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Originally posted by Dave W.:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

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Originally posted by Dave W.:
Are there UK ... politicians you respect?

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I've tried my best. But, nope. I can't think of any.

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It's dishonest of you to suggest that's even an approximation of what I posted.

Can I assume from this evasion that you're unable to describe any benefits of joining the Euro?

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• Transparency of price - everyone in the Eurozone can see the prices of goods and services everywhere in the Eurozone without needing to calculate the exchange rate. This simplifies shopping around for the best price for goods and services, reducing costs to businesses buying components and materials and to consumers.
• Reduced transaction costs and uncertainties - when buying goods and services within the Eurozone there are no charges related to exchanging between currencies, and no uncertainty about what the price will do as a result of currency fluctuation.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
...you think that national membership of the EU is a civil rights issue or comparable to a civil rights issue? Interesting.

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You think the Irish Troubles were about civil rights? Interesting.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

I remain fairly neutral on the outcome of the vote. What I'm not neutral on is my growing contempt for the people, mostly leaning on the left side of politics like myself, who have shown themselves to be utterly incapable of losing a vote with good grace.

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This is ridiculous. Passively accepting a result is not how any civil right was ever gained.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm genuinely bemused at how anyone can think that civil rights has anything to do with this. Membership of the EU is not on an individual basis.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Oh look, more civil rights talk.

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Someone telling me I can't continue to say the UK should remain in the EU is infringing my civil (and human) rights. If someone comes along and demands I remove the Remain poster which has been in my window since June, then they are infringing my rights. Same if they said I couldn't join a peaceful demonstration on the streets of London or Edinburgh.

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Originally posted by Stetson:
Personally, when I make statements like "Your side lost, so you need to face reality and shut the fuck up", I don't mean that the person has no right to continue whining about whatever. He DOES have that right, it's just that a lot of people, including me, are gonna find his behaviour annoying, and the government is under no obligation to listen to him.

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All we lose through Brexit is then just our voice in the European Parliament, Commission and Councils.

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I suspect the other European governments know very well which way the referendum went, and are proceeding from the premise that the Leave vote was a valid expression of public opinion. Obviously, the proposed new arrangements will all involve varying degrees of association between the UK and the EU

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...we are going to get a worse deal than we currently get....

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Europe has its own version of far right nationalists, some of whom make Farage look like Shirley Williams. Nobody in European government wishes to empower them, so there is going to be a fairly solid consensus that Brexit should make things worse for us, rather than better.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Europe has its own version of far right nationalists, some of whom make Farage look like Shirley Williams. Nobody in European government wishes to empower them, so there is going to be a fairly solid consensus that Brexit should make things worse for us, rather than better.

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Originally posted by Stetson:
Callan wrote:

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Europe has its own version of far right nationalists, some of whom make Farage look like Shirley Williams. Nobody in European government wishes to empower them, so there is going to be a fairly solid consensus that Brexit should make things worse for us, rather than better.

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This is exactly what I've been thinking, except I might not phrase it it terms of "making things worse" for the UK, so much as just forcing the UK to reckon with the results of its own referendum.

Basically, the EU probably doesn't want to set a precedent where governing parties can say to themselves "Hey, let's hold an Exit referendum just to appease the torch-and-pitchfork mobs, and if the people vote Leave, we can just ignore the reasults like the British did."

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Basically, the whole exercise of holding a referendum has allowed the far right in the UK to find a voice (and, far too often their fists, boots, and bricks through windows). Whatever way the vote went, that was always going to happen - the only hope being a resounding "Remain" vote to tell the far right that their views are not popular with the vast majority of the UK population (and, to be clear, I don't believe they are popular with the UK population, but that they have taken the vote to leave to be support for their views).

That also means that the far right in the rest of the EU have also been heartened by the UK referendum. So, Cameron not only encourage the UK far right to take to the streets with their vile message, he also did the same for the far right in France, Germany and everywhere else. Yay for Hameron, screw up the whole of the EU as well as the UK.

