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General Election 2017

Who will you be voting for on June 8th

  • Conservative

    Votes: 15 32.6%

  • Labour

    Votes: 21 45.7%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 3 6.5%

  • UKIP

    Votes: 3 6.5%

  • Green

    Votes: 1 2.2%

  • Other

    Votes: 3 6.5%
  • Total voters
    46
The German car figures back you up, Andy - someone somewhere has got a lot of money (though of course that does also include quite a few lower end VWs - I won't bore everyone with the breakdown).
Though the statement seems to suggest they aren't that worried about the impact of Brexit. It was a very long interview piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung (a fairly 'conservative' national paper) and he said that the industry was becoming increasingly focused on the Chinese market, while they saw the US market as similarly important and were able to deal quite happily with the US tarifs.
 
HS2 is a vanity project (IMO) but will have little impact on most local elections (IMO, again).
 
So Paul Nuttall will be standing in Boston and Skegness.

Isn't it time that parliamentary candidates actually lived in the constituency for some minimum time before being eligible?

Same goes for McEvil... and plenty of others.
 
can we get off this heavy stuff and get back to Esther she was in Asda northwich this morning I think she we be an excellent choice for Tatton, George osbourne would only frequent Waitrose and Graham evans is a floater.VOTE ESTHER YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE.she drew quite a crowd especially when she was selecting items from the bottom shelf
 
Alan M said:
The German car figures back you up, Andy - someone somewhere has got a lot of money (though of course that does also include quite a few lower end VWs - I won't bore everyone with the breakdown).
Though the statement seems to suggest they aren't that worried about the impact of Brexit. It was a very long interview piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung (a fairly 'conservative' national paper) and he said that the industry was becoming increasingly focused on the Chinese market, while they saw the US market as similarly important and were able to deal quite happily with the US tarifs.
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Correct Alan, the focus is increasingly on US and Chinese markets, and other emerging markets such as India and Brazil.

So why shackle ourselves the the EUs shrinking economy? And why shackle ourselves to an organisation that is incapable of signing a trade deal with the likes of China and the US?
 
German car makers are perfectly capable of doing deals with the US and China without being held back by any EU shackles. Perhaps those shackles are a figment of some people's imagination, or a useful construct to support a wider standpoint?
 
It's just something that we'll never agree on, and we could go on and bore the forum with the same conversations that we're had this time last year.

Back to the 2017 election. Labour keep promising massive spending hikes, and rises in many things. Where is this money coming from? Their proposed rise in corporation tax (which I really don't agree with) will only go so far.

Do Labour have a money tree? Or have they just not learnt the basic lessons from their last run in Government?
 
Who knows what the Tories will be doing with taxes? May did nothing to clarify the situation this morning.

The more I watch her and her badly staged attempts at 'getting out there and meeting the people' the more I think she's way out of her depth. Best of a very, very bad bunch when it came to the Conservative leadership decision last year.
 
Nicki said:
Who knows what the Tories will be doing with taxes? May did nothing to clarify the situation this morning.

The more I watch her and her badly staged attempts at 'getting out there and meeting the people' the more I think she's way out of her depth. Best of a very, very bad bunch when it came to the Conservative leadership decision last year.
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May is awkward in front of the camera, don't think she's out of her depth, I think it's just who she is. Very different from air brushed Dave Cameron and shouty Trump.

It appears to me, in a last ditch attempt, Labour are making lots and lots of promises that even they know they can't afford. Problem is if that's the case and they do win, is that they'll have a manifesto that they can't afford to implement, at which case, they'll either make a right mess of the economy again and lose the public again, or fulfill non of their promises and lose the public agin that way.

He's going for the Left Wing populist approach, after the success of the Right Wing populism recently. Will be interesting see whether it's populism that people are buying in to, or is the political pendulum just swinging right.
 
Perhaps less a political pendulum and more a personality issue (low confidence in Corbyn) with a dose of Brexit 'confusing' this particular election. It's far from a typical case.

If it IS a pendulum swing to the right, you can guarantee it will swing back to the left at some point. There's nothing quite as swingy as politics... or pendulums.
 
