Has anyone changed their mind about Brexit?

A_Medium_Size_Jock

padington wrote: »

It's never nice signing up for a mobile phone, only to lose it then to have to pay the monthly bill for years and get nothing for it.

Funny because I thought we were told changing contracts was going to save hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

Ho hum.

No it isn't nice - but no phone has been lost.

Also surely that depends upon the terms of the contract; this phone contract was (we were told) able to be cancelled at any time giving appropriate notice.
Once cancelled, those hundreds of millions of pounds a year will instead turn out to be billions of pounds saved.

Above £40 billion according to the link below - so even if you have lost your phone you can easily afford a new one, eh?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/12/27/clean-brexit-is-the-way-to-go-saving-uk-24-billion-a-year-thank-you-goodbye-were-gone/#706e7aa96cd9

Conrad

padington wrote: »

Funny because I thought we were told changing contracts was going to save hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

Ho hum.

Remember these are opening volleys, typical in any negotiation - aim high.


When all is said and done we are shareholders in EU assets now selling our share. There will be liabilities and assets to balance out.


Personally I'd stop the daily £25m club fee today and say we've left, and invite the EU to carry on free trade (cant see even the EU wanting to further harm already struggling nations with high unemployment by further hampering their trade)

gfplux

An interesting piece within the BREXIT daily briefing from politico.eu
Please note these are not my words I post them to add to the debate. Politico are a Brussels based organisation so I imagine it leans towards the EU. However we all have things to learn and should be able to pick the bias out of any comments Politico publish.

"Britain could be on the hook for bills from the EU for many years to come.
Take space. One of the few legal principles in outer space, enshrined in Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, states that if you send something up, you must take care of it until it comes down.
States are liable for damage caused by their satellites, rockets and shuttles “on the Earth, in the air or in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.”
The EU’s four most recent satellites were sent into a medium-Earth orbit in November last year, carried by the EU’s own Ariane rocket on flight VA233 from Kourou in French Guiana.
The satellites are part of a global navigation system called Galileo, planned to include at least 24 satellites by 2020, which is the EU’s best hope of competing with America’s GPS.
The satellites are intended to stay up in space for at least 12 years. Then, if nothing goes wrong, they’ll burn up when re-entering the atmosphere.
But what happens if one of them doesn’t melt, if a piece comes down and falls through someone’s roof?

Britain and the EU will need to figure out exactly what the U.K. is liable for during their divorce negotiations.

Britain, brace for impact. The questions don’t stop in space.

What happens to collective pension liabilities for EU civil servants if the EU’s pension system breaks down? EU employees who joined before Brexit — or at least before Article 50 is triggered, for those inclined to be a little more accommodating — represent a potential liability to the British taxpayer until they retire in some 30 years or more.

What about bridges, roads, railroads and airports planned for construction using EU subsidies, money that has been promised will only be disbursed a few years from now?

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned Brits Tuesday that they’re going to be presented with a “hefty” bill, or sal!e in the French he used in front of the Belgian parliament. The devil’s in the details: Expect the bill to be for a long long list of tiny things — be they in Brussels or in outer space."

A_Medium_Size_Jock

Conrad wrote: »

Remember these are opening volleys, typical in any negotiation - aim high.


When all is said and done we are shareholders in EU assets now selling our share. There will be liabilities and assets to balance out.


Personally I'd stop the daily £25m club fee today and say we've left, and invite the EU to carry on free trade (cant see even the EU wanting to further harm already struggling nations with high unemployment by further hampering their trade)

Welcome back Conrad!

gfplux wrote: »

An interesting piece within the BREXIT daily briefing from politico.eu
Please note these are not my words I post them to add to the debate. Politico are a Brussels based organisation so I imagine it leans towards the EU. However we all have things to learn and should be able to pick the bias out of any comments Politico publish.

This has been discussed ad nauseam.
Try balancing such possibilities with those from say post # 16619 in this thread onwards:

cogito wrote: »

For starters, the assets of the European Investment Bank total €243bn. The UK's share of that should come to around €30bn.

There cannot be much doubt that certain things already agreed may require funding, the example of space being just one.
Providing participation in that programme by the UK is also as agreed prior to Brexit.

What conversely can also not be denied however if this route is chosen is that the UK is equally entitled to a share of assets built since commencing membership.

Ergo IMHO a balance will probably equate to a negligible sum.

steampowered

Of course there will be some ongoing liabilities. The space thing is a great example.

I am sure there also be ongoing agreed expenditures. There was an article this morning about E-numbers in food: a European system used to check that additives are safe before they can be added to food. It would make perfect sense for the UK to continue paying towards that and adopting the E-number system. If the UK were to set-up and pay its own laboratories to run a duplicate testing system that would be far more expensive and would make cross-border trade more difficult.

I don't think any of that should stop Brexit though. That's just sensible cross-border cooperation.

.string.

gfplux wrote: »

Coming back to the original question asked by the original poster.
I voted remain and was shocked and heart broken (yes) when the result was announced.
However +7 months on I have come to terms with the result and I except that Britain is leaving the EU.
ALL those who voted thought that the EU had effected their lives significantly in either a negative or a positive way. Leaving such an entity that has effected so many people in so many ways will not be a simple thing.
The job of leaving is in the hands of the British Government and I can only hope they will do a good job. Most on both sides of the argument have little concept how complicated it will be. I do worry that all the intellectual power and man/women hours, days, weeks and months being used on the Brexit planning and negotiations will leave many other important issues neglected.
I and others have often complained politicians never get anything done, well this time they might not get anything done BUT BREXIT.
I still believe leaving the EU is wrong and will make both Britain and the EU weaker, but the people have spoken and we have to live with it.

