Guardian headlines
Britain credit rating downgraded as markets suffer more Brexit losses - as it happened
Rating agency S&P says EU referendum result is a ‘seminal event’ that means Britain no longer deserves a top credit rating
Letter to the Guardian
BREXIT – Uncertainty triggers
investors worldwide, way beyond UK control, to convert to cash or gold.
Whitehall requires 300 experienced civil servants to work for ten years to
remake our trade deals; they have just three. 1/5th of UK companies
are already quitting the country; exporting capital. Individuals will join the
capital-flight. Tax-evaders are exporting more assets, adding to the estimated
£2 trillion (8 million good UK jobs) in tax havens. 3M Brits have signed the
petition to nullify the referendum because it was based on lies. This
unprecedented chaotic collapse will worsen day-by-day, impoverishing us all.
Cameron slinks off into retirement. The LEAVERS offer us Corbyn, Johnson, Gove
& Farage, outright liars who have already reversed all their campaign
promises.
A “democratic decision” based on blatant lies is fraudulent. The UK
government must tell the world, urgently, today, that we are staying in the EU.
Noel Hodson - Director
Tax Reconciliations, Oxford UK,
Tel +44 1865 (0)760994 Mobile 07713 681216
****
THESE ARE TERRIBLE TIMES FOR THE UK.
The economic consensus to date (12.30 pm 28 Jun 2016) is that the UK assets have lost about $1.5 trillion. That is $50,000 per UK household of wealth lost. People will therefore curtail spending - transactions are being and will be decimated - businesses will be bankrupted - huge unemployment will result. My wife's and my modest pension assets (our home and a few shares) have lost 14% in 3 days. We and millions of other families will stop spending. The UK is going bust.
Unless the government announces to the world that the Referendum was based on blatant lies, peddled to ordinary folk with no chance of evaluating the EU - UK relationship; and misled by villainous politicians and offshore-owned media into blaming all their problems on the EU, and that therefore the Referendum is being set-aside - we will lose ten times as much as we already have. The nation will go bust.
Currently (1 pm 28 Jun 2016) a UK Voters' Petition to remain in Europe has 3.9M signatures, but the BBC and Government and our Offshore Owned media are determinedly ignoring it as SS Titanic Great Britain sinks into the cold, lonely Atlantic. The BREXIT team have instantly broken and denied all their campaign pledges for change, yet are pushing their celebrity idiots and half-wits forward as the next UK Leaders .
Conspiracy or Cock-Up? It hardly matters. Either way we will have a swift General Election - and hopefully the comedians, jesters and fools will be sent packing and an entirely different 21st Century democratic system will emerge.
I live in hope.
*******
24 JUNE 2016. UK Update.
LEAVE 54%
REMAIN 48%
Sterling falls 6%
London Stock Exchange falls 4%
Scotland says it will quit the UK, and join the EU. I guess that Northern Ireland will go with Scotland.
I think; England and Wales will decline and be effectively bankrupted within 10 years. Mass unemployment will follow this foolish LEAVE vote. House-building will stop - Interest Rates will rise, major companies will relocate to mainland Europe, families will lose their homes. The unthinking mob has been stirred up (by twisted drunkard MEP Nigel Farage who takes £100,000 a year from the EU while sabotaging the entire EU 50 year peace-project) stirred to wrongly blame the EU for UK governments' cumulative failures since 1980. Turncoat barrack-room-lawyer, elderly, querulous Jeremy Corbyn who said "immigration cannot be capped" and covertly led Labour to vote LEAVE, is finished. Stupid or venal David Cameron, having done his worst for his country, is jumping ship back into his Ivy League Trust Fund offshore personal comfort. Fascism will triumph as England collapses.
Our UK population has been counted this week as 65M - a major leap up from 62M. It does have to be quickly reduced. Quitting the EU won't do it. How about culling the old folk (me and my generation) who no longer have the good manners to die when they've had their three-score-years-and-ten? A new corner shop franchise - Euthanasia Unlimited - would be very profitable.
DOOM DOOM DOOM
*************
22 JUN 16 UPDATE as Britain's Referendum Thursday on 23rd June 2016 looms. "FOG IN CHANNEL - EUROPE ISOLATED."
My note to a deluded LEAVE friend:
Hi Tony,
I’ve just spoken with John who
flies to Lanzarote tomorrow – after voting LEAVE; which will cancel out my
REMAIN vote.
But, you QUITTERS may well be in the majority – which is why
Donald Trump flies IN today, to join with his equally blond hirsute
doppelganger, Boris, to jointly take over the Anglo-Saxon world. Fascinating
though the mass debate has been and is, I’m drowning in the swamp of
misdirection, half-truths, lies and insane-statistics from both sides – and I
need to come up for air.
