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Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

So where the EU is now weighing a 5yr ban on FR, the UK after Brexit seems to be going full on to adoption?

that is kind of the point of brexit. UK elites have been frustrated at not having the kind of totalitarian control they desire thus far

I'm not sure what you mean by that being the point in brexit. Theresa May voted for remain and introduced bills like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-51196849

EDIT: your link kind of proves my point:

"On 21 December 2016, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared that the generalised retention of certain types of personal data is unlawful, although little is known as to how this will affect the Investigatory Powers Act at this stage."

also my perception is that may and cameron were doing reverse psychology by backing remain

I mean Cameron did put it to a binding referendum with a simple majority. At least part of him was in support of leaving for him to do that.

The referendum was advisory/non-binding.

https://fullfact.org/europe/was-eu-referendum-advisory/

No, he 100% expected a comfortable remain win. He called the non-binding referendum because it was a major manifesto promise. It was a manifesto promise solely as an attempt to shut up the awkward squad -- the extreme Brexit wing of the Tory party, and put them back on the fringe for another decade or so. Then expected another hung parliament and probable coalition, not a majority.

There are plenty of major Tory figures on record confirming this.

> Theresa May voted for remain

Allegedly. It was more of a 'agreeing with the government in place at the time'

As a minister, she had to agree with the government. It's called "Cabinet Collective Responsibility"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_collective_responsibil...

Technically, it was suspended during the 2016 referendum, but was it? Really?

Nah. Had Cameron's gamble paid off, Gove and Grayling would have been out on their ear.

He put down as a stake the future of the country in an internal power struggle. Politics at its finest.

Wasn't the EU going to impose some financial transparency rules that had the potential to expose Britain's misdoings?

Oh, I heard about this. Is the same EU where one of the most senior politicians signed over 300 secret deals with corporations to help them avoid hundreds of billions in tax? And we only found out it about decades later, the deals were "off the books", because govt officials leaked it?

The region that is most responsible for tax avoidance is the EU. End. In BOTs, everything is reported (company ownership, beneficial owners, and financial institutions report everything back to home tax authorities). Member states in the EU are engaged in industrial tax avoidance (Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, etc.) and marketed themselves to corporations that way (i.e. they didn't just facilitate it, they caused it). And one big reason why no-one did anything is that the EU was led by (Juncker) the guy who was solely responsible for this (he was signing these deals in the 90s, before Ireland and co. got in on the game).

Are you complaining that the EU was representative of the wishes of its member states by not forbidding national governments from offering favourable tax policies to attract investment, or are you complaining that the EU is somehow making tax avoidance in its member state easier and more common, despite it passing an anti-tax avoidance directive[1]?

The EU enables member states to agree policies which are beneficial when widely adopted despite being detrimental if unilaterally adopted, thus avoiding a "race to the bottom". This sort of dynamic should be expected, given results from game theory like the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Public Goods Game[2].

[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/anti-tax-avoidan...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods_game

No...you are just raising points that I didn't raise.

The EU is the centre of industrial tax avoidance. Member states are responsible for assisting corporations (not just facilitating, advertising) in tax avoidance (trillions of dollars have moved out of tax systems as a result). This wasn't to encourage investment...yes, Luxembourg...Amazon has invested so heavily there...is your stupidity deliberate?

The connection with the EU is that the EC was run by the person who had signed a massive amount of those deals. The stuff that has been passed is weak, it probably won't work (nation states have already devised new ways to get round this), and work on transparency (most of these deals were secret) has been blocked by the usual tax havens (this contrasts nicely with the UK where transparency has been adopted in full, the only stumbling block was the inability to force this upon some overseas territories...it was adopted overnight in Jersey/IOM however).

Congrats you have read Wikipedia. What you don't seem to realise is that a "race to the bottom" did occur. Luxembourg did these deals, we now know, in the 1990s then other nations started copying. The EU triggered a race to the bottom globally and it occurred within the EU...but why let reality get in the way of your theories?

Again, we really need to crack down on these rouge tax haven states. Thankfully, the US/UK has led the way on this.

With a little luck they can now do so, and require participation by any potential new trade partners. :)

This propensity doesn't have to do with Brexit, we've had signs of the UK moving towards a police state long before it.

They put an exception for security related use

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