[Closed] EU Referendum - are you in or out?

@matty as we've said many Brits take their pensions and accumulative wealth and spend it in generally otherwise quite poor areas. Tourism a massive business for Spain, Italy, France etc. IMO it s quite clear they will be keen to keep the £££'s flowing. Might they ask for a health insurance payment ? Maybe they will depends on how much other tax is paid inc property taxes.

@matty as we've said many Brits take their pensions and accumulative wealth and spend it in generally otherwise quite poor areas. Tourism a massive business for Spain, Italy, France etc. IMO it s quite clear they will be keen to keep the £££'s flowing. Might they ask for a health insurance payment ? Maybe they will depends on how much other tax is paid inc property taxes.

Why would they ask for health insurance, unless the UK closes the door on it's own people, people who have paid UK tax thier entire working lives, the Spanish can just bill the NHS, as it's already paid for. No insurance needed.

[I] No business wouod ever make a payment in the billions which itbwas not legally bound to do so and nor should we.[/I]

Not read most of the posts, I've been out riding (4000ft in 18 miles, and lots and lots of mud), but surely they do, where they believe its politically 'correct'.

Philip Green and the BHS pensions is a good recent example, +£300m that he really didn't (legally) have to pay.

Interesting as a lot of Spanish are not necessarily keen on the German tourist and a dgree Brits. They tend to load up their vehicles/bags with locally bought products to consume while on holiday.
Buying a pint of John Smiths doesn't help the economy in the same way as buying a tercio of Mahou does either, does it?
Some might add to local economies, but not all by a long way.

That's not really taking into account those expats who actually live out there full time.

They help pay local taxes, they keep the local bars, restaurants, convenience stores, mechanics, hairdressers, dentists, handy men ticking over winter when the Spanish tourists go back inland, it's really not very simple.

Where my dad lives would be a ghost town if it wasn't for immigration.

The Swiss do exactly that. It's normal to me to ask for sufficient tax income to pay for services. Health being one example. I hear your comments about spending, it's just something I would not be surpirsed to see being introduced.

Philip Green and the BHS pensions is a good recent example, +£300m that he really didn't (legally) have to pay.

I take your point (I think BHS was a grey area though as to whether Green's sale to two men and a dog was legal and if not he would be back on the hook) but EU nut jibs are toss numbers around from £20-60bn. The figures and the individuals are a joke.

They help pay local taxes, they keep the local bars, restaurants, convenience stores, mechanics, hairdressers, dentists, handy men running over winter when the Spanish tourists go back inland, it's really not simple.

Many of those service providers are also expats

In Benidorm maybe..

I've got no idea what N340 is.. I'll look it up.

jambalaya - Member
It's normal to me to ask for sufficient tax income to pay for services.

Are you a state or an individual? If the latter then tax is expenditure, not income. Your comments are increasingly irreverent.

I've got no idea what N340 is.. I'll look it up.

Is it a motorway, im still non the wiser after a few googles..

We seem to be entering the outer fringes of Theresa and Boris's delusional book of dreams.

If I'm reading this right, we tell the EU to **** right off with their 'divorce settlement' and in return they reward us with a preferential trading deal to the one we have at present

That seems entirely realistic. I'd be massively inclined to do that, if I were them

Not just Benidorm, right along the coast.
The N-340 is the coast road that sits between many bars and chinguitos and Brit occupied hotels, all the way from Barcelona to Chiclana de la Frontera. Get to the road edge, look right, see nothing coming and bam! Bridges were built. 😀

The Brit abroad generally doesn't mix well.

Young ones do.

I think people are underestimating how quickly and easily young Brits go native. As soon as people get a job they get health cover in France and are no longer any drain at all on the NHS. There are people on here working in many European countries. I doubt any that have been there for more than a year don't subscribe to the local social security system. Perhaps if they read this they'll elaborate. I worked in Spain before it was a full EU member but paid into the Spanish system and was not reliant on any reciprocal arrangement.

Read Spekkie's thread for an idea of how it's possible to integrate a remote village community in Spain.