When and If LEAVE wins – Sterling will fall, it will for
a short time stimulate UK exports before tariffs kick in, then will push up
import prices, which will trigger inflation, which will push up interest rates
on the UK’s record £1.3 trillion of household debts, which will freeze all
businesses and trigger liquidations and mortgage defaults, which will
make families homeless and jobless; the EU and USA will say "its your own fault" and leave us adrift in the Atlantic without a paddle. Scotland and Wales and
maybe Yorkshire will leave the UK and join the EU. The next stage is mass
starvation and civil-war. On the other hand… Michael Gove MP says that those
who vote REMAIN will be cursed with withered rotting privy-parts and their
dicks will drop-off – and the NHS will refuse to treat them.
Between a rock and a hard place.
It’s a terrible dilemma, which David Cameron created by calling the referendum. What's his game?
Noel HODSON
Author - Sci-Fi & Socio-Economics
January 2013 - I
hesitate to write on complex subjects that I have not studied. The European
Union (EU) is such a topic. It dates back to World War Two, to Churchill,
Roosevelt and Stalin carving up continental Europe – then it becomes The Common
Market – The Treaty of Rome – The European Union, served by the European
Commission (EC) – and latterly it recently expanded to include countries from
the old USSR eastern bloc. It now
encompasses 550 million citizens – compare this to 1.2 billion people in China and about the same in India , and to the 350 million in the United States of America .
From
1994 to 1999, I coordinated a couple of EC funded projects to promote Telework,
during which I realised that the EC, the civil service for Europe, is very
bright, recruiting some of the best minds in Europe, and very small, being no
more than the 30,000 Council workers of an average British town. This small executive group manages the whole of Europe
– which must be extremely good value for our taxpayers’ money.
Being
born and reared in a largely unthinking Manchester
family of archetypal British Tories – the right wing of UK politics –
embedded in all the political unquestionable certainties of self-made men and
the small business community; I had scant regard or respect for the political
classes and their Machiavellian machinations. But I was converted into an
admirer of the EC and EU by the simple fact that they made the telephones work.
The
base line was that in 1970 my wife and I travelled across France and had to
call Manchester – it took half a day to book a call time, had to be routed via
New York on a crackly line, and cost a hundred times what it costs today.
European “Nation did not speak peace unto Nation”, certainly not on the phone.
In 1996 I was despatched to Reykjavik , Iceland , and easily and cheaply called my EU
colleagues Enrique de la Serna in Rome and
Eduardo Barrera in Madrid – thanks to the EC
negotiating the maze of tangled wires and tariffs and gang-rights across the
whole of Europe . The EU was and is very
effective. They get things done.
Being
an old cynic and northern sceptic, I suspect the British lobbyists urging us to
quit the EU, despite the EU buying 40% of our exports and providing jobs and
homes for 2.8 million of our countrymen, are indulging in good old fashioned
self protectionism. Many well padded Brits sit in large inefficient rice bowls,
such as The City of London and our energy companies, creaming off personal
billions from the uncomplaining public – for example the £1.2 trillion we are
contributing to repair City losses – and these easy-street gravy trains might
be slowed or even stopped by those acute people in the EC.
A good
summary of the EC’s and EU’s useful work is in this recent letter:
What's
the EU ever done for us? This lot…
The Guardian, Friday 11
January 2013 20.59 GMT
At
last we may get a debate on Britain 's
relationship with Europe (Leader, 11 January). What did the EEC/EU ever do for us? Not much,
apart from: providing 57% of our trade; structural funding to areas hit by
industrial decline; clean beaches and rivers; cleaner air; lead free petrol;
restrictions on landfill dumping; a recycling culture; cheaper mobile charges;
cheaper air travel; improved consumer protection and food labelling; a ban on
growth hormones and other harmful food additives; better product safety; single
market competition bringing quality improvements and better industrial
performance; break up of monopolies; Europe-wide patent and copyright
protection; no paperwork or customs for exports throughout the single market;
price transparency and removal of commission on currency exchanges across the
eurozone; freedom to travel, live and work across Europe; funded opportunities
for young people to undertake study or work placements abroad; access to
European health services; labour protection and enhanced social welfare;
smoke-free workplaces; equal pay legislation; holiday entitlement; the right
not to work more than a 48-hour week without overtime; strongest wildlife
protection in the world; improved animal welfare in food production; EU-funded
research and industrial collaboration; EU representation in international
forums; bloc EEA negotiation at the WTO; EU diplomatic efforts to uphold the
nuclear non-proliferation treaty; European arrest warrant; cross border
policing to combat human trafficking, arms and drug smuggling; counter
terrorism intelligence; European civil and military co-operation in
post-conflict zones in Europe and Africa; support for democracy and human
rights across Europe and beyond; investment across Europe contributing to
better living standards and educational, social and cultural capital.
All of
this is nothing compared with its greatest achievements: the EU has for 60
years been the foundation of peace between European neighbours after centuries
of bloodshed. It furthermore assisted the extraordinary political, social and
economic transformation of 13 former dictatorships, now EU members, since 1980.
Now the union faces major challenges brought on by neoliberal economic
globalisation, and worsened by its own systemic weaknesses. It is taking
measures to overcome these. We in the UK
Simon Sweeney
Lecturer in international political economy,University of York
Simon Sweeney
Lecturer in international political economy,
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