Brexit or no Brexit

acotrel said:
The underlying problem with both Trump and Brexit is probably neoliberalism. Maximum freedom for everyone might sound good, but if there is no balancing level of control, safety and quality of life can suffer. The Americans have no monarch who could dismiss Trump - due to their love of freedom. Brexit is about free trade which is usually manipulated to give a different result, due to freedom of the individual - deregulation ? There is probably no way back to prescription, however more performance-based regulation based upon desired goals, might give an answer.
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Condolences on your recent election
 
NPeteN said:
Condolences on your recent election
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Theresa May's new Brexit deal includes improvements to workers' rights. - Begs the question about why Trump has reintroduced tariff protection for American workers' jobs. Perhaps Australia has similar issues with neoliberal globalised free trade ? - ( Murdoch dudded us again - his News Poll showed Labor well ahead, but the rest of his media was into scaremongering in a big way. He turned Bill Shorten into an existential threat - the message was ' he is going to win and tax your arses off'.
 
Thatcher's neoliberalism was primarily about stuffing the unions. Bexit and Trump are a reaction. In Australia, the workforce has almost been completely casualised and there is stagnant wages growth. But the top end of town are doing very nicely, thank you very much. We are different from the UK, our education system is inferior. Most Australians vote on emotion, not critical thinking. Two things which really impress me about the British is their level of perception and their ability to hold sensible conversations. In that regard Australians and Americans are always second best.
 
acotrel said:
British is their level of perception and their ability to hold sensible conversations
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Al,
Unfortunately this has not been very evident over the last 3 years. The focus used to be lifting others up to try and achieve a more equitable society - recently we have tended to sink to the lowest common denominator to achieve equality. The most prominent people are now reality tv stars and internet bloggers, more people know who Stacey Dooley is than the foreign secretary
John
 
Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian ethics is about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. There are a lot of people in India and China. So what is the lowest common denominator globally ?
Bill Shorten might have done much better if he had simply stood up in public and said ' I have had tea and sticky buns with Rupert Murdoch and he says I have a very good chance of winning this election' ! This time Murdoch had help from Clive Palmer. Clive had gone broke in his company Queensland Nickel but has coal mining leases in Queensland which offer jobs. Through the government he got a loan of $67 million to pay his workers' entitlements. He then promised his workers $70 million. Straight away he embarked on a huge advertising campaign which attacked Labor and he gained preferences from the Liberal Party. It is unlikely that now the conservatives have been elected, he will ever be pursued to pay back the loan to the Fair Work Commission.
 
I suggest that morality and altruism have their origins in the collective, not individualism.
 
acotrel said:
Thatcher's neoliberalism was primarily about stuffing the unions.
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Thatcher was against closed shops, that included Unions but also Stockbrokers who lost their monopoly on share dealing due to the opening up of the London stock exchange.
 
Were there more stockbroker monopolies than closed unionised shops ? - Tokenism ?
 
In Australia we currently have wage stagnation. If only one notable person got a pay rise, our government would claim that wages growth is not stagnant.

I was in a pub with my son, his girl and my daughter. I mentioned the board games we used to play when my kids were young. My son said 'And you also taught us how to play mind games'. I was a middle manager for 40 years and I'm expert at it. If I was running Australia, I would be the most cynical manipulating bastard ever. My son is an engineer - I don't think I would be happy working under him.
 
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The latest on the HOC is the Commons leader Andrea Leadsom quits government over Brexit;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48374098

She becomes the 35th person to resign, leaving PM May to hole up in No, 10 and batten down the hatches! - If she was the captain of HMS Bounty we would be calling this a mutiny!!!

Worse still the 1922 Committee have taken a sealed vote that they may, on Friday, have already decided to force here out of no. 10 if she is unable to get the HOC to pass a vote to get the exit from the EU passed.
 
Thousands of jobs on line as British Steel go into liquidation;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48365218

Unable to get cash from the government, which are unable to give it them, - ironic because of EU rules it looks like 5,000 people will be out of work, just when Trump has put the taxes up on Chinese imports - it looks like we will lose one of our main steel plants, just when we need or on the verge of leaving the EU.
 
Bernhard said:
ironic because of EU rules it looks like 5,000 people will be out of work
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The real irony is that the UK government was able to support a steel firm in Europe to the tune of £40 million last week but were blocked from giving £50 million to British steel by the EU!
Madness...:confused:
 
It is just time that the "politicians" in this country grew some balls, ignore what the EU tell them to do, and do what is right and save our damned industry. Sick of em ---- you bet.
sam
 
trident sam said:
It is just time that the "politicians" in this country grew some balls, ignore what the EU tell them to do, and do what is right and save our damned industry. Sick of em ---- you bet.
sam
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Abso-bloody-lutely !!

That’s what the French Govt would do (or does do... constantly) !
 
I have always been of two minds about neoliberal globalised free trade. I feel there must be a middle path which helps local industries survive better. When Australia trades with China, our 'free trade' encounters prohibitions and subsidies. They also have minimal respect for other peoples' intellectual property rights. Most of our current economic problems probably come from our reliance on Chinese manufacturing. Australia has almost totally lost it's manufacturing capability and technology base. Rat-bag politicians have a lot to answer for. I don't think there is even one engineer in any of Australia's parliaments.
 
You've said before that the education system in Oz is different to Blighty Al...

But here in Blighty, engineering schools don’t tend to teach politics...!
 
Here is a thought :

Maggie Thatcher was a neoliberal Conservative. Conservatives promoting Brexit is disingenuous populist bullshit. Who is winning out of the UK being in the EU ?

I am very interested in your response.
 
Eljahara said:
And the only Engineering taught at Politics school is how to spin!
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Politicians do not think like engineers or scientists, and are often a long way removed from any area of real economic importance. Government businesses used to provide the major technology seed in Australian industry, however they needed to be led from the top. No Australian politician ever had the balls to step up to the plate and lead from the front, because none of them have any idea about the big picture. So everything becomes situationalist management. Industrial hierarchies are usually hierarchies of ignorance. One lesson I've learned is that 'the system runs on bullshit' - once you understand that, you will never be disappointed, because your expectations are not so high.
 
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