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How Wrong They Were!

Found a little blast from the past in my inbox earlier from a well known economist. We do like poking fun at NewStatesman.

17 thoughts on “How Wrong They Were!”

  1. How very interesting!

    His arguments are:

    1 – Every time I hear Trump I dislike him more and see him as a racist, so obviously not many people will vote for him because they will be thinking like me.

    2 – I cannot see any groundswell of discontent with the EU, so there isn’t one, and this referendum is just an accident. People will get bored and vote for a quiet life by remaining in the EU.

    In both cases he is simply ignoring the large parts of the electorate who do not think like him – indeed, he does not seem to recognise that they are there. It is a classic example of thinking inside the left-wing bubble…

  2. Brexit Wednesday in EU Parl

    “Guilty Pleasure” says Vice President Mairad AlBeeb

    – Molly Scott Cato, the Green party MEP, starts her speech by saying that she feels she is about to cry. Now is not the time to campaign to return to rejoin the EU, she says. But she says it is important to keep the hope alive. She ends:

    I hold in my heart the knowledge that one day I will be back in this chamber, celebrating our return to Europe.

    As she finishes she gets emotional and tearful. She gets a loud and long standing ovation.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Buts8BW_PI
    “Comments are turned off”

    Another, like Mairad AlBeeb, who believe EU = Europe

    – Dan Hannan: “EU is losing a bad tenant and gaining a good neighbour”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12w9NePsXNY
    “Comments are turned off”

    Bad? Reluctant more accurate imo
    Tenant? Prisoner imo

    – Tory leader Geoffrey Van Orden in his EU farewell speech: UK will be a leading power in Europe –
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMz_XhpxuE
    “Comments are turned off”

    – Jussi(?) Finnish Eurosceptic MEP: Brexit Party I love you guys, UK will triumph outside EU
    youtube.com/watch?v=9gCGFClbVjA
    “Comments are turned off”

    @Dennis

    – :chortle

  3. Caller slams Nigel Farage’s “disgraceful” behaviour in the EU Parliament Cathedral
    “You may speak for 1 minute” … “Wrong speak verboten, you’re silenced” “Obey, Obey; Heil Ursula”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dw3SlB5l4M

    The moment Nigel Farage realised EU was fundamently undemocratic and Brexit had to happen
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNNQHSl-vPI

    1st of Feb the Battle of Britain flight should fly over London to celebrate VEUSSR day

    Nigel Farage, the Best Prime Minister we will never have

    Alastair Stewart steps down from ITV News amid race row over tweet | Good Morning Britain
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGb9lxPsgXg
    “Comments are turned off”

    Good point by host “Did Stewart know he was black”, not that it matters; can’t imagine a black being vilified for calling a hairy old white chap a polar bear/yeti. Black woman destroyed her own argument with “if he, anyone might take offence”

  4. It isn’t so much that he was wrong – forecasting the future is extremely difficult and people could make lots and lots of money if they could – it is that such is their insufferable, overwhelming self-regard they do not even consider that they might be wrong, despite a long track record of being so in the past. And worse, others do not consider they are wrong, too.

    Possibly the greatest example is Erlich – still banging his drum and promoted with breathless awe by the Guardian, New Statesman, etc, despite being completely wrong for the best part of four decades.

  5. @CM: aye, and it used to have an amusing competition for writing parodies. But it was still a pretty poor rag.

    WhenIwasbutalad the News of the World carried a good golf column. Or so the old boys at the golf club insisted.

  6. @Andrew C

    David Webb makes my point about Left, she accused him of being white for his views.

    Stewart didn’t accuse twat of being white, brown, yellow, black. He quoted Shakespeare (Again) with no knowledge of twat’s colour.

    If one must ascertain someone’s colour before speaking to them, that is racist as colour is influencing speech

  7. Bloke in Costa Rica

    I am smarter than all but a relatively small fraction of the human race (this isn’t boasting; merely a statement of fact). I am smarter than the overwhelming majority of journalists. I do not claim to be smart enough to solve the world’s problems of even to have anything other than the most general idea of how to ameliorate them, because I am in accordance with Hayek et al. who state that no such person exists. Therefore I intrinsically discount anyone in the media who makes de haut en bas pronouncements because my assumption is that if I do not know the answer to something then a fortiori neither does he. It saves an awful lot of time.

  8. @BiCR There are a few things you can know for sure – or so close to being “for sure” that the distinction doesn’t matter.

    Many of them concern things that cannot be right – here one of the great tools is Thermodynamics. That’s probably the main strength of economics and economic history too – they can give you a good guide to what won’t work.

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