Hmm... interesting.

From The Daily Mail:

The Cabinet is divided between 'hawks' and 'doves' over whether to push to ease the lockdown soon, with some saying the public is obeying social distancing too well and must be urged to keep working where possible.

But concerns have been raised that it is impossible to lift the curbs at the moment anyway because the public is so strongly in favour of them staying in place, and would simply refuse to go back to normal.

You do notice that. Some people wear face masks and step into the middle of the road rather than cross you on the pavement; other people just aren't fussed.

I'm genuinely not too fussed, but I do step aside out of politeness, just in case that person is in the 'panic' category.

"The end of the world is nigh"

Comment by OnTheOtherHand here:

The whole [climate change] issue is so complicated that in order to understand it fully, one needs to quit life and study it full time, or one has to pick trusted sources to digest the complexity and summarise. 

Based on the other beliefs that tend to be correlated with climate alarmism - e.g. big government controlling lives rather than freedom, SJW, rejection of most tradition in favour of this replacement new "religion", I tend to smell a rat with the data selected by climate change proponents.

I come from a position that every generation thinks that there is some massive problem that will never be solved - Malthus and overpopulation, global cooling in the 70s, DDT and pesticides, nuclear war, acid rain and forests, ozone layer, AIDS going epidemic in the general population, GM food, bird flu, ebola.

Global warming is one of our problems, but I am sure that it will make more sense to invest in research and innovation and adapt than to bomb our economy now for certain just to slightly reduce the possibility of catastrophic GW theory being right.

The end of the world is nigh. Repent, or at least signal your virtue by campaigning about plastic straws.

At the risk of sounding glib (some of those things were real issues which we actually dealt with; some were real issues which we learned to live with/brushed under the carpet; some were real issues which somehow sorted themselves out; and of course some were just scare stories etc), amen to that.

"Despite Brexit" weekly round up

As prompted by Graeme, here are the highlights from the last seven days.

Eurozone economic recovery picking up despite Brexit, PMIs show

Persimmon reports soaring profits and ‘robust’ demand despite Brexit

Brits Take to the Shops Despite Brexit

Hedge Funds Avoided Big Losses Despite ‘Brexit’ Shock

Car sales boom will continue despite Brexit, says one of Britain's biggest dealers

Demand for IT pros high, despite Brexit

Pound hovers at $1.30 as UK jobless claims unexpectedly fall despite Brexit shock

Mining sector outlook improves despite losses and Brexit

And my favourites, given the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll:

DFS shrugs off Brexit as it basks in Team GB glory

Team GB’s Olympic medal haul is a blissful break from Brexit blues

BBC does "balanced" reporting

From the BBC:

German carmaker Opel plans to cut its workers' hours this year because it expects Brexit to hurt its UK sales. A spokesman for Opel said about 5,000 workers at its Ruesselsheim and Eisenach factories would be affected. Opel is owned by US car giant GM.

It has been mentioned that the Germans, for whom exporting is the national religion, are keen to maintain free-ish trade with the UK after Brexit and that their car manufacturers are putting pressure on the government in that respect. So this story is actually just about plausible - in the long run. In the short term, nothing has happened or will happen for a long time, which means that the excuse is a little thin - unless this is the German car manufacturers' subtle way of putting political pressure on the government, in which case fair play to them.

The pound has weakened against the dollar and euro since the UK's 23 June vote to leave the EU, adding costs for firms exporting to the UK.

That also seems plausible at first sight, although falling GBP does not add to exporting costs, it reduces them if anything and is more likely to put downward pressure on selling prices. Car manufacturers face a strange 'kinked demand curve', have huge sunk costs and are tied to a certain fixed level of average-cost minimising output, which means that they are probably better off maintaining GBP prices (and accepting lower EUR income) than cutting production. We will see.

So in true Mythbusters' fashion, let's call that one plausible.

Another German car giant - Volkswagen - has also introduced short-time working ("Kurzarbeit") at several factories, but not because of Brexit. It has been hit by slow deliveries from some component firms, the German broadcaster ARD says.

Why was it necessary to add "but not because of Brexit"? They might as well say "but not because of the weather" or "but not because of Germany's poor showing at the Olympics" or anything else totally irrelevant.

Project Fear - Yankee style

From an IBISWorld press-release:

Britain’s exit, or Brexit, from the EU also sent the pound plunging to its lowest level since 1985. While the sharp drop in the pound makes British imports comparatively cheaper for US buyers in the short term, it poses a serious long-term threat: disruption to trade.

