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Is Brexit actually going to happen?

Will we have a brexit?

  • Yes - A fully independant Britain making its own way in the world (apart from scotland).

    Votes: 66 18.2%

  • A Semi-Detached Norway type deal

    Votes: 111 30.7%

  • No - 2nd referendum and/or face saving fudge to let us slink back in feeling a bit fucking stupid

    Votes: 185 51.1%
  • Total voters
    362
The division of the country into two warring camps shouting stereotyped insults at each other is yet another massive plus of the referendum. . . I know it's a bit of a media invention, but you do see - and hear it, irl - a fair amount now.

I wonder how much it was revealing a binary country rather than creating one? It sometimes feels very like American culture-wars stuff...
 
MightyTibberton said:
The division of the country into two warring camps shouting stereotyped insults at each other is yet another massive plus of the referendum. . . I know it's a bit of a media invention, but you do see - and hear it, irl - a fair amount now.

I wonder how much it was revealing a binary country rather than creating one? It sometimes feels very like American culture-wars stuff...
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Are you witnessing these warring factions in the workplace etc or is this perhaps just on twitter?
 
More online, though there were several dozen casualties in the Remain v Leave street battles down the road from me last weekend. . . :)

(Online is my workplace.... I don't really buy the "just on Twitter" "it's only Facebook" thing... Lots of people spend a lot of time online and it's just as valid a part of their lives as the bricks-and-mortar world...)

I have to go to bed now, but thank you for talking... (Just don't want to look like I've stormed off or something...) :)
 
MightyTibberton said:
More online, though there were several dozen casualties in the Remain v Leave street battles down the road from me last weekend. . . :)

(Online is my workplace.... I don't really buy the "just on Twitter" "it's only Facebook" thing... Lots of people spend a lot of time online and it's just as valid a part of their lives as the bricks-and-mortar world...)

I have to go to bed now, but thank you for talking... (Just don't want to look like I've stormed off or something...) :)
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I work as a carer so regular contact with the awful racist elderly and also immigrants in close proximity with the uneducated local voters for over a decade in urban and rural areas, to me there’s so much (I’m laughing writing this word after the trans debacle) SOLIDARITY being built in our ranks, but it will never make the internet though I have noticed last year or so talk of unions is becoming a norm- I hope it’s a sign of a wider thing, people just seem to be getting confident and recognising ranks and the need to stick together more? . So I’m working towards unplugging, urban will be the last to go twitter and FB gone already! . If you are up for chatting at any time feel free to PM you seem amiable and open to arguments, I bet I don’t! M

For now, I’ve been a drunk HC signing off :)
 
HoratioCuthbert said:
And when a person takes on a bully there are predictable consequences because they’ve been bullied for years, but that doesn’t mean they should never make a break for it, ever.
Simplistic analogy, I know but I’m using it because it’s not just “lexiters” you are trying to convince, on a europewide scale it’s the poorest you bang on about. They know what’s coming but they try and make a run for it anyway. Because if in the short term the status quo will very likely kill them, why the fuck should they worry about relatively short term punishment from business if there’s a chance -even a slight glimmer of hope- of long term gain- (involving other means of fighting besides just the vote of course- don’t kid yourself it’s only a few on urban that have thought this through)
A lot of the argument around remain is “now is not the time”. That only makes sense if you are comfortable right now, it means fuck all to those who are anything but.
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No it doesn't. People at the bottom will be hardest hit - and there is no "glimmer of hope of long term gain".
It will be even harder for people to pay their bills, feed their kids, find decent employment or housing.
Services will be worse - longer waits for hospital treatment, community programs in the poorest areas will be cut and severely reduced, schools will be more crowded and under resourced, disabled people will have to wait longer for things like a replacement wheelchair or hearing aid or home modifications.
Support workers, community midwives, mental health workers and debt advisors will have bigger caseloads. Adult education programs will be slashed. Their will be less support for poorer kids to do things like music or sports or day trips. Local authorities will have to sell assets in order to stay solvent - and will stay have to make people redundant.
And the number of people tipped into the bottom tier will grow.

That's what happens. Its what happened after 2008, its still happening and brexit will make it worse.

And no im not "comfortable" - i work in a community centre in one of the most deprived areas of leeds - I know exactly what the poorest have to deal with cos i see it every day - (and ive been there myself) - and i don't want to see that community even more fucked than it already is.
 
