The Mistake most conventional Economists and I include you in that John is that these Institutions are Doing what they say they are doing. In Fact, much of what they do and the outcomes are things turning out exactly as planned. 1/2https://t.co/UczGO06XtX

— GrubStreetJournal (@GrubStreetJorno) June 15, 2019

Still as yet just a small paragraph, Having Watched the Treasury Committee evidence

and given the word Tags a bit of thought and watched the Excellent Brexit The un-civil war

I think that perhaps the most accurate depiction in the Drama was Boris and Mr Cummings has certainly I must say confirmed the side of Boris which seems strange to say, but that of his self effacing side.

The CHannel 4 film shows considerable snobbery and media liberal bias in its portrayal of Banks and Farage as Spivs and of Cummings as arrogant and un self-knowing, all of these characterisations seem to me to be unfair. Richard Tice has emerged as more of a force since the Brexit party EU election campaign and I did not sense any needle between the two both of who seem shrewd and savvy businessmen more than an intellectual measure against the very ordinary committee of hugely conventional MP’s . Steve Baker stands out as having done his homework and knowing his stuff .

The Issues seem to have a very good airing the hostility of the Chairman and the majority of the questioners is evident to anyone with an ounce of objectivity and Cummings makes some very strong statements regarding Threats and dirty tricks from the Cabinet Secretary and others, The emergence of Sedwill from the spook shadows only serve to add more fuel for that particular fire.

Q1448   Mr Baker: Dominic, good afternoon and thank you for coming.  For the record, I should say that I am closely associated with Vote Leave.  Back in 2007, a British Member of Parliament went to the Czech Republic to make a speech on the EU and he said this: “It is the last gasp of an outdated ideology, a philosophy that has no place in our new world of freedom, a world which demands that we fight this bureaucratic overreach and lead Europe into the hope and potential of a new, post‑bureaucratic age”.  Do you agree with what the Prime Minister said back in 2007?

Dominic Cummings: Roughly speaking.

 

Q1449   Mr Baker: From your unique perspective, could you possibly give any insight into why he might have changed his mind?

Dominic Cummings: I think that David Cameron has never wanted to leave.  Overall, David Cameron’s view about the European subject is that the less it is mentioned the better.  He agreed with William Hague, who said, “It is a bomb and let us try to stop the bomb going off”.  Therefore, for many years, his main goal was simply not to talk about it.  Before the 2010 election, I remember the unit that he created to think about Government was explicitly stopped from thinking about EU affairs, which hampered a lot of preparations for Government, because he simply did not want people thinking about it; it would only lead to trouble.  Overall, that has been David Cameron’s attitude.  Also, David Cameron is, psychologically, someone who goes along with the conventional wisdom of the establishment, so I am not at all surprised that he is on the other side of this debate.

 

Q1450   Mr Baker: Another kind of bureaucracy is, of course, the large multinational corporation and you were not able to complete what I thought was a very interesting answer earlier to Helen Goodman.  Would you like to finish your answer on how these large multinational companies operate, please?

Dominic Cummings: There is a basic problem of power in how the European Union works and its regulatory system, and there is huge scope for corruption.  This is not particularly a point just about the European Union; it is a general point about how the world works.  If you centralise a huge amount of power in a place like Brussels, where you do not have Britain’s tradition of a free press, you do not have an awful lot of scrutiny, you do not have any kind of democratic control, you do not have pluralist institutions and you have very centralised institutions, you inevitably get a lot of nepotism between big business and politicians.

That is one of the most unfortunate and disagreeable aspects of the European Union, but it also puts a lot of these companies in a bind and I experienced this on the euro campaign.  A lot of them say to you privately, “Of course the euro is a bloody stupid idea.  Of course we should not be in it, but if I come out and say that, I have had a phone call from Tony Blair in Downing Street that says my business in north Africa is up the spout, so very sorry, I cannot do anything about it.”  That happened repeatedly on the euro campaign.  It has happened repeatedly throughout this campaign as well.  Calls go out from Jeremy Heywood’s office in the Cabinet Office to people, saying, “You do not want to be on that side or bad things might happen to you.”  Think of how much worse that is in Brussels.  If you are an airline, like British Airways or whoever, and you have to negotiate your landing slots with the European Commission, what do you think the odds are that the board of a company in that situation is going to say, “Oh yes, do not worry, Charlie, go out on TV and tell everyone how rubbish the EU is”?  It does not happen.

