Brexit: Now What? Part III

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Strawberry said:
The German election seems to be the latest meme. Once Merkel has the election out of the way, she will come riding to the rescue and insist on Barnier negotiating a trade deal straight away and nobody else in the EU will dare contradict her because we all know the EU means Germany really.
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Has anyone sat down and explained to Davis that he can't have a deal with just Germany yet? He seemed confused about that not too long ago.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
One EU member (Ireland) would be entering an arrangement with a non-EU member (UK) to give its citizens a special status in the UK - as I understand it anyway. There would be free movement of people between Ireland and the UK but not between say France and the UK. Unless they are saying there will be free movement between the EU and the UK as long as its on the island of Ireland? Also an odd arrangement.

I understand that the EU might want to accommodate this but it seems to go against the principles of the Union that everyone gets the same deal and there are no special arrangements for individual member states.
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Wait...what? Since when did third countries become prohibited from making different immigration rules for different EU countries? The no special deals and everyone treated equally rules are rules of the single market surely, not the world.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
Has anyone sat down and explained to Davis that he can't have a deal with just Germany yet? He seemed confused about that not too long ago.
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Davis recently met at a party a Bavarian nobleman (*) Von Separatismus who assured him that Germany could do that and that he had an entry into the German government. He's preparing a plane with extra fuel tanks as we speak to fly to Von S.' estate.

(*) never mind that the FRG abolished nobility.
 
Strawberry said:
The German election seems to be the latest meme. Once Merkel has the election out of the way, she will come riding to the rescue and insist on Barnier negotiating a trade deal straight away and nobody else in the EU will dare contradict her because we all know the EU means Germany really.
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Which is a heap of bollocks because there's nothing in Merkel's policies to date that indicates she would even try such a thing. And Merkel, like any other German politician, is very acutely aware of not even wanting to give the impression that Germany dictates EU politics.
 
Strawberry said:
I base it on every opinion poll I've ever seen on the subject, and more recently on the fact that Enda Kenny was even openly talking about the prospect. When a FG Taoiseach starts talking about unification its clearly not a minority opinion given that the FG party are traditionally the most hostile party towards Irish nationalism on that side of the border.
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According to wiki, there's a clear majority for reunification. However, it dramatically drops when people are asked to pay more taxes. I'm not sure how realistic the latter is; when the Wall came tumbling down in 1989, Germans didn't consider higher taxes in pondering the question of reunification either.
 
Vixen said:
It is not economic illiteracy in my case. Of the many business case studies I have had to analyse, one was to do with a manufacturing company in an industry which customarily outsources production to China. As of the time, Cost of Sales (price of labour and production costs) of this product was just £0.56p.

This coincided with a programme on TV (Horizon?) about a factory in Kirby, Lancs which specialised in goods produced by machinists having to sew up the soft goods for widespread wholesale distribution to retail outlets.

The owner of this factory was filmed visiting his factory outlets in China which did all this seamstress work, as it was much cheaper than paying British labour.

As you know, in recent years, China has been one of the BRIC economies*, and this chap began fretting about the rise of the Chinese middle classes demanding better middle class wages.

So he terminated his contracts with the Chinese producers and set up his factory back home in Kirby, giving jobs to the local ladies for much the same price as before (roughly £0.56 per completed item).

So, this is a clear demonstration that employers will go for the cheap labour options. So yes, higher wages may not benefit 'competitiveness' in the short term, but on an international market, it all levels out. The poorer countries in the EU, such as Romania, used to an average salary of just £200 pcm will come to the UK and consider £13K pa a fortune, but ultimately, they will soon be demanding a par with their British colleagues (and discrimination on the grounds of nationality is technically illegal). So things in the long-term do reach an equilibrium.

One very good reason people set up trade unions was to have a closed shop so that only persons of the right skill level could join, and the rates for the job were kept at a premium to keep out the cheaper undercutters.

And I guess that is what professional bodies - including my own - try to do.

*In economics, BRIC is a grouping acronym that refers to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which are all deemed to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development. It is typically rendered as "the BRICs" or "the BRIC countries" or "the BRIC economies" or alternatively as the "Big Four".
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According to Vince Cable, the current LibDem leader:
But, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “When I was Business Secretary, there were up to nine studies that we looked at that took in all the academic evidence.

“It showed that immigration had very little impact on wages or employment. But this was suppressed by the Home Office under Theresa May, because the results were inconvenient.”
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Strawberry said:
The foreign nation here is Britain and the internal border is between two parts of Ireland. You seem incapable of viewing it from an Irish perspective, and frankly I'm a bit sick of it from you and others. We all know what the de jure status of Ireland was at the time, but that doesn't give you the right to start arguing and rolling your eyes at me when I call my country a country.
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So because at some point in the past Ireland was a single country that means that should be the default position regardless of what the people living in different part of the island want now? Well I'm sure the Spanish and Argentinians would support your viewpoint, but until you can obtain a democratic majority for unification on both sides of the border things are not going to change.
 