Kaka Tim said:
No it doesn't. People at the bottom will be hardest hit - and there is no "glimmer of hope of long term gain".
It will be even harder for people to pay their bills, feed their kids, find decent employment or housing.
Services will be worse - longer waits for hospital treatment, community programs in the poorest areas will be cut and severely reduced, schools will be more crowded and under resourced, disabled people will have to wait longer for things like a replacement wheelchair or hearing aid or home modifications.
Support workers, community midwives, mental health workers and debt advisors will have bigger caseloads. Adult education programs will be slashed. Their will be less support for poorer kids to do things like music or sports or day trips. Local authorities will have to sell assets in order to stay solvent - and will stay have to make people redundant.
And the number of people tipped into the bottom tier will grow.

That's what happens. Its what happened after 2008, its still happening and brexit will make it worse.

And no im not "comfortable" - i work in a community centre in one of the most deprived areas of leeds - I know exactly what the poorest have to deal with cos i see it every day - (and ive been there myself) - and i don't want to see that community even more fucked than it already is.
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You’ve just given a more detailed example of what I simplistically named “the bullies” are going to do. I don’t suppose it’s a great idea for me to explain myself a second time, I think I was clear enough the first time.
When I speak about poorer people voting against the wishes of capital, I do realise many poor people also vote in a way capital is comfortable with, that is in a way that won’t harm the economy as you put it. But that doesn’t mean those giving a big fuck you to economic growth don’t have valid reasons for doing so- I’m not talking about lexiters, I’m talking about the millions of poor people that voted leave. What I’m trying to say is at this time we are seeing a huge number of people saying FUCK ECONOMIC GROWTH(or in less articulate language, they might just be saying I’m sick of experts ken?) and at some point socialists are going to have to realise they need a better response than “come on guys, keep sticking with this and let’s see what happens” because frankly people have given up on this. You don’t like it, but this is where we are.
 
HoratioCuthbert said:
You’ve just given a more detailed example of what I simplistically named “the bullies” are going to do. I don’t suppose it’s a great idea for me to explain myself a second time, I think I was clear enough the first time.
When I speak about poorer people voting against the wishes of capital, I do realise many poor people also vote in a way capital is comfortable with, that is in a way that won’t harm the economy as you put it. But that doesn’t mean those giving a big fuck you to economic growth don’t have valid reasons for doing so- I’m not talking about lexiters, I’m talking about the millions of poor people that voted leave. What I’m trying to say is at this time we are seeing a huge number of people saying FUCK ECONOMIC GROWTH(or in less articulate language, they might just be saying I’m sick of experts ken?) and at some point socialists are going to have to realise they need a better response than “come on guys, keep sticking with this and let’s see what happens” because frankly people have given up on this. You don’t like it, but this is where we are.
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On the one hand, this is right. I think the left (wherever you stand on the left, and whether you agree or not) is faced with a problem that can't be resolved simply by appealing to people to be rational. But recession is not the enemy of capitalism. It's build in to the design. I don't actually believe that FUCK ECONOMIC GROWTH is anything to do with the mainstream leave vote, but if it were, that would not be a meaningful act of rebellion against capital. Some bourgeois capitalists are likely to suffer at least a tenth as badly as the poor. But capital more generally is mobile and it will survive and prosper.
 
Raheem said:
On the one hand, this is right. I think the left (wherever you stand on the left, and whether you agree or not) is faced with a problem that can't be resolved simply by appealing to people to be rational. But recession is not the enemy of capitalism. It's build in to the design. I don't actually believe that FUCK ECONOMIC GROWTH is anything to do with the mainstream leave vote, but if it were, that would not be a meaningful act of rebellion against capital. Some bourgeois capitalists are likely to suffer at least a tenth as badly as the poor. But capital more generally is mobile and it will survive and prosper.
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I tried to broaden it, fuck this shit. Whatever, the fact is people are sick of THIS SHIT. You can’t expect everyone living with absolute shite to have read Marx ken.
 
I’m just saying people are trying to claw their way back to before the brexit vote. Fucking forget it. It’s not happening. If you are the sensible heavyweights you claim to be, all balls deep in logic rather than ideology, then FFS try and make sense of what’s actually happening now.
 
free spirit said:
According to the ONS that's only one way they measure GDP, they also use "all the money spent on goods and services, minus the value of imports (money spent on goods and services produced outside the UK), plus exports (money spent on UK goods and services in other countries)".
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There’s only one definition of GDP but it’s hard to measure and theoretically equal to other formulations that are easier to measure, such as GDI. The fact it is theoretically equal to GDI, however, is also a useful instruction in what can and cannot affect it.

