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Post by mrsonde on Apr 2, 2019 5:45:44 GMT 1
Yes. And who wants food to be cheaper anyway? Not the Labour Party, apparently.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 2, 2019 5:55:48 GMT 1
Did you see Politics Live yesterday? Steve Baker - I'm more and more impressed with that guy, might even be a potential leader - repeated the assertion that Barnier offered a Free Trade deal at the beginning of the negotiations. It's hard to think of a reason that would explain why May and her little Treasury team turned this down...They wanted to apply tariffs to the EU? First I've ever heard of that! Doesn't seem very plausible...But, then why?
I've also heard it asserted a couple of times that May was the one that first suggested the Irish effin backstop.
Is it really possible that she foresaw this logjam, and worked her way to it deliberately? Well - not her. Plainly, she's nowhere near that bright. But Robbins et al?
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 2, 2019 10:27:13 GMT 1
The rationale for Remain has always been clear: the EU is Good for Business. Whether you are importing or exporting, a single market gives you stabiity and convenience. And cheap migrant labor is a Good Thing.
The reason for Leave is equally clear: the EU is Bad for Britain. The UK imports more from the EU than it exports to the EU, the net trade deficit has grown geometrically every year since we joined the Common Market, and we have to pay for the privilege of losing money. And cheap migrant labor plus the compulsory sale of council housing means that UK residents on low wages can't afford to rent or buy anywhere to live.
Having said that "no deal is better than a bad deal" many times, I think Mrs M is promoting a bad deal in the hope of being able to wash her hands of the entire mucky process.
What disgusts me is the way that the Parliamentary Labour Party has turned against its electorate. Hardly surprising since no farm laborer or factory worker is going to offer you a fact-finding mission to Hawaii or a nonexecutive directorship, much less a tax-free sinecure in Brussels.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 2, 2019 22:35:12 GMT 1
The rationale for Remain has always been clear: the EU is Good for Business. Hmmm...it's the rationale for some Business, agreed. (A correct rationale, that is.) Large multi-nationals, primarily. Big Ag, of course. I don't think it's good for most businesses in this country, as I've argued at length before. And as you say, it's been a long-running slowly accumulating disaster for the national Economy as a whole. But, more importantly, this is somewhat besides the point - it's not the rationale that most Remainers cleave to. I'm pretty sure it wasn't what motivated Heath and the generation that took us in; or even for Major, Clarke, Heseltine etc.: the one that followed, and absorbed their rhetoric. Their rationale is very much more amorphous and harder to grapple with rationally = mainly because they're virtually incapable of expressing it in ratiocinative clarity themselves. It's a strange confused ragbag of inchoate half-swallowed beliefs about things like: what causes wars, and how do we ensure peace (national governments, and interests, and they're overcome by subsuming them in greater larger authorities like the UN)? How do we overcome racism, and the unpleasant features that at least seem to accompany nationalism ("ethnic nationalism", as Will Self likes to label it, with a virtue-signalling sneer)? How do we resist the problems of over-population, environmental threats, and the irritatingly recurrent security risks of nationalist powers like Russia, China - and as usual with those inclined to this way of thinking, the United States (the answer is as before - conglomerate, elevate greater legal authorities, with the power to stand up to them.) These misconceived lines of thought are mixed up with self-congratulatory beliefs, derived mainly from their backgrounds of privilege and fortune, about the nobility of Education (by which they mean Professional Qualifications), internationalism of Culture (in the Sunday Times, or rather Guardian, sense), and the accompanying noblesse oblige (AKA snobbish condascension) that an advanced civilisation has a duty to extend the rewards of its development to those less fortunate (Black people, mainly, and Arabs, but at a pinch Poles and Bulgarians will do - the Spanish, at least.) In short, it's a quite ghastly mess of misconceived idealism and supercilious paternalism, rooted in the disastrous interwar intellectual erros of cultural and cognitive relativism - a gaudy showy flowery creeping shrub that strangles anything of real value it touches and poisons the soil it colonises. It is for them, to be sure. Better than raising wages - and it comes with the delicious added bonus of being able to proclaim that one is civilsed and those who disagree are racist. That is the convenient myth, certainly. I don't get it. No - but again it's far more complicated than that, with the current bunch at least (the Blair generation, I think you have a point.) It's a poverty of ideas, fundamentally.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 2, 2019 23:18:34 GMT 1
I never accepted the "racist" slur against Brexit. The UK population is about 20% non-white. The objection to free movement in Europe is an objection to the unlimited right of principally white Europeans (the non-white population of the rest of the EU is about 15%) to live and work in the UK.