US companies sourcing British imports face looming uncertainty over the price and availability of a wide range of goods. The United Kingdom is a major exporter of petroleum products, such as hydraulic oil and gasoline, as well as gas turbines, hydraulic motors and other aerospace and industrial equipment and machinery. In fact, the United States imports about $58 billion worth of goods annually from the UK, according to the US Census Bureau, making it our seventh-largest trading partner.

Pending the formal exit process, which could take up to two years, Britain will remain a member of the EU. However, trade relations with the United States will need to be renegotiated once Britain’s separation is complete. Given political gridlock in Congress and the often lengthy nature of trade negotiations, it could be many years before a new bilateral agreement between the two countries is hashed out—in an interview with the BBC in April, President Obama warned it could take up to 10 years. Meanwhile, Britain will face higher trade barriers with the United States.

For now, tariffs, quotas and rules governing trademarks and patents with the UK will remain unchanged; however, these trade mechanics may change with whatever new agreement emerges from future negotiations. IBISWorld suggests that buyers looking to maintain continuity in their supply chains to consider alternative sources for any British products. By diversifying their supply chains, buyers are less likely to experience supply disruptions or price volatility associated with Brexit.

Nobody move or the global economy gets it!

From the BBC:

The Bank of England has warned that uncertainty about the EU referendum is the "largest immediate risk" facing global financial markets.

The Bank said there were "risks of adverse spill-overs to the global economy" from the 23 June vote. It was "increasingly likely" that sterling would fall further - perhaps sharply - in the event of a leave vote, the Bank added.

They clearly think we are totally gullible.

Nobody move or the tenants get it!

Emailed in by MBK from The New Statesman:

The expectation at the Bank is that a Leave vote would trigger a sharp decline in the value of sterling…

GBP might indeed fall, good for exporters, not so good for importers.

… and a period of heightened inflation.

If GBP falls, there is no reason to assume there will be high inflation. There wasn't after precipitous GBP falls after White Wednesday and during 2008.

In that case, the expectation is that the Bank would have to increase the basic rate of interest, which has been held at 0.5 per cent for seven years.

Why would it "have to"? Central banks should not be trying to control exchange rates, FFS, and if you want a fair exchange rate, the best thing to do is have similar interest rates to other major countries, i.e. very low at present.

Further, if a doomsday economic crash scenario, the BoE would be advised to reduce interest rates, not increase them.

That would trigger an immediate crisis in Britain’s housing market – several banks estimate that about one-third of buy-to-let landlords would be unable to pay their mortgages in the event of a 2 per cent rate rise.

We don't have a "housing crisis", we have a "transfer of wealth crisis", we've done that topic.

The rest is more wild assumptions. We know from 2008 how banks will respond. They will certainly not be increasing interest rates and repossessing landlords, thereby pushing down house prices. Banks want house price to stay up more than anybody else, it seems, even if it means making losses on the interest margin.

According to officials at the Bank of England, the true figure may well be higher, as many buy-to-let landlords have mortgages with multiple banks.

WTF difference does that make?

Renters would face a toxic cocktail of rent rises, banks that were unwilling to lend even as house prices dropped…

Again, no reason to assume rents would rise, rents are dictated by tenants' disposable incomes and not the landlord's costs. Seeing as we going with doomsday economic crash scenario, tenants' income down = rents down, not up.

Banks would be no more or less willing to lend than they are now, that is another wild assumption.

… and homeowners stuck with mortgages greater than the equity in their homes, unwilling and unable to sell up – even if buyers could be found.

Apart form being more wild assumptions (and wrong - see above), that's a tautology. What he means is "negative equity", anybody with a mortgage of more than half the value of his home has a mortgage greater than his equity, by definition. Twat.

The most sickening bit is that the NS is supposed to be left wing, is it heck, this article is just as pro-bank and pro-landlord as The Daily Mail.

Nobody move or the border gets it!

From The Guardian, after some vacuous drivel from Gordon Brown which is not even worth taking the piss out of:

Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, has said that a vote to leave the EU would lead to the return of some form of border controls at the border with the Republic. Speaking at the University of Ulster, he said:

"The re-establishment of customs checks on the border, or indeed of any customs arrangements, would be a regrettable and backward step for North-South trade and cooperation...

"We are standing here today less than 50 miles from the United Kingdom’s only land border. Can anyone credibly suggest that nothing would change if that became the western border of the European Union? We remember when it was a hard border. We remember the delays, the cost and the division. One of the most beneficial effects of the peace process and our common membership of the EU has been the virtual elimination of that border."

There was a very open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland/UK until The Troubles, 1970 or thereabouts, when neither country was in the EEC. Ireland and the Irish retained preferential treatment after it/they demerged from the UK in (the 1920s or 1930s? Never really clear to me), for most purposes, they are still treated on a par with full UK citizens (Irish passport holders have the right to vote in UK elections, certain tax advantages etc).