What this means is that the production approach to GDP produces the same number as the income approach. Government services are included, yes, but on the same basis as they would be under income, namely the cost of labour and materials (plus things like depreciation). And, indeed, the ONS spells this out — see page 11 of their guild to the national accounts:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives....k-national-accounts---a-short-guide--2014.pdf

As nationalised rail / electricity or whatever would still be charging for their service I don't see why this would be excluded from the GDP calculation.
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If we pay directly for it, this is a point that it gets fuzzy “even” to me (with a certain level of self-deprecation, because I am really not an expert this stuff either). But if we pay for it or it is subsidised through taxation, that tax is not included. That’s why it is ideological. Socialised services show up as a drag on growth whereas private services show up as more output the more people have to pay for them.

And in your original version of how it's measured - people working for those industries would still be being paid and included that way.
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As noted. But this is less than the value created by private profit. Is this what we want? As much private profit as possible? That’s what growth really is — the accumulation of profit and forget about who gets to enjoy it.

Profit repatriated to foreign shores still counts for GDP, by the way. When services have head offices based in Dublin where corporation tax is below 10% and then cede all UK profit back to head office to avoid tax, that U.K. profit still shows up in GDP.

Look what the ONS themselves say about it in my link above:

ONS said:
It is also useful to describe the limitations of GDP. It is often described as a measure of wealth, welfare or well-being. It is none of these and has not been designed to be an all-encompassing indicator for these concepts. GDP is a measure of economic activity and, whilst there may be a link between this and wealth and welfare, such a link is complex. For example, there may be a huge amount of economic activity in a country, but this may be due to foreign companies building factories in a poor country to make use of liberal tax, environmental and employment regimes and then repatriating the profits back to parent companies in richer countries – this repatriation of profits has no effect on GDP, but the fact that it happens, along with low wages in the factory, will mean that the growth in GDP may well not be reflected in domestic wealth and social welfare. The ONS is currently developing ways of measuring national well-being, but these fall outside the scope of the national accounts and are thus excluded from this guide, although a link to a recent paper on the subject can be found in the further reference section towards the end of the guide.
Click to expand...

free spirit said:
That aside, Brexit will not just impact statistically on GDP, it will do so because of it's very real impact on the real world economy of wages, profits, sales of goods, the entire shebang. How much of an impact is yet to be seen, and really depends on what sort of a deal they come up with, but it will be a real impact not just a statistical anomaly and that's what people are concerned about.
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It’s also what Brexit voters were concerned about. They saw that the impact on them in the real world economy of the last 30 years of neoliberalism had fucked them up and they see Brexit as the first step to try to unwind that. And who’s to say it won’t? Free movement of labour is a great way to increase corporate profit and depress wages. Moving profit overseas is a great way to improve profit but not pay tax. These things are possible in the EU and don’t reduce GDP but do impact lives of citizens here.

So yes GDP is a bit of a shit way of measuring the economy, and the real impact that has on people's lives, but it's also useful to have a comparative timeseries such as GDP that goes a long way back in time to get a snapshot of what's happening even if other variables need to be taken into account to really get a fuller picture of it. I'd need some more convincing though that what you say about nationalisation and GDP is actually correct, as it flies in the face of my understanding of it (not that it matters to the substance of whether nationalisation is a positive thing or not, but it's good to understand how the metrics work).

As an example of why I'm thinking that nationalised industry is counted as part of GDP, here's a quote from the IEA about the pre-thatcher economy.

"“By the late 1970s, the nationalised industries accounted for 10pc of Britain’s GDP, 14pc of investment and 8pc of employment,”
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Well I hope that I have now convinced you, since it comes from the ONS themselves. When they say that nationalised industries account for 10%, they are talking about the cost of wages and the spend on materials. This is true whichever method you use to calculate GDP. It’s right there in the ONS document.
 
