Big J

I think that there is a general acceptance of it now, but also an increasing awareness that is was just a plainly bad idea. I imagine it's like losing a foot. It's gone, you can't do anything about it, you have to make the best of the situation, but you still yearn for the time when you had your foot and accept that life was better with it. I do believe that a lot of the sentiment that fuelled the Brexit vote stemmed from a feeling of loss of identity in the UK. If you consider how the UK's standing on the world stage has diminished since WW2, how the manufacturing sector has diminished and how issues of poverty are becoming more and more relevant, the context for a leave vote as a form of protest is much more understandable. It's now over 6 years since the vote took place. 6 years to process, negotiate, instigate, capitalise and make a positive case for leaving. And after 6 years, if the vote were held again tomorrow, the remain vote would be far, far stronger than the leave vote was in 2016.

It's overly simplistic to look at it in this manner. £450 a day is lovely, especially as an increase from £200, but that money has to come from somewhere. Massive pay rises are inflationary, and the money to pay for them isn't coming from efficiency savings. It's coming from charging the customer more, which is also inflationary. Couple that with the massive amount of red tape around our borders on import/export, and you have further inflationary pressures. These factors are all part of the reason the UK is struggling so badly to reign in inflation. I'm all for improving the quality of life for people, be that through better pay or whatever. It cannot be done overnight though.

Apologies. I missed it before. £200 a day seems like less than brickies were paid up in Scotland, which is the last time I engaged with them. £200 is what I used to pay my chainsaw operatives as a minimum, provided they were good. Chainsaw operation is more expensive than brick laying and just as hard work, I dare say. It's a decent enough living, but maybe not quite so much now with the cost of living increases.

Yep, very much agree. If there was a single, solid benefit of Brexit, the Tories would have been shouting it from the rooftops. Their silence is very telling.

Now you're asking! It's about ten years since my wife last worked with it (kids and life and all that). Firstly, it's a massive carbon store. Secondly, low grade timber is something that's grown in large quantity in the UK. The climate produces fast growth, low quality timber. Thirdly, wood is naturally insulative, whereas breeze block is a thermal bridge. Fourthly, wood is hydrophilic, and plays a part in moisture regulation of the internal environment. Not the case with masonry. There are loads more, but those spring to mind.

Acharacle. Acharacle Primary School : Timber Development UK TIMBERDEVELOPMENT.UK Acharacle is a small, remote community on the south-west tip of Loch Shiel. For many years the village had campaigned for a new primary school and community space to replace the old... I stress that the issues were resolved and the school has been performing beautifully. The climate there is truly one of the worst imaginable. Constantly windy and extremely wet.

Kept punching holes in it with nail guns, amongst other things.

With architectural and engineering projects (as I am sure you are aware), you have the local contractors and the lead contractors. The school is constructed using a technique called brettstapel, which involves using low grade timber doweled together to form structural panels. It was at the time very specialised, the panels were made in Austria and transported over. The Austrian team's job was to erect the shell of the building and get it airtight. I went up for the airtightness test with my wife - the tester (an enthusiastic Yorkshireman) said it was the most airtight building he'd ever tested that wasn't underground. The local contractors were employed for the fitout and finishing. Being a Highland Council project, the architects had only limited control of who was chosen, and I was not saying blaming the local contractors for any kind of negligence, only saying that they were not used to working at the standard set by the Austrian team. I used this is an example of the sometimes apparent skills gap in certain professions between local contractors and foreign contractors.

It's too late and I'm too tired to address every point, but I'll address this one. It's probably the most thermally efficient school in Britain. It requires no heating except for Monday mornings and is subject to all the weather on the West Coast of Scotland. The very last thing Highlands and Islands Council did on this school is cheap out. It's just built to a higher standard than the British contractors were used to. And apologies for forgetting you're in Angus. Not quite Aberdonian 😁

I do not mention your wage as a mark of disrespect, far from it. You bring it up fairly regularly, and today is the first time I've referenced it. My point is that your lofty salary (when compared to the UK average), along with the fact that you mostly work offshore, means that you are inevitably going to be a little disconnected from what constitutes normal. Plus Aberdeenshire is a bit odd anyway I agree that some trades need to be paid better. I'd also argue that some need to have their pay cut. There is also the question of productivity and skill. UK workers are often less productive and less skilled. A school that my wife's architecture practice built over ten years ago ran into difficulties when local joiners didn't seem to understand the concept of air tightness and kept breaching the air tightness membrane on an Austrian timber kit. This caused issues. I don't know what the answer is Andy. Yes, some wages need to go up, some need to come down and there needs to be a general wealth transfer from the top 1% down to the lower echelons. Society is getting progressively less equal and Brexit isn't helping this.

