Brexit discussion thread XIII (Please read OP before posting)

BonnieSituation

Jizique wrote: »

Bentley was sold to VW and RR Motors to BMW

It was actually a lot more complicated than that.

Both were sold to VW and the RR trademarks were owned by a separate entity and the rights to them transferred to BMW a few years after.

MG Rover was bought by BMW as well despite its obvious and more sensible links to Honda.

The 75 being the major product of that period. Then it all went awry.

johnnyskeleton

Sam Russell wrote: »

Look back at the dot com bubble.

Venture capitalists threw money at anyone who had a dot before a com and a sort of idea. All this money was burned at a furious rate that produced very very few successes ad a lot of very unhappy investors and quite a few rich fraudsters.

Entrepreneurs are like artists - they produce their best work when they are hungry.

Cummins plan for seeding tech start ups is folly and will spawn much corruption, as has already been seen from this Gov.

Look at right now, even, with companies like spotify who dont make profit:

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/loss-making-spotify-will-continue-to-focus-on-growth-over-profit-for-next-few-years/#:~:text=Since%20it%20launched%2012%20years,bn%20at%20today's%20exchange%20rate.

The narrative that they plan to grow and so are reinvesting is one way to look at it. The other is that for over a decade western governments have been pumping credit into the system but its not materialising as wealth or growth on the high street. I dont think its unreasonable to connect those two dots.

So yeah, the UK plans to pump more into an already (IMO) overinflated sector of the economy that is engaged in a deeply flawed investment model of growth created by chasing growth instead of growth created by profitable trading. That sounds like a bold strategy, but lets see how it works out for them

trellheim

Where can i find the details of the free trade deal that the EU and UK are about to sign up to??

Thats the big question. No-one knows until they emerge from the tunnel . can't be too long now as ratification timelines by individual countries and Europarl. Also nearly guaranteed someone's going to want a pound of flesh ( watch what happened over the Belarus sanctions)

johnnyskeleton

View wrote: »

It is also one that they never make about elsewhere in the world - You never hear them arguing that the US dollar is a convenient mechanism that boosts the profits of companies in California by keeping the currency of California low or that the same applies to companies in the London and SE England regions for a U.K. wide Sterling. If the poorer Euro regions are supposedly dragging down the value of the Euro then equally the poorer regions of the USA and of the U.K. are dragging down the value of their respective currencies.

Because of the UKs reliance on financial industries, the opposite applies. Their export of financial services benefits from a strong stable and high currency. Thus, you have some of the poorest areas in western europe in the UK and they are unable to trade their way out of it until recently, because STG was too high compared to other countries. Brexit has theoretically been a boon to the poorer manufacturing parts of the UK, except that it has created such a toxic and uncertain investing environment that all the benefits are almost instantly cancelled by the more significant detriments.

I do agree with your overall point though about the way they want to characterise the Germans in the EU. But much like they keep insisting that the EU is about economics not peace in Europe, so too do they inaccurately consider that Germany doesnt want a weak currency, it wants a stable currency, because they are terrified of weimar style inflation and devaluation

View

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Because of the UKs reliance on financial industries, the opposite applies. Their export of financial services benefits from a strong stable and high currency.

Sterling, like the Euro, floats freely and the markets determine its value. As such, it can’t be argued that Sterling was too high. In addition, it should be pointed out that Sterling has consistently but slowly lost value against the Euro since the latter was launched in 1999.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Thus, you have some of the poorest areas in western europe in the UK and they are unable to trade their way out of it until recently, because STG was too high compared to other countries.

That’s the flip side to the argument about any currency since if its supposedly too high for some region, it will automatically be too low for another. We could, for instance, have argued that the value of the Punt was too low for Dublin and far too high for Leitrim, but I doubt anyone would argue that we should have floated a Punt for every county or townland!

