Opening gambits in EU / UK exit negotiations;

[keithisco]

1 minute ago, FLOMBIE said:

That a flat out lie. And you know it. I do make snarky remarks from time to time, but boohoo, can you only dish out?

 

All your rhetoric is about getting one over the EU. Like I said, who has the bigger b******s. That's not how it works. Both sides will work for functional trade agreements. Because that is needed - for all sides. And they will find a way that makes it possible for everyone to keep their face. 

Actually FLOMBIE it is not about getting "one over" the EU27 - it is about not being treated as a supplicant. I thought I had made that quite clear. Either the EU genuinely WANTS to negotiate sensibly and in a mature mind-set or it does not. If the latter is the case then it is time to walk.

The EU27 are clearly not ready to negotiate despite their earlier claims because they have already delayed them by a month. 

[FLOMBIE]

See, that is your opinion. No empirical evidence. You just seem fed up with not being able to set the terms. 

[keithisco]

34 minutes ago, FLOMBIE said:

See, that is your opinion. No empirical evidence. You just seem fed up with not being able to set the terms. 

I think you are just being a bit teensy-weensy childish now FLOMBIE. If you have an alternative "spin" for delaying the negotiations then please enlighten us because I cannot think of any other credible reason. You assume that the UK must act as supplicants?? - please tell us why.

Edited April 4, 2017 by keithisco

[FLOMBIE]

Just now, keithisco said:

I think you are just being a bit teensy-weensy childish now FLOMBIE. If you have an alternative "spin" for delaying the negotiations then please enlighten us. You assume that the UK must act as supplicants??

No, I am just not as emotional as you are on this topic. Thus my remark.

 

I don't spin anything. I just observe. If you want to get out of a contract, you do not get to set the terms. That has nothing to do with being a supplicant. You know, your choice of word shows me that you see this as someone witha winner and a loser. A stronger party and a weaker. But once you leave the emotions out of it, you'll see that nothing really can be determined by us on the outside. 

[keithisco]

5 minutes ago, FLOMBIE said:

No, I am just not as emotional as you are on this topic. Thus my remark.

 

I don't spin anything. I just observe. If you want to get out of a contract, you do not get to set the terms. That has nothing to do with being a supplicant. You know, your choice of word shows me that you see this as someone witha winner and a loser. A stronger party and a weaker. But once you leave the emotions out of it, you'll see that nothing really can be determined by us on the outside. 

No, I am not emotional about the topic just very engaged - emotions play their part when undemocratic forces do everything possible to overturn the results of a clear-cut referendum, or to obfuscate because they cannot get their "United" approach agreed.

[FLOMBIE]

Alright, noted. I do find your hatred of the EU to be emotional, though. I would just be glad about Britain getting out then. 

I'll just wait and see what happens. It's going to be interesting negotiations. 

Edited April 4, 2017 by FLOMBIE

[FLOMBIE]

double

Edited April 4, 2017 by FLOMBIE

[Helen of Annoy]

1 hour ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

Isn't it interesting that so many people from Australia have such affection for the Old Country that they keep wanting to helpfully explain how stupid the Brits are. 

Well, someone has to... not that it's not too late. 

[keithisco]

37 minutes ago, FLOMBIE said:

Alright, noted. I do find your hatred of the EU to be emotional, though. I would just be glad about Britain getting out then. 

I'll just wait and see what happens. It's going to be interesting negotiations. 

You have failed to understand that it is not hatred of the EU per se; rather it is a deep and enduring distrust in what the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties have forced upon us in morphing a perfectly good Trading Bloc into something of a supra-national Political Bloc. The interpretation of these 2 Treaties by unelectable bureaucrats in Brussels re-enforced by "Puppet States" was never approved by universal suffrage.

