Lloyds Banking Share Discussion Threads

[bargainbob] 24/2/2020 22:04

Minerve 2 lol , i wonder the first numpty to say but we are not in Europe now lol

[malcolmmm] 24/2/2020 22:02

The UK will do very well unencumbered by the EU's ponderous way that they do things trying to please all the nations involved. Such as one small EU country of a few hundred thousand stopping a trade deal with Canada for years because it didn't help their sheep farmers, if I remember rightly.
The UK will be more nimble and adapt to a fast changing world and leave the squabbling EU far behind.

[psychochopper] 24/2/2020 22:01

We've left your version of Europe. Are you some sort of moron?

[malcolmmm] 24/2/2020 21:47

Some of the speech by David Frost our chief negotiator .

I made the point just now that some of the studies of the benefits of trade were really studies of the benefits of good institutions and good politics. That, in my view, is where the gains of Brexit are going to come.

Some argue that sovereignty is a meaningless construct in the modern world, that what matters is sharing it to gain more influence over others.

So we take the opposite view. We believe sovereignty is meaningful and what it enables us to do is to set our rules for our own benefit.

Sovereignty is about the ability to get your own rules right in a way that suits our own conditions. Much of the debate about whether Britain will diverge from the EU I think misses this point. We are clear – and the PM was clear in the speech he gave at Greenwich in London that we are not going to be a low-standard economy. That’s clear. But it is perfectly possible to have high standards, and indeed similar or better standards to those prevailing in the EU, without our laws and regulations necessarily doing exactly the same thing. One obvious example, I think, is the ability to support our own agriculture to promote environmental goods relevant to our own countryside, and to produce crops that reflect our own climate, rather than being forced to work with rules designed for growing conditions in central France.

I struggle to see why this is so controversial. The proposition that we will not wish to diverge, that we would wish not to change our rules, is the same thing as the rules governing us, on 31 December this year, are the most perfect rules that can be designed and need never be changed. That is self-evidently absurd. I think we should dismiss the ‘divergence217; phantasm from sensible political debate.

I think looking forward, we are going to have a huge advantage over the EU – the ability to set regulations for new sectors, the new ideas, and new conditions – quicker than the EU can, and based on sound science not fear of the future. I have no doubt that we will be able to encourage new investment and new ideas in this way – particularly given our plans to boost spend on scientific research, attract scientists and make Britain the best country in the world to do science.

There are other broader advantages to running your own affairs. One obvious one is that it is much easier to get people involved in making decisions. Another, less obvious advantage, is the ability to change those decisions. My experience of the EU is that it has extreme difficulty in reversing the bad decisions it takes. Yet every state gets things wrong. That’s clear. Course correction is, therefore, an important part of good government. Britain will be able to experiment, correct mistakes and improve. The EU is going to find this much, much more difficult.

I am confident that these political economy factors really matter. In an age of huge change, being able to anticipate to adapt, and to encourage really counts. Brexit is about a medium-term belief in that reality that this is true – that even if there is a short-run cost, it will be overwhelmed rapidly by the huge gains of having your own policy regimes in certain areas.

It’s a personal view, but I also believe it is good for a country and its people to have its fate in its own hands and for their own decisions to matter. When I look round Europe, by and large it’s the smaller countries, who know they must swim in the waves that others make, that seem to have higher quality decision making – they can’t afford not to. Being responsible for your own policies produces better outcomes.

So, that is why, once again, we approach the upcoming negotiations in a pretty confident fashion. We aren’t frightened by suggestions there is going to be friction, there are going to be greater barriers. We know that and have factored this in and we look further forward – to the gains of the future.

Finally, that is also why we are not prepared to compromise on some fundamentals of our negotiating position.

One of those fundamentals is that we are negotiating as one country. To return again to Burke, his conception of the state was and is one that allows for differences, for different habits, and for different customs. It is one which means that our own multi-state union in the UK has grown in different ways across the EU – each playing unique roles in its historical development. It is actually rather fashionable at the moment amongst some to run down that state which has been very successful historically. We cannot be complacent about the Union in the UK, but I nevertheless believe that all parts of the UK are going to survive and thrive together as one country. In particular, I am clear that I am negotiating on behalf of Northern Ireland as for every other part of the UK.

A second fundamental is that we bring to the negotiations not some clever tactical positioning but the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country. It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us – to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has. So to think that we might accept EU supervision on so-called level playing field issues simply fails to see the point of what we are doing. That isn’t a simple negotiating position which might move under pressure – it is the point of the whole project. That’s also why we are not going to extend the transition period beyond the end of this year. At the end of this year, we would recover our political and economic independence in full – why would we want to postpone it? That is the point of Brexit.

In short, we only want what other independent countries have.

To underline this I want to finish with a thought experiment. Boris Johnson’s speech in Greenwich a couple of weeks ago set out a record of consistently high standards of regulation and behaviour in the UK, in many cases better than EU norms or practice. So, how would you feel if the UK demanded that, to protect ourselves, the EU must dynamically harmonise with our national laws set in Westminster and the decisions of our own regulators and courts?

Now I assume, many in the EU would simply dismiss the suggestion out of hand. But perhaps the more thoughtful would say that such an approach would compromise the EU’s sovereign legal order; that there would be no democratic legitimacy in the EU for the decisions which the UK would take and to which the EU would be bound; and that such decisions are so fundamental to the way the population of a territory feels bound into the legitimacy of its government, that this structure would be simply unsustainable: at some point democratic consent would snap – dramatically and finally.

So however amusing and however tempting it would be for us to run these arguments in reverse, the reasons we would not do so and will not do so is that these arguments of our more thoughtful people on the EU side would have very significant force.