I have pretty well the same opinion. I would however aldd that it would be much more helpful if more thought was given ( by the 48%) as to how Brexit could be successful rather than repeating ad borium the arguments of the Refsrendum. By continually doooming and gloomng those that do reduce the chances of a good result by enboldening EU expectatuons.

When the extent and implications of the UK/EU deal are known and Parliament gets to vote on it, then we who have not been privy to the detailed progress of the negotiations will be at last to judge properly both on leaving the EU and on staying in it. I am assuming that will be an option up to the last minute by withdrawing Article 50.

It is not axiomatic that rejoining the EU would be attractive. Would we keep the budget rebate? Would we be able to reverse the march towards ever closer union? Cameron's now-defunct agreement gave us some assurance on that; but now? As a formerly staunch remainer myself I am not certain I would be so again.

BJV

No. We all had the opportunity to vote. Those who wanted to vote voted and the majority said leave. My views have not changed. My OH is french we lived in France for a time, have family there and spend a lot of time there. They do not feel unwelcome, instead I think they are more worried about there own elections and what will happen.

Honestly wish that we could all but the united back in UK and get behind the decision and make the most of the opportunity.

.string.

gfplux wrote: »

An interesting piece within the BREXIT daily briefing from politico.eu
Please note these are not my words I post them to add to the debate. Politico are a Brussels based organisation so I imagine it leans towards the EU. However we all have things to learn and should be able to pick the bias out of any comments Politico publish.

"Britain could be on the hook for bills from the EU for many years to come.
Take space. One of the few legal principles in outer space, enshrined in Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, states that if you send something up, you must take care of it until it comes down.
States are liable for damage caused by their satellites, rockets and shuttles “on the Earth, in the air or in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.”
The EU’s four most recent satellites were sent into a medium-Earth orbit in November last year, carried by the EU’s own Ariane rocket on flight VA233 from Kourou in French Guiana.
The satellites are part of a global navigation system called Galileo, planned to include at least 24 satellites by 2020, which is the EU’s best hope of competing with America’s GPS.
The satellites are intended to stay up in space for at least 12 years. Then, if nothing goes wrong, they’ll burn up when re-entering the atmosphere.
But what happens if one of them doesn’t melt, if a piece comes down and falls through someone’s roof?

Britain and the EU will need to figure out exactly what the U.K. is liable for during their divorce negotiations.

Britain, brace for impact. The questions don’t stop in space.

What happens to collective pension liabilities for EU civil servants if the EU’s pension system breaks down? EU employees who joined before Brexit — or at least before Article 50 is triggered, for those inclined to be a little more accommodating — represent a potential liability to the British taxpayer until they retire in some 30 years or more.

What about bridges, roads, railroads and airports planned for construction using EU subsidies, money that has been promised will only be disbursed a few years from now?

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned Brits Tuesday that they’re going to be presented with a “hefty” bill, or sal!e in the French he used in front of the Belgian parliament. The devil’s in the details: Expect the bill to be for a long long list of tiny things — be they in Brussels or in outer space."

The UK may or may not want to continue with some projects. It is a matter of negotiation as to whether this involves costs or whether the UK simply continues to invest in that project. If the latter it is not a cost as such but an investment. There are also such things as vested rights in the technology and results of the project.

There will be some projects which are EU infrastructure projects in which the UK is not interested. I doubt whether the EU can hold the UK to account on those. I don't know the specifics but the usual contract arrangement is for contracts of a set duration tuned to the relevant (EU in this case) financial year. So since Brexit has been on the cards since last June, the EU would have been incompetents had they committed new expenditure beyond April 2019. Our people will be well aware of this.

So it's no slam dunk for the EU negotiators.

Those quoted remarks on Space are not credible or relevant to large Brexit costs in my opinion - involvement of the UK is as part of a while group of countries and liability, if there is any can hardly be determined in advance, there are too many what-ifs many of which would be outside the UK's responsibility.

I should add that meeting obligations for a safe deorbit is a matter of design, i.e. already done.

In any case EU satellite projects are only a very small part of the total

Incidentally, the Arians is not an EU project, it is ESA's, an elementary error by the person who wrote that piece.

tara747

To the Brexiters who tell us Remainers to "be positive about Brexit" and "accept the will of the people", I say: for 41 years, they refused to be positive about the EU and never accepted the result of the 1975 referendum, a far more emphatic majority than the 52% delivered in June.

tara747

Sapphire wrote: »

Just spotted this. So good of you to belittle the very real and severe suffering of my parents and grandparents, who lost family in terrible circumstances to the Germans, and were themselves severely traumatised by being wounded, placed in POW camps and losing their country as well as all their worldly goods – something you obviously have no concept of, especially given your flippant description of the German invaders (who were actually murderers, as witnessed by my family and millions of other people) as 'opponents'.

Don't worry, though, you'll sing a different tune when you experience such things yourself – and you will. Unfortunately, it seems that will be the only way you will learn. Well done. :T

My opinion of people like you stands – and my attitude towards them. And I'll end it at that.

I am in no way belittling the Nazis' crimes.

Your previous post #125 stated that you don't trust Germany - an entire country - because of what the Nazis did. Never mind the fact that modern-day Germany is a far more moderate and tolerant country than modern-day Britain and the German people are still horrified by the atrocities their forebears committed.

That's why I told you to get over yourself. And my comment stands.