Brexit now = CETA +/-?

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

The Hindu owners of a British passport are getting miffed about it.

[The Duke]

As I have an airbus place near me, I’ve talked about them before on here. Ad soon as the vote come in it was clear if we leave thay will have to relocate. Current contracts shouldn’t be effected, but these satalite stations have to put tenures in to build parts. So any future contracts they just won’t be competitive.

Also it’s not just airbus empowers that loses out, its the many bispoke tooling shops and material specialists that have set up close by. They will all leave for Europe, and will only take one or two vital staff each, to train local workers wherever they set up.

Also ellsmerport vauxhall looks like it will be shut in 2022 when the current Astra ends it’s life. And will be build on the new pug 208 platform. There is no way Ellsmere port will win contracts to build it. They are already running at under 50% capacity now.

And the old Ford Halewood plant that makes Rangrovers Evokes will be going the same way and taking the many bespoke shops from hear by that focus only on upscale Rangrovers things like exotic wood finishings and seat trimming. These things are bought in by Rangrovers. I have school friends that work in both the seat and wood suppliers.

Just them 3 plants with in 40 miles of me, will likley be responsible for 25k jobs or more. Iirc the rule of thumb is a large business closing effects about 3x its own work force sixe. So 25k jobs may be on the low side. That’s alot of jobs for a small area.

I suspect its the same story across the nation. And not just local to me.

[Dave Rice]

There was a local politician on last night, from Tewkesbury I think, but he doesn’t have any Airbus near him. He says Airbus should respect the decision of the voters. What a clueless tw*t.

My mate says the shareholders would never let it happen. I asked who he thought the shareholders were and he said BAE and lots of British investors. Another clueless tw*t.

This is the problem, people make decisions on what they think reality is without doing any checking of the facts. If I hear another person say that the USA trades with the EU under WTO rules without mentioning the bilateral side agreements grrrr. When they’re caught out they have no answer but keep peddling the same half truths at the next opportunity.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

At least you metioned we DID vote to get out without calling us all twits ED ?

[Ed P]

People had many different reasons for wanting out. Some I can respect, but I have a real problem with those (and I know some in Manchester) who voted out to get rid of third generation Pakistanis. Those I would call racist twits or worse.

[Bob Williams]

Graham, you are still sticking to your Brexit faith, despite the very clear signs that major companies and organisations, large employers, are either moving or planning to move, from the UK. I don’t understand Brexiteers, it is very plain that this whole mess is going to damage the country, possibly for many decades, maybe into the next century even. Leaving aside the fact of Cameron’s responsibility and the current incompetence and division in Parliament, it should be obvious that the result of Leaving, in whatever shape it takes, will be a disaster for the nation.

My Remain vote was a clear and simple choice for me. I have grandchildren and I believed that their future employment, financial and life prospects would be best served if their country was a member state of the EU. I believe that even more strongly now and I do not understand why Brexiteers do not realise the truth. Yes, I hate the fact that ultimately every EU state is subject to governance by unelected bureaucrats. I dislike some of the “Directives” handed to us. But the alternative is that we will be alone as a small nation with no real support from anyone, no significant resources, a GDP affected by the fact that we import more than we export. As a member state of the EU, we had a loud voice, as one of the 3 largest economies we were able to have a say, despite what the super-patriots say about ‘Sovereignty.’ Now we are going to be outside of that support and subject to anyone who wants to take a piece of us.

The British empire died long ago and most of the Commonwealth resents us. We can only expect support from the US, Australia, NZ or Canada if it suits them economically. The moment that we are seen to be a drain on their resources, we will be dropped. That is reality and Brexiteers struggle with reality.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Dear Bob

We are NOT a tiny weeny little country. That is just what the EU would have you believe. Two fingers up to them.

[The Duke]

We are an island if about 70m in a world of almost 8bn. You don’t need the EU to tell you our size.

