Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Unflushable Turd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984943#Comment_120984943

one of the problems with having english as a first language though, is what second language do you pick?

Learning Spanish is great if you want to work in Spain, but a waste of time if you end up in Germany, Poland or France. Meanwhile, it seems more and more people are speaking fluent English.

I am in Bratislava four or five times a year and other than the odd word to be polite, I don't know any Slovak and nor do the few Irish people that work in our office there. The standard of English (and education in general) is very impressive.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120986873#Comment_120986873

People never learned languages in the past though with the intention of moving to those countries and working there. It was considered part of your broad education, not something to give you a leg up in your career.

Unflushable Turd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120988173#Comment_120988173

you only get four subjects at A level, people are just not selecting a language at that level, they would atill be learning languages as part of the general syllabus

yagan

Interestingly from reading commentary if anything can move the needle back towards Europe amongst the average little englander it's Harry Kane's move to Munich.

pixelburp

Bang goes the craft brewing industry anyway: an estimated 100 breweries dead in large part to the sudden and insurmountable tariffs and barriers thrown up by brexit and their export opportunities drying up.

Now, I always thought the craft beer thing was a bit of a bubble that'd bound to bounce eventually, but mostly down to trends or tastes changing - not the self-sanction farce of Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/aug/19/craft-beer-boom-uk-firms-bust-brexit

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120999951#Comment_120999951

Since Brexit you rarely see a British craft beer in Ireland and recently on a trip to Brussels the owner on an English themed pub explained how he had to switch to an Irish beer menu.

The UK industry is very reliant on ingredients and machinery from the EU. London was also a Mecca for craft beer in Europe and you would meet loads of Spanish and Italian brewers working there.

There are other factors like the fight back from the big breweries and their fake craft ranges. Also lots of breweries are set up as a midlife crisis or a trust fund baby with no experience in business.

You constantly hear about this "bubble" from people but the UK and Ireland actually have loads of room for small breweries which are the norm in Europe.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120999951#Comment_120999951

I don't want to be harsh but they opened the thing after the Brexit vote. What did they think was going to happen?

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121003356#Comment_121003356

I suppose to be devil's advocate, were one to believe in the inevitable sobriety of even this UK government, the company thought trade agreements would have transpired to make the export of their goods easier than what it is now - a shítshow. It couldn't possibly be worse for companies of that size and not for nothing some Brexit voters lament the lack of good implementation - not the vote itself. Because in theory there were levels of easy trade there for the taking (infamous "red lines" of Theresa May notwithstanding), even I might have presumed "something" agreed after all the bluster subsided.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121003948#Comment_121003948

Don't get me wrong, I sympathise with them completely but this was around the time of Theresa May's soapboxing about "Brexit means Brexit", "Red, white & blue Brexit" and the whole citizens of nowhere stick. Like, even I never thought that the UK, a country which historically went to war to enhance its trade, would ever erect this silly trade barriers but given the high risk of such, it'd be ill-advised at best to start exporting actual goods here with all of the red tape and checks that were likely to be needed. No government was going to take the sensible EEA/EEA-like option. Even Jeremy Corbyn firmly pronounced that freedom of movement had come to an end which meant an end to the other four freedoms as well.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984943#Comment_120984943

How much of being a services provider was reliant on multilingual staff hired via freedom of movement.

The last time I visited London around 2018 a friend we were meeting from the EU worked in finance. His entire job was based on his native language from elsewhere in the EU, and the same for most of his floor. It was interesting that anytime there were no English at our table the conversation would immediately switch to plans to leave London asap.

yagan

Mod: no link dumping!

salonfire

I'm surprised to see that the focus on renewable energy is not getting the same attention as Brexit is.

Germany is now in a deeper recession than the UK due to their insane energy policies, blowing off a larger portion of their foot than the UK and Brexit.

It's an odd trend. People making themselves colder and poorer for some perceived greater good.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036246#Comment_121036246

Germany's insane energy policies have nothing to do with renewable energy and everything to do with their absurd anti-nuclear stance.

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036270#Comment_121036270

Well yes. That's what I mean.

Perhaps it's for a new thread, but I see a lot of parallels between the damage of Brexit and the damage of restrictions in energy production.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036316#Comment_121036316

There is no such thing as energy production because, as per basic physics, energy cannot be produced - it can only be converted from one form to another.

If we won't use fossil fuels or nuclear, how do we get our energy that won't bugger up the planet, etc?

Nonetheless, this has nothing to do with the economic idiocy behind Brexit.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036246#Comment_121036246

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036270#Comment_121036270

Germany's recession is primarily due to the fact that, for reasons we all know, they had to suddenly pivot away from an absurd degree of reliance on Russian-supplied energy. The policy mistake was allowing that degree of reliance to develop in the first place.

flatty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036533#Comment_121036533

You can see how the reliance developed. The anti nuclear pivot however was odd and looked odd at the time tbh. Question really is whether it was a knee jerk reaction to Fukushima (and if so, why? Was the political gain so great?), or was Fukushima an excuse because they German govt knew something about their nuclear energy program that we didn’t.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036574#Comment_121036574

Bit of a false dichotomy there. If it wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to Fukishima (and, spoiler, it wasn't) it doesn't follow that it was driven by some dark secret. There are other possibilities.

