Merged Now What?

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The capital markets are not necessarily the "Tories' mates in the City", they're the ones that have pushed down the pound to 1985 levels and sold UK financials. They're not subservient to any government and happy to inflict punishment on assets they think just got risky, and they forced the situation where Greece, Portugal and Ireland required massive EU wide rescues, among other things.

You can claim that investors wouldn't regard a walk-away threat as significantly raising the credit risk of Scotland if you like though. Hopefully Sturgeon won't.

You keep re-asserting the same thing but don't seem to be able to create any logical chain of events where your outcome actually happens and you didn't respond to my more prior detailed post about this I think.

The only 2 scenarios that play out are :

1) the rUK and Scotland agree a settlement with 0% of the debt going to Scotland. I think that's very unlikely but are you saying the markets would punish Scotland for THAT and consider it a default?

2) the rUK and Scotland don't agree on a settlement. Are you saying the markets will punish Scotland for THAT and consider it a default?

Perhaps you could define exactly when Scotland would default on the debt. What would be the trigger?

Do you really think rUK can just start sending invoices to Scotland for things not agreed on Independence Day and that the entire financial world will just fall into line with that? You're not that much of a English supremacist that you think the entire world just does what England tells it to are you?

Does it work for the EU too? Can they just start sending 'your share of our debt' notices to Cameron now? This argument is of the 'Mexico will pay for our wall' level of Trumposity. You sure you don't write his speeches?

What you are ignoring is that in the case of PIGS it wasn't that they thought the assets got risky. It's that they were risky and were getting moreso. It was debts they had accrued. That were due. And that they might struggle to pay. With their names and signatures on the paperwork.

Being debt free doesn't make Scotland more risky going forward. Quite the opposite. Not that it will happen.

Had the Greek financial crisis been caused by their refusal to pay spurious invoices from London you may have a point.

 

[The Don]

Another infantile idiot farmer on the radio complaining about EU bureaucrats who have never done an honest days work in their life and their stupid laws. Boris (that horny-handed son of the soil) will sort everything out, the subsidies will be guaranteed for 10 years.

Apparently the EU imposes all these rules on the UK without consulting with the EU and with no opportunity to push back

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I suppose it remains to be seen the extent of the Bot fraud and whether it can be regarded as credible or not, and thus debated.

no further word from the petitions committee about it yet?

and let's face it, if the public feeling really is that strong and the continual 40k votes per hour weren't primarily Bots, it won't be hard to reproduce it again on a more credible version.

Are we still talking about this ridiculous petition?

There's really no need to reproduce anything - we had a referendum on Thursday.

 

[LondonJohn]

Presumably because Brexit / whatever happens doesn't make gilts much less creditworthy, but does mean interest rates stay low for another couple of centuries.

Oops I'd completely misread that as Gilt prices falling, not yields. And yes, it makes sense that the only area of potential upside for investors here is that fears of (and/or actual) recession, coupled with wage inflation feeding through to price inflation, imply that UK interest rates are only headed in one direction in the near future - down. So there's a short-term opportunity to exploit that change in sentiment and interest-rate outlook by buying Gilts. It'll be interesting to see whether Gilt yields continue to fall, or whether they've now stabilised at the lower level and the full adjustment has been made.

 

[Francesca R]

the rUK and Scotland agree a settlement with 0% of the debt going to Scotland. I think that's very unlikely but are you saying the markets would punish Scotland for THAT and consider it a default?

No, I don't think the markets would punish that.

the rUK and Scotland don't agree on a settlement. Are you saying the markets will punish Scotland for THAT and consider it a default?

Yes pretty much, if Scotland was saying "We are not accepting any of it" and the RUK ended up shouldering it all but did not want to.

Being debt free doesn't make Scotland more risky going forward. Quite the opposite.

Depends how you get debt free. If you get debt free by defaulting, not so much.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No, I don't think the markets would punish that.

Yes pretty much, if Scotland was saying "We are not accepting any of it" and the RUK ended up shouldering it all but did not want to.

Depends how you get debt free. If you get debt free by defaulting, not so much.

Yet another Chewbacca-defence argument.

Yes

Because

DEFAULT!

