Question Time audience......

[hoolahoop]

I like the Norwegian model, what they pay in is earmarked for grants to Norway, scholarships etc. That's very fair. Particularly as British governments tend to struggle when it comes to funding out north of Watford long term.

Now that I DO agree with which is where the EU Development fund designed to assist poor regions came into force very much to our benefit as a " poor and deprived "  region  - yes the 5th -8th largest economy ( depends on how you now measure it ) in the world has such disparities of wealth that the EU  put in measures to assist these areas and not just here - Southern Italy being a similar case in mind.

The idea of using  in fact in a way " forcing" central governments to finance areas and regions long neglected has worked.

Sproty I don't know your age but believe me DMBC  and it's resources have grown immeasurably over the last 40 years almost to city status . That EU  money has been the stimulus for much needed economic growth far beyond anything I could have imagined 40/50 years ago . It meant that other bodies felt that this town was worth investing in . Look around you everyone and look at what you can do at any weekend in the calendar, how clean our air is , how beautiful are our parks and wildlife park, how we can fly from OUR  airport or go to one of the top 5 racecourses in the country or enjoy our community stadium . Then there are our wetlands and moors .

This is NOT the same town of my youth- yes it still has lingering problems but we do have an entrepreneurial spirit and have managed to start up new businesses and attract huge multi- national companies into our borough. It's full steam ahead  for our town providing we can still secure funding.

A lot of this has been done on the back of the EU  and I'm proud of the association we had. Now it's back to local government fighting to secure funding for our borough from a government that has proven to be , in the past, a bad partner that destroyed this region .

[BillyStubbsTears]

Jesus wept BB do you have the memory of a goldfish? It’s every week that we go through this. Go and read how I replied to you last week. And the week before. And the week before.

[hoolahoop]

The thing that amazes me about the so called 350 million quid thing is that, at the time it was common knowledge that although we allegedly paid out that much, we also got back around 200/250 million quid a week as well (apologies if that figure isn’t accurate as I have forgotten now what was actually quoted).
Why didnt people take that onboard as well.

Not quite hound in reality because of a discount we got when Thatcher was PM , we pay in some £ 8.6 billion p.a.  after the rebate or roughly £ 250 million p.w.  roughly £4  per person per week.  ( £ 208 per person / per year

Yes we are giving all that we got from being a member of the EU in exchange for that !

[BillyStubbsTears]

I like the Norwegian model, what they pay in is earmarked for grants to Norway, scholarships etc. That's very fair. Particularly as British governments tend to struggle when it comes to funding out north of Watford long term.

Sproty

I’m not sure what you are meaning by “What they pay in is earmarked for grants to Norway.”

It certainly isn’t in Horizon2020 R&D funding. Every country pays a certain percentage into a pot then there are fiercely competitive proposals submitted from companies and Universities in each country to try to win that money. If you, as a country, don’t put in good proposals, you get zero funding. There is nothing ring fenced for particular countries.

As it happens, the UK does very well in this process. Until the Brexit vote, we were getting more funding than Germany even though Germany paid far more in than we do. And we were getting far more funding than France even though France pays in a similar amount to us. This is vital funding because it underpins our future as a high-tech economy. Now we’re going to have to find that extra money from our own tax payers. Or not do the R&D.

[Bentley Bullet]

Jesus wept BB do you have the memory of a goldfish? It’s every week that we go through this. Go and read how I replied to you last week. And the week before. And the week before.

BST, sorry to carp on. I'll ask you again next week in the hope of an answer.

[Glyn_Wigley]

It was the Treasury who predicted a recession.

[ravenrover]

Raven

In a recent poll, 42% of people said they believed we’d be economically better off outside the EU.

The number of economists who believe that can be counted on not many fingers. The number of politicians who believe that can be counted on it many more fingers. Yet something like 20 million people In the country believe it. Because they were strung along by the biggest political lie in many decades. A lie that the leader of the Vite Leave campaign who came up with the lie has smugly admitted was a lie, and triumphantly claimed that it was the lie that made the difference in the vote.

If those 20 million people were told the truth about how much poorer they, personally are going to be as a result of Brexit, do you think they might be demanding a second referendum?

