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Brexit discussion thread III

ancapailldorcha

This thread is for discussing the departure of the UK from the EU. I will move some posts over shortly.

New posters, please read the forum charter before posting.

Regards,

The Politics Mods.

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First Up

Enzokk wrote: »

Harika wrote: »

That's a tactic, May replaces only what is lost but claims that the NHS gets more. Same happened in Austria with tuition fees, the minister claimed that this would go fully to the universities where it is hard to argue against it. Meanwhile the university budget was slashed so the additional fees only compensate for what was deducted.

She is trying to hoodwink the public and some will fall for it. She really is the worst PM off all time in my opinion. She has been caught as the architect of the hostile environment that caused so much misery to their own citizens. She caused her friend to lose her cabinet position due to that. She also recommended Christopher Pope to be knighted 6 months ago. Her actions speak louder than anything that she may say (he initial speech when she became PM was about how she was all for the little guy, yet look at what she has done). Here she is trying...trying to explain the inexplicable.

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1008278694714961920

She is hopeless but she has stiff competition for worst ever.

Cameron's fumbling caused Brexit and Blair's war in Iraq makes him a strong contender.

Capt'n Midnight

Enzokk wrote: »

She also recommended Christopher Pope to be knighted 6 months ago.

Actually the issue was that May & Co. were trying to railroad in populist legislation without debate.

Sound familiar ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44513497

He explained that he stopped the bill from progressing because he disapproved of how the legislation was being brought in.

"The government has been hijacking time that is rightfully that of backbenchers," he said.

"This is about who controls the House of Commons on Fridays and that's where I am coming from."

He accused the government of trying to "bring in what it wants on the nod", adding: "We don't quite live in the Putin era yet."

Sam Russell

First Up wrote: »

She is hopeless but she has stiff competition for worst ever.

Cameron's fumbling caused Brexit and Blair's war in Iraq makes him a strong contender.

I'd say Anthony Eden would be on the list thanks to his escapade on the Suez Canal, trying his bit of regime change. Unfortunate his best friend Ike threatened to sell his GBP Government bonds. The UK withdrawal marked the end of the UK as a serious world power.

It is a long list.

Enzokk

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Actually the issue was that May & Co. were trying to railroad in populist legislation without debate.

Sound familiar ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44513497

Not buying that. If he hasn't voted against legislation for human rights, same sex marriage, equal pay and hunting and smoking bans I would buy it. Seeing as he also opposed the minimum wage and opposed a bill to give Alan Turing a pardon makes his comment that he isn't a "dinosaur" seem very hollow.

Then you him calling staff in the commons "servants", that is just an excuse to not look like the bigot he is. Actions speak louder than words and his actions are very clear over the years.

Leroy42

Enzokk wrote: »

She is trying to hoodwink the public and some will fall for it. She really is the worst PM off all time in my opinion. She has been caught as the architect of the hostile environment that caused so much misery to their own citizens. She caused her friend to lose her cabinet position due to that. She also recommended Christopher Pope to be knighted 6 months ago. Her actions speak louder than anything that she may say (he initial speech when she became PM was about how she was all for the little guy, yet look at what she has done). Here she is trying...trying to explain the inexplicable.

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1008278694714961920

Is it just me of does May have a facial tick when she is faced with a question either she doesn't know the answer to or knows the answer can't be told honestly?

Its as clear as day in the video clip (1.10) and I'm pretty sure it happens quite a bit (although I haven't gone back through other videos).

Either way, she was caught out totally on the issue, simply had no answer. When she started to say he was a long standing member I was thinking she was about to say the Tory Party but she stuck with parliament.

Leroy42

And yet we still have government ministers coming out with the mantra that 'no deal is better than a bad deal.'

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/975535/Brexit-news-Brexiteer-slaps-down-Tory-rebels-EU-withdrawal-bill-Suella-Braverman-May

This is the minister than only a few weeks ago admitted that the £39bn was payable regardless of the outcome of any deal.

