The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[NurembergVillan]

7 hours ago, colhint said:

I can't answer that, I have no Idea. What i do know is that Brazil agriculture tries to export to the EU but tarriffs are imposed, So any imports are levy'd with tarriffs

Agriculture makes up 4% or Brazil's GDP, which could be in part due to EU tariffs, but then soy beans and coffee are two of their main products and there are countries closer than Europe that consume plenty of that stuff.

Their other main agricultural sectors include corn and wheat - and we already grow shit-loads of that here anyway. On a personal note, I'm against shipping food halfway around the world when it could be grown closer to home. It's bad for the environment. Not that Bolsonaro gives a toss about that.

The Netherlands is Brazil's 4th most important export destination, with a focus mostly on metals and items related to ships. Agricultural by-products are high up the list too, so animal feed and stuff like that.

Two of Brazil's top five importers are France and Germany, so there's already opportunity from inside the EU to sell them stuff.

That's as much as I can be bothered to research this morning. I was up late watching Cobra Kai.

I do wonder, though, if Brazil is another big country, like Australia, that Brexiters have thrown around as "an opportunity" just because they're big countries so it sounds plausible.

[Genie]

8 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Let's be fair, the majority who voted for Brexit did it for immigration reasons. Can't wait for brown migration to increase and Little Englander's heads to explode.

As for Austria opting out, I like the idea of being within a club where every member has to agree. 27(28) is always stronger than 1.

I was thinking in terms of buying and selling with them. We don’t have to open up our country for immigration at the same point (although I don’t have an issue with it). 

[StefanAVFC]

54 minutes ago, Genie said:

I was thinking in terms of buying and selling with them. We don’t have to open up our country for immigration at the same point (although I don’t have an issue with it). 

We dont have to but theres nothing stopping India putting FoM as a red line for a deal. 

[bickster]

9 hours ago, colhint said:

Let's be fair you have absolutely no evidence for that.

I don't think i like the rules of a club where everyone has to agree to get something done.  I infer you do, I would guess then when Austria voted against country by country reporting proposed by the EU so they had at least an idea how bad Amazon etc were at avoiding tax, which the EU lost by one vote, you would think this a good idea.

What would your thoughts be on Jack getting fans player of the season, what if some voted for Emi. perhaps there should be no player of the season in that case.

Trade deals are not comparable with Player of the Year awards, no mater how much you think they can be. Crap analogy, must try harder

[StefanAVFC]

 

[bickster]

33 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

We dont have to but theres nothing stopping India putting FoM as a red line for a deal. 

Which they've already stated as a pre-cursor to any deal, it was a while back bt it's been mentioned more than once

[blandy]

11 hours ago, Awol said:

Working with the US, Australia, S Korea, Vietnam & Japan, UK is helping to build a balancing coalition to contain Chinese aggression

It's tangential, but I think this is a bit, well, fleeting.

China is being ever more aggressive. Trump was right about China and it seems like Biden shares the same view. But the UK, as we know, up until very recently was acting more commercially - chasing Chinese investment and so on - whether that be Nuclear Power stations or Huaweii 5G and so on. There were the various football clubs with Chinese owners and so on - all as a consequence of Cameron and Osborne's charm offensive.

We appear to have flipped from that now, under pressure from the US. We're a bit between two stools. We're not really "helping to build a coalition", we're more a reluctant participant in US led policy towards China and Chinese aggression. There are 2 different imperatives for the UK - we need trade and investment, even more because of the loss of EU access and the reduction in inwards investment in the UK - down by 80% since the referendum result. But we also need to stay onboard with the US, and we want their trade and investment too. We're really in a rubbish position here, and part of that is as a result of leaving the EU - we have less value to the US because of it, we are more needy for trade and we are poorer, too. Blowing in the wind.

[Awol]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Which they've already stated as a pre-cursor to any deal, it was a while back bt it's been mentioned more than once

Visa liberalisation for business, education and tourism, yes. That’s a good thing. Tying trade to complete FoM is an EU thing, no-one else in the world does it. Even the new CANZUK proposals  will be linked to employment. 

[Awol]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

It's tangential, but I think this is a bit, well, fleeting.

China is being ever more aggressive. Trump was right about China and it seems like Biden shares the same view. But the UK, as we know, up until very recently was acting more commercially - chasing Chinese investment and so on - whether that be Nuclear Power stations or Huaweii 5G and so on. There were the various football clubs with Chinese owners and so on - all as a consequence of Cameron and Osborne's charm offensive.