The EU is the largest collective at about 600m. Still relatively small, but I’d raver be in it than not. We have next to noting to offer any notions worth trading with, and the stuff we are decent at the nations that would want to trade with us can’t afford what we are flogging.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

The EU are robbers. They cannot bully us by threatening to withdrawal funding cos we pay them

[Bob Williams]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Dear Bob We are NOT a tiny weeny little country. That is just what the EU would have you believe. Two fingers up to them.

But we are a small country Graham, in terms of population and area. The problem is that too many of that population, are living in the past. look at your “two fingers” gesture, did you know where that comes from? Check out the battles of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, all English victories and all won mainly by the efforts of English and Welsh bowmen. The French vowed to cut off the two ‘draw’ fingers of the bowmen, who promptly began flashing those two fingers at the French at every opportunity. The problem with the gesture is that it is based upon events in the 13th and 14th Centuries – living in the past again.

I once heard a well to do English toff telling a French guy in a Larzac bar, that “…we once owned all this area you know.” I was with a mate and we were on exercise with the French. The mate had a French mother: he walked over to the toff with his ½ Liter of beer and poured its contents over the toff’s head. That toff is symptomatic of many Brits’ attitude to people from other countries.

” The EU are robbers. They cannot bully us by threatening to withdrawal funding cos we pay them. ”

If you mean we contribute whilst we are still members of the EU, of course we do, in common with all other EU member nations, and we do not contribute as much as France or Germany. What you fail to mention is the huge amount of benefits we have received in EU grants since we have been members. But that’s typical Brexiteer tactics: talk about mythical disadvantages of EU membership, but never investigate the advantages.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

I’d like them to Atleast start investigating the disadvantages. About 50% are just made up, folklaw crap, about 40% over inflated and maybe the remain in 10 are true.

30 years of fause propaganda that’s the issue.

[Bob Williams]

When you tell people a truth that they see as unforgivable:

http://tinyurl.com/y87bzmeh

Something new, an intelligent politician speaking the truth.

“I was trying to put the debate within a wider context of modern British history and tried to explain where I think Britain’s position is in the world and the possible mistakes people can make by looking back into history and misinterpreting what they see.”

Wise words, that totally escape those with rose coloured glasses.

 

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The VFM Addict]

Yes, I guess I do look back at the past.  I recall when we were a small insignificant little island that Julius Caesar walked all over very easily.   Then a millennium or so later much the same when a Norman Duke did much the same.    How small and weak we were.   But look where we went after that by believing in ourselves.    The trouble with Remainers is that they pick only that later point of reference to compare to.   They forget that we weren’t always the British Empire.  We started with next to nothing did we not.    How come there resulted the Great British Empire across the world and not the a world encompassing a Spanish, Portuguese, French or German Empire of similar proportions?   Surely it was our people, our ingenuity and our self belief that took us there.   Yet in Remainers I see today not even the belief that we can even fend for ourselves.   Is this the faith we have in ourselves and our off-spring.    I note that that lack of belief must be contagious.   Because our young seem more wedded to similar thoughts than do the young of most other EU states.  In other EU states it is the young that are the most eurosceptic.     It is the young that do not desire to tolerate all of the EU’s failings that Bob highlighted a few of his posts back but which he said he was prepared to put up with.

Frankly the writing is increasingly on the wall that the EU project is certain to fail.   The North-South Financial Divides and the East-West Free Movement divides highlight that the different peoples of the EU want different things.   Federalisation is simply not possible where states each have many centuries or even millenia of developing there own have attitudes and individual psyche.    Are the states of the EU states and their peoples really very different from each other?   Too true they are.   Look at the way the French (just 22 miles from us) react when dissatisfied with their government. How different they are to us Brits.    True we all share the same continent but is there really such a thing as a ‘European’ bar that geographical commonality?   I think not.    We are as different as are the nations of the Indian Sub-Continent and as different as are the nations of Asia  one from another.   If we forget that we sow seeds of conflict rather than negate the germination of such.    The far right would and I am certain could never have risen again in Europe were it not for the EU.   It is the EU that provides the fuel for a/the fire as folks desire their own full independence and unfettered nationality.

