Living by numbers.

The Fraser Institute is as independent non-partisan research and educational organisation based in Canada.  The Institute 2017 Economic Freedom of the World report has two interesting figures.   

£31,588 and £4,490.   

The difference is, to save you working it out, £27,097.  

So, what are these two magical numbers?  Well, the first is the average income in the most economically free quartile of countries.   

The second figure is the average income in the least economically free quartile of countries.  By economically free we are talking countries that are not socialist state planned economies.  

So why would anyone vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn whose whole economic thrust would lead to the latter figure of the average person being £27,097 worse off?

What a speech!!!!

It was brilliant.  Yes, the Jeremy Corbyn speech today in Brighton was truly brilliant.  It shone with clarity.  It told us where he was going.  It left us in no doubt what the future would look like under a government led by him.   

He lauded the public sector workers alone completely forgetting that it is the private sector workers and businesses that actually provide the money for all the things he wants to do.  The people who work for the State are more important was the subliminal message.   

There were promises of a surge in housebuilding and the imposition of State controlled rent controls.  This is an interesting one – something almost every economist on the planet thinks is a pretty daft idea.  Oh, and tenants and leaseholders are to have veto over local redevelopment efforts.  Anything that is not State run in housing is not much off being evil was the subliminal message.  

His whole thrust was that the private sector has totally failed the nation and needs replacing with a totally socialist State solution clearly doesn’t hold much water given it has created 3.5 million jobs since 2010.  But, the State is better than the private sector was the subliminal message.   

Yes, it was a brilliant speech because it left us in absolutely no doubt that he believes that a state controlled and run economy is what is best.   A socalist utopia.

His problem is, such a socialist economy never works.  Look at the evidence.  Look at any nation that has gone down the route Mr Corbyn advocates and you see many things.  Poverty.  Poor services.  Under achievement.  Lack of democracy.  Lack of accountability. Stifling autocracy.  Corrupt bureaucracy.  Failure.  

Gaby Hinsliff of the Guardian unkindly but probably fairly described the second half of his speech as “the Light Ramble Through Areas Of General Interest To Me phase which all Corbyn’s speeches reach eventually” – he looked unelectable.

A good deal is in everyones interest, not least for the rEU.

I’m not sure that Messrs Barnier and Tusk have got the message.  It is in their interest as much as ours in the UK to talk about the future.  Listening to Mr Tusk after his meeting in Downing Street today suggests he is in denial.  

Let’s take trade.  The myth that we won’t be able to trade with the single market.  Well, we won’t be in the single market so it’s true, we won’t be trading in it.  But then, neither is any other country in the world.  So will we be able to buy and sell goods from and to the remainder European Union (rEU)?  You bet we will.  On the same basis as every other non EU country on the planet.  And Messrs Tusk and Barnier can’t stop us.  And they know that.  And we know that they know that we know that.  

Let’s talk money.  The myth that we owe the EU loads of money.  Actually, legally we don’t owe them anything.  Like leaving a golf club, you may have voted for something a few years ago, but the club cannot come to you and say, you voted three years ago for something, you have to keep paying even once you leave.  How ridiculous.  But if they are a nice group of people you may say “well, it was fun when I was a member and you continue to be good friends, so let me make a contribution to the costs of the new clubhouse or whatever”. But it is morally right if we have committed to fund something, we should continue to do so till we leave the EU.  I think Mrs May has made that clear.  And for the duration of the programme if it extends past the date we leave the EU.  But Mr Tusk and Barnier can’t stop us walking away and pay nothing if we so chose to.  And they know that.  And we know that they know that we know that.   

At the end of the day, the UK can walk away as no deal could indeed be better than a bad deal.  And they know that.  And we know that they know that we know that.

Forget the magic money tree, this is a forest.

Do you have a pension?  Well, chances are your pension scheme invests in a lot of household names.  That’s how they grow the money you regularly put into your pension pot.  They look for good businesses and invest.  Then as the business grows they get pay back.  This is your pension.   

So yesterday at the Labour party conference must have had you scratching your head and wondering what would to happen to your pension should John McDonnell become Chancellor of the Exchequer if Labour wins the next general election.  If it didn’t it should have.   

Announcing his plan to in effect nationalise PFI contracts John McDonnell noted that they started under John Major.  True.  But if you want to introduce history to your argument, you have to be consistent.  So he really should have mentioned that the vast majority began under Labour governments. The figures?  604 PFI projects started under Labour.   112 under the Conservatives.  Don't get me wrong.  PFI was perhaps not the best way to find investment.  But it is what successive Labour and Conservative Governments did.  And in many cases the contracts are still in place. 

Mr McDonnell then went on in the same vein in relation to the Utility companies. And this is where you pension becomes very important. So listen up.    

