[Politics] Brexit

[Westdene Seagull]

So it favours the French and disadvantages all other 27 countries? One wonders how this continues to exists?

Because CAP was put in place years before the expansion, many of the new members don't have farming as a main business and the French have a veto on any new CAP policies if they wish ( as does the UK ) meaning change is difficult.

 

[Triggaaar]

she comes back to the house announces the new year will see a further referendum that must be run on all sides without lies, media bullshit...

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I was talking to my tax advisor last night. He told me the tax authorities here (in the Netherlands) have back-up plans to fill whole office buildings with the new staff that they believe will be needed just to deal with the mountains of additional customs paperwork that will arise out of a no deal scenario.

Good news if you're an accountant/clerk/administrative assistant I guess.

Compare this with the HMRC. I was discussing some items with them relating to EC sales, I’d made a mistake. I asked how long I’d got to correct the paper work and the HMRC bod paused and said “we are about 2 years behind with our checking, you have time”.

It’s pointless worrying about anything tax related in the U.K. at the moment.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I was talking to my tax advisor last night. He told me the tax authorities here (in the Netherlands) have back-up plans to fill whole office buildings with the new staff that they believe will be needed just to deal with the mountains of additional customs paperwork that will arise out of a no deal scenario.

Good news if you're an accountant/clerk/administrative assistant I guess.

By the way. Had a lovely evening in http://dereigeramsterdam.nl and http://www.arendsnest.nl on Saturday. Stopped off in Amsterdam on my way back from London.

 

[Triggaaar]

Simple question - if 'no deal' is the utter impossibility that Watford zero is claiming why have EU members, particularly the Dutch, spent so much on preparation for a 'no deal' ?

Although I have no idea how likely a no deal is, I'd imagine the EU would have to prepare for it fully even if it was extremely unlikely. If they didn't, it could also put them in a poor bargaining position regarding the deal we're trying to get. And the millions of Euros spent is insignificant in the scheme of things.

 

[vegster]

Some UK farmers get reasonable amounts in subsidies but that is a small minority. A large chunk of subsidies are based of the amount of land you have to farm. A good section of British farmers use a relatively small amount of land and therefore get very little. French farmers on the other hand tend to have HUGE areas to farm and so CAP favours them. It's a very over simplistic comparison but French farmers get large amounts of money towards new equipment because of the amount of land they have. Most British farmers get zero towards new equipment. The rule around CAP subsidies runs into thousands of pages. The application form my Uncle had to complete just to get a subsidy to plant new hedgerow was over 100 pages !!!! CAP needs reforming but that will never happen because is favours the French farmers far too much for the to ever agree to change it. And before someone says it, no, I don't hate French farmers, good on them for getting such a good deal.

I remember almost quite the opposite. I remember being told quite often by experts on the tv that French farms were usually smaller than ours and much less efficient and that we had to subsidise their inability to merge and form productive farms while our efficient farms qualified for less support.

This is also quite interesting..... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...t-james-dyson-earl-rosebery-cap-a7815871.html

 

[golddene]

Fanciful Trig I know but .....

 

[Triggaaar]

Stay in EU
Hard Brexit from EU
Mrs Mays deal with EU

If you went with those options I think you need to allow people to have 1st choice and 2nd choice, otherwise the leavers vote will be split between 2, so you could have a result of 48%, 26%, 26% (matching the original referendum) and then wonder what the **** you're supposed to do next.

If you have 1st choice and 2nd choice, then one of the leave options would get dropped, with those voters putting their 2nd choice towards the remaining 2 options. Then we'd get a result.

Actually, I think that's a pretty good option going forward. It seems better to me than going forward with something that most people haven't actually voted for. You can't really argue it's not democratic.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Email from Peter Kyle that I thought was reasonably insightful as to how we got to where we are:

Dear Scott

What a shambles this week has been in the Commons and it's only Tuesday! You'll be well aware by now what happened yesterday when Theresa May announced that the 'meaningful vote' on her Brexit deal would be pulled. What a complete and total mess this government is in.

