Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Well Hannan, like Farage, has seen the EU from the inside. Must be worth something. The more shrill the voices of doom become about leaving, the more certain I am that they are wrong.

Our population is estimated to increase to 70 million over the next 12 years. We are growing in population slower than most countries and we take the least immigrants. UKIP has done a good job in making immigration a worry for people. And UKIP is very similar to the BNP and attracts similar supporters. Immigration is not such a problem as is made out. The real problem is the lack of infrastructure to support our population. UKIP only gained any serious following when the last recession began. In times of economic difficulty, parties at the extreme fringes start to do well. They appeal to people's fears and basic instincts.

How do you know our population is set to increase to 70 million in the next 12 years , nobody can estimate that with the doors open to 500 million people .

I take it your voting to stay then Hays ?

A factor in people wishing to leave the EU is the belief that laws are passed that affect us where we have no sovereign right to challenge them.

That could be an important thing. However, it seems that no one can thing of any examples.

Is there anyone here who has been affected in their day to day life by an EU law that is anyway onerous?

Jimmy
No, I am voting out for different reasons.

The estimate of 70m is from the ONS. Farage gave massive estimates of people who would come here from Romania etc and he was completely wrong. Knowing the total numbers in the EU doesn't tell you how many will actually come.

Hays has asked Lynton, who told him the best chance is with;

cynic is it France.

I could think of a number of countries. The oil rich, like Saudi, that have to cut due to the low oil price. Ditto Venezuela which is a train wreck under the Chavistas. Equally the USA under Obama with his food stamps program. But he thinks he has a bottomless pit to draw from.

no V ..... actually it's Saudi

Well it's their own fault .

68196 - eu legislation is often insidious .....

there is the plain stupid like dictating what apples can be grown commercially to limiting the number of hours that can be worked (48 hours includes travel time) to delaying for years making lorry cabs safer insofar as seeing cyclists is concerned

from the outside, one can pick and choose and adopt the bits of legislation that look sensible while rejecting the plain interfering and junk

Saudi and Russia have agreed to cut production to help raise prices.

It won't work because as the price rises then the shale oil that is loss making at present will come back on stream an cause over supply again.

Then add to that Iran beginning to pump again.

We are in for losing oil prices for the foreseeable future. Good for some developed countries and very bad for lots of others such as Saudi, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria etc.

Saudi and Russia are freezing production .

I see this as the biggest problem on the long term horizon. We are heading for a mass low wage low skill future. The first phase will be lower wages for unskilled jobs. Next it will be no wages because of few jobs. Long term it will be high wages for a few highly skilled jobs and no work for the masses. I have had this conversation on here before.

http://news.sky.com/story/1646966/earn-less-than-20-robots-could-replace-you

The White House says that if you earn less than $20 (£14) per hour, you'll probably be replaced by a robot.

The Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) came to the conclusion in its economic report for 2016.

It said that worldwide shipments of industrial robotics doubled between 2010 and 2014.

This surge in automation could put workers in non-supervisory roles that make less than $20 per hour out of work.

My understanding is that Iran, Russia and Saudi have agreed not to increase production. Nothing about cutting. Also the shale oil wells have relatively short lives, although techniques are being developed to increase the yields. Nevertheless, the yield per well drops off quite quickly so that the well preparation cost is amortized over a much shorter time than conventional wells.
The average break even cost of US shale oil is estimated at $65 per barrel, so it will need to rise above that for some time before we see new rigs.
Perhaps more relevant is that we are all using less oil each year.

Yes. It was a freeze. The article I saw was before that when they were talking about cuts. This is current today from CNBC.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/23/how-saudis-can-cut-oil-production-commentary.html

iturama - never mind shale oil recovery; on a normal well i think the recovery is only about 40% of the actual reserve .... even that might be a bit high

meanwhile, i see no uptick in saudi production or at least development of new wells

P68206 H/S where have you been for the last 45 years? the low wage rip-off Britain climate has been in operation all that time.

If people seriously want to stop the down down projection in Wages and Conditions and have a better chance of it going the other way then a cut in the hourly working week is one of the ways, unlike the French (35 hr) trial model that did not work simply because it was far to inflexible in operation.

What work is worth is a difficult subject. It is not a rip-off. It is market forces. You may not like it, but wages will remain low permanently. There are just too many people and not enough work. We need smaller populations. Full employment is a distant memory. It has only happened in the aftermath of wars.

higher consumption works!