I know one Brit who has just applied for French nationality. i'll let you know how it goes. So far she's just had to provide papers. She had to change her name back to her maiden name for administrative purposes because you can't officially keep your married name after divorce - you can call yourself what you want informally. So far so good.

I lived there for over 10 years, thanks for the info though.

We are many times more functional than the EU itself or a number of the member states.

Must be nice to be so happy about this shitfest. Can't see it myself.

Binners May has said and Hammond repeated today on Andrew Marr, we are a country which honours our commitments and we will pay what we owe 🙂 That's genius as what we owe is ZERO. Also our current deal is terrible, we pay a fee in the billions to allow the EU to export more to us than we do to them and we accept freedom of movement. We could achieve freedom of movement by granting all the visas people applied for and make them pay for the privilige. The EU is a terrible deal and almost anything else would be better.

Seems the budget is going to contain more positive news, higher tax receipts and more growth - discussed on Marr earlier

Jammers darling...as someone pointed out during the referendum, it's like divorcing your wife, but still expecting her to do your washing, clean the house, and cook your tea every night

It's not going to happen

The current deal was AWESOME. We pay/paid less than 1% of GDP to secure free access to one of the most important economic zones in the world, our largets trading area and to facilitate FDI into the UK from other countries seeking easy access to the same market. We were also able to deliver advantageous trade agreements with almost 90% of our trading partners including many commonwealth countries as part of the EU better that we could as an Independent nation - all of which will now have to be renegotiated.

It was a BRILLIANT deal and awesome VFM.

And we escaped the Euro (despite the best efforts of Bliar, Major, Tarzan and Clark etc), Schengen and having financial liabilities to the Euro Zone. By any measure, this was a brilliant arrangement and will stand head and shoulders above what comes next.

(binners, sorry you are not reading this right ^. 😉 )

The EU is a terrible deal and almost anything else would be better.

Still don't get this.

We pay to the EU to be a member. We import more from them than we export to them, for sure. But our imports are cheaper because of it, so we benefit as much as they benefit from our exports, surely?

What are you trying to say Jam? That tariff free trade is only of benefit in one direction?

Why did Nissan invest in the UK? Was it because we were cheap? Was it because of our location? NO it was because they had access to their target market the EU.

And here's the thing

Seems the budget is going to contain more positive news, higher tax receipts and more growth - discussed on Marr earlier

What would it have been without the referendum? We don't know how much better it could have been. So however s*** it gets the Brexiters will deny it was their stupidity that caused it.

Oh well, with the US roleing back any emmission controls we won't have to worry too much. We'll have cooked first! And to continue that cheerie thought, where do you think all those people who currently live in those countries that will take the brunt of climate change are going to go? You can pretend the UK is a little castle isolated from the comping storm, but you will fail.

What are you trying to say Jam? That tariff free trade is only of benefit in one direction?

What do you think made the UK the richest country on earth? It certainly wasn't "free trade"!

What do you mean mrmo?

What do you mean mrmo?

Sorry if you think i am arguing with you, i am not.

Simply that the UK was rich because it exploited its empire, it was never about Free Trade, it was about preferential trade...

I suspect the Chinese might object to the UK sending gun boats to force them to buy Opium this time.

The EU is a terrible deal and almost anything else would be better.

Well it forced a sort of free trade but as we know this can be exploited when both parties are hugely disparate in wealth or assets.

@slow For the reasons I stated above. If the EU was such a great idea it would be replicated all over the world. It is not. The European Union is a protectionist trade block.

If the EU was such a great idea it would be replicated all over the world.

What rubbish. Maybe not all areas of the world are in a position to do it. The world is not very homogeneous a is it?

Still don't see what the problem with it is apart from abstract ideas like sovereignty and control. I understand the issues with the Euro, and I realise the execution isn't perfect, but what is so fundamentally wrong?

No it's not. Two "facts" that explain why

1. EU memberhsip expanded our trade with the EU AND outside EU. Our national income expanded much faster than before.
2. Rather than be protectionist, the EU significantly increased competition in industries that had previously been very protected. This lead to very well documented and significant productivity improvements - a very significant benefit.

