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

[blandy]

[Chindie]

Disgraced current cabinet minister Liam Fox isn't very happy the BBC is accurately reporting that Brexit is a shit show so is requesting a chat with the Beeb with menaces.

Ideas above his station, he'll want a pink palace in the desert soon.

[Enda]

On 7/24/2017 at 18:05, magnkarl said:

With Corbyn now saying he'd go for a hard brexit too I think all hope we have of staying in the EU is either nationalists from Scotland or weird gay bashers from N. Ireland. How sad is that?

The weird gay bashers were the only party in NI to support Brexit. Given that they're losing ground to nationalists and republicans, I'm fairly sure they want as hard a border with the Republic as possible.

Which the chlorinated chicken will give them, as we cannot let that into the EU.

And how will a hard border, coupled with the appearance of Downing St breaking its commitment of neutrality, play out for the security of the people of NI? Ticking time bomb, quite literally.

The hard Brexiteers are poking a terrorist machine that's been quiet for two decades. For chlorinated chickens.

[Chindie]

I did enjoy disgraced current cabinet minister Liam Fox getting a bit of a kicking over the chlorine chicken thing. Apparently he doesn't think its a big deal.

Yes Liam, yes it is.

Not only from the point of 'eurgh, chlorine washed chicken, do I want to eat that?' (itself more complicated than it sounds - the problem isn't really the chlorine, it's the chlorine being used to cover up substandard hygiene in production and slaughter processes) side of things. But it also causes issues with the Irish border again. It embodies the concern that the EU would have of us turning into an importing house for substandard goods.

And that's before you start thinking about the effect of opening up the market to American produce knackering our own farmers.

[Xann]

5 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I did enjoy disgraced current cabinet minister Liam Fox getting a bit of a kicking over the chlorine chicken thing. Apparently he doesn't think its a big deal.

Well he won't be eating it, will he?

[Chindie]

A quiet few days for Brexit news. But now some tidbits.

A Yougov poll has found that a majority of older Leave voters (I.e. pensioners) are willing to accept economic hardship across the country to achieve Brexit, with 50% open to a family member losing their job to get Brexit done. Which is mental. And also perhaps one of the more extreme takes on 'I'm alright Jack' in modern British history from a demographic. This drops off markedly in younger Leave voters (though even there 25% will accept a job loss in their family to get it, including their own. Nuts). Extremism does exist across the debate with some Remain voters open to economic hardship to stop Brexit, but is much lower.

The Irish border continues to be the elephant in the room with no 'solution' given yet that is going actually help at all.

Speaking of Ireland, the Irish are bidding to get the EBA and or EMA over to Dublin, pretty much on the basis that Ireland is as close to no change as you'll get (including the same time zone, which seems like the kind of argument you'd put at the end of the bid when you'd run out of the really good ideas). These agencies will be leaving, even the Tories have accepted that now, and the Leave response has basically been 'well they're not very big agencies anyway'.

Speaking of jobs, Japan's biggest bank is shifting it's investment arm to Amsterdam, following suit with national rivals eying Frankfurt bases. Hundreds of jobs are expected to go.

Speaking of banks, the BoE has been urged to tell the Treasury exactly what the plan is for banks and insurers if there's no deal. You rather suspect the answer will be '...there better be a deal'.

And the government has finally said free movement will end on Brexit day. But then Hammond said there'll be a transition and the government comments are so vague they could do a deal on Brexit day and call it 'open movement of people' and have nothing change but still be right...

...all good fun.

Where's your money now? No deal? No Brexit? Norway deal? Disappointed Kippers? Disaster? A politician growing a pair and telling the country this is a bloody stupid idea and pack it in?

I'll go with no deal, because the words removed running the show are morons.

[darrenm]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

A Yougov poll has found that a majority of older Leave voters (I.e. pensioners) are willing to accept economic hardship across the country to achieve Brexit, with 50% open to a family member losing their job to get Brexit done. Which is mental. And also perhaps one of the more extreme takes on 'I'm alright Jack' in modern British history from a demographic. This drops off markedly in younger Leave voters (though even there 25% will accept a job loss in their family to get it, including their own. Nuts)

I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that, actually, people in general are just **** stupid.

Anyway. What's Dublin like to live in?

[Dr_Pangloss]

Funny how many of these voters believed they were doing the younger generation a 'favour' by getting them out of the EU.

[blandy]

For balance, here's the other side's view.

Quote

 

The Good News on Brexit They’re Not Telling You
By DANIEL HANNANJULY 31, 2017 
  
LONDON — On July 24, trade talks began between Britain and America. All right, they weren’t formally called trade talks: As long as Britain is still in the European Union, it is supposed to contract out all its commercial decisions to Brussels. Officially, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and the British trade secretary, Liam Fox, met for broad discussions about what might happen when Brexit takes effect in 2019.