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Kaka Tim said:
right yes ok - there is an valid argument that conventional economic discourses are inherently ideological - that they exclude and constrain other, counter or alternative discourses - and yes talking about GDP as the only measure of value does exactly that - and leads to the almost invisible hegemony of capitalist discourses.
But - this stuff has real world consequences - because decisions are taken based on world views rooted in those discourses and on the reality of how resources are allocated and utilised. So rather than going back to first principles im trying to cut to the chase by saying brexit will shrink the economy - and that will result in shitter conditions and less resources for the mass of the population - especially those at the bottom of the pile - because that is what has always happened in similar situations in the past.
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But you are constricting yourself to the demands of capital. You've defined the economy as GDP, you've defining benefits as NOT a public service.

Let's accept a minute that over the last 50 years decreases in GDP do correlate with decreases in government spending on what you are calling public services (although you've not actually provided any evidence of this), surely the question to ask is why? Is this some economic law, like the Philips curve? Or is it because capital has used, or at least tried to use, recessions to grab a bigger slice of the cake? (hint it's the second)

But there's no law that this has to be the case, you've already accepted some measures that would shrink the economy would be good. I'll admit I've not checked the data but I'd have a guess that the Russian Revolution gave a downfall in GDP, but are you going to argue that it didn't immeasurably improve the lives of millions?

Moreover, GDP has been increasing since ~2010 (and in over the longer term since the 60s as kabbes has pointed out), have people's lives got better since 2008? Government spending on public services has been going down (in real terms) even though GDP has been increasing.*


You talk about real world consequences but what are you actually trying to argue? That you think Brexit is a shit idea? Well that debates been done, and like danny la rouge I personally am bored of it. The arguments have been made and I don't think people are going to change their minds now. Or are you arguing that the results of the referendum should be overturned? That there should be another referendum? If so you need to read HoratioCuthbert posts because if all you can give is "let's go back to what worked" then you're screwed.

*EDIT: and you talk about unemployment increasing. But unemployment is at a low, so why are so many people struggling at this moment?
 
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I heard a Paul Mason talk on YouTube a while back and he told an anecdote about a referendum campaign event in Sunderland, where some politician or economist was speaking to a group of car workers and telling them how bad Brexit would be for them and for the economy, and when he said GDP would go down X% someone shouted out: "Your GDP!"
 
I am sitting in bed Far away from the U.K. reading a 2016 Pre-brexit vote special issue of the new statesman edited by Gordon Broon that has a sticker on the front saying Servisair Lounge copy - do not remove. Full of the usual commentators handwringing over the loss of Tuscany access

whay a bunch if self centred selfish cunts with no understanding of why people might actually be tucked off with what they have had to live with - Not just the EU either
 
HoratioCuthbert said:
What I’m trying to say is at this time we are seeing a huge number of people saying FUCK ECONOMIC GROWTH
Click to expand...

kabbes said:
It’s also what Brexit voters were concerned about. They saw that the impact on them in the real world economy of the last 30 years of neoliberalism had fucked them up and they see Brexit as the first step to try to unwind that.
Click to expand...

You both simply state this as if it's a given that this was the/a main motivation behind the mainstream brexit vote. But I don't buy it at all. What's your evidence?
 
teuchter said:
You both simply state this as if it's a given that this was the/a main motivation behind the mainstream brexit vote. But I don't buy it at all. What's your evidence?
Click to expand...
You don’t buy that the motivation was a general dissatisfaction with society as it currently is?
 
kabbes said:
You don’t buy that the motivation was a general dissatisfaction with society as it currently is?
Click to expand...
A 'general dissatisfaction with society as it currently is' is not the same as seeing brexit as 'a first step to unwinding neoliberalism'.

And anyway - since when has an electorate ever been 'generally satisfied with society as it currently is"?
 
kabbes said:
The latter is my interpretation of the underlying reason for the former.
Click to expand...

You weren't talking about your interpretations though, you were talking about the mainstream Brexit vote, and what motivated it. What's the evidence that a significant proportion of voters saw it as a first step to 'unwinding neoliberalism'?

HoratioCuthbert described their family members' reasons as:

they generally centred around the issue of sovereignty
Click to expand...

That seems more plausible to me. I don't speak to many leave voters in real life and I don't claim to have a representative sample but that seems more representative of the views that I hear, or see in writing online. I never see anyone talking about 'unwinding neoliberalism' except on here or in wordy articles linked to from here. More likely there'll be complaints about lefty liberal types in London, which is not the same thing. I think it's a complete Lexit fantasy that the mainstream leave vote had any desire for unravelling capitalism behind it.
 
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