Cont: Brexit: Now What? 9 Below Zero

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Captain_Swoop said:
In an interview today on Sky News Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak says We don't need a trade deal with the EU.

Apparently trade is only "one part" of what will drive the UK's economy in the coming years and a trade agreement with the EU isn't essential.

He muttered something about "Investment infrastructure" being more important and something about "Australia" style trade deals. Australia doesn't have a trade deal with the EU or the UK
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So they'd be pretty similar then ;)

Prepare to hear much more of such bollocks in the months to come.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
In an interview today on Sky News Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak says We don't need a trade deal with the EU.

Apparently trade is only "one part" of what will drive the UK's economy in the coming years and a trade agreement with the EU isn't essential.

He muttered something about "Investment infrastructure" being more important and something about "Austalia" style trade deals.

Australia doesn't have a trade deal with the EU or the UK
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An arch Remoaner who has a Youtube channel called "A Different Bias" has noted that it's interesting that now the Brexiteers are completely in control of the process, Boris Johnson is backing away from his own deal. Not only that but Brexiteers are falling over themselves to prepare the ground to blame everyone else for the inevitable ****-storm when a no-deal Australia-style deal happens.

The thing to point our about Australia is that they have taken great care to form trade partnerships with their major trading partners.
 
The Don said:
It's interesting that the government is in the process of re-branding "no deal" as "Australian Deal".

I also note that talks of not allowing chlorinated chicken into the UK food chain has now been replaced by vague references to not reducing food standards and relying on scientific principles - which coincidentally is exactly the wording that the US trade negotiators have been using.

Expect a fire-sale deal with the US this year with all that means in terms of drops in food standards (with resulting difficulties in exporting food to our current biggest market, the EU) and increased US access to lucrative parts of the UK economy and restrictions on the NHS being able to negotiate on drug prices.
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Your Prime Minister has instructed you to stop 'talking mumbo jumbo' about chlorinated chicken.

It is all, er, very scientific because, er, the chlorine washes off the bacteria from the excretia (not that cooking wouldn't kill them).
 
The Don said:
One way to judge how important Brexit is to the average Brit is to look at how often it's mentioned in pantomime. The pantomime I was part of at the end of January had around a dozen (mostly negative) Brexit references and one reference to what a useless Prime Minister we have at the moment. In this, quite affluent corner of South East Wales, people care about Brexit quite a bit.

Captain Swoop often refers to pro-Brexit pub conversations in his local in the North East of England. We have fewer here but they also tend to be pro-Brexit (and IMO woefully misinformed, but that's probably my bias showing). Certainly the local farmers are looking forward to generous post-Brexit subsidies and higher prices for their produce. I suspect that they my be very disappointed if the UK agrees a trade deal with the US in which the US largely prohibits UK farming subsidies while flooding the UK market with its own highly subsidised farm produce.
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And GMO corn. Don't forget the GMO corn.
 
The Don said:
Even then there are economies of scale that come from US farming due to the sheer size of US farms, access to inexpensive (often illegal) labour and the highly industrialised approach to raising livestock (some elements of which are prohibited under EU law) which means that even with equivalent subsidies, UK farmers would be operating at a significant disadvantage.

Of course the US wouldn't want the UK to be allowed to subsidise UK farmers in the same way that US farmers are. It's a common theme of US trade deals and WTO complaints that whilst the US should be allowed to subsidise - directly or indirectly, subsidy by foreign countries should be forbidden.
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That's a thing I have thought about before. The UK rather famously ranks animal welfare above even child welfare. I suspect there may be protests at the imposition of US rules to animals in general. People? Not so much.
 
Perhaps the allusion to an Australia-style deal refers to the devastating effects of the bush fires recently. BoJo's scorched earth policy in which Great Britain is unleashed onto the world in this New Dawn.
 
abaddon said:
That's a thing I have thought about before. The UK rather famously ranks animal welfare above even child welfare. I suspect there may be protests at the imposition of US rules to animals in general. People? Not so much.
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I'm sure that it'll be explained to us that in fact it's scientifically proven that washing excreta off chickens with chlorine is far better for food safety than preventing contamination in the first place and furthermore the US's comparatively high food poisoning rates actually indicate safer food than the EU because they have nothing to hide (rather like President Trump's countless lies demonstrate his fundamental honest - he has nothing to hide, why else are his lies so blatant).

