Tag Archives: Brexit

[embedded content] Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25 , former Minister of Finance for Greece and high profile economist, academic and writer, addressed The Oxford Guild  on Tuesday 28th November in the Said Business School Amphitheatre. He discussed the state of the European Union, of the United Kingdom, the political landscape globally and the political/economic/social agenda of DiEM25...

Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement), former Minister of Finance for Greece and high profile economist, academic and writer, is speaking to The Oxford Guild from 7.30pm on Tuesday 28th November (8th wk) in Mansfield College’s Sir Joseph Hotung Auditorium in the newly opened Hands Building. He will be discussing fascinating topical issues including the state of the European Union,...

“Will you tell me how long you have loved him?” asks Jane Bennet, on receiving the astonishing news that her sister Elizabeth is to marry Darcy, the rich aristocrat she used to hate. “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began,” replies Elizabeth. “But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” This is from the end of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Austen is lampooning the British 19th century marriage market, in which...

The ONS's latest flash productivity estimate is rather good. Productivity in Quarter 3 2017 was up by 0.9% on the previous quarter. Here's what ONS has to say about it: Output per hour growth in Quarter 3 2017 was the result of a 0.4% increase in gross value added (GVA) (using the preliminary gross domestic product (GDP) estimate) accompanied by a 0.5% fall in total hours worked (using the latest Labour Force Survey data). This fall in total hours was driven primarily by a 0.5% fall in...

The UK should stay within the single market for five years after Brexit and Northern Ireland beyond that under “nominal” control from the UK, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has said. Speaking on a visit to Ireland, Mr Varoufakis, who was Greece’s finance minister in 2015, said Britain should apply for a five-year transitional arrangement to remain with the European Economic Area under “a...

The Guardian newspaper has a story about wages in England: A shortage of factory workers is starting to push up pay rates but wage rises in the services sector remain rooted at around 2%, according to the latest feedback from the Bank of England’s regional agents. The central bank said its agents, which are based in offices across the country, found that shortages this month across the manufacturing sector were leading to a “slight increase in pay growth”...

No venue is better suited for a detoxifying discussion on Brexit than The Royal Society, whose motto (Nullius In Verba – On No One’s Word) ought to be the foundation of all rational debate. I was, thus, moved and deeply honoured by the EEF’s (*) invitation to deliver their annual lecture on Brexit in The Royal Society. To listen to the talk, which I delivered in the evening on 7th November 2017, click media...

Apparently, whenever some poor economic news is published about the United Kingdom, journalists have to weave in their on-going gripe about the outpouring of democracy in June last year that saw the Brexit vote to leave successful. Its hysterical really. The most recent example is from the otherwise sensible Aditya Chakrabortty from the UK Guardian (October 17, 2017) – Who’s to blame for Brexit’s fantasy politics? The experts, of course. The story has nothing much to do with the June 2016...

On the evening of Friday, September 22nd, the credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded the UK's credit rating. Admittedly, it was only by one notch. But coming as it did hard on the heels of Theresa May's grand speechin Florence, it was a shattering blow.  Credit ratings agencies lost much of their lustre in the financial crisis of 2008, when they were revealed to have been complicit in the mispricing of complex financial derivatives – the “toxic waste” that brought down some of the...

Britain must make a radical move if it is to avoid the snare set by Brussels, which wants Brexit to fail, writes Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis September 10 2017, 12:01am, The Sunday Times Varoufakis arrives at a meeting in Athens while he was the Greek finance ministerGETTY Share Brussels’s cheerleading journalists are at it again. Their mission? To aid and abet the EU negotiators in winning...