So we had greater national income combined with significant productivity gains, Then the wonderful world of regulation whose benefits also exceeded costs despite ethe Brexshiteers BS.

On the flip side: What is fundamentally wrong with the €? Everything. Design, execution and catastrophic results. Apart from that.....

+1 THM

The ability to do business easily is only really understood when you have to try and do it elsewhere, and I'm not talking about the corporates and multinationals with the clout/people/cash but small business that post-Brexit will suffer as they just can't justify the expense vs risk.

A bit like trying to win public sector contracts, and why the big boys pretty much always win it - especially when trying to complete the rules/regulations they demand, and this is what'll be required.

Probably the only business that will benefit from Brexit is freight forwarding, as they'll need to expand 10-fold.

on a tiny scale, over the years i have sold stuff though eBay to various countries, Ireland piss easy, Norway pain in the arse.

Why, paperwork!

Now scale up from the odd item being sold to a business having to sort out more red tape? Hardly a reduction in red tape is it.

Serious Question, if you take exchange rates as a measure of a currencies strength and the Euro is so bad, why is it a long way from its lows against Sterling?

And yes i can see issues, but then again does the USD suit Lousiana and California? Does the Pound work well in Orkney and in London? As for Switzerland with 26 different tax systems 4 national Languages, 23% immigrant population, etc.

Every currency will have a problem because regions will always be different.

The price/value of the Euro is not the issue. That is simple the rate at which people are prepared to swap it for other currencies, For some memebrs that rate is too high, for other it's it too low.

The issue for the Euro is far more fundamental

1. The Euro zone (unlike the UK) does not satisfy the criteria for a single currency area
2. The systems were not put in place to allow the Euro to work
3 So it couldn't work by design and by execution
4 it hasn't worked

THM, do you have anything to back up your points? I am not trying to start an argument just gain an understanding of what you see as the fundamental failings? ( in reasonably understandable english please)

Is it simply that the legal/tax/etc systems of Germany and Greece (for example) are simply too divergent to ever really function as a single currency area???

Of course

1. Google - optimum currency area or "does the Euro Zone satisfy the criteria for an OCA" for the theory. IIRC there is a pretty good wiki summary that not too theoretical

2 for an OCA to work you need fiscal and political union not just monetary union in isolation. The latter is like tying someone's arms and legs together and asking them to swim channel

3 mechanisms need to put in place to recycle the surpluses generated in some parts of an OCA. These were never put in place. Instead the Germans hid behind the "put your houses in order" while systematically raping the rest of the EZ economically

4. The most chilling of many downsides was the fact that high unit labour cost economies were forced to impose 30% reductions in real wages and or youth unemployment >50%

One of the challenges for remainers was to explain why this was not relevant to our own vote. Not easy but vitally true. You will note how Brexshiteers here often conflated issues relating to the Euro Zone with our membership of the EU. An easy sorcerer's trick

igm - Member

No not an opinion, the claim that Britain is the most multicultural and least racist and xenophobic country in Europe is based on the fact that there no other country in more multicultural and less racist and xenophobic than Britain.

Facts require evidence. Got some evidence that every other country in Europe is more racist and more xenophobic than Britain?
How do you even measure xenophobia objectively?

Well I thought it was self-evident, I hadn't realised that it needed to be spelt out to a bunch of people who contemptuously dismiss the masses as 'stupid'.

36.7% of residents in London were foreign born, no other capital city anywhere in the world has that level of foreign born residents. The only other European countries which come close to the level multiculturalism which exists in Britain are, because of the global reach of their former empires, France and the Netherlands, neither can be described as 'less' racist and xenophobic than Britain.

In France the candidate of the far-right National Front, a xenophobic party founded by a nazi sympathiser and convicted racist, is set to come second in the forthcoming presidential election, they could possibly even win it, although that's unlikely.

In the Netherlands the racist, deeply islamophobic, and xenophobic, Party for Freedom, whose leader is such an obnoxious neo-nazi that he has previously been banned from entering the UK, is set, in 10 days time, to become at least the second largest party in the Dutch parliament, very possibly the largest.

