Britse politiek #22 London's Burning!

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Op donderdag 23 november 2017 17:46 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

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Ach, dat doet het hier ook

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That's the key takeaway from two influential reports published just a day after the U.K. Treasury admitted that a weaker outlook for growth -- exacerbated by Brexit -- meant Britain had fallen out of the world's top five economies.
The Resolution Foundation, a non-partisan think tank, said that average earnings, when adjusted for inflation, are likely to stay below the level they hit before the global financial crisis until the start of 2025. That means 17 years without a pay hike.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, the country's leading independent economic research institute, gave a similarly dire warning.
Britain's independent Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) on Wednesday slashed its growth forecast for this year from 2% to 1.5%. The watchdog said that weak productivity means growth won't pick up until 2021, and it cited Brexit as one factor.

Resolution Foundation described the OBR forecasts as "truly catastrophic," and warned that the U.K. faces its longest period of declining living standards since records began in the 1950s.
'Unremittingly grim'
It based its projection of earnings in 2025 on OBR forecasts that run to 2022, showing that real wages will still be £1,000 below the pre-crisis peak at that point.
"The future for family finances implied by yesterday's forecasts is unremittingly grim," the group said in its report.
Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said the forecasts suggest that economic production per person in 2021 will be 3.5% less than what was expected in March 2016.
"That's a loss of £65 billion to the economy," he noted. "We are in danger of losing not just one but getting on for two decades of earnings growth," he said.
The sharp downgrades underscore the tough economic conditions under which Britain will depart the European Union in March 2019.
Britain was until recently one of the strongest economies in the bloc. But it's now likely to lag many other advanced economies, including the United States and some of its former partners in the EU, for years.
Related: Brexit Britain slashes growth forecast
The pain has already set in for many Brits.
The pound has dropped 12% against the dollar since the Brexit vote in June 2016, forcing them to pay higher prices for imported goods.
Wages aren't keeping pace with inflation, which now stands at 3%. Household debt has been growing by about 4% a year, and the Bank of England has squeezed consumers by hiking interest rates for the first time in a decade.
Business investment has slowed and consumer spending fell the most in four years in October, according to Visa.
The weak growth outlook makes it even more vital that Britain is able to negotiate continued trade access to EU markets after Brexit. But there's no guarantee of a deal with the EU yet -- talks are stuck on the terms of divorce.
Meanwhile, the Brexit bills are piling up.
Treasury chief Philip Hammond said Wednesday that he had set aside £3 billion ($4 billion) to prepare for Brexit over the next two years. And the EU divorce bill is likely to cost the U.K. tens of billions of pounds.

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Former minister describes deal involved appointment by prime minister David Cameron of Andy Coulson, former News of the World editor, to position at No 10

David Cameron may have done “some sort of a deal” with Rupert Murdoch to win the Sun’s support for the Conservatives in the 2010 general election, Ken Clarke, the former justice secretary, has claimed.

“Quite how David Cameron got the Sun out of the hands of Gordon Brown I shall never know,” Clarke said. “Rupert would never let Tony [Blair – Brown’s predecessor] down because Tony had backed the Iraq war. Maybe it was some sort of a deal. David would not tell me what it was. Suddenly we got the Murdoch empire on our side.”

The Sun switched its support to the Conservatives in 2010 after backing Labour in the previous three general elections.

Clarke made the comments in an interview with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as part of its investigation into 21st Century Fox’s proposed takeover of Sky.

Rupert Murdoch accused of enjoying ‘astounding access’ to Downing Street
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He said that within a few weeks of winning the general election in 2010 he had a meeting with Rebekah Brooks – then the chief executive of Murdoch’s News International, the owner of the Sun and the Times – in which she “described herself as running the government now in partnership with David Cameron” and said she wanted the government to buy prison ships.

“I found myself having an extraordinary meeting with Rebekah who was instructing me on criminal justice policy from now on, as I think she had instructed my predecessor, so far as I could see, judging from the numbers of people we had in prison and the growth of rather exotic sentences,” Clarke told the CMA.

“She wanted me to buy prison ships because she did accept that the capacity of the prisons was getting rather strained, putting it mildly. She really was solemnly telling me that we had got to have prison ships because she had got some more campaigns coming, which is one of her specialities.

“I regarded this as a very amusing conversation and took not the slightest notice. As long as I was justice secretary, we would not have any of this.”

Clarke said that appointing Andy Coulson, the former editor of the Murdoch-owned News of the World, as Cameron’s director of communications “was part of the deal [with Murdoch] I assume” and that it was “absurd” to think that Murdoch’s newspapers were not influential.

Clarke previously referred to his meeting with Brooks in his memoirs last year. In the book, called Kind of Blue, Clarke said he never had a meeting with Brooks again.

He was interviewed by the CMA alongside Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, and the Labour peers Lord Puttnam and Lord Falconer. The cross-party group of politicians are long-term opponents of Murdoch and Fox’s proposed £11.7bn takeover of Sky.

Revealed: the deal between Murdoch and Blair
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Clarke dismissed the idea that Sky News would not become like Fox News – more partisan – if the deal went through. He described Fox News as one of the “ultimate examples of savagely political American television”, adding: “The idea that we allow the owner of Fox News to buy Sky News, assuming he will resist the temptation and be a changed man who will carry on running according to British broadcasting standards, entirely impartial. Believe that, you believe anything.”

Cameron has always denied he did a deal with Murdoch to win the support of his newspapers. He told the Leveson inquiry in 2012: “There was no overt deal for support, there was no covert deal, no nods and winks. There was a Conservative politician, me, trying to win over newspapers, trying to win over television, trying to win over proprietors – but not trading policies for that support.”

Fox and News UK, the successor organisation to News International, declined to comment.

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Op zaterdag 25 november 2017 05:36 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Wat betreft die luchtvaartmaatschappijen valt echt wel iets op te verzinnen, ze kunnen voor vluchten binnen de EU (van A naar B), een andere airline (in naam) maken en het hoofdkantoor in een Europese lidstaat plaatsen. Dat lijkt me niet zo onoverkomelijk in deze, bovendien heeft de EU zelf ook veel baat bij deze prijsvechters, dus ik denk niet dat van beide kanten even overboord zal worden gezet dus.

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Op zaterdag 25 november 2017 07:33 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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De EU trekt inderdaad niet echt een duidelijke lijn.