Surely the journalist should be asked her what a no deal would actually mean? and how they have concluded that a bad deal, of which they have no details, can be judged without having that pretty vital piece of information. Particularly sine all the expert advice is saying that a no deal is a disaster.

But since they dismiss these experts, on what are they basing this opinion of 'no deal is better than a bad deal'?

Strazdas

Leroy42 wrote: »

And yet we still have government ministers coming out with the mantra that 'no deal is better than a bad deal.'

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/975535/Brexit-news-Brexiteer-slaps-down-Tory-rebels-EU-withdrawal-bill-Suella-Braverman-May

This is the minister than only a few weeks ago admitted that the £39bn was payable regardless of the outcome of any deal.

Surely the journalist should be asked her what a no deal would actually mean? and how they have concluded that a bad deal, of which they have no details, can be judged without having that pretty vital piece of information. Particularly sine all the expert advice is saying that a no deal is a disaster.

But since they dismiss these experts, on what are they basing this opinion of 'no deal is better than a bad deal'?

Either these loons believe what they are saying or are lying to the public, both of which are scary propositions.

Thomas_IV

Leroy42 wrote: »

And yet we still have government ministers coming out with the mantra that 'no deal is better than a bad deal.'

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/975535/Brexit-news-Brexiteer-slaps-down-Tory-rebels-EU-withdrawal-bill-Suella-Braverman-May

This is the minister than only a few weeks ago admitted that the £39bn was payable regardless of the outcome of any deal.

Surely the journalist should be asked her what a no deal would actually mean? and how they have concluded that a bad deal, of which they have no details, can be judged without having that pretty vital piece of information. Particularly sine all the expert advice is saying that a no deal is a disaster.

But since they dismiss these experts, on what are they basing this opinion of 'no deal is better than a bad deal'?

On the fantasy of 'La-La-Land Brexitland'. That's enough for them and always have been that way cos the opinions and foundings of experts were always the dismissed cos they always get in the way of the 'ideal Brexit era'.

Dymo

Look at it from the Brexiters point of view.

Teresa May said there was going to be a huge dividend after Brexit, no more payment to Europe and by 2023 the NHS will be getting an extra 600M a week
No more control from europe.
They can sort out their own immigration laws now.
Doesn't matter what happens in negotiations, every country is going to want to deal with the UK.
It's a shame Boris Johnson isn't running the negotiations he would tell europe where to go.
Europe can go swivel if it thinks we're going to take a bad deal.

That's pretty much Joe Public's opinion and reinforced by newspapers and politicians.

Call me Al

Dymo wrote: »

Look at it from the Brexiters point of view.

Teresa May said there was going to be a huge dividend after Brexit, no more payment to Europe and by 2023 the NHS will be getting an extra 600M a week
No more control from europe.
They can sort out their own immigration laws now.
Doesn't matter what happens in negotiations, every country is going to want to deal with the UK.
It's a shame Boris Johnson isn't running the negotiations he would tell europe where to go.
Europe can go swivel if it thinks we're going to take a bad deal.

That's pretty much Joe Public's opinion and reinforced by newspapers and politicians.

Precisely.. and polling indicates that many brexit supporters say short term pain (job losses, spending cuts etc) is worth it to achieve all of the above.
There is lots of rhetoric but very thin on the practicalities and reality.
And there is a definite irony that the "Better Together" slogan from Scottish independence ref is lost on them..

Leroy42

^^^This always gets me.

How long is short-term and what sort of pain are they talking about?

Many months ago James O'Brien had an electrician leave voter making that same point and accepting short term pain and JOB pointed that that not only him but all his customers would be down, nobody knows for how long or how far.

And nobody seems to be able to state, beyond generalities, how these short-term losses will be made up for in the medium term.

