out of interest, once brexit is complete, would the uk be on the same level as Norway, or does Norway have other deals in place with he eu?
Off Topic Politics Thread
- Thread starter ChilcoSaint
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record numbers of people doing some hours each that used to be a single job is part of that but I'm not typing up loads anymore.
I'm sure you can use the search function. I'm not going to humour your inability to avoid jumping to conclusions based on straight line correlations. I'm sure you're more intelligent than that so can only be doing it on purpose.
Funny how you come up with that answer to the problem yet ridicule me when I stated that the Brits used to get paid more on the farms and production sites, carers used to get paid more etc.
This is the lazy Brit myth.
I don't think they need any suggestions from me. May is quite obviously on course to deliver nothing but a name change so you should all be pretty content. She gives out a good speech here and there, before then getting in a huddle with her clan and proposing staying in the EU without the tag every time.
And Davis, Boris & Fox are not in that clan. That is why they are constantly briefing by themselves rather than through government. She is a closed shop.........
...........and to delight those above the consensus on Conservative platforms is probably 70% that she needs to go now!!! With JRM, Gove and Javid as the 3 frontrunners. Of course JRM won;t get the nod from the MPs so it will likely be down to Javid & Gove although Mordaunt has some support as well.
Norway is in the European Economic Area, which basically means it's in the single market, although not the customs union. So free movement of people still applies but customs tariffs apply to (some?) goods.
EEA membership could in theory be useful for the UK, particularly as a transition stage. There's even the possibility that we could get an exemption from free movement of people. The EEA agreement allows members experiencing "serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties" to "unilaterally take appropriate measures". In 2008 Iceland (another EEA member) was collapsing financially and suspended the free movement of capital. More relevantly, Liechtenstein is a member of the EEA but operates an immigration quota system. It's reviewed every few years but has remained in place for some time now. The UK might be able to do something similar to buy some time. I'm not sure whether this would be widely accepted though - I would think any arrangement would need to have a fixed time limit.
The good outcome is leaving an anti-democratic, supra-national organisation that's able to overrule democratically elected governments (see Greece and almost certainly Italy) and will inevitably take on more and more powers as time passes (that is, after all, the point of the EU). The good outcome is once again becoming a truly independent country - electing a government able to make whatever laws it pleases, being able to create our own trade policy, control our borders and so on.
There's no question now that the leaving process has been handled badly. I had hoped "reluctant remainer" Theresa May would be reasonably well placed to do the job but that hasn't been the case. The election fiasco last year has obviously undermined her authority but I'm not convinced she would have done a good enough job even without that self-inflicted problem.
Her greatest failing has of course been failing to prepare for no deal, just as Cameron's greatest failing was not preparing for a vote to leave the EU. If you want to succeed in any negotiation, whether it's an international trade deal, buying a house or car or trying to get Sky to reduce your monthly bill, then the possibility of you walking away altogether has to be plausible. It appears May simply doesn't get that. The latest example is the possibility we will agree an open-ended "backstop" on the Irish border where the UK would remain in the single market and customs union if no other agreement is reached. Once the EU has that commitment there is no incentive for them to negotiate seriously on any other solution, meaning we have zero leverage in the discussions.
As I say above remaining in the single market through the EEA might work as a step in a transition away from the EU. We haven't been a truly independent country for decades and it makes sense that the country may need some time to adapt to the realities of independence, just as someone who's had their leg in a cast for months needs time to rebuild their muscles. As an end state though it couldn't work - remaining subject to EU regulations while giving up our role in the decision-making process is impractical in the long term. We've been outvoted on EU matters more and more in recent years so it seems clear the EU's aims are quite different from the UK's. The chances of the EU acting in a way that suits the UK are very slim indeed.
I have never ridiculed you.
I seldom respond to your posts so please retract your comment.
Being a truly independent country is impossible.
Last time we were truly independent we were in the time known as the stone age. Thats because all you cab make without trading is stone tools.
