"we are not bound by EU rules"
Except if the UK wants to export anything to the EU they must abide by the EUs rules for those things (without any say in those rules what-so-ever).
Except if the UK wants to export anything to the EU they must abide by the EUs rules for those things (without any say in those rules what-so-ever).
Either way, once that deal is signed, the effort was wasted and we'll finally actually be in the crazy dumb position brexiteers thought we were in.
For sure privatizing them in the first place was a pure UK decision with - IMHO - predictable outcome.
The UK applied the state aid rules in a rigorous way, while other countries, uh, didn't.
> From what I read some lines actually did get nationalized again after how poorly Virgin & co run some of the lines.
That did happen (though I don't think it was Virgin, who were one of the better operators IME - they had sharp elbows in their dealings with the government, but they needed them), but the rules allowed that strictly on a temporary emergency basis (even though they ended up running a significantly better service than most operators).
And even if it were true, why not just apply the rules less strictly to ourselves like you say everyone else is!?
For decades British politicians have blamed Brussels for their own mistakes and dumb brits have swallowed it without question. That's our fault, no one else's. Brexit at least may price that when we aren't suddenly vastly more free and successful and socialist and capitalist and powerful on 01/01/21...
Overground is run by Arriva i.e. Deutsche Bahn who are fully owned by the German government. "TfL" Rail is run by MTR who are majority owned by the government of Hong Kong.
> And even if it were true, why not just apply the rules less strictly to ourselves like you say everyone else is!?
Because respect for the rule of law is one of the greatest strengths of the UK, both for our international reputation and for its own sake. If joining the EU means following rules that are written for Italian-style legal systems, staying out is a lesser evil than turning into Italy.
Also, as I've said before, the UK government does not care about the law. That's why we were so enthusiastic to get involved in Iraq 2. That's why we're still ignoring the ruling on prisoners voting (15 years later). The truth is, laws are just an excuse for governments about why they "can't" do things people want. Don't want to nationalise trains? Blame some obscure foreign law. Do want to play cowboy in the Middle East? Go for it!
And that's without getting into why we never bother to try and enforce all these laws ourself? If DB are an illegal state company, why not say so in court? Instead we give them contracts, because we're a law abiding country that ignores laws when awarding contracts to foreign entities but not domestic ones which is illegal!?
All national rail lines (including Overground and TfL Rail) are privately operated in general; they're only ever nationalised on a short term basis when something goes wrong with the privatised operations. London Underground falls under a different regulatory regime (as does Tyne & Wear Metro and, without checking, presumably the Glasgow Subway) and I believe they have a derogation to permit that.
> That's why we were so enthusiastic to get involved in Iraq 2.
I won't defend that war but I haven't seen any convincing argument that it was against English law. Royal prerogative is pretty broad, and Blair lying to parliament is not a crime as far as I know.
> The truth is, laws are just an excuse for governments about why they "can't" do things people want. Don't want to nationalise trains? Blame some obscure foreign law.
Even if that's the only effect of EU law, it's corrosive to democracy. Whether it's because of real EU laws or because they can lie about them and get away with it, EU membership has destroyed the accountability of British politicians. E.g. in the aftermath of the leave vote, there was a lot of reporting saying that the UK could have put restrictions on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria without leaving the EU. Which is true, but misses the fact that - despite it being what the majority of voters wanted - that was completely outside the Overton window of UK politics, because the UK political class wanted unrestricted immigration. So practically speaking, voting to leave the EU was actually the only way to achieve that.
> And that's without getting into why we never bother to try and enforce all these laws ourself? If DB are an illegal state company, why not say so in court? Instead we give them contracts, because we're a law abiding country that ignores laws when awarding contracts to foreign entities but not domestic ones which is illegal!?
