Off Topic Political Debate

The UK didn't leave with 48%, if that figure is correct then the support for Brexit has gone down since the referendum, I wonder why.

 

I did see a graph at the weekend that the gap between leave and remain had narrowed but leave was still on top, just!

A bit immaterial though as the only thing that mattered was the vote on 23rd June. Imagine what the French public would have decided if they could have voted a week after Hollande was elected but rules are rules.

 

Quite clearly the polls are giving very different results in the UK to those on the continent. Every country across the EU has shown a minimum of 5% move towards the EU, with France, that was showing a desire to leave early in the year now showing a 58% in favour of remaining. Everyone in the political commentaries is talking about the chaos seen in the UK, and it has clearly moved opinion.

 

These polls were recently taken on the continent. Pollsters have not recently covered themselves in glory but YouGov are one of the more respected. There may of course be the "shy Tory" effect whereby people often not reveal their more extreme view. Trump is a perfect example.

The 'UK chaos' is more wishful thinking than reality by desperate remoaners, but the uncertainty is due to last at least another two years.

 

MAX HASTINGS: Yes he had to be optimistic. But whatever happened to the idea of living within our means?
By MAX HASTINGS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 01:39, 24 November 2016 | UPDATED: 01:39, 24 November 2016

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Philip Hammond delivered his first Autumn Statement with considerable brio and some jokes designed to show he is not merely the bland accountant his critics claim

The Chancellor yesterday found himself obliged to read out to the Commons figures about Britain’s indebtedness that, if they featured on the balance sheet of a public company, would cause its shares to slump and its bosses to quit.

Because this is Britain, however, which has been living beyond its means since at least 1939, a few Tory optimists applauded the Government’s prudence, while Labour and the Scottish Nationalists renewed their mindless demands for an end to ‘austerity’.

Philip Hammond delivered his first Autumn Statement with considerable brio and some jokes designed to show he is not merely the bland accountant his critics claim.

We are embarking on ‘a new chapter in our country’s history’, he said, and it is his task to ensure our economy is ready ‘to seize the opportunities ahead . . . to prepare it to be resilient as we exit the EU’.

To this end, he plans a big increase in local and national infrastructure spending, and maintenance of planned tax cuts and welfare spending, despite a steeply increased prediction for public borrowing in the coming years, so it will rise from 84 per cent of GDP last year to 87.3 per cent this year and peak at 90.2 per cent in 2017-18.

The Autumn Statement has become a second Budget, which is why the Chancellor announced his intention to abolish it and have a single November Budget to provide breathing space for government and allow business to prepare for announced tax and regulation changes to be implemented in the following April.

Shocks

This is sensible. It is doubtful whether more than one in 20 of the MPs assembled yesterday understood a word Hammond said or a number that he rehearsed.

The average voter would have listened to the speech live only if they fancied taking a pleasant afternoon nap.

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The undeniable reality, however, is that Britain is still spending more than it earns. Over the next five years, the national balance sheet will be £122 billion worse off than was predicted in George Osborne’s March Budget.

Our productivity is dire: 30 pc below that of the U.S. and Germany, 20 pc worse than France, even 8 pc under Italy’s.

Public spending has fallen from a high of 45 pc of GDP in 2010 to 40 pc today, which the Chancellor says shows ‘controlling public spending is compatible with world-class public services’.

Yet the figure is still far too high for the long-term health of the national finances.

But Hammond is a politician and he had to deliver his statement at a time of almost unparalleled unease and fear among the political class around the world not only about Brexit, but about the future of the EU and now — almost incredibly — of the U.S.

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The Prime Minister and her Chancellor saw his first task as being to steady nerves, calm markets and strike a note of optimism, says Max Hastings

Those in power in the world’s democracies are feeling terrified of voters, who in recent times have visited upon them such stunning shocks and upsets.

For that reason, the Prime Minister and her Chancellor saw his first task as being to steady nerves, calm markets and strike a note of optimism.

This he did, making the very best of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s predictions that Britain’s growth compares favourably with that of the rest of the world.

While it is predicted to slow considerably next year and there are warning signs about inflation, the Government argues that the economy will continue to defy the doomsters, as it has done since June’s EU referendum.

Hammond knows this country can only prosper outside the EU as a low-tax, low-regulation and low-pay economy, though he didn’t admit to the last bit yesterday.

The undeniable reality, however, is that Britain is still spending more than it earns
The first big question about his remarks is whether he can justify his promised big infrastructure spend. Many of us are sceptical about the HS2 rail link and the Hinkley Point nuclear project, which the new Government has endorsed.

There seems a better case for a more modest initiative to fund research and development, together with new super-fast internet broadband links to propel Britain further into the age of the ‘knowledge economy’.

The Chancellor has nodded through all sorts of spending measures previewed in the March Budget by his predecessor.

He has maintained the ‘triple lock’ guaranteeing pensions increases (while announcing it will be reviewed) and freezing fuel duty for a seventh successive year.

Hammond trumpeted the last measure as an effective tax cut to help ‘millions of hard-working people’. But is this really the time for cutting any tax?