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Brexit has theoretically been a boon to the poorer manufacturing parts of the UK, except that it has created such a toxic and uncertain investing environment that all the benefits are almost instantly cancelled by the more significant detriments.

Agreed. Like much of Brexit the supposed benefits from it remain theoretical even after they have left the EU. It brings to mind the joke about not letting reality interfere with a good theory.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I do agree with your overall point though about the way they want to characterise the Germans in the EU. But much like they keep insisting that the EU is about economics not peace in Europe, so too do they inaccurately consider that Germany doesnt want a weak currency, it wants a stable currency, because they are terrified of weimar style inflation and devaluation

I don’t think the Germans are terrified about this as this stage. Rather they have operated in a stable, low inflation environment for decades and are utterly unconvinced of the supposed benefits of a high inflation environment.

fash

forgottenhills wrote: »

The EU had a no-blame open door to walk away from trade talks with the UK after the UK signaled that they would renege on the WA with their Internal Market Bill but it is telling that they did not even though this was a real insult and provocation. Mutti Merkel had her say and now they all seem to be the best of mates again and about to sign up to a free trade deal. All a coincidence I'm sure. The EU doesn't need access to the UK market blah blah blah...

Why would they be silly enough to walk away? It costs nothing to talk- and you potentially get a deal from a country you have over a barrel. Why should the EU have walked away?

Peregrinus

forgottenhills wrote: »

Well yes but they manufacture in quantity in order to achieve economies of scale and hence they have a vital need to export. To export you need to avoid tariffs and thus you need trade deals. (You also need to keep your currency from going too high and many argue that the Euro is a convenient mechanism for Germany to achieve this but that is a whole different thread in itself). In manufacturing the last few percent of your production run can be 100% of your profit after fixed costs and hence the Germans will be keen to hold on to a tariff free market into the UK, even if is only 5-6% of global sales. There is also the issue of JIT manufacturing of many products using components sourced in both the UK and the EU, the problem of identifying country of origin for customs purposes for some manufactured products, the interconnected nature and physical proximity of the economies that the EU never had to contend with in other trade talks.

The EU had a no-blame open door to walk away from trade talks with the UK after the UK signaled that they would renege on the WA with their Internal Market Bill but it is telling that they did not even though this was a real insult and provocation. Mutti Merkel had her say and now they all seem to be the best of mates again and about to sign up to a free trade deal. All a coincidence I'm sure. The EU doesn't need access to the UK market blah blah blah...

The EU may or may not need access to the UK market, but we certainly want it. Nobody has ever suggested otherwise; least of all the EU ourselfves. We don't want it at any cost, but we certainly would rather have it than not. Hence the EU appetite for a trade deal . . . on terms that we like.

The Vote Leave government's cavortings certainly gave the EU an open door to walk away if we wanted to. But we didn't want to, so we didn't. Why would allow ourselves to be so transparently manipulated into abandoning our own agenda and our own interests? We still want a deal, within the same parameters that have always applied. Why would this change?

The schizophrenia here isn't on the EU side, which has always been clear about wanting an FTA with the UK, and has also been clear and consistent about the parameters to that want. The schizophrenia is on the UK side where Johnson is credibly reported to be undecided about whether he wants a deal or not, powerful factions within the governing junta are pulling in opposite directions, and there has been no attempt to construct any kind of consensus about whether a deal is desirable and if so why or, indeed, about a coherent national trade policy.

RobMc59

fash wrote: »

Why would they be silly enough to walk away? It costs nothing to talk- and you potentially get a deal from a country you have over a barrel. Why should the EU have walked away?

Potentially over a barrel?I was under the impression reading the majority of posts here over the last few months the UK would have been pleading for mercy and scraps from the table by now...still waiting though.

Sam Russell

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Thanks, I had thought it was Rolls Royce the jet engine makers. Rover used to make jet engines once upon a time.

RR Jet Engines were moved away from RR cars sometime before the sale of the trade mark to BMW - just the trade mark. RR went bust, and the Jet Engine part was rescued, and the the RR cars bit emerged briefly from bankruptcy.