There have been rules between tribes ever since.
Best outcome is that we stay in the EU and continue the effort to increase its democracy so we can have actual democratic decisions on issues that effect the EU. If you don't have that mechanism you just get issues like how our democratic government allows trade with Iran while the US are sanctioning our companies and forcing them not to.
As long as we are in Europe (the continent) we will be affected by EU and other European laws. You'll not escape that. Just means you wont have any say in them.
And as you say, without that framework the chances of the EU favouring the UK are very slim indeed.
I’m with VocalMinority on this one. Being an “independent” country doesn’t work anymore and the complete cock up by the government and with their side kicks the Labour Party have done in trying to get this done has already done irrepairable harm to the country, the pound and any confidence anyone had in the ability of this country to ever be considered a leading economy.
Clearly that idiot PM who dreamed up the idea of a vote in order to try and hang on to power never thought of the Irish issue nor the harm the dithering would do. The lies told by Boris, Farage and their merry men struck home to those already worried by the problems of the NHS (which had nothing to do with the EU) and people fell for it.
In my opinion, we are royally ****ed and this country will just slide into obscurity with the younger generation left to try and work their way out of it all.
Trying to do trade deals with the idiot in the White House and pleading to the ex-commonwealth countries we abandoned years ago isn’t going to work and I struggle to understand how anyone can see this as progress.
I suppose we’ll have less immigration cos no bigger will want to come here. I’m seriously considering my options for when (and hopefully if) they ever actually sign out of the EU, because I’m concerned about the future and can’t see where we’ll be in 10 years time ......
UK to put forward to leaving the Customs Union to join a Customs Terrority which include all EU countries....
Lol
Lol
Hmm, let’s see. You could call it the Common Market!
I didn't mind us being in that!
Your stone age comparison only makes any sense if you define being an independent country as living in a bubble unaffected by anyone else, which is absurd. Rules on trade are rules on trade but EU membership affects much more than that. It means that (among other things) we do not have control of who can enter our country, do not have the ability to remove from office those who make EU regulations/laws we dislike and cannot elect anyone to amend EU regulations/laws we don't like or propose legislation we do want passed. Oh, and we can't really control how our railways work. Want Corbyn elected so he can bring back British Rail? Not possible while the UK is a member of the EU.
Once you get snared deeper in the EU's institutions they start to impose other rules on you - look at Greece where in January the (supposedly Radical Left) Syriza government was compelled by the troika to pass laws to restrict the power of trade unions. Laws that are stricter than those we have here in the UK. Which also makes a mockery of the "We have to stay in the EU to protect workers' rights from The Evil Tories" argument. We may well see more of this once the new Italian government inevitably clashes with the EU.
Anyone who suggests you could make the EU more democratic shows their fundamental misunderstanding of it. First of all the EU frequently does not and will not reform even small things. I'll roll out my usual example here - the obviously ridiculous way that the European Parliament literally gets boxed up and moved between Strasbourg and Brussels every month (at a cost of roughly £150m a year). The parliament itself has voted to stop the move but has so little power that the moving continues anyway - the French would veto any move to change the arrangement.
The main reason though is that the EU (like, say, the House of Lords) was not created to operate democratically and democratisation would require such fundamental changes that you would effectively be destroying it and creating something new in its place. Again this is rather like the House of Lords - if you made the House of Lords democratic it simply wouldn't be the House of Lords any more, it would be something different that had replaced the House of Lords.
If there had been any desire to create the EU as a democratic institution that could have been done. Unlike the House of Lords the EU is a creation of the twentieth century. Democracy was well-established but the EU's four main institutions (a commission, a council of ministers, a court and a parliament) are deliberately modelled on the structure of the League of Nations because that's where its early architects (the likes of Jean Monnet) had worked. To make the EU democratic you would have to make huge changes to at least 3 of those 4 institutions and in the process you would effectively be dismantling the EU and creating something entirely different.
