Brexit ! what will this mean ? ( lets get a good thread going )

[javelin10]

2 hours ago, Richard 1234 said:

It could be said that a big percentage of people who voted remain did so out of fear of change. I know my dad did. He said “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t!”

Yes and "better the devil you know" is the position of someone who may not like a situation but can think of worse ones. "Better the devil you don't" is the position of someone who feels they have nothing to lose. The leave campaign scooped up all the latter group with promises so obviously false even leading leave campaigners were disowning them less than 24hours after the vote. I've never heard of anyone regretting voting remain. I can't say the same for leavers.

[javelin10]

2 hours ago, skyhuck said:

Or maybe they voted to still have the power to control their own countries future. If we had voted to remain in "ever closer union" would have left us all as simply passengers on the EU bus, without even the power to vote out a dangerous driver and paying for far more than our share of the fuel.

No country has the power to entirely control it's own future. Climate change is seeing to that. The fact that most countries can't even raise enough taxes anymore thanks to super rich companies and individual tax avoidance is also a problem we can't solve on our own. Whilst in the EU we did at least have a say. Every country has  a veto on major issues and the others have to bully/bribe them to change their minds. No-one could play the 'dangerous driver' - that is just fantasy talk, and we paid more than poor countries because we aren't poor. I just don't see anything unfair about that. 

 

Now we are leaving 'ever closer union' is probably an inevitability, and the other countries that weren't enthusiastic about it don't have a big power to rally round, so those prophecies of 'doom' are probably self-fulfilling.

[Richard 1234]

6 minutes ago, javelin10 said:

No country has the power to entirely control it's own future. Climate change is seeing to that. The fact that most countries can't even raise enough taxes anymore thanks to super rich companies and individual tax avoidance is also a problem we can't solve on our own. Whilst in the EU we did at least have a say. Every country has  a veto on major issues and the others have to bully/bribe them to change their minds. No-one could play the 'dangerous driver' - that is just fantasy talk, and we paid more than poor countries because we aren't poor. I just don't see anything unfair about that. 

 

Now we are leaving 'ever closer union' is probably an inevitability, and the other countries that weren't enthusiastic about it don't have a big power to rally round, so those prophecies of 'doom' are probably self-fulfilling.

Your contradicting yourself there.

you can’t  have all countries having a veto while at the same time having countries that don’t have big power?

 

on paying more I think it was unfair simply due to the huge differences in contributions between nations.

ever closer union has been the point for a long time so was always inevitable.

these tax issues could be solved more easily possibly out of the EU as we could tell the likes of amazon and google that they can’t route the money through Ireland or jersey or whichever they pick.

 

i think quite a lot of the leave vote had nothing to do with trade or immigration or any of the other big things. Just about sticking 2 fingers up at the government 

[arbogrunt]

It's a simple argument if you look at it objectively. Do you want to be Governed by British leaders or German dominated European ones?. The rest of it is important...but this is the fundamental issue.

[javelin10]

2 hours ago, matelot said:

You seem to be unable to articulate why not being able to decide EU standards is such a bad thing though.... Honestly, if that's the reason you think the EU is such a good thing it's absolutedly bizarre.

It's just one of the reasons. The main one being that the EU is a 'regionalised' trading bloc. We accept common standards and some common laws in return for not having to have customs checks or border patrols thus promoting trade and saving billions in public expenditure. We also accept we are in a common 'community' which tries to promote and preserve standards in working conditions, personal rights and standards of living. In a fully globalised economy such as we are heading towards, everything we try and produce has to compete with wage levels in China and India. In the EU economy there is still plenty of trade and competition, but that competition has to be fair and we only have to compete with wage levels in Poland and Romania. I regard this as the best of both worlds.

 

Just getting back to standards for a sec, your post about vacuum cleaners is a case in point. If we really thought that 1600w hoovers were an absolute necessity for civilised living we could do something about it. After we leave we have to either buy an EU spec cleaner, produced in huge quantities on the cheap, or we could buy a UK spec cleaner produced in small quantities at triple the price; except we won't, because they'll all be made in China...to EU spec.

[skyhuck]

13 minutes ago, javelin10 said:

It's just one of the reasons. The main one being that the EU is a 'regionalised' trading bloc. We accept common standards and some common laws in return for not having to have customs checks or border patrols thus promoting trade and saving billions in public expenditure. We also accept we are in a common 'community' which tries to promote and preserve standards in working conditions, personal rights and standards of living. In a fully globalised economy such as we are heading towards, everything we try and produce has to compete with wage levels in China and India. In the EU economy there is still plenty of trade and competition, but that competition has to be fair and we only have to compete with wage levels in Poland and Romania. I regard this as the best of both worlds.