Still, both sides can see the prize. For decades, there have been fitful negotiations between Washington and Brussels on trade liberalization, but they have always run up against the protectionism of France and some southern European states.

Between Britain and America, there are few such problems. Each country is the other’s biggest investor: About a million Americans work for British-owned companies, and a similar number of Britons work for American-owned companies. A liberal trade deal, based on mutual recognition of standards and qualifications, will bolster both economies.

Prime Minister Theresa May keeps saying she wants Britain to be a “global leader in free trade.” In parallel to the talks with Washington, Britain is starting discussions with China, Japan, India, Australia and others. Global trade deals should supplement rather than replace Britain’s economic relationship with the remaining 27 European Union states. The nonmember Switzerland, for example, exports nearly five times as much per head as Britain does, mostly to the European Union, while simultaneously having bilateral trade deals around the world.

The idea of a more global Britain emerging from the European Union may strike you as jarring. Much of the commentary over the past year, at least outside Britain, has portrayed Brexit as a nativist and protectionist phenomenon. I keep reading — often in the pages of this newspaper — that the vote was overwhelmingly about immigration.
 
In fact, opinion polls before and after the vote concurred that the main issue for Leavers was democracy. An exit poll of 12,369 people, for example, found that 49 percent of Leavers had been motivated by the desire to bring decision making back to Britain, and only 33 percent by wanting more control of immigration.

I’ve learned in politics that almost no one listens to the other side. Rather than going to the source, people read allies’ reports of what the other side is supposed to have said. If a British person tells you that the vote was “all about immigration,” I can almost guarantee that you are talking to a Remainer. Those among my friends who voted to stay in the European Union didn’t weigh and then dismiss the economic and democratic cases against membership; they never heard them.

The same confirmation bias can be seen in their determination to find bad economic news. Here is a selection of British reports from the past two weeks: Unemployment fell again, as every month since the vote, to 1.49 million (from 1.67 million in June of last year); manufacturing orders are at their highest level since August 1988; retail sales, official figures show, are up 2.9 percent on this time last year.

Exports were up 10 percent year-on-year in May, helped by the long-overdue correction of the exchange rate. Remainers like to point to the fall in sterling, but rarely mention that, before the vote, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England agreed that Britain’s currency, seen as a haven from the travails of the euro, was artificially expensive.

Continental Europeans evidently still regard the British economy as attractive; more of them are working in Britain than ever before. As for the supposed decline of London, a number of European banks, including Deutsche Bank and ING, have grown their operations here since the referendum. Last year, Wells Fargo spent £300 million (about $392 million) on its new European headquarters — in London. The latest survey from the Robert Walters City Jobs Index, for July, reported that hiring in financial services was up 13 percent year-on-year.

You may think I’m prone to a confirmation bias of my own. But it’s only fair to contrast what has happened since the Brexit vote with what was predicted during the campaign. Remain campaigners told us to expect a recession in 2016; in fact, Britain grew faster in the six months after the referendum than in the six months before. They told us that the FTSE 100 index of leading companies’ share prices would collapse; in fact, British stocks performed strongly after the Brexit vote. They told us that Scotland would leave Britain; in fact, support for separatism has collapsed, and the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has shelved her planned independence referendum.

Most people, whichever way they voted, are celebrating the good news. But a few Euro-fanatics, disproportionately prominent on the BBC and at The Financial Times, are acting like doomsday cultists, constantly postponing the date of their promised apocalypse. First, a Leave vote was supposed to wreck the economy. Then, it became “wait until we begin the disengagement.” Now it’s “wait until you see what a bad deal we get from the European Union.”

It’s odd. The people who are the most pro-union are generally the most convinced that the union will act in a self-harming way out of spite. I have a higher opinion of our European allies. But even if I didn’t, I’d still expect a deal. Adam Smith observed that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” It is not from the benevolence of the European Union that we expect a free-trade agreement: Exchange makes everyone richer.
If you want a picture of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union, think of Canada’s with the United States. Canadians have a type of federation on their doorstep that they decline to join, but with which they enjoy the closest possible diplomatic, military and economic ties. Two years from now, in a similar vein, the European Union will have lost a bad tenant and gained a good neighbor.

 

 

[ml1dch]

31 minutes ago, blandy said:

Between Britain and America, there are few such problems. Each country is the other’s biggest investor.

That sounds pretty good. So good in fact I'd suggest it might not really be worth ripping up the current trade arrangements and chucking them on a bonfire.

