Tim – You assume UK and EU politicians will act logically. Why?
PF
Tim,
So Osborne, in trying to plug the EU, says a -6% effect on GDP – whereas Minford says a +3% effect on GDP.
Solution’s simple isn’t it – get rid of Osborne.
Bloke in Wales
Troll filter, for those running Chrome:
1) Create a new directory somewhere
2) Cut and paste this into a file in your new directory called ‘manifest.json’:
{
“manifest_version”: 2,
“name”: “Troll Filter”,
“description”: “This script filters out the irritating little turds clinging to the comments”,
“version”: “0.1”,
“content_scripts”: [{
“matches”: [“*://www.timworstall.com/*”, “*://www.timworstall.com/*”],
“include_globs”: [“*timworstall.com/????/??/??/*”],
“js”: [“trollfilter.js”]
}]
}
3) Cut and paste this into a file in your new directory called ‘trollfilter.js’:
var comments = document.evaluate(
‘//div[@id=\’comments\’]/ol[@class=\’commentlist\’]/li’, document,
null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for (var i = 0; i < comments.snapshotLength; i++) {
var author = document.evaluate(
'article[@class=\'comment\']/footer/div[contains(@class, \'comment-author\')]/cite[@class=\'fn\']/descendant::text()',
comments.snapshotItem(i), null, XPathResult.STRING_TYPE, null);
if (author.stringValue === 'Steve') {
var comment = document.evaluate (
'article[@class=\'comment\']/div[@class=\'comment-content\']',
comments.snapshotItem(i),
null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
/* Should just be the one, but replace all just in case */
for (var j = 0; j < comment.snapshotLength; j++) {
comment.snapshotItem (j).innerHTML = 'Usual trolling drivel’;
}
}
}
4) In Window->Extensions (on mac), Tools->Extensions (on Linux), no idea on windows, click “Load unpacked extension” (you may need to tick “Developer mode” for this option to appear) and select the directory you created at step 1.
5) Enjoy troll free comments.
Hopefully the comment box allows pre tags, otherwise it might screw up the content…
Bloke in Wales
Cool, looks like it mostly survived unscathed. It just ate the formatting and some <p> around the replacement text.
Mr Ecks
Booting Steveo isn’t worth the chance of fucking up your computer.
A masterly argument from Junior Evil tho’–political pig are irrational –so lets stay in an organisation committed to giving the bastards ever more power over every aspect of our lives.
Gareth
Osborne’s report repeatedly sells the UK economy as open, competitive and dynamic.
Yet he also wants us to believe that Leaving, with the chance of being even more open, competitive and dynamic (through no longer needing to converge with EU economy and no longer needing to wait for the EU to agree trade deals on our behalf) will leave us worse off than the EU baseline.
The Inimitable Steve
Does anybody believe government reports these days?
Jim
@ EU S(hill)teve: we can assume UK politicians will act logically, or rather as we voted for them, we bear the responsibility if they prove to be working to our detriment (obviously different pols will have different views as whats best for the UK, but I think its fair to assume none of them are actively working to harm the UK, apart from maybe Jeremy Corbyn, but hopefully he’s going nowhere near the levers of power).
So that leaves the remaining EU politicians. Will they act irrationally to harm themselves in order to harm the UK as well? Obviously we can expect them to act to harm the UK if it helps them, thats rational self interest. But will they actually cut their noses off to spite their faces? And if they are the sort to do exactly that, why should we ally ourselves with them at all? For example how do we know they aren’t secretly working to our detriment behind the scenes within the EU right now? After all they hate us so much (you tell us) that if we leave they’ll do all manner of nasties to us, so why wouldn’t they be doing nasties to us right now?
You can’t go from fraternal feelings to bitter hatred overnight just like that, or if you do you’re unhinged, and who wants to be associated with psychopaths? Better off to be well away from it all, even if it costs you a bit of £££, its safer in the long run not to be chained to madmen.
jgh
Getting divorced impacted me negatively financially – I no longer have access to her savings as a fiscal buffer and to reduce my mortgage interest rate – but I feel much better for it and have greater degrees for freedom in future decision-making.
The Inimitable Steve
Jim – I reckon the EU will punish us if we vote to stay in.
It’ll be taken as a green light to ram more integration down our throats while the UK’s moral and political resistance is at its weakest, and simultaneously encourager les autres who might be thinking they can strong-arm (or noodle-arm, in Cameron’s case) the EU into redefining their terms of membership.