Both countries joined the EEC as was at the same time in 1973.

The armed police, border controls persisted until the 1990s when the worst of The Troubles had died down again (thanks to The Peace Process i.e. massive bribes and diplomatic spadework by John Major, with Tony Blair riding in to get the glory).

To thank the EU for this is laughable. I'm sure it did no harm, but it deserves little or none of the credit. For once, the Yanks were a moderating force in all this.

Nobody move or western political civilization gets it!

Emailed in by View From The Solent, from Reuters:

If Britons vote to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum it could be the beginning of the end for the 28-nation bloc and for western political civilization more generally, European Council President Donald Tusk said.

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Tusk said a so-called Brexit vote would provide a major boost to radical anti-European forces who he said would be "drinking champagne".

"Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be," Tusk said. "As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilization in its entirety."

Project Fear appears to have moved so far beyond satire that it I'm starting to take it seriously again.

Clearly, I'm still not particularly worried about the negative consequences of Brexit, which will be negligible unless TPTB fuck things up deliberately to teach us a lesson, I'm now starting to worry about the sanity of all these people.

Nobody move or the Cornish Pasty gets it!

... says View From The Solent, who spotted this in The Register:

Any reader who's still undecided as to how to vote in the forthcoming, and increasingly tedious, EU referendum, should consider a Brexit future without the culinary protection afforded us by membership of the happy European family of nations.

Last week, the Cornish Pasty Association came out in favour of Britain remaining in the European Union, because "after working so hard for so many years to gain recognition for the Cornish pasty through the EU Protected Food Names scheme, it would be wholly inappropriate for it to support anything that could potentially impact on that status".

In a brief statement, association chairman Jason Jobling said: "As an organisation that has benefitted from the EU protected food names system, and no clear evidence available to demonstrate that Brexit would enable that protection to continue, the CPA supports Britain remaining in the EU and being able to participate in that system."

Protected Geographical Status is indeed an typical EU protectionist thing.

But... from Wiki:

This regulation (enforced within the EU and being gradually expanded internationally via bilateral agreements between the EU and non-EU countries) ensures that only products genuinely originating in that region are allowed to be identified as such in commerce.

So if we want to protect our pasties, all we have to do is sign up and preserve the status quo.

(If we didn't sign up, then UK producers would be able to use all the other protected names and sell their produce to non-EU countries, probably a net gain for them overall, and I can't see the EU letting us get away with that.)

Nobody move or your ice cream gets it!

Via MBK, from politico.eu:

“Take one of our … products, Magnum,” Polman said, sending a (raspberry) ripple through the Brexit debate. “If you have trade restrictions, because undoubtedly if the U.K. will leave the conditions will not be as good as if they stay in. That is a fact that I think is broadly accepted.”

“How does that affect ice cream?” asked Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow.

Polman’s chilling response was: “For example, you will have import duties on dairy; anybody from outside the EU has import duties that could be up to 40-50 percent. So the price of dairy products will go up, the price of ice cream will go up, and ultimately the consumer will pay the price for that.”

He's taking it as a given that the UK would impose import duties on milk from overseas, false assumption, fail.

And it's a good thing the internet never forgets, from The Guardian five months ago:

Unilever, the consumer goods group behind Persil and Magnum ice-creams, has said it will not scale back its UK operations if Britain votes to leave the EU.

The comments from Paul Polman, the chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch business, echo those of Akio Toyoda, his counterpart at Toyota, who said the Japanese carmaker would continue to produce cars in Derbyshire even if Britain left.

In an interview with the Guardian, Polman said Britain should remain in the EU, but that Unilever’s UK sites, including three research and development centres, would not be affected by a vote to leave. “The effectiveness of my research centre is the quality of the people I have there and the ideas coming out in terms of the innovations that we produce. We don’t make a decision on moving research centres around depending on if you are in the EU or not,” he said.

Nobody move or your first born get it!

Far beyond parody, from The Evening Standard:

Couples are delaying having children because of worries about the uncertainties of a Brexit, a senior London academic said today. Professor Michael Bruter of LSE discovered evidence that young voters in particular were “far less likely to make family plans” before the June 23 vote.

The extraordinary finding came as a think tank calculated that economic turmoil after leaving the EU could cost low-income families up to £5,500 in reduced benefits and tax credits to rebalance the public finances.

The operative word is "could", if you read the article for the list of assumptions and caveats, a fairer term would be "is highly unlikely to", but hey.

