BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴

I don't imagine an organisation as large as the EU is fretting about a few million of rent, but I guess it gives the last three journalists at the Telegraph something to do.

They like to point out incompetence in the EU as

1) it's still there and hasn't collapsed without us

2) they're fixated

3) it draws attention away from the financial incompetence at home, which is currently on a much larger scale

I'm not actually sure how much we're paying to the EU now, but I think the 'divorce settlement' payments carry on for quite a while yet.

So you don't think that wasting £373m of EU taxpayers money isn't a big deal? Imagine now if was the Nasty Tories who'd tied a UK government agency into a deal like that and the comments you'd get on here...

Imagine……

The big difference being that I'm a UK taxpayer not an EU taxpayer. Well done to the landlord who managed to get that clause by their team.

Still no government in NI

Current package on offer from UK government is c3 billion

If this is helping your therapy, please do carry on.

Run out of arguments to deny that €434m is a lot of money? If you still think it's small change, ask the EU to send it to me as it clearly doesn't matter.

It's a lot of money, but not mine. Though compared with (say) Bibby Stockholm, it feels like a bargain for the EU.

And as nothing compared with the 10s of billions the Tories have squandered in various fiscal fiascos, and that does include mine. And yours. Considering how much you dislike paying tax, I'm intrigued why you are so relaxed about that. I suspect that if Labour had wasted £50bn+ and the country was still worse off than before, you might just not be quite so relaxed, but maybe I'm mistaken.

I would say the amount is relevant as that could be a lot of projects getting cut (or a few big ones) and potentially some large bunfights. Seems par for the course with the EU though.

Obviously £400m or so is not a trivial amount in terms of the projects typically marked with blue and yellow plaques, but if this was a liability at national level, it would be paid without anyone even blinking as it's barely a rounding error in national finances. But no EU country will stump up unilaterally. Hence it's an official EU-level problem.

I'm guessing you only read down as far as you saw what you wanted to see. A few quotes from the same article:

1.“I’m not convinced it is because of Brexit,” says Martin Gilbert, former chief executive of FTSE 100 fund manager Aberdeen Asset Management.

“Structural, systemic changes in the portfolios of pension funds had the biggest effect. It’s just the cycle and it’s nothing to do with Brexit.”

2. “This is not a Brexit issue,” says Citi UK chief executive Tiina Lee. “This has been in the making for the last 25 years.

“There has been a process where risk minimisation has really taken hold in the UK and 25 years on there’s been a massive de-equitization of the market."

3. Rolet says the trends towards a slimmer stock market were already in train before Brexit and a result of political decisions taken by the UK government over many years.

“We have a regulatory framework in the UK that makes it prohibitive for pension funds and insurance companies to hold a significant amount of equities. Unless this is repealed there is absolutely no way that UK equity markets are going to recover.

4. City minister Bim Afolami MP argues that the problems with the stock market reflect global issues.

“There have been difficulties with capital markets but that is the case in all European countries,” he says. “It’s the case in most places, including the US, but much less so in the US. There has been a global shift towards private capital for a bunch of structural reasons.”

5. Analysts are also quick to argue that London’s listing drought is the result of the wider global economic slowdown that has proved to be a drag on deal-making.

Listings dropped 8pc across the globe last year, according to a report by EY.

“We have seen the IPO market around the world shutdown as things have occurred externally - the war in Ukraine, high inflation, high interest rates,” says Scott McCubbin, who leads EY’s UK and Ireland IPO team.

6. London’s stock market has also had to compete with the rise of private capital, fueled by an era of rock-bottom borrowing costs and low inflation.

7. Another explanation for the malaise lies in the composition of Britain’s stock market. While Big Tech has fuelled the US stock market’s stellar performance – Amazon, Apple and Tesla are among the ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks that have driven massive gains this year – the UK’s blue-chip companies have faced repeated setbacks.

Funny how you managed to miss so many points in that article that went against your world view :)

I'm sure you did read it, but you were probably hoping we wouldn't ...

Still no devolved government in NI

There's (in all but name) a general public sector strike on Thursday demanding a public sector payrise.

The SoSNI has put the money on the table but the DUP are refusing to go back into government to spend it.

What's new?