Sorry BST but I'm just a thick lad from Woodlands, a politician "lies" to us and because of that we should have a 2nd referendum, but when politicians "lie" to us in a General Election there is no clamour for a re-vote. Am I missing something? What is the difference? Are you saying that intelligent people only should vote on these matters?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Glyn. What the Treasury predicted was a large and immediate reduction in economic growth and a large and immediate hit to the Govt’s finances in the case of a Brexit vote IN COMPARISON TO THE COUNTETFACTUAL CASE OF NOT HAVING A BREXIT VOTE.

They were 100% accurate with that prediction. Those two things HAVE happened.

BB is obsessing about the fact that Osborne extrapolated from that that a Brexit vote would lead to a recession and to tax cuts and spending cuts to balance the books.

As I’ve pointed out to him times without number without effect, Osborne was not lying in saying that. What he WAS doing was making a couple of implicit assumptions.
1) That the global economy wouldn’t go into boom mode, drag us along in its wake and save us from a technical recession.
2) That he, Osborne, would stay as Chancellor and would remain committed to eliminating the deficit by 2019. If he had done, it is a matter of simple arithmetic that he would have had to sharply increase taxes and/or reduce spending. The massive hit to the public finances HAS happened. By pushing out the date by which we will balance the books to 2025, Hammond has avoided the need to increase taxes or reduce spending. But the penalty is that it will be another half decade before spending can start to rise significantly, or taxes be reduced.

BB is clever enough to follow that argument, but he’s going through his weekly phase of pretending to be too thick to follow it, so he can show how clever he is by demonstrating that both sides lied

They didn’t both lie. Equating the £350m/week lie and the “Turkey is joining the EU” lie with the predictions of the economic effect of a Brexit vote is something that would only be done by someone who either doesn’t think through the issues or someone who is bored and wants a pointless argument.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Raven.

I’m not saying that at all. Not in the slightest.

I DO think people have a public duty to properly engage in discussions and debate and I DO think that something has gone dreadfully wrong when you go into something as crucial as this one with 42% of people believing something that is a lie on an appalling scale and a lie that had been accepted as a lie by all the mainstream media outlets who had stopped using it. I assume you worry about that too?

The thing that went wrong is slowly coming into the public domain. It was a focussed and concentrated approach by Vote Leave and Cambridge Analytica to identify people who were receptive to a lie like that, then bombard them with personally targeted messages.

I DO think that is a threat to the democratic process. If someone says a lie on the TV, there’s a reasonable chance that the other side can put the opposite point of view and redress the balance. But if someone is only getting their news and views through social media, and that social media has been hijacked to pump lies directly into their feed, how the hell do you counteract that? That’s not calling people who fell for that “unintelligent”. I haven’t done that and I would never do that so please do not suggest that I did. It demeans the discussion.

I DO think that those people have been deliberately and very skilfully misled in a way that we have never seen before and in a way that is almost certainly illegal.

Final point. This IS different to a General Election. If you feel you’ve been misled at a GE, you can vote the other way in 5 years time. What do you do if you’ve been misled over Brexit?

PS. If you REALLY want to hear someone calling people who voted for Brexit gullible, listen to the words coming out of Dominic Cummings’s odious gob on C4 News last night. They showed him at a presentation after the vote, highlighting how they won the vote. By sending 1.5billion targeted messages to 7million targeted voters by e-mail, Facebook and Twitter in the week before the vote. Lies about the £350m. Lies about Turkey and immigrants.

He spent £3.5m spread those lies. Presumably he did it because he assumed that a fair fraction of the people they were aimed at would buy them.

[Metalmicky]

I really hope our economy fails and the country goes to the wall when we leave - otherwise all the posts predicting doom and gloom will have been a waste of peoples time.......... that would be enormously tragic...   

[BillyStubbsTears]

MM

Got me bang to rights mate. Of COURSE I want our country to lose something north of £500bn over the next decade so I can be a smug t**t and say “told you so”.

f**k me...

[Bentley Bullet]

BST, I am merely pointing out that voters decisions were based on both promises from the Leave campaigners and threats from Remain campaigners. Equally, some of the promises and threats can be called untruths at this point.

If another vote were to take place at this moment in time, I dare suggest that some Leavers would now vote Remain, but on the other hand, I believe that some Remainers would now vote leave, based on the untruths of both parties.

