The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[Jim2007]

	Quote:	marton
	May has accepted that a new trade deal with the EU will not be signed before UK leaves in 2019. She is now considering following EU rules after 2019, allowing free movement and continuing paying into the EU Source House of cards is collapsing?

So in addition to the repeal bill, she is going to have the pause bill to cobble U.K. Law to EU law for a while and she now expects the EU to negotiate on three fronts....

I wonder in the end who gets to bring home the bad news...

[pdofr]

	Quote:	marton
	Could be that Brexit was the trigger to think about moving out of the UK. Then one starts to think to EU or to a lower cost country

Access to the EEC market was a (the?) key factor in attracting Japanese car manufacturers to the UK in the 70s/80s.

At the time there was serious lobbying from the German and French (and probably Italian) vehicle manufacturers to cripple/ban Japanese car imports.

[pdofr]

	Quote:	Jim2007
	The thing about a bubble is that everyone seems to be acting rationally at the time and the thing a crash is that everyone blames someone else for not having the foresight to have prevented him (the complainer) from loosing money. Anyone in such a situation who tries to raise the red flag will be treated as an idiot!

Bang on the money. A couple of quotes from John Galbraith:

• In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
• When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble — until the day of disaster.

P.S. I cannot resist adding another quote from Galbraith (The Great Crash, 1929):

• Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account.

[pdofr]

Jim,

Slightly off topic, but do you have a German translation for the Mandela quote in your sig?

	Quote:	Jim2007
	"There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." - Nelson Mandela

(It's structurally quite a complex sentence, when you look at translating it)

[marton]

	Quote:	Jim2007
	So in addition to the repeal bill, she is going to have the pause bill to cobble U.K. Law to EU law for a while and she now expects the EU to negotiate on three fronts.... I wonder in the end who gets to bring home the bad news...

" pause bill " LOL, good point; I did not think of that.

Maybe she should have a repeal bill with conditional clauses; if... then...

What a nightmare

[marton]

	Quote:	nunos
	The EU id doing everything to stopp the UK from being an independent nation like Switzerland, but I believe the British people will be able to set themselves free from the despicable European Union dictatorship.

"despicable European Union dictatorship." Well the UK were a major player in forming this with many cunning points so it will not be easy to break free!

[Urs Max]

	Quote:
	"There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

I would translate it as:
Es steckt keine Leidenschaft darin, sich selbst klein zu machen oder sich mit einem Leben zufrieden zu geben, das weniger ist als man daraus machen könnte.

[lewton]

	Quote:	nunos
	The EU id doing everything to stopp the UK from being an independent nation like Switzerland, but I believe the British people will be able to set themselves free from the despicable European Union dictatorship.

Is Switzerland an independent nation?
How independent is a nation that didn't respect its citizens' vote to control immigration from EU countries?

	Quote:	nunos
	The EU id doing everything to stopp the UK from being an independent nation like Switzerland, but I believe the British people will be able to set themselves free from the despicable European Union dictatorship.

You do realise Switerland has to pay huge sums to be part of single market- without having any say in Brussels on anything. Plus have to agree to free movement of people, despite the Feb 14 referendum?

[Urs Max]

	Quote:	lewton
	Is Switzerland an independent nation? How independent is a nation that didn't respect its citizens' vote to control immigration from EU countries?

There's no such thing as an independent nation in today's world, the "best" you can be is sovereign. Still, actions have consequences, and the consequences of a full MEI implementation would have been too severe.

	Quote:	lewton
	Is Switzerland an independent nation? How independent is a nation that didn't respect its citizens' vote to control immigration from EU countries?

A compromise was reached and an appropriate one imo given the tiny yes vote majority.

It was open to the usual suspects to have an implementation vote or a new vote and they failed to get public support for either.

Sounds like democracy in action to me.

[McTAVGE]

	Quote:	nunos
	The EU id doing everything to stopp the UK from being an independent nation like Switzerland, but I believe the British people will be able to set themselves free from the despicable European Union dictatorship.

What planet do you live on? You make very light use of the word "dictatorship". Having two EU citizenships (well, one will soon be outside the EU) and having grown up, lived and worked in several EU countries, I never felt so free. You must have been reading the wrong kind of newspapers.


Now, go and talk to people from one of the -Stan countries and ask them if they'd rather be in the EU or enjoy their "full sovereignty". You have well and truly pissed me off and in this nice weather, it takes quite a lot.

[McTAVGE]

	Quote:	Loz1983
	I'm not one for celebrity endorsements, but Michael Caine does explains his leave vote in such a wonderfully succinct way. "What it is with me, I'd rather be a poor master than a rich servant."

In a nation of "Downton Abbey" lovers and a Tory government that would love to return to the "golden age of poor and obedient servants"!