Rover did some experiments with a jet engined car - but it came to nought. It turned out to be a curiosity - a bit like the Wankel engine, although Mazda actually had a production version on sale.

johnnyskeleton

View wrote: »

Sterling, like the Euro, floats freely and the markets determine its value. As such, it can’t be argued that Sterling was too high. In addition, it should be pointed out that Sterling has consistently but slowly lost value against the Euro since the latter was launched in 1999.

The days of governments setting the currency value or pegging are gone, but there are still many things that a central bank can do to influence currency fluctuations, including the setting of interest rates and printing additional money.

I'm not saying that Sterling was in my view too high, but I am pointing out that it suits the UK's exports for their currency to be high because they are exporting financial products, in much the same way as it could be said that it suits German goods exporters if the Euro is lower than it arguably should be. Neither statement suggests that it is a deliberate policy on either side, but the point is that the British analysis have complained about German exporters benefitting from the lower Euro, but UK Exporters would not benefit from lower Sterling because so much of their exports are financial services.

Again, it has been German and ECB policy to control inflation and create a stable currency which is long term much better than trying to manipulate a currency. However, that policy has not survived the 2008 recession.

I don't agree that sterling has consistently lost value against the Euro since 1999. It was £1.4 to the € on the 1st Jan, 1999, then went up a bit but generally hovered in or around £1.4 until the 2008 crash when it went down to £1.10ish and then back up. Brexit caused it to drop again in 2016, and where it goes from here really depends on what happens next. But it is not a slow decline.

I'm not quite sure what your point is in relation to the rest of your post. You originally critiqued the British view that Germany relies on the poorer countries in Europe to keep the currency low. I agree with your critique of that, and it follows logically that you could just as easily critique London for keeping the currency too high for the poorer regions.

Sam Russell

RobMc59 wrote: »

Potentially over a barrel?I was under the impression reading the majority of posts here over the last few months the UK would have been pleading for mercy and scraps from the table by now...still waiting though.

Maybe they are - we do not know, but the word seeping out from the tunnel is that fishing continues as is for a few years.

We will know soon, but the USA election will be a factor, and that will not be certain for a good few days.

murphaph

forgottenhills wrote: »

I think that's an overly simplistic way of looking at it. For many of the years from the 1960s to the 1990's, when British manufacturing was suffering its greatest decline, the Labour party were in power there and they didn't do any more than the Tories to arrest the decline during their periods in government.

What was happening was a widespread move of manufacturing from high cost areas in the West to new low cost and highly efficient manufacturing areas particularly in China, Japan and Korea. It is debatable if any government there could have saved traditional manufacturing. Where the UK missed out was in having any strategy to change from their traditional manufacturing in steel, heavy engineering, shipbuilding etc into new areas such as pharma, electronics etc. Ireland was lucky in that we didn't have much heavy manufacturing to lose to the Far East and instead we skipped industry generations straight to the pharma and IT era.

The UK (and in Ireland we slavishly followed them) had terrible "us vs. them" management-employee relations. That's what really killed British industry. A constant battle, rather than a more consensus led approach like in Germany, which was completely smashed after the war. In Germany the unions see the books. They sit at the table and know the real challenges being faced by the employer. There is an element of common sense at play.

British manufacturing wasn't doomed but the British class system doomed it. It was unconscionable for a business owner back then to allow union riff raff anywhere near the levers of power.

timetogo1

RobMc59 wrote: »

Potentially over a barrel?I was under the impression reading the majority of posts here over the last few months the UK would have been pleading for mercy and scraps from the table by now...still waiting though.

Think you made a mistake there.

This

fash wrote: »

you potentially get a deal from a country you have over a barrel.

