Brexit Penny Dropping?

[woolley]

2 hours ago, John Wright said:

Because they were planned and agreed pre Brexit to apply to third countries, and wouldn’t have applied to UK passport holders if Brexit hadn’t taken place. UK chose to become a third country through the act of Brexit.

It did. That's totally understood. It's an EU decision. Their prerogative.

[Non-Believer]

21 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Did you miss this from my previous post? 

If you think it’s worth giving up sovereignty to shave a few minutes off entering EU countries just because they are next door then shame on you.

 

I don't believe that I gave anything up that equals loss of convenience.

I'm still waiting for you to supply the list of one or more of the promised, tangible benefits that have been conferred on the average Briton by Brexit 🤷‍♂️

Edited December 21, 2023 by Non-Believer
Typo

[woolley]

35 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

You are obtusely missing the point as usual. Pre-Brexit, we didn't or wouldn't have to go through this proposed, demeaning rigmarole.

The post-9/11-paranoid US (and its revenue-raising ESTA requirements that I am also familiar with) is 3000 miles away. The EU that we share a continental shelf with is 22 miles at its closest point. There should be no requirement to go through such processes with such a close neighbour and it is born of nothing more than the insular xenophobia that is such a feature of Brexit.

Now as previously requested, please list one or more tangible, promised benefits that an average Briton has had conferred upon them by Brexit?

Britain shares a continental plate with Russia and China too come to that.
What has this to do with the price of fish?

More obsession with minutiae while ignoring vital principles of sovereignty and self determination. The ability to run your own affairs is worth far more than any number of trifling inconveniences. It's the same old nonsense going back 8 years. The questions have been answered ad nauseam, and the argument long since settled.

[Non-Believer]

7 hours ago, woolley said:

Britain shares a continental plate with Russia and China too come to that.
What has this to do with the price of fish?

More obsession with minutiae while ignoring vital principles of sovereignty and self determination. The ability to run your own affairs is worth far more than any number of trifling inconveniences. It's the same old nonsense going back 8 years. The questions have been answered ad nauseam, and the argument long since settled.

So you can't think of one promised, tangible benefit has been conferred upon the average Briton by Brexit either then? Other than some nebulous waffle about "sovereignty" that we never actually lost in the first instance.

In fact the only things that have been imposed are increased prices via inconvenience, increased administration and sheer profiteering through lack of economic scale.

And the country being reduced to an insular European backwater.

[La Colombe]

Another triumph. Unable to even extend a rollover of the EU's terms of trade. 

[P.K.]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:14 PM, woolley said:

No it shouldn't. Your priorities are wrong. Self-determination is the bedrock upon which everything else is built.

@woolley

BS in it's purest form. Unlike you my priorities are spot on.

Prosperity is the bedrock upon which everything else is built.

Try preaching your nebulous "self-determination" to those struggling with eat/heat issues and see how far it gets you...

[The Voice of Reason]

36 minutes ago, P.K. said:

@woolley

BS in it's purest form. Unlike you my priorities are spot on.

Prosperity is the bedrock upon which everything else is built.

Try preaching your nebulous "self-determination" to those struggling with eat/heat issues and see how far it gets you...

Is not the “nebulous” self determination the same sort of concept as “ nebulous “ civil rights?
 

Have you Leavers now sunk to such a new low to blame Brexit for the cost of living crisis  which is also affecting our European neighbours  ( and those further afield) 

Straw clutching at  its finest. Shame on you.

[The Voice of Reason]

On 12/21/2023 at 10:10 PM, Non-Believer said:

The post-9/11-paranoid US (and its revenue-raising ESTA requirements that I am also familiar with) is 3000 miles away. The EU that we share a continental shelf with is 22 miles at its closest point. There should be no requirement to go through such processes with such a close neighbour 

 

OK Dokey, North Korea and South Korea share a land border (not. 22 miles apart ), so much closer than the UK is to its nearest European neighbour.

You tell them there should be free movement between the two countries because they are such close neighbours.

 

 

[P.K.]

3 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Is not the “nebulous” self determination the same sort of concept as “ nebulous “ civil rights?

No.

[Freggyragh]

On 12/23/2023 at 9:00 PM, The Voice of Reason said:

OK Dokey, North Korea and South Korea share a land border (not. 22 miles apart ), so much closer than the UK is to its nearest European neighbour.

