What has been the effect of Brexit?

[pecksniff]

Are the British people now any better off, or worse off, for any reasons attributable to it?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Wait, that happened? I thought that was fever dream I had that ended with takesie backsies.

 

[phrodeau]

Supply chain disruptions in recent weeks caused by the new regulatory system for imports, with miles of semi trucks waiting to enter, or as they say, lorry queues for leagues.

 

[Dribble]

I'd be interested in hearing about the positives...easy to find out about the negatives since they were predicted. I am sure there has to be more to it than puffing out the chest

 

[Sean]

I'd be interested in hearing about the positives...easy to find out about the negatives since they were predicted. I am sure there has to be more to it than puffing out the chest

I'd love to hear about the positives. Unfortunately, there fucking aren't any.

 

[oggbashan]

I'd love to hear about the positives. Unfortunately, there fucking aren't any.

Except pissing off the French. We didn't need Brexit for that. We piss off the French just by existing. Today is the French presidential election. Both remaining candidates have been rude about the UK in their campaigns. Attacking the sacré Ros-Bifs always plays well with French electors.

 

[Dribble]

I'd love to hear about the positives. Unfortunately, there fucking aren't any.

This really sucks. I am a firm believer that the US cannot survive unified, so I was hoping there were positives we could build on.

 

[Btq97]

There never were any upsides to leaving the EU. Unless you count being able to keep tax havens opaque. Blue passports erm that is it. Being able to stop foreign types from being able to move here and work which has worked real well. But I may be prejudiced as I voted to stay

 

[pecksniff]

Except pissing off the French. We didn't need Brexit for that. We piss off the French just by existing. Today is the French presidential election. Both remaining candidates have been rude about the UK in their campaigns. Attacking the sacré Ros-Bifs always plays well with French electors.

France and the UK were enemies throughout the 18th Century and longer. I guess some grudges die hard.

 

[oggbashan]

France and the UK were enemies throughout the 18th Century and longer. I guess some grudges die hard.

It's mutual. We were allies in the Crimean War; enemies in the 1860s and allies again from 1905 in theory to the present but De Gaulle hated us, and Macrom (and Le Pen) love bashing the Brits. We reciprocate, of course.

 

[pecksniff]

It's mutual. We were allies in the Crimean War; enemies in the 1860s and allies again from 1905 in theory to the present but De Gaulle hated us, and Macrom (and Le Pen) love bashing the Brits. We reciprocate, of course.

I read once that the line in "British Grenadiers" -- "We throw them from the glacis, about the enemy's ears" -- originally read "the Frenchmen's ears."

Also, the never-sung verse of "God Save the Queen" -- "Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks" -- originally read "their popish tricks."

 

[butters]

In my last column I suggested that Brexit is the biggest act of self-harm inflicted on the British economy since the return to the gold standard in 1925. Even arch-Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg has recently admitted that implementing the next stage of the bureaucracy associated with Brexit would be an “act of self-harm”. I did not make that up.

As minister for Brexit opportunities he has the sisyphean task of searching for such opportunities. One of the few he is reported to have come up with is the chance to abandon EU rules on the manufacture of vacuum cleaners, thereby making them more powerful and less environmentally friendly. I am not making that up either.

Brexit is proving an unmitigated disaster and having a seriously deleterious impact on the economy. It is aggravating the inflation problem and having such a drastic impact on output, and hence living standards, that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecasts the UK will next year be the worst-performing economy in the G20 apart from, er, Russia.

Our dreadful prime minister – still in place at the time of writing – talks of growth and investment. But the truth is that investment has collapsed under Brexit, a development that is hardly a signal for growth.

an opinion piece in The Guardian, for sure, but he's not wrong either

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...sedgntp&cvid=440951fbacfc47ecb06eb328f8612b4e

 

[Dribble]

Although it is an easy excuse to say inflation is worse...but there is no BREXIT in the US so what is causing inflation there that isn't in the UK?

 

[oggbashan]

The Guardian is and was a left-wing anti-Brexit paper.

Of course, any opinion piece there will be against Brexit.

 

[McSmoothie]

Except pissing off the French. We didn't need Brexit for that. We piss off the French just by existing. Today is the French presidential election. Both remaining candidates have been rude about the UK in their campaigns. Attacking the sacré Ros-Bifs always plays well with French electors.

Well perhaps in England that is the case. As a Scot I get a warm welcome in France, we both despise le rosbifs.

 

[colddiesel]

Britain should never have joined the EEC and that became even more evident after it morphed into the EU, a German /French duopoly. However, once in, it was not a good idea to just walk away. Brexit was stupid; it would have been smarter to have just withheld funds and negotiated a way out of the political union. That however, would have required skill, planning and resilience, all qualities absent in the present British government.

Despite what McSmoothie thinks, the Scots, the Northern Irish and the Welsh are of no importance, they all survive on subsidies from the English. London is far better than that raving harridan in Edinburgh. And as a Gaelic speaker from Harris I would far rather have English government than the trash of the Scottish lowlands.

