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Nope, not getting it

He said, and I’ll share the video just so you can check this, that the first two priorities for post-Brexit Britain (and that is the right word, because it’s not clear by how much Northern Ireland will ever be post-Brexit) are to control migration and to create freeports.

Nothing I have yet seen so starkly states what Brexit is all about.

For Johnson the first objective of Brexit is to place greater controls on labour. The intention is to ensure that by controlling free movement labour itself can be controlled, and so too can its price be kept at rates the government would desire. And that is low, of course.

Umm, an influx of labour reduces the price of labour, no? So not having the influx lowers it again? Not sure that quite works really.

And let’s not for a moment pretend that any freeport activity supports markets: creating ring fences always creates unlevel playing fields that will always, by definition and in practice, undermine effective markets.

Well, that pretty much screws over the idea of national boundaries, jurisdictions, then doesn’t it? Even national tax systems…..

20 thoughts on “Nope, not getting it”

  1. Thumbs up and thumbs down are all very well, but how about a symbol for “Stick your thumb up your bum”?

  2. Dennis, He Who Has A Degree In Economics

    And let’s not for a moment pretend that any freeport activity supports markets: creating ring fences always creates unlevel playing fields that will always, by definition and in practice, undermine effective markets.

    Gibberish. Complete, total, brain-dead gibberish.

  3. Bloke in Costa Rica

    I imagine Murphy is more than usually dyspeptic this morning. I do wish he could be taunted more regularly, face to face.

    How do I “login” to get thumb-up-bum capability?

  4. I’m disappointed with the thumb twiddling. Earlier I bestowed lots of thumbs to all and sundry and was the happy recipient of both plus and minus thumbs. Then thumbs in boxes with counters made a brief appearance annihilating earlier scores and now we have thumbs for the select who are able to log in.

    It would splendid if this could be sorted out otherwise m’Lud will decamp to Ingrid’s, BiG will just sit in a plane and look at his watch and Andrew C will probably take up carpentry to fill his spare time.

    For my part, I just want to scroll quickly past the posts without reading them (I call this the Newmie Skim) and award thumbs willy nilly. Those who wish to do insalubrious things with thumbs take heed – this is a family blog and you will defo rake up down-thumbs from yours truly.

  5. “…otherwise m’Lud will decamp to Ingrid’s, BiG will just sit in a plane and look at his watch and Andrew C will probably take up carpentry to fill his spare time.”

    Or combat insanity on the website of The Times, as Chris Miller and I do…

  6. Not forgetting my Basque waitress, Mr B.

    Well, turns out she’s from Weston-super-Mare. But she sports a basque.

    Mr Phrastus, must I subscribe to The Thunderer in order pitch up and tease its readers, or can anyone do it?

  7. @Richard

    Thumbs / Ticks

    Bin please, too many wasted empty lines in each post. Really annoying on a small screen

  8. Eh? Not since Heinrich Hoffman’s tale of the Daumenlutscher have thumbs received such short shrift as they have here today.

    Glad you reminded me of your waitress friend and her foundation garments, m’Lud. I had always believed that Weston-super-Mare was the consort of Champion the Wonderhorse but it turns out to be a source of sauce to the lubricious, libidinous and lascivious. Respeck!

  9. Mr Phrastus, must I subscribe to The Thunderer in order pitch up and tease its readers, or can anyone do it?

    I’m afraid so, M’Lud. This does something to prevent their comments descending to the level of the ‘Ndraguia, though there remain many clueless wonders. And the number of times I see ‘of’ for ‘have’ – these are Times readers for heaven’s sake!

  10. “An influx of labour reduces the price of labour…”

    Don’t disagree, but… Thatcher’s revolution in the early 80s resulted in a white-collar jobs boom. Virtually every other month it seemed I was being summoned to the Boss’s office and plied with another rise to stop me jumping ship. Of course back then there wasn’t an endless supply of migrant labour to challenge my position. And while it’s tempting to blame the current difficulties related to social mobility on better educated/qualified migrants, the real competition for jobs came from massed ranks of middle-class girls (girly swots) entering what had previously been an all-male environment. They effectively put an end to the rise of white working-class boys. Not blaming the girls, bless them; just acknowledging social change.

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