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The austerity policies of the UK and EU have destroyed job security and undermined real wages over the last 5 and 20 years (also in the USA). People feel they have been mistreated economically and financially. They feel that that their elected representatives have abandoned them and are more concerned about the welfare of a minority running the banking sector or with a minority of foreign migrants; they see that no one was punished for the financial crash of 2008-09; they witness growing social global and regional inequality and manifest corruption and tax avoidance (“Taxes are for poor people”) as exemplified most recently in the Panama Papers, and they see the financial security of their children eroded.

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Accusing people who think like this of being stupid, ignorant, fat racist fools is not constructive and often does not attract their vote, as we have seen. But unless European governments understand this, the political and social outlook for the EU is bitterly bleak.

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Originally posted by Tubbs:
Daniel Thorniley goes on to talk about how the perception of uncontrolled migration was an issue, but also states:

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Accusing people who think like this of being stupid, ignorant, fat racist fools is not constructive and often does not attract their vote, as we have seen. But unless European governments understand this, the political and social outlook for the EU is bitterly bleak.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Yes, Leave was a hydra-headed monster, but that was its potency, I guess. It's quite interesting watching Mrs May gradually cutting some of the heads off - money for the NHS? No, thank you. A points based immigration policy? Not appropriate.

I was chatting to a UKIP guy who insisted that the vote was over immigration, and I asked where that was on the ballot paper, answer, incoherent rage. So it was a kind of Schrödinger's ballot, it existed in multiple states of virtual meaning.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Has somebody mentioned this? The solution, if people like the Japanese leave (cowards), is to rent some empty factories and build the Austin Allegro again. As David Davis said, Glorious! In fact, we could call it the Austin Gloriana.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You would predict a lot of disappointment coming up. Already, it seems to be around, as Mrs May says no to NHS money, and no to a points system for immigration. I suppose the govt is trying to balance between the racists, and the requirements of finance and industry, which needs immigration.

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The austerity policies of the UK and EU have destroyed job security and undermined real wages over the last 5 and 20 years (also in the USA). People feel they have been mistreated economically and financially. They feel that that their elected representatives have abandoned them and are more concerned about the welfare of a minority running the banking sector or with a minority of foreign migrants; they see that no one was punished for the financial crash of 2008-09; they witness growing social global and regional inequality and manifest corruption and tax avoidance (“Taxes are for poor people”) as exemplified most recently in the Panama Papers, and they see the financial security of their children eroded.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Originally posted by Tubbs:

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The austerity policies of the UK and EU have destroyed job security and undermined real wages over the last 5 and 20 years (also in the USA). People feel they have been mistreated economically and financially. They feel that that their elected representatives have abandoned them and are more concerned about the welfare of a minority running the banking sector or with a minority of foreign migrants; they see that no one was punished for the financial crash of 2008-09; they witness growing social global and regional inequality and manifest corruption and tax avoidance (“Taxes are for poor people”) as exemplified most recently in the Panama Papers, and they see the financial security of their children eroded.

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If they think that leaving the Single Market and signing up for some sort of experiment to turn us into Singapore is going to fix any of that I have many bridges to sell them.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Some people are talking of a bespoke deal, whereby the UK is sort of attached to the single market, and sort of has exemptions from free movement. The obvious counter-argument is, why should the EU be so generous? They don't want to make it easy to leave.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
They don't want to make it easy to leave.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
They don't want to make it easy to leave.

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Speaking as a non-Brexiteer though, this is where I start to look a little askance. It does look like the Brussels centre has a view of what the EU is and should look like, which they suspect doesn't have the support of (some? many?) member states.

Ie, they don't want to make it easy to go for something that's just a free-trade deal because everyone else might want it instead too. Doesn't that raise all sorts of questions about *why* the people with the federalist vision should be allowed to keep forcing things in that direction?

