AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Pompous, humourless battleaxe.

I was furious for two reasons when Britain joined the the European Economic Community in 1973. The first was the return of the Corn Laws, 127 years after they had been repealed in 1846, after many decades of hard campaigning by people like David Ricardo and William Cobbett, a campaign punctuated by events such as the Peterloo Massacre and the Swing Riots. The result was that cheap food from Commonwealth countries and a few other traditional suppliers was locked out of the the country, leading to a chain of events including a round of strikes for more pay to keep up with the higher cost of living, the Three Day Week, the Winter of Discontent, the election of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War; the latter would obviously not have happened as long as Britain was one of Argentina’s biggest customers. The second was the replacement of Purchase Tax, a bad tax but we could live with it, by the infinitely worse EuroTax, VAT, which fails all four of Smith’s Canons of Taxatio...

REMAINER DERANGEMENT SYNDROME Brexit has destroyed old friendships, or perhaps friendships that were never as well grounded as I thought. Here is a recent email exchange. It began when I sent this link to a Guardian article about the mysterious increase in explosions in Sweden. * * * * *   ME: Here is how the Guardian reports a recent phenomenon in Sweden. It shows how the Guardian will write nothing that spoils its narrative. Who are these bombers? Where have they come from? Why Malmö (though we have had them here, too). Why are these a recent phenomenon? The Guardian is utterly untrustworthy and the editors are a disgrace to their predecessors. * * * * *   RESPONSE: The Guardian is one of the few newspapers with truly investigative journalism despite what you might think. The whole BREXIT saga is the real utter disgrace, leaving this country deeply, deeply divided for generations to come … you played your part in this - extremely disappointing … t...

The Brexit coin has been criticised, “for rubbing the remainer’s nose in it”. This seems unreasonable, considering that a coin was issued when the UK joined in 1973, and there was another one in 1998. Philip Pullman made a fool of himself by complaining about the absence of the ‘Oxford comma’, a convention of the Oxford University Press. I would have thought that Pullman, as a member of the Oxford Militant Atheists Brigade, would have been more concerned about the letters ‘FD’ in the inscription around the Queen's head. It is depressing that no-one has criticised the design of the coin itself. The typeface looks like, though it probably is not, Zapf Chancery, one that comes with every computer. The seven-sided UK 50p coins are an ugly lump of metal; in fact the entire UK coin set lacks coherence, unlike the Euro set. When coins are worth more than their face value if struck in copper, it is time to withdraw that denomination. The best of the UK coins is the finely proportione...

With Brexit almost out of the way, the focus has shifted to the war on carbon dioxide. I have covered this in previous blogs here and here . Even the term “Greenhouse effect” is misleading and creates a false picture in people’s minds. IF the climate is changing, and IF it is due to human activity, the cause is almost certainly something other than an increase in carbon dioxide levels. That is the devil in the hysteria. It could be making everyone aim at the wrong target.

As the outlines of the Brexit settlement emerge, it is important to study Adam Smith and break out of mercantilist habits of thought; to keep the focus on IMPORTS as well as EXPORTS. A balance of payments surplus means that there is a net flow of real wealth out of the country. The surplus is other countries’ paper. The EU negotiators are behaving stupidly, in particular, because they ignore the effect that treating the UK as a third country will have on IMPORTS to the EU. Ireland in particular, will be badly hit because the UK is a major source of so many goods. After Brexit, the Irish will suffer as they will either have to pay the EU tariffs or the extra transport costs of bringing goods from continental Europe instead. They will be hit with a price hike. In other EU countries, there will be specific problems as UK products become more expensive and difficult to obtain – for example, Swedish microbreweries like to use UK malted barley. The best thing that the UK government could...

I got this from a former neighbour who for ten years has worked for the European Food Safety Authority – a tax-free appointment  In the news: “Today’s Politico Morning Agri & Food covers the post-Brexit farming plan that the UK government presented yesterday. According to plans, UK will no longer be part of the European Food Safety Authority, which regulates the active substances that make pesticides work using the so-called precautionary principle, which obliges policymakers to err on the side of caution when the potential hazards are serious, even if the supporting evidence is incomplete or speculative. Pesticides regulation will be taken over by the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive; UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also trumpeted a ‘liberation’ from EU rules holding back the use of genetically modified crops.” It seems that some people are blinded by the EU faith. My reply was “Job opportunities for you. Keep an eye on the appointments adverts. Where will they be b...

The European currency board is currently squabbling. It has a set inflation rate target, the idea being that inflation will help to reinvigorate the sluggish economy of the Eurozone. With a rise in inflation due to higher energy prices, the target is on the way to being reached, though it is not clear how higher energy prices will stimulate the economy. Underneath all this is a set of trade and economic policies which should, in the twentieth century, never have seen the light of day. German banks have had to lend to other Eurozone countries in order to maintain demand for German products, but they now hold vast amounts of urepayable debt. Germany has the supposed advantage of a currency that is undervalued (for them) by at least 10%, possibly more. In reality, of course, it is a disadvantage. It means that Germans are working at least half a day a week for nothing. German workers are, literally, being short changed. What will happen when they notice? How has this situation...