Comments by "Curious Crow" (@CuriousCrow-mp4cx) on "A Different Bias"
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Er... Not really. WTO rules are the base rules for trade in Services and goods. The WTO rules were designed when the focus was more on goods trade than services trade, so the rules for services are less onerous. This why the repatriation of Euro-deniminated derivatives transaction clearing from London is only a problem as a loss of revenue. The biggest issue has been the need for UK banks to create subsidiary businesses in order to continue selling their financial products within the EU. That is as WTO rules for services require, which as the largest sector to donate both to the Conservative Party and the Leave Campaign is only fair. They got what they wanted, but not in the form they wanted. They sought to defy economic gravity and lost. And the British economy took that bullet for their benefit unknowingly. Britain's second empire - it's tax haven and offshore financial centres business won't make up for that loss unfortunately, as those sums aren't taxed inside the UK. I don't feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for the rest of my countrymen who have not yet of the folly they were led into by a particular section of their elites. They put their wealth before the needs of the country. And there still trying to pretend they did nothing wrong. So a particular segment of our PR industry is still producing their own form of disinformation in order to wrest control from those with calmer and cooler heads. Such circumstances are nothing new to our continental brothers, whose own history is punctuated by periods like these. I'm sure the British people thought such a thing couldn't happen here in this time. But, we know why it did. And it's a symptom of where we need to do more work to be fit for a 21st century that isn't going to be a dystopia nightmare. Everyone has problems, because whether we all admit it or not, there is more work to be done to provide a fairer and more secure economic settlement for the vast majority who aren't wealthy. And, we have to start an honest debate about what will look like, and how it may be achieved. Part of that is having good relations with those we share common interests with, based on the choices open to us. For myself, that means effective negotiation and cooperation is the way forward with our neighbours, as much within ourselves. Only time will tell what shape our relationships will take in the future. Butt all we can do in the present is to make the best foundation we can for our relations to be positive and mutually beneficial. That means keeping the lines of communication open, and taking it from there. So Au Bientot, Mon ami.
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According to Google'S AI:
The UK did apply to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961, but France's President Charles de Gaulle vetoed the application twice. De Gaulle accused the UK of being hostile to European construction and more interested in the US. The UK eventually joined the EEC in 1973 after de Gaulle left office. And Britain under Clement Attlee considered the EEC's precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community "undemocratic," and refused to apply for membership.
The Problem is that the UK was interested in the US, but even de Gaulle may not have known that the Americans wanted the UK to join the EEC, and that the CIA had funded Jean Monnet's movement. But by the time 1961 rolled around, the UK realised that the Commonwealth would not become a trade bloc in its own right, and it needed more economic growth. So, it had to turn to Europe, because the US was too busy setting up it's own economic empire to bother with Britain. Yes, a lot of American multinationals bought inward investment in electronics and car manufacture, but little else was offered. Britain needed both to keep the US happy and to find new markets, so the EEC ended up being the only way to turn. It was so important that de Gaulle noted in his memoirs that Macmillan looked like he was about to cry after yet another rebuff during a shooting party, that de Gaulle said to Macmillan "There's no need to cry, milord." Ouch! So Britain had no choice, and arguably it was not comfortable with having to look to Europe. After all, the Americans were richer, and had all of Europe's gold. Perhaps if Ireland had been an imperial power and had lost it after neatly 500 years of lording it over the planet, then you might understand how they might find it difficult. Yet, that does not explain the persistence of wishful thinking.in the present day. I just found a quote NY Nietzsche which said, "There are two types of people. Those who want to think, and those who want to believe." I think a lot of the Brexiteers were by nature belonging to the second group. They wanted to believe in a British Renaissance of some fashion, where they would be the heroes somehow. Little did they know that they were tilting at windmills. Why? Because Brexit was already DOA. 2008 was the wrecking ball, and the failure to rewrite the "software'" of the global financial system "hardware", together with climate change, would not send the UK economy to the moon, but rather see the engine of economic growth run like it needed a rebuild. Neoliberalism is endangering our very survival, and it cannot deliver on its promises to the masses. So, a new age is coming, and it's birth will be painful and slow, as the elites try to keep their gravy train running at least, why trying to convince is to blame and hate anyone but them.
