Brexit, the economy and house prices part 5

Eric_the_half_a_bee

Herzlos wrote: »

I don't hate seeing interesting news stories; so many pro-brexit ones contradict themselves.

That's why I prefer anti-Brexit news stories. They are always consistent.

Thrugelmir

gfplux wrote: »

Britain was told by its leaders before negotiations started in June 2017 that all would go smoothly and if it did not a no deal would be better that a bad deal.

17 months to go yet. Why the panic?

CKhalvashi

Thrugelmir wrote: »

17 months to go yet. Why the panic?

Because 17 months in my line of work isn't a long time to organise something so big, especially when you need 27 parties to agree to it at the end. I'm being realistic from my own experiences and not trying to 'talk the country down' at all.

I saw first hand the operational difficulties of something much smaller with fewer organising parties and one management company overseeing everything with 11 months to plan earlier this year. It ended up costing the management company a lot more than the original quotes, and also more than it should have done had it been organised properly in the first place. It also led to the resignation of 2 very good (and key to the project) executives in the final stage from the largest contractor, one of whom I've known personally since she was appointed to the role in 2009, in protest at the way the management company had done things. This complicated matters further.

When you're comparing the issues I've just mentioned and the future of a country, what do you think is going to take longer and be worse in the event of it going horribly wrong?

I've been deliberately vague in the above description and won't be going further into who the parties mentioned are.

cogito

gfplux wrote: »

Trade deals do take a long time to bring to conclusion.

Indeed they do. The EU are so successful in negotiating trade deals that in the several decades of its existence, they have failed to
achieve deals with the likes of the USA, Japan, China, India and Brazil.

They did however trumpet loudly an agreement with Japan but it turned out that it was only an agreement to talk about an agreement. It's already floundering over cheese exports.

Herzlos

Yes it takes the EU a long time to negotiate a trading agreement because they have so many considerations, but it's the EU we need to negotiate with. 24 months was cutting it fine if we were making progress and took an off the shelf option.

Once we can decide what we want I'm confident the pace will pick up.

gfplux

ukcarper wrote: »

No that's what EU say. I fail to understand why you and others are so keen to put blame on UK and paint EU as some kind of righteous angles.

I voted remain but I realise people voted to leave and the main reason they did that was not to be tied to the four freedoms. I fully expect us to leave and no trade deal will be detrimental to us and EU but the EU are afraid that if they give us a good deal other member states might be tempted to leave.

When you talk of the EU not wanting to give Britain a good deal what do you mean.
Is it only the money?
So is a good deal that Britain pays 25% of what is owed, or 50% or 75%.
Is a bad deal about the amount of money. So a good deal is paying £25 billion, or £50 billion.
There is so much talk about a good or bad deal but no one wants to be specific.

ukcarper

gfplux wrote: »

When you talk of the EU not wanting to give Britain a good deal what do you mean.
Is it only the money?
So is a good deal that Britain pays 25% of what is owed, or 50% or 75%.
Is a bad deal about the amount of money. So a good deal is paying £25 billion, or £50 billion.
There is so much talk about a good or bad deal but no one wants to be specific.

I think the UK should pay all of what it legally owes but it's up to EU to prove what we owe, not pluck a figure out of the air. If they were to present a detail account with figures it would be possible to look at it and see if figures were realistic. I don't think EU citizens living in UK should be given better rights than UK citizens and I can't see how you can realistically resolve the Irish border question with out knowing trade agreement.

Herzlos

ukcarper wrote: »

I think the UK should pay all of what it legally owes but it's up to EU to prove what we owe, not pluck a figure out of the air. If they were to present a detail account with figures it would be possible to look at it and see if figures were realistic.

They pretty much did and the UK said "nope, not paying that" and has then refused to talk about it. That's what we're stuck on; we haven't provided any kind of counter offer or discussion as to what we should/shouldn't pay.

I don't think EU citizens living in UK should be given better rights than UK citizens

I don't think it's fair for EU citizens to lose rights just because we voted to lose rights. That said, I don't think they need ECJ coverage to guarantee those rights; dual citizenship/passporting should be enough.

and I can't see how you can realistically resolve the Irish border question with out knowing trade agreement.

Both sides want as free trade as possible, so that's not strictly the issue.

You do need to know what the deal is regarding movement and standards though. Assuming tariff free trade, if people are allowed to cross freely and standards and taxes are the same on both sides then no border is needed. This is what the EU wants, and is basically EU membership.

If we want to restrict movement or adopt different goods standards then we need some sort of border point.

I don't think it's actually a solvable problem whatever terms we agree on. The only solution is Irish reunification (either all in EU with hard border to UK, or NI becomes UK with hard border at Eire) but I don't think that's achievable without another few decades of bloodshed.

There are too many border crossings to monitor, and no interest from anyone for a hard border anywhere. A soft border would still involve some sort of occasional checks and would be entirely porous, so really not worth the effort of enforcing.

Maybe you could get away with some sort of Israeli style intelligence based border with no checks but surveillance and interception of anyone we're sure is violating whatever terms (i.e. non-EU nationals, goods smugglers) but again, I doubt those that don't want a hard border would be happy being spied on.

An open border would suit everyone apart from those that wanted to stop migrants, because they could just travel in freely via Eire->NI->UK instead of coming over direct from France.

mayonnaise

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The only people stalling progress here are the UK govt by continuing to bicker and fight with each other and refusing to accept reality.

Only yesterday, within a couple of hours we heard:
- Our Brexit Secretary saying it was important to keep the 'no deal' option open.
- Our Home Secretary saying the 'no deal' option was 'unthinkable'.

And to top it all off, our Foreign Secretary iterated that "the EU needs to get serious about Brexit talks".

Herzlos

'no deal' has always been a bluff, and everyone knows it. People seem quite upset that we're admitting publicly that we don't have any cards.