A European trading bloc makes sense and would/could work.   But the political union that the ‘political elite and bureaucratic EU entity’ desires is nothing other than a ticking time bomb that it will be better to be as remote politically and fiscally from as is possible when it inevitably blows.     Do not talk to me of EU unity.  Heck the last week or two and the increasing visibility of entirely different views of how the EU should be dealing with Brexit have surely revealed that the United Face the Commission sought to have us believe existed was little more than a deception.

I do believe all here are doing and arguing for what they believe is best for their off-spring.   But such is no different with Leavers.   The only difference I see between the two sides is self (national self) belief.   Sorry folks but it is surely so that in 1939 it would have been all too easy to argue that we had to go along with the Germans because we were to weak to do anything else.   I’m sure the ‘Experts’ of the day would and indeed did give us no chance unless we did; far less chance even than today’s Experts give us in the case of a No Deal Brexit.     To me there is a similarity with 1939.  Such is not to frame matters in the same context as war.   Rather it is simply to say that the EU is, as was Nazi Europe in 1939, fundamentally going somewhere we do not want to go; and the psyche of the British people is such that Britain can never go.    The means of the divergence today may be different fro 39 but there remains a divergence inconsistent with the British psyche nonetheless.    Let me ask you all a question and detach it partly from the usual Remain-Leave debate.    If there were a Referendum about joining the Euro how do you think it would go (percentages)?    If there was a Referendum about a EU army how do you think that would go?    What about a Referendum where our foreign policy was not decided by us but by a vote of which we had just 1 say in 28?    The reality is to my mind that the overwhelming majority of the UK do not want to go where the EU is going.    To remain in a club the ultimate objectives of which are not one’s own is to me pretty damn close to the definition of insanity.   Is it truly not?

Lastly, I note how folks talk of us having nothing to offer to the world.   Nothing to export that anyone would buy etc.   Makes one wonder why the EU even wants us as a member or where the heck it expects us to have the income to pay our subs if we remain.    Get real.  The EU wants us as customers for their goods and unless post Brexit the EU allows us to make money we sure as hell won’t be buying their goods with shirt buttons will we?     The EU has to, for a multitude of reasons offer us a good free trade deal.    The businesses of the EU (and the world) recognise that even though the self-interested ‘Bureaucratic EU entity’ for its own political survival desires to prevent such.    If you can’t see its the EU entity against the peoples of Europe, such as the German automobile workers or French farmers, you sure as heck will see it if the UK holds firm to ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’.    The peoples of the EU from the Spanish, Italian and Greek holiday resorts to those in the fields of France and Italy and the factories of Germany will see it too; and the EU dare not let that be seen with the EU elections coming up.    Do we hold a strong hand of cards?    You bet we do if played with guts and our, trade mark, stiff upper lip.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Dave Rice]

I see you’re still playing if you’re a leaver you don’t believe in the country card. If we don’t believe the jingoist nonsense we cannot be patriots. Well we are but we believe we’re better off in the EU than outside it.

I don’t think it patriotic to lead the country into an economic nightmare where we’ll have to run to stand still. I have still not seen any evidence that these wonder deals we will do will even compensate for what we’re about to lose, never mind exceed it. It seems like the existence of Heaven you must be a believer and not question, unless someone can enlighten me with some real facts. Not some nonsense over the worth of this country or that but what will be the meat of these deals and how they will be better. Don’t forget you need to detail the downside too, so any talk of zero % tariffs must include the negative impact of that policy.

What argument do you use for the Scottish Nationalists wanting to break up the Union? Or do you believe that like England, in your eyes they would be best served going it alone?

As for the EU being split on how to deal with Brexit, some sound bites from a few politicians with differing ideas doesn’t mean the “EU” isn’t united when push comes to shove. On our part there isn’t even the pretence of a united front even within a political party, or even the cabinet! It might help if we could actually agree what it is we want.

