The doom and gloom merchants are out in force today in the media.
When I was reading the various doom and gloom predictions online today and on some of the various news sites I wondered just how much of this will be down to the exploitation of the Brexit situation. Unemployment fell to 4.8% (1.6 million) but the numbers of people on zero hours contracts increased to over 800,000 this year. Wages continue to stagnate and are predicted to fall below even the 2008 level yet the UK’s largest 100 companies saw revenues grow by an average of 7.3 per cent. Bankers salaries continue to rise year on year, both in the UK and across the EU, while our living standards continue to fall or are they being driven down by greed.
Energy companies are blaming the collapse of the pound for the increase in prices, the Competition and Markets Authority said consumers were already paying £1.4billion a year too much for their energy. We have seen companies demand price rises while we have all seen the size of things like a chocolate bar get smaller as the price gets larger, we have seen the number of pieces in the box reduce while the price gets higher. The business analyst Guy Shone has noted that “Big companies are treating the British high street as a cash cow ready to be milked. They are using Brexit to make bigger profits.” Guy Shone, founder of Explain the Market, added: “Companies are using Brexit as an excuse to bump up prices and make bigger profits.
It’s bad enough that many seem to see Brexit as a re-birth of the empire, but this is just masking the fact that us poor folk continue to be ripped off at every opportunity, Rip Off Britain is back with a vengeance. So while I don’t doubt that things will be tough until things settle down, I also wonder how far this situation will be exploited, how much we will be exploited.
We have got to keep our eyes open, and if we see that companies are exploiting Brexit, and ourselves, we have to make them pay at the checkout because sure as fate the Tories won’t, they mostly own the companies who will be doing it.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
If only so many people hadn’t voted “leave”, eh? What were they thinking would happen? Hmm?
TB
Well there were a lot of reasons people voted the way they did but any company exploiting the vote should be hammered big time, we are ripped off enough in this country as it is and it’s not on in my opinion.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Ah, 1970 all over again, but with the value in the pound falling prices will inevitability rise.Sad but some people will only learn when it hurts them in their pocket, theirs and ours unfortunately. Only then can we see Independence come.
Helena
I do believe that while there will be short term pain no one really knows what the result of leaving the EU will be, esp with elections across the EU next year and parties wanting change doing well, time will tell I guess but as I said to TB any company found to be exploiting the vote at our expense to rip us off has to be hammered.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Members of the conservative party and the government of the day has embarked on a process of Creative Destruction. Simply and usually this is an economical term which is applied to an industry, an evolutionary process which brings about change in an industry or in markets. For those of us who are not involved in such thinking because we are occupied in daily life, bring up a family, paying bills, working, saving and caring for family members or running a business, I use the following example to explain in the normal circumstances what Creative Destruction is and does.
The retail market has gone through a period of Creative Destruction. How we purchase goods and services for our family or ourselves took place physically on the high street. That changed because innovation was taking place in the form of the internet. The internet changed the way we shop, changed logistics, banking and how money transfers, even how we access or purchase music and visual art. So in addition to the retail market a whole host of other industries changed the way they did business and indeed evolution is still taking place.
The Conservative Party started the Creative Destruction of the United Kingdom by holding the referendum to leave the EU. The government and leave voters embrace this destruction and want confidence from the population in adapting to the change, there is a new way of working, a new future. There will be more control of our affairs, control over laws and who lives in our country. None of this is unreasonable. What is unreasonable is to embark on a process which affects every industry in the country, affects every single person’s way of live with no visible innovation influencing the change. For those who voted to stay in the EU the government’s approach in the back drop of the much discussed lack of a plan for leaving the EU amounts to nothing less than internal economic terror(ism) on business, families and a generation of our youth. Leaving the EU does not provide innovation in the form of any tangible asset, method, or strategy to replace what we have at the moment.
As wife, mother, a very ordinary individual and not a member of any particular party. I am in a state of terror, why?
