The remain campaign is constantly telling us leaving the EU would be a leap in the dark through Project Fear, what reasons do they have to justify this?
previously:-
caldariborderzone.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/eu-referendum.html
The growing role of the EU in global diplomacy would be severely diminished if Britain left, well they are right but that is not bad news for the UK only the EU.
The EU is worried, really worried that the UK leaves and yet they fought tooth & nail over the meagre points made by the PM David Cameron during the re-negotiation summit.
Do we really want to stay in the EU, no, but there is plenty of time to change our minds.
Monday, 29 February 2016
Saturday, 27 February 2016
Dame Janet Smith Review
The Dame Janet Smith Review was established in October 2012 by the BBC to conduct an impartial, thorough and independent review of the culture and practices of the BBC during the years that Jimmy Savile worked there. It was released yesterday [25-Feb-2016], is it what was expected?
The review found that senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of an "atmosphere of fear" which still exists in the BBC.
Before I continue the report is extensive and I am sure will be written about by many but the point that frustrates me is in the last 24 hours Janet Smith has not been asked why she did not inter view the two NewsNight staff who were removed from the BBC and their Savile investigation was quashed as there were two Savile tribute shows being produced.
In October 2012 Peter Ribbon stopped a programme which was being made by Liz MacKean & Meirion Jones which was investigating Jimmy Savile and his abuse of young girls, neither of these people had been questioned by Dame Janet Smith during her three year review even though both had given evidence to the Pollard inquiry, why?
The review found that senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of an "atmosphere of fear" which still exists in the BBC.
Before I continue the report is extensive and I am sure will be written about by many but the point that frustrates me is in the last 24 hours Janet Smith has not been asked why she did not inter view the two NewsNight staff who were removed from the BBC and their Savile investigation was quashed as there were two Savile tribute shows being produced.
In October 2012 Peter Ribbon stopped a programme which was being made by Liz MacKean & Meirion Jones which was investigating Jimmy Savile and his abuse of young girls, neither of these people had been questioned by Dame Janet Smith during her three year review even though both had given evidence to the Pollard inquiry, why?
Friday, 26 February 2016
OFCOM need teeth
BT & OpenReach are still installing fibre from exchanges to street side cabinet and then the existing copper carries the signal, so no matter how super fast the fibre is, it comes to a crunching halt between the street side cabinet and the home or business.
This latest report was expected to recommend splitting off OpenReach from BT but that will not happen as OFCOM has only recommended a new set of rules and sprucing up OpenReach's governance.
OFCOM offers two arguments for not going the whole way with separation. One is that making BT spin off OpenReach would involve too much disruption to be useful and second is that the market for broadband is fluid and would reduce the flexibility of future projects, extremely weak excuses.
This is hardly surprising as ORCOM is one of the weakest quangos presently and BT has just released a statement saying they will put another £1 billion into OpenReach for the future. That would be clawed back if the split took place.
This latest report was expected to recommend splitting off OpenReach from BT but that will not happen as OFCOM has only recommended a new set of rules and sprucing up OpenReach's governance.
OFCOM offers two arguments for not going the whole way with separation. One is that making BT spin off OpenReach would involve too much disruption to be useful and second is that the market for broadband is fluid and would reduce the flexibility of future projects, extremely weak excuses.
This is hardly surprising as ORCOM is one of the weakest quangos presently and BT has just released a statement saying they will put another £1 billion into OpenReach for the future. That would be clawed back if the split took place.
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Eurozone banking crisis
Can the eurozone survive another banking crisis?
caldariborderzone.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/banking-capital.html
The reasons for the nervousness were not hard to work out. The one thing we learned in 2008 is that the financial system is interconnected, and that losses in one market can easily turn up somewhere else. Oil and commodity prices have slumped across the world, and it would be surprising if at least some of those losses were not showing up in the banking system somewhere.
To make matters worse, economies remain depressed, and the ECB [European Central Bank] has imposed negative rates across the continent, making it very hard for banks to earn any sort of margin on the difference between deposits and loans. Against that backdrop, it is easy to understand why traders, who know how these things work better than most people, started to target the banks. Whether any of them are in genuine trouble, we will find out in the next few weeks and months. It may well have been a panic over nothing, then again there may be some genuine pain ahead.
The real question is what would happen then. In the United States, or Britain, if a major bank ran into trouble, the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England would step into rescue it. They have done that before and would do it again. In the first instance, the ECB would attempt to do the same. When Mario Draghi said he would do “whatever it takes” to rescue the euro, it surely included a bailout were one necessary.