And The EU itself has to question it's economic model too, and how other arrangements are needed to reduce the risk of further disruption. Other than full membership, there will be probationary or associate memberships in the EU in future. That where the UK may be happy to rest. Full membership and the Euro is for the UK unlikely. But that's my analysis, but who knows? We shall see.
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The solution is to not took for quick or easy solutions. To explore options thoroughly and objectively, rather than being led by either fear or greed. To acknowledge that anyone's wealth cannot be sustained or created by them alone, as it relies on the joint efforts of you and those around you to have wealth. And if you don't do what is just or moral to others, you cannot be expected to be treated justly or morally. And we need to start by being honest about ourselves, what is happening in our country, and how we might have contributed to both what is good or bad about it. We been subjected to a series of social and economic experimentation, driven more by ideology than sound, proven ideas. We can't ignore feelings - we should be informed by them, but not led by them. Reason should be lead us. And misplaced idealism, or cynicism is unhelpful. We can't put aside altruism or justice, or we can no longer function sustainably as communities or nations. We have to accept that we do need to strengthen our democracy and democratic norms and make our governance more responsive than technocratic. We have to start understanding, before we try to be understood. We have to start listening to each other, and thinking before we speak. We have to stop valuing wealth more than people, and valuing character before social status. And we have to accept that there will be always be those that don't see the dignity or humanity of others who aren't their kith or kin, and we should strengthen our systems and norms that limit their influence.
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The overseas hedge fund was incorporated in the UK by the owners, Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya, both British nationals. Like the hedge fund they are, they retry tured the company as a conglomerate, whose holding company is now in the Cayman Islands. Nothing strange about that, as the Cayman Islands is a British overseas territory, like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. So the Cayman Islands is a British tax haven. It's not foreign money,from foreign people. It's money from British billionaires, based in a British overseas territory. Is that ideal? Nope. But as we don't live in an ideal world nor the land of Oz, but the real one that is globalised, it is what it is.
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Actually, Iain Anderson, owner of one of the biggest lobbying firms in the UK, wrote a book entitled "F**K Business: the business of Brexit" in which he wrote:
"I come to the conclusion that so much has been ‘lost in translation’ between the political class and our wealth creators that many on both sides don’t really understand each other any more – and perhaps don’t want to. However, a new chapter has opened in British politics with a new Prime Minister. I have a genuine hope that things can only get better. Perhaps the relationship with business and politics can be rebooted – or, even better, remade." p. xiii
The book was published in 2019. But in February 2024, Anderson wrote an article for The Times entitled:
"I’ve supported the Tories for 40 years, but enough is enough".
The tagline was:
"The party has treated business and investors with contempt and shredded its reputation for fiscal competence. Now Labour are showing how it should be done."
That was before Sunak had even called the election. So it would not be unreasonable to infer that the current iteration of the Tories were run by zealous ideologues, who knew nothing about business, and couldn't care less. After all, they had got all their donations already, hadn't they?
Due Dilligence is a necessity and arguably, the port owners discounted the rumblings of discontent, the analysis of buyer's remorse growing in the country, and ignored the protestations of the Chair of the British Chambers of Commerce, who was not a happy bunny. You see, Brexit wasn't dreamed up by businessmen or corporations. It was dreamt up by a caste of public school educated entrepreneurs, who ran their own boutique service businesses for people within their circle, and knew nothing about global trade. There were no Sir John Harvey-Joneses - I remember him in the Troubleshooter series - in their ranks, who could have put them straight. So their ideas about Britain were based on myths that reffered to a long gone Imperial and colonial past, where there was no WTO, and Britain was the world's largest trading nation. But we're no longer in that world, and so we're getting a through kicking from Reality who was ignored in the present. And it calls to mind one of the issues responsible for British productivity being low relative to its peers, which was the quality of British Management. They didn't have the knowledge or the commonsense to identify the political and economic risks to doing business with a government who hadn't solidified the type of Brexit they were getting done before trying to do so. That should have been a red flag, but complacency, fatigue, and zealotry bypassed a lot of frontal lobes.