There is no innovation supporting this creative destruction, there has been no success in establishing inclusive political and economic institutions that encourage participation in our exit and there is no level playing field for the majority of our people. The conservative party and the government have had time before the vote and 5 months after to create innovation. The arrogance of stating it can’t declare it’s hand regarding negotiations begs believe. Do they think the EU does not know what the UK wants. Free market trading, at no cost, and no freedom of movement into the UK. The UK is looking for a set of circumstances which the EU and international institutions cannot give. Creative Destruction is needed to evolve industry, markets, economic growth and redistribute wealth. When it fails, the nation fails.
Creative Destruction has happened without innovation being present. The government and EU leavers want the political institutions to agree to adopt a vicious extraction of the whole of the UK population from EU markets and immigration. There are no other political or economic institutions proving an acceptable alternative outcome. We have for sometime been a part of a political and economical environment were the working population didn’t prosper because both the political and economic institutions have been extractive in their activities. The democratic vote outcome also provides fuel for the political extractive position and exit from the EU. Everyone knows the result, it is what you do with it is the matter at hand. The reasons for it’s outcome is what is being peddled as all important and is now creating our own bird cage for our economy and little hope of even a bigger cage for the the economy to grow. The extractive politics of the government is removing all the other elected politicians and the majority of the population from participation in the political or economic effects of our departure. This approach will also promote the elite leaving the majority behind. Throughout history, extractive institutions only lead to stagnant economic growth. Creative Destruction require political and economic inclusive institutions, allowing the population to participate in the political and economic systems of the country. The direction the government has taken is leaving the country void of this element and why this approach as opposed to others available it is best described as internal economic terrorism.
As a scot with a vote that goes down the drain each time I use it, I ask the question. For the love of god when is another party going to announce an inclusive plan that people can buy into even if it starts the debate? Leave an open invitation for other inclusive political parties to amend or suggest. The country will thank you for it. Don’t leave the tory party setting the agenda for an EU exit.
Isobel
Thanks for such a well thought out and informative reply, I won’t pretend to be at that level in my analysis of the overall situation in the UK right now. I do think that Thatcher took the oil money and used it to support her deindustrialisation policy, paying for unemployment and giving tax incentives to the wealthy in the misguided belief in the so called trickly down effect, America followed the same path, while everyone else either invested in modernisation or like Norway build up reserves for the rainy day which came in 2008, or even had an economy like Germany that could withstand the shocks.
Of course we are also having to endure a very harmful right wing agenda that the Tories feel they now have free reign to follow, they can drive us back to the victorian age as there is no opposition anymore and the Scots have been put back in their box for a few years at least. The Liberal Democrats, as I learned in my brief time as a member, are full of crap. When push comes to shove they just do not believe in the policies they are supposed to stand for and Labour are years away from recovery and need to rid their party of the the red tories. That will at least allow them a chance to form left of centre coalitions in the UK in the future if they can get passed their own narrow nationalism but with UKip breathing down their knecks that will be a difficult journey for them.
I think people voted as they did for many reasons in the EU referendum, I voted the way i did because I could not stand by and watch what had happened to Greece, to Spain, to Portugal. The deal with Turkey on refugees and everything being done to suit the same narrow minded and destructive forces that brought about 2008 in the first place. While Iceland jailed their bankers we rewarded ours, as did many in the EU, and that I just cannot be a part of. I think others, esp down south, sadly voted out of an inherent fear that their England could not take in any more people, some of that was ignorance, some racism and some just genuine fear. The Tories are exploiting the situation to their advantage and I suspect hoping that the EU will fall at some stage and it may well do if it does not reform, it can’t continue the way it is and not see growing unrest in the EU states and the risk of pushing people to the likes of Le Pen in France and all the horrors that could bring.
The established order has failed us and while they are doing their best to drag us back in time to enshrine their position, wealth and influence it will and can only end in tears. For Scotland the path has to be independence but if that fails a second time then there will be no third attempt, pure and simple. I can see why the SNP is playing the waiting game but time will run out and they need to be ready, a snap GE is not out of the question and they will need to run on a manifesto which includes either a referendum no matter what or dare I say it, UDI. We live in very scary if somewhat interesting times for those of us who actually care about this, sadly not enough people do in Scotland, I see it every day, it breaks your heart.
Thanks for a brilliant and informative reply.
Bruce