Versions of a possible deal for the UK with the EU have today been denied by the government. That’s sensible of them. All the versions I have seen are not Brexit. Let’s just leave, spend our own money, and negotiate a free trade deal once the EU has realised we are out. There’s nothing on offer worth £39bn.

When I criticised so called economic and business experts on the BBC someone wrote in here to say if I were ill I would want an expert doctor to help. Yes, of course. I am all in favour of genuine expertise. I have spent a lot of my life reading and listening to people with expertise to widen my understanding. I admire learned people who improve our knowledge  and  make accurate predictions and diagnosis.

Were I ill I would of course turn to well educated qualified doctors who know far more than me about illness and treatment. I would however want an expert who was likely to get both diagnosis and treatment right. The first instruction for any expert must be, do no harm. The second must be to know the limits of your knowledge and craft, and learn each day from experience. I do not  usually write here with critical comments about modern medicine as I am not qualified to do so.

I am qualified in matters financial, and have studied economies and public policy for many years. That is why I feel confident enough to criticise and disagree with so called experts in these areas  who lack basic knowledge and with experts whose judgement is faulty. In the recent Today programme case both so called experts were commenting on the simple question of what the Bank of England was going to do on interest rates. Both wrongly stated the current interest rate, thinking it was one third lower than it is. Why should we then value their opinion?

An apologist for the BBC said it was just a simple mistake. I of course accept we can all make mistakes. I go to considerable lengths to check facts and figures for this blog, but agree I could make a mistake. If I did I would move rapidly to amend it. I have not heard Today amend this mistake. Whilst I could accept one of them could make a mistake I find it difficult to believe two genuinely independent experts could  both make such an elementary mistake on the same occasion. Surely the outside expert is used by theBBC to avoid just that sort of error or lack of knowledge by the in house expert? The outside expert did correct the BBC man when she thought he was wrong to say the Bank was forecasting a recession on a WTO exit from the EU. She quoted  the wrong interest rate as well as the BBC man.

I am returning to this because the Today Business correspondent regularly turns one of the few decent business slots on the mainstram media into an anti Brexit story. Following the interest rate howler he rushed on to try to explore how and why a no deal Brexit might cause a recession.His guest helped him, by agreeing that there were unnamed forecasters who hold this view though she did not think that included the Bank of England.

He asked her why these nameless forecasters thought that. It was surely a factual question which you could only answer as an expert if you had read these forecasts and could name them. If you answer speculatively and in general terms, as she seemed to do, you should as an expert  balance the answer with why others presumably in her view  including the Bank of England do not think there will be a recession just from a no deal exit.

The following morning a different BBC person introduced the business slot. This time we were told – with support from another “expert” interview” – that the pound had risen owing to rumours of a financial services deal between the UK and the EU. They made heavy weather of explaining this would be a one sided affair with the EU in the driving seat, without mentioning that the EU wants access to London and has more passports into London than London has into the continent. The government had denied there was any such agreement, and there is no official draft or agreed  text allowing an expert to tell us what they have in mind. More importantly during this section of the business slot there was no mention of the fact that the Governor of the Bank of England had added another possible two interest rate rises to his forecast, which most people think was the main reason the pound went up! They got around to mentioning this as an also ran possibility after this story about Brexit.

This is not serious journalism based on texts, statements and sources. Most days this section of the Today programme is just used as a way of attacking WTO Brexit.

The biggest items in the Italian election were economic. Did the economy need a stimulus? Does Italy need lower taxes? Should it reverse some of the big cuts in spending made at the EU’s request earlier this decade? Do people want a basic income from the state?

Voters answered clearly. In the north they wanted tax cuts and a boost. In the south they wanted better benefits and a boost. All across Italy they wanted to roll back the pensions cuts of 2011. They elected a Lega/Five Star government who set out to carry through their wishes.

To make the government more palatable to the EU they appointed a PM and a Finance Minister more to the EU’s liking, with the two winning party leaders accepting Deputy Premierships. They constructed quite a modest budget by their standards, limiting how far they could go on tax, benefits and pension reform. The EU decided nonetheless to reject it and to tell them to produce a tougher one.