These negotiations will indeed be interesting because the other Eurosceptic groupings in the EU27 will be able to witness first-hand whether the bureaucrats truly represent their own sense of sovereignty or indeed their own national interests

Edited April 4, 2017 by keithisco

[stevewinn]

We head towards the negotiations with our economy on track to make it 5 consecutive years as the fastest growing economy in the G7, Even with the referendum vote and now the triggering of Article 50, with that backdrop in mind, the good economic news continues.

• Foreign direct investment in the UK rose sharply in the final quarter 2016 to £110 billion, the highest level since 2014.
• Current account deficit fell from 5.3% to 2.4% GDP, lowest since 2012; biggest quarterly decline since records began in 1955.
• UK current account deficit improved by largest amount on record -- deficit fell to £12 billion in Q4 2016 v £25.7 billion in Q3.
• Exports to the EU (goods and services) were there lowest on record in Q4 at 43.2%
• USA exports in 2016 at 18.9%. (could reach 25% with possible UK-USA trade deal)
• Department for International trade record number of investment projects in the UK last year, 2,213.

 

 

[hetrodoxly]

11 hours ago, Black Red Devil said:

Why would the EU go running to Britain?  You just have to look back at Britain before they joined the predecessor of the EU, the EEC.  Before it joined in 1973 Britain's economy was going backwards at the speed of light.  In the 60's, Germany, France and Italy's GDP was almost double that of Britain and mostly thanks to the common market.  Let's also not forget that all these three countries suffered vast devastation to it's territory and industry, far more than Britain, 20 odd years earlier.  Anyone that believes Thatcherism was Britain's sole savior in the early 70's is deluded.  The common market saved Britain and now that Britain's tummy is full, they want to leave the dinner table and say goodbye by raising their middle finger. What's even more incredible is the idea that, because Britain's economy is 9th in the world per PPP, which is a more realistic measure of the value of income per capita than GDP alone, people are going to maintain the same standard of living.  IMO you're in for a megashock that'll last generations when you go alone. 

Complete and utter nonsense the unions were crippling Britain, who stopped the stranglehold they had on the country?

[AnchorSteam]

I know it seems like I am hooked on YouTube, but I can only kcik one addition at a time... and this is a Gem that seems to state the case far better than anyone like me could.

It is quick, to the point, and delivered by a guy who speaks like only a Brit can;

(no, I don't mean the accent!)

 

 

[Black Red Devil]

13 hours ago, keithisco said:

Your assertions do not add up in any sense (Link to Tables)

Additionally, Germany has grown fat from using a heavily undervalued currency if it was compared just to Germany's GDP. It has grown fat in several sectors exporting tariff-free to the UK just like France (although less so).

As a correction to your monologue - Thatcherism did not even exist in the early 70's

So...I re-iterate that Germany, France, Italy also Spain Belgium will have to come cap-in-hand to continue trading on favourable terms with the UK.

 

Typo error.  I meant 80's.

The link in your linked table, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of_the_ten_largest_economies_by_GDP_(PPP) is more specific.  In 1950, the UK economy was far superior than Germany, France and Italy (the main EU6 members, the other three were the BENELUX countries), by 1973 Germany more than tripled compared to 1950 and overtook Britain, France more than tripled compared to 1950 and overtook Britain and Italy almost tripled compared to 1950.  Britain merely less than doubled and was on the slide. 

Some points from Economic experts:

After 1945, the six founding members of the European Economic Community (EEC), which later became the EU, grew faster than the UK (we refer to these countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands – as the EU6). This relative decline in the UK stopped, however. The conventional explanation for this is the far-reaching structural reforms implemented by Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s (Walters 1986). After thorough scrutiny (Bean and Symons 1989, Layard and Nickell 1989, Card and Freeman 2004), this view remains popular (Minford 2015).

We ask whether econometric evidence provides support for this perspective, and find that it does not. We then examine an alternative hypothesis: the turning point occurred instead around 1970, when the UK finally began the process of joining the EEC. We find that this latter explanation has strong empirical support.

