I went to this talk just now. A few key points before I forget. The speaker was clear that the talk had to be devoid of political views so asked us to keep that in mind.
- The speaker, Walter Boettcher - Director of Research and Financing at Collier's, said the talk was almost pointless because there was little chance of us leaving.
- The question was whether the long term benefits out weight the short term risks, in light of the uncertainty.
- He then listed the short term risks which he said were realistic. It was..... Baaaaaaad. 'Technical' recession likely at the very least, £ probably going to drop 10-15% on international markets, likely to affect financing, interest rates likely to increase to protect the £, knock on effects on employment, resi property markets most likely to see a downturn over a 2-3 year period. US investment likely to decrease. Just general doom and gloom.
- Very interesting discussion on over statements of the impact of the brexit. UK will survive whatever happens, tourism industry and export industries to UK unlikely to change, unlikely to see banks etc relocate due to locations of work forces, even if some places 'brass plate' their head office locations probably not much of an affect on that, property markets will pick back up as long term investors look at buy up cheap.
- He said that the economic effect of migrants to the Uk was net positive to the tune of £3 billion a year, although that was not necessarily offset by relationship with the EU (as in, that is before any EU financing is taken to account) but immigration is generally good and bolsters the UK working population.
- Controlled migration is a good thing. The U.K. Man on the street is predominantly concerned by "pockets" of minorities that are of concern. Very interesting stories about the Calais camps his wife had been to and an obvious split between genuine refugees and dangerous economic migrants who were extremely agressive. He thought it was unfortunate timing of the referendum as the refugee crisis was clouding the economic arguments this was supposed to be about.
Just was pretty interesting, thought I'd share.
I'll watch a few of those vids though and I recommend people watch them as well, the first one was quite a good debate. EU strikes me as good ideas with a bit of flawed execution, it'll take a lot of fixing to get it to work as well as it should but if it's the right step then is it worth waiting 40 years or 80 years? Even if it's not fully likely to ever rid itself of the very slow processes. Can we afford to be so inflexible and politically burdened in the future though? On the other hand can we afford to avoid raising standards across all of europe and improving our human rights, economic and environmental issues? For everything I like about the EU there is something wrong with it which is why it's so hard to decide.
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