{"id":19811,"date":"2016-07-27T11:20:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T10:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=19811"},"modified":"2016-07-27T11:20:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T10:20:02","slug":"brexit-schmexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=19811","title":{"rendered":"Brexit Schmexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Medicines\"All the little Brexiters are fawning over this story. Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) is apparently investing in the UK \u201cdespite Brexit\u201d<\/a>. The part they conveniently play down is this:<\/p>\n

\n

There is also the benefit of a cheaper pound when producing products bound for foreign markets.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s the rub, you see. GSK already has several manufacturing sites in the UK, so it\u2019s not as if it has chosen to come to the UK ahead of anywhere else. I used to work in this industry and I know how much it would cost to shift pharmaceutical production to another site, especially if it was one in another country \u2013 the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) would make it nigh on impossible, and it would raise regulatory issues for long-standing products that had hitherto been \u201coverlooked\u201d.<\/p>\n

A decision like this, reportedly worth \u00a3275 million, is not something you scrape together in a few weeks \u2013 it\u2019ll have been years in the planning. The only outwardly visible signs for the UK economy will be a few dozen extra jobs for high-flying graduates, and if GSK are even remotely similar to the outfit I used to work for, they\u2019ll try and keep that to a minimum anyway in order to maximise the benefit to themselves. A large part of that \u00a3275 million will pay for the internal arseing about that will be required. Basically, GSK is investing in itself.<\/p>\n

The majority of GSK\u2019s UK-manufactured goods are exported, and the collapse of the GBP following Brexit means selling GBP products on a USD market is highly beneficial to whoever is doing it. As long as the UK doesn\u2019t physically fall into the sea, and as long as the GBP remains weak, GSK will coin it.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, GSK are not doing anything that any other company wouldn\u2019t (hell, they even offered me a job once). But they\u2019re not doing it to save the UK. It\u2019s for the short- to medium term benefit of their shareholders. <\/p>\n

\n

Just as I suspected. The day after I wrote this, I see that the toilet paper version of the Daily Mail \u2013 another right-wing, pro-Brexit misinformation machine \u2013 is trumpeting that \u00a3275m is being invested \u201cin Britain\u201d. It isn\u2019t. It\u2019s being invested by GSK, in<\/strong> GSK. Britain will get a few dozen new jobs out of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the little Brexiters are fawning over this story. Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) is apparently investing in the UK \u201cdespite Brexit\u201d. The part they conveniently play down is this: There is also the benefit of a cheaper pound when producing products bound for foreign markets. There\u2019s the rub, you see. GSK already has several manufacturing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[98,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brexit","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}