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If Japanese soldiers stranded on a remote island in the Pacific can believe WWII hadn't ended, it is sometimes at the cost of their sanity at best, or their lives at worst. The reaction to the Nazis from many ordinary people involved turning a blind eye or giving themselves over utterly to the cult. When looking at the extremes of reactions to the pandemic, sanity is less at issue. Rather, it is whether individuals can conquer their emotions of fear, anger, or greed and not be indifferent to the suffering of their fellow men. Some will willingly turn their backs on real suffering. Those who seek power for their ends have few scruples in trying to encourage the masses to ignore who or what to be ignored. Arguably, the far right wants us not to interfere with or object to their cruelties. Thus, they are spending money hand over fist to train us to at least ignore it, if not indulge in it ourselves. But also, they are aided by an economic system that has failed. And that's the wedge issue. Immigration is an excuse for those unable to handle their angst and alienation. They are perfect camouflage for the goals of the far right, whose goal is to wreck the Labour government, who aren't as wedded to total economic and political domination and corruption as the far right is.
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The answer to your question is, no. First, the resources in Ukraine won't be commercially available until, 1. Russia leaves Ukrainian soil permanently, and 2. The mining of which rare earths are the by-product of, will take about 25 years or more to be up and running. 3. Ukraine's resources in critical minerals are dwarfed by those already available in Canada, South America, and Africa, which are on the open market already.
What is smells badly is that the above information was already known before the meeting on Friday. What this "deal" was supposed to do was to give Trump positive optics and keep Putin guessing. It would have been Trump's Chamberlain moment for the media. After all, the deal wasn't a treaty enforceable by law, but only a Memorandum of Understanding, which isn't enforceable under International Law. If there was anything valuable to the US, they would not settle billions of investment on a Memo. They would have gone in under a full bilateral treaty, with terms detailing consequences fir failing to keep the deal.
What can we reduce from this? Considering how many times Ukraine have signed Memos of Understanding, and been screwed over by them, they would have been aware that their "deal" was not to be relied on. And so would the Americans. So I think Zekenskyy decided to play along, because it suited his ends which was to keep Trump interested in the fate of Ukraine, discombobulate Paranoid Putin, and have some space to push for the needed security guarantees. But the rules of the game were switched, to provide Trump a get out of jail card, so he could concentrate on his problems at home. That's why Zelenskyy was made the patsy. Now, he's depending on the Europeans who haven't got all their ducks in a row, especially as they seemed to have forgotten that Russia broke 25 agreed ceasefires, so much to have recommended yet another one... Doh!
Trump is distracted and bored with Ukraine. So, in every really sense it is up to Europe. It's Put Up or Shut Up time.
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Not really. It's not untenable. It's the result of our economic ststem. That's untenable. That's the cause of the problem. And it's impacting everything from the food you can get, to asylum seekers knocking up on your doorstep. Until you acknowledge that, you are whistling into the wind. That is the result of not having the difficult discussions about economic colonialism as a sustainable form of capitalism. And the chickens are coming home to roost. And the sad thing is, that from Farage to Starmer nobody is willing to grasp that nettle. They pretend that the economic colonialism is sustainable, as long as you let them manage it. It's not. It's extracted too much from other people and places not to have an effect. And who has benefitted?
Follow the money.
The problem is who is going to fix these issues? The UN has been tasked to do projects to repair some of the damage from fossil fuel induced climate change, like projects in The Sahel, but the regions impacted are widespread and huge, and if not addressed, the economic and social impacts in the West and elsewhere, will only be opening number to the damage. It's creating political and geopolitical instability everywhere. So, closing down the asylum system will do nothing to fix the root causes. People will still move to find better conditions, unless their conditions where they are improve. That how humans are. That's how we came to dominate the planet. And changing the rules of asylum is a paper tiger. It will add fuel to the fire, which you actually need to put out. What needs to be done?