At least we Leavers are united in what we want, it would help immensely if the Brexiteers could stop the infighting and got on and actually agreed a plan. Let’s face it there are too many vested interests and I’m not sure many of them go past personal ambitions and the “national interest” seems a very flexible thing.

[The Duke]

VFM your right in one thing the French do seem to be different from us. They seem to still have a backbone. We brits like to moan and do nothing. The French have always been able to have a good strike.

 

There is rumours the French people, or the yellow jackets, are threatening to start a run on the banks if they don’t get what they want.

This is a genius non violent approch to a strike. Imaging if they say on Saturday I want everyone to withdraw wlall their cash. Would you not for the next 6 be frantically trying to get your cash it the bank, or transferring it to a bank in another country. Just leaving in your 85k in each bank you have. (as the give will have to cover that).

It’s a genius idea. I hope they do it. As then all it will take in future is a mention of it in any country and go erments will quiver. It will fu*k up France though. And I really lile the fench.

[The VFM Addict]

@ricedg

Dave, couldn’t help but chuckle at your typo in you last paragraph where you described yourself as a Leaver.   That aside there are a couple of issues raised by your post that I will address.

How much of our current exports to the EU do you believe we will lose in the case of a hard Brexit?   And how many exports with the EU lose to us?    My suspicion is very little.  In reality the effect of tariffs overall is very little more than the cost variances from currency swings.   As an aside –  I do not buy into this argument that border delays would seriously damage JIT supplies because many of the items our manufacturers already use on a JIT model come from outside the EU currently and business allows for and copes with that.  Its merely a case of adjusting lead times accordingly.

I do take your point that the EU Unity is not yet entirely shattered but equally it is true that cracks which the EU even denied existed a week or two ago are now shown to have been present and pressure will build on those and other weaknesses as No Deal becomes more of a possibility.

I reject totally the argument re Scot Ind.   It is not as if the impetus from the SNP for Ind will vanish were we to remain in the EU.   Other excuses will be found and their push continue unabated, won’t it?

Returning to your last paragraph with that unfortunate typo which I am certain you meant to read, “At least we Remainers are united in what we want” my previous post sought to show that such is not in reality so clear.   Remaining opens many questions too.   If we demonstrate by remaining that we will never leave believing we cannot then the EU will increase pressure for us to join the Euro, commit to closer political union, drop our veto, drop our rebate, commit to a full EU army, etc.   Why would they not?   We’d hardly be likely to threaten to leave, would we !!!    What Remainers want is not as clear cut as you seem to suggest.   I have spoken to many and what Remain means varies hugely once one talks of the consequences of what Remain means.   It means in effect committing to the will of the other 27 far more clearly than have any of the other 27 have so far.   Can you truly not see that?

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Dave Rice]

Freudian slip ? ?

How will WTO improve our trade? You suspect very little loss of exports but they will be worse. What about the imports we rely on (and also make up part of our exports)? Will they be cheaper? Even the most optimistic models with 0% tariffs say that won’t be so. I don’t want another 20% price increase like we had after the referendum and the £ plummeted, things are bad enough business wise as it is.

How many businesses have warn about the JIT model and many other aspects of leaving the frictionless customs arrangements? Fingers in ears, keep the faith, dismiss anything that doesn’t fit the argument. Project Fear and they’ve been put up to it by the Remain Establishment (straight out of the populist handbook). The Tewkesbury MP the other night was implying that if Airbus want to trade in this country they must respect the wishes of the people over their own. Well they have already said how that will play out.

I don’t see anyone saying we will only remain if this that and the other apart from the Leavers pre referendum (of course there will be areas people would like to see reformed but not chucking out the baby with the bath water). Contrast that to Leave. The various factions are as split as ever over what Leave means and refuse to compromise with each other whilst asserting that their view is the one people voted for.

Then there’s the not inconsiderable 48% who still deserve a say on what shape our country will be in. If you cannot bring us with you it will ultimately fail when the backlash begins. People will be moving from Leave to Remain as the promises fail and that 4% is a perilously small margin to treat with contempt.

