Politics

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michael scuffil
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Re: Politics

Post by michael scuffil »

Anyway, today is VE Day -- Victory for Europe.
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Re: Politics

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michael scuffil wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 11:38 am Anyway, today is VE Day -- Victory for Europe.
And there is still a discussion as to who won!!
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J.R.
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Re: Politics

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jhopgood wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 1:12 pm
michael scuffil wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 11:38 am Anyway, today is VE Day -- Victory for Europe.

And there is still a discussion as to who won!!

You really don't want me to make a comment on that question surely John ?

Ask me again in five or so years, assuming I'm still watching the debacle !!
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Re: Politics

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Well that was a turn-up for the books, wasn't it. The Maybot's software providers failed to provide her with enough varied programming. But for those of us who remembers the 70s we see the return to influence of that familiar tribe, the gaggle of garrulous Ulster Protestants asking for favours, in this case the unlikely combination of a hard Brexit and a soft border. But anyway folks, Brexit is going to be a disaster whichever way you view it so better to have a weakened Tory party tearing itself to pieces over it than Labour.
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Re: Politics

Post by LongGone »

Cheer up, at least you don't have the Mango Mussolini tweeting covfefe.
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Re: Politics

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LongGone wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 5:21 pm Cheer up, at least you don't have the Mango Mussolini tweeting covfefe.
I think I had that once, but anti-biotics did the trick !!
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michael scuffil
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Re: Politics

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rockfreak wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 12:39 pm Well that was a turn-up for the books, wasn't it. The Maybot's software providers failed to provide her with enough varied programming. But for those of us who remembers the 70s we see the return to influence of that familiar tribe, the gaggle of garrulous Ulster Protestants asking for favours, in this case the unlikely combination of a hard Brexit and a soft border. But anyway folks, Brexit is going to be a disaster whichever way you view it so better to have a weakened Tory party tearing itself to pieces over it than Labour.
I think I can agree on all of that. Meanwhile, the rest of the world says you couldn't make this country up if you tried. Anyway, I think there'll be another election by this time next year, and Corbyn will certainly win it (though without an absolute majority). He of course is a Brexiteer too, mainly because EU rules forbid nationalization.

This was my 16th all-night election session; the first was in 1959, when we huddled in the lav-end with a portable radio filling in the Times map in red and blue (mostly blue, unfortunately). I must say, this latest was the best night to date. Rarely laughed so much.
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Re: Politics

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Ian Paisley has gone but Arlene Foster appears to be a bit of a chip off the old block. She's got a voice like broken glass in a blender. At least there's no cries of No Popery this time round but instead we've got No Gropery, as far as Lesbians are concerned. And if it all continues in this unsatisfactory way it'll just be a case of No Hopery.
I'm a bit baffled about these EU privatisation laws Michael. Since countries like Germany and France already have state railways (and have picked up bits of our privatised transport systems) how will these laws affect them? Of course this whole privatisation mania emanates from Anglo Saxon economic ideology to begin with so it's strange how the originally social democratic EU has picked it up.
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Re: Politics

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rockfreak wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:42 pm Ian Paisley has gone but Arlene Foster appears to be a bit of a chip off the old block. She's got a voice like broken glass in a blender. At least there's no cries of No Popery this time round but instead we've got No Gropery, as far as Lesbians are concerned. And if it all continues in this unsatisfactory way it'll just be a case of No Hopery.
I'm a bit baffled about these EU privatisation laws Michael. Since countries like Germany and France already have state railways (and have picked up bits of our privatised transport systems) how will these laws affect them? Of course this whole privatisation mania emanates from Anglo Saxon economic ideology to begin with so it's strange how the originally social democratic EU has picked it up.
Hope she stears clear of the leader of the Scottish Tories, then !! :shock:
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Re: Politics

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Freaky does it again. Another letter in the FT (today, 19 June). Exhorting British businessmen to shout their misgivings about Brexit before it's too late. If I read it correctly and we jump off the cliff onto WTO rules and have to pay tariffs on our exports and imports for the foreseeable future, Banker Brown will have to pay a tariff on all his cases of Bordeaux coming in, to say nothing of having them held up at Dover for ages.
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Re: Politics