Germany has long had a significant anti-nuclear movement, going back to the late sixties. It fuelled (see what I did there? 😀) the rise of the German Green Party, one of Europe's earliest and most successful Green parties. Public protests stopped the construction of a new nuclear plant at Wyhl in the early 1970s. Public distrust of nuclear power increased still further after the Chernobyl incident in 1986, after which no further nuclear plants were commissioned in the Federal Republic. (East Germany did continue to construct nuclear plants, but these were all decommissioned fairly shortly after reunification on safety grounds.)

In 2000 — more than a decade before Fukishima — The German government announced its intention to phase out nuclear power completely by 2022. In pursuit of this policy plants were closed in 2003 and 2005. In 2010 (after a change of government) the German government committed to replacing nuclear energy with renewable, and the nuclear phase-out date was pushed back to 2034; this led to widespread protests. After the Fukishima incident, the government announced a review of the new phase-out date; massive public demonstrations called for a more rapid phase-out and, at the conclusion of its review, the government confirmed the original 2022 date. It was in this context that Germany committed heavily to Russian gas as a fuel; it was to be the bridge between the phase-out of nuclear energy and the development of renewable.

Tl;dr: the phase out of nuclear power had been determined more than a decade before Fukishima, and was well under way by the time of the Fukishima incident. the impact of that incident was to derail plans to extend that phase-out.

rock22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036246#Comment_121036246

You're surprised that , in a threaded titles "Brexit discussion thread XIV" that people are discussing Brexit rather than german energy policy?

peter kern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121036270#Comment_121036270

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/

if you want to stick to facts , its actually germany sending more energy to france than the other way....

rock22

Perhaps only tangentially related to Brexit, but a German court has refused to extradite an Albanian because the IUK authorities could not give undertakings regarding conditions in the UK prisons.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/germany-refuses-extradite-albanian-man-uk-jail-conditions

The articles implies that these assurances would not have been sought pre Brexit when the rules of the European arrest warrant fully applied.

This is just one of the small divergences that I imagine will become more common as time go by.

Peregrinus

It wasn't so much that the UK couldn't give the required assurances as that they didn't. Asked to provide assurances that prison conditions for the person whose extradition they were seeking would be compliant with ECHR requirements, the UK authorities basically sent over copies of press releases about prison expansion programmes.

It isn't necessarily the case that UK prisons do fail to meet minimum standards of human rights; it's just that the UK don't yet appreciate that, as a third country that doesn't participate in the EU arrest warrant system, they need to gear up to be able to demonstrate, with something more credible than departmental press releases about future plans, that their prisons are compliant. This is no longer taken to be presumed unless the contrary is proven.

It's another example of Brexit being Brexit, and (some people in) the UK not realising it and thinking that, although Brexit has happened, nothing has changed. This particular example is probably a temporary glitch; now that the UK realises that it needs to be able to do this, it will presumably gear up so that, when the next such request arrives, it will get a proper answer.

Sam Russell

The UK learnt that during the IRA campaign in NI, that an extradition request to an Irish court had to be complete, correct, and exact - if it was to accepted and acted on by the Irish court.

Many was the subject of such warrants let walk free from court because of mistakes in documentation or service of the warrant. Took years for them to cop on to the proper procedure. Now they need to start that education again.

ancapailldorcha

Apparently, a gardener from Hertfordshire is now ashamed to be a Brexiter. The reason? Humiliation? Loss of prestige? Economic damage? The Tories? No.

ROME – A 50-year-old British man with Italian roots says he is “ashamed” to come out as a Brexit voter, and feels foolish “for having believed in the utopia of sovereignty” fed to him by politicians.

He is now trying to recover his lost Sicilian ancestry in order to get an Italian passport and ditch the UK for good, but is aware that it will be tough.

Thomas (not his real name), a gardener from Hertfordshire, bought a cosy farm near the Umbrian town of Foligno for €50,000 (£43,000) 10 years ago, hoping to enjoy it in the holidays whenever he wanted.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/ashamed-brexit-voter-holidays-affected-2581261

This is why I don't think the UK should be rejoining soon. I'm fine with adopting the Euro and the permanent loss of opt-outs. The issue is that too people here still think it's fine unless it affects their own lives directly. When it was other people, all was fine.

I know this is just one example but it signifies the mental framework that a lot of Brexit voters still operate in. There no appreciation of the EU in any terms other than narrow fiscal gain or loss.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071190#Comment_121071190

Love the overly dramatic "not his real name"

Are there hit squads out to kill the Brexit deserters ?

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071250#Comment_121071250

Probably wants to avoid doxxing and online harrassment.

Sam Russell

Great cover for Thomas (not his real name) if he is actually Thomas (his real name).

Obviously he could be of the opinion Brexiteers will believe any nonsense printed in the media, so why not use a clever strategy that is beyond them..

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071250#Comment_121071250

By his own account he was party to a decision that inflicted harm on a great many people. His only regret seems to be that he himself turns out to be one of those people, and now his efforts are focussed on remedying the harm he has done to himself. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that he might perhaps attempt anything to remedy the harm he has done to others.

So, yeah, if I was him I'd definitely want to keep my identity secret. A lot of people might be quite cross with me, and I wouldn't want to attract attention to myself. Mind you, I'd think a basic first step in that direction would be not to give interviews to the newspapers.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984941#Comment_120984941

As someone who has represented Ireland at FEMA meetings, to me this is a daft decision. Car and motorcycle manufacturers are not going to make UK-market-only vehicles. Vehicle standards, noise/emissions rules, rules over self-driving (massive safety implications for motorcyclists) etc. etc. are going to continue to be set at EU and UNECE level.

Unflushable Turd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121074013#Comment_121074013

It sounds as though the BMF has some financial pressures and is tightening its belt.