Boris Johnson is on record saying US food must be safe - otherwise Americans wouldn't be so fat.
 
Vixen said:
Perhaps the allusion to an Australia-style deal refers to the devastating effects of the bush fires recently. BoJo's scorched earth policy in which Great Britain is unleashed onto the world in this New Dawn.
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:D

Being serious, I think that there are two main reasons why the Australia style deal is being promoted.

Firstly people in the UK still think that Australians are just Brits who live a long way away and so any deal they have must be one we'd be happy with. This ignores the fundamental shift in Australia's outlook over the last 70 years. It's no longer Britain's child, Australia rightly considers itself to be a Pacific trading nation.

Secondly, the Australian economy has done very well over the last couple of decades compared to the UK economy so anything they have must be the right thing to have. That's true but IMO that's down to digging millions of tonnes of stuff out of the ground and selling it to China - not something that's dependent on an EU deal and not something the UK can do.
 
The Don said:
I'm sure that it'll be explained to us that in fact it's scientifically proven that washing excreta off chickens with chlorine is far better for food safety than preventing contamination in the first place and furthermore the US's comparatively high food poisoning rates actually indicate safer food than the EU because they have nothing to hide (rather like President Trump's countless lies demonstrate his fundamental honest - he has nothing to hide, why else are his lies so blatant).
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That is horribly cynical of you. Oh wait, I agree.

The Don said:
Boris Johnson is on record saying US food must be safe - otherwise Americans wouldn't be so fat.
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Wait what really?
 
The Don said:
:D

Being serious, I think that there are two main reasons why the Australia style deal is being promoted.

Firstly people in the UK still think that Australians are just Brits who live a long way away and so any deal they have must be one we'd be happy with. This ignores the fundamental shift in Australia's outlook over the last 70 years. It's no longer Britain's child, Australia rightly considers itself to be a Pacific trading nation.
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That notion causes me issues. Do the Brexiteers really think that the Great British Empire will simply wash ashore on the gentle waves that they don't rule? It seems absurd on it's face, but leavers seem to actually believe it.
The Don said:
Secondly, the Australian economy has done very well over the last couple of decades compared to the UK economy so anything they have must be the right thing to have. That's true but IMO that's down to digging millions of tonnes of stuff out of the ground and selling it to China - not something that's dependent on an EU deal and not something the UK can do.
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Britain: We will consign our poor, our criminals, and anyone we don't like to the hell hole of OZ.

Australia: No worries, we are wizards.
 
The Don said:
I also note that talks of not allowing chlorinated chicken into the UK food chain has now been replaced by vague references to not reducing food standards and relying on scientific principles - which coincidentally is exactly the wording that the US trade negotiators have been using.
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Translation: Boris wants to get more "Technology Lessons".
 
Lothian said:
Australian points system. Australian deal. Next the PM will be feeding our babies to dingos.
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The UK already has a points system for non-EU incomers. Until recently you could just bribe pay your way in if you were a rich oligarch or similar.

The sheer stupidity of copying Australia lies in the fact Australia has developed it over many decades and is specific to Australia's needs. In addition, it wanted to invite the 'right sort' of citizen in (read: non-Asian).

Now, the UK has the opposite problem. It wants people to leave the country. The EU citizens already in the UK mostly have the skills sets needed to work here successfully. EU citizens are no longer going t be attracted to the UK if they have to pay whopping £2K - £4K for a limited visa for the privilege. OK, so maybe most of this will be paid by employers with job offers.

Truth is, if the minimum salary threshold for entry drops to £25K (instead of the £30K suggested) what are employers going to do about all the catering and hospitality staff that usually come from abroad? Or Kent orchard and vegetable farmers reliant on gangs of Romanian fruit pickers (and these are very skilled and efficient) as there is no way they can suddenly afford to increase their wages from the minimum wage standard to £25K. Huge piles of produce rotting (like last year) gone to waste because the EU workers are disappearing elsewhere. Non-EU can't come in because they don't meet the salary threshold nor have job offers on a traditionally casual-basis market, where you just turn up.