The next one is beyond logic:

Brexit would “drive a wedge” between London and the rest of the UK as more Europeans live, study and work here than in any other part of the country, a report said today.

The Centre for London think tank said the capital was “more closely linked” with continental Europe than ever before, with 850,000 EU nationals calling it home.

It warned that with over 600,000 employed in London, any visa regulation following a pull-out would deal a major blow to the capital’s economy.

In which case, London would become more like the rest of the UK (again), which is the opposite of "driving a wedge between", is it not?

Nobody move or the exporters get it!

From Sky News:

British exporters are at risk of paying up to £5.6bn in duties if the UK votes Out, the head of the World Trade Organisation says.

Although director-general Roberto Azevedo believes Brexit would not stop the UK from trading with international partners, during a speech in London he warned "it could be on worse terms".

The WTO chief also said "it is impossible to tell how long it may take" for the UK to re-establish terms of trade within the EU - and said negotiations in the past had been known to take 10 years or more.

We've done this one. The UK would have no problems getting the same tariff-free terms as Iceland or Turkey, that is EU policy; or the UK could remain in the EEA/rejoin EFTA. As to third countries, there is the basic principle in international treaties that we would continue on the same terms. For example when Czechoslovakia split into two, each new country entered into a double tax treaty with the UK on identical terms to the old UK-Czechoslovakian one.

More to the point, this is the head of the WTO talking. His organisation is there to try and remove trade barriers and tariffs, and has been doing a reasonably good job over the decades, albeit at a slow pace. So it's like the police warning people to stay away from certain streets instead of policing them properly.

If he were taking his job seriously, he would be issuing a stern reminder to the EU that Brexit is not an excuse for stupid retaliatory mercantilist meaures.

As I've said before, I'm as cautious as the next man, if TPTB could come up with a couple of really good arguments for Bremain, then I might chicken out of voting for Brexit, but so far it's just been complete crap.

Nobody move or Northern Ireland gets it!

Emailed in by MBK, from The Daily Express:

The Chancellor, who kicks off a two-day Ulster visit today, will say unemployment in the region will skyrocket if British voters opt to ditch the 28-member bloc later this month. And the Remain campaigner will insist prosperity in the Republic of Ireland – the only EU state that shares a land border with Britain – would also be hit.

Osborne is the latest high-profile Europhile to claim that Northern Ireland faces a grim future outside of the EU. Labour grandee Lord Mandelson was last month slammed as "ridiculous" for claiming that Brexit would bring an end to peace in Northern Ireland.

Osborne will argue that the economic shock caused by a vote to Leave will wipe £1.3 billion off the value of the Northern Irish economy by 2018 – despite claiming that the region is a "great success story"...

He is also set to warn of the impact on trade with the Republic, warning that border and custom checks will have to be introduced. The Chancellor will also question whether the current free movement of people across Ireland under the Common Travel Area arrangement between the UK and Ireland could be maintained.

Of course those 'open borders will be maintained', it is in the interests of people in both parts of Ireland for them to remain open. The only reason to change that would be sheer spite. End of discussion.

Nobody move or the bankers' bonuses get it!

From the BBC:

Mr Dimon said: "After a Brexit we cannot do it all here and we will have to start planning for that. I don't know if it means a thousand jobs, two thousand jobs, it could be many as 4000, and they will be jobs all around the UK."

He added: "Brexit will result in years of uncertainty and I believe that this uncertainty will hurt the economies of both Britain and the European Union. If the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to re-organise our business model here."

And here's the obvious response:

Steve Baker MP, a Leave campaigner, said: "The British people will not be bullied into voting to hand more money and more power to Brussels by someone whose bonus would make even some eurocrat's eyes water and whose bank helped crash the economy. It's time for the 'In' campaign to engage in an honest debate, not make unsubstantiated and illogical threats which are the real danger to our economy."

I don't get this whole "uncertainty" thing, that is just a threat, that is not something that would just happen of its own accord, that would be something that people would deliberately and maliciously do. And there's only one way to find out if it was all just idle threats or whether other countries' leaders really are psychopaths... either way... it's better to find out.

Nobody move or your state pension gets it!

Emailed in by Lola, via Professional Pensions from NIESR:

Our main conclusions are that reductions in immigration would have a negative impact on the public finances. To offset these impacts policy change in the form of increases in national insurance contributions, reductions in pensioner benefits, or increases in the state pension age could be used. More restrictive immigration policies would, not surprisingly, have more negative impacts.

However...

Aargh! Disasater looms, but what's that "however" leading up to..?

However, these impacts could be mitigated, and indeed reversed, were the government to be able to successfully implement a very significant change in the incomes (and implicitly the skills or qualifications) of new migrants by introducing a skills or points based migration policy (perhaps similar to the policy in Australia).