Post by sejintenej »

rockfreak wrote: Mon Jun 19, 2017 11:33 am Banker Brown will have to pay a tariff on all his cases of Bordeaux coming in, to say nothing of having them held up at Dover for ages.
Sorry, David, I'm not into claret. A nice Macon Villages, a Malapere, for bubbly a Blanquette de Limoux (methode ancestrale) which is far better that that takeoff from the Champagne region. Some of us have taste, you know.
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Re: Politics

Post by michael scuffil »

I'm a bit baffled about these EU privatisation laws Michael.

The EU is basically a free-enterprise economy and frowns on state aid and on monopolies. Of course, there have been certain industries which were already state-owned when the EEC was formed, and there is no obligation to privatize them. But Harold Wilson's nationalization of steel (1965) would not be in accordance with EU rules, and if Jeremy Corbyn wanted to nationalize the lingerie retail sector, that wouldn't either.

Glad to see HM wearing a conspicuously EU hat...
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Re: Politics

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Freaky does it again! Another letter in today's Guardian (24 June). Along the lines of "The 70s wasn't so bad". Ha ha! Already I can hear Banker Brown grinding his teeth and muttering darkly about unions, strikes, three-day weeks, etc. Actually he might also have mentioned flares, idiotic suits with wide collars, kipper ties and garish interior décor. And Brotherhood of Man. But anyway we'll pass that by. I was expanding on Owen Jones' feature in the Guardian about the way that certain periods seem to wipe out all political and economic fashions that have gone before. In this case that the 70s finally did for the idea of the post-war Keynesian consensus. Not so, quoth I. In retrospect you can pick apart the policies of the 70s that caused us problems (many of them as much the property of the Tory Heath administration of 1970 - 74 as Labour's) and see that some were avoidable and that some were a bit unusual and that the Keynesian consensus might well have continued if the times had been more propitious. After all, this style of economics continues to this day in many western and northern European nations.
I've no doubt that Post War Blue is also grinding his teeth about my ideas. It's good to see him back again after a lay-off, even though he's managed to persuade the moderators to remove my nautical limerick about him. Back on the old spinach diet again, eh?
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Re: Politics

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Re. Michael Scuffil's comment about privatisation rules in the EU, Larry Elliott in today's Guardian talks about the gradual drift in the EU towards neoliberalism, less state aid, balanced budgets and outsourcing. I sometimes think that economics is like pop music or clothes; there's an inevitable drift in a certain direction and everyone seems to get dragged along with it.
The debate here is starting to question this drift since the Grenfell Tower fire seems to involve a lot of different outsourced companies with no-one really in charge at local council level and the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. And of course underfunding (as with much of our public sector over here). Everything's being stripped back as the government ideologically tries to reduce the state to pre-war levels This can only be reversed by the rich paying more tax by one means or another. We are actually a lower-taxing country by the standards of the G10.
Someone, possibly my favourite economist JK Galbraith, once said that the proponents of sound money were generally those who had plenty of it while the effects were felt by those who didn't.
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Re: Politics

Post by michael scuffil »

Don't worry rockfreak, we have a govt. which has not only found the magic money tree to buy itself a majority (the same money would have re-clad all the tower blocks in the country, but not bought their votes), but also one which is positively rolling in its love of red-tape and regulation, as witness its proposals for EU citizens in the UK, who for more than forty years have managed to live in the UK without any red tape at all...

Incidentally, the great and good Mr Michael Gove, in a throwaway line on 'Farming Today This Week' last Saturday, said that any future immigration policy would be dictated by economic considerations alone*. Which is another way of saying that the government has no intention whatever of even trying to reduce immigration.

*I think we can expand his sentence with the words: 'and not by xenophobia or uninformed prejudice'.

I hear that there is a new trawler operating out of Hull, ready to exploit the great new possibilities offered by the end of the Common Fisheries Policy. The trawler was built in Turkey and its crew is mostly Icelandic and German. But the paperwork is British to the core.
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