What sections will be most hit, and may not recover? What happens to say the workers in the car plant? Is there a plan to retrain them? It just seems that the UK is fundamentally changing the very structure of the trading situation and little has been done to plan for that. Whether or not it ends up better or worse, moving from trading with France to trading with India.

They are totally different markets, the customers have different wants and culture. Advertising or selling techniques in one doesn't necessarily translate to the other. What are the UK diplomatic corp planning on doing to increase relationships within countries? Is there a plan for trade missions? Will the UK government offer credit guarantees to cover cash-flow?

Who covers the cost of relocating the sales team from Lyon to Jakarta? Do they need offices there or simply a call centre in the UK?

There is lots of talk about the high end Brexit negotiation stuff, but I have seen nothing in terms of the practicable requirements of such a fundamental change.

It is said, though not always true, that it is 5 times more expensive to acquire than retain customers. Yet the UK are doing this across the board.

Sam Russell

Just a short term loss that no-one appears to see.

It costs, I would guess, about £100,000 to employ a civil servant in London what with salary, pension, office provision, etc. There are 10,000 CS in the Dep for Exiting the EU, that is a cost of £1 billion a year. So 10% of the saving of quitting the EU is already taken up with the Dep for Exiting.

Add in the £40 billion exit cost, and the cost of duplicating the 36 EU agencies, like the medicines and banking that used to reside in the UK, and they are unlikely to see any dividend - rather a deficit when you add the extra numbers employed bu the UK Border Force and HMR&C staff to inspect all these shipments.

That is just the direct cost to HMG. Now add in the cost of customs documentation for all these shipments to be paid by industry, and it becomes obvious that the cost of any form of Brexit will be massive - even the softest.

Will the GBP fall like a stone if there is a hard Brexit - or will it recover if there is a very soft Brexit?

In the last 70 years, the GBP has fallen from US$4 to US$1.40 today - that is a fall of 3.5 times or it has fallen to 28.5% of its value against the US Dollar over that time. It has fallen much further against the German currency since 1966.

Mind you, they do have control of their own currency, so they can devalue it further if they wish. They devalued in 1931, 1949, and 1967, and floated in 1971.

We shall see.

LuckyLloyd

This is what "post - truth politics" is

Professor Moriarty

Leroy42 wrote: »

^^^This always gets me.

How long is short-term and what sort of pain are they talking about?

Many months ago James O'Brien had an electrician leave voter making that same point and accepting short term pain and JOB pointed that that not only him but all his customers would be down, nobody knows for how long or how far.

And nobody seems to be able to state, beyond generalities, how these short-term losses will be made up for in the medium term.

What sections will be most hit, and may not recover? What happens to say the workers in the car plant? Is there a plan to retrain them? It just seems that the UK is fundamentally changing the very structure of the trading situation and little has been done to plan for that. Whether or not it ends up better or worse, moving from trading with France to trading with India.

They are totally different markets, the customers have different wants and culture. Advertising or selling techniques in one doesn't necessarily translate to the other. What are the UK diplomatic corp planning on doing to increase relationships within countries? Is there a plan for trade missions? Will the UK government offer credit guarantees to cover cash-flow?

Who covers the cost of relocating the sales team from Lyon to Jakarta? Do they need offices there or simply a call centre in the UK?

There is lots of talk about the high end Brexit negotiation stuff, but I have seen nothing in terms of the practicable requirements of such a fundamental change.

It is said, though not always true, that it is 5 times more expensive to acquire than retain customers. Yet the UK are doing this across the board.

When asked about a post-Brexit FTA, the Indian High Commissioner emphasised that, in return, India would require less stringent British immigration laws for its citizens than currently prevail. The ironing is delicious.

Strazdas

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

This is what "post - truth politics" is

There are clearly a lot of dumbed down folk in the UK. The right wing press are responsible for around 80% of newspaper sales and people have been reading their nonsense for many years and think everything they read is the actual truth. Brexit probably couldn't happen in any other country.