Terrified

He made much of funding a one-off £7.6 million grant to save the great crumbling Yorkshire mansion Wentworth Woodhouse, a measure obviously designed to please Our Friends In The North.

But it is hard to imagine any rational case for giving a farthing of public money to Wentworth when the Royal Navy is reduced to sailing its remaining ships in the bath.

Conspicuous by its absence from the statement was any significant mention of the NHS, right up there alongside welfare as the principal charge upon the Exchequer, and facing equally rampant costs.

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Hammond made much of funding a one-off £7.6 million grant to save the great crumbling Yorkshire mansion Wentworth Woodhouse, a measure obviously designed to please Our Friends In The North

Almost every man, woman and mouse associated with the health service knows its present financial structure is unsustainable and must be reformed, starting by imposing small charges on those able to pay, just as free travel passes for better-off pensioners should have been abolished yesterday.

David Cameron’s government was terrified of tackling this unexploded NHS bomb, even after winning a General Election with an absolute majority.

Theresa May’s successor regime shows no stomach for doing so, either. May and Hammond are no more ready to announce charges for NHS services than they are to shut down the Brigade of Gurkhas (which would be another economically prudent, but politically lethal measure).

They know they will require all their political capital to steer Britain through the minefields of Brexit and the economic turbulence that was probably coming anyway, whether we voted to leave the EU or not.

They are unwilling to risk trouble anywhere they do not need to have it.

Thus, yesterday, more chunks of dripping meat — or rather, English taxpayers’ money — were pushed through the bars of Scottish cages, and assorted titbits promised to those in the North who feel excluded from the South-East’s prosperity.

Hammond said that nowhere else in the developed world is the productivity gap so wide as it is in Britain between London and the rest of our country.

Philip Hammond did what was almost certainly essential to avert an economic downturn
Most of us recognise this as an inherently unhealthy and politically dangerous state of affairs, but it is hard for the Chancellor or anyone else to do much about it.

Government-launched Industrial Strategies, which the Prime Minister has talked much about since she took office, have a poor record of success.

In the years ahead, neither we nor our rulers must be allowed to forget how many problems we face that have absolutely nothing to do with Europe: a huge trade deficit, failing education system, lagging productivity.

Philip Hammond is a dry stick, but an intelligent man who knows this. He also knows how little room for manoeuvre he enjoys when international confidence is precarious and our national debt monstrously high.

Caution

During Prime Minister’s Questions before yesterday’s statement, one of the SNP’s imbecile commissars demanded to know how Mrs May could ‘sleep in her warm bed at night’, knowing the privations to which her austerity policies are subjecting the nation.

She replied tersely and absolutely rightly: ‘Austerity is about living within our means.’

That mantra can’t be repeated too often. A key question about the Autumn Statement is whether political caution has caused the Chancellor not to be austere enough — to avoid making painful, if necessary, cuts.

In these turbulent times, he deserves the benefit of the doubt, as he put a bold and cheerful face on the prospect before us. ‘We have made our choices and set our course,’ he said.

Yesterday, the Commons did not hear many hard truths about our predicament, nor was it confronted with any tough choices or hairshirt policies.

But Philip Hammond did what was almost certainly essential to avert an economic downturn. He offered an optimistic vision for Britain’s future which we can all unite in hoping to see fulfilled.

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Another critical article on the Tories missed opportunity to address the UK's large debt


Our debt appals me – and it’s all Osborne’s fault...PETER OBORNE says former Chancellor did not cut deeply enough because he had ambitions of getting to Number 10
By PETER OBORNE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 23:46, 23 November 2016 | UPDATED: 04:15, 24 November 2016

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George Osborne, to his considerable credit, was sitting there on the backbenches yesterday to listen to his successor Philip Hammond deliver his first financial statement as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr Osborne did his best to look cheerful, but in reality the event must have been pure torture. The former Chancellor was obliged to watch his economic legacy dismantled in front of his eyes.

His much-vaunted scheme to help workers buy shares in the companies they work for? Dumped! His pledge to bring the national books back into balance before 2020? Dumped! The Autumn Statement itself? Dumped!

Mr Osborne liked to deliver two annual financial reports, in the form of the Autumn Statement and a March Budget, perhaps in order to award himself two great parliamentary occasions a year when he could parade his stewardship of the economy and make those rather sardonic jibes at the Opposition benches.

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George Osborne, to his considerable credit, was sitting there on the backbenches yesterday to listen to his successor Philip Hammond deliver his first financial statement as Chancellor of the Exchequer

Mr Hammond’s decision to ditch the Autumn Statement is, however, a great relief to everyone else.

Above all, the new Chancellor has swept aside the financial forecasts so proudly presented by George Osborne in his Budget last spring.

In them, Mr Osborne had planned that the national debt would peak at just over £1.7 trillion. Under Mr Hammond, the national debt is expected to surge to more than £1.9 billion.

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Remember that Britain (like much of the rest of the world) is reaching the end of a long economic cycle.

That means a recession may well be round the corner. If it strikes, we — and many other Western countries whose finances are even worse than ours — face financial calamity on a scale that has never been seen in our lifetimes.