Does not translate to

RobMc59 wrote: »

Potentially over a barrel?

ancapailldorcha

RobMc59 wrote: »

Potentially over a barrel?I was under the impression reading the majority of posts here over the last few months the UK would have been pleading for mercy and scraps from the table by now...still waiting though.

Like the overwhelming majority of this country, you continue to fail to understand what the EU is and what it is for.

Getting London "over a barrel" was never its objective. It's objective is to protect the welfare and interests of its member states. In the context of these negotiations, this means preventing the Conservatives from undermining the Belfast Agreement, securing the UK's commitment to settling its financial obligations, protecting EU citizens' rights in the UK and negotiating a deep and comprehensive trade deal.

Leroy42

RobMc59 wrote: »

Potentially over a barrel?I was under the impression reading the majority of posts here over the last few months the UK would have been pleading for mercy and scraps from the table by now...still waiting though.

This is the approach taken by the Brexiteers, all about one side winning and the other losing. The EU would rather the UK came to it senses and remained, but that was never realistic so they quickly (as in within days of the result) prepared the options open to the UK.

The EU very much want a deal, in fact they were very happy with the previous deal (well happy!). So they would obviously like to return to as close to that as possible.

There is little long term benefit from forcing the UK into anything. As the disgraceful behaviour over the WA has shown, even when the UK agree to something it is worthless once they decide they no longer feel the need to abide by it.

So consensus is, and always was, the way to go. Help the UK to get where we want them to go. Allow them to think they did it.

Look at the WA. TM was hounded, called a traitor, and eventually licked out of office and then Johnson agrees to something which seems even less beneficial. But the UK felt they had 'got the better' of the EU and so it sailed through the HoC and the electorate gleefully voted for it.

The EU will not get everything they want, ie the UK returning to the EU, but it will get far closer to its goals than the UK will to theirs.

ancapailldorcha

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Just going to leave this here https://fullfact.org/online/ireland-uk-tracing-app/

Mod: No more of this please. When posting a link, please give a context for it instead of just pasting it.

RobMc59

Sam Russell wrote: »

Maybe they are - we do not know, but the word seeping out from the tunnel is that fishing continues as is for a few years.

We will know soon, but the USA election will be a factor, and that will not be certain for a good few days.

Realistically,the UK was always going to concede on fishing if the EU was willing to compromise also.
I wouldn't pin too many hopes Biden would cut off his nose to spite his face regarding any potential trade deal with the UK because of his Irish descent.(Obviously the UK disregarding the GFA would change this)There are many people of Irish descent here in the UK and even if they don't agree with the current government,the interests of the UK comes first.

fash

RobMc59 wrote: »

Potentially over a barrel?I was under the impression reading the majority of posts here over the last few months the UK would have been pleading for mercy and scraps from the table by now...still waiting though.

It is- but behind closed doors. You think the Tories are silly enough to discredit themselves in front of the (what they clearly regards as) sheep?

sondagefaux

RobMc59 wrote: »

Realistically,the UK was always going to concede on fishing if the EU was willing to compromise also.
I wouldn't pin too many hopes Biden would cut off his nose to spite his face regarding any potential trade deal with the UK because of his Irish descent.(Obviously the UK disregarding the GFA would change this)There are many people of Irish descent here in the UK and even if they don't agree with the current government,the interests of the UK comes first.

Do you really think that not doing a trade deal with the UK would hurt the USA?

RobMc59

fash wrote: »

It is- but behind closed doors. You think the Tories are silly enough to discredit themselves in front of the sheep?

Why do you have to resort to insults?
Calling people sheep or an infestation as you have in the past isn't worthwhile discussion fash.

The Raging Bile Duct

RobMc59 wrote: »

Why do you have to resort to insults?
Calling people sheep or an infestation as you have in the past isn't worthwhile discussion fash.

You've deliberately edited his post to completely change the context of what he was saying.

RobMc59

The Raging Bile Duct wrote: »

You've deliberately edited his post to completely change the context of what he was saying.