What's my alternative? Well, all the way through I have tried so hard to work openheartedly and with MPs from all parties to provide workable solutions to the really tough challenge the referendum posed. I worked on a Single Market based solution that would have delivered a soft-Brexit that protected our jobs and economy and along with other MPs offered it to the government with proof that it could carry a majority of the Commons. It was rejected.

I then worked on a Customs Union-based solution, and offered it to government. It was rejected. I then worked with others on a Norway-style solution. To give you an idea of how much work I put into this, I travelled to Norway and met with businesses, ministers, and their chief negotiator. I then went to Brussels and to the EEA head office and met with their staff and country representatives. I worked so hard to understand the challenges and potential ways through.

Each of these options wasn’t just rejected, we were sneered at by the prime minister in the Commons at every turn. Time after time I got to my feet and spoke politely and respectfully, selling the benefits of one scheme or another, but every time she would hurl robotic catchphrases back at me like ‘Brexit means Brexit’ or ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ and she would do so to impress the hardliners in her own party but all the while staring huge resentment among MPs from all parties who are just trying hard to find a way through.

Well now we have got to the crunch point. Theresa May has painted herself into a corner, no-one else put her there. Her own decisions got us to this point. And rather than stand up and face the Commons, she did something of such political cowardice that I never imagined I would live to see it, let alone be sitting in the chamber as it happened.

If we had struck the deal down today we could have moved forward as a country. We could have allowed parliament to debate a way forward and I would be passionately advocating a People’s Vote so that you can have a say as well as MP’s. But now this will be kicked into the future. More time will be wasted and the drama will go on and on. We all deserve better.

So the question for me is, is no prime minister better than a bad prime minister?

Best

Peter

 

[Triggaaar]

Jesus, this thread is breaking out into a sensible reasoned discussion. Wake up people, there are winners and losers and no inbetweeners!!!

Every couple of weeks I check in to see if the insults have made way for sensible discussion, and it hasn't happened in the last 2 years. Surely this is a temporary lull in hostilities? This is our Great War Christmas football match. A momentary break from the barrage.

 

[sully]

If you went with those options I think you need to allow people to have 1st choice and 2nd choice, otherwise the leavers vote will be split between 2, so you could have a result of 48%, 26%, 26% (matching the original referendum) and then wonder what the **** you're supposed to do next.

If you have 1st choice and 2nd choice, then one of the leave options would get dropped, with those voters putting their 2nd choice towards the remaining 2 options. Then we'd get a result.

Actually, I think that's a pretty good option going forward. It seems better to me than going forward with something that most people haven't actually voted for. You can't really argue it's not democratic.

Indeed. A three-way vote is most likely to result in no clear winner. It would have to be binary like last time or ranked. Or we’d have to diarise more than one vote!

I can’t see any way that parliament can come to any sort of agreement, so a new referendum seems like the only way to reach a conclusion. The politicians are playing party politics still which isn’t helping one iota.

 

[Triggaaar]

So it favours the French and disadvantages all other 27 countries? One wonders how this continues to exists?

If favours farming countries with a lot of land, at the expense of farming countries with less land.

This isn't breaking news HT, this is how the CAP has been for decades.

 

[WATFORD zero]

To be fair, your options do keep changing ever so slightly - they're certainly not consistant and when you're challenged about them you go all politician like. And Pasta is correct, you very rarely answer a question yet always chase people to answer yours. I can only assume you're a politician.

You are also still banging on that a 'no deal' isn't at all possible. Yet the primary purpose of the meeting of EU leaders this week is to continue plans and actions in the event of a no deal. Note the word continue - they have already spent millions upon millions of Euros on a no deal. They will spend plenty more. An EU spokesman this week even put the chance of a no deal as high as 60%. Yet here you are saying a no deal is IMPOSSIBLE. If only the EU had consulted you first, they could have saved millions. Because a retired civil servant with a mate still there feeding him info is going to know so much more than those actually involved in the process !

For over 2 years I have said that the 3 options were

1. Softest of soft Brexits
2. GE or referendum
3. No deal

And you're right, my opinion has changed in the last few weeks. I believe that option 2 has now firmed up to a referendum and that would lead to rescinding article 50. So I have narrowed down option 2 to rescind Article 50.