Our intuition is that UK’s accession to the EEC signalled the pre-eminence of business groups that preferred to compete in the high-tech common European market over those that favoured the Commonwealth markets driven by comparative advantage. These pro-Europe business groups later became key supporters of Mrs Thatcher’s reforms. Without their support, we argue, Mrs Thatcher’s reforms would not have been nearly as effective, and perhaps not even designed or implemented.

Now take note of the graph below relative to productivity and the similarity between the turning point of the three countries who joined the EEC in 1973. 

Our main finding for per capita GDP, and even more strongly for total factor productivity (TFP), was that 1969 was the main turning point. This was the year Charles de Gaulle resigned, and hence the year in which the UK successfully applied to join the EEC. (This was the third attempt – de Gaulle vetoed applications in 1961 and 1967).

Figure 2 shows the ratio of TFP for the three countries that joined the EU in 1973 (UK, Denmark and Ireland) to the EU6 founding members between 1950 and 2011. We subjected these TFP ratios to the same structural break estimation exercise and same range of robustness checks (Campos and Coricelli 2017). The conclusions are even stronger than for per capita GDP. They suggest a structural break in 1969, which dominates the 1979, 1983, 1986 or 1990 alternatives. Although the turning point for productivity in Ireland is the introduction of the single market (O'Rourke 2016), for Denmark and UK this clearly happens earlier.

link

 

Edited April 5, 2017 by Black Red Devil

[Black Red Devil]

13 hours ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

Isn't it interesting that so many people from Australia have such affection for the Old Country that they keep wanting to helpfully explain how stupid the Brits are. 

Dunno what to tell you mate, it must have something to do with the fact that we're sooooo lonely and distant downunder that we feel the need for some motherly love from the Old country.  Anyhow, I did provide Saru with my passport details before I entered the UK forum and he granted me access but, at two conditions.  1. I enter the forum in tippy-toes and 2. I don't antagonise a certain Manfred Von Strudelburger.

[Black Red Devil]

8 hours ago, hetrodoxly said:

Complete and utter nonsense the unions were crippling Britain, who stopped the stranglehold they had on the country?

Let me guess, Margaret Thatcher?

[Black Red Devil]

10 hours ago, stevewinn said:

We head towards the negotiations with our economy on track to make it 5 consecutive years as the fastest growing economy in the G7, Even with the referendum vote and now the triggering of Article 50, with that backdrop in mind, the good economic news continues.

• Foreign direct investment in the UK rose sharply in the final quarter 2016 to £110 billion, the highest level since 2014.
• Current account deficit fell from 5.3% to 2.4% GDP, lowest since 2012; biggest quarterly decline since records began in 1955.
• UK current account deficit improved by largest amount on record -- deficit fell to £12 billion in Q4 2016 v £25.7 billion in Q3.
• Exports to the EU (goods and services) were there lowest on record in Q4 at 43.2%
• USA exports in 2016 at 18.9%. (could reach 25% with possible UK-USA trade deal)
• Department for International trade record number of investment projects in the UK last year, 2,213.

 

 

And you still have that iron ball around your ankle, the EU.  Imagine the greatness when you definitely leave!

[Black Red Devil]

Anyway, that's 4 posts now.  I don't think Von Doubledecker is going to give me many more chances.

[Black Red Devil]

An interesting piece from someone who was in the mix of things at the time.

How Britain negotiated its entry to the EEC – then failed to play its part

The standout:

We weren’t talking about the united states of Europe, or suggesting that Europe should become something similar to the United States or the then Soviet Union. Instead, we sought to set in train the development of something that needed to evolve inch by inch as we went ahead. It was always going to be up to later governments to establish how the union could be developed, and what the limits should be. The challenge was to get people seeing the world through a European lens.

It was sad that in later negotiations we were always one of the more reluctant countries. We never gave proper leadership. We spent our time arguing about details, and were grudging members when we could have been leading members.

[Space Commander Travis]

53 minutes ago, Black Red Devil said:

Typo error.  I meant 80's.