Not at all. But to have to jack up the wages of construction workers already on £50k plus, often by £10k or more, is only going to fuel inflation. Andy, the difficulty is that your perspective is warped by your income. For the great majority of people, their wages are far far lower and they manage OK. If everyone was on your level of income, then inflation would be catastrophic and the UK wouldn't be competitive in any market. And also, wages can only go up if economies are made elsewhere. How else would they be paid for except for with end product price rises? I am sure that your average Brexiteer didn't vote leave in order to increase their cost of living.

Well there is that, but another example would be construction workers. I remember my brother saying that they had to dramatically up the wages of construction workers on their engineering site just to keep them as the exodus of European builders meant there was a serious shortfall on the housing developments. Brickies weren't exactly on minimum wage before hand!

Beware of the leopard!!

I don't think that the majority of Brexit voters could actually name anything that they specifically objected to, as regards the EU. There were some quite comedic series' of interviews with the public where immigration was the most oft stated reason, but that's higher than ever now. More and more and more people feel that Brexit was the wrong decision. It's not far off double as many that think it was wrong to those that think it was right (if you disregard those that say they don't know). https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/ I have very few chips in the game now (apart from exporting the odd machine from the UK), but it still affects all my friends and family.

The main benefit, as far as I'm concerned, was the freedom of movement. That didn't actually cost us anything. Quite the opposite - the exodus of EU migrants has left a hole in the workforce, pushing prices up for everyone. And it's in the news that the year to June 2022 saw the highest ever recorded net migration number for the UK. I know that Ukraine and Hong Kong were factors, but this notion of Brexit being a route to 'taking back control of our borders' is a fallacy.

I appreciate the analysis, and as you say, it's wasn't a landslide, but democratically, NI didn't vote for Brexit. Which ever way you look at it, the situation in NI is not as good as it was pre-Brexit. Unless you are one of the businesses that is capitalising on being within the single market and the UK. But then that is disadvantageous for any other business in any other part of the UK. I agree with your overall sentiment. We were once part of a large and powerful club. We now aren't, and we're paying for that, without actually seeing an tangible benefit. The loss of freedom of movement for UK citizens cannot really be overstated. I don't think that any country in history has ever voted to so radically curtail the freedoms of it's citizens.

I wouldn't say that the North is being abused by non-UK interests. It feels very much to me that they are being thrown under the bus by the Tories. In all honesty though, what did we expect would happen? The situation in Ireland is fragile, volatile and intractable. Pre-Brexit, the situation was a lot more stable. By the English and Welsh dragging the Northern Irish out of the EU, they'd inadvertently jeopardised the NI peace process and for no good reason.

What other option is there though? Given that the UK will not agree to regulatory alignment with the EU, having a soft border would effectively give a back door into the EU trading block. The UK has been trying to have it's cake and eat it, insofar as divorcing itself from any regulatory commitments but maintain full access. It can't really work.

At the moment I'm not really working. This is as a result of sorting out our new business, tax status and immigration status. That's all about done now, we've bought a machine and a lorry and we're going to be starting work in a couple of weeks. I've gone into partnership with a machine operator friend here as we have a good mix of skills and it splits the base costs and risk. We will be operating the machine for 60hrs a week between us. We'll each do two long days and one normal day a week, staying in the lorry overnight. The start of the week stint will be 07:00 Monday until 14:00 Wednesday. The back end of the week 12:00 Wednesday until 19:00 Friday. That gives us 60 billable hours a week, with each of us working 34hrs a week including breaks. We each get 4 days a week off, and we plan to work 42 weeks a year. It should give us a good standard of living, leave time for family and other projects and be sustainable in the long term. I've got no interest in trying to make a lot of money, expand the business or anything like that. I want to live modestly, well within my means, enjoy life and stay healthy. On the question of whether I'd work if I won the lottery? Absolutely not. I enjoy forestry work, but I have a million other things I'd happily do if I wasn't working. I always think that people that say they couldn't envisage not working lack imagination!

Norway has far closer ties to the EU than the UK does, or is seeking to have.

It's 9.3% here in Sweden, down from 9.7% the previous month. The difference is that the cost of living crisis isn't really talked about, with the notable exception of electricity. I think that people aren't as close to the bread line here. Maybe it's better hidden though. Who knows!

A ten second Google search suggested 7.5% for Norway, which is a lot lower than the UK. I don't think either of these numbers are truly reflective of the situation though.

OK, that as the case may be..... The UKs economy is being widely reported as performing worst of any developed nation in the world. All other countries are dealing with the ramifications of covid and Ukraine, but only the UK has Brexit too. Correlation isn't necessarily causation but perhaps in this case it is? The difficulty is that you are shielded from the economic effects of Brexit because your income is principally drawn from overseas work. For most people in the UK, this isn't the case. Now, as an outsider looking in, all I see is the systematic and systemic removal of benefits and support that was once taken for granted, whilst the tax burden shoots up. Some people will scarcely notice (you being one, I guess) but most will.