Ops-Normal.org

..........it's just suckers like us who have to jump through hoops to move a few quid.

llondel wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:23 pm

As a young child I had always envisaged them as small spherical objects used by the ancient Greeks to play games similar to what we played in the school playground.

barkingmad wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 4:39 pm

k3k3, as a former inmate of Stalag Luft 8 at Lossiemouth I’m baffled as to what may have affected me after over 5 years there, with neither parole nor time off for good behaviour?

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 5:53 pm

ex Royal Lincolnshire Air Force.

ian16th wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:24 pm

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 5:53 pm

ex Royal Lincolnshire Air Force.

Does 12 months at Coningsby qualify me?

More and more people are having their doubts about the EU's survival

We are now in the warm-up period before negotiations begin between the EU and the UK.

Predictably, both sides are digging their heels in and it looks as though there is a good chance of some sort of bust-up. Not so long ago, this prospect would have caused anguish among the EU-supporting British commentariat.

Remarkably, it now seems to be greeted with equanimity. Many people appear to have come to the view, long held by most Brexiteers, including myself, that although it would be preferable to get a good trade deal with the EU, we can do perfectly well without one.

By contrast, there is increasing anxiety about the future of the EU. When I first suggested about a decade ago that the EU might not endure, I was met with incredulity and amazement. Yet more and more people are having their doubts about its survival.

Why is this? What has sustained the EU through thick and thin has been the strength of the Franco-German relationship. Optimists believed that this was a permanent feature of the European landscape.

Yet it was always a fragile thing born of the extraordinary situation in Europe after the end of the Second World War. Once Germany was reunited and it began on the long road back to becoming a normal country then its subservience to France was bound to wilt.

The euro continues to be a key aspect of EU fragility. It was always a halfway house – monetary union lite. It is now widely recognised that for the euro to survive in the long-term, it needs full fiscal and political union. Yet there seems scant prospect of this happening any time soon.

President Macron pushes his grand schemes, but they receive no enthusiasm in Berlin. The euro’s difficulties are linked to major problems over fiscal policy.

Outside the eurozone, governments are re-examining their approach to fiscal policy. This is not merely a limp response to austerity fatigue among the public.

On the contrary, economists with impeccable pedigrees have called for a significant relaxation in fiscal policy. In the UK, this is about to bear fruit, I suspect, in a much more expansionary budget than could have been imagined even a few months ago.

But in Germany, by contrast, there is rigid adherence to an extreme type of fiscal prudence under which the government should supposedly never run a deficit. Indeed, Germany is currently in surplus to the tune of about 1pc of GDP.

Admittedly, fiscal relaxation would not cure Europe’s fundamental ills, which are associated with supply side weaknesses – but it would boost aggregate demand and strengthen economic performance. Brexit will make it more difficult for the EU to survive.

As we saw last week, the absence of the UK’s budget contributions is causing a major problem. No member country is rushing to pay more. Meanwhile, the absence of the UK alters the political balance between the membership and is making the traditionally prudent northern countries increasingly worried about the future.

Moreover, it is striking that senior European politicians are worried about the competitive threat that the UK will pose to the EU after the end of the transition period on Dec 31. This is why they are so keen to get the UK to agree to a so-called “level playing field”.

It has been heartening to hear the clear declaration from the UK negotiating team that there is no chance of granting such a concession. Quite apart from the obvious economic danger, one of the reasons why the EU negotiating team is keen to play hardball with the UK is to try to make leaving the Union an unattractive prospect for other members.

After all, if the UK could leave, ending its budget contributions and setting its own rules and regulations while still having pretty much unfettered access to the Single Market, what would there be to bind in other EU countries with substantial Eurosceptic inclinations?

But there is a major danger in this approach. Suppose the UK does not buckle. It does not concede regulatory alignment and leaves without a trade deal and yet does pretty well, continuing to outgrow EU members.

At that point, M. Barnier and his merry men will have done their worst. It would then be extremely difficult to argue that countries faced economic disaster if they left the EU. It is ironic that the EU establishment sees centralisation and harmonisation as the route to success.

For Europe’s golden age was the period of competition between nation states. Indeed, some economic historians see this competition as the essential reason why the countries of Europe outpaced so dramatically the great empires of the day – the Chinese, Ottoman and Russian.

Of course there can be some economic advantages from size and uniformity. But there are also serious potential problems. When a large unified economic/political area is driven forward in a particular direction it matters a great deal that this direction is the right one.

Unfortunately, the EU establishment has been quite good at choosing the wrong direction – the Common Agricultural Policy, protectionist trade policies, the establishment of the euro and the Schengen free movement zone, to name but a few examples.

If the UK does not concede regulatory alignment and ends up leaving the EU without a deal then the pressure on the EU will become intense. Over many years some commentators have argued that the UK should stay in the EU in order to reform it.

I wasn’t persuaded. I thought that our chances of reforming the EU were greatest through leaving it, succeeding outside it and letting the forces of competition do the rest.

Either this would force reform, or the EU was doomed. It may take a few years to play out, but we may eventually see which view was right.

barkingmad wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:43 pm

It is also generally acknowledged that if the marbles had been left in place they would have suffered serious damage due to long-term exposure to the historically bad air pollution in Athens which, coupled with local acid rain, would ensure degradation over the years.