to start to add to inflationary pressures.

as fourbanger posted the farmer was raising £ prices as he can export more profitably now

Uhhh no. I said we bought protein in Euros and this has increased our cost of production….

I think I may have just black balled myself from the local pub…. When two of the locals piped up about immigrants I told them that I found their views xenophobic and out dated, that the fall in the pound isn’t likely to be a bonus to a country that imports more than it exports, their generation isn’t going to feel the punch the same way that my young nephew will, their annual holiday to Spain is going to cost more, that any potential savings I might see importing to Germany could be wiped out if trade tariffs are introduced and that if the UK is gunning for the same deal as either Norway or Switzerland then we will be worse of than we are now…..

Seriously considering applying for a German passport.

Seriously considering applying for a German passport.

Did you tell them that? You’ll be a local legend.

Oh…pissed off half my aunties last week when they started on about immigrants.

Can’t be **** with roughly half the people I encounter….

[more importantly, did you ride the S Hills!!]

I think I may have just black balled myself from the local pub

Welcome to my world. I’ve not been in my local this year. Used to drink in there regularly, but got sick of listening to the regulars. All approaching retirement age, they’re a bunch of shit-thick, UKIP (probably Tory now) voting, racist, homophobic, misogynistic bigoted ****-wits!

I kind of barred myself from the pub by quite forcefully pointing this out to them. It got a bit sweary, and finger pointy. But I got sick of listening to the woes of the world being blamed on ‘****, ****’s and queers’

I dread to think what the level of conversation has been like in the last 3 months.

What I find scary, and spirit-crushingly depressing, is that these people are now winning. And don’t they know it! Their moronic 1970’s style retro bigotry agenda is now official government policy, no matter what the cost to us all as a country.

Its all very well the like of Jammers talking about Internationalism, but that kind of high-minded nonsense’s just wilfully delusional. It isn’t an ‘Internationalist’ agenda thats being pursued here. Its an agenda that is being written to blatantly pander to the regulars in my local pub. They could have written it themselves. And believe me, they’re a bunch of utter ****s!!! And they haven’t got two brain cells to rub together between them

Nice company you’re keeping Jammers. As was said at the time of the referendum – not everyone who voted for Brexit is a racist, but every single racist voted for brexit. And those racists are clearly now setting the agenda.

What the **** must this country look like? Its genuinely embarrassing. And I think we’re descending into some genuinely nasty, dark times indeed

The trouble is the UK only does small scale, specialist manufacturing. We gave up making consumer stuff in the 70s & 80s. Generally uk companies farm stuff abroad, it’s not just about the money these days it’s also about foreign manufacturing expertise. The current situation might be better for luxury car manufacturers, defence and aerospace but the benefits of the low £ may be negated a little- it’s very rare that a factory makes everything under one roof, usually a ‘made in the UK’ product also contains a lot of imported components as well.

I’m really angry about how weak the Remain/Project Fear campaign was; no real Labour support and Conservative MPs didn’t stick their neck out, despite many of them being pro-EU. It’s worrying that May and Johnson (two political game players that stand for nothing) gained from this.

Also note that historically it seems there’s a pattern of protectionism (leading to nationalism and racist sentiment) that happens around large economic downturns- the rise of the rise of the National Front in the 70s and early 80s (I remember seeing ‘NF’ scrawled all over bus stops as a kid), also The BNP gaining mainstream support in the early 90s, winning the Tower Hamlets seat from Labour in 1993.

So that’s 4 recessions in a row that have sparked-off mindless flag waving and intolerance.

Graham – that’s not fair. The weaker pound should improve our trade deficit in time. Of course, in the ST it makes it worse (j-curve effect) but should boost UK aggregate demand in the medium term

AD = Consumption + Investment + Gov spending + (Exports-Imports ie net exports)

At the same time, it is true that Import price eg fuel are going to start to add to inflationary pressures.

Okay so I think follow you (I’m no economist! But this site helped.)

But isn’t that J-curve effect predicated on the idea that the devalued pound makes our exports more attractive?

So what happens if those exports are then hit with additional tariffs that increase their cost and negate the benefit of the low value currency?
Doesn’t that mess things up?

According to those ONS figures I linked, the EU accounts for 47.3% of our goods exports and 39.4% of our service exports. So, depending what trade deal we reach, they could be impacted by new tariffs.

Doesn’t that mess things up?

No, we should be able to cut labour costs by employing….. Oh hang on!

The trouble is the UK only does small scale, specialist manufacturing.

Not true although it did decline a lot under bLair (not Maggie as zokes suggested before)

Graham,

No the J-curve effect occurs because the immediate impact of a weaker £ is the exact opposite of the medium-longer term one. (All other things being equal 😉 I almost posted about tariffs etc before) the weaker £ will make exports more attractive and imports less so. (Depending on the price elasticity of demand) this should improve our terms of trade and there be good for the economy. BUT, the changes in quantity lag changes in price, so in the ST imports merely cost more and our exports are worth less.

Weak £ is great for manufacturing

Wrong

Not true although it did decline a lot under bLair (not Maggie as zokes suggested before)

Please give me some examples of large scale manufacturing in the UK that doesn’t involve foreign multinationals…

We do some very high value sub sea and specialist upstream oil and gas stuff. But I know at least two companies that have just laid everyone off due to downturn in oil price.

+1 binners…..

One bloke earlier in the pub mentioned some company making hovercrafts now with their order books full and exporting to countries as far away as Brazil….
He mumbled something along the lines of “it is companies like that that will make this country great again”.