Plutocrats and Multinational Corporations need to pay the costs for fixing the problems they create and facillitate.
- They need to pay fair wages
- They need to pay fair prices for the commodities they extract
- They should ensure that the communities in which they operate are not harmed by their actions.
If those 3 things were being done, you would not have the problems you have now.
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Phil, I think your missing the point. Even in your comment section there are bots misleading people about the facts. As you know perception usually Trump's facts in politics. So, if the perception is that Labour are just the cleanest of the dirty shirts in the laundry basket, and that is why they're hesitant, that undermines our democracy just as much as Musk buying Farage. However much the British bicker amongst themselves, they are patriotic. And the issue is that Farage taking money from foreign Billionaires is simply unpatriotic. Labour's largest donor is a British hedge fund, founded and owned by British billionaire nationals, and whose owning company is based in a British-owned tax haven. For our sins, this hedge fund is British. And that's what is importsnt. They have skin in our game, and are future. Musk doesn't. All he's got here are Telsa dealerships. That's it, and he's done nothing to even suggest he's expanding his interests here, or even cares beyond that. Indeed, he might even be putting off British people buying a Tesla, because of his behaviour. If Musk gets kicked out of Tesla, he has no skin in the game except his ego as far as the UK is concerned. That's not the case with the owners Quadrature. They were born here, have London based offices here, and AFAIK, they are still based here. So is it unpatriotic to take money from British billionaires? Not as the system stands at the moment in my opinion. It's as simple as that. But, Musk is a foreign national and thus, no British political party should accept funding from him.
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Its the size that makes it difficult, but if you follow the link in the descrption, you can replicate the chart by:
1.changing the year to the latest (2022)
2. Sorting the data by GDP per capita, descending in value
3. Selecting the UK and every country that has a larger GDP per capita than the UK. You will see that the percentage of tax vs GDP per Capita varies widely amongst those countries who are richer than us when measured by GDP per Capita. So Tax cuts, or low taxation are not magic beans that automatically makes economies more productive. Indeed, its the right amount of tax levied in the fairest ways, and spent in productive and efficient ways to incentivise, generate, and maintain economic activity according to the needs of a particular economy that determine its ability to produce asset wealth. The problem is that under neoliberal economics, the wealthy have been at war with the State, and have insisted the State leave everything to markets. And thats has got us to where we are now. The irony is that many of these better perfoming economies are high taxing economies, with different priorities than ours. And thats a Us problem. We have failed to deal with our problems that have been created because of our economic priorities. these issues essentially erode our ability to have an economy that meets our communal priorities. Instead, we have an economy that meets the needs of the asset wealthy, but neglects the needs of the majority who rely solely on being employed for a living. Wealth creation is important but only if it benefits everyone who creates it. And everyone pays taxes for that to happen. Taxation is a tool in that process, and the burden should equal the benefits gained. And right now, it does not. And that has to change, or we will continue to fall behind.
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I think everyone in this thread need to actually spend the time opining less and learning more about the British Constitution. Brit monkey has an excellent 5 video series on the subject that explains how it evolved and how it powered the largest empire in history, and enabled it to draft the written constitution of Germany after World War II. Moreover, doing so will force you to consider why the Far Right parties in your own countries are now gaining power there even though you all have written constitutions. At least then you might then consider the history of democracy, and how even such a humanistic idea has very young and shallow roots everywhere. Look at how vulnerable it is. Then you will not only better understand the strengths and weakness of Constitutions, but the threats and opportunities involved in each, and to democracy itself.
I know this approach might feel unduly boring and sanctimonious, but I feel you're missing the elephant in the room: the far right are growing strength and influence everywhere, and people feel less trusting of democracy. How did that happen? And Qui bono? Who benefits from that? Especially as there are interests spending huge amounts of money funding bot farms churning out a morass of white noise designed to stop people actually thinking about things seriously. But hey, that's the internet right? Remember, they don't want you to be curious, do they? That's why they put AI to do your thinking for you, right?
