EU referendum are you in or out

[gilesgoat]

... soooo .. 25 days about to the big crash .. I lost track of what they are doing ?

[Dio]

Fiddling.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Beat the Brexit rush: buy your balaclava and crowbar for looting before the shops run out of them forever.

[guythp]

Buy them? I'm looting my balaclava and crowbar when the time comes.

[skab]

Buy them? I'm looting my balaclava and crowbar when the time comes.

You'll be too late:

... before the shops run out of them forever

[merman]

... soooo .. 25 days about to the big crash .. I lost track of what they are doing ?

Offering "struggling towns" a Brexit bribe - which works out at being substantially less than the EU was investing in deprived areas.

[guythp]

Buy them? I'm looting my balaclava and crowbar when the time comes.

You'll be too late:

... before the shops run out of them forever

I'll just mug someone smaller than me. I have a hammer.

[KlaxonCow]

Great.

So the government's solution to the fact that we're not at all prepared for No Deal Brexit and even WTO rules are not automatically guaranteed is to simply drop all tariffs completely. A few "protected industries" but otherwise zero tariffs on anything.

This does nominally solve the problem by side-stepping it completely. It fulfils the obligation to charge all countries exactly the same and implicitly knocks 10% or so from the price of all imports, to combat the inevitable economic damage of Brexit itself, by offsetting higher prices with an implicit "discount" for all those importing into the UK.

And don't get me wrong, as it'd be lovely if every country on the face of planet Earth did the same. But if you're the only one doing it, while everyone else doesn't, then you're putting us at a massive disadvantage,.that could well kill home-grown industry (and if they're happy to drop all tariffs completely, then we can expect that they'll also just drop all regulation for similar logic, and we're all eating chlorinated chicken - and be unable to export food to the EU, as American GM crops will enter our supply chain that the EU standards will refuse to toucb).

This is rather radical extremist "neo-liberalism". Including that,.as we're losing that money to the public pot, "austerity" on public services will continue and worsen.

But, ultimately, this is a desperate gambit. "How do we sort out all the tariffs, Prime Minister? It's all very complex and we'll need to sort things out with the WTO and..." / "Fuck it, bypass it. No tariffs on anything and then we don't have to worry about any of it".

[Barney]

It's a little worrying that tariffs will still be applied to food imports as farming here is a protected industry. So for the bottom end of the population with the least money, their food bills will continue to rise while goods for the more well-off (technology etc) will get a break in their