We appear to have flipped from that now, under pressure from the US. We're a bit between two stools. We're not really "helping to build a coalition", we're more a reluctant participant in US led policy towards China and Chinese aggression. There are 2 different imperatives for the UK - we need trade and investment, even more because of the loss of EU access and the reduction in inwards investment in the UK - down by 80% since the referendum result. But we also need to stay onboard with the US, and we want their trade and investment too. We're really in a rubbish position here, and part of that is as a result of leaving the EU - we have less value to the US because of it, we are more needy for trade and we are poorer, too. Blowing in the wind.

Not long finished reading ‘The Hidden Hand’ and Chinese influence (state capture, in essence) went far beyond Cameron & Osborne, who basically fronted for commercial interests - check out The 48 Group for more about them. 

The US rightly pressured UK to change policy, but it was China’s behaviour around Covid that finally enabled the national security lot in Whitehall to overcome commercial interests. 

We are actively helping to build that new coalition, that’s why Johnson has invited Australia, S Korea & India to the G7 and aims to turn it into the D10 - a UK innovation. It’s why he’s off to India in a few weeks, why the QE carrier-strike group is going to the SCS for exercises with Japan and the US Navy. This isn’t spin, it’s real, tangible stuff.

We can’t help the US steer EU policy anymore that’s true, but that comes as the US is reprioritising to the Indo-Pacific, where UK has oh-so coincidentally established a deep water naval and logistics base at Duqm in Oman. 

The geopolitical tectonic plates are moving and there won’t be any going back now. Europe is stuck with anemic growth, East Asia (not just China) is going to boom. The Merkel/Macron push to get into bed with Beijing puts the EU on the wrong side of things from a US perspective, but UK is in the opposite position aligning with the CPTPP.

I fully get the reluctance in some quarters of the media and politics to see any benefit to these changes for UK, it’s completely contrary to their world view. But you can spot those unsure of their ground by the retreat to snark and sarcasm, instead of addressing the issues. 

Give it 12 months and none of the above will be controversial in wider debate. 

 

 

[AVFC_Hitz]

First World problems I know, but I've lost all of my UK amazon prime content. It turned off at exactly 2am on New Years Day. Watching a wonderful film and then all of a sudden  'not available in your current location'.*

If I ever seen Farage in a bar in Sofia I'm going to bum him in the toilets. 

*I shouldn't really have been getting uk prime content but it was nice to have.

[blandy]

10 minutes ago, Awol said:

The US rightly pressured UK to change policy, but it was China’s behaviour around Covid that finally enabled the national security lot in Whitehall to overcome commercial interests. 

We are actively helping to build that new coalition, that’s why Johnson has invited Australia, S Korea & India to the G7 and aims to turn it into the D10 - a UK innovation. It’s why he’s off to India in a few weeks, why the QE carrier-strike group is going to the SCS for exercises with Japan and the US Navy. This isn’t spin, it’s real, tangible stuff.

We can’t help the US steer EU policy anymore that’s true, but that comes as the US is reprioritising to the Indo-Pacific, where UK has oh-so coincidentally established a deep water naval and logistics base at Duqm in Oman. 

The geopolitical tectonic plates are moving and there won’t be any going back now. Europe is stuck with anemic growth, East Asia (not just China) is going to boom. The Merkel/Macron push to get into bed with Beijing puts the EU on the wrong side of things from a US perspective, but UK is in the opposite position aligning with the CPTPP.

I fully get the reluctance in some quarters of the media and politics to see any benefit to these changes for UK...

Give it 12 months and none of the above will be controversial in wider debate. 

Hmmm. I don't know that I see it exactly the same.

My perception was that Trump blamed China. For his Covid failings - all this "China virus" stuff and so on. Now the Chinese gov't were not blameless, by a long way, but in essence a fair part of Trump's pressure on the UK over Huawei was to do with immediate messaging to his domestic audience as much as genuine security concerns. He's broadly right in the wider sense about China's actions wrt IPR, industrial espionage, hacking and aggression - the West generally has been far too passive in ignoring or tolerating it.

Assuming Biden is more stable than Trump, you'd imagine the wariness of and concern about China's behaviour will remain a US feature, and to that extent, they will lead efforts to form alliances and a counter to it. The UK will go along with it, sure, and we'll do little bits.

You say Europe is stuck with anaemic growth - but it's better than the UK's by a distance, and Brexit will hurt that further. China depends on the US and RotW for it's growth. They are very vulnerable to recession in their overseas markets, and of course sanctions. Equally, the RotW and US is dependent upon Chinese labour to produce the stuff we invent. We're tied together, and we can't wrestle the upper hand without hurting ourselves. And China is the same.

Were it not for the nature of their Gov't, basically everyone would be trying to do what Cameron and Osborne did, and Merkel and Macron are looking at. The US is also concerned (rightly) that China will become the dominant nation in the world, replacing the USA. Those are the plates that are moving.