In Britain there is nowhere near the same level of support for racist and xenophobic parties, let alone more support. As I have previously the neo-nazi BNP, which is the closest thing we have to the National Front and Party for Freedom, hasn't even got a single local councillor.

It is a measure of the lack of support for far-right parties in the UK that some have been forced to offer UKIP as an example of such. The comparison is ludicrous, however unpleasant the petty little england attitude of UKIP it is not a far-right neo-nazi party. It has never been plagued with issues of holocaust denial as the National Front and Party for Freedom has. It is does not share the level of islamophobia as the National Front and Party for Freedom.

In fact it is precisely because UKIP isn't a far-right holocaust denying neo-nazi party that it enjoys the level of support that is does in Britian. And why the BNP doesn't enjoy any significant support.

Britain is the most multicultural and least racist and xenophobic country in Europe. I asked for examples of European countries more multicultural and less racist and xenophobic than Britain, I haven't seen any. But if it helps you to cope with losing the referendum then carry on believing the sort of bollocks that Donald Trump would be proud of.

mrmo - Member

No not an opinion, the claim that Britain is the most multicultural and least racist and xenophobic country in Europe is based on the fact that there no other country in more multicultural and less racist and xenophobic than Britain.

here's a thought for you, why has the UK always imported low skilled workers, Irish Navvies, Jamaican bus drivers, polish abattoir workers, etc, etc??

Well that's a first for me.......never in my life have I have heard encouraging immigration as an example of racism!

Yes Britain has a history of encouraging immigration into the country such as Irish Navvies and Jamaican bus drivers, irrc London Transport even had a recruiting in Jamaica, this was mostly during periods of full employment when there was a serious labour shortage.

But it's worth looking at the historical perspective. Back in the 60s when much of this immigration was taking place despite the labour shortage Britain was a far more racist country than it is today. Things did improve with the first Race Relations Act which made it an offence to incite racial hatred.

Despite that in the 70s as unemployment became an issue the National Front started to regularly knock the Liberal Party into fourth place in elections. As a result there was a highly organised effort to fight racism and the National Front where eventually defeated as a political force.

The BNP did make a concerted attempt to achieve a major political breakthrough in the 90s, they were worryingly successful to some extent. But again they are now no longer a force to be reckon with.

Britain was more racist 20, 40, 60, years ago. Racism is far less tolerated today than it was previously. As I said, Britain has never been [i]less[/i] racist than it is today. Unless you can give me an example when it was?

And btw whilst on the subject of history Britain was at the forefront of the abolition of slavery. It abolished slavery before the other Europeans powers and put pressure on others to do the same. Since the abolition of slavery Britain has never had any laws which allowed discrimination on the basis of race or allowed segregation.

But rubbish Britain's record on racism compared to other countries if you must.

I asked for examples of European countries more multicultural and less racist and xenophobic than Britain, I haven't seen any. But if it helps you to cope with losing the referendum then carry on

Britain may be less racist and xenophobic than other countries, but that doesn't mean it's not racist or xenophobic, does it?

TMH past results don't guaranty future performance and all that. The EEC imo worked pretty well for a bit, then the wheels came off massively with the shift to the EU project, massive expansion and the €. We can't really tell how much the EU has held us back but its my view its substantial.

Molgrips its a terrible deal as France is a member, has balanced trade and pays a net contribution of zero.

Molgrips everywhere I have been has a degree of racism and xenophobia, Asia especially. Middle East pretty bad too. The most Islamphobic people I have met are Indian but the seperation and pointing nuclear weapons at each other will do that.

You make valid points Ernie but racism is not a black or white issue (sorry) it's much greyer and messier than that

We may be less racist than before and less than "some" societies near by

But that does not negate the obvious fact that the referendum vote clearly exposed a core xenophobic element of our society - I change the words deliberately - which in itself was quiet shameful in its attitude and abuse of facts

Ignore that if you must

TMH past results don't guaranty future performance and all that.

What does that have to do with the price of milk?

The EEC imo worked pretty well for a bit, then the wheels came off massively with the shift to the EU project, massive expansion and the €. We can't really tell how much the EU has held us back but its my view its substantial.