Of course, Britain would be in far better economic shape if Mr Osborne’s much-vaunted ‘Plan A’ to rein in spending and borrowing had done what it was supposed to do. Last year he (or more likely one of his underlings), tweeted: ‘We act now to fix the roof when sun is shining. I’ll introduce new fiscal framework with permanent commitment to run surplus in normal times.’

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Contrary to the myth put about by the economically illiterate Left, George Osborne was never really an austerity Chancellor, says Peter Oborne

Well, the fact that the debt even now is £1.7 trillion shows that he certainly did not fix the roof: we are currently spending more on servicing our debt than we are on transport or defence!

As for Britain running a surplus as a result of Osborne’s six years in No 11, there now seems little chance it will happen in the next decade.

Of course, the Left howled about ‘savage Tory cuts’ throughout the last Parliament. But the truth is Mr Osborne did not cut deeply enough when he had the chance.

Perhaps the problem was that he was always an intensely political Chancellor, with one eye on his own burning ambition of getting to No 10.

For that reason, while he did instigate departmental cuts in government and tried to tackle the vast welfare bill, he was never willing to go far enough because it would make him so unpopular.

That is surely why he ducked the chance to end the tax credits racket last year and instead — like some benevolent Father Christmas — chose to increase the minimum wage and so increase the financial pressure on employers. In the end, his great austerity project only served to alienate half the country while failing in its stated goal to eradicate the budget deficit.

When he came to power in 2010, Britain faced an annual deficit of some £150 billion. So Mr Osborne pledged to balance the national books within five years.

Unfortunately, that task proved beyond him. Even today, six years on, it stands at around £70 billion.

Before last year’s General Election, the Chancellor made a fresh vow of fiscal prudence, promising to bring the national finances into balance by 2020. Even before the Brexit vote, Britain was on course to miss that target as well.

Contrary to the myth put about by the economically illiterate Left, George Osborne was never really an austerity Chancellor. Indeed, by the time he left office, big spender Osborne had expanded Britain’s national debt far more than any Chancellor in our national history — including Gordon Brown!

All this raises a puzzling question: What on earth has led Philip Hammond to set such considerable spending plans at a moment when the British finances are already out of control?

I believe there are two primary reasons. First, Mr Hammond has found it hard to escape George Osborne’s financial excesses, some of which were set in train last year in order to win the 2015 election.

Second, Hammond’s new fiscal laxity has its origins in deepening tensions between him and Prime Minister Theresa May.

There are, of course, always sensitivities between a Prime Minister and Chancellor. This is because the Chancellor sees his primary task as to make sure the national finances are safe, whereas the Prime Minister wants to spend money in order to please the voters.

Mr Hammond recently indicated that he wanted to be a prudent Chancellor when he talked about the ‘eye-watering’ levels of the national debt.

This led me to expect that yesterday’s Autumn Statement would emphasise prudence.

It has done the opposite. It envisages that the national debt will have doubled by 2020 to almost £2 trillion — from less than the already huge £1 trillion inherited from Labour. (And consider this. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn and ex-Marxist shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who is still committed to balancing the books, on the face of it now has more austere and responsible spending plans than the Tories! This is bonkers.)

So it looks very much as if the Chancellor has been obliged to increase spending on the orders of Theresa May.

The great Osborne experiment has not worked.

Now, Mr Hammond is trying a different approach — but it’s one I fear will only exacerbate the mess his predecessor left behind.



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http://www.quizony.com/which-famous...-you #USD-5#int#&utm_medium=clicks_to_website

Who are you really....???

Well now have confirmation that i am Martin Luther King

 

Gandhi......although I did the test very quickly. Just done it again with the same result......but did Gandhi really start the day off with a coffee and a *** ?

 

I am Martin Luther King - married to Henry Ford...

 

I so much wanted to be Che Guevarra It was not having a gun and being religious which threw me off course.

 

Me too. I put down non-religious though, so it was all about the gun. I'll try and acquire one.

 

Git. Do you have a gun, Toby?

 

Haha no, my answers were pretty Gandhi-esque, was surprised at the end to get that.

Think it's one of the last questions which says 'would you break the law if you believed the cause was right' (or something along those lines).

 

Balls, it wasn't that either, I said absolutely to that. I am Che. 'Tis a government conspiracy, I say. I'll write a letter to the Times... Just like he would've done.

 

George Washington...could have been worse. Mrs Whitehouse anyone?

 

Gandhi for me as well. Reckon that if I got a gun to frighten off the deer it would change.

 

Does that make you my wife or my husband??

 

Some dubious questions here. Like the one 'do you believe democracy is the best political system' - the word is not really defined, do they mean a restricted western liberal democratic system ? If so then no. Also, what about those revolutionaries who never went to high school ? Choosing between equality and freedom is difficult because you can't have equal access to freedom without having economic equality. Also the question of guns will come out differently depending on where you live - does this mean that Americans are more likely to be Che Guevarra ?

 

Why not narrow this down a bit and list your objections to UK accepted version of democracy. Having an elected second chamber would obviously improve democracy. You would probably prefer a single transferable system or proportional representation but that would have elected many UKIP MP's in 2015.