Democracy is not the aim of the EU though. The point is and always was to create a supranational entity run by technocrats that could overrule national governments. Arthur Salter, Monnet's colleague at the League of Nations, advocated a customs union in the early 1930s and described how this "would in effect reduce [national Governments] to the status of municipal authorities." This sort of thinking is why neither the council of ministers nor the elected MEPs can propose new laws or amendments to current laws - the EU was deliberately shaped so that only the un-elected European Commission could propose new EU legislation and the un-elected, unaccountable Commissioners are not going to propose their own abolition or that their own powers are reduced.
My response to this has to be much shorter:
- Being independent works just fine. There are 165 UN member states that aren't in the EU and they seem to manage okay.
- No irreparable harm has been done to anything, except the reputations of some politicians. In April the pound's value against the dollar reached the same sort of value it was at before the referendum. Its value against the Euro is still a bit low but it's been at a similar value a few times in the past decade.
- Cameron and May have both made serious errors since 2015. No arguments there.
- The "idiot in the White House" won't be there forever. The next US election is not that far away.
- Off the top of my head I can point to Canada, New Zealand and Australia as commonwealth countries that have said they want to do trade deals with the UK as soon as possible. Australia has even suggested the UK could join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The Current EU system was only created in 2009, the entire reason we are in this situation is because the EU is reforming too quickly and introducing laws faster than it is gaining the sovereignty to introduce them and doing things out of order. I doubt you will find a country in the world who has changed its political system more rapidly than the EU, Certainly not the UK who recently voted against proportional representation. What is required for the EU to act democratically is a reduction of member states veto. you cant be democratic if individual member state can veto decisions and you've shown this in your example. This is the purpose of the core pillar known as ever closer union and something the Eu has been working towards for decades. Its the main aim of the EU.
I agree with a lot of what you've said in terms of facts, you have knowledge, i just think you have a poor interpretation of it. for example you used an example of France having to much power with its veto as a reason for every member state having more power....
we can actually propose or amend legislation democratically and there's even a mechanism in place for EU citizens to put for legislation forward directly and skip many of the usual steps, but i'm guessing you simply haven't noticed these changes. I was also going to point out the similarities to the house of lords and our political system so Im glad you've done that for me. main difference is that the EU has change at its core. Its changed rapidly over the last couple of decades and its aim is to create a democratic system that can override local governments in the same way the UK government does to its local governments. Thats a requirement of democracy.
Judging by your first paragraph, you need to realise that trade and economy are affected by far more than direct rules on trade. Besides movement of people is actually a core pillar of an economy, any economic system needs rules on it. so is transport. As we expand our rail network and good transport into the EU which is currently happening and would be happening faster if not for our inability to modernism our own damn railways, we will need to have rail networks overseen by a European wide body in the same way our railways are overseen by a UK wide body or Japanese rails etc. I think theyve gone too fast with completely free movement, i'm not going to disagree there and its something the EU is going to have to look at and will look at when it continually clashes with governments like Italy's new one. i doubt they can eliminate it as its another pillar of the EU so it will be interesting to see what happens there.
True independence IS living in a bubble and its what you propose even if you don't realise it, and i agree its absurd. Our government agrees its absurd which is why after over a year our solution to this whole customs fiasco is again to copy the EU
.In order improve an economy you need to specialise and become a master of your trade, and that requires that others do the same. To become reliant on them to do their part so they can contribute to yours. This network of interdependence is what will see the world flourish, not blindly questing for independence like an adolescent.
if during the last few millennia pretty people had only been breeding with other pretty people and intelligent people with other intelligent people there would be 2 distinct types of humans by now. Luckily, pretty people still get attracted to rich people and the gene pool is not quite as polarised as it could be?
Even @St Godders managed to get his leg over back in the day, and he is a self confessed ugly misanthrope, so there is hope for us all
Which group do people go in who complete statements with a question mark?