But then Remainers are not known for telling the truth. A so-called "expert" was asked tonight on some crap TV program to quantify the effect of WTO regulations on prices. She said there would be an immediate 20% import duty on finished cars and food. What she didn't say is that there is already a 20% tax on finished cars as you have to pay the difference between UK and say German VAT on a car imported from the EU - the only difference is that part of the tax has been collected at the point of manufacture. And there is already a duty on most foods imported from outside the EU, the difference being that the money goes to Brussels, not London. And the CAP and CFP are designed to support the market price of food. And of course WTO tariffs are the permitted maxima, not statutory impositions: the UK government could choose to impose none at all.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 3, 2019 6:18:45 GMT 1
Indeed - as could the EU on us: the Article 24 solution championed by Farage and Rees-Mogg. Could have been proposed by May too, if she really wanted a way out of the mess she's created.
Amusing to speculate what would happen now if someone - Boris, say, or John Mann - had the nerve to table a No-Confidence motion. Would Corbyn whip to support the Government, now he's been invited for tea? I'm fairly sure the DUP would abstain in their present mood - and I believe there'd be enough Tories heartily sick of her that she'd lose. Probably not the two-thirds needed for an election (the most stupid thing Cameron ever did, surely), but enough to give her a clear message: Go, for God's sake woman.
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Post by Progenitor A on Apr 3, 2019 7:36:22 GMT 1
Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind Sir Mark Sedwill's assertion that a no-deal Brexit will cause food prices to rise by 10%? If we leave with a no-deal WE set import tariffs. Why the f**k would we increase tariffs on imported food?
Of course this is Project Fear Mk3 in action. Was it just coincidence that the following day the Head of Ford Europe was on the telly predicting doom if we leave without a deal?
Most MPs seem to wet their knickers at the mere mention of no-deal. I found it quite telling that yesterday in Westminster there was a seminar for MPs to explain what a Customs Union meant
Seems the establishment have conquered democracy again
They will probably get more than they bargained for
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Post by fascinating on Apr 3, 2019 9:00:38 GMT 1
Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind Sir Mark Sedwill's assertion that a no-deal Brexit will cause food prices to rise by 10%? If we leave with a no-deal WE set import tariffs. Why the f**k would we increase tariffs on imported food? Of course this is Project Fear Mk3 in action. Was it just coincidence that the following day the Head of Ford Europe was on the telly predicting doom if we leave without a deal? Most MPs seem to wet their knickers at the mere mention of no-deal. I found it quite telling that yesterday in Westminster there was a seminar for MPs to explain what a Customs Union meant Seems the establishment have conquered democracy again They will probably get more than they bargained for This probably derives from Mark Carney's statment in December, made after he had discussed the "no-deal" scenario with the head of the WTO. He said food prices could rise between 5 and 10%, most likely 6%. With no deal we go to WTO rules which have means 20-35% tariff on processed food. If we waived that tariff on European goods, we would have waive it on everyone else. www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46439969I believe the statement of 5 business organisations, the CBI, British Chambers of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses and the Engineering Employer's Federation, "the suggestion that ‘no-deal’ can be ‘managed’ is not a credible proposition. Businesses would face massive new customs costs and tariffs. Disruption at ports could destroy carefully built supply chains." Please define what you mean by "the establishment".
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 3, 2019 11:45:22 GMT 1
The time to manage the transition to WTO was 3 years ago when the offer was first made to the British public.
Note the weasel word"could". Every significant change, be it decimalisation, imposition of VAT, or change in VAT or any duty, is always accompanied by retail profiteering - prices are never rounded down. So a competent and legitimate government would introduce at least temporary retail price control and antiprofiteering legislation as in wartime. We have not had a competent government since 1945, nor a legitimate one since 2017.