Another loonie leftie snowflake, like KPMG, concerned for financial services (Guardian today)

Friday 7 April 2017 13.28 BST
First published on Friday 7 April 2017 10.24 BST

The Bank of England has given financial firms a deadline of 14 July to explain how they are planning for the UK’s departure from the EU and warned them to be ready for all possible outcomes, including a hard Brexit.

The Bank wrote to hundreds of banks, insurers and other financial firms on Friday ordering them to get contingency plans in place. The move follows prime minister Theresa May’s triggering of article 50 last week, formally launching the Brexit process.

Bank governor Mark Carney said central banks and financial firms should be planning for “all eventualities” as he used a speech in London to call for an open financial system between the UK and the EU post-Brexit (pdf).

[Jim2007]

	Quote:
	Another loonie leftie snowflake, like KPMG, concerned for financial services (Guardian today)

How exactly is ensuring that the financial institutions are prepared to deal with any outcome a loonie approach???

Sarcasm by-passed you dear... we are always told anyone worrying about Brexit are just leftie or libtards loonies...have several very close relatives in high-end financial services who are very concerned and planning to move- and I can assure you they are not either of the above

	Quote:
	Sarcasm by-passed you dear... we are always told anyone worrying about Brexit are just leftie or libtards loonies...have several very close relatives in high-end financial services who are very concerned and planning to move- and I can assure you they are not either of the above

It has always intrigued me how euroscepticism shifted from a largely left wing position to a largely right wing one. The EU is essentially a continent-wide neo-liberal protection racket - it's like a Tory's wet dream - yet it was a Tory Prime Minister who planted the seeds that grew into Brexit, even though it was the Tories who dragged the UK into the EEC into the first place and the Tories who did the treacherous deed of signing up for Maastricht.

Meanwhile, the Labour party has shifted from the vocal and patriotic euroscepticism of the seventies and eighties to a not-entirely-convincing defence of the status quo.

What happened, why and when? I'd be curious to know what they were thinking on both sides of the fence.

[MathNut]

I miss being a mod. Back in the day I could just ban you when it was time for bed.

I tell you one thing (or two) that happened.

Take back control they say- and fair enough. But perhaps it would have been a good idea not to sell all our essential utilities, be it electricity, nuclear power, gas, water- our transport, be it trains or airports- to other Europeans or other highest bidder to fill the pockets of the very rich, no? And become so dependent for imports of essential footstuffs, oil, and so on? No?

How can you take back control of stuff you have sold to all and sundry- who basically have you, literally, over a barrel.

Now the Spanish owner of Heathrow has reacted re the sabre rattling over Gibraltar, he also owns Southampton and Glasgow airports. As for Gatwick- it is owned by all sorts:

The airport is owned and operated by Gatwick Airport Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ivy Holdco Limited. Ivy Holdco is, in turn, owned by a consortium of companies, which has changed over time. As of March 2016, the airport ownership is:
Owner Shares[24]
Global Infrastructure Partners 41.95%
Future Fund Board of Guardians 17.23%
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority 15.9%
The California Public Employees' Retirement System 12.78%
National Pension Service of Korea 12.14%

When customs have to move from Calais to Dover (which is in a very tight funnel with no space to expand) - the French will also have total control on imports and exports, ferry ports and the Tunnel. The Dutch and Belgians the rest.

The traditional left, Labour in the UK - have lost their rôle in the new world. Because they represent people for whom modern society has not really got an answer. All those who supported Labour and Unions, who worked in steel, mines, textiles, the manual car and boat building industries, etc, etc. Increased automation will continue to erode the ordinary Labour sector, and the Left with it. Farmers in East Anglia have said clearly that unless they can get very cheap and reliable labour, mostly from Eastern blocl- then with such pressure on prices from supermarkets, and of course ultimately, the customer (us..) - then the only way to survive would be full automation.

[pdofr]

	Quote:
	Take back control they say- and fair enough. But perhaps it would have been a good idea not to sell all our essential utilities, be it electricity, nuclear power, gas, water- our transport, be it trains or airports- to other Europeans or other highest bidder to fill the pockets of the very rich, no? And become so dependent for imports of essential footstuffs, oil, and so on? No? How can you take back control of stuff you have sold to all and sundry- who basically have you, literally, over a barrel.

Read this and weep:

James Meek: How We Happened to Sell Off Our Electricity

	Quote:
	The most unexpected consequence of selling the country’s electric legacy, the consequence that most directly contradicts what the Thatcherites were trying to do, was the gradual absorption of swathes of the industry by EDF. Beginning with the takeover of London Electricity in 1998, exploiting the Thatcherites’ open-door market structures and their decision to split the electricity industry into small, easy-to-swallow chunks, France in effect renationalised the industry its neighbour had so painstakingly privatised. Renationalised it, that is, for France. As well as being one of the six dominant UK suppliers of energy, EDF now owns a fat portfolio of British power stations, including the fleet of nuclear reactors that still provides around a sixth of the country’s electricity.

Please take the time to read the full article.