Well you are wrong the evidence in the other direction is overwhelming. Had we joined the € then the story may well have been different a fact Major conveniently chose to ignore last week

36.7% of residents in London were foreign born, no other capital city anywhere in the world has that level of foreign born residents.

Sure you're not living in a Westminster-ish bubble Ernie?

Remember how strongly pro-Europe London was compared to most of England & Wales.

jambalaya - Member
Molgrips everywhere I have been has a degree of racism and xenophobia,

Agreed. I have had the same experience. Still doesn't make it right though does it?

I am reminded of Warren Buffet's comment that the 5 most dangerous words in the English language are "everyone else is doing it".

Back in the 60s when much of this immigration was taking place despite the labour shortage Britain was a far more racist country than it is today

No Blacks, No Irish, Dogs Welcome - certainly.

molgrips - Member

Britain may be less racist and xenophobic than other countries, but that doesn't mean it's not racist or xenophobic, does it?

Whoa, if you are going to claim that Britain is a racist and xenophobic then that claim can only be a comparative one. No, compared to other European countries Britain is the most multicultural and least racist and xenophobic in Europe.

That doesn't mean that there isn't racism and xenophobia in Britain, of course there is, and it's something which should never be tolerated. But that's a completely different argument.

And then there appears to be different definitions concerning what constitutes racism and xenophobia. I for one couldn't give a monkeys what colour a British school-leaver is or whether their parents were Polish immigrants, for example, but I do believe that they should have priority in the jobs market over European nationals. Especially when the relationship of labour movement with other European countries is very strongly out of balance.

I believe it is the job of British governments to put the interests of British nationals before the interests of other nationals. It's not the job of British governments to solve the problems of unemployment or low wages in say, Lithuania, for example. It's not called "representative" democracy for nothing - politicians are elected to represent the people that elect them, not people who don't elect them.

Some people will choose to call that attitude racist and xenophobic, again I couldn't give a monkeys. I am aware that among those most disadvantaged in the UK job market are black school-leavers and the poor inner-city children of immigrants, I would put them before nationals of the enlarged EU any day of the week.

A steady supply of skilled foreign labour might be attractive to the Tories and UKIP with their "points" system, but I believe there is nothing inherently wrong with British school-leavers and graduates which leaves them without the aptitude for skilled trades and professions.

EL you are aware that the worst performing group at school is white working class boys. If these are the people you want employed we have a problem.

It is not societies job to give themselves living because they couldn't be arsed at school to learn.

Thank you for the racial perspective on the issue mrmo but I said that I couldn't give a monkeys what the race or ethnicity of the school-leaver was. Perhaps you missed that, not paying attention?

I have to say I am disappointed, I have asked numerous times, for the leave camp on here to set out their plans for brexit, and all I have got is diversion and waffle, and some poor quality links.
I can't believe that Jamblya, Ernie and the others do not have the guts to just lay it out, how is it going to work?
I will not bother you with my questions on this again, but the response has taught us all something.
Somebody somewhere must know how this is going to work.

I think the Vauxhall workers at Luton & Ellesmere port will be hoping May gets that Brexit cheque book out again....

Somebody somewhere must know how this is going to work.

EL, what do you define as British then?

And if a large subset of native born are incapable of doing the work we need doing because they are too special. It is why the English keep on bringing in foreigners after all what do you propose?

Plenty of times i have heard people say would get out of bed to do his or that, they would rather sit around on the dole scrounging and blaming foreigners for taking jobs they refuse to do.

WTF should my taxes pay for the brexiters who can't be arsed to look at themselves and figure out why their lives are shit?

So while the NHS is shafted along with social care etc, some idiots can claim we took back control!

I think the Vauxhall workers at Luton & Ellesmere port will be hoping May gets that Brexit cheque book out again....

Why, they were areas that voted leave and I assume they were happy with all the consequences that might flow from that decision. Leavers all took properly informed decisions after extensive research and consideration after all.

5plusn8

Yep, join the club.