WTO tariffs are all maxima. At present there is a 20% EU tariff on most imported non-EU food. Farmers are rightly concerned that Argentine beef, for instance, could turn out cheaper than Scotch, but once outside the EU the government could introduce any subsidy or tariff it wanted (up to WTO maximum) to level the market.
Fortunately, the civil service that Mr S despises, has indeed been working on a smooth transition to WTO whilst the morons in parliament vote against it and the revolting meeja talk about "crashing out" as though walking carefully away from the oncoming train wreck of Europe was a Bad Thing.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 3, 2019 19:12:27 GMT 1
Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind Sir Mark Sedwill's assertion that a no-deal Brexit will cause food prices to rise by 10%? If we leave with a no-deal WE set import tariffs. Why the f**k would we increase tariffs on imported food? As most brexiteers have worn themselves pointing out, if we leave on No Deal we can immediately agree with the EU to negotiate a Free Trade deal and suspend any imposition of tariffs. Carney quite falsely asserted today that this would only be allowed under (the now defunct) the GATT rule that permits it if the negotiation was to a Customs Union. This is a lie - I've been reading the Treaty this afternoon. But, let's assume a No Deal means the cliff-edge the Remainers like to scare us with. There would be an inflationary surge, of course, if tariffs were imposed on European imports (and consumers syubbornly continued to buy them, rather than domestic alternatives). Temporary, as home producers moved to fill that market opportunity, and non-EU producers came in to do the same. So, there's be a spike in food prices, lasting for a year or at most two. Then our food would turn out to be on average cheaper than in the rest of the EU, as New Zealand and Australia and African and American suppliers came in to fulfill the opened-up gaps in the market. Most importantly - as our farmers did the same, repalcing their EU market losses with the newly opened market deficits available to them by our tariffs on European food. The same rationale applies. Ford suddenly find that German, French and Italian cars are 10% plus more expensive than their British produced ones. So - do they move their production to Spain? So they can import to that market and face the same increase in price? Or do they stay here, expand even, to take advantage of their windfall? Ah, yes, you are so right! This is a much under-appreciated problem with this whole issue. A lot of them are going to find themselves deselcted. A lot of them are going to find themselves losing what they believed were safe seats.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 3, 2019 19:20:45 GMT 1
I think I'm fairly sanguine about this whole issue, on the whole. But the more I have to hear Alistair Campbell's blatant spindoctor hypocrisy and downright lies the more I...oh, I suppose one should be careful what one says these days. Let's just say I would not be sorry to enjoy a long period of silence from the bounder - a lifelong period, preferably.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 3, 2019 21:25:45 GMT 1
They will probably get more than they bargained for A lot of them are going to find themselves deselcted. A lot of them are going to find themselves losing what they believed were safe seats. It would indeed be interesting if the present farce led to an early general election, or even a European Parliament election. The only registered political party with a clear line on Brexit and no history of completely screwing up parliamentary procedure and ignoring the wishes of the electorate, is UKIP, with a guaranteed 17 million votes. But I gather a EU election would cause hysteria as the EU has already allocated most of the UK seats to other countries in anticipation of our leaving, and 27 seats is quite a lot in a very disparate parliament.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 4, 2019 23:31:11 GMT 1
With no deal we go to WTO rules which have means 20-35% tariff on processed food. If we waived that tariff on European goods, we would have waive it on everyone else. This isn't true. It's up to any member of WTO to impose whatever tariffs they like, as long as they don't exceed the maxima. Hence the Government's planned imposition of quarter percent tariffs on food and the like from non-EU countries, assuming the EU would impose full EU tariffs in the event of a No Deal. You can't waive a tariff completely, that's true - unless you're engaged in negotiations towards a free trade deal. The bulk of the work has already been done. Not necessarily. Customs costs and tariffs are rarely paid by businesses - the cost gets passed on to customers. And if it's serious, the customers buy where those costs are not levied. Rearrange your supply chains. The springs in your car seats made by poor peasant women in Slovakia or Turkey are suddenly more expensive - get them from a small engineering firm in Coventry instead, if that works out cheaper. People in positions of power and influence on power.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 4, 2019 23:41:52 GMT 1
The time to manage the transition to WTO was 3 years ago when the offer was first made to the British public. Note the weasel word"could". Every significant change, be it decimalisation, imposition of VAT, or change in VAT or any duty, is always accompanied by retail profiteering - prices are never rounded down. So a competent and legitimate government would introduce at least temporary retail price control and antiprofiteering legislation as in wartime. We have not had a competent government since 1945 Oh, pleeease. A government that went bankrupt twice, and ramrodded immense ideologically driven immensely expensive and inefficient changes on this country that we're still saddled with now? Thank goodness for the Civil Service! Saved the day again, like at Dunkirk - (though, sadly, we're talking about work that a six-year old could do in an afternoon.) Thank goodness there are still nearly four million of them, selflessly beavering away for our good, else nothing would ever get done.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 5, 2019 6:31:52 GMT 1
Campbell's at it again this morning! The man's everywhere at once - why does the British broadcasting media give him so much airtime? It's not as if he has any particular expertise in anything, apart from in bullshitting.
