Good career choice for your daughter then, yes would have expected financial companies to prepare for a move of part or all of there business.
Totally understand financial services businesses having a plan in place as offices can be moved very quickly but manufacturing plants can’t be. We’re already two years from the result yet where is the feared apocalypse, even the B of E is expecting higher economic growth this year for the UK when Brexit is just around the corner.
My son as a precision engineering company in Dorset and his order book as never been so full with most of it being new work which is being brought back to the UK.
This would be the same Bank of England which reduced its economic forecast from 1.8% to 1.4% for 2018 and kept interest rates at 0.5% as a result?
Against a Eurozone grown of 2.4%
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I think you’ve bought a pair of those glasses that you were talking about on another thread.
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Is this work for export or are the clients in the UK?
Either way I expect that this is due to the reduction in the value of the pound. If the finished goods are being exported then the low pound make UK firms cheaper, if the client is in the UK but was gettiing work done overseas this will now be more expensive so it now makes more sense to get it done in the UK.
The fall in the value of the pound does help exporters - at least in the short term but it also increases the price of imports, including raw materials and retail goods. Since we are a net importer it will hurt if the £’s value falls further.
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Looks like you have answered your own questions, so no need for an in depth reply.
Things change very quickly -
Why because I dare put out the possibility that the effects of Brexit may just turn out to be less catastrophic than was predicted by many?
No because you seem to only see what isn’t happening and ignoring all the things that have.
One person, not the whole committee.
But, fair enough - any good news is welcome. I note that the British Chambers of Commerce also upgraded their forecast - interestingly to the same 1.4% (up from 1.1%) as the Bank and feel that growth of 1.5% will occur in 2019 - this is inline with the current IMF estimates (though the headline there was that the IMF estimate for 2019 went down recently).
However, look again at the figures above the UK in that IMF table - the Euro zone is predicted to be ahead of us for the next two years.
It is quite a difficult concept to get across - that, while we are growing we are not doing so as well as we would have done without Brexit - most can’t get beyond “but look, the economy is growing”.
So, you agree with me?
The economic meltdown that was meant to occur with a Leave vote has not happened, I class mass unemployment, double digit inflation and rampant interest rates as a meltdown which is not what we have seen in the last two years.
Very little has happened yet because no-one, not the government, not the brexiteers and cartainly not the private companies know whats going to happen yet.
Give it time, Timothy.
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Fair enough - but you might note that we have not, in fact, left yet so there is still time for things to go pear shaped.
Mind you - inward foreign investment is down 90% which I’d call pretty much a meltdown as far as that is concerned.
The NHS can’t recruit enough staff because EU workers won’t come and we won’t give visas to non-EU workers
Disagreement has crippled government and the negotiating process - raising, again, the real possibility of blowing out without a deal.
The £ is down 20% (mitigating some downsides, see above, but not an unambiguously good thing, see below).
Growth is down
Food prices are up (inflation generally is up).
With inflation up real wages are stagnant again
The trade deficit is larger
Its really all looking rosy isn’t it?
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So what you are all saying is that no matter what Brexit is going to be a financial disaster and there is nothing anyone can do about it? Will it only affect the UK or will the EU also be dragged down? What are people doing to prepare for armageddon, have you all got French nationality now?
I am not saying that there will be financial (or any other sort of) Armageddon - my main point is that to claim that just because one has not come to pass does not mean Brexit is going swimmingly; the one thing that almost everyone agrees upon is that Brexit is not going swimmingly.
What I expect to happen is that May will continue to fudge as much and as long as the EU will let her get away with so that we will continue in a Customs Union with the EU for some time. She will continue to be vague1 about Brexit since she needs to do so to keep the Tories together. If we, and she, get to a 2022 election I would assume that she will want to hang up her hat, retire gracefully and hand the poisoned chalice to someone else (I don’t want to reflect on who because I like to sleep at night). She will presumably want to go off for a very long hike in the Alps.
However there is a fair bit that could derail things. The EU might not want to play ball. One of the fractious twins might actually resign and set in motion events which lead to an October snap election - this would be a disaster because the Tories are no so reviled that if Corbyn can capitalise on their weakness he might even win. The problem then is that the Labour party are just as split and have just as little clue what they want so, together that the delay the election would cause we’d be at real danger of running out of time and having nothing agreed come next March.
As for French citizenship - I might consider it if I lived in France but I don’t - my job would not move, neither would my wife’s and even if it would my French would need a lot of polish. No 1 son is just about to start his GCSE’s so it would be a really bad time for him to move education systems and try to cope with a new language.
So, for good or ill, I am stuck here at least until I retire and even then I’m not sure I want to move to France permanently because it would be too complex financially.
[1] I fully expect that the white paper, when we get it, will be full of phrases like “deep and special” or “maximum cooperation” without actually saying anything useful.
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No Tim, not yet, but seriously thinkin’ about it 
Another chink in the armour.
Yes, there’s a bit of hand waving about future models but the bottom line seems to be that there will be job losses in Solihull as a result.
Meanwhile Rees-Mogg is still spouting bull about customs arrangements.
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