The reduction in EU migrants, an increase in total non EU migrants and an up-scaling of skills are all possible policies which have been aired in the referendum debate. However, an important policy question, which we do not address here, is whether these policies would and could actually be delivered in practice.

Most migrants from other EU member states are net contributors, of course, so a sensible points system would have little impact on them; I don't think we want an increase in non-EU migrants, again, a sensible points system would weed out the half we don't want. Of course it could be "delivered in practice", we managed perfectly well up to 1997.

Sorted.

Fun Online Polls: Project Fear & Fire extinguishers

The responses to last fortnight's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What are the likely outcomes of Brexit?
Putin & ISIS expand their empires - 9 votes
A new European civil war - 6 votes
End of Scottish whisky distilling - 5 votes
No more new school buildings - 6 votes
End of UK pharmaceutical industry - 5 votes
End of UK beef farming - 5 votes
Global habitat endangered - 7 votes
House prices crash - 6 votes
Interest rates shoot up - 7 votes
Boarding schools close down - 4 votes
Holiday costs would soar - 9 votes
Sterling would tank - 11 votes
UK becomes haven for terrorists - 5 votes
Mass unemployment - 6 votes
All of the above and worse - 30 votes
None of the above - 138 votes

Total voters - 182 voters

Top comments:

Posted by

Henry Law
That is only the start.
* Birmingham will be wiped out by a large meteorite.
* Manchester will be flattened by a magnitude 8 earthquake.
* The south coast will be devastated by a tsunami.
* There will be an explosion in the rat population and London will be hit by an epidemic of bubonic plague.
* Sterling will tank and soar at the same time so that nobody will be able to afford British goods.

We don't want to scare people unecessarily.

Wigner's Friend

You missed:
Plague of locusts.
Death of all first born sons
Water turning to blood
And 7 others.
-------------------------------
This week's Fun Online Poll.

"What are fire extinguishers most commonly used for?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Nobody move… or I'll cut your pension and deport your carer!

Emailed in by MBK from The Sun, David Cameron plumbs new depths of silliness:

DAVID Cameron tonight warned the elderly a Brexit would wreck their pensions and cost them their carers as No.10’s Project Fear targeted Britain’s OAPs.

In an extraordinary blast the PM used his latest Referendum attack to try and scare the over 65s – the one age group most likely to vote Leave - into changing their mind. He said quitting the EU would shrink Britain’s economy by six per cent- meaning “less money to pay people’s pensions”.

And he added that cutting ties with the EU could cause shortages in the amount of migrant workers in the care sector handing out medicine. He told Saga magazine: “There are 100,000 skilled EU workers in our health and social care system. If we leave there will be uncertainties around visas and residency permits. That could cause some to return home and that would have an unpredictable impact on hard-pressed frontline services.”

You're the Prime Minister, Dave, you get to decide how high pensions are and who can live and work in this country, even after Brexit.

Nobody move or the poorest countries get it!

Emailed in by MBK, from The Sun:

Fuelling the Tory civil war, Mr Osborne also mounted a direct attack on leading Tory Brexiters by claiming they think an economic shock is “a price worth paying”.

The Chancellor told them: “It’s not your wages that will be hit, it’s not your livelihoods that will go, it’s not you who will struggle to pay the bills. It’s the working people of Britain who will pay the price if we leave the EU.”

The World Bank also yesterday warned that Brexit is one of the biggest threats facing the poorer countries in developing world. The British economy’s stability “is really important for the global economy”, its head Dr Jim Yong Kim said.

Words fail.

Nobody move or female workers get it!

Harriet Harman on (over the) top form in The Guardian:

Harriet Harman has claimed campaigners calling for Britain to leave the EU are more likely to associate with an old-fashioned view that a woman’s primary role is in the home.

The Labour MP made the claim in an interview with the Guardian in which she also argued that Brexit could derail the fight for women’s rights.

Harman, who has been a leading campaigner on gender equality for four decades, said she would not trust high-profile out campaigners such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove or Nigel Farage “as far as I can throw them” on the issue... Harman argued that lurking behind the opposition was the idea that women should not be demanding rights in the workplace when they should really be at home.

“We still see occasionally the veil slips,” she said. “And actually there is quite a good match between the people who want to leave the EU and the people who actually want women to be back in the home. Why would we want them to be in charge of our rights? Why would we trust our rights to them?”

Perhaps Johnson, Gove or Farage are indeed old school male chauvinist pigs (there's no evidence for it, but hey), surely we are having a referendum on EU membership, not voting on whether those three form the next government?