Brexit - whats the difference.....

[goatwack]

Spare a thought for the poor person that discovers Boris in a ditch in or around Oct 31st

 

[pinnit2014]

Thanks Harry, that's a very apt saying to describe the EU

And Bonanza

 

[steveh35]

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[Mr_Slot5]

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France will do as they're told and vote for the extension unfortunately. Do you honestly think they won't?

 

[mack341]

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I wonder how the remainers in parliament will respond to this, I do hope hilary benn ends up with egg all over his face. A sinister and machiavellian man pretending to be a do-gooder.

 

[dunover]

I wonder how the remainers in parliament will respond to this, I do hope hilary benn ends up with egg all over his face. A sinister and machiavellian man pretending to be a do-gooder.

Yet his equally lefty father hated the EU and was an avid leaver in today's parlance.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Only 90 seconds, well worth a watch.

'He's making the exact point No Dealers fail to grasp - No Deal is not an end point. Its just a delayed deal, coming from a weaker negotiating position with a lot of added chaos and financial harm.'

 

[thr0b]

“Please give us a deal, even though we’ve reneged on our debts recently, we won’t this time, honest.”

UK.gov is basically going to be grovelling to the ashes of Wonga.com on our behalf.

 

[mack341]

Only 90 seconds, well worth a watch.

'He's making the exact point No Dealers fail to grasp - No Deal is not an end point. Its just a delayed deal, coming from a weaker negotiating position with a lot of added chaos and financial harm.'

Chop you're back in the game

The thing is doing a deal takes time, but we have to pass the result of the referendum at some point otherwise we have the democratic standing of a banana republic.

Let's be honest, the EU doesn't want to do a fair deal now, they want to see if they can make our country suffer so that we beg to rejoin. The backstop was probably a kinder, legal way of not letting us escape their control, they say it would only come into effect in the event of not being able to reach a final deal, so what was the likelihood of that, very high I 'd say.

The EU is not a force for more democracy but less, that's why the business people and the blairs of this world love it, they get to dictate the new laws and regulations without the pesky voter getting in the way. It's the commission and president telling nation states 'you will accept this law or otherwise face the consequences...'

I think every other eu member state should now have to have a referendum, let's test how popular the EU really is with the public at large. If it's so good you'd expect to see around 70% of votes in favour, if it falls to around to 50/50 levels it must be viewed as a failure and in need of binning or major reform.

 

[vorcirion]

Chop you're back in the game

The thing is doing a deal takes time, but we have to pass the result of the referendum at some point otherwise we have the democratic standing of a banana republic.

Let's be honest, the EU doesn't want to do a fair deal now, they want to see if they can make our country suffer so that we beg to rejoin. The backstop was probably a kinder, legal way of not letting us escape their control, they say it would only come into effect in the event of not being able to reach a final deal, so what was the likelihood of that, very high I 'd say.

The EU is not a force for more democracy but less, that's why the business people and the blairs of this world love it, they get to dictate the new laws and regulations without the pesky voter getting in the way. It's the commission and president telling nation states 'you will accept this law or otherwise face the consequences...'

I think every other eu member state should now have to have a referendum, let's test how popular the EU really is with the public at large. If it's so good you'd expect to see around 70% of votes in favour, if it falls to around to 50/50 levels it must be viewed as a failure and in need of binning or major reform.

Yeah other states should follow your idiotic example How about no thanks. We prefer to reform the EU the way it needs to be reformed (from the inside of the EU). EU is working pretty well already...so how about you keep the misery all for yourself and let the rest of us enjoy the benefits of the EU.

 

[mack341]

Yeah other states should follow your idiotic example How about no thanks. We prefer to reform the EU the way it needs to be reformed (from the inside of the EU). EU is working pretty well already...so how about you keep the misery all for yourself and let the rest of us enjoy the benefits of the EU.

Are you scared the results would be 50/50 across europe, rather than the 70/30 in favour your post implies?

I am interested to understand exactly what these benefits are, which could not be available other than through the auspices of the EU ?

Edit: I'm expecting a fairly long and hefty list that should come straight to mind considering the costs and surrender of sovereignty of each member.

And also the new benefits of membership on the horizon...it keeps passing new laws and regulations so new advantages/benefits have got to keep coming, right?

 

[vorcirion]

Are you scared the results would be 50/50 across europe, rather than the 70/30 in favour your post implies?

I am interested to understand exactly what these benefits are, which could not be available other than through the auspices of the EU ?