Like I say, not a Brexiteer but troubled by the idea that the EU is something that states need to be kept in for their own good, when they might actually want something else.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Yes, the idea of a looser organization might be attractive to some, although possibly it's very difficult to have a loose free trade area.

I thought the polls were showing that Brexit has increased support for the EU (among Europeans).

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
They don't want to make it easy to leave.

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Speaking as a non-Brexiteer though, this is where I start to look a little askance. It does look like the Brussels centre has a view of what the EU is and should look like, which they suspect doesn't have the support of (some? many?) member states.

Ie, they don't want to make it easy to go for something that's just a free-trade deal because everyone else might want it instead too. Doesn't that raise all sorts of questions about *why* the people with the federalist vision should be allowed to keep forcing things in that direction?

Like I say, not a Brexiteer but troubled by the idea that the EU is something that states need to be kept in for their own good, when they might actually want something else.

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If they think that leaving the Single Market and signing up for some sort of experiment to turn us into Singapore is going to fix any of that I have many bridges to sell them.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Errm, some people don't like foreigners, especially in those areas which don't have any.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

Speaking as a non-Brexiteer though, this is where I start to look a little askance. It does look like the Brussels centre has a view of what the EU is and should look like, which they suspect doesn't have the support of (some? many?) member states.

Ie, they don't want to make it easy to go for something that's just a free-trade deal because everyone else might want it instead too.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

Speaking as a non-Brexiteer though, this is where I start to look a little askance. It does look like the Brussels centre has a view of what the EU is and should look like, which they suspect doesn't have the support of (some? many?) member states.

Ie, they don't want to make it easy to go for something that's just a free-trade deal because everyone else might want it instead too.

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I think your first paragraph misrepresents things for the following reason; The single market is much more than a 'simple' free trade deal/area.

Most free trade deals won't cover services. Secondly, in most free trade arrangements regulation will still be a completely national competence. This raises the possibility of potential non-tariff barriers (widget X made in country Y, regulated by the Widget Engineering Board of Y cannot be sold in country Z because of regulations set by the Widget Engineering board of Z), sometimes these barriers may in fact be punitive and at other times they won't be.

The whole point of a large part of EU regulation is to remove these kinds of barriers. Hence things like the financial passport, where banks regulated by the FSA-equivalents of their own countries, can then sell into other countries without being re-regulated (because of EU regulations and rules covering financial regulators across the EU). In the case of the widget, it means that suddenly you don't have a massive queue of lorries between Y and Z making sure that the widgets being imported comply with the standards of the local Widget Engineering Board.

Of course, every country would like to have complete access to the single market, whilst simultaneously being exempt to the four freedoms itself, so that they could put up barriers against international competition. But if every country operates like that there would no longer be a single market to sell into.

Incidentally, this is why trade deals are an EU level competence - to avoid the same situation being created at a supranational level (Republic of Rurutania selling widgets into Y, now requiring checks on all Widgets moving from Y to Z).

So your question is a little like saying; I want government taxes, but I don't want to pay any taxes and the fact that the government won't let me do that is highly suspect.

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But for some things, particularly services, the single market is still more of a theory than a practice due to local quirks. Like the requirement that all documentation be issued in local language. Meaning that you’re potentially be working with two sets of documentation. The local language one for the regulator and the English one for internal use.

One of the reasons that many of the large US financial companies went to London rather than Paris was because of the common language. (As well as the time differences, the tax regimes and the flexible employment laws). It’s why a lot of them are likely to end up in Dublin if passporting is lost to London.

And, if you’re a refugee seeking asylum, freedom of movement of people isn’t happening either. As many EU counties have closed their borders, including Sweden, loads of them in stuck in transit camps in Greece. Either awaiting processing or, having been processed, nowhere to go.

Tubbs

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"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it up and remove all doubt" - Dennis Thatcher. My blog. Decide for yourself which I am