Priti Patel really hasn't thought this through.
 
abaddon said:
Wait what really?
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Not exactly those words but.....

Boris Johnson championed American food and called for an end to “mumbo jumbo” and paranoia in a change of tone before Brexit trade talks.

The prime minister said that “pretty well-nourished” Americans disproved “hysterical fears” over the quality of agricultural produce from the US.
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Well nourished being doctor code for "fat"
 
abaddon said:
That notion causes me issues. Do the Brexiteers really think that the Great British Empire will simply wash ashore on the gentle waves that they don't rule? It seems absurd on it's face, but leavers seem to actually believe it.
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I think we have to distinguish between the architects of Brexit and the rank and file supporters of Brexit.

In the case of the former I think that there are few illusions about what the future holds but that's fine because they personally stand to gain significantly from the turmoil which is likely to result from a messy Brexit.

In the case of the latter, IMO it's difficult to generalise. Many in the former industrial heartlands are sick to the back teeth of being of having the fuzzy end of the lollipop for decades and see Brexit as a way to break the current system without necessarily having a clear idea about what might follow. Others on the left may see Brexit as an opportunity to finally implement the workers' utopia they've been wishing for all these years. There is however a sizeable group of red-top reading middle-Englanders who genuinely think that the Commonwealth countries really do love the UK sufficiently to get great trade deals and other countries like China, Russia, Brazil, Japan and Korea will simply recognise our innate superiority and give us the trade deals we deserve.
 
Vixen said:
The UK already has a points system for non-EU incomers. Until recently you could just bribe pay your way in if you were a rich oligarch or similar.

The sheer stupidity of copying Australia lies in the fact Australia has developed it over many decades and is specific to Australia's needs. In addition, it wanted to invite the 'right sort' of citizen in (read: non-Asian).

Now, the UK has the opposite problem. It wants people to leave the country. The EU citizens already in the UK mostly have the skills sets needed to work here successfully. EU citizens are no longer going t be attracted to the UK if they have to pay whopping £2K - £4K for a limited visa for the privilege. OK, so maybe most of this will be paid by employers with job offers.

Truth is, if the minimum salary threshold for entry drops to £25K (instead of the £30K suggested) what are employers going to do about all the catering and hospitality staff that usually come from abroad? Or Kent orchard and vegetable farmers reliant on gangs of Romanian fruit pickers (and these are very skilled and efficient) as there is no way they can suddenly afford to increase their wages from the minimum wage standard to £25K. Huge piles of produce rotting (like last year) gone to waste because the EU workers are disappearing elsewhere. Non-EU can't come in because they don't meet the salary threshold nor have job offers on a traditionally casual-basis market, where you just turn up.

Priti Patel really hasn't thought this through.
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Any time any industry group brings up any issues associated with freedom of movement, the government response seems to be a suggestion (but never a commitment of course ;) ) that the particular industry group may be eligible for some kind of exception from the general rule.

It's the same when there's a suggestion that Brexit will destroy an industry sector. There are suggestions but never a commitment of course - unless you're the fishing industry for some bizarre reason) that the particular industry will be in receipt of some generous subsidies.
 
Vixen said:
Your Prime Minister has instructed you to stop 'talking mumbo jumbo' about chlorinated chicken.

It is all, er, very scientific because, er, the chlorine washes off the bacteria from the excretia (not that cooking wouldn't kill them).
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And yet the USA sees a half-million salmonella food poisoning cases (and over 350 deaths) each year. That's ten times the UK illness rate; the UK hasn't had any salmonella fatalities for several years.
 
Wudang said:
There's a joke doing the rounds on social media (a variant of older ones) which is basically

US kid: Does your family pray before you eat dinner?

EU kid: No, the EU has decent food safety standards.
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True. East a soft-boiled USAian egg and you have a significant risk of becoming sock, getting hospitalised (and a huge medical bill) or dying.
 
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