Freedom of movement comes to my mind first. And we can actually say FU to Trump if he tries to blackmail us somehow. It's good to be part of something great...something strong We have much more influence like this.
And we can help each other in the time of need. Like helping Greece for example.

Sure there may be nations (nationalists) who would vote to leave the EU. But I guess leaders are looking how things are going in the UK and saying...f**k that.

 

[dunover]

Freedom of movement comes to my mind first. And we can actually say FU to Trump if he tries to blackmail us somehow. It's good to be part of something great...something strong We have much more influence like this.
And we can help each other in the time of need. Like helping Greece for example.

Sure there may be nations (nationalists) who would vote to leave the EU. But I guess leaders are looking how things are going in the UK and saying...f**k that.

And that is exactly what the EUSSR wants - to make things as difficult as possible to put other countries in fear of leaving their cabal. Helping Greece? It was being in the EU and moreover an illogical membership of the Euro that was largely responsible for wrecking their economy. Greece had essentially no autonomous monetary policy flexibility and their debt was under reported too despite it being less in relation to GDP than say Belgium's or Italy's. Now it's tens of thousands per person.

 

[Harry_BKK]

And that is exactly what the EUSSR wants - to make things as difficult as possible to put other countries in fear of leaving their cabal. Helping Greece? It was being in the EU and moreover an illogical membership of the Euro that was largely responsible for wrecking their economy. Greece had essentially no autonomous monetary policy flexibility and their debt was under reported too despite it being less in relation to GDP than say Belgium's or Italy's. Now it's tens of thousands per person.

Geez Dazza, inform yourself first.

First, the Greek Drachma was worth very little, then the Greeks cheated on how much debt they have to be allowed to get the Euro (that's how much they wanted it). Greece has always had a debt problem, purely because people do not pay taxes from their salary but have to voluntary hand in their tax declaration every year. At some point, more than 50% didn't do it, draining the country even more than it already was.

And it was more in relation to their GDP than they actually reported, much more. That is what led to the crisis in the first place.

 

[mack341]

Freedom of movement comes to my mind first. And we can actually say FU to Trump if he tries to blackmail us somehow. It's good to be part of something great...something strong We have much more influence like this.
And we can help each other in the time of need. Like helping Greece for example.

Sure there may be nations (nationalists) who would vote to leave the EU. But I guess leaders are looking how things are going in the UK and saying...f**k that.

I would say the negative impacts from membership to the eu are probably felt less in finland than the uk. I think your country is slightly bigger than the uk but with less than 10% of the population, so you're much less crowded.

And Laura Huhtasaari seems quite a lovely lady, a decent finnish politician, she'd get my vote

 

[Tengil]

I would say the negative impacts from membership to the eu are probably felt less in finland than the uk. I think your country is slightly bigger than the uk but with less than 10% of the population, so you're much less crowded.

And Laura Huhtasaari seems quite a lovely lady, a decent finnish politician, she'd get my vote

'
A complete nutcase creationist. One of the most despicable Finnish politicians and a fraudster.

 

[vorcirion]

I would say the negative impacts from membership to the eu are probably felt less in finland than the uk. I think your country is slightly bigger than the uk but with less than 10% of the population, so you're much less crowded.

And Laura Huhtasaari seems quite a lovely lady, a decent finnish politician, she'd get my vote

She can kiss my hairy ass!

 

[ternur]

I would say the negative impacts from membership to the eu are probably felt less in finland than the uk. I think your country is slightly bigger than the uk but with less than 10% of the population, so you're much less crowded.

And Laura Huhtasaari seems quite a lovely lady, a decent finnish politician, she'd get my vote

She is an idiot who thinks evolution is an impossible theory among other things.

Edit: Tengil beat me to it.

 

[dunover]

Geez Dazza, inform yourself first.

First, the Greek Drachma was worth very little, then the Greeks cheated on how much debt they have to be allowed to get the Euro (that's how much they wanted it). Greece has always had a debt problem, purely because people do not pay taxes from their salary but have to voluntary hand in their tax declaration every year. At some point, more than 50% didn't do it, draining the country even more than it already was.

And it was more in relation to their GDP than they actually reported, much more. That is what led to the crisis in the first place.

Geez Harry, I said it was under-reported!
But the Euro is a huge handicap on them recovering and ensures they are beholden to the EU financiers for far longer than is necessary as they cannot devalue their currency in order to establish their natural terms of trade in many important areas of commerce.

 

[mack341]

from the spectator magazine:

"Analysts estimate that some €230 billion (80 per cent) of the €290 billion eight-year rescue package has gone straight to European banks, bypassing the stricken Greeks altogether. As Yanis Varoufakis, the rock-star former finance minister and the bane of Brussels, has said: ‘Greece didn’t get a bailout.’ The bailout went ‘primarily to French and German banks’.