Right, so now it was membership of the EEC, which started in 1973, which was responsible for pulling Britain out of the doldrums in the 80s, despite the fact that it had done nothing at all to prevent Britain from declining into the doldrums in the 70s? The Winter of Discontent was 1978-79, but the magic of EEC membership just hadn't taken effect by then had it? 

[Black Red Devil]

14 minutes ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

Right, so now it was membership of the EEC, which started in 1973, which was responsible for pulling Britain out of the doldrums in the 80s, despite the fact that it had done nothing at all to prevent Britain from declining into the doldrums in the 70s? The Winter of Discontent was 1978-79, but the magic of EEC membership just hadn't taken effect by then had it? 

Not the 70's, the 60's.  During the 70's, after it joined, it's economy started to pick up.  Before the Winter of Discontent or Thatcher.

[Space Commander Travis]

5 minutes ago, Black Red Devil said:

Not the 70's, the 60's.  During the 70's, after it joined, it's economy started to pick up.  Before the Winter of Discontent or Thatcher.

You're living in a fantasy. Whatever some "experts" may be able to demonstrate with the aid of graphs, Britain, by the end of the 1970s, was a third world country ruled by hard Bolshevik unions whose expressed ambition was to bring down the Government. Even if some "expert"'s graph may be able to "prove" that actually the economy was starting to pick up, and they may (with the aid of a graph) be able to "prove" to their satisfaction that it was due to the EEC, what that does show is that EEC membership perhaps had absolutely no benefits for the ordinary man or person in the street, and perhaps that economists and "experts" really do talk out of their backside.

[Black Red Devil]

6 minutes ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

You're living in a fantasy. Whatever some "experts" may be able to demonstrate with the aid of graphs, Britain, by the end of the 1970s, was a third world country ruled by hard Bolshevik unions whose expressed ambition was to bring down the Government. Even if some "expert"'s graph may be able to "prove" that actually the economy was starting to pick up, and they may (with the aid of a graph) be able to "prove" to their satisfaction that it was due to the EEC, what that does show is that EEC membership perhaps had absolutely no benefits for the ordinary man or person in the street, and perhaps that economists and "experts" really do talk out of their backside.

Well sure, I suppose between experts with graphs and your opinion the clincher has to be your opinion.  LOL and I'm living in fantasyland.  I suppose you were also there in body and soul to witness the events at the time as well.

 

[Space Commander Travis]

It really is puzzling how people (from Australia in particular) seem so utterly fanatical about a political union/would-be superstate on the other side of the world to them that they utterly rewrite history in an attempt to prove their point. 

[hetrodoxly]

1 hour ago, Black Red Devil said:

Well sure, I suppose between experts with graphs and your opinion the clincher has to be your opinion.  LOL and I'm living in fantasyland.  I suppose you were also there in body and soul to witness the events at the time as well.

 

I lived through it, as an apprentice at British Leyland (Longbridge) i saw 'Red Robbo' bring the lines to a stop! every other day with no cars coming off the line for days, i remember going into work with oil lamps because the very well paid miners were on strike and electricity had to be rationed, today there appears to be great sympathy for the miners by people who weren't there, the irony is they had huge payouts compared to the pittance all the people they put out of work from the company's that had to shut down,

there were funds set up for miners while those they put on the dole got nothing, the west midlands the 'workshop of the world' was decimated, i remember the miners mantra

'no son of mine is going down pit' it appears everyone today want's the opportunity to put their kids underground, the fact is things started to change when Maggie got into power, it took time to turn things around but she was reelected 3 times because we could see she was on the right path, you give a list of countries who were doing better than the UK at the time well they were also members of the EU their economies going down makes your argument null and void.

[Eldorado]

Thatcher was lynched by her own Tory cabinet amid riots on the streets of Britain.  She died alone in a hotel bedroom, hated by half the people of Britain.

(Tony Blair was elected three times too.  He was also lynched by his own.  He's also hated by half the people of Britain)

It's a funny old game.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Eldorado