Mr McDonnell does not believe investors in utility companies, your pension fund, would be fully compensated at market value for their shares under Labour’s nationalisation plans.   Instead, as he admitted on Radio 4, share prices would be determined by Parliament according to how MPs perceived the past behaviour of firms:   “The value of any industry which is brought into public ownership is determined by Parliament itself… the perceived behaviour [of companies] affects the price…”   

When asked if shareholders would be compensated at market value, McDonnell replied:   “The market value will be determined by Parliament.”  So in one short sentence he displays total ignorance of how trade works.  The market value of anything is determined in the market place.  Of businesses competing for our spending power. That is why it is called the market value.

So, if Labour doesn’t pay the true market rate but a rate that it as a political party decides it should pay, your pension is well and truly in trouble. 

Not that I’m against a democratically elected government doing such a thing.  He can bring these back on to the public debt book.  They would have a mandate.     

But Mr McDonnell needs to be crystal clear that his policy will destroy the value in your pension fund.  Labour’s economic illiteracy in a nutshell…  And as one commentator put it, “Forget the magic money tree, this is a forest”…

Disruptive technology good. Not paying fair share of taxes bad.

I love disruptive technology like UBER.  But I really don’t like them using a gap in EU and UK tax rules to avoid incurring sales tax on the booking fees it charges drivers in Britain.   

It means I have to pay more tax to keep the hospital, police, fire service, roads, army, etc. going.  In an article in The Guardian a year ago it was noted that “Uber’s main British business paid only £411,000 in tax last year while the commission fees from thousands of drivers in the UK disappeared into a controversial tax structure in the Netherlands”.   

How does Uber do it?  Well, it avoids having to charge British value added tax on its booking fees by treating each driver as an individual business and then billing drivers across EU borders from its Dutch subsidiary, using an EU VAT provision called the “reverse charge”.  Easy when you know how.   

But you and I don’t have that luxury when it comes to choosing how much tax we would like to pay.  And where.  If UBER don’t pay the same taxes as their competitors do, that mean you and I have to pay more to fund nurse’s police etc.   

So disruptive technology, yes.  Creatively playing the tax system that means the rest of us have to pay more of because they don’t. No!

Cliff edge? There is a different view.

From the way it is reported in MSM, the world and its wife thinks leaving the EU is going to be an utter disaster.  Well, it could be if enough people put up obstacles that make the UKs bargaining position utterly compromised.   

Which is what the SNP and Labour seem to be about these days.  One wonders whose side they are on.  For the SNP, that’s obvious, their own narrow agenda of self-rule.  

But Labour, they are in a different space.  They are a UK wide party.  So why are they now turning against the UK and in effect supporting a foreign government?  We might as well start calling the EU a foreign government for that is what they are in effect becoming.   

One Army.  One foreign policy.  One Chancellor of the Exchequer.  One head of state.   

But, not all of the establishment are so enthralled by the undemocratic leanings of the EU and the EC.  And they don’t all think that it’s a cliff edge either.  Some think WTO is just fine, acting in the same way as the USA and China and just about every other nation in the world.  

So why are we not hearing this alternative view more often?  

I think you will have to ask those with an agenda who want to see the worst possible outcome of the “negotiations” so they can say “I told you so.”

Just Do It!!

Europol says an agreement for a future partnership with the UK will take a number of years to negotiate.   My question is “why?”.  Why does anything take a number of years to negotiate?   

The reality is, it doesn’t.  What happens is somebody somewhere says “it will take three years”.  So what happens?  It takes three years.  Even if it could take less.   

The principle that the business community take is much more focused and pragmatic.  Just do it.  Don’t give it a must be done by date.  Just ask, why can’t it be done now?  The reality is, it can.   

Businesses take decision quickly.  They need to.  They would go bust if they took three years to negotiate with thier suppilers or customers. Yes, implementation of decisions can take longer. But the negotiating and decision is taken very quickly.   

But the mind-set of the EC is that it can’t.

Clearly the productive part of the economy, led by people like James Dyson, has much to offer in terms of experience to our negotiators as they battle with the civil servants of the European Commission.

Let's embrace Diversity. When it suits us.

Last week  there was a big get together of the great and the good in broadcasting.  At least they thought they were the great and the good.   

The occasion was the biennial Royal Television Society Cambridge convention.  Its aim?  To tackle the main issues facing the industry.   

You would have thought they would have a lot to talk about, not least the falling standards of impartiality we see every night on our TV screens.  Was that one of the key things they were talking about?  Er, no.  The key theme was Diversity.  They love diversity.  All shades.  All opinions. All….  Except.  They don’t like diversity when it comes to leaving the EU.   