Andy said:
It's just something that we'll never agree on
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That's the second time (the other was housing) that you've swerved the point and opted not to answer it. ;)

As for financing their policies, that is indeed Labour's weakness, particularly in the eyes of the wider electorate, the ones they have to convince to swing behind them, to continue with the grandfather clock analogy. But we are still in the pre-manifesto stage for all parties. There is always a chance that they will come up with some figures to back up their Keynesian approach (although they did last time, but not enough people were nerdy enough to read the detail). Which brings us back to image politics - I have the sense that some of the "May is not as strong as she claims to be" messages are beginning to get through (cut and run election, avoiding public debates, avoiding meeting real people, needing to shore up her slender majority, reliance on catchphrases rather than policies, hiding behind 'the will of the people', etc), but whether that will backfire on a Labour leadership which clearly lacks a few characteristics of its own in the strength department, time will tell.
 
Alan M said:
That's the second time (the other was housing) that you've swerved the point and opted not to answer it. ;)
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Well, if you feel I've swerved the point I'll respond. Not now however, I'm going the pub, and that's far more important.

Very easy from your big house in the South of England telling us uneducated Northern folk why Brexit was a bad idea. But unfortunately it's that sort of "pseudo-intellectualism" that's losing the Left elections all over. ;)
 
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I've gone way past bothering to spout on Brexit being a bad thing. That ship has sailed. I'm now concerned about the flavour of Brexit. And I was educated up North (SJD, Sheffield & Manchester), there's nothing "pseudo" about my intellect, and my house is not particularly big. ;)
 
Andy said:
Correct Alan, the focus is increasingly on US and Chinese markets, and other emerging markets such as India and Brazil.
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No reason why Britain can't trade with countries such as the US, China, India and Brazil inside the EU. We can do both. The EU is larger than all these markets you mention as I'll cover in my next point.

Andy said:
So why shackle ourselves the the EUs shrinking economy?
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Fact is the EU remains the largest economy in the world in terms of GDP per head, the world's largest trading block, the world's largest trader on manufactured goods and services and the top trading partner for 80 countries including Britain, where around half of our exports go to the EU. So why turn our backs on something that has clearly been hugely beneficial to our economy?

I voted remain last June in the belief that our economy is far stronger in the EU and I maintain that to this day. We won't know the true implications of Brexit on our economy until we've left the EU and know what trading deal (if any?) May can secure. I don't hold out much faith in her to deliver anything like the deal we need to ensure the least damage.
 
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Not too much joy from Brazil with a couple of years' recession behind them and rising unemployment. A couple of Brazilian acquaintances here tell me they've gone a long way (downwards) since the heady days of being hailed as one of the BRIC economies and taking on the Rio Olympics.

But no worries, there are plenty of other countries queuing up to do trade deals ....
And of course we can always trade with individual EU countries without an EU trade deal - that will even possibly generate employment in the sectors of international law and trade negotiators ...
 
Ben said:
No reason why Britain can't trade with countries such as the US, China, India and Brazil inside the EU. We can do both. The EU is larger than all these markets you mention as I'll cover in my next point.

Fact is the EU remains the largest economy in the world in terms of GDP per head, the world's largest trading block, the world's largest trader on manufactured goods and services and the top trading partner for 80 countries including Britain, where around half of our exports go to the EU. So why turn our backs on something that has clearly been hugely beneficial to our economy?

I voted remain last June in the belief that our economy is far stronger in the EU and I maintain that to this day. We won't know the true implications of Brexit on our economy until we've left the EU and know what trading deal (if any?) May can secure. I don't hold out much faith in her to deliver anything like the deal we need to ensure the least damage.
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upload_2017-5-1_14-34-3.png

The EU does have the largest GDP, however it is shrinking.

With the UK leaving, and the likes of Italy and France almost certainly on their way to their own exit, the nominal GDP suddenly wouldn't look so large.
 
Stats will show you anything.
This one from tradingeconomics.com shows a growth rate of 1.90 in the most recent quarter. That's an interesting definition of "shrinking" ;)
european-union-gdp-annual-growth-rate.png


Add to that another table (which doesn't copy across very well) showing EU GDP per capita as being at its highest ever level and there's further evidence of a negative contraction

Last Previous Highest Lowest Unit
GDP Annual Growth Rate 1.90 1.90 4.60 -5.40 percent
GDP Per Capita 35099.89 34432.16 35099.89 10065.65 USD
GDP Per Capita Ppp 35630.30 34925.59 35630.30 24872.05 USD
 
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