Somewhere in all of this, a cardinal rule of international banking seems to have been forgotten. As a recent Bloomberg editorial recently put it: ‘Irresponsible borrowers can’t exist without irresponsible lenders. German banks were Greece’s enablers.’

Any and all funds raised through austerity cuts and privatisations in future have been pledged to repaying EU loans for the next 50 years. The Bank of Greece estimates that the Greek population has fallen by 3 per cent in the last eight years owing to a falling birth rate (a sure sign of a society’s diminishing confidence in its future) and to the decision of some 420,000 Greeks of working age to seek work overseas (mostly in Germany, the UK and the UAE). These are the talented and thrusting young professionals the economy needs to achieve a recovery. "

I wonder how much interest greece will have to pay over that 50 years

---------------------

And from the nation website:

How Goldman Sachs Profited From the Greek Debt Crisis
The investment bank made millions by helping to hide the true extent of the debt, and in the process almost doubled it.

The Greek debt crisis offers another illustration of Wall Street’s powers of persuasion and predation, although the Street is missing from most accounts.

The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process almost doubled it. And just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Street’s predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role.

In 2001, Greece was looking for ways to disguise its mounting financial troubles. The Maastricht Treaty required all eurozone member states to show improvement in their public finances, but Greece was heading in the wrong direction. Then Goldman Sachs came to the rescue, arranging a secret loan of 2.8 billion euros for Greece, disguised as an off-the-books “cross-currency swap”—a complicated transaction in which Greece’s foreign-currency debt was converted into a domestic-currency obligation using a fictitious market exchange rate.

As a result, about 2 percent of Greece’s debt magically disappeared from its national accounts. Christoforos Sardelis, then head of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency, later described the deal to Bloomberg Business as “a very sexy story between two sinners.” For its services, Goldman received a whopping 600 million euros ($793 million), according to Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over from Sardelis in 2005. That came to about 12 percent of Goldman’s revenue from its giant trading and principal-investments unit in 2001—which posted record sales that year. The unit was run by Blankfein.

.....Greece wasn’t the only sinner. Until 2008, European Union accounting rules allowed member nations to manage their debt with so-called off-market rates in swaps, pushed by Goldman and other Wall Street banks. In the late 1990s, JPMorgan enabled Italy to hide its debt by swapping currency at a favorable exchange rate, thereby committing Italy to future payments that didn’t appear on its national accounts as future liabilities.

But Greece was in the worst shape, and Goldman was the biggest enabler. Undoubtedly, Greece suffers from years of corruption and tax avoidance by its wealthy. But Goldman wasn’t an innocent bystander: It padded its profits by leveraging Greece to the hilt—along with much of the rest of the global economy. Other Wall Street banks did the same. When the bubble burst, all that leveraging pulled the world economy to its knees.

Even with the global economy reeling from Wall Street’s excesses, Goldman offered Greece another gimmick. In early November 2009, three months before the country’s debt crisis became global news, a Goldman team proposed a financial instrument that would push the debt from Greece’s healthcare system far into the future. This time, though, Greece didn’t bite.

As we know, Wall Street got bailed out by American taxpayers. And in subsequent years, the banks became profitable again and repaid their bailout loans. Bank shares have gone through the roof. Goldman’s were trading at $53 a share in November 2008; they’re now worth over $200. Executives at Goldman and other Wall Street banks have enjoyed huge pay packages and promotions. Blankfein, now Goldman’s CEO, raked in $24 million last year alone.

Meanwhile, the people of Greece struggle to buy medicine and food.

There are analogies here in America, beginning with the predatory loans made by Goldman, other big banks, and the financial companies they were allied with in the years leading up to the bust. Today, even as the bankers vacation in the Hamptons, millions of Americans continue to struggle with the aftershock of the financial crisis in terms of lost jobs, savings, and homes.

and it goes on...a long article written by Robert B. Reich, a former secretary of labor, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Beyond Outrage.

-------------

Make of these extracts what you will, but I'm not sure the average greek person feels the EU has helped them much in their hour of need.

 

[mack341]

She is an idiot who thinks evolution is a impossible theory among other things.

Edit: Tengil beat me to it.

wow! I never thought mentioning this lady's name would get such a heated response ...most of the youtube videos featuring her are not in english so I don't know much about her viewpoints. A nice looking lady though, I think most could agree on that....