When Alastair Campbell, best known for his work as Tony Blair's spokesman and campaign director, asked the room to put up their hands if they voted to leave the European Union, no one did.  Which is odd.  On one hand they want to seek to be representative of the diversity of the nation.  Yet on the other hand, they are the most un diverse grouping you could think of.   

If they had been representative of the people of the UK, 52% of them would have put their hands up.

The whole shebang.

If we voted today to join the EU we would have to join the whole shebang.  No soft or hard entry.  No negotiations.  Just entry.  Take it or leave it. 

Leaving the EU is leaving the whole shebang.  No soft or hard exit.  Just exit from everything we would have joined.  What bit of that do Remainers not understand?

He lives in a different world.

Remember the good old days?  When we had discussions about the EU and what its real plans were?  When we were assured by the Remain camp that staying in the European Union would allow us to influence and bring about change and stop the ever increasing power grab that the European Commission is undertaking?   

Well, I am afraid those who were a little sceptical that the UK could do any such thing, based on the evidence that Prime Minister Cameron virtually begged the leaders in the EU to give him even just a few crumbs of hope to itself, were right.    But we knew all along the EU had an agenda.

Today Mr Junker set out in as clear a way as it was possible that the EU really is going forward to build a super state.  Its own President.  Its own chancellor of the exchequer.  Its own army.  And so it went on.  Reform the EU?  Even the most ardent Remainer tonight will be listening to Mr Junker and wondering, didn’t he learn anything form the UK vote?   

Apparently not.

After 44 years Parliament is back in business.

Early this morning the House of Commons voted.  Nothing remarkable about the House voting.  Nor that it was late at night.  They do that on occasion.  Not even the subject of the vote, the Bill that will transfer all existing EU legislation in the UK statute book.   What was remarkable was it was the first time Parliament has acted as the legislature of a sovereign country since we signed up to joining what was then the EEC.   One of the best speaches was from Caroline Flint (Lab, Don Valley). She voted Remain.  But she is a democrat.

There was lots of bluster.  Daniel Zeichner (Lab, Cambridge) declared: “We should not be withdrawing from the European Union at all”.  I could have understood if he had said “I don’t think we should be withdrawing from the European Union at all”.  But, no, in the vein of many Remainers who spoke, their view was to be more important than that of the democratic majority.   

What is quite amusing, though equally sad, is to hear people like Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda) lecture the nation from the green benches: “This Bill is utterly pernicious…fundamentally un-British…has at its heart a lie.” Oliver Letwin (Con, West Dorset) rose, cited provisions in the Bill which contradict Bryant’s claim that it will allow legislation by ministerial fiat, and invited him to withdraw that claim.   Bryant responded by saying, “I’m not going to give way to him again,” and ended: “Do not sell your birthright for a mess of pottage. Vote against the Bill.”   

So when the facts go against you, shut down the debate.  Perhaps one of the most unusual of speeches was made by Sir Ed Davey (Lib Dem, Kingston & Surbiton) who claimed “this Bill is undermining parliamentary sovereignty more than the EU ever did”, for it “doesn’t give control back to Parliament. It gives control back to ministers.”   Bit of an odd arguement that one given 20,000 laws were brought in to UK law without a single debate in parliament.

Perhaps it is not surprising for Sir Ed to have a bind spot given his party believes that the EU is virtually the Messiah.  And perhaps he is forgetting the thousands of thing in our laws in the UK which were never debated on the floor of the House he was speaking in.  These instruments of legislation had no parliamentary scrutiny.   

But now, as we did early this morning when we began the process of bringing all these instruments of legislation under the control of the people we elect, we are indeed restoring parliamentary democracy.  

That the Liberal Democrats and others don’t see this and would rather we continued to have our laws made elsewhere and automatically imposed on us, makes you wonder why they bother adding Democrats to their name.   

And here is the rub.  What the Lib Dems and others seem to miss, although the Bill last night passed this hurdle by the relatively comfortable margin of 326 votes to 290, a hard process of legislative scrutiny lies ahead.  Parliament is restored.   

It is now doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and couldn’t do in the years we were enslaved by the European Court of Justice, act as the legislature of a sovereign country.

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It’s not a military Coup d'état that’s going on. It’s worse than that.

Should the United Kingdom become a member of the European Union or remain outside the European Union?  That is a simple question.  We understand it. It using the exact same formula of words that the Electoral Commission agreed would be put to us in June 2016 on the opposite question, should we leave.

We would all know what that question meant.  If we voted yes we would be joining the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.  We would be joining the Single Market.  We would be joining up to freedom of movement and the Schengen principles.  And we would be joining up to the Single Currency.

And we would all accept the outcome.  That’s Democracy.