EdgeCase

Leroy42 wrote: »

^^^This always gets me.

How long is short-term and what sort of pain are they talking about?
.....

Who covers the cost of relocating the sales team from Lyon to Jakarta? Do they need offices there or simply a call centre in the UK?

There is lots of talk about the high end Brexit negotiation stuff, but I have seen nothing in terms of the practicable requirements of such a fundamental change.

It is said, though not always true, that it is 5 times more expensive to acquire than retain customers. Yet the UK are doing this across the board.

There's also this rather arrogant assumption that they offer some kind of amazingly competitive products or services and that they can suddenly just rock up to already well-established economies and take a significant chunk of the market.

This is based on nothing but hot air and arrogance. It's certainly not based on market research or proper analysis.

In a trade deal with a highly developed services market like the US for example, the whole thing could flow the other way and US companies could end up wiping out UK competitors based on their scale and abilities.

Also, what gives them idea that somewhere like China even wants their services? China already has huge financial services centres and is unlikely to want London trying to siphon off money beyond Chinese control.

Where would they find all this business in Canada or Australia? They can't act as a bridge into the EU for those countries, so they'll only be offering them the UK domestic market and all of those countries already have very well developed and established markets for pretty much everything and would have highly established companies dominating them and doing quite well.

On top of that the UK's expecting totally open free trade deals in countries where its industries would be directly competing. The EU allows this as it's got an ideological agenda of creating a pan European single market and openly encourages UK and companies from all over the EU to take advantage of that, seeing them as part of the home market. Nation states don't think like that. If you're a UK bank trying to take business from a US, Canadian or Australian bank, their respective governments will likely work in favour of their local employers and suppliers, not try to giver the UK a free lunch.

Also, as I mentioned before, you've the Trump factor. He is pushing an "America First" agenda and hates trade deals. If they get a deal with the US, it's very likely to be one sided, particularly if he notices that there's actually a large services trade surplus in favour of the UK which could need to be rebalanced.

Then you've all the deeply integrated supply chains that take advantage of the European single market and have taken it for granted to grow businesses in Britain. Those could all end up fractured and turned upside down. If you've a few % of extra costs on many businesses, margins can be low enough that they will go under very quickly.

They're just turning a huge % of the UK economy upside-down and inside out and have no concept of how risky what they're doing is.

It's like turning up at Dragons Den without a business plan and a flashy brand.

You can't eat hype!

Capt'n Midnight

Sam Russell wrote: »

In the last 70 years, the GBP has fallen from US$4 to US$1.40 today - that is a fall of 3.5 times or it has fallen to 28.5% of its value against the US Dollar over that time. It has fallen much further against the German currency since 1966.

Mind you, they do have control of their own currency, so they can devalue it further if they wish. They devalued in 1931, 1949, and 1967, and floated in 1971.

We shall see.

BTW
Roughly half of that drop was the 1949 devaluation which was forced on the UK by the USA because of the Anglo-American loan.

Sam Russell

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

BTW
Roughly half of that drop was the 1949 devaluation which was forced on the UK by the USA because of the Anglo-American loan.

Yes, but not the others. Also, the dollar has suffered as well. GB£10,000 converted to Deutsche Marks in 1966 would be worth €65,000 today. In 1966, £1 was worth 13 DM.

The USA has been running unsustainable deficits for decades.

Capt'n Midnight

This will allow better links to the continent, whatever stranglehold the brexiteers imagine they have on us is being eroded step by step.
Port of Cork €80M Container Terminal Development In Ringaskiddy Underway

The Cork Container Terminal will initially offer a 360 metre quay with 13 metre depth alongside and will enable larger ships to berth in Ringaskiddy. The development also includes the construction of a 13.5 hectare terminal and associated buildings as well as two ship to shore gantry cranes and container handling equipment.

