Michael Everett wrote:munroburton wrote:The whole Communist spy thing is a convenient distraction for both sides. The smoke from it is helping to obscure Labour's latest fidgeting on Brexit policy and throwing another log on the metaphorical fire that Corbyn's support base is. "Boo! Nasty MSM and lying Tories at it again!"
For the Tories, it distracts from their incompetence and inability to agree. It also feeds their support base's fire - "Corbyn schemes with Europeans! Corbyn is a hard-left communist who will nationalise YOU!"
I don't think that Corbyn actually schemes, although I'm fairly sure that people have schemed in ways that take advantage of him.
As for the nationalization thing... seriously. Just read his press releases. Dude wants to re-privatize stuff and put it under government control, because that worked so well last time it was done. Six weeks wait for a phone line to be installed ring a bell? Rolling brown-outs and three-day-weeks due to power issues? Brilliant.munroburton wrote:an exit from the EU which the government's own impact assessments suggests will reduce UK economic growth by 5-8%.
Really? An independent assessment actually came up with the figure that the economic growth would probably increase by about 4%...
You must remember that the Civil Service abhors change and while they (probably) won't actively work against it, changing anything encounters a lot of passive resistance and warnings.
Watch Yes Minister to see how the Civil Service works. Margaret Thatcher herself said that the TV show was essential viewing for anyone who had to interact with the bureaucrats...
Well, I was reading economic assessments from before the referendum and they generally averaged + or - 2% change in growth. During the campaign, however, both sides cherry picked the reports which either predicted plagues of frogs and the death of the first born or rainbows, unicorns and puppies.
They weren't lying: the plague of frogs one was produced by a perfectly respectable
LSE academic. They just didn't mention that they were the outliers.
'It won't make much difference in the long term' isn't going to change any policies. Or gain any votes, or make good headlines. So the reports we will get will be the ones with the maximum predictions of percentage change, on both sides.