The European Commission did pursue cases against Deutsche Bahn and others. Under the English law implementation of the same EU directive a structure like Deutsche Bahn's is illegal (because the Duck Test applies); the ECJ ruled it legal (while acknowledging that it was a loophole that was clearly against the intent of the law, and recommended that the next version of the directive should explicitly make it illegal, which was done). But in many ways all that is moot, because even where the ECJ ruled that there was illegal state aid to railway operators (e.g. Spain), there was no practical punishment.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/14/uk-faile...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirst_v_United_Kingdom_(No_2...
Seriously?
Imagine that tomorrow parliament gives prisoners the vote, but not to implimented it for 15 years. Does this upset you so much that you will you emigrate? No?
Then why do I have to leave the EU over the exact same thing?
The most amazing thing about this to me, is that people hate the EU, really hate it, for literally no reason at all. Then they make up reasons to justify it. And they don't even seem to see what they're doing. So many people acting completely irrationally. It's actually scary. It makes me worry about the future of democracy.
For business yes, for tourism no.
And you'll need to pay tariffs to get good in or out.
This is a zero tariff agreement.
And you'll need to abide by our laws on those import and exports, things like emissions for cars, pesticides, safety regulations, that stuff.
Yes, but that applies for all exports/imports under any circumstances.
Work will mean a full blown visa. For each country. Imagine if you were a musician and needed a separate work visa for each US state.
Goods like instruments and laptops still mean a carnet (although most countries ignore the requirement for carnet for things like phones and laptops)
Limited to 90 days a year in Europe. lol on the quitter wimps that voted for brexit who own a house in Spain. They can rot in hell.
Say Texas left. Then Texans would need a visa to go or work in Florida.
This doesn't seem bad at all to me.
And now bear in mind that complying with EU regulation was one of the main propaganda points of the pro-Brexit campaign.
It really makes no sense, but hey at least nacionalista demagogues got their way.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why not?111
this site is a riot
United Ireland will happen within a few years, followed by an independent Scotland rejoining the EU.
FWIW, the Tories probably going to be in power for at least another half-decade or two.
Today, Wales is thought of as a constituent country of the United Kingdom, on par with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. From a standpoint of the monarchy, it's all one unified realm of The Crown.
2) The queen has now reigned for 68 years
2) It's still a kingdom, whether a king or queen rules.
The freedom to be undercut in the labour market and priced out of the housing market by uncontrolled immigration from other EU countries?
Neither of which are the main sources of our problems.
If I was worried about economic undercutting I would be worried about China and other Asian countries because they not only have the advantage in numbers, China is nowadays the go to place for manufacturing even for high quality products. The key aspect is that the quality control is managed by first world economies. For some reason the Chinese are really terrible at creating medium/premium quality brands.
I’m not talking about refugees, I’m talking about economic migrants, both skilled and unskilled.
In any event, please could you explain to me how adding approx. 3.5m EU nationals to the UK benefits young people?
Consider the challenges faced by young people in the UK today, including widespread unemployment and underemployment, and a chronic housing shortage where the supply of housing is virtually fixed.
I’ll let all the young people know there isn’t a housing crisis after all, and seeing as the millions of EU nationals residing in the UK don’t need housing, young people needn’t worry.
And yes, the fact that a lot of voters don't really know what's going on (or suffer from cognitive dissonance, fostered by the terrible English tabloid press) is a large part of what's going on.
But I'm sure things will improve dramatically from 1 January... /s
I'm sure that without large quantities of foreign workers willing to do the most menial jobs specifically this situation will immediately improve. /s
I should point out I’m talking about both skilled and unskilled labour here.
British university graduates don’t stand a chance when they’re undercut by French, Spanish or Italian professionals with a decade of professional experience willing to work for peanuts.
Your council tax system basically seems batshit crazy to people from anywhere else. I am guessing that there's some serious history behind how the UK arrived at this point.
My point in this thread is that uncontrolled migration from the EU has not helped the matter.
It is a real, tangible example of how EU membership has harmed the prospects of young people in the UK.
