Britain is leaving the EU

[Kyriakos]

Soft on hard-brexit, soft on the causes of hard-brexit

 

[Hrothbern]

Maastricht was where the whole thing went from likely good to inevitably bad. From separate cooperation projects that each sovereign country joined or left according to its interests, accountable to its population, to the federal dream-nightmare that merged all european cooperation and the numerous separate organizations though which it could be carried out into a single body that no country was supposed to be able to escape. Thus becoming province or an empire-to-be, where some regions are bound to win and others to lose no matter what their people would like to attempt, because it is the bureaucracy in the imperial centre that sets policy and can overrule any single region. That is always the nature of any polity, and the consequence of abdicating sovereignty.

You say bureaucracy as being something bad...
well... It was one of the biggest civilisation inventions and was done by Hammurabi

To get effective and efficient economies in Europe, standardisation is of the utmost importance
That is mainly an bureaucratic task
that starts with simple industrial standards like the nuts and bolts with the DIN values to create lowest production cost (as opposed to the inch nuts and bolts of UK and USA)
it touches as well for Science the metric c.g.s system as opposed by the archaic Pounds and Inches that are utterly impractical for understandable calculations.
the CE norm as standard for safety
not to forget the enormous savings for an economic cooperation in Europe by using 1 currency.
and so on and so forth.
Those are not the kind of things where you can "shop" to your liking
The gigantic progress here already achieved is ofc not as exciting as the political aspects of the differences in EU..... and therefore not part of the "must be exciting" daily news !!!

My personal guess is that UK will end up as the City State London, fully dominated by the global Finance industry as main source of income.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Then how do you know what to quote?

I can make my own mind up without being told what to think (by ?? tabloids), and if you had
paid attention, you might have noticed that my main souce for quotations here is the BBC.

 

[EnglishEdward]

There was little more than a customs union beforehand.

Not so, there were many things before then, common agricultural policy, fishery policy and visa less travel.

 

[Colon]

I was talking about the market ofcourse...

 

[innonimatu]

To get effective and efficient economies in Europe, standardisation is of the utmost importance
That is mainly an bureaucratic task
that starts with simple industrial standards like the nuts and bolts with the DIN values to create lowest production cost (as opposed to the inch nuts and bolts of UK and USA)
it touches as well for Science the metric c.g.s system as opposed by the archaic Pounds and Inches that are utterly impractical for understandable calculations.
the CE norm as standard for safety
not to forget the enormous savings for an economic cooperation in Europe by using 1 currency.
and so on and so forth.
Those are not the kind of things where you can "shop" to your liking

On the contrary, those are the kind of things you can shop as you like. Standardization predates the EU and was carried out by independent bodies. The EU may have swallowed some (I lost count of how many it did...) but most standardization efforts are deliberately set up as international efforts open for anyone to join. Not just the card-carrying members of the EU.
Even the euro was a shop thing: several EU states don't and won't use it, several states outside the EU use it. Not that is is anything good for a state.

 

[Hrothbern]

On the contrary, those are the kind of things you can shop as you like. Standardization predates the EU and was carried out by independent bodies. The EU may have swallowed some (I lost count of how many it did...) but most standardization efforts are deliberately set up as international efforts open for anyone to join. Not just the card-carrying members of the EU.
Even the euro was a shop thing: several EU states don't and won't use it, several states outside the EU use it. Not that is is anything good for a state.

smile
I guess we can agree to disagree on this

Still a question
IF that "shopping as you like" is not bad for business....
Why does every country in the world force WITHIN that country to have it standardised ?

 

[FriendlyFire]

or an empire-to-be

I think the mistake was expanding too fast
Along with German inflexable economic policy until the damage had been done

 

[Takhisis]

Prediction: There's not going to be a deal.

edit: damn, wrong thread

Reposted, to quote a departed NF poster, for ‘relevence’.

 

[dutchfire]

Since the Brexit vote, Sterling is down 10-15% compared to Euro and Dollar, and inflation has been roughly in the 2% range. I had expected more inflation with such a drop, but maybe that will take longer to 'trickle down'.

 

[Hrothbern]

Since the Brexit vote, Sterling is down 10-15% compared to Euro and Dollar, and inflation has been roughly in the 2% range. I had expected more inflation with such a drop, but maybe that will take longer to 'trickle down'.

The lower Sterling for sure helps and helped the export of UK.
Whereby noted that the main "export" increase so far has been the massive buying by the Chinese of prime London real estate, banks, etc up to footbalclubs and Weetabix.

The already low Corporate tax in UK of 20% is likely to go down further to help getting busines to UK.
Theresa May mentioned 17% and for comparison Germany, France, Italy are around 30%.
Tax paradises, like Monaco, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, Bahamas etc are usual in the 10-15% corporate tax range.

I expect governing in the UK to become more and more to be a balance between the "Finance Industry" of London versus the normal economy of people of UK as a whole.
Not simple

 

[EnglishEdward]

Theresa May mentioned 17% and for comparison Germany, France, Italy are around 30%.

The conservatives are making a lot of promises that they can not fund.

After all they won the 2015 general election partly on that basis, and expect to do so again.

And I get the feeling that spreadsheet Phil Hammond is not a happy chappy about that.

 

[Hrothbern]

The conservatives are making a lot of promises that they can not fund.

After all they won the 2015 general election partly on that basis, and expect to do so again.

And I get the feeling that spreadsheet Phil Hammond is not a happy chappy about that.

Phil Hammond answered in January at the explicit question of the German newspaper "die Welt" whether UK is going towards a tax haven:

"IF we are closed off from the EU market we will consider to change our social, economical, regulations, tax model and become something different".
He also expressed he would like to stay close to the European mainstream, but to do whatever necessary to keep UK competitive.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Phil Hammond answered in January at the explicit question of the German newspaper "die Welt" whether UK is going towards a tax haven:

"IF we are closed off from the EU market we will consider to change our social, economical, regulations, tax model and become something different".
He also expressed he would like to stay close to the European mainstream, but to do whatever necessary to keep UK competitive.

Yes, but become something different is not necessarily the same as becoming a tax haven.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Yeah, It is more like i have not a clue what we will do.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yeah, It is more like i have not a clue what we will do.

Well typed. That is my most likely interpretation of his statement.

There are alternatives to the tax haven, but none are palatable to the conservatives.

 

[Hrothbern]

Well typed. That is my most likely interpretation of his statement.

There are alternatives to the tax haven, but none are palatable to the conservatives.

agree
Their instinctive reflexes are to cut cost and lower tax

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I was told again about all the problems of the European Union and how it never will work, although for some reason they called the EU a "single party state". What they said should've been done instead of creating the EU was the governments of each European country should have simply made agreements with each other, "removing the middle man".

 

[Arakhor]

Funnily enough, that's exactly what the Treaty of Rome was.

 

[Kyriakos]

It isn't a middle man, but an over-structure, which for some time now has been geared towards being a muscle of huge corporate interests and their friends, in the larger countries.