Strawberry said:
Wait...what? Since when did third countries become prohibited from making different immigration rules for different EU countries? The no special deals and everyone treated equally rules are rules of the single market surely, not the world.
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The principle is that all EU citizens should have the same rights. So you can't have deals that you will accept French and Germans but not Romanians or Poles.

I'm not sure if Ireland is prohibited from making a deal with the uk on immigration but I would still say the EU shouldn't be encouraging it on principle.
 
Garrison said:
So because at some point in the past Ireland was a single country that means that should be the default position regardless of what the people living in different part of the island want now? Well I'm sure the Spanish and Argentinians would support your viewpoint, but until you can obtain a democratic majority for unification on both sides of the border things are not going to change.
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That's right. What is interesting is, now that democracy has belatedly been introduced into Northern Ireland, the prospect of a majority in favour of a United Ireland doesn't look remote or outlandish.

It is reasonably certain that the population of Britain is losing interest in Northern Ireland, and whether or not it ever unites with the Republic is of less and less importance to mainland U.K. voters.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
One EU member (Ireland) would be entering an arrangement with a non-EU member (UK) to give its citizens a special status in the UK - as I understand it anyway. There would be free movement of people between Ireland and the UK but not between say France and the UK. Unless they are saying there will be free movement between the EU and the UK as long as its on the island of Ireland? Also an odd arrangement.

I understand that the EU might want to accommodate this but it seems to go against the principles of the Union that everyone gets the same deal and there are no special arrangements for individual member states.
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Ah, but Irish worker privilege predates the EU.

The Irish have always been free to come and go.
 
Garrison said:
So because at some point in the past Ireland was a single country that means that should be the default position regardless of what the people living in different part of the island want now? Well I'm sure the Spanish and Argentinians would support your viewpoint, but until you can obtain a democratic majority for unification on both sides of the border things are not going to change.
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Who are you arguing against exactly? Nobody here has suggested that a united Ireland should be achieved by anything other than a referendum on the subject.

Obviously Ireland should never have been partitioned in the first place, but that's an argument for the history forum.
 
Vixen said:
ddt said:
And a hilarious piece of satire in the Independent:
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I don't think it is hilarious at all.


How did that rubbish ever get published?
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This bit was a bit cutting.

So it’s encouraging that the negotiations are going so smoothly. David Davis warned us: “No one said Brexit will be easy,” and this is true, as no one did – except his negotiating colleague Liam Fox, who said a Brexit deal “should be the easiest in history”, but it would be unfair to interpret this as suggesting it might be easy.
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The Express's take on that in July
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/83...-davis-michel-barnier-brussels-european-union

Liam Fox snubs 'Project Fear' insisting Brexit trade deal 'easiest in human history'

LIAM FOX hit out at Brexit doom-mongers saying a free trade agreement with the European Union will be one of the “easiest in human history”.
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Knaves and fools
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
The principle is that all EU citizens should have the same rights. So you can't have deals that you will accept French and Germans but not Romanians or Poles.
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Up to a point; there are various complications re the Nordic countries (including Norway), who grant each others citizens different status than EU citizens.
 
Vixen said:
“It showed that immigration had very little impact on wages or employment. But this was suppressed by the Home Office under Theresa May, because the results were inconvenient.”

What a facile statement.


And you believe Vince Cable?
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Why not? It's not exactly news. The Guardian reported the same last year - though only about one report. This blog post gives a longer timeline on May regarding her immigration stance. As well as this one.

Given her history, Cable's claim is eminently credible.
 
Strawberry said:
They're being encouraged in that delusion by the Brexit supporting media though....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rading-EU-without-barriers.html#ixzz4s5twewgB
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That was just after the referendum, and Merkel's statement that there's no reason to be nasty is a far cry from her willing to intervene. In the meantime, the British government has wasted more than a year essentially doing nothing.

(I note that there's a stupid gaffe in the subtitling of the video; it translates "Binnenmarkt" with "domestic market" instead of "Common Market")
 
ddt said:
Those should be added to the list of exclusively British jobs?
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WHAT kind of small minded xenophobe do you take me for?

I will admit that Britain, and especially England and the Orange part of Northern Ireland seem to have a gift for that, but like all good Brexit Bulldogs I'll be more than happy to open it up to other members of the Anglosphere though, as they seem to have a talent for it. Or at least the UK, US, and Australia... so far.
 
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