The EU argues that Italy has borrowed far too much in the past. The underlying reality it has also  been borrowing too much recently, drawing down large sums at zero interest from the European Central Bank to keep its banking system liquid and to allow the state and companies to go on borrowing from banks. The custodians of the Euro are worried by the scale of this, now at Euro 500bn, and want to call a halt to it. They insist that if you are in the Euro the EU tells you how much you can borrow, as it is a matter of common interest. If a state does not comply the EU sends detailed proposals on taxes and spending to try to get a compliant budget. If the state still does not comply it will be fined. The ECB could also take action to make things very uncomfortable for Italian banks and the wider economy, as it did to Greece and Cyprus.

Greece went through this argument and lost. The radical Syriza government desperate to lift Euro austerity buckled when pressure was applied to the banking system. The absence of ECB support meant the banks had to close for some of the time and limit people’s access to their own money. This makes carrying on normal business very difficult. They discovered that if you want to stay in the Euro the EU  decides your budget. Italy says she wants to stay in the Euro, so she will be told the rules do apply for her.

What should the leaders of the Italian government do in this situation? They have a General Election mandate which the EU intends to veto. What is the point in General elections debating  big economic issues, if the national government is not in charge?  Who is and who should be accountable for Italy’s budget?  When will the EU complete the architecture of its political union, to make its power more accountable somehow?

Over our years in the EU some of the worst damage the EU has done is that to our fishing grounds and fishing industry. Environmentalists are rightly upset by the industrial trawler techniques ripping out so much fish, only to see a lot of it thrown back into the sea dead under the infamous discards policy. Our fishermen and women have seen more and more quota allocated to foreign vessels. There has been a big decline in our fishing fleets, and a big decline in the proportion of the catch landed in the UK.

As soon as we leave the EU the UK becomes an independent coastal state with full control over our own waters. We will decide how much fish it is safe to take out of our seas, and how much of that should be fished by UK vessels. The opportunities are great. People in the fishing industry think we could catch and land twice as much as we do today by taking back control of our own fish stocks, whilst removing fewer fish from the sea overall with no discards. They also think there is considerable spare capacity in the present UK fleet, given the controls on fishing.

Work is well advanced with systems to regulate the amount of fish taken without having to throw dead fish back into the sea with all the extra damage that creates. That means we can land more in UK vessels whilst still taking fewer fish overall.  If we landed in the UK twice the amount currently landed, that would add £900 m of raw fish value.  This becomes £3.5bn of total value for the UK once the fish have been processed and sold on to final customers. We would develop more fish processing industries, often in coastal communities that need more jobs and more value added processing.

These policies would boost employment, cut our balance of payments deficit on food, provide more wholesome local food, and reduce environmental damage. The seas would be plundered less, and there would be fewer food miles travelled from trawler to plate. It’s another compelling argument against delay in exiting the EU.

This morning in the business section of the Today programme after 6 am the BBC’s own expert and his chosen interviewee expert both told us that today the Bank of England will announce its decision on interest rates. They will, we were told, keep them unchanged at 0.5%.

Both seemed  unaware that the Bank of England raised rates to 0.75% on the 2nd August 2018, the second rise from the lows. The BBC man was in a rush to get on to his main theme, that the Bank of England was forecasting a recession should the UK just leave the EU on 29 March 2019 without a Withdrawal Agreement to hand over £39bn to the EU.  This was a bit much for his interviewee who said she did not think the Bank had forecast that, but probably others had!  She was then asked to explain why without naming any specific forecast which either could quote.

No wonder voters increasingly say to so called experts “We do not believe you”. The BBC Business correspondent for Today regularly leads his witnesses to his agenda for the day. He also seems to regard it as primarily a slot to pursue anti Brexit questions, when there are so many more accurate and interesting stories he could pursue. Normal business life carries on regardless of Brexit, and so far we are still completely locked into the EU. He usually  fails to question the EU critically or to comment on the perverse consequences of many of its decisions that still affect us.