So a vote to Remain is a vote for the City of London to be looted by the Eurocrats, and I expect they’ll force us to take our “fair share” of those “refugees” Mrs Merkel so kindly invited in as well.
This is our last chance to democratically extricate ourselves from the Euroblob. We either get our country back peacefully now, or violently later.
Mr Ecks
Stephan Molyneux calls it right.
In the face of an evil–say slavery–the line should not be “No slaves are being freed until we’ve worked out absolutely every detail of who is going to do the work the slaves do now”. No slaves would ever be freed with that type of thought. We end the evil and then figure it out. Something will come along.
“We can’t allow the Industrial Revolution until someone has figured out every detail of how trains will effect the economy” We’d still be waiting for the age of the train.
Rob
The 6% bit is dubious, but still – a 6% smaller economy in return for national sovereignty.
That’s not a bad deal.
tomsmith
Good article Tim.
Monoi
Is it me or hasn’t the gdp of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, been less than stellar in the last few years? Not to mention their unemployment numbers.
Did they leave the EU and we weren’t told?
The Stigler
The Inimitable Steve,
These days? I think perhaps they were always suspect, but in the past we didn’t have scrutiny like we do now. And journalists, lazy fuckers most of them, don’t count.
I imagine that most of the reports suggesting giving electric shocks to homosexuals would have been easily torn apart if we’d had the internet.
CHF
“Solution’s simple isn’t it – get rid of Osborne.”
Yes, he’s certainly been a big disappointment all round.
Nice enough in person, I’ve been told, but he’s more Gordon than Gordon with this stuff.
Dave
Jim>
“we can assume UK politicians will act logically, or rather as we voted for them, we bear the responsibility if they prove to be working to our detriment ”
So what? Tim’s point relies on the frankly reality-defying notion that our politicians, however accountable to us they may be, have ever or will ever implement a sensible trade policy.
If they won’t, then the Treasury figures are correct. Cameron’s flat-out telling you that if we leave the EU, to remain in power he’ll have to pursue isolationist policies despite their stupidity. That’s the one kind of statement from a politician you can believe.
James g
One thing I’m not clear about is whether unilateral free trade is always the best policy?
Henry Marsh
Under Brexit, we can replace politicians that implement bad trade policy.
Not so easy under Remain.
Dave
James G>
Yes, always. Of course, immigration and trade are very nearly the same thing there.
Henry>
Of course we _could_ – but it’s never happened. The simple hard facts are that being in the EU has (at least) coincided with the closest thing to unilateral free trade we’ve had in centuries. It was just a (rare) silly argument from Tim: whatever you think on In/Out, it’s not an argument that stands up for a moment.
Dave
Anyway, what do the other parts of Osborne’s junk have to say about Brexit?
Henry Marsh
“Of course we _could_ – but it’s never happened”
I think a lot of politicians have lost jobs due to bad trade policy, from the Corn Laws, to the debauched openly pro-EU farmer anti-Africa stance taken by the Lib Dems at GE2015.
Mr Ecks
Stepping up for Jnr now Dave?
We are supposed to stay attached to a nascent dictatorship or Pig-Fuck will “have” to run bad policies.
What cock-rot–even for you Dave.
Having ditched the external gang of tinpot tyrants the next step is to be rid of native shite.
We don’t have free trade because political shit on all sides don’t want free trade. Where is the gelt for those cunts if people realise we don’t need them and never did.
Dave
Henry>
Sure, politicians have lost jobs. (Not sure citing an instance of EU policy costing a job is quite what you meant, but…) However.
The question is whether we’ve ever had sensible trade policy, not whether politicians have ever been sacked.
Ecksy>
If you slowed down a bit and read what people actually wrote, maybe your frothing explosions wouldn’t be quite so frequent or quite so irrelevant to anything anyone else has said.
Mr Ecks
Which bit of “We don’t have free trade because the political scum don’t want it” is beyond your comprehension Dave?
Henry Marsh
@Dave – you’ve changed the question to one that is not relevant to the referendum.
The number one issue at most GEs is the state of the economy, and trade accounts for all of the measured economy. “It’s the economy stupid”. Getting rid of politicians who are bad for the economy, or keeping the ones that seem to have a decent grasp of things, really is what it’s about.