I am not sure if, once we had voted to join, people like Blair, Starmer, Ashdown, Clark, Soubry, Sturgeon, et al would be saying, yes but we don’t want it to be “hard” Entry.  People would rightly laugh at them.  We voted to join.  What’s wrong with you?  

In June last year the Electoral Commission approved the wording for the referendum question and everyone agreed it was good.  Indeed, everyone agreed we should abide by the result, with hard core Remainers like Mr Ashdown being at the front of the charge.  Perhaps that is because they thought they would win.

How un-democratic are these people who now say “but we didn’t mean hard Brexit”.  It’s simple, we voted to leave the EU; just the same as I hypothesised that we would join at the top of the article. 

All this has cost the nation a lot of money.  So it seems logical to me that all those MPs and Peers who in any way vote to stop us leaving the EU in its entirety are seeking to overturn the democratic wishes of the people expressed thought a vote approved by the Electoral Commission.  

They should be individually surcharged the whole cost incurred since the referendum was first announced.  Cost would include all the costs associated with parliament sitting, MPs and Peers time, the time of the civil servants involved, court costs, the cost of the the referendum itself, the costs of the campaign before the vote, (with the Leave side getting all their money back).  

It’s not a military Coup d'état that’s going on.  It’s worse than that.  It’s a Coup d'état by democratic people who now don’t like the idea that democracy means they might lose.

100,000 new jobs. Because of BREXIT.

The odd thing about those who seek to undermine the will of the people of the UK by trying all they can to get a bad deal when leaving the EU so they can say ‘we told you so’, they really don’t look at the evidence.   

For example, a conservative estimate is that almost 100,000 jobs will be created in the food and drink sector over the next five years.  Why will this happen?  Simple.  In business people will trade where the conditions are good.  And as UK firms look at the competitive exchange rate, guess what, exports will be on the rise.   

How can we say that for sure?  Well, it is based on research published today in the The Food and Drink Report 2017, from Lloyds Commercial Banking (back in April 2016 it wasn’t so cheerful with the bank warning that a vote to leave the EU would cause economic uncertainty and potential volatility). Now it has found that the proportion of manufacturers investing to secure new international customers has risen from 55% to 69% over the past year. And more than a quarter of food and drink firms said they planned to export for the first time in the next five years.   A report with similar conclusions has been published by BDO.

So why are food and drinks firms as positive in spite of BREXIT as BDO and Main Stream Media would put it?   

Again, it’s simple, it’s not in spite of BREXIT that they forecast this massive improvement.  It’s because of BREXIT.   

The Unions will be happy as workers in the sector will be pleased that 48% of firms expect wage costs to rise.  Just as Sir Stuart Rose predicted about wages rising if we voted to leave the EU.

Under which judicial system do people live?

Apparently the EU is not pleased with the Home Office plans to introduce a ‘Britain first’ immigration policy which is much the same as Australia has.   “Toxic” one person said.  And as is the way with the EU bullies these days, threatened the UK. Implementing controls on our borders would have serious consequences for future EU-UK relations.  Well, I am so scared!

A Mr Brok (an MEP who clearly thinks he has something to add to the debate) added: “The British proposal is that EU citizens’ rights should be enforced purely in British law, but this kind of thinking gives us no confidence that British legislature won’t change three years after Brexit. The confidence [in the UK] is not there.”  

So, let me get this straight, if an EU citizen (for that is what they are now rather than French or German) chose to live in the USA, the EC thinks that the USA will not be the one and only law that will be enforced?   

Do they seriously think the USA would say, ok, let’s have both our judicial systems in play?    I’ve heard of some odd things from the EU, but this really shows they don’t get it.   

We’re leaving.  We want to be part of a global community, not a charade that is little more than a fixed market.

A view from outside the EU. Wealthy Iceland.

If you were munching your cornflakes at ten past seven this morning and listening to Today on BBC Radio 4, you would have heard the simplest reasoning I’ve hear why leaving the EU is good.  

John Humphries wondered why Iceland isn’t joining the EU.  To paraphrase, the reply from Iceland’s Foreign Minister, Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, "why would we want to join the EU, it’s nothing to do with trade, it’s a political union".  And he is right.   

Breezily Iceland’s foreign minister went on “Everyone" wants to strike a free trade deal with the UK. “You’re the fifth largest economy in the world. Everyone wants to sell you goods and services. It’s just as simple as that.”   

So, from a neutral outsiders point of view, the cliff edge is simply the place to have the vantage point for all the opportunities that await a re-invigorated UK once we have left the European Union.  

Back in April, Mr Thordarson warned that erecting trade barriers after Brexit would “simply mean that the politicians in the remaining 27 EU countries will have to explain to the people who could lose their jobs, that they are doing it because they are so 'tough' on the Brits.”