The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged

[Woodsey]

Albania’s Prime Minister is incredulous that Britain would want to leave the EU when all the East European countries have been scrambling to get in.

“it is odder still that he (Gove) wants voluntarily to leave a union that seems to have given Britain so much.”

“Most countries on the edges of Europe want in, because we know the remarkable benefits there have been to EU countries.”

“While we work hard in taking the many further steps towards EU membership, we enjoy none of the benefits that Britain has, benefits Britain would lose if it came out.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3559400/Albania-mention-Brexit-supporters-surprises-PM-Rama.html



He has also been interviewed by the BBC, and said that Gove is talking "nonsense".

"I don't see how the hell British people and the United Kingdom would get out of the EU and would accept to lose so many benefits of being in".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03s97qk

Albania lol. It's all the skint countries that want in, they have everything to gain and little to lose so not surprising those comments really.

[Doobs]

Albania’s Prime Minister is incredulous that Britain would want to leave the EU when all the East European countries have been scrambling to get in.

“it is odder still that he (Gove) wants voluntarily to leave a union that seems to have given Britain so much.”

“Most countries on the edges of Europe want in, because we know the remarkable benefits there have been to EU countries.”

“While we work hard in taking the many further steps towards EU membership, we enjoy none of the benefits that Britain has, benefits Britain would lose if it came out.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3559400/Albania-mention-Brexit-supporters-surprises-PM-Rama.html



He has also been interviewed by the BBC, and said that Gove is talking "nonsense".

"I don't see how the hell British people and the United Kingdom would get out of the EU and would accept to lose so many benefits of being in".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03s97qk

Albania lol. It's all the skint countries that want in, they have everything to gain and little to lose so not surprising those comments really.

Must be nice to have a debt to GDP ratio of only 72%

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/albania/government-budget

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-budget

[Woodsey]

Albania’s Prime Minister is incredulous that Britain would want to leave the EU when all the East European countries have been scrambling to get in.

“it is odder still that he (Gove) wants voluntarily to leave a union that seems to have given Britain so much.”

“Most countries on the edges of Europe want in, because we know the remarkable benefits there have been to EU countries.”

“While we work hard in taking the many further steps towards EU membership, we enjoy none of the benefits that Britain has, benefits Britain would lose if it came out.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3559400/Albania-mention-Brexit-supporters-surprises-PM-Rama.html



He has also been interviewed by the BBC, and said that Gove is talking "nonsense".

"I don't see how the hell British people and the United Kingdom would get out of the EU and would accept to lose so many benefits of being in".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03s97qk

Albania lol. It's all the skint countries that want in, they have everything to gain and little to lose so not surprising those comments really.

Must be nice to have a debt to GDP ratio of only 72%

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/albania/government-budget

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-budget

Doesn't matter, irrelevant country hence why they and others are desperate to join.

[OverTheBorder]

Re: BHS , did financial reporting requirements change in 2008/09 or was the scheme just very badly managed?

Scheme Specific funding replaced MFR on 31 December 2015. Far more stringent.

The number also needs to be relevant to the Scheme size. I mean a £10 million scheme with £5 million deficit doesn't really make headlines but is proportionality funded to the same degree as a billion Scheme with a £500 million deficit.

This isn't relevant I don't think.

I think the difference is between a funding basis earlier and a buy out basis now.

Long term  interest rates have collapsed since the earlier numbers, so liabilities now have a much higher value now.  To that you can add in 5 years of flat equity returns, so asset values won't have gone up to compensate.

All in all it is mainly external events, but a 23 year recovery plan was ambitiously long and the company could have tackled that earlier if it was able to pay out all those dividends.

But as I said earlier, the end result would still have been a big deficit on scheme wind up, just a bit smaller big deficit.

I said in my post a few up the difference between the £200 million and £500 million figures are due to the basis used.  £200 million is technical provisions, and £500 million is buyout.  The true cost to the PPF is the S179 basis which will probably fall between the two, depending on the level of non PPF increases the Scheme has.