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Watched a video where a UK butcher gave his professional opinion on frozen Argentinian Legs of Lamb. Now leg of lamb is a prime roasting cut, but in this butcher's opinion after opening its packaging, and examining it, he stated it wasn't fit for human consumption... He added it to his dog food grinder, along with his scraps, trimmings, and waste. Sadly it seems that that the meat buyers aren't trained butchers, or meat inspectors, and the suppliers are are sending low grade meat. So... I'm not surprised the incidence of food poisoning is increasing, as caterers will buy that kind of poor quality meat. I remember being told by my late father back in the 1970s,before we joined the EU to be careful to look closely at what was being sold as beef, because horsemeat looks fairly similar. So, in my lifetime we've gone full circle, and back to having to double check everything,because it's either low quality, gone off, or unbeatable.
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I think you are looking down the wrong end of the telescope. I suggest that you actually research the deficits the UK has had since WW2 to the present. Our current deficit is 50% lower than our deficit in the postwar era. And the decision to bail out the banks made by almost every country, was a result of the biggest banks in the global financial system being American. The global financial system is no longer fragmented behind national borders. It is deeply and widely interconnected, so the UK's relationship with American banks meant the UK banks had to be bailed out. (But it should not have been a handout. It should have been loans IMO). Anyway, yes, the GFC increased our deficit, but deficits are private sector savings, as it is the private sector that buys UK Gilts. So, the only problem is with that Covid/Brexit entailed more spending, and how that was done was questionable. The loss of Brexit was £800m just in customs revenues every 3 months, plus the loss of economic output from the Small Business sector, which accounts for 99% of businesses in the UK. Brexit was a huge mistake, and it still is, as it is a drag on the UK economy and reducing tax revenues still today. It is an error to see everything through the eyes of big donors, when they are not the backbone of your economy. And there's little hope for an economy where small businesses are the backbone of your economy, but are being neglected.
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Phil, the global financial system was patched up after 2008, but it's stopped working well. Being an economt dominated by the financial sector, our economy is really exposed to this volatile and troubled system. Trump may get his way with tariffs and increasing the US deficit, and that might introduce more systemic pressures to it, because the US dollar is critical to its functioning. The pandemic exacerbated its issues, and with Trump's trade wars and Tariffs, there might be turbulence ahead, which could cause the UK economy problems via the banking sector, probably later next year. Napoleon said he preferred Lucky generals. Reeve's luck might be tested next year, because she'll be blamed for something unavoidable.
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You can replicate the chart Phil is referring to by
- following the link in the description of this video
-setting the time scale to the latest year
- Setting the sorting of countries to be by GDP per capita
- and select only the UK and those countries that have larger GDP per capita than the UK.
By doing this you will see that there is not correlation between between GDP per Capita and percentage of GDP spent on Tax. Low taxes do not stimulate economic growth. Economies that help the economy to be productive invest according to what they need to be economically productive. And the percentage of GDP deemed necessary varies widely, because not every country is the same, nor dealt the same hand. State-owned extractive enterprises based on profitable essential commodities like energy may have low taxation, but also have smaller private sectors. So, despite whst Billionaires like to suggest, taxation doesnt make people poorer. Missppent taxation does, because taxation is a communal investment to incentivise, generate, support and distribute productive economic activity. Productive economic activity generates returns for the whole economy, and not just assets to be hoarded by a small percentage of people. But we seem only to hear their subjective narrative because they are wealthy and powerful enough to control the narrative the public hears. And as someone plainly put it, the rich are not public intellectuals. You're not going to get the unvarnished truth.