Dave
Henry>
It’s Tim’s point, not mine. He argued that the Treasury statement was at best disingenuous, because it assumed we wouldn’t pursue a policy of unilateral free trade following hypothetical Brexit. I merely pointed out that it’s the correct assumption given that we’ve never had anything approaching a sane trade policy.
As I said before, regardless of where you stand on Brexit – and I don’t really stand anywhere, the whole thing strikes me as arguing over which fragrance of sewage you’d pick – this particular argument doesn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
Mr Ecks
There are no sane “trade policies”. They are all political meddling with markets. People have been trading since before the Stone Age. All political scum have ever done is take a cut.
Henry Marsh
Nope Dave, it was explicitly your point – my point was that under Brexit it is easier to replace politicians that make bad trade policy. Your counter to that point is that it was plain wrong. Your reasoning was that there has never been an occurrence of a politician kicked out for making bad policy on trade, that ease of kicking out politicians who affect your life is not changed by the outcome of the EU membership decision.
Monty
Some of the immigration projections in that Treasury report are just bizarre. They have assumed that immigration will fall to 180000 pa by 2021 if we stay in. That’s nonsense-we’d have our arms twisted up our backs to take our “fair share” of Merkels multitudes, and there are millions more preparing to make the trip, having seen that the risks of being turned back are minimal. Plus the Turkish horde, as per Merkel’s promised concessions.
Then the report says they have made no growth assumptions dependant on immigration. I’m not surprised- the cost of that many MENA immigrants, with their high levels of hostility, criminality and violence, would be ruinous.
To me, the overwhelming advantage of Brexit will be the return of our sovereignty, the ability to chart our own course, and run our affairs according to our own priorities.
CHF
“The NFU is clear tonight – British farmers are better of in a reformed European Union” (Cameron tweet)
I found several things interesting about this: Conservative PM praises trade union; why is there a trade union for farmers at all? is it like the strange idea of a “national herd”; “reformed” (really? what changed?).
CHF
“why is there a trade union for farmers at all?”
I didn’t know the background. It’s rather quaint.
Alastair Harris
The tactical error is how well it demonstrates that the clowns are not competent to handle the exit negotiations. The logical response should be to go for the man. At least Gove gets it.
Alastair Harris
Of course you could also argue for a counter document,showing a forecast gain from leaving. Time it to disrupt May’s speech on security. It should also emphasise the risks of remain. The likelihood and impact of the failure of the euro. The effect of Brussels led banking regulation on the city. The stagnation of industry under their energy policies.
Tim – You assume UK and EU politicians will act logically. Why?
Tim,
So Osborne, in trying to plug the EU, says a -6% effect on GDP – whereas Minford says a +3% effect on GDP.
Solution’s simple isn’t it – get rid of Osborne.
Troll filter, for those running Chrome:
1) Create a new directory somewhere
2) Cut and paste this into a file in your new directory called ‘manifest.json’:
{
“manifest_version”: 2,
“name”: “Troll Filter”,
“description”: “This script filters out the irritating little turds clinging to the comments”,
“version”: “0.1”,
“content_scripts”: [{
“matches”: [“*://www.timworstall.com/*”, “*://www.timworstall.com/*”],
“include_globs”: [“*timworstall.com/????/??/??/*”],
“js”: [“trollfilter.js”]
}]
}
3) Cut and paste this into a file in your new directory called ‘trollfilter.js’:
var comments = document.evaluate(
‘//div[@id=\’comments\’]/ol[@class=\’commentlist\’]/li’, document,
null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for (var i = 0; i < comments.snapshotLength; i++) {
var author = document.evaluate(
'article[@class=\'comment\']/footer/div[contains(@class, \'comment-author\')]/cite[@class=\'fn\']/descendant::text()',
comments.snapshotItem(i), null, XPathResult.STRING_TYPE, null);
if (author.stringValue === 'Steve') {
var comment = document.evaluate (
'article[@class=\'comment\']/div[@class=\'comment-content\']',
comments.snapshotItem(i),
null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
/* Should just be the one, but replace all just in case */
for (var j = 0; j < comment.snapshotLength; j++) {
comment.snapshotItem (j).innerHTML = 'Usual trolling drivel’;
}
}
}
4) In Window->Extensions (on mac), Tools->Extensions (on Linux), no idea on windows, click “Load unpacked extension” (you may need to tick “Developer mode” for this option to appear) and select the directory you created at step 1.
5) Enjoy troll free comments.