[Glyn_Wigley]

So...because although the British economy has taken a big hit, just because it wasn't as big a hit as was threatened Remainers would decide it was a big lie and change their mind and decide to vote Leave instead. Aye, makes perfect sense.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB

And once again, I say to you that there is no correspondence whatsoever between one side lying (£350m, Turkey) and getting the economic argument totally wrong (claiming we’d do better economically after a Brexit vote) saying we could stay in the Single Market during the campaign then after the vote insisting that the Will of the People is that we have to leave the SM and being in total denial about the Ireland issue

and the other side getting the economic argument broadly correct (our economy and public finances HAVE tanked since the vote) and pointing out that the Irish border was a hell of a problem to solve.

Saying that the two sides were both untrustworthy is, frankly, daft. It’s like saying that hammering someone over the head with a baseball bat and slapping them in the face are equally appalling assaults. I genuinely do not understand why you refuse to engage with any of the facts and instead keep coming round the hamster wheel to the point you first started from. You’re a smart lad, but you’re sounding daft with this “Yeah but Osborne said” trope.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Glyn

No. It HAS BEEN as big a hit as was predicted. That is the point! It has been exactly as big a hit as was predicted. As I keep screaming, the rest of the developed world has had a boom since summer 2016. If we’d had the same boom, we’d now be about £60bn richer as a nation than we are. We’ve lost that because we are the only advanced large economy on the planet whose growth has shrunk since the vote.

The fact that we’re not in recession is irrelevant. We HAVE had the economic hit that was forecast.

If I keep repeating it enough, BB might get the message.

[Bentley Bullet]

BST. The only reason why Osbourne keeps popping back up is that you refuse to admit that he said there would be an imminent recession and a budget with tax rises and spending cuts.

[BillyStubbsTears]

No! I KNOW he said that!

And I’ve spent precious hours explaining the context of that to you. And you never once give any impression that you’ve read what I’ve written.

[Bentley Bullet]

THANK YOU!

Imagine the story of the vet who examined a dog and told it's owner that it only had weeks to live? The owner decided to go against the vet's advice to euthanise and took the dog home. Weeks, and then months went by, and the dog was still alive and happy. Years went by and the dog was still alive and happy. Then, ten years after the vet's prognosis, the poor bugger died.

Aye, the vet was right, after all!

[RedJ]

Well what a shit analogy that was.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Yep. Lost me.

The analogy only remotely works if you accept that we are going along happily.

BB obviously thinks that the UK, now, today, already being £60bn poorer than we should have been after the vote, and projected to be £0.5tr poorer by the middle of the 2020s is a cause to be happy.

Personally, I reckon someone who is happy in those conditions puts winning an argument above caring for the country. Me, as someone who loves this country and wants it to be a success, I’m f**king livid.

[Bentley Bullet]

Ah well, you can't win 'em all!

BST, would it make you happier if we were all as depressed as you?

[MachoMadness]

A better analogy would be a man who refused to take his dog to the vets because he didn't like experts, and then when the dog died a week later the bloke said he was right all along because the dog still lasted a week.

[Bentley Bullet]

Na, that's a shit analogy.

[hoolahoop]

I really hope our economy fails and the country goes to the wall when we leave - otherwise all the posts predicting doom and gloom will have been a waste of peoples time.......... that would be enormously tragic...   

No-one should hope that happens but most experts believe it will be MAYhem.
The late1960-70s were difficult times and many a family struggled , I know mine was one of them - I wouldn't wish that on everyone . There are far too many with  short memories on here , people who forget the destruction wrought on our region by Maggie and her gang of thieves. People that have virtually signed us up for decades of not just austerity but extreme austerity for our young

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB

Who mentioned being depressed? I’m not depressed about this. I’m f**king angry. It might help if a few more got f**king angry about the way they have been played and the way our country is going.

[hoolahoop]

THANK YOU!

Imagine the story of the vet who examined a dog and told it's owner that it only had weeks to live? The owner decided to go against the vet's advice to euthanise and took the dog home. Weeks, and then months went by, and the dog was still alive and happy. Years went by and the dog was still alive and happy. Then, ten years after the vet's prognosis, the poor bugger died.

Aye, the vet was right, after all!