UK port suggesting unacompanied tucks instead of warehouses. Either way there will be delays, but Dover is the bottleneck.
https://afloat.ie/port-news/port-and-shipping-news/item/39588-uk-needs-channel-trade-reality-check-looks-to-irish-sea-solutions

Peel Ports [a UK ports group incl. Liverpool] is calling on cargo owners, hauliers and others to look at two potential solutions to inevitable congestion at Dover, learning lessons from a model commonly used for Irish Sea freight and using capacity at ports across the country.
...
Currently, more than 75% of all RoRo freight from ports on the near continent passes through the Dover Straits. The market is around 4 million units, of which 99% is transported by conventional means of a lorry driver with a cab and trailer.

This is in contrast to Irish Sea freight, where more than 50% of the cargo is only the trailers. In this model, goods are held as contingency stock at the port of entry, with trailers not leaving the port until up to 48 hours after their arrival in some circumstances. Such an approach would provide more time for border checks to take place without the pressure of them needing to be completed during a short sea crossing or at a congested border point.

White Paper
https://www.peelports.com/media/3463/brexit-unlocked.pdf

It is far easier for a ferry operator to cope with a growing market by putting on slightly larger ships on the
Dover-Calais route than attempting to start a new service. Yet now, for cargo owners, the risk of doing nothing is
perhaps higher than the risk of a contingency plan addressing potential future threats

[Deleted User]

I've just woken up, so pardon the silly question, but can customs checks be done on ferries in transit, and ships stay offshore until they're done?

Basically no added infrastructure, just extra manpower to make it as fast as it was before.

Peregrinus

Deleted User wrote: »

I've just woken up, so pardon the silly question, but can customs checks be done on ferries in transit, and ships stay offshore until they're done?

Basically no added infrastructure, just extra manpower to make it as fast as it was before.

In principle, yes. In practice, it may depend on the nature of the check, and the situation on the vessel. Typically, on a container ship, containers are stacked up like lego blocs; you only have access to the ones on the outside of the stack, if even them.

Customs formalities are mostly dealt with during transhipment; while goods are being transferred from land transport (trucks, trains) to sea transport (ships) or vice versa at the other end. Depending on the nature and extent of the check, this may delay transshipment, hence the problem. There is some scope for alleviating this with on-board checks, but it's limited.

prinzeugen

I worked with a courier, delivering documents to ships. They check the cargo!

I stopped posting here as it has became an echo chamber..

Still is.

[Deleted User]

Peregrinus wrote: »

In principle, yes. In practice, it may depend on the nature of the check, and the situation on the vessel. Typically, on a container ship, containers are stacked up like lego blocs; you only have access to the ones on the outside of the stack, if even them.

Customs formalities are mostly dealt with during transhipment; while goods are being transferred from land transport (trucks, trains) to sea transport (ships) or vice versa at the other end. Depending on the nature and extent of the check, this may delay transshipment, hence the problem. There is some scope for alleviating this with on-board checks, but it's limited.

Fair enough. I hadn't really considered cargo ships between France and England. Thought it was mostly a drive on drive off setup.

Peregrinus

Deleted User wrote: »

Fair enough. I hadn't really considered cargo ships between France and England. Thought it was mostly a drive on drive off setup.

There is a lot of ro-ro traffic but, even there, the setup on the ferries is not designed with access to cargo during the ferry passage in mind. Clearance around the vehicles won't allow container doors to be opened. You'd have to redesign the interiors (and reduce the capacity of the ferries) for this to happen.

Processing of paperwork can happen while the voyage is underway (and did, in pre-Single Market days). This mostly happens on shore.

CelticRambler

Don't forget all the freight that currently crosses under the Channel. Those trucks travel on open-sided wagons so there's no way anyone would be opening/checking them en route, even if you could recruit and train enough new inspectors to check 30 trucks in 30 minutes. Eurotunnel Freight is likely to be particularly hard-hit, as they've spent years (and millions) developing their infrastructure and protocols to the stage where "trusted drivers" don't even have to stop for ID checks. You can do that for people (not much different to IDS's "everyone has a mobile phone" border control solution) but it's of no use for tracking the contents of vehicles. Eurotunnel still needs to scan (moving!) trucks for unauthorised human cargo.