Hopefully the comment box allows pre tags, otherwise it might screw up the content…
Cool, looks like it mostly survived unscathed. It just ate the formatting and some <p> around the replacement text.
Booting Steveo isn’t worth the chance of fucking up your computer.
A masterly argument from Junior Evil tho’–political pig are irrational –so lets stay in an organisation committed to giving the bastards ever more power over every aspect of our lives.
Osborne’s report repeatedly sells the UK economy as open, competitive and dynamic.
Yet he also wants us to believe that Leaving, with the chance of being even more open, competitive and dynamic (through no longer needing to converge with EU economy and no longer needing to wait for the EU to agree trade deals on our behalf) will leave us worse off than the EU baseline.
Does anybody believe government reports these days?
@ EU S(hill)teve: we can assume UK politicians will act logically, or rather as we voted for them, we bear the responsibility if they prove to be working to our detriment (obviously different pols will have different views as whats best for the UK, but I think its fair to assume none of them are actively working to harm the UK, apart from maybe Jeremy Corbyn, but hopefully he’s going nowhere near the levers of power).
So that leaves the remaining EU politicians. Will they act irrationally to harm themselves in order to harm the UK as well? Obviously we can expect them to act to harm the UK if it helps them, thats rational self interest. But will they actually cut their noses off to spite their faces? And if they are the sort to do exactly that, why should we ally ourselves with them at all? For example how do we know they aren’t secretly working to our detriment behind the scenes within the EU right now? After all they hate us so much (you tell us) that if we leave they’ll do all manner of nasties to us, so why wouldn’t they be doing nasties to us right now?
You can’t go from fraternal feelings to bitter hatred overnight just like that, or if you do you’re unhinged, and who wants to be associated with psychopaths? Better off to be well away from it all, even if it costs you a bit of £££, its safer in the long run not to be chained to madmen.
Getting divorced impacted me negatively financially – I no longer have access to her savings as a fiscal buffer and to reduce my mortgage interest rate – but I feel much better for it and have greater degrees for freedom in future decision-making.
Jim – I reckon the EU will punish us if we vote to stay in.
It’ll be taken as a green light to ram more integration down our throats while the UK’s moral and political resistance is at its weakest, and simultaneously encourager les autres who might be thinking they can strong-arm (or noodle-arm, in Cameron’s case) the EU into redefining their terms of membership.
So a vote to Remain is a vote for the City of London to be looted by the Eurocrats, and I expect they’ll force us to take our “fair share” of those “refugees” Mrs Merkel so kindly invited in as well.
This is our last chance to democratically extricate ourselves from the Euroblob. We either get our country back peacefully now, or violently later.
Stephan Molyneux calls it right.
In the face of an evil–say slavery–the line should not be “No slaves are being freed until we’ve worked out absolutely every detail of who is going to do the work the slaves do now”. No slaves would ever be freed with that type of thought. We end the evil and then figure it out. Something will come along.
“We can’t allow the Industrial Revolution until someone has figured out every detail of how trains will effect the economy” We’d still be waiting for the age of the train.
The 6% bit is dubious, but still – a 6% smaller economy in return for national sovereignty.
That’s not a bad deal.
Good article Tim.
Is it me or hasn’t the gdp of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, been less than stellar in the last few years? Not to mention their unemployment numbers.
Did they leave the EU and we weren’t told?
The Inimitable Steve,
These days? I think perhaps they were always suspect, but in the past we didn’t have scrutiny like we do now. And journalists, lazy fuckers most of them, don’t count.
I imagine that most of the reports suggesting giving electric shocks to homosexuals would have been easily torn apart if we’d had the internet.
“Solution’s simple isn’t it – get rid of Osborne.”
Yes, he’s certainly been a big disappointment all round.
Nice enough in person, I’ve been told, but he’s more Gordon than Gordon with this stuff.
Jim>
“we can assume UK politicians will act logically, or rather as we voted for them, we bear the responsibility if they prove to be working to our detriment ”
So what? Tim’s point relies on the frankly reality-defying notion that our politicians, however accountable to us they may be, have ever or will ever implement a sensible trade policy.
If they won’t, then the Treasury figures are correct. Cameron’s flat-out telling you that if we leave the EU, to remain in power he’ll have to pursue isolationist policies despite their stupidity. That’s the one kind of statement from a politician you can believe.