Alliances with the likes of the proposed D10 (whether it actually comes into being) are going to be necessary for "the free world" - but groupings around telecoms tech or whatever are not a replacement for market access to Europe. We'll (the tories) happily shoot ourselves in the foot by leaving Erasmus and having to leave Galileo on the basis of ...well, I'm not really sure why - and then they have to come up with something new to replace what we've just thrown away. There was no need, and it's more costly and less effective.

The EU is slow and beurocratic, and something of a compromise between different interests for broadly similarly minded European democracies. Whatever alliances the UK forms are going to become similar compromises - whether with India or whoever else. If you think getting anything done with the EU is slow, India is even slower and harder - it took 17 years to do a deal to sell India Hawk aircraft - 17 years!

The possibility of potential gain from leaving the EU is available. Definitely. As is the kind of sliding doors of "what negatives do we avoid, by having left". The difficulty is that theoretical possibilities actually have to be practically grasped, and the Tories in particular are utterly incompetent and incapable. They are really only interested in themselves, not in what's possible for the UK (or what will be left of the UK, if NI and Scotland clear off). It's not long terms strategy led - it's ultra short terms based on personal gain, cronyism, siphoning off.

It's tricky too, because the growth nations are going to be in the far east, and some tories want us to adopt their ethos. Of course if we do, then the likes of the EU and USA will hit us with tariffs and so on - all nations are quick to respond to threats to their own interests - see Boeing and Airbus. See US tariffs on the UK.

We're currently worse off for leaving the EU - both economically and politically and in terms of freedoms lost. Opportunities exist, but I don't see us taking them - we're not set up to do so.

[blandy]

42 minutes ago, AVFC_Hitz said:

*I shouldn't really have been getting uk prime content but it was nice to have.

Legally you were allowed it as an EU citizen, I think - roaming Netflix and so on was protected in the EU for people going on holiday etc. Maybe permanent residence is different, but it's another thing lost.

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

Visa liberalisation for business, education and tourism, yes. That’s a good thing. Tying trade to complete FoM is an EU thing, no-one else in the world does it. Even the new CANZUK proposals  will be linked to employment. 

This was what I thought, due to the nature of Europe and the EU project FoM and free trade go hand in hand. 
For countries many miles apart I don’t think it’s the norm for freedom of movement to be a requirement when agreeing special deals on tariffs (but could be wrong).

[markavfc40]

Just reading the recent exchanges, by people who probably know way more than I do on this by the way, but it seems to sum up the whole debate around Brexit. One side is solely focusing on what is, being really optimistic, now possible and the other side is looking at what we have lost and seeing that even being optimistic about what is now possible we are only going to be at best making up for what we have lost.

I guess going forward those in favour of Brexit will gauge its success against where we are now, in fact they already do announce trade deals with other countries as though they are a new thing when in fact they just duplicate what we had when in the EU. Shouldn't we measure any success against where we were at pre Brexit and with that being the case I can't see in my lifetime us getting to the stage where we consider ourselves better off. I am 47 by the way and plan on being around a while longer.

[Genie]

4 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

Just reading the recent exchanges, by people who probably know way more than I do on this by the way, but it seems to sum up the whole debate around Brexit. One side is solely focusing on what is, being really optimistic, now possible and the other side is looking at what we have lost and seeing that even being optimistic about what is now possible we are only going to be at best making up for what we have lost.

I guess going forward those in favour of Brexit will gauge its success against where we are now, in fact they already do announce trade deals with other countries as though they are a new thing when in fact they just duplicate what we had when in the EU. Shouldn't we measure any success against where we were at pre Brexit and with that being the case I can't see in my lifetime us getting to the stage where we consider ourselves better off. I am 47 by the way and plan on being around a while longer.

I expect a lot of Brexiteers will measure success on the basis we haven’t gone bust and most of the stuff in the supermarket is still there. Only a few businesses went bump or moved out of the UK.

Brexit wasn’t forced on us like Covid-19, it wasn’t a case of making the best of the bad situation.
With Brexit we were told it was going to be an upgraded situation over what we had and people voted for that. Unsurprisingly it isn’t better so far and there is zero evidence of it being better in the medium or long term either.

Whats the upside? Well we’re no longer being told by the EU how to run our country or our waters... apart from we are as part of the trade agreement. Difference is now we have no seat in the discussions to shape the future of Europe.

Weve downgraded our own conditions in every possible way, and we consciously decided it was what we wanted to do. Nobody forced us.
It’ll go down in history as one of the stupidest events ever.