Although maybe it's a Red Dwarf plot and we'll all wake up post-March 2019 and find that the last 2.5 years has been a dream/nightmare*

* delete as appropriate

5+

Tbf to the Breshiteers, there is no definitive answer. We ARE stepping into the unknown and no one has attempted to do this before. Hence the uncertainty.....there is no blueprint to follow.

What we have is a basic framework of four core options for continuing access to the single market. This sets the context eg, what is plausible under what conditions etc. This is all pretty clear but generally poorly understood as (1) people can't be bothered to read and/or (2) they prefer to use deliberately misleading language for effect eg, we are."in" the single market etc.

So all we can do at the moment is understand the options and what each requires properly and then await the negotiations. Of course, we also need to remember that we are not - at this point - looking for an off-the-shelf solution we are looking for our very own, bespoke "RED, WHITE & BLUE BREXSHIT" ....cue Elgar's pomp and circumstance.....

I will not bother you with my questions on this again, but the response has taught us all something.
Somebody somewhere must know how this is going to work.

It hasn't taught us anything and why should we expect it to? It was a referendum on one simple question, there was no need to produce a detailed policy manifesto because they were not seeking to govern. Both the Leave groups and the Remain group will have different priorities from those on their own side, they simply coalesced for this simple question.

Well it has taught me something. I think I have come to the slow realisation that THM etc is correct, the leave camp voted for an ideology with no actualplan.
Shame. I was hoping for at least a coherent economic and cultural/social treatise.

"RED, WHITE & BLUE BREXSHIT" ....cue Elgar's pomp and circumstance.....

And I thought this was just to celebrate her 100th birthday..

[img] [/img]

 

ideology

It is not an ideology, they voted against a political construct, which for whatever reason, and there are many, they didn't think was good for the country.

It was won on a vote about what leave didn't want, not what they did.
Leave was, and is, the ultimate negative campaign / ideology.

Anyway Brexy leaver types, don't worry us remainers will bail your sorry arses out.
I was in Denver last week on a "in't Britain great" marketing campaign doing my bit again (that's 4 different initiatives so far for me).
The Brits in Denver were remainers to a man (and woman). The leavers were nowhere to be seen.

Well you seem to be asking two things ; (1) why are we leaving and (2) how are we leaving. They required different answers.

We are leaving for the simple reason that the majority of voters believed that their/our interests were served best by giving up our memberhsip of the EU. Whether correct or not, this seems to be a practical not an ideological decision if for no other reason than most Breshiteers would struggle to spell eyediolojee.

The plan is to negotiate continued access to the single market. Something that requires considerable time to negotiate and organise. - hence the need to get on with it. As before, there is no blue print. This is a live experiment....

IGM, leave may well have been total BS but I am not sure it's was negative, if anything the remain campaign was the more negative of the two - partlally justified but negative nonetheless

Justified isn't negative - it's honest.

What I mean THM, is that I'm pretty clear after the campaign what leave are against. I have no idea what they are / were for.

THM, not quite, the reasons why the people voted a numerous, but I deluded myself that the people pushing vote leave, eg farage, arron banks, rees mogg etc had some kind of theory as to why leaving the eu was gong to make things better.

It is a philospophical approach: I believe that you should only change direction if you have a plan, map, theory. Just because something isn't working well does not mean we should abandon it. EG medical science it is not perfect, but we do not abandon science in favour of magical thinking, we work to make the scientific process better. And one day, maybe someone will find a new "scientific process" which wipes out our current thinking. This analogy is what I was hoping brexit would be. The current "science" (the EU) is not perfect, there are many issues that need to be improved. So we have a new method (Brexit this is how it works and this is why it is better. Boom away we go.
Until someone explains why, brexit appears to be abandoning science in favour of optimistic voodoo.

They did. Although they we split over which parts of their (flawed) ideology were more/most important.

If you need to distill the leave argument down into one very simple (again flawed) sentence it is: we gain more from taking back control than from sharing power.

This v simple concept is displayed clearly in our choice of options for accessing the singe market post Brexshit. At the one end we have EEA which involves sharing more power in return for more liberalised trade and IMO greater prosperity. At the other we have WTO which gives us more control in exchange for less liberalised trade and IMO less prosperity.