First Up

prinzeugen wrote: »

I worked with a courier, delivering documents to ships. They check the cargo!

I stopped posting here as it has became an echo chamber..

Still is.

You are as free and as welcome as anyone else to give us your perspective.

Peregrinus

prinzeugen wrote: »

I worked with a courier, delivering documents to ships. They check the cargo!

Really? Tell us more! What checks are imposed, and by whom?

prinzeugen wrote: »

I stopped posting here as it has became an echo chamber..

Still is.

You mean, nobody agrees with you?

flatty

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

This will allow better links to the continent, whatever stranglehold the brexiteers imagine they have on us is being eroded step by step.
Port of Cork €80M Container Terminal Development In Ringaskiddy Underway

The Cork Container Terminal will initially offer a 360 metre quay with 13 metre depth alongside and will enable larger ships to berth in Ringaskiddy. The development also includes the construction of a 13.5 hectare terminal and associated buildings as well as two ship to shore gantry cranes and container handling equipment.

UK port suggesting unacompanied tucks instead of warehouses. Either way there will be delays, but Dover is the bottleneck.
https://afloat.ie/port-news/port-and-shipping-news/item/39588-uk-needs-channel-trade-reality-check-looks-to-irish-sea-solutions

Peel Ports [a UK ports group incl. Liverpool] is calling on cargo owners, hauliers and others to look at two potential solutions to inevitable congestion at Dover, learning lessons from a model commonly used for Irish Sea freight and using capacity at ports across the country.
...
Currently, more than 75% of all RoRo freight from ports on the near continent passes through the Dover Straits. The market is around 4 million units, of which 99% is transported by conventional means of a lorry driver with a cab and trailer.

This is in contrast to Irish Sea freight, where more than 50% of the cargo is only the trailers. In this model, goods are held as contingency stock at the port of entry, with trailers not leaving the port until up to 48 hours after their arrival in some circumstances. Such an approach would provide more time for border checks to take place without the pressure of them needing to be completed during a short sea crossing or at a congested border point.

White Paper
https://www.peelports.com/media/3463/brexit-unlocked.pdf

It is far easier for a ferry operator to cope with a growing market by putting on slightly larger ships on the
Dover-Calais route than attempting to start a new service. Yet now, for cargo owners, the risk of doing nothing is
perhaps higher than the risk of a contingency plan addressing potential future threats

As a slightly ironic aside, the owner of peel holdings, though by all accounts a very nice man, lives in the Isle of man for tax reasons.

J Mysterio

Interesting poll results

Two out of three British voters who backed Brexit would prefer to see a hard border in Ireland than for Britain to remain in the EU customs union, according to a new poll.

Only one in three British voters said they could not accept a different status for Northern Ireland after Brexit and six out of 10 Leave voters said that leaving the EU was more important than keeping the United Kingdom together.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/leave-voters-prefer-hard-border-to-staying-in-customs-union-poll-1.3535851?mode=amp

Akrasia

J Mysterio wrote: »

Interesting poll results

Two out of three British voters who backed Brexit would prefer to see a hard border in Ireland than for Britain to remain in the EU customs union, according to a new poll.

Only one in three British voters said they could not accept a different status for Northern Ireland after Brexit and six out of 10 Leave voters said that leaving the EU was more important than keeping the United Kingdom together.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/leave-voters-prefer-hard-border-to-staying-in-customs-union-poll-1.3535851?mode=amp

That's pretty depressing, but it also means that if there was another referendum, that voters would reject a hard brexit given that one would assume that the vast majority of remain voters would not agree to a hard border or the breakup of the UK.