 

Q1451   Chair: I am sorry to interrupt again.  I just want clarification.  When you talked about Jeremy Heywood there, you were suggesting Jeremy Heywood is ringing people up and threatening them, saying, “You do not want to be on that side lest bad things happen to you.”

Dominic Cummings: All sorts of people in the Cabinet Office call people all the time and make threats, some more overt and some more covert.  I do not want to say that Jeremy Heywood himself has particularly and specifically done anything, but everyone close to how Government operates knows the power of the Cabinet Office and the power of the Cabinet Secretary and the power of subtly worded, in a very English way, threats.

 

Q1452   Chair: The Cabinet Office—we are not naming any particular individuals, but you are talking about senior officials—are making threats all the time with respect to this referendum.

Dominic Cummings: Certainly, and people in Number 10.

 

Q1453   Chair: By which you mean who, or at least which category of person, if you do not want to say?

Dominic Cummings: I mean both officials and special advisers.  It is part of what their job description is.

 

Q1454   Chair: To make threats.

Dominic Cummings: Correct.

 

March 16, 2019

#AANGIRFAN, WHAT THE ESTABLISHMENT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW. THE LAST #TABOO! #BREXIT #CONTROLFILES

 

 

Treasury Committee

Oral evidence: The economic and financial costs and benefits of UK membership of the EU, HC 499
Wednesday 20 April 2016

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 20 April 2016

Watch the meeting

Members present: Andrew Tyrie (Chair); Mr Steve Baker, Mark Garnier, Helen Goodman,  Stephen Hammond, George Kerevan, Chris Philp, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting

Q1459   Rachel Reeves: The Monetary Policy Committee said that “a vote to leave the EU might result in an extended period of uncertainty about the economic outlook, including about the prospects for export growth.”  Are the Monetary Policy Committee scaremongering as well?

Dominic Cummings: The establishment operates on the basis of herding around conventional wisdom.  It is why the establishment has got every big foreign policy decision wrong since trying to deal with Bismarck in the 1860s.  Whitehall and Parliament have unfortunately got all the big things wrong since then; and they herd—it is what happens all the time.  They herded behind the ERM; they herded behind the euro; now they are herded behind supporting the EU.

However, conventional wisdom changes when crises hit.  Look what happened in 2008: all these people did not predict that.  An eclectic group of other people, often from outside the economics profession, politics and the establishment, are the people who accurately said, “The financial system is going to fall off of a cliff.”  It was not the people that you are quoting.

Q1460   Rachel Reeves: Mr Cummings, your campaign is being championed by the Mayor of London and the Justice Secretary; if they are not part of the establishment, I am not sure who is.  This is not an issue about the establishment versus everyone else.

Dominic Cummings: It is very much about establishment thinking, conventional wisdom, and herding.

Q1461   Rachel Reeves: Would you not agree that the Mayor of London and the Justice Secretary are part of the establishment as much as the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England?

Dominic Cummings: No, I would not.  They are champions of anti‑establishment, anti‑conventional wisdom and thinking, and Michael Gove has been like that for many a year.

Chair: Like that product of Eton?

Rachel Reeves: Yes, I was going to say, “Did his anti‑establishment credentials start before or after he went to Eton College?”

Mr Rees-Mogg: Lots of old Etonians are anti‑establishment.

Dominic Cummings: Exactly.  You took the words right out of my mouth.

Treasury Committee

Oral evidence: The economic and financial costs and benefits of UK membership of the EU, HC 499
Wednesday 27 April 2016

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 27 April 2016

Watch the meeting

Members present: Andrew Tyrie (Chair); Mark Garnier, Helen Goodman, George Kerevan, Chris Philp, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rachel Reeves,

Questions 1512 – 1693

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Arron Banks, Co‑Founder, Leave.EU, and Richard Tice, Co‑Founder, Leave.EU, gave evidence.

Q1590 Helen Goodman: £4,500 “expressed in terms of 2015 GDP in 2015 prices”, is what they are saying.