I have said that 'no deal' will not happen, not that it's impossible. The 2 reasons I believe this are that Parliament won't let it happen and that we have no infrastructure, systems or staff to support it. (And you will see that straight after the referendum, I was saying that we had insufficient time to implement these when we had 2 years!). And, if somehow it happened (and it won't) we would be crawling back into the EU within the week. And that is quite aside from Vladimir already putting the kibosh on our WTO negotiations.

There has been lots of talk and a few papers published about 'no deal' but I haven't seen any tarmac laid or staff recruited with 100 days to go.

I've always quite enjoyed our discussions, but feel that you are slowly but surely going 'loonside'. Recently you have admitted that you have no idea how 'no deal' would work in practice and that you have no idea of the economic impact of 'no deal' but it's still your preferred option.

Surely even you can see that's a little Ppf ?

And I have always run SMEs in the Private Sector and never ever worked in the Public Sector. HOW VERY DARE YOU

 

[studio150]

Email from Peter Kyle that I thought was reasonably insightful as to how we got to where we are:

Agree, the only thing really missing is more of Mrs May's favourite soundbites, 'It's the will of the people', 'In the national interest' and 'we are leaving the EU on 29 March 2019'

 

[ManOfSussex]

Fair answer - I just don;t see why they would spend the money on an impossiblity. Maybe they should start to spend some money of the possibility of the Sun exploding in the next 5 years ?

In regards to the Dutch, impossibility or not, they really can't account or take chances for how long it may last/we're prepared to try and ride it out/how stupid the British really are. With Rotterdam being the biggest port in Europe, their contingency planning is a necessity and the dickhead level in The UK has to be assumed to be critical now. The issues back in 2015 when Phase 4 of Operation Stack was initiated was costing The UK economy £250m a day for example - The Dutch are just being sensible.

I also did read a little while back that French and German diplomats have apparently spoken of being prepared to ride out no deal in the anticipation that in the worst case scenario it'd only last a matter of weeks before sanity prevails on our part.

Still, as I said to you the other day, Amber Rudd for one, has categorically stated no deal will not happen.

 

[Is it PotG?]

….so a new referendum seems like the only way to reach a conclusion.

And if Leave wins again?

 

[Seaber]

And if Leave wins again?

I think the point is 'Leave' wouldn't be an option, it'd be between May's Deal, Remain and No Deal, or something like that as mentioned on a recent page.

 

[Is it PotG?]

I think the point is 'Leave' wouldn't be an option, it'd be between May's Deal, Remain and No Deal, or something like that as mentioned on a recent page.

I thought that the poster I was replying to identified the fact that a 3 way vote may give an indefinite outcome, and a binary vote would be more applicable.

Obviously the Leavers would vote for either May Deal or No Deal, diluting the will to go vote.

 

[WATFORD zero]

And if Leave wins again?

That's the whole point, the referendum would have to be clear whether it is TM's negotiated deal or 'no deal' that people are voting for. Don't know whether you've noticed in the last couple of weeks, but they are very different and have very different groups of supporters for each.

Trigaaar explained it very simply and clearly here

If you went with those options I think you need to allow people to have 1st choice and 2nd choice, otherwise the leavers vote will be split between 2, so you could have a result of 48%, 26%, 26% (matching the original referendum) and then wonder what the **** you're supposed to do next.

If you have 1st choice and 2nd choice, then one of the leave options would get dropped, with those voters putting their 2nd choice towards the remaining 2 options. Then we'd get a result.

Actually, I think that's a pretty good option going forward. It seems better to me than going forward with something that most people haven't actually voted for. You can't really argue it's not democratic.

So all three groups, remainers, no deal and TM's deal get a fair and democratic hearing.

 

[Is it PotG?]

That's the whole point, the referendum would have to be clear whether it is TM's negotiated deal or 'no deal' that people are voting for. Don't know whether you've noticed but they are very different and have very different groups of supporters for each.

Trigaaar explained it very simply and clearly here

I still don't understand the desire for another vote. Just me being thick. I recall being asked if I wanted to stay or leave. Wasn't too complicated.