The Scottish Referendum – it’s the principle of independence not the EU aspect. Surely your arguments for leaving the EU apply equally to the Scots leaving the Union? To me they seem identical (and equally deluded).

Crystal ball time. I think we will leave on March 29th, may be a bit later, with TMs deal basically as it is. The ERG will continue to play chicken until Yvette Cooper’s amendment gets passed and they see no Brexit staring down at them.

Then we can get down to the serious job of negotiating the final deal and I hope a General Election will help shape that but I fear another stalemate and years and years of this crap. The main parties are split, we could do with a system based on Leave or Remain not Left and Right.

[The VFM Addict]

I agree 100% with your last sentence; albeit that we disagree as to which it should be.

Addressing your point that there was no debate about this or that form of Remain that is true.  But such is identical as it was with Leave.   It is only when one debates in detail at a later stage that the meaning of each becomes clear.   The debate re what Remain actually means short, mid and long term has, has as yet never been had.    I truly believe that the consequences of Remain were we to do so would result in very bitter battles as the EU sought to bring us ‘into line’ which it would surely do  as it would be confident that we would had no option but to conform having shown we had no guts to leave.    Frankly, I perceive the battles would be even more divisive and vicious in the UK in those circumstances than may be the upset of some were we to No Deal Brexit now.

I discount the argument that in the EU we had a big say.   I see no sign of that whatsoever.  We couldn’t even thwart the Drunkard getting the Chair, could we?    It is close to impossible to find a major matter on which we had truly significant influence.    Of course in an EU superstate we would be one country.   So I can’t see the rest of the world allowing the EU two permanent seats on the UN security council can you?    In that respect we truly would have less influence in the world, would we not.

No, Dave, Remain is not a single entity because the EU is morphing so rapidly.   Remember how Clegg was adamant that saying an EU army was planned was a fantasy.  Look where we are now.    And do you really see the EU being committed (i.e. 2% GDP) to NATO if it believes its own army is enough.    Its NATO that kept the peace in the Northern Hemisphere not the development of the EU.   The EU showed how committed it was to stop conflict during the problems in the Balkans and for that matter Ukraine.   I’d side with the USA, no matter the problems I have with it, before I’d side with an EU Army overseen by a committee.   But perhaps that’s just me.

If you think Remain is a simple one proposition offering then perhaps you have never truly considered all it likely facets or its predictable and as yet unpredictable consequences.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[The Duke]

Everything has unpridictable consequences, however there is Atleast less veriables in remaining. As the path is drawn and we have data ponits we can predict.

Leaving however is more a shot in the dark, and the data points we do have, or estimate to have, don’t look good in the short and medium term. We are looking at at least anoutehr ten years of pain.

The EU on the other hand doesn’t forecast as badly. Given we was supposed to be about to exit resession, it’s seems insane to choose to jump into a rescission plus. We could even enter a depression and be knocking on the imf door within a decade. I don’t see that as a possibility by remaining.

I choose stability over mayhem. I don’t care about immigrants, they are net contributors after all. They make us money. Same in America and his stupid wall.

[Ed P]

The REAL problem with a Hard Brexit are not the arguable long term impacts, but the short to medium term impacts on various sectors of our economy.

IMO much depends whether the EU are pragmatic or totally peed-off with us. As a result this ranges from minor to utter disaster for many Agricultural Sectors, a car industry given a JIT shock from which it may never recover, and a thoroughly Graylinised transportation system with Channel ports, roads gridlocked, the Army mobilised and emergency food rationing. — I’m not sure that I fancy 50 year old Vesta curries, but maybe they have already rotated them through Army MRE packs.

This should not be completely discounted as a possibility, as I have witnessed otherwise sane business leaders make totally irrational decisions in order to ‘punish’ the subjects of failed takeover bids. At the moment the Irish are at the very annoyed stage, which would go catatonic if the EU made good their warning that they would have to impose strict border controls.

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