Nipper99 - Member
I think the Vauxhall workers at Luton & Ellesmere port will be hoping May gets that Brexit cheque book out again....
Why, they were areas that voted leave and I assume they were happy with all the consequences that might flow from that decision. Leavers all took properly informed decisions after extensive research and consideration after all.

A huge number of the Ellesmere Port workers are from the Wirral area.

[url= http://election.news.sky.com/referendum/wirral-3069 ]http://election.news.sky.com/referendum/wirral-3069[/url]

They did what? Explain some kind of economic or social theory of brexit? Where?

Why, they were areas that voted leave and I assume they were happy with all the consequences that might flow from that decision. Leavers all took properly informed decisions after extensive research and consideration after all.

I think this is a little bit unfair. It seems obvious to me that the 52% of an area can vote out, but the 48% can still ask that the govt replace the EU money or economic inflow that has been cut through brexit. Conflating both groups in one area is unfair.

5+ excuse the edit - hopefully answered rhe question in the edit

If you need to distill the leave argument down into one very simple (again flawed) sentence it is: we gain more from taking back control than from sharing power.

Ahh. So we voted to take our bat and ball home.

Then what?

I've met plenty of people doing practical (if somewhat disparate at times) things to try and dig us out of the Brexit hole the leavers have left us with.
The leavers are conspicuous by their absence.

My god, it can't be just that.

Someone needs to talk about the dependence-independence-interdependence maturity curve.

Think children, teenagers, adults.

The other bit, which leavers argued about, was nasty foreigners.

But yes, essentially that is it. Each argument ultimately corms down to this issue.

Edit: yes igm that maturity argument is a powerful counter argument albeit a bit late now. We lost.

We lost the war agreed.

The peace is yet to be decided. Difference is both sides either win or lose the peace together.

Agreed. Hence my call - largely rejected here - than we now ALL have a responsibility to try to make this work rather than stick our heads in the sand and/or stand crying its not fair,

Life isn't fair, accept that and move on

THM - I am still hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. Hence why I'm help UK gov with various initiatives. Nice if some Brexies helped out.

PS - I'm still blackballing businesses that supported Brexit though.

A good mantra IGM

Not sure about black balling - can you still say that? - but I did send a snotty email to H Landsdown after they sent me an email re the investment implications of Brexshit. I have reduced my business with them although not 100%

Bet you posted that before my edit 😉

Sixty billion.

IN THE FREEDOM BANK.

I'm so excited. That's a lot of freedom.
Perhaps the [s]Mexicans[/s], [s]French[/s], EU will pay.
Perhaps not.

we now ALL have a responsibility to try to make this work rather than stick our heads in the sand and/or stand crying its not fair

That sounds nice, but most of us who are 'crying' aren't in any position to be able to make a difference. That's large part of the problem for me at least.

So no-one rejected your call THM. Just becase we remain unhappy about the situation and are critical of our politicians, doesn't mean we don't want our country to be a success still, obviously.

Life isn't fair, accept that and move on

Hell no. If everyone accepted unfairness (and in this case crass stupidity and poor thinking) we'd all still be feudal serfs. So once again - HELL NO.

[i]Life isn't fair, accept that and move on [/I]

FTFY

Life isn't fair, don't accept it, work to make it better.

I'm not in anyway helping Leavers to f*** it all up, although I'm not sure they need any help.

The priority now is to make sure all the (now Leaving) politicians KNOW that they'll pay for their acquiescence at the next GE, that might wake them up.

Molgrips its a terrible deal as France is a member, has balanced trade and pays a net contribution of zero.

Still none the wiser I'm afriad Jam.

True but working to make this better does not include failing to accept what has happened, rehashing old arguments, clinging to the past. It involves dealing with the NOW - what IS in front of us not what we would like to be in front of us - so than we can shape the future.

Mol, Jambas is incorrectly using trade balances as a measure for determining whether we get a good deal or not. It's the sort of trick Alex Salmond uses. Close enough to the truth to sound vaguely plausible but still flawed when examined properly.