But hold on. Stop and think about the politics of that and it all gets a lot more complicated.
At the height of the confrontation between the radical Syriza government and the rest of the eurozone last year the Greek banking system effectively shut down. Capital controls were introduced, and the amount ordinary Greeks could withdraw every day was heavily limited. Much the same thing happened in Cyprus.
But surely it would look very odd if German banks were bailed out, and the ATMs kept open, when Greek ones were not. It would make clear in the most dramatic way possible that the eurozone was about what worked for Germany, and not about what worked for anyone else.
The eurozone is young and still an experiment, there is room for improvement, but is there time?
caldariborderzone.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/banking-capital.html
The reasons for the nervousness were not hard to work out. The one thing we learned in 2008 is that the financial system is interconnected, and that losses in one market can easily turn up somewhere else. Oil and commodity prices have slumped across the world, and it would be surprising if at least some of those losses were not showing up in the banking system somewhere.
To make matters worse, economies remain depressed, and the ECB [European Central Bank] has imposed negative rates across the continent, making it very hard for banks to earn any sort of margin on the difference between deposits and loans. Against that backdrop, it is easy to understand why traders, who know how these things work better than most people, started to target the banks. Whether any of them are in genuine trouble, we will find out in the next few weeks and months. It may well have been a panic over nothing, then again there may be some genuine pain ahead.
The real question is what would happen then. In the United States, or Britain, if a major bank ran into trouble, the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England would step into rescue it. They have done that before and would do it again. In the first instance, the ECB would attempt to do the same. When Mario Draghi said he would do “whatever it takes” to rescue the euro, it surely included a bailout were one necessary.
But hold on. Stop and think about the politics of that and it all gets a lot more complicated.
At the height of the confrontation between the radical Syriza government and the rest of the eurozone last year the Greek banking system effectively shut down. Capital controls were introduced, and the amount ordinary Greeks could withdraw every day was heavily limited. Much the same thing happened in Cyprus.
But surely it would look very odd if German banks were bailed out, and the ATMs kept open, when Greek ones were not. It would make clear in the most dramatic way possible that the eurozone was about what worked for Germany, and not about what worked for anyone else.
The eurozone is young and still an experiment, there is room for improvement, but is there time?
Tuesday, 23 February 2016
Pound Falls
The pound suffered its biggest drop in more than six years on Monday [23-Feb-2016], as fears that the U.K. will leave the European Union intensified after London Mayor Boris Johnson came out in favour of a “Brexit”.
Now that was the sort of headline we got this morning from the media in connection with yesterdays drop and I wonder how four months before a vote takes place and the possibility of people changing their minds several hundred times during that period anyone can give credence to the suggestion that the pound was affected by this current situation.
So why did the pound drop?
Perhaps we should remind ourselves of a recent global financial crisis and foreign exchange scandal.
The forex scandal [also known as the forex probe] is a financial scandal that involves the revelation, and subsequent investigation, that banks colluded for at least a decade to manipulate exchange rates for their own financial gain. Market regulators in Asia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States began to investigate the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market [forex] after Bloomberg News reported in June 2013 that currency dealers said they had been front-running client orders and rigging the foreign exchange benchmark WM/Reuters rates by colluding with counterparts and pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmark rates are set.
It seems to me that yesterdays drop was caused by a few as there could be no evidence that everyone has made their mind up today on what they are going to vote on 23-Jun-2016.
Another reason could be simpler and yesterday's fall reverses the gain made last Friday when the PM David Cameron returned from Europe with a deal for Britain that would be good enough for us to stay in the EU. The status quo has been achieved.
Now that was the sort of headline we got this morning from the media in connection with yesterdays drop and I wonder how four months before a vote takes place and the possibility of people changing their minds several hundred times during that period anyone can give credence to the suggestion that the pound was affected by this current situation.
So why did the pound drop?
Perhaps we should remind ourselves of a recent global financial crisis and foreign exchange scandal.
The forex scandal [also known as the forex probe] is a financial scandal that involves the revelation, and subsequent investigation, that banks colluded for at least a decade to manipulate exchange rates for their own financial gain. Market regulators in Asia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States began to investigate the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market [forex] after Bloomberg News reported in June 2013 that currency dealers said they had been front-running client orders and rigging the foreign exchange benchmark WM/Reuters rates by colluding with counterparts and pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmark rates are set.