Here's his "People's Vote" campaign "which I'm involved with" strategy, quite clear from the number of times he keeps repeating it, over and over and over ("tell a big enough lie often enough and the people will believe it, and the bigger the lie the more readily they'll believe it.") Firstly, the first referendum should be seen as invalid because it was based on now evident lies told by the Leave side. No interviewer apparently has the wit to ask "what alleged lies are you referring to?" but we can assume I think that he would reply something along the lines of: the £350 million for the NHS for a start, and the lie that this whole process would be easy - the easiest trade deal in history.
Well, the £360 million business was not a "lie", nor was it a "promise". At most it was a proposal, a suggestion made by an organisation not in power nor even aiming to be. "But it was a proposal that could never be met, because Brexit loses us money, not makes more available", he might reply. That's your belief, Campbell. Granted you have a lot of heavyweight Establishment opinion on your side - but their confident assertions of what will happen to the economy if we do X or y have been completely wrong before - often before, especially where our involvement with the EU is concerned. One is tempted to say always, in fact. At any rate, this belief, this prognostication, is not a fact, not a revealed truth that the voter was not aware of in 2016 but that "we now know". It's what it always was, an estimation of how things will go in the future. The Establishment agrees with you; but many people disagree, based on a differing analysis. So far, it's the people who disagree with you that have been proved to have the better analysis - the economy did not plummet after the vote, unemployment did not go up, the country did not go into recession: quite the opposite. You were wrong, the Treasury was wrong, the Bank of England was wrong, the OECD was wrong, the CBI was wrong, the IMF was wrong.
The second message he wants to brainwash everyone with follows on from the first: "Brexit is 'undeliverable', and always was". This is why we do not need to put the choice again on the second referendum, because it's impossible to achieve, and so Parliament has quite rightly ruled it out. "The far right headbangers who promised that it could be delivered can not be allowed to threaten our country and undermine our democracy any further."
Well, Brexit as "promised" was perfectly "deliverable". What has proved to be undeliverable, a fantasy, is May's atrocious deal. But no one on the Leave side ever campaigned for such an abortion of a "deal". What was campaigned for was leaving the institutions and control of the EU and then negotiating a free trade deal. And Fox was quite right, as it turned out - negotiating such an arrangement would have been far easier than any other ever established: we're already there, in effect. Which is why Barnier did indeed offer us this arrangement, way back at the start of the negotiations. Why didn't May jump at this offer? Who the f*#k knows - I can't work it out, and as far as I can tell no one else has the first clue either. It was entirely a unilateral decision, taken by her and her tiny cabinet office team (all of them Remainers), in camera, with no public or Parliamentary consultation, and as far as I can tell has never been explained or even attempted to be justified.
So - explain to us please Mr.All-knowing Truth-telling Public Vote saviour, why should not the question be put back to "the people": Would you like to Remain in the EU, or, would you like to Leave with a Free Trade Deal?
In other words, exactly what people voted on the first time around. And guess who would win such a vote, again? With a smacking great majority this time around, thankyou. That's my prognostication, as solidly endorsed by the latest YouGov poll. And that's just offering WTO terms.
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