You tell them there should be free movement between the two countries because they are such close neighbours.

 

 

The UK is nothing like North Korea, in fact its record on human rights and democracy is excellent by comparison. North Korea's border with the prosperous Republic of Korea is separated by a 2.5 mile wide impassable demilitarised zone. The UK's border with its closest European neighbour, the prosperous Republic of Ireland, can be freely crossed.

This level of thick would be amusing if it wasn't so widespread. 

[The Voice of Reason]

3 hours ago, Freggyragh said:

The UK is nothing like North Korea, in fact its record on human rights and democracy is excellent by comparison. North Korea's border with the prosperous Republic of Korea is separated by a 2.5 mile wide impassable demilitarised zone. The UK's border with its closest European neighbour, the prosperous Republic of Ireland, can be freely crossed.

This level of thick would be amusing if it wasn't so widespread. 

Woosh!

[P.K.]

On 12/23/2023 at 7:20 PM, The Voice of Reason said:

Have you Leavers now sunk to such a new low to blame Brexit for the cost of living crisis  which is also affecting our European neighbours  ( and those further afield) 

Straw clutching at  its finest. Shame on you.

@The Voice of Reason

As a Guardian reader you should be well aware of how your totally stupid and completely unnecessary brexit has hurt business.

A Guardian piece on a typical UK SME:

"Danny Hodgson runs Rivet & Hide, which sells quality men’s clothing from stores in London and Manchester as well as online. He says EU sales, which he spent a decade building, plunged by half in the first month after Brexit and never recovered.

“It’s really frustrating,” he says. Rivet & Hide has pushed up prices for EU customers to include new tariffs, VAT and shipping costs.

“I hear Johnson boasting about free trade and all the rest of it. I don’t know how he’s got the brass neck to talk about us doing free trade when basically he’s the one who’s imposed sanctions on our business. “We were freely trading with the EU and now we’ve had tariffs imposed on us through our Brexit deals.”

With Britain’s economy facing the risk of recession amid the cost of living crisis, Hodgson says the government has caused harm to the British economy that could have easily been avoided.

“We’re less profitable, there’s a lot more work involved, there’s a lot more hassle, but I’m still slogging away at it in the hope one day things improve,” he says. “But if there was a trade war, it would finish us off.”

Very obviously to deliberately make it harder, more time consuming and therefore more expensive to trade with your biggest customer sitting right on your doorstep can only be a bloody stupid thing to do...

It's not just about SMEs either:

"The world’s largest seller of electric and hybrid cars will not consider building its first European car factory in the UK because of the impact of Brexit.

China’s BYD, which has been backed by the US investment billionaire Warren Buffett since 2008, intends to take on household names such as Tesla and become one of the three most popular electric vehicle brands in Europe by the end of the decade.

China’s top-selling electric car maker, which is targeting sales of about 800,000 cars annually in Europe by 2030, has shortlisted locations in Germany, France, Spain, Poland and Hungary.

“As an investor we want a country to be stable,” said Michael Shu, BYD’s European president, speaking to the Financial Times. “To open a factory is a decision for decades. Without Brexit, maybe. But after Brexit, we don’t understand what happened.”

BYU, which stands for Build Your Dreams, said the UK had not even made a top 10 list of possible locations to build its first European car plant. The company already makes buses in Europe.

“The UK doesn’t have a very good solution,” said Shu. “Even on the long list we didn’t have the UK.”

It is not the first manufacturer to have cited issues relating to Brexit in deciding not to expand business opportunities in the UK.

Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said in 2019 that the decision to leave the EU made it too risky to build a gigafactory in the UK. The company built its first European plant in Germany, where it also created a research and development base."

The link below gives a fuller picture including some concerning graphs on UK trade. 

Or rather the contraction of it...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/12/china-byd-blames-brexit-as-it-rules-out-uk-for-first-european-car-plant

[La Colombe]

 

[La Colombe]

Oh no! The UK is being left out of a transport plan by scheming EU countries.  As reported by a paper that literally campaigned vigorously for years to get the UK out of the EU. Bonkers. 

[The Voice of Reason]

10 hours ago, La Colombe said:

Well I’ve not noticed any food shortages .

Certainly seen cheaper food though, post Brexit. This may be be due in part to Tesco’s buying out Shoprite