A small number act to stimulate supply in those markets (e.g. entrepreneurs setting up businesses, or construction workers building the pitiful number of new homes that get built each year), but the vast majority simply add to the demand-side, driving down wages and increasing rents and property prices.
This applies to both skilled and unskilled migrants. The former often come with savings and significant professional experience. Great for businesses, rubbish for our young people.
Or since I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077, they'll have some sort of digital border, and there'll be digital smugglers going back and forth...
I mean, with the current agreement they already have special status (no borders) and I think NI people can get Irish Citizeship easily.
It sounds "nice" to have a unified Ireland from a purely simplification perspective but I wonder if it's actually a popular idea in NI.
At 1.8M people, it would be larger than Cyprus, Malta and Luxemburg, so yeah.
It is an interesting possibility, but would it make any sense?
People who want a united Ireland wouldn't like it, and people who want it part of the UK wouldn't either. Both may like it more than the opposite alternative though.
Is it that time when we pretend that the barrier to a United Ireland is somehow British intransigence rather than Northern Irish sectarianism?
Unfortunately for sectarists in Northern Ireland, catholics have more children there. A quick glance at the declared religion by age will tell you all you need to know. Catholics will soon outnumber protestants in Northern Irland. From there unification seems unavoidable.
I feel like I’ve been hearing this for most of the last 40 years and it’s still not come to pass.
One curve is steadily going up while the other trends down.
For those who are not familiar, in the Irish context republicans are republican in the sense that they want to reunify the Republic of Ireland, unlike the US GOP they are largely democratic socialist.
Exports to a big chunk of that diagram are about to get much more difficult.
1. https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/gbr/show...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
One could say the UK has given back control...
https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/GDP%20graph%20world%20vs%...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
The question you posed assumes that the EU will continue to be involved with half of the UK's trading activity, which I don't buy.
The difficult bit to buy, hard as Brexiters have been selling it, is that the reduction in the proportion of trading activity with the EU will be compensated for by an increase in trading activity with countries which are further away, more protectionist and/or poorer, as opposed to just a reduction in trade overall.
Regulations, imports from the EU, taxes paid to the EU, and tourists to and from the EU are also part of the equation. So the UK might be better off outside the EU when you ignore trade.
Having said that, offsetting some of the drop in EU exports with and increase in non EU exports seems likely and could allow for a net benefit even assuming a net drop in total exports.
We've had several years to hear a concrete argument for what regulations need removing and what the benefits would be, and the best we got was Patrick Minford's ambitious "it's likely we would eliminate manufacturing" growth projections based on the assumption the UK removed all barriers to importing anything. Ironically the EU has made more progress in securing FTAs with our list of putative alternative trade partners...
It’s possible for the increase to exist, it to be less than the loss, and for the UK to be better off. As such some people talking about the likely increase may not be implying it’s a 1:1 replacement for the drop.
Generally being part of a larger market is the best option, but individual executions are clearly going to be argued about endlessly.
Those sectors could always have chosen to abandon trading with the EU to find better arrangements.
post-brexit: the rest of the world will be on a more even footing, so this will likely change
You can look stuff up here. Lots of things are, as you'd expect, reduced but some things surprisingly high still.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_agreements_of_the_Unit...
Remember though that an average trade deal takes longer to negotiate than the time we have legally had to negotiate them so far. It is likely that in the next 5 or so years we will get an agreement with the USA, CPTPP and India.
[1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
To use an extreme example, if the UK suddenly decides to legalize pot they could then export that while continuing to export every other product under EU regulation. Net result an increase in exports.
The whole goal of brexit seems to be to lower U.K. food standards to that of the US.
> As an EU member, the UK was automatically part of about 40 trade deals which the EU had with more than 70 countries. In 2018, these deals represented about 11% of total UK trade.
> So far, 29 of these existing deals, covering 58 countries or territories, have been rolled over and will start on 1 January 2021. The latest deal to be struck was with Mexico on 15 December.