I'd be able to take an "other side" view a lot more seriously were it not from a one-eyed, intellectually dishonest ideologue such as Daniel Hannan.

[blandy]

13 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

That sounds pretty good. So good in fact I'd suggest it might not really be worth ripping up the current trade arrangements and chucking them on a bonfire.

I'd be able to take an "other side" view a lot more seriously were it not from a one-eyed, intellectually dishonest ideologue such as Daniel Hannan.

Indeed. There's plenty of valid data and information to counter his shiny eyed, utopian view.  I just thought it interesting to delve into the outlook of these people.

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that, actually, people in general are just **** stupid.

Anyway. What's Dublin like to live in?

judging by the amount of Irish that live in the Uk I'd say pretty shit

 

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, Chindie said:

A Yougov poll has found that a majority of older Leave voters (I.e. pensioners) are willing to accept economic hardship across the country to achieve Brexit, with 50% open to a family member losing their job to get Brexit done. Which is mental. And also perhaps one of the more extreme takes on 'I'm alright Jack' in modern British history from a demographic. This drops off markedly in younger Leave voters (though even there 25% will accept a job loss in their family to get it, including their own. Nuts). Extremism does exist across the debate with some Remain voters open to economic hardship to stop Brexit, but is much lower.

 

[tonyh29]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

 

the average UK  pension pot is about £50,000 ..giving you a whopping income of £2,500 per year to supplement the £155 a month you'll get from the government  .. so that's an income of roughly £10,500 a year for these rich bastards to enjoy the spectator sport with  ....

dunno , his logic seems a bit flawed if you ask me

[Jon]

You also still have to buy stuff when you're retired, like food, clothes, consumer, luxury goods and energy etc.  When they skyrocket, they might experience some regret .... 

[blandy]

8 hours ago, darrenm said:

I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that, actually, people in general are just **** stupid.

That would be a mistake. People may be ill informed, but on average/in general people are of average intelligence, rather than stupid.

And these surveys - people don't actually mean what they say, anyway. When they say "I'd accept my lad losing his job, for Brexit" they mean "I'd accept the notion of someone else's son losing their job..." or "I really strongly want to leave".

[tonyh29]

9 minutes ago, blandy said:

That would be a mistake. People may be ill informed, but on average/in general people are of average intelligence, rather than stupid.

 

kinda on this theme

I "lost" an old friend on Facebook Monday night as he wrote on his wall that he'd now lost his freedom of movement around Europe thanks to brexit ( this was in relation to the news that day about end of FOM in 2019 ) .. he  was talking about a travel perspective rather than him maybe moving to Germany to work  , so to that extent he was misinformed

I asked him if he thought every train crossing a border in Europe would have special patrols looking out just for English people in light of the fact that everyone else can currently ride these trains without showing a passport ... (I 'd travelled last week through Germany ,Czech, Austria and Hungary for example without having to show any documentation , nor did anyone else appear to have to ) 

He called me a Brexit **** and then defriended me

he wasn't a close friend so no biggie , but was someone I'd worked with 30 years ago and I did learn a lot from him so I'm a wee bit sad it's ended that way (my fault for breaking my own Brexit on facebook rule I guess )  but that seems to be the norm these days , everyone can have an opinion and it doesn't seem to matter if its right or wrong ,ill informed etc ..people are very entrenched

[Chindie]

I wouldn't call naming a potential practical exception to a rule an example of someone being misinformed. If/when free movement ends, traveling to and from Europe Union destinations is going to be more onerous. It just is. Great, trains have a practical consideration that may exempt them or reduce the hassle, but particularly flights, entering, leaving and crossing Europe by any other means, becomes more difficult.

An exception doesn't break the rule. An exception doesn't make someone misinformed. Free movement ends. And that is going to make travel more difficult for people quite used to travel in Europe effectively being no different to travel internally.

[tonyh29]

7 minutes ago, Chindie said:

 And that is going to make travel more difficult for people quite used to travel in Europe effectively being no different to travel internally.

it really isn't  .....currently you do not need to show a passport when you are travelling from one border-free Schengen EU country to another ..... that's everyone be it American , Japanese or whatever 

 it physically can't change otherwise they'll have to introduce passport controls for every person  ..and  simply put it isn't going to happen 

his freedom of movement in the context he put it wont change one bit .. had he talked about work , or hospital treatment or even pensions , then differnet argument , but that wasn't what he was referring to hence he was misinformed

now Europe might decide that they want to introduce a Visa policy for British passport holders , but I'd say that was extremely unlikely and it could only be one visa for the whole block so even then I'd question any erosion of his freedom of movement

 

[Chindie]

...And getting off a plane?