Remind me again. What happens if Scotland and rUK don't reach a settlement?

 

[Francesca R]

Does it work for the EU too? Can they just start sending 'your share of our debt' notices to Cameron now?

No because the UK negotiated itself out of the ESM and the other bailouts. But it can be sent bills by the IMF for its part in them. It is also on the hook for a fraction of the European Central Bank's capital. If the UK tried to renege on any of those commitments, you bet markets would conclude the UK had defaulted.

Scotland and "Westminster" never made an agreement about who would be liable for public debt if Scotland became independent. Actually legally it is the RUK and the RUK promised markets last time that it would itself honour all debt. But that would not be the issue around how investors would regard an acrimonious refusal of Scotland not to take on any obligation associated with public debt to the RUK

 

[ceptimus]

The petition is worded in a way that guarantees referendums for ever. The rule could never apply retrospectively, so the best the 'regretters' could hope for is another referendum.

But passing the bar set by their petition (>=75% turnout with >=60% majority) will never happen - the first referendum only achieved a 72% turnout.

Any remaining remainers could ensure a never-ending series of referendums by just not bothering to vote.

I suppose that would get the remainers what they want in one sense (Article 50 would never be triggered) - we'd just be mired in the current uncertainty situation for ever.

 

[catsmate]

I make no comment.

Possibly a teeny bit NSFW.

 

[catsmate]

Put up or shut up.

Start with the Government of Ireland_Act 1914 which granted Ireland self-government (on terms similar to the current Scottish arrangement) and then look at the (pre-execution) reaction in Ireland to the Easter Rising.
If events had been better managed, less Blood Sacrifice, Irish independence would have been far less bloody.

However this is my last post in this thread on this topic. If your want to start a dedicated thread feel free to do so.

 

[McHrozni]

The petition is worded in a way that guarantees referendums for ever. The rule could never apply retrospectively, so the best the 'regretters' could hope for is another referendum.

But passing the bar set by their petition (>=75% turnout with >=60% majority) will never happen - the first referendum only achieved a 72% turnout.

Why not? The next referendum could conceivably pass either bar.

The petition does raise an important point by itself however. In decisions as important and far-reaching as this one you do need to set the bar higher than the 50% plus one vote.

McHrozni

 

[Information Analyst]

I suppose it remains to be seen the extent of the Bot fraud and whether it can be regarded as credible or not, and thus debated.

no further word from the petitions committee about it yet?

and let's face it, if the public feeling really is that strong and the continual 40k votes per hour weren't primarily Bots, it won't be hard to reproduce it again on a more credible version.

The Committe tweeted last night that they'd purged 77k non-UK votes which were deemed fraudulent, and the rest remain valid. What 4Chan flagwavers like Sunstealer didn't appreciate (either through ignorance or wilful avoidance) is that with the UK votes requiring a postcode, fakery would be easily spotted. The 4Chan cockwombles were bosting about how easy their pissing-in-the-lake was, so it stands to reason that they didn't actually bother to map all 1.75 mill UK postcodes (covering 29 million addresses) to the local Referendum results in order to model a pattern of random fakery that could not be spotted. They just stuck to easily faking non-UK votes, which shows how a) lazy, and b) not actually very bright they really are.

 

[Information Analyst]

Another infantile idiot farmer on the radio complaining about EU bureaucrats who have never done an honest days work in their life and their stupid laws. Boris (that horny-handed son of the soil) will sort everything out, the subsidies will be guaranteed for 10 years.

Apparently the EU imposes all these rules on the UK without consulting with the EU and with no opportunity to push back

I used to have a degree of sympathty for farmers - especially the dairy farmers - but now I consider how they remain convinced of their entitlement to the EU subsidies that form half of their income, and I think "**** them."

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No because the UK negotiated itself out of the ESM and the other bailouts. But it can be sent bills by the IMF for its part in them. It is also on the hook for a fraction of the European Central Bank's capital. If the UK tried to renege on any of those commitments, you bet markets would conclude the UK had defaulted.

Scotland and "Westminster" never made an agreement about who would be liable for public debt if Scotland became independent. Actually legally it is the RUK and the RUK promised markets last time that it would itself honour all debt. But that would not be the issue around how investors would regard an acrimonious refusal of Scotland not to take on any obligation associated with public debt to the RUK

So there would be no default. I think we can agree on that.