 

[ternur]

Geez Harry, I said it was under-reported!
But the Euro is a huge handicap on them recovering and ensures they are beholden to the EU financiers for far longer than is necessary as they cannot devalue their currency in order to establish their natural terms of trade in many important areas of commerce.

That would be just another way to export unemployment. The ECB's main goal is to have a stable real economy, i.e. neutrality of money supply. Like Harry pointed out, much of the problems with Greek economy are related to fiscal policy rather than monetary policy.

 

[goatwack]

wow! I never thought mentioning this lady's name would get such a heated response ...most of the youtube videos featuring her are not in english so I don't know much about her viewpoints. A nice looking lady though, I think most could agree on that....

I'd cast my vote in her ballot box

 

[mack341]

I wonder if this guy knows his beans:




He doesn't seem to think, over the medium term, that no-deal will be detrimental to the uk, compared instead to a deal that constrains the uk.
Some good news for brexiteers, remainer speaker bercow is hanging up his robes at last

 

[thr0b]

So, on a day in which our Prime Minister has been found by the highest court in Scotland to have wilfully misled the Queen, the government has released a heavily summarised (and somewhat redacted) version of the Yellowhammer report.

In the government's own words, this is the reasonable worst case scenario. i.e. it's NOT the worst case scenario. It's more likely than that.

And in summary, this is what our government is CHOOSING to do to this country.

• No bilateral deals have been concluded with individual member states with the exception of the reciprocal agreement on social security coordination with Ireland. EU Citizens living in the UK can retain broadly all rights and status that they were entitled to prior to exit from the EU, at the point of exit.
• Public and business readiness for a no-deal will remain at a low level, and will decrease to lower levels, because the absence of a clear decision on the form of EU Exit (customs union, no deal etc) does not provide a concrete situation for third parties to prepare for.

• HMG will act lawfully and in accordance with the rule of law, including by identifying the powers it is using to take specific actions.

I had to laugh at that one.

• The lack of trader readiness combined with limited space in French ports to hold "unready" HGVs could reduce the flow rate to 40-60% of current levels within one day as unready HGVs will fill the ports and block flow. The worst disruption to the short Channel Straits might last for up to 3 months before it improves by a significant level to around 50-70% (due to more traders getting prepared), although there could continue to be some disruption for significantly longer

So after three months, if we're lucky, our ability to move stuff to the continent and back might be almost back to three quarters of what it is today.

• In a reasonable worst case scenario, HGVs could face maximum delays of 1.5-2.5 days before being able to cross the border. HGVs that are caught up in congestion in the UK will be unable to return to the EU to collect another load and a proportion of logistics firms may decide to avoid the route should there be significant and prolonged disruption
• The BDG/DfT planning assumption on reduced flow rates describes a pre-mitigation reasonable worst case flow rate that could be as low as 40% D1ND via the short Channel Straits, with significant disruption lasting up to six months. Unmitigated, this will have an impact on the supply of medicines and medical supplies.
• The reliance of medicines and medical products' supply chains on the short straits crossing make them particularly vulnerable to severe extended delays; three-quarters of medicines come via the short straits.
• Demand for energy will be met and there will be no disruption to electricity or gas interconnectors. In NI there will be not be immediate disruption to electricity supply on Day 1. A rapid SEM split could occur months or years after EU Exit. In this event, there would not be security of supply issues. However, there will likely be significant electricity price increases for consumers (business and domestic), with associated wider economic and political impacts

So it's going to cost more just to have electricity.

• Any disruption to reduce, delay or stop supply of medicines for UK veterinary use would reduce our ability to prevent and control disease outbreaks, with potential detrimental impacts for animal health and welfare, the environment, and wider food safety/availability and zoonotic diseases which can directly impact human health. Industry stockpiling will not be able to match the 4-12 weeks' worth of stockpiling which took place in March 2019. Air freight capacity and the special import scheme is not a financially viable mitigation to fully close risks associated with all UK veterinary medicine availability issues due to border disruption.

Don't worry about the costly electricity and the lack of medicines though, because...

• Certain types of fresh food supply will decrease.
• Government will not be able to fully anticipate all potential impacts to the agri-food supply chain. There is a risk that panic buying will cause or exacerbate food supply disruption

...we'll probably be more concerned about lack of food than lack of medicine.

• Low income groups will be disproportionately affected by any price rises in food and fuel.

That's nice.

The whole document is a summary, and doesn't go into huge amounts of detail.

What is clear though is it dry, and it is realistic. And it reads like a country preparing for war, and all of the disruption associated with that.

And we don't have to do it.

There is no good reason to do it.