He looked a little sheepish when I asked him whether he thought the UK economy could keep its head above water with exports of hovercraft.

He looked a little sheepish when I asked him whether he thought the UK economy could keep its head above water with exports of hovercraft.

Depends on the amount of hot air really.

He looked a little sheepish when I asked him whether he thought the UK economy could keep its head above water with exports of hovercraft.

Oh I don’t know, with the polar ice caps melting (that’s the fault of immigration too 😉 ) I think he may be onto something….

One bloke earlier in the pub mentioned some company making hovercrafts now with their order books full and exporting to countries as far away as Brazil….
He mumbled something along the lines of “it is companies like that that will make this country great again”

It’s this sort of nonsense that scares me the most. For me the main problem with Conservative governments is their reliance on a rose-tinted rhetorical image of Britain’s past as a sovereign economic powerhouse that we’ll somehow magically become again if we all pull our finger out. The Britain they refer to didn’t exist.

Interesting graph in the FT today..

[url=https://flic.kr/p/M9E5xr]Stocks lag (FT.com)[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

For all the talk about the FTSE 100 being in a high, it’s performing below par in $ terms since we announced divorce…

http://on.ft.com/2dIUzqk

Weak £ is great for manufacturing

Only if you don’t import all your raw materials and are not about to have 10% + trade tariffs imposed by your largest trading partner….

If you import your raw materials, they now cost more and the 10% tariffs will offset the benefit of cheaper labour costs.

The trouble is the UK only does small scale, specialist manufacturing. We gave up making consumer stuff in the 70s & 80s.

Tell you what, prove this first.

For all the talk about the FTSE 100 being in a high, it’s performing below par in $ terms since we announced divorce…

Why do $ returns matter to a £-based investor?

+2 for Binners this is the underlying problem in as much as the people who have voted for this and provided the Tories with unquestioning power (sad to see MPS almost begging for a vote on Brexit conditions) will not contribute anything and I mean **** all to dragging this country out of the shite – they will sit on there fat lazy arses whining about the immigrants who didn’t get sent home and how being “British” means the country owes them a living. It will be left to the people and businesses who voted to remain to try and make something of this – I don’t like this but I am starting to hope the Tories regionalise benefits and kill the triple lock on pensions cut Farmers subsidies just so I can stand in my local pub (which I will be able to afford £4.50 a pint) so I can say “f***ing told you so” while the Ukrainian barman pours me another pint of Moretti- careful what you wish for ****wits as all your dreams are coming true. Oh Jamba your input in respect to this level of commerce and the benefits class (includes farmers) is of little use so no thanks on advance. I despair at the sheer uneducated ignorance of these people.

I did a lot of work for a large German multinational a couple of years ago. They’re based in Burnley. If you don’t think we make anything in this country then take a look around there. We make plenty! And its a high value, high skills business. And therein lies the problem.

The German parent company had just invested tens of millions in new plant. Brilliant for the local economy. Trouble was that with this extended capacity now required skilled manpower. And they couldn’t find enough of it locally. Burnley has become a bit of a manufacturing boom-town on the quiet over the last few years.

Being German, so not as short terms and blinkered as UK companies when it comes to actually training people, they took on a lot of young apprentices. But that takes time.

In the meantime they imported their ready-made skilled workforce from Europe.

How do you reckon the mood music coming out of number ten is sounding to them at the moment? Soothing? Comforting? Reassuring? Or absolutely ****ing terrifying?!!

Yeah… exactly

Because one look at Boris ****ing Johnson and the clueless muppets surrounding him and you can say with absolute bloody certainty, is that they haven’t got the first bloody clue about the actual needs of a large, high-skilled industrial manufacturer, and exporter, in Burnley.

And by the sound of their rhetoric they’re spouting, they seem to be wilfully proud of this fact. Ignorance really does appear to be bliss

As I said earlier, I genuinely fear how bad things are going to get in places like Burnley, once those jobs have been shipped back to Germany. Which WILL happen if these morons carry on down the course they’ve set us on!

But then this is a familiar scenario isn’t it? Those now unemployed people, formally in high skills, high pay jobs, in a town none of the Tory front bench could find on a map (it’s under ‘there be dragons’), just don’t even register.

Same old, same old…..

Out of interest – what IS Labour’s policy here after the conference?

THM – Corbyn’s policy is absolutely insane. As you’d expect. As generally tends to happen when you write policy in the common room

He doesn’t care about retaining access to the single market, as this is an evil capitalist construct, that is there to oppress ‘The Workers’

But he does want to retain an open door immigration policy

Yeah…. I know…. you couldn’t make it up.

Actually – I am with Jezza on freedom of movement of people. Its a GOOD thing.

Its to his credit that he has not targetted the knuckle-draggers

But he is confusing priorities between single market and freedom of movement. But then again thats not surprising. He’s confused on lots of things

I’m absolutely with Jezza on freedom of movement as well THM. We need immigration, especially in skilled areas. All this Daily Mail cobblers that immigrants are all working in potato fields is complete and utter bollocks! They’re highly skilled people!

But to defend that and then be, at best, indifferent to retaining access to the single market…..

Absolutely insane!

There appear to be very, very few voices in Westminster, from any side of the house, that makes any sense at all. Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry are valiantly doing their bit, as they’re clearly horrified at the Stockholm Syndrome thats taken grip of their own party as the foaming-at-the-mouth Brexiteers hold everyone to ransom

Why do $ returns matter to a £-based investor?

Because a lot of the things you buy with your £’s have costs tied to the $ e.g. anything involving oil in it’s manufacture…