Arron Banks: It is in 2030.

Q1591 Helen Goodman: I know it is in 2020 or 2030, but the prices are on the basis of this year’s prices, so it is not that we have masses and masses of inflation. By 2030 that number of £4,300 will be much higher.

Arron Banks: What they have done in the report, as I understand it, is forecast growth will be 29% instead of 37%, based on a whole series of factors that I think are erroneous. I start from the position that the report is just a bunch of rubbish, which it is basically. You cannot forecast over 15 years. In a business you are lucky if you can forecast over six months and a year at the outset, and beyond that it is just a complete wild guess. The numbers you are quoting are fanciful.

Q1592 Helen Goodman: I could contest what you are saying about long‑term forecasting, which in fact is easier than short‑term forecasting, but we will not go there. I am just trying to get you to focus on the fact that a drop of £4,300 for the average household would be some 17%, and to ask you: when you reflect on this carefully, do you really think that most people would regard a drop in their annual income of that sort of quantity as a bargain?

Arron Banks: I certainly regard our parliamentary democracy and the right to make our own rules as paramount. When people were hitting the beaches of Normandy, I do not think they were saying, “This is going to cost us £2,000.” They were fighting for democracy. I know it is an extreme example, but that is the way I feel about the European Union. I have to say, though, to forecast something over 15 years and to come up with a 37% growth rate or a 29% growth rate is just statistical nonsense.

Helen Goodman: The truth of the matter is they gave a range depending on which scenario one looked to.

Arron Banks: You can see their equation.

Treasury Committee

Oral evidence: The economic and financial costs and benefits of UK membership of the EU, HC 499
Wednesday 23 March 2016

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 23 March 2016

Watch the meeting

Members present: Andrew Tyrie (Chair); Mr Steve Baker, Mark Garnier, Helen Goodman,  Stephen Hammond, George Kerevan, John Mann, Chris Philp, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting

Questions 1129 -1358

Examination of Witnesses

Witness: Boris Johnson MP, gave evidence.

Chair: Boris, order.  I am about to ask you a question.  What is the single market council?

Boris Johnson: There used to be something called the Internal Market Council, and that has now, as far as I can remember, been scrapped in favour of the Competitiveness Council.

Q1217   Chair: What is this single market?

Boris Johnson: I do not think it is possible to do that.  I was speculating there about a possible relationship you could have.  It does not really make sense, because in the end you are either part of the single judicial system or you are not.  This comes back to the whole two referendums idea that some people floated a while back.  Could you, as it were, vote to get rid of a lot of the stuff that is not necessary and then re-accede into the single market?  In the end, I am giving you a very clear position.

Q1218   Chair: Are you for or against the two referendums approach?

Boris Johnson: I think we have one referendum and we get on with it.

Q1219   Chair: Is that then the end of our relationship within the EU?  We do not try to engage in another referendum.  I want to be clear whether that is your view or not.

Boris Johnson: That is my view.

Chair: Okay, that is all I need to know.  It appeared that it was your view for a while, some months ago, and it is very helpful now that we have had that clarification.

Boris Johnson: I think I have been pretty clear about that.

Chair: You have, just now, been very clear.

Boris Johnson: I think I have been pretty clear about that before this august Committee.

The ECB is obsessed with avoiding inflation, it is not engineering deflation, it is just that deflation can be the outcome of either approach.

— Professor John Hearn (@jbhearn) May 31, 2019

Do you think the ECB is engineering deflation? I do not think they have that level of understanding or competence.

— Professor John Hearn (@jbhearn) June 8, 2019

The Mistake most conventional Economists and I include you in that John is that these Institutions are Doing what they say they are doing. In Fact, much of what they do and the outcomes are things turning out exactly as planned. 1/2https://t.co/UczGO06XtX

— GrubStreetJournal (@GrubStreetJorno) June 15, 2019

In respect of Politicians they make the same mistakes as the commentariat and Academic Gatekeepers as amply shown by Aaron Banks and Richard Tice Here.https://t.co/LToazs5bB9 pic.twitter.com/iLUmbqpzpC

— GrubStreetJournal (@GrubStreetJorno) June 15, 2019

Take Back Control!