 

[Dribble]

Now...you can see why it is failing over there. The question is...how can Americans learn from the ignorance?

 

[rockcasbah]

Now...you can see why it is failing over there. The question is...how can Americans learn from the ignorance?

Deport Butters now.

 

[oggbashan]

Now...you can see why it is failing over there. The question is...how can Americans learn from the ignorance?

Do not split into states with no federal government.

Make sure your federal government and its administrators are democratically responsible - which those in the EU weren't.

Don't allow democratic decisions to be rejected and/or overruled by the federal government which the EU did on the Treaty of Lisbon.

Do not piss off a large percentage of your population which is happening throughout Europe. President Macron of France has admitted he dare not hold an in/out referendum on the EU. He is afraid he would lose...

PS: One of the failures of the EU has been their own buzzword subsidiarity which was meant to mean that countries could do things differently. Italy is a federation. The Alto Adige in Nothern Italy is a German-speaking area which is largely self-governing. They see themselves as closer to the Tirol in Austria and Germany than to Italy, sometimes describing themselves as South Tirol. Yet because the central government allows them more freedom than in other parts of Italy. they are proud Italians too.

But the EU frequently issues orders and directions across the whole EU which fit poorly with local cultures and traditions.

 

[UltraMAGAKing]

This really sucks. I am a firm believer that the US cannot survive unified, so I was hoping there were positives we could build on.

You guys get to have your progressive utopia... no pesky liberal bullshit like civil rights. You can take all the guns, censor speech and persecute Christians all you like....take all the private property.

There is your positive.

We don't have to go down in flames with you guys... that's ours.

 

[oggbashan]

One little thing that apparently the EU blocked:

There has been a long-running campaign in the UK to take sales tax (VAT) off women's sanitary products because there is none on men's things such as razors. It was set at 5% (Instead of the normal 20% on most goods and services).

It seems that the EU would not allow zero-rating on women's products because that would give the UK an 'unfair advantage'. After Brexit, the sales tax on women's sanitary products has been made zero in the UK.

But that can't be wholly true. Take cigarettes for example. In the UK the taxes on cigarettes are nearly the highest in Europe. You could save a substantial amount by buying them in France and paying the French government's tax level; or much cheaper in Belgium. The cheapest place to buy cigarettes in Europe is Andorra, a tiny state. Heavy trucks drive into Andorra day and night delivering cigarettes which leave Andorra in private cars and small panel vans - by the ton. Andorra's economy depends on cheap cigarettes.

If the EU allows different levels of taxes for cigarettes, why could they not do so for women's sanitary products? Their answer had been consistent 'Non', 'Nein' and never...

 

[Dribble]

You guys get to have your progressive utopia... no pesky liberal bullshit like civil rights. You can take all the guns, censor speech and persecute Christians all you like....take all the private property.

There is your positive.

We don't have to go down in flames with you guys... that's ours.

You forgot the other positive...we control 85% of the nation's GDP.

 

[McSmoothie]

Britain should never have joined the EEC and that became even more evident after it morphed into the EU, a German /French duopoly. However, once in, it was not a good idea to just walk away. Brexit was stupid; it would have been smarter to have just withheld funds and negotiated a way out of the political union. That however, would have required skill, planning and resilience, all qualities absent in the present British government.

Despite what McSmoothie thinks, the Scots, the Northern Irish and the Welsh are of no importance, they all survive on subsidies from the English. London is far better than that raving harridan in Edinburgh. And as a Gaelic speaker from Harris I would far rather have English government than the trash of the Scottish lowlands.

We will need to disasagree on your last point. Boris and his clown alley can only organise parties. Cameron and his Cabinet could not.

The UK government's handeling of the COVID pandemic was a massive cock up.

I keep asking myself, why does England want to keep the union if it such a drain on their resources? Nobody has ever answered that.

 

[oggbashan]

Another EU nonsense. They were pressed by German manufacturers of vacuum cleaners to introduce a maximum permitted power for a vacuum cleaner at 1000 watts. All German manufactured machines were less than 1000 watts.

Who were the only EU manufacturers of vacuum cleaners with greater power than 1000 watts? The UK. The company outsourced their production to the Far East and after Brexit is now repatriating production.

 

[oggbashan]

We will need to disasagree on your last point. Boris and his clown alley can only organise parties. Cameron and his Cabinet could not.

The UK government's handeling of the COVID pandemic was a massive cock up.

I keep asking myself, why does England want to keep the union if it such a drain on their resources? Nobody has ever answered that.

Why does Scotland want to leave when they will lose their subsidy from England and their finances after leaving would be impossible? The Scottish National Party, governing in Scotland, looks like an even worse set of managers than either the Conservatives or Labour. They spend English money freely while claiming Scotland would be better off as an independent state.

As for COVID. Yes, at first they made a mess relying on inadequate information and bad advice. But eventually, they got their act together and the UK did far better than Trump's America.