He has called the English an infestation in the past

listermint

RobMc59 wrote: »

Realistically,the UK was always going to concede on fishing if the EU was willing to compromise also.
I wouldn't pin too many hopes Biden would cut off his nose to spite his face regarding any potential trade deal with the UK because of his Irish descent.(Obviously the UK disregarding the GFA would change this)There are many people of Irish descent here in the UK and even if they don't agree with the current government,the interests of the UK comes first.

No offence but you clearly have not been following events from the democratic party over the last few months. They've come out publicly several times from all sections of the party telling the UK not to mess with the GF agreement. It's a legacy item for the party. End of.

Also noteworthy how boris has been awaiting concluding the EU agreement on trumps election.

But all of this means nothing to you ?

It's like brexit facts all over again.

RobMc59

sondagefaux wrote: »

Do you really think that not doing a trade deal with the UK would hurt the USA?

Probably not but I doubt capitalists will pass up the chance of a deal with the UK if there's money to be made because they have Irish ancestry.Interesting that a search for the definition of capitalism names the US,UK and perhaps ominously Germany as some of the major capitalist countries.

listermint

RobMc59 wrote: »

Probably not but I doubt capitalists will pass up the chance of a deal with the UK if there's money to be made because they have Irish ancestry.Interesting that a search for the definition of capitalism names the US,UK and perhaps ominously Germany as some of the major capitalist countries.

Your making up your own facts now.


This look is getting increasingly depressing.

RobMc59

listermint wrote: »

No offence but you clearly have not been following events from the democratic party over the last few months. They've come out publicly several times from all sections of the party telling the UK not to mess with the GF agreement. It's a legacy item for the party. End of.

Also noteworthy how boris has been awaiting concluding the EU agreement on trumps election.

But all of this means nothing to you ?

It's like brexit facts all over again.

You're replying to my post yet totally ignore my comment on the GFA.Has Johnson said he's waiting for the US election result?I was under the impression that was untrue?

CelticRambler

listermint wrote: »

Your making up your own facts now.

Rob has clearly expressed an opinion - what's desperate about that?

While I think his hypothetical forecast is off target, he has a point: the Democratic Party in the US is no more left-wing than the Tories were before they mutated into the Palatable Brexit Party. In the absence of any extenuating circumstances, therefore, it'd be quite reasonable to expect the US to want to make a US-favorable (sic :P ) trade deal with the UK.

What will frustrate that ambition, in the event of a Biden victory, is that there are extenuating circumstances, namely the US's need to rehabilitate its image over the next few years. In practical terms, that means that the whole of Biden's term will be spent trying to avoid upsetting the EU, and the US will not do anything vis-à-vis the UK that risks torpedoing attempts to rebuild that relationship.

The UK wanted to be seen as a Serious World Power, equivalent to the China, US, the EU ... well, as we've seen quite often, sometimes Serious World Powers gang up on each other. Britain will have to fight its corner alone, and there are no indications that Johnson & Co. are capable of putting their gloves on correctly, let alone climbing into the ring.

listermint

RobMc59 wrote: »

You're replying to my post yet totally ignore my comment on the GFA.Has Johnson said he's waiting for the US election result?I was under the impression that was untrue?

I took account of your comments on GFA.the UK have ignored it so far to date, what's changed.
And Johnson has bypassed all his own deadlines and pushed talks right into November. It's entirely true.


You are the one ignoring facts. And you have been getting increasingly daily mail in your analysis. It's bubbling to the surface more frequently.

listermint

In other news in accordance with the UKs actions so far to line themselves up for the bestest deal from the democrats and biden...


https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1323583660424110080?s=20

Seth Brundle

Leroy42 wrote: »

The EU will not get everything they want, ie the UK returning to the EU, but it will get far closer to its goals than the UK will to theirs.

Without wanting to sound flippant, does the UK actually have goals that can be measured or defined in non-soundbite terms?