It seems to me that yesterdays drop was caused by a few as there could be no evidence that everyone has made their mind up today on what they are going to vote on 23-Jun-2016.
Another reason could be simpler and yesterday's fall reverses the gain made last Friday when the PM David Cameron returned from Europe with a deal for Britain that would be good enough for us to stay in the EU. The status quo has been achieved.
Monday, 22 February 2016
The Referendum
The Referendum is set for 23-Jun-2016 and we now have 123 days to listen to the arguments and we should do, voting in this referendum is probably going to be the most important vote for this generation.
One thing we have to do is wait for the electoral commission to choose one group for each side of the argument, at the moment the remain campaign consist of strongerin / sayyes2europe and the leave campaign consist of Leave.EU / Vote Leave / BetterOffOut, only one of each can continue.
They also need to select a frontispiece for each side, the remains first choice wasn't much good as Sir Stuart Rose forgot the name of his group in the first interview and leave currently has the problem of too many choices.
One thing we have to do is wait for the electoral commission to choose one group for each side of the argument, at the moment the remain campaign consist of strongerin / sayyes2europe and the leave campaign consist of Leave.EU / Vote Leave / BetterOffOut, only one of each can continue.
They also need to select a frontispiece for each side, the remains first choice wasn't much good as Sir Stuart Rose forgot the name of his group in the first interview and leave currently has the problem of too many choices.
Sunday, 21 February 2016
The Deal
What is the deal that David Cameron has brought back?
Child benefit - Child benefit payments to migrant workers for children living overseas to be recalculated to reflect the cost of living in their home countries.
Competitiveness - The settlement calls on all EU institutions and member states to "make all efforts to fully implement and strengthen the internal market" and to take "concrete steps towards better regulation", including by cutting red tape.
Eurozone - Britain can keep the pound while being in Europe, and its business trade with the bloc, without fear of discrimination. Any British money spent on bailing out eurozone nations will be reimbursed.
Migrant welfare payments - The UK can decide to limit in-work benefits for EU migrants during their first four years in the UK. This so-called "emergency brake" can be applied in the event of "exceptional" levels of migration, but must be released within seven years - without exception.
Protection for the City of London - Safeguards for Britain's large financial services industry to prevent eurozone regulations being imposed on it.
'Red card' for national parliaments - It will be easier for governments to band together to block unwanted legislation. If 55% of national EU parliaments object to a piece of EU legislation it may be rethought.
Some limits on free movement - Denying automatic free movement rights to nationals of a country outside the EU who marry an EU national, as part of measures to tackle "sham" marriages. There are also new powers to exclude people believed to be a security risk - even if they have no previous convictions.
Sovereignty - There is an explicit commitment that the UK will not be part of an "ever closer union" with other EU member states. This will be incorporated in an EU treaty change.
The questions is:- will this be enough for you to vote 'remain' on the 23-Jun-2016 -[as there is no second chance]- or do you consider it is time to leave?
Child benefit - Child benefit payments to migrant workers for children living overseas to be recalculated to reflect the cost of living in their home countries.
Competitiveness - The settlement calls on all EU institutions and member states to "make all efforts to fully implement and strengthen the internal market" and to take "concrete steps towards better regulation", including by cutting red tape.
Eurozone - Britain can keep the pound while being in Europe, and its business trade with the bloc, without fear of discrimination. Any British money spent on bailing out eurozone nations will be reimbursed.
Migrant welfare payments - The UK can decide to limit in-work benefits for EU migrants during their first four years in the UK. This so-called "emergency brake" can be applied in the event of "exceptional" levels of migration, but must be released within seven years - without exception.
Protection for the City of London - Safeguards for Britain's large financial services industry to prevent eurozone regulations being imposed on it.
'Red card' for national parliaments - It will be easier for governments to band together to block unwanted legislation. If 55% of national EU parliaments object to a piece of EU legislation it may be rethought.
Some limits on free movement - Denying automatic free movement rights to nationals of a country outside the EU who marry an EU national, as part of measures to tackle "sham" marriages. There are also new powers to exclude people believed to be a security risk - even if they have no previous convictions.
Sovereignty - There is an explicit commitment that the UK will not be part of an "ever closer union" with other EU member states. This will be incorporated in an EU treaty change.
The questions is:- will this be enough for you to vote 'remain' on the 23-Jun-2016 -[as there is no second chance]- or do you consider it is time to leave?
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