 

Just getting back to standards for a sec, your post about vacuum cleaners is a case in point. If we really thought that 1600w hoovers were an absolute necessity for civilised living we could do something about it. After we leave we have to either buy an EU spec cleaner, produced in huge quantities on the cheap, or we could buy a UK spec cleaner produced in small quantities at triple the price; except we won't, because they'll all be made in China...to EU spec.

You ever heard of a little Co called Dyson?

 

Sir James is VERY pro leave, but I guess you know more about the situation than he. 

[javelin10]

11 minutes ago, arbogrunt said:

It's a simple argument if you look at it objectively. Do you want to be Governed by British leaders or German dominated European ones?. The rest of it is important...but this is the fundamental issue.

I don't care where the laws come from so long as they are good laws. This lot we've got at the moment haven't got a clue. Like I said earlier, our biggest problems in the UK were caused by Westminster, not Brussels.

12 minutes ago, Richard 1234 said:

Your contradicting yourself there.

you can’t  have all countries having a veto while at the same time having countries that don’t have big power?

 

on paying more I think it was unfair simply due to the huge differences in contributions between nations.

ever closer union has been the point for a long time so was always inevitable.

these tax issues could be solved more easily possibly out of the EU as we could tell the likes of amazon and google that they can’t route the money through Ireland or jersey or whichever they pick.

 

i think quite a lot of the leave vote had nothing to do with trade or immigration or any of the other big things. Just about sticking 2 fingers up at the government 

I'm sorry that's just grasping at straws. I'm not contradicting myself at all; smaller members have the same veto that everyone has, it's just that it's easier to buy off the smaller countries so they withdraw their veto, as in the recent trade deal with Canada. Belgium was holding the whole thing up for a while until the other members threw them a bone. You'd have to throw the UK a much bigger bone, that is all.

 

On your second point I think the Germans would agree; being by far the biggest net contributors. But I don't see Germany making serious noises about reforming the 'membership fee'.

 

There WAS nothing inevitable about ever closer union; many countries didn't want it, but without the UK holding it up for decades it will probably happen now as the balance of power shifts to France and Germany.

 

Those tax issues will be impossible to solve without the cooperation of the rest of the EU. If we try tell Google or Amazon 'pay your taxes or get lost' they could realistically get lost; they aren't going to tell the whole EU to get lost; that is just too much money to give up. This is how leaving the EU would actually represent a loss of sovereignty, not a gain. If the EU got their act together on tax havens (half of which we seem to own) then something could actually happen, especially if they persuaded the US to cooperate. On our own we won't accomplish diddly, in fact, it looks like our current government wants to give these fat cats an even easier ride.

 

Immigration was  a lot of it; anyone who thinks otherwise has a short memory; it was the number one topic and in the final weeks the main issue that leavers were pressing. As regards sticking two fingers up at the government; yes, that was what I said myself. But I think what they will now get is a double helping of the same old shit; and seeing as that was such a predictable outcome is what makes that 'two fingers' gesture so pathetic.

[javelin10]

7 minutes ago, skyhuck said:

You ever heard of a little Co called Dyson?

 

Sir James is VERY pro leave, but I guess you know more about the situation than he. 

Google "where are Dysons made?"

[skyhuck]

Just now, javelin10 said:

Google "where are Dysons made?"

Not China 

 

Yes, but its still a British Co and pays plenty tax.

 

Electric cars are next.

[matelot]

50 minutes ago, javelin10 said:

It's just one of the reasons. The main one being that the EU is a 'regionalised' trading bloc. We accept common standards and some common laws in return for not having to have customs checks or border patrols thus promoting trade and saving billions in public expenditure. We also accept we are in a common 'community' which tries to promote and preserve standards in working conditions, personal rights and standards of living. 

Europe started off as a trade block. However it's clear that the EU is about making a super country called the EU. We've never been asked what we thought of this idea. You can't blame people for saying "FU EU". Has being in the EU been good for Greece? 

 

What about the rights of Brits? You think I like having to pay tax so that the Government gives it to the EU and EU migrants? You think Brits like competing for jobs with migrants that work for pitiful wages? You think Brits like EU migrants skipping the queue for things like council housing?

 

The EU should never have expanded to accept the old communist states. The standards of living are just too different between places like Poland and Germany.