The Republic of South-East England? A low tax haven comprising of London and the surrounding counties? Any region with a public expenditure to GDP ratio of less than 40 percent can join.
The Republic of South-East England? A low tax haven comprising of London and the surrounding counties? Any region with a public expenditure to GDP ratio of less than 40 percent can join.
If it is good enough for the scots......
ReplyDeleteNot my term, but a good one.....
ReplyDeleteThe People's Republic of Northern Britain.
It aptly describes Labour's client state with its votes bought by our money, and it's "activist" public sector unions banging their hammers and sickles everytime someone mentions "restraint".
Nick
Nick, it should be the:
ReplyDelete"People's Democratic Republic of Northern Britain"
Yeah, the "democratic" bit is beautifully ironic. Like in Congo.
ReplyDeleteNick
Nick - I thought you might like it. Wes
ReplyDeleteNI is wild - biggest regional housing bubble, and over 62 percent public expenditure to GDP. I call it bubble socialism.
ReplyDeleteThe map points to diverging political priorities - separation might be for the best.
ReplyDeleteIf a company has factories up north, and corporate HQ in London, which region gets the GDP? This analysis looks fraught with difficulty.
ReplyDelete"It's grim up North" is a myth.
ReplyDeleteMy relatives in Newcastle have always enjoyed a better lifestyle than we southerners.
If you do can we sack the place?
ReplyDeleteI reckon you southern woosters would last about 10 mins on yer own!
Factories up north? Don't be daft, there's none of those left in the entire country. So much easier to have them in China!
ReplyDeleteGo ahead and declare independence, as long as we have the OIl, GAS and COAL, how long, do you think it will be, before we make the finance industry come to us?
ReplyDeleteYou Southern parasites have enjoyed a massive subsidy from the rest of the country for YEARs - e.g site of Government, Corporate HQs, Museums, Orchestras etc
All countries have some regions which are richer and some poorer. I'm from the East Midlands but I live in the South East.
ReplyDeleteSplitting the UK up into bite-sized pieces to be digested as regions of the EU is a really bad idea.
Amigauser - so long as we can have the Queen and the military sworn to her.
ReplyDeleteJust another good example of how we need to recognise the Union is finished.
ReplyDeleteThe 1707 Act of Union with Scotland (that made us one country "to be represented by one and the same Parliament") was torn up by the 1998 Devolution legislation that re-established the Scottish Parliament. The Belfast Agreement set up a schedule for the eventual abandonment of Northern Ireland. And Wales wants to vote to gain a full Parliament with Primary Law-making powers, and once again separating their legal system from England's.
On the plus side we will be financially better off with lower taxes and an end to Celtic interference in our governance and historic liberties, (e.g. the scrapping of Habeas Corpus by the 42 days "terrorism" legislation, which was opposed by English MPs and imposed by Scottish and Irish MPs).
Not only that, but it's a win-win situation for us.
Either they will be successful and we gain rich neighbouring markets that we no longer have to support with our taxes.
Or they are economic basket cases in which case we have our own version of a low-wage Eastern Europe on our doorsteps to make use of.
What's not to like?
whenever a soldier's origin is mentioned, I don't recall any coming from the southeast.
ReplyDeleteThat's cos in the south east there's better things to do than get shot at
ReplyDeleteWhat Wildgoose says.
ReplyDeleteIt's up to Boris. He can do at least as well as Alex Salmond running Scotland, in London and its hinterland . New Labour thought they would never lose London or Scotland, (Wales never even crossed their minds) so the powers of the London mayor, even though hurriedly trimmed when Ken won, are still extensive and autonomous of the London Assembly. For Ireland it has been always a Labour objective to hand over the British part of Ulster to the rest of Ireland.
ReplyDeleteLondon is a metropolitan, international trading post surrounded by under-developing badlands.
"That's cos in the south east there's better things to do than get shot at"
ReplyDeleteReally?
What's that?
Talk about house prices....
This all falls down to the way in which GDP is calculated. It includes profits from financial services. Ethically, I believe, it shouldn't (since usury is not productive in itself). Of course, the powers that be disagree and intend to tweak the GDP calculation this Autumn to "increase reflection of the contribution of financial services to GDP."
ReplyDeleteMmm - but surely, the costs to the public purse of bailing out the City-based clearing banks has not been reckoned into these figures yet... and all those juvenile bankers joining the dole queues... B. in C.
ReplyDeleteasteve,
ReplyDeleteFinancial services bring in foreign exchange and pay money which can then be spent. While paper pushing is in itself a worthless activity, if you want to go by that principle you'll probably eliminate about 90% of GDP because most jobs are worthless.
I mean, should Chris Moyles' salary count towards GDP, or an ad agency's revenue, or cans of coke?
Nick
Nick,
ReplyDeleteThe argument that financial services bring in foreign exchange etc. is specious because that money is then spent in the economy and recorded anyway.
I see no reason not to consider production, wholesale and retail of products - or voluntary payments for entertainment. Chris Moyles, of course, is paid by the BBC - and, as such, is remarkably close to government spending... so sits in a dubiously grey area between production and plain overhead. The ad-agency should count - unless, of course, it is employed by government... making such spending an overhead imposed on the public.
I don't think GDP is straightforward as a metric to measure economic activity. It is clearly influenced by the ethics, religions and preconceived ideas of its founders. I think that is is perfectly sensible to ask if GDP reflects anything useful. I don't think it appropriate to accept the morals of the IMF's founders without, at least, questioning them.... I see statistics like GDP as representing a partisan stance on international rule... not entirely dissimilar to a revealed religion that dominates a global empire.
On that note, however, I'll stop... before you declare me a whack-job. ;)
Loaning funds is a useful service, so I don't think it fair to declare it 'non productive'. However, being granted a right to create credit out of nothing is a form of legalised counterfeiting or theft. There's a difference.
ReplyDeleteI can see that loaning funds responsibly, and at rates which are not usurious, in a way which does not falsely inflate asset prices, is a useful service.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the near-fraudulent or actually fraudulent hiding of risk and the duping of the incautious into buying the poisonous tranches SIV's in order to steal savings assets on which economies could otherwise build useful growth, if soundly lent, is a counter-productive economic activity.
So perhaps we should rate much recent activity over, say, the last eight years in the City negatively, somehow, and recalculate GDP entirely over that period.
B. in C.
I'd like to point out that this isn't a Union flag, y'know.
ReplyDeleteThe Burberry colours are a deliberate allusion to the chav in Chav YooKay since Nu Lab came to office and abolished Britain.
Alas I do think the spectre of civil war will return to these Isles - we are a culturally unstable nation now.
It's all down to Ricardo's Law!
ReplyDelete