 

[Genie]

I just saw this in an “The Office” group on  facebook

“OK Boris, I’ve just spent 2 days in Brussels, and they’ve made some big changes. Now when we spoke before the deal was signed, you said you were going to make some big positive changes to the UK post Brexit.
How is that going?”
“Great”
“What will you do?”
“Many things, really – in a global sense! Freeing our Fish, Opening us up to the world, taking back control, all the benefits and none of the costs... Opportunities!”
“I’m sorry Boris, that sounds like empty populist rhetoric and I know you hate that!”
“Yeah, I do”
“So Well, can you give me, say, five benefits that Brexit will bring us?”
“I'll give you three, then another two if you need them”
“OK – Fish, End of Free movement, Blue passports”
“That still sounds tabloid propaganda Boris”
“Shall I tell you what the EU offers? Reciprocal Healthcare in member states, freedom to travel, work and study across the EU28, and A 5 fold boost to GDP on our payments for single market access”
“I was gonna say 6 fold but 5 is okay”
“And under regulation 2004/38/EC they’re free to repatriate non-contributing citizens Boris.. so all this about not being able to control who comes here from the EU was a lie Boris”
“That's only four”
“Yeah, whatever”
“Have you told the UK about the complete lack of control this deal offers us Boris”
“I gave a speech only this morning to the UK assuring them there would be no loss of control and certainly no continued adherence to EU regulations”
“Why on earth would you do that?”
“Why? Don't know, a word that I think's important in politics called pride”
“Well, it's going to be worse for national pride in the long run when we still have to obey EU regulations with no power to shape them or they will be able to slap tariffs on us when you promised a clean break”
“They won't remember”

[StefanAVFC]

3 hours ago, AVFC_Hitz said:

First World problems I know, but I've lost all of my UK amazon prime content. It turned off at exactly 2am on New Years Day. Watching a wonderful film and then all of a sudden  'not available in your current location'.*

If I ever seen Farage in a bar in Sofia I'm going to bum him in the toilets. 

*I shouldn't really have been getting uk prime content but it was nice to have.

Yep same for me and my SkyGo. Proper annoying.

[Awol]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

 

....*snip*...We're currently worse off for leaving the EU - both economically and politically and in terms of freedoms lost. Opportunities exist, but I don't see us taking them - we're not set up to do so.

Agree with some of that, disagree with other takes, but the bit in bold is key. 

I remember discussing this exact issue with you in 2014/15 times and said then that leaving the EU wasn't an end in itself, but a necessary first-step to doing things differently. I still believe that. Civil service reform, seeding industries for the 4th industrial revolution, radically changing the tax system, there's a whole bunch of stuff I'd like to see happen, but the status quo consensus that was driving us into the ground had to be destroyed first to create the political space for new thinking.  

I genuinely didn't anticipate the establishment fighting so hard to overturn a vote to leave, a process that has robbed us of four years and created deep bitterness within the populace. That doesn't change the fact that as of yesterday no British government has anywhere to hide, no one else to blame and a country that now expects things to be done differently, with different priorities and values - spurred on by the experience of Covid.

We'll know in 12 months or so what - if any - ideas the current lot have to address some of these systemic problems. If not, someone else will get a try. The point is those changes were either not possible while EU members, or EU membership would provide the fig-leaf to continue ways of doing things that benefitted a narrow but very comfortable portion of society. Brexit has dislocated that system (hence the push back) and now we will get to shape a new approach via the ballot box. Vive la Revolution.   

[markavfc40]

9 minutes ago, Awol said:

We'll know in 12 months or so what - if any - ideas the current lot have to address some of these systemic problems. If not, someone else will get a try. The point is those changes were either not possible while EU members, or EU membership would provide the fig-leaf to continue ways of doing things that benefitted a narrow but very comfortable portion of society. Brexit has dislocated that system (hence the push back) and now we will get to shape a new approach via the ballot box. Vive la Revolution.   

This is the bit that most worries me. I found some comfort in the fact that even under a destructive Tory government many of my rights and freedoms were protected by being in the EU. With that no longer being the case and in a country where despite the masses being done over by the Tories since 2010 the Tories have won the last 4 elections, the last of which by the biggest margin of the 4, I see zero reason to be optimistic unfortunately.

[snowychap]

22 minutes ago, Awol said:

I genuinely didn't anticipate the establishment fighting so hard to overturn a vote to leave, a process that has robbed us of four years and created deep bitterness within the populace.

That is such a biased, pernicious take on what has happened and I fear it will persist for far, far too long.

22 minutes ago, Awol said:

Vive la Revolution.

I know it's an attempt to be comical but given the utterly disgraceful direction of travel of the UK government, a line like the above really reinforces just quite how galling the championing of Brexit has become.

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by snowychap