Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Well if the honey business isn't paying the bills they can always retrain work in the now surely booming British fishing industry.

It's not about raising labour standards, or aligning them, and if the two parties have different labour standards it doesn't matter which one is higher and which one is lower. The aim of the clause is quite limited; the parties can keep the labour standards they already have, and that they currently consider appropriate; the only restriction is that they can't cut them in order to attract trade/investment.

While the US has, on the whole, less progressive labour standards than Europe, it has more progressive labour standards than many other countries. It seeks this clause in all cases and, yes, that does prevent it from reducing its own labour standards to e.g. Mexican levels in order to try and compete with Mexico for inward investment. But they're OK with that because they generally don't have a policy of cutting labour standards to compete for inward investment with countries that have shìtty labour standards.

The EU is likely to counter with a suggestion for a slightly tougher, but broadly similar clause. The EU likes non-regression clauses; neither party can materially cut its labour standards (below what they are when the deal is made) for any reason. Again, these leave misaligned labour standards in place , and mostly commits the EU to maintaining higher labour standards that its trade partners, but the EU is generally fine with that.

Everything that both sides seek in a deal is sought "for their own domestic political reasons", and that is the only meaningful definition of "makes sense".

Another Brexit benefit (for the EU)

I'm chuckling here, because the photo above is literally what they wanted. The EU was this horrible, corrupt dictatorship that was holding the UK back and stopping it from reaching its true potential. The solution was to leave the union forever and put up hard borders against it, as its influence was so noxious.

It's also so stupidly close to a carafe to make it pointless anyway.

Plenty of barley wine sold by the pint bottle so expect to see some craft brewery make a joke of it soon by releasing a drink called Pint of Wine.

I took two things from the article

• The first being that workers rights are important, for US workers.
• There is no mention of workers rights in the existing drafts, so these need to be put in before anything can progress.

I didn't see any mention of the deal being derailed or the US pulling out, just that nothing is happening until these are put in and has absolutely nothing to do with the level of workers rights in the UK.

Yes. They just chose not to because it's too "EU-centric" and the Turing scheme is meant to be "truly global".

Janey, there's a lot of rubbish being spouted on this thread recently! It's entirely possible to buy and use non-standard sized bottles for the sale of wine. Ask any of the specialist vin jaune producers in the Jura. They sell their wine in 620ml bottles - so a pint and a bit. Chances are the majority of you have never even heard of it, let alone bought or tasted it, so there's no reason to think that the Brits couldn't make a commercial success out of their Brexit pint. Or at least it's not the sourcing and filling of the bottles that'll be the limiting factor.

If putting 568ml into a 620ml wine bottle is too much of a technical challenge - or too heretical an idea to be getting such bottles from the same country as they got their blue passports - then I can order 1-pint bottles right now from an American supplier. Of course they're American pints, so hold only 473ml - but did the Minister for Brexitness specify that these new pints of wine have to be British pints?