One thing I’m not clear about is whether unilateral free trade is always the best policy?
Under Brexit, we can replace politicians that implement bad trade policy.
Not so easy under Remain.
James G>
Yes, always. Of course, immigration and trade are very nearly the same thing there.
Henry>
Of course we _could_ – but it’s never happened. The simple hard facts are that being in the EU has (at least) coincided with the closest thing to unilateral free trade we’ve had in centuries. It was just a (rare) silly argument from Tim: whatever you think on In/Out, it’s not an argument that stands up for a moment.
Anyway, what do the other parts of Osborne’s junk have to say about Brexit?
“Of course we _could_ – but it’s never happened”
I think a lot of politicians have lost jobs due to bad trade policy, from the Corn Laws, to the debauched openly pro-EU farmer anti-Africa stance taken by the Lib Dems at GE2015.
Stepping up for Jnr now Dave?
We are supposed to stay attached to a nascent dictatorship or Pig-Fuck will “have” to run bad policies.
What cock-rot–even for you Dave.
Having ditched the external gang of tinpot tyrants the next step is to be rid of native shite.
We don’t have free trade because political shit on all sides don’t want free trade. Where is the gelt for those cunts if people realise we don’t need them and never did.
Henry>
Sure, politicians have lost jobs. (Not sure citing an instance of EU policy costing a job is quite what you meant, but…) However.
The question is whether we’ve ever had sensible trade policy, not whether politicians have ever been sacked.
Ecksy>
If you slowed down a bit and read what people actually wrote, maybe your frothing explosions wouldn’t be quite so frequent or quite so irrelevant to anything anyone else has said.
Which bit of “We don’t have free trade because the political scum don’t want it” is beyond your comprehension Dave?
@Dave – you’ve changed the question to one that is not relevant to the referendum.
The number one issue at most GEs is the state of the economy, and trade accounts for all of the measured economy. “It’s the economy stupid”. Getting rid of politicians who are bad for the economy, or keeping the ones that seem to have a decent grasp of things, really is what it’s about.
Henry>
It’s Tim’s point, not mine. He argued that the Treasury statement was at best disingenuous, because it assumed we wouldn’t pursue a policy of unilateral free trade following hypothetical Brexit. I merely pointed out that it’s the correct assumption given that we’ve never had anything approaching a sane trade policy.
As I said before, regardless of where you stand on Brexit – and I don’t really stand anywhere, the whole thing strikes me as arguing over which fragrance of sewage you’d pick – this particular argument doesn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
There are no sane “trade policies”. They are all political meddling with markets. People have been trading since before the Stone Age. All political scum have ever done is take a cut.
Nope Dave, it was explicitly your point – my point was that under Brexit it is easier to replace politicians that make bad trade policy. Your counter to that point is that it was plain wrong. Your reasoning was that there has never been an occurrence of a politician kicked out for making bad policy on trade, that ease of kicking out politicians who affect your life is not changed by the outcome of the EU membership decision.
Some of the immigration projections in that Treasury report are just bizarre. They have assumed that immigration will fall to 180000 pa by 2021 if we stay in. That’s nonsense-we’d have our arms twisted up our backs to take our “fair share” of Merkels multitudes, and there are millions more preparing to make the trip, having seen that the risks of being turned back are minimal. Plus the Turkish horde, as per Merkel’s promised concessions.
Then the report says they have made no growth assumptions dependant on immigration. I’m not surprised- the cost of that many MENA immigrants, with their high levels of hostility, criminality and violence, would be ruinous.
To me, the overwhelming advantage of Brexit will be the return of our sovereignty, the ability to chart our own course, and run our affairs according to our own priorities.
“The NFU is clear tonight – British farmers are better of in a reformed European Union” (Cameron tweet)
I found several things interesting about this: Conservative PM praises trade union; why is there a trade union for farmers at all? is it like the strange idea of a “national herd”; “reformed” (really? what changed?).
“why is there a trade union for farmers at all?”
I didn’t know the background. It’s rather quaint.
The tactical error is how well it demonstrates that the clowns are not competent to handle the exit negotiations. The logical response should be to go for the man. At least Gove gets it.
Of course you could also argue for a counter document,showing a forecast gain from leaving. Time it to disrupt May’s speech on security. It should also emphasise the risks of remain. The likelihood and impact of the failure of the euro. The effect of Brussels led banking regulation on the city. The stagnation of industry under their energy policies.