MFR is hugely different to Scheme Funding, and will be a significant reason behind the move from a £5 million surplus to the £200 million technical provisions basis.  Interest rates, inflation, mortality being the factors that move the funding level between valuations.  Interest rates and inflation between 2008 to 2014 would have hit the Scheme hard.  The move in discount rate (set by gilt prices) between 2009 and 2012 was about 1.3% which would put about 80-90% on the liabilities.  However, the asset correlation (or luck) must have been pretty good, as they made enough in that period to offset the bulk of this.  Emerging market alpha bonds which seem to have risen, almost as quickly as the liabilities.  Therefore the funding level only fell 3% during 2009-2012.  The deficit was pretty much static between 2012 and 2014.

Since 2014 the Scheme has actually done a lot right.  They appointed an independent trustee, and placed 35% of their assets in a Liability Driven Investment strategy which would likely hedge the majority of the interest rate and inflation risk.  These funds are 3:1 leveraged.  Therefore very little should have happened to the funding level between mid 2014 and 2016.

There is also nothing wrong with dividends, as long as the Scheme gets its fair share.  There was £8.4 million per year going in over 23 years, which is on the long side of Recovery Plans which are not asset backed or guaranteed in some way.  My two questions would be how did the contributions compare to dividends, from the figures quoted it doesn't look like the Scheme got its share.  The second is how did they assess the strength of the covenant of the new employer.  I don't think the answers to these would be favourable.  The Recovery Plan originally looks to have been set based on the parent strength.

NB -  All these figures are public domain, I have nothing to do with this Scheme.

[TightEnd]

[Cf]

I never see much about the junior doctors strikes in here.

Are people generally on the side of the doctors? Whole thing feels an absolute mess from a government point of view.

[TightEnd]

I never see much about the junior doctors strikes in here.

Are people generally on the side of the doctors? Whole thing feels an absolute mess from a government point of view.

I don't have much time for Jeremy Hunt, and generally have sympathy for the doctors as feel that central governments must be pretty clueless about the front line for health professionals

It is such a shame though that yet again the opposition should be holding the government to account for this but

a) for the second week running Corbyn hasn't asked Cameron about the issue at PMQs. I can't work out why that would be

b) Labour is embroiled in an anti-semitism row (Naz Shah resignation, suspension) which it is handling ham-fistedly and drawing attention away from these types of issues

[horseplayer]

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/725360463165329408

some speech done a superb job

[MintTrav]

Just as Farage seems to have a negative impact whenever he appears these days, the same is true of Cameron with regard to the Brexit debate. The Tories need to realise that, rightly or wrongly, he is now toxic to the Remain side and needs to be kept out of it as much as possible. They have enough other faces, who are more likely to stay on script.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-mocks-nigel-farages-7849755

[horseplayer]

spot on

[TightEnd]

Click to see full-size image.

can't help thinking it would be better if the opposition would oppose more effectively than commit hari kari every week in public

amazing that anti-semitism is a front line issue in this day and age

[TightEnd]

livingstone about to be interviewed by andrew neil on daily politics bbc2

should be good, neither give an inch usually

[AndrewT]

Livingstone's basic comments (that Naz Shah's comments weren't anti-semitic) were correct, but then he ruins all that with his stupid Hitler comments.

Then the dribbling idiot John Mann makes Livingstone look reasonable by ranting and calling him a Nazi in front of the cameras.

Labour just seem to make a habit of trying to catch falling knives at the pointy end.

[dakky]

Livingstone suspended. Don't really know what to think of all this mess. He has said some stupid things in his time, for sure.

[DungBeetle]

Livingstone suspended. Don't really know what to think of all this mess. He has said some stupid things in his time, for sure.

This one takes the biscuit - the headline I just saw said he called Hitler a Zionist!