Now you and your friends in Lord Haw-Haw land can run around and cry into your Pimms as much as you want about it. 'Investors' would assess their investments on what actually is the case rather than how it looks if you screw up your eyes and just repeat whatever Gideon tells you to think.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Why not? The next referendum could conceivably pass either bar.

It would be a first.

Scotland was already cheated out of one referendum thanks to changing the rules while the game was in play. No way I would support it happening to anyone else whether I agree with them or not.

The people have voted for the Government to do something and they should go and do it and stop pissing around.

 

[McHrozni]

It would be a first.

It wouldn't even be the first referendum on the topic that would pass at least one of the bars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975

Or the first in a decade:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum,_2011

In fact, it looks more like this referendum was an outlier among referendums in the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Authority_referendum,_1998
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_England_devolution_referendums,_2004
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_sovereignty_referendum,_1973
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_Good_Friday_Agreement_referendum,_1998
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014

Far more referendums in the UK passed at least one of the bars than passed neither. Why do you think it is so unlikely a new referendum on Brexit would be unable to pass either bar?

McHrozni

 

[LondonJohn]

I used to have a degree of sympathty for farmers - especially the dairy farmers - but now I consider how they remain convinced of their entitlement to the EU subsidies that form half of their income, and I think "**** them."

The problem there is that the economics of the milk market have been skewed by EU subsidies. It's meant that the true cost of production of milk has been hidden and "net costs" (i.e. after applying the subsidy) are much lower. This in turn has lead to the main purchasers of wholesale milk (the major supermarkets) being able to force down factory-gate prices. So the farmer sells the milk for much less than it truly costs him/her to produce (plus other costs of doing business), and his/her remaining costs plus (if (s)he's lucky....) profit margin are covered by the EU subsidy.

In an ideal world (yeah, right!), if/when the UK leaves the EU it will continue, in the short term at least, to pay dairy farmers (and other farmers for that matter) the same level of subsidy as the EU did. That money should of course be covered by the notional saving that the UK will be making when it's no longer making inpayments to the EU (and being a net inpayer at that). But really, in the longer term, a more sensible and market-oriented approach would be to phase out the subsidy, regulate (in the transition phase) the wholesale price of milk upwards such that the decreasing subsidy is matched by the increased factory-gate price, and cause a rise in the retail price of milk.

After all, the price of milk in the supermarkets is artificially low, and it's only that way because of the current (indirect - i.e. via the EU) subsidy which ultimately comes out of public finances anyhow. So we'd be paying more for a litre (or pint...) of milk, but effectively we'd be gaining the equivalent in the public finances (e.g. paying less tax, or lowering govt debt, or increasing public spending).

The one large problem with all the above is that if EU member state farmers continue to receive large subsidies, there's a chance that they could then undercut UK milk farmers. Perhaps a "milk pipeline" might be laid across the channel..........

 

[Craig B]

Start with the Government of Ireland_Act 1914 which granted Ireland self-government (on terms similar to the current Scottish arrangement) and then look at the (pre-execution) reaction in Ireland to the Easter Rising.
If events had been better managed, less Blood Sacrifice, Irish independence would have been far less bloody.

However this is my last post in this thread on this topic. If your want to start a dedicated thread feel free to do so.

I agree with you on that, but it doesn't justify the implication that independence was available through peaceful action. The 1914 Act was never implemented. If only it had been!

 

[Ashorn]

The people have voted for the Government to do something and they should go and do it and stop pissing around.

(my bolding)

I don't disagree with the sentiment. However, in the back of my mind that is exactly the problem - do "something".

I am not convinced that either the population as a whole or - specifically- the Leave campaigners had or have a clear idea what that something IS.

To me that is deeply unsatisfactory.

If there had been a clear plan that people had voted for, then there really could have been no question. There wasn't...

 

[kevsta]

The Committe tweeted last night that they'd purged 77k non-UK votes which were deemed fraudulent, and the rest remain valid.

ok. so with lobbying now starting from the likes of Branson and his 0.1% buddies, this isn't just any old petition, is it? IMO we're still game on.