The reason we expect – for example – to have open and fair competition provisions based on FTA precedent is not that we are looking for a minimalist outcome on competition law. It is that the model of an FTA and the precedents that exist in actual agreed FTAs are the most appropriate ones for the relationship of sovereign countries in highly sensitive areas relating to how their jurisdictions are governed and how their populations give consent to it. So if it is true, as we hear from our friends in the Commission and the 27, that the EU wants a durable and sustainable relationship in this highly sensitive area, the only way forward is to build on the approach we want of a relationship of equals.

I do believe this needs to be internalised on the EU side. I do think the EU needs to understand, I mean genuinely understand, not just say it, that countries geographically in Europe can, if they choose it, be independent countries. Independence does not mean a limited degree of freedom in return for accepting some of the norms of the central power. It means – independence – just that. I recognise that some in Brussels might be uncomfortable with that – but the EU must, if it is to achieve what it wants in the world, find a way of relating to its neighbours as friends and genuinely sovereign equals.

So let me conclude. Michel Barnier said in Belfast the other week that ‘not one single person has ever convinced me of the added value of Brexit’.

So, Michel, I hope I will convince you when you read this to see things differently – and maybe even think that a Britain doing things differently might be good for Europe as well as for Britain.

And in concluding, I draw inspiration from three sources in believing we are going to get a good conclusion in negotiations this year.

First, we can do this quickly. We are always told we don’t have enough time. But we should take inspiration, I think, from the original Treaty of Rome back in 1957. This was negotiated and signed in just under 9 months – surely we can do as well as that, as well as our great predecessors, with all the advantages we have got now?

The second source of inspiration is from President De Gaulle. I know that Michel is a great admirer of Charles de Gaulle. He probably doesn’t know that I am as well. De Gaulle was the man who believed in a Europe of nations. He was the man who always behaved as if his country was a great country even when it seemed to have fallen very low and thus made it become a great country yet again. That has been an inspiration to me, and those who think like me, in the low moments of the last three years.

And the last source of inspiration once again is from Edmund Burke who gave a famous speech to the electors of Bristol in 1780. he urged his voters to ‘applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover!’ In 2016 we ran; in 2018, we fell; so cheer us now as we in Britain recover, and go on, I am sure, to great things.

Thank you very much.

[crossing_the_rubicon] 24/2/2020 21:46

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLhWzMOccTg
Should sort out the car thieves!!!"

Superb.

Wonder if it can be adapted for houses :)



"incapacitating the attacker...."

Love it.

[alangriffbang] 24/2/2020 21:41

Dow Jones down over a thousand ,

[essentialinvestor] 24/2/2020 21:39

Some perspective is needed. Before the swine flu outbreak epidemiologists
were modelling for 50,000 plus UK deaths, the actuality was fewer than 500.
It's too early to know how serious this is. The best part of 2 million people
die globally each year from pneumonia and flu combined. Gets little attention.
The top end estimate I've seen is 400,000 UK deaths, but it could be well under 1% of that.


Lloyds worth a look around 50 pence?, may not get there.

[optomistic] 24/2/2020 21:29

Not really having a good time though are we Mitchy, did buy a few more today at 53p and a touch. Built up a big holding (for me) would be nice to see a bit of movement to the upside soon...that would brighten things up a bit :-))

[minerve 2] 24/2/2020 21:29

grahamite2

Are you OK old boy?

You haven't posted in a while.

Hope all is OK.

[minerve 2] 24/2/2020 21:14

All this fixation with Labour.

LOL

Sad bunch.

[mitchy] 24/2/2020 21:08

Phew! What a day. Certainly not boring anymore.

[crossing_the_rubicon] 24/2/2020 21:07

"i'll be chopping up two large beech trees over summer,and flogging off the logs cheap"

How much do you charge to chop and saw up an Ash tree?

:)

[k38] 24/2/2020 21:04

UK will only benefit from Brexit. The results will be shown after 2 to 3 years. In 5 years labours chance of winning the election will be minimum to nothing.

[xxxxxy] 24/2/2020 21:01

Charles Lee24 Feb 2020 5:37PMThe virus is a genuine Black Swan event.The damage caused by such an event is, by its very nature, impossible to predict.My own feeling is that it will break out of its current locations and go on to infllict even more misery on mankind.When it is reported in Africa I would sell.johnny rioja24 Feb 2020 5:29PMwhen markets fall investors have two choices - rubbish !  - the third choice is to stay invested , trying to guess the market is a mugs game . Stay invested for 10  years you will be fine.Bab Boon24 Feb 2020 5:44PM@johnny rioja If you did that in 1929 you would have waited 'til the mid 1950s for it to come right.

[xxxxxy] 24/2/2020 20:58

Coronavirus virus constructionPierre Sauvon24 Feb 2020 5:45PMA common pattern is a big drop followed by a "sucker's rally" which draws in the over optimistic.   This correction/crash has legs and Brexit is going to cause massive damage to the EU if they refuse to grant us a Canada style FTA sans controls.  When is it safe to go back in?  At a guess after a 20% drop.Itzal Lyes24 Feb 2020 6:03PM@Pierre Sauvon Incredible how Brexit,  in this interconnected World,  can cause the EU massive damage,  yet no mention of the catastrophe that it will wreak  in the UK.

[minerve 2] 24/2/2020 20:43

"Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority"

-Schopenhauer

[minerve 2] 24/2/2020 20:39

It looks like I am saying and writing all the right things.

The gammons are indeed rattled.

Reality hurts doesn't it gammons. Your limitations are there for all to see!

LOL

[mikemichael2] 24/2/2020 20:11

Should sort out the car thieves!!!

[mikemichael2] 24/2/2020 20:04

Hi Scruf, i'll be chopping up two large beech trees over summer,and flogging off the logs cheap. I don't have a log burner just enjoy the chainsaw and axe.
Must be 10 ton or so,