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It's a moral panic from the Tory hypocrites who implemented Zero of the recommendations in Professor Alexis Jay's Inquiry report published in 2022. It's now 2025, and it's only now since Elon has blown a fuse, that now they display fake outrage. You in Ireland from your own experience, the cultural barriers within institutions to not want to deal with it. Often out of prejudice against the victims, or the fear of confronting powerful institutions. All we want is the unvarnished and unspun truth to be confronted and addressed. And what gets me is that we've a public inquiry, and local public inquiries, but very few people have actually read the findings. Including Kemi Badenoch, who was minister for Women in the last government and is the Tory leader now. Their cynicism is disgusting. They're just interested in demonstrating how racist they can be, so they can get money from Musk and any other billionaire. If they cared about children, we would not have child poverty increasing. It's making me feel sick. It's a cultural problem all right, but they don't want anyone pointing out that the stats tell a very different story to the narrative they're pushing for political capital. And it's Divide and Rule, the old colonial trick, and people are falling for it, helped of course by bot farms paid for by wealthy "interested parties" who want to sow discord. In the UK, because they want to take power. Lord, help us.
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Trump inadvertently broke the illusion of the magical thinkers that voted him in, that the POTUS can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. But, in reality he can only say what he wants. In post-truth politics, it's mostly talk, and even less action. By doing so, he's devalued it, because he can't rule alone. All rule is by coalition between the ruler and the other powerful people who can throw a spanner in the works. And when the coalition doesn't play along to the same tune, it's chaos and cacophony. In this sense, Trump is a lame duck president, because he can't rid himself of the coalition. And Mitch Mcconnell - a very powerful man, coming to the end of his time in politics - wants to go out with a bang. A good reason to buy some popcorn.
Next spanner in the works is the Boy Wonder Troll Musk, who is working hard to keep his enthusiasm in check...
No, not really. He's enjoying the attention a little too much.
He knows he's richer than Trump and likes bering courted. He should be careful not to rely on the gratitude of princes and kings. He's a favourite, not the monarch.
After the show in January, when people will begin to expect some real results, he'll be one of the disappointed within the first 100 days, unless he keeps to his place.
As for the UK, we just got to avoid being a distraction, as this administration will rely on distractions to switch attention away from its failings.
There will be a lot of posturing from Trump, and diplomacy is the only defence we have. But technocratic diplomacy - reliance on norms, conventions and rules - won't work. Trump's brand is being a disruptor, who ignores rules. And he'll want to line up some heads as victories for his base. And the UK is one, because he perceives us as weak. After all, American billionaires convinced British billionaires that Brexit was the right thing to do... And look how that turned out.
And now he's waving the prospect of a trade deal under our nose. Why? because his coalition at home wants rewarding for their effort. And they're queuing up for them already.
So, the Special Relationship myth can now die in peace, and we can wake up to the reality that Geopolitics is a game of poker, where every one is lying about their hand, and some are decieving themselves at the same time. But that's life. Trump will be looking for easy wins, and let's be honest with ourselves - we haven't got a good track record of negotiating great trade deals since Brexit. So, this is a tight rope walk, because surviving Trump's 2nd Term and not being worse off at the end of it, is the real goal. Johnson having to walk away from the last trade deal we were offered by the US should be the reality we keep in mind. It was that bad, and it will be unlikely to be any different this time. The US has always been hard-nosed negotiators. And that will not change.
So, pray for some good luck. We're going to need it.
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Sorry, butMohamned Safa is just as ignorant about the UK immigration system as you are. Please go and check how much it costs to get a visa to work in the UK. It costs between around £6,000 to £9, 000 just to get into the door. That includes fees to the Home Office, language examiners, lawyers, medical examination, and vaccination, and processing fees. Then when you start work you have to pay the NHS surcharge which is over £1000 per person a year. Immigrants are overwhelmingly young and fit. So they rarely use the NHS. They're paying taxes and spending money in the communities they are working.
As for cheap labour, there's the Minimum Wage. Why aren't the protestors campaigning for the Minimum Wage to be enough to function effectively in society? Why aren't they looking up the Work of the Living Minimum Wage Foundation? Why aren't they working to improve things? Why didn't the Conservatives make work pay? And why are they rioting against a government that is trying to fix things and who have been in power only for 5 minutes? Where were they when the Conservatives were causing these problems?
