Early-retirement wannabe

greenglide

... and it could still be **** off!

Remember that free access to the single market, even if the Norwegian model where you accept free movement of people and get no say in the making of the rules, would still require the agreement of all the remaining member states, not just Germany and France.

All of the remaining states have their own agendas as well. Access will come at a price, we dont know what that price will be.

the UK can play hard ball as well

We have shown, in the past, to be very, very poor at playing hard ball over anything important over many years.

We consider ourselves as "important" and "special" and want everyone else to agree with this. The rest of the world often remembers what we did to them in the past and wants to do us no favours.

westv

This thread seems to have morphed into a EU debate.

jojorose

Hi Im the 9K lady whose name should not be spoken

I would have replied earlier but Ive not been on line for a while as my partner and I have been off getting married and gallavanting around the South Coast in the van.

The aim of my post was purely to say if you can afford it do it. In no way was i implying that those with big houses shouldnt have them. What I was trying to say is if you think you can afford it, if your health is bad, if you hate your job with a passion (which I did) you can do it without those things.

I am finding that 9K is "stingy" and am looking at ways to make a little income for luxuries but we are happy. I find I appreciate the things I have more and I have always been careful with my cash. I was a single mum for a long time so had got used to counting the pennies.

We could have worked for another ten years plus (and in the sector I worked it would have been beneficial to do so) but my friends started to die, to have heart attacks, to take time off with stress and so on.

I knew what I used to live on and I knew I could do it without the boys being home. We jumped. In that time frame Tata have sent the letter saying my new husbands pension will probably take a 10% hit. One of my sons has been taken ill and had to come home. Trying not to think about the Brexit. Would I do it again. YES.

More would be great but its fine, really it is.

jamesd

Marine_life wrote: »

I am not sure why the negotiations should take that long as I imagine the conversation will go something like this

There are 196 - 1 countries that trade deals can be negotiated with and not all of them are in the EU. To minimise trade disruption it would be sensible to get deals in place with every one of those countries that is not under a boycott before notice is given of an intent to leave the EU. Maybe that'll leave the EU ones as the rump with no deals in place before the notice. Similarly there's a lot of EU-based legislation that needs updating and probably can't be done within two years, but which should be sorted out before notice is given.

Marine_life wrote: »

Boris Johnson: "Can we please have access to the free market, pay less for it and reduce immigration"
EU official: "Seriously?"
BoJo: "Yes"
EU official "No"
Bojo: "oh"

More sensibly "we'll let you know when we have all of our other trade deals and national law updates in place; let us know if you want discuss and speed things up for the EU countries instead of waiting until after all of the others are done". With immigration likely to be a major issue in the 2017 elections in both France and Germany I presume that conniptions would result as the current leaders recognise that this issue isn't going to be tidily sorted out before their electorate gets to vote.

A purpose of the two year time limit is to impose pressure on the departing country to accept unfavourable deal terms. The departing country doesn't have to notify until it's good and ready and that means minimising its own risk and the risk to all of the non-EU countries it trades with from the uncertainty of things like losing tall of the trade deals that the EU has negotiated. The EU is a big trading partner but it's not the only one and those other countries and their people deserve the certainty of having deals in place.

You can see the no negotiating pressure tactic in effect now, with France banning negotiations but the Paris region having frequent ads in the Financial Times encouraging companies to seek to move there, undoubtedly with complete freedom to negotiate those deals.

Let me know if the EU trade deal with the US obliges the US to accept free movement of labour between the EU and US without visas. Or indeed if you know of any deal with a non-European country which has that as a requirement of the trade deal. China, say, or India.

The EU is perfectly entitled to say that they are going to impose worse* trade deal conditions on European countries than non-European countries but that doesn't meant that the end result will necessarily be those worse terms.

I don't know how things are going to turn out but I'm not at all keen on a UK government being rushed into a way too short two year notice period when there four decades worth of trade deals and law to update.

*worse here means in the eyes of brexit voters who voted with opposing immigration as a substantial part of their reasoning. That's not my personal view, I think it's largely a good thing.

mgdavid

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Boris Johnson: "Can we please have access to the free market, pay less for it and reduce immigration"
EU official: "Seriously?"
BoJo: "Yes"
EU official "No"
Bojo: "oh dear in that case we'll be imposing a 20% tariff on everything EU, and locking all European fishermen out of UK waters, which will cost you £2BN and us £200M and you can kiss bye bye to the jobs of 20% of Seat, BMW, Citroen and Renault workers and half your fishermen and we'll be accepting zero of your young peopel to work here except in industries we choose, so you can have an extra million of your unemployed young back. Now, what was your answer again?"

My point being, the UK can play hard ball as well and its sad how little confidence so many people have in their own country, how much they think we must kow tow to unelected officials who cannot be removed however unpopular, and perhaps a clue why many voted leave, because they were fed up being dictated to. And BTW i voted Remain but I appreciate why so many didnt.

You missed VW-Audi-Porsche and Mercedes-Benz who employ well over 400,000 in Germany, not insignificant numbers.

atush

jojorose wrote: »

Hi Im the 9K lady whose name should not be spoken

I am sorry (although not surprised) you are finding 9K hard to live on, I am even more sorry for the news of your son and your OH's pension.

My 3 boys have just moved back home (hopefully temporarily) and i find my costs shooting up (although i get rent from 2 of them). It is fun and irritating in equal measure.

Have fun tootling round the coast in your van, and good luck for the future.

richbeth

The WTO actually has default tariffs agreed so we already know the worst case scenario. It is a massive and complex list but can be accessed here
https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/tariffs_e/database_explanation_e.htm

FYI a quick glance at some of our biggest exports shows cars have 10% tariff into the EU, Pharma products 0 % and engines 1.7-4.2 % depending on fuel. Evidently the average tariff is 3.8%.

In general tariffs are falling over time in order to encourage trade and with some exceptions (e.g. cars) are nowhere near the barrier they used to be. If I've read the document correctly the average tariff was 6.3 % in 1995 (https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm2_e.htm) presumably it was even higher when we joined the EC in the early 70s. So for many industries these in themselves won't be a barrier to being in the UK if we have a competitive corporation tax system and skilled workforce.

Back on topic I'm still planning to retire early but as I'm 2-3 years away it may be sensible to work an extra year or so and have a much larger contingency than planned :-)
R

robin61

Here is what I have been struggling with. Take cars as an example. A 10% import duty on cars would work both ways. If we buy more cars from the EU than we sell to them then it's a net gain for the UK. Then we could ring fence that money and use it to give a tax incentive to the firms who export cars to the EU to cover the 10% duty.
If the balance of trade is against us surely we are in a strong position ?

AnotherJoe

westv wrote: »

This thread seems to have morphed into a EU debate.

I don't think I've had any conversation in the last week that hasn't

bigadaj

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I don't think I've had any conversation in the last week that hasn't

That's depressing, do you live with bigfreddiel?