fire at the circus maximus

Last few days of the campaign and, sure enough, more scare stories are popping. I suppose they'll save some for the weekend, although the effect so far is driving the various dials south.

Let's take a look - there's the value of GBP (down).

The stock market (down).

Shares in Britain's biggest industry - finance services (down).

We can see a consistent downward trend. Supposedly the markets are pricing in the uncertainties. Now we're hearing about emergency budgets and new taxation as well. I illustrate the post with Alphonse Mucha's Nero watching Rome burning.

Maybe Osborne is a modern version of Nero? Certainly Osborne and toast in the same sentence seems likely in the near future.

Of course, by talking about the economy here, I'm playing into the hands of the Remain camp, who are steadfastly avoiding talk about migration, which is the main plank of the Leave camp argument. Cameron is superb at giving his speeches to non-press questioners and swerving out of shot when he gets buttonholed. To balance it up, here's the ONS stats for migration.

Total UK migration is about 50:50 between EU and Rest of World.

The Rest of World has China top incoming, then India and then USA.

And there's a couple of countries that particularly skew the EU incoming (the so called EU2, comprising Bulgaria and Romania, who account for 27%).

There's more about all of this here, in the ONS May 2016 report.

And this morning, I could look up and see a couple of helicopters hovering over Parliament. I'm guessing it was linked to the two mini flotillas splashing around outside the Palace of Westminster, so that the two groups could shout through megaphones at one another.

I'm not making a point about In or Out here, it's more that our government is probably supposed to promote stability but seems to be doing everything possible to inject uncertainty.

For Osborne and Cameron, the very fact of a referendum make a brilliant political excuse for all manner of things that don't get done.

Weirdly, without an election to follow the Referendum, we're in a very strange situation.

If we Remain, we've the scare stories of Ozza and Cazza to deal with, but if we Leave we swing further right with Bozza, Nige and Mikka tugging the island further from the thamentopoein-carrying death moths of Europe.

Crazy in the coconut.