They are being manipulated to ignore real issues, that as part of the electorate who elected those manipulators are accountable too. It takes two to tango. Both the electorate and the government have to behave in constructive ways to make this country work. And mostly the electorate does. It's only a minority of yobs shutting from town to town looking to cause trouble for other towns. They are the Twitter mobs. Not, the voice of freedom, or for social justice. They are unjustly targeting towns where all the people there are in the same boat trying to cope with the legacy of distant, inept and cynical, and ideological economic and social experiments. So Mohamned Safa and those like him need to stop cherry picking facts, and get real. Unemployment in the UK is close to being negligible under our economic system. There aren't enough with the right skills or training. Workers are like oil for this economic engine in this, and we haven't produced enough children in the past to replace the ageing and retiring ones. So we need immigrants or theres no essential or quality of life services. The point about wages is one to be addressed by government and employers, but those people who burnt down shops, are making British people unemployed. Do you think Greggs are going to reopen their branches burnt out when they're losing money and the cost of doing so are going up? Rioting is costing jobs, and putting people on the dole.
Rioting is only putting salt on the wound, when it needs to stitched up.
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It didn't try to avoid dealings with the EU. It had repeatedly tried to join after burning bridges with the Commonwealth by going back on its promise to support Black majority rule in Africa. That scuppered the UK's initial plan which was to form its own trade bloc with the Commonwealth. It would have been even bigger than the EU. But Harold Wilson's decision not to send British troops to Rhodesia to enforce Black majority rule turned the Commonwealth away. Then the UK had no choice but to renew it's pursuit of EEC membership, because it was facing economic decline without it. So, decisions made back in the middle of the 20th century have consequences in the present. Simply, the UK establishment have found it difficult to adapt to the erosion of their power and influence, because the change was quick and speedy enough to leave its institutions scrambling for a new framework. After all, the effort of centuries of Empire building had collapsed in 30 years, and their position in the world was precarious, which they had not seen coming. And arguably today, that issue is still creating problems now, because they still exhibit the loss of self-esteem caused by the loss of power. It's upper classes still want to think of themselves as inheritors of greatness and wealth, but are mostly shallow and venal. They don't realise the real job at hand is not playing faux aristocrats or being educated as if they were, but getting to grip with the realities at hand, and empowering their country and it's people so it can prosper, and not just themselves. In short, doing right by their people. And that means being honest as much as possible about the position the country is in. We've been so used to having smoke blown up our assets to win votes, that a lot of people are oblivious to the real issues. And so the reeducation of Brittania ends up being in the School of Hard Knocks as Reality keeps putting the boot in. We cannot prosper by cannibalising our people or the past. We need to do things differently.
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Switzerland does not control the world’s money. Even the US Federal Reserve does not control it. Neither can we.
London was the second global financial centre after New York. However, this has changed since Brexit. London lost the rights to trade euro-denominated derivatives to Paris and Frankfurt. Now, it is no longer a major player, and the UK’s economy is weaker than before Brexit.
The British banking industry has shrunk since Brexit, particularly due to a major loss in profits. One might wonder if Starmer will need to secure his grip on the last major asset here – the interest that the Bank of England pays on the banks’ capital reserves. The UK pays banks billions in interest that it doesn't really need to, as global banking regulations make capital reserves compulsory. This totals around £221 billion each year. Starmer will need that money in the future. Thus, a greater reliance on financial services in our economy will make us more vulnerable to global financial downturns, a situation that is very likely since the global a financial system was flawed before 2008, and now is more sensitive to more frequent liquidity and collateral problems.
Like investing, our failure to diversify our economy away from a reliance on financial services has cost us dearly. It has made us vulnerable to a global financial system that is deeply interconnected, where risks are amplified, and more prone to crises that can affect the whole system.
Britain needs to diversify its sources of economic growth through long-term investment in industries beyond financial services. This will bring greater economic stability in the long run. The days of Londongrad, the world's laundromat of dirty money, are over. This may be a good thing too.
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