F**k me can we move on there are 100s of posts in different threads where the so called Project Fear was/ has been  proven to be Reality.
Fact the world economy has been going through a strong patch over the last 12 months and of course the UK has ridden on that crest of a wave too as PART of the EU , however we have not performed as well as most and we are not expected to have growth above 1.5% over the next five years ....a dismal forecast.
As Billy pointed out countless times but for Quantitive Easing , the economy would be in a total mess. Our people are poorer and are set to be poorer going forward  post Brexit.

To put things into perspective , BB you were given a figure Of - £ 60 billion , that's the extra money we would have in the Treasury coffers - this would have been sufficient to pay the  " divorce bill" and still leave enough change left over to subsidise the NHS and Community Care budgets 

This all pre-supposes that you don't think that BST is talking out of his arse all the time.

I,  like him, am just as angry about the way that our democracy has been hijacked.

[Bentley Bullet]

Hoolahoop, my argument is that contrary to others beliefs, I think there were untruths told by both Leavers AND Remainers, and votes were swayed by them. It doesn't matter how many times you want to shoot down my opinion that the above is true, I am only the messenger. The fact of the matter is that Many, many people have the same opinion.

I believe if there was another referendum, people on BOTH sides would vote the other way.

[hoolahoop]

Hoolahoop, my argument is that contrary to others beliefs, I think there were untruths told by both Leavers AND Remainers, and votes were swayed by them. It doesn't matter how many times you want to shoot down my opinion that the above is true, I am only the messenger. The fact of the matter is that Many, many people have the same opinion.

I believe if there was another referendum, people on BOTH sides would vote the other way.

NOBODY but nobody on here has ever disputed that but it is a matter of degree and believe me the economy has taken a kicking , why do you think the Chancellor has put off eliminating the deficit until 2025. Why do you think that your Council tax bill has gone up to support local services ? Why do you think that EVERY Govt. Dept. is screaming out for some more resources just to stand still !
No-one disagrees with you that Osborne's hit hasnt happened , its simply as has been explained to you countless times that the world's economy has performed far better than anticipated - however OUR  performance with the exception of our strong ( pretend almost full employment) lags way behind even the weakest countries in the EU  which incidentally we are still a part of !!

As for employment  - is it real employment with 0 contract hours , the sick made to work and kids being churned through unis and colleges in ever greater numbers who might otherwise be on that dole queue. Look around at the massive growth in the food bank sector - look at the collection points in your local supermarket.

As for the Leave/ Brexit lies , exaggerations and deceit  then look no further than the £ 350  million a week to the NHS con , the invasion of millions of Turks, the unelected EU  Parliament and of course the massive overspend and bending of the Referendum vote by the Leave and DUP  campaigns  - read it man it's there on the Guardian webpages now being churned out . This shit has been suppressed by the establishment for well over the year . Bentley Bullet you don't benefit from the actions of this cabal rather you will be financially hurt by it as will most of the country . You should be fighting THIS rather than questioning constantly the way successive Chancellors have sought to deal with and represent the damage done to our economy.

Believe me given another vote Remain would win by a country mile and this shocking lot would be out on a limb. Did you really vote Remain, because if you did then you made the right choice  and Osborne's supposed  labelled * Project Fear * wouldnt be worrying you so much . It seems that the Leave campaign's primary message that you should laugh at rather than fear it ; is still working on you .

It was all about the brave brexiters ( read musketeers )  against the unpatriotic " moaners " and for you perversely it's still working ....

[Bentley Bullet]

"NOBODY but nobody on here has ever disputed that" (untruths were told on both sides)

Yes they have!


 
"Why do you think that your Council tax bill has gone up to support local services" ?

It always did pre Brexit!



"Why do you think that EVERY Govt. Dept. is screaming out for some more resources just to stand still"!

They always did pre Brexit!

[hoolahoop]

"NOBODY but nobody on here has ever disputed that" (untruths were told on both sides)

Yes they have!


 
"Why do you think that your Council tax bill has gone up to support local services" ?

It always did pre Brexit!



"Why do you think that EVERY Govt. Dept. is screaming out for some more resources just to stand still"!

They always did pre Brexit!

Yes it was always said that Project Fear might not result in an immediate impact as suggested by Osborne's economics - nevertheless the economy has been severely damaged .

Look at your Council Tax bill it has an extra PRECEPT charge on it

Then you need to watch what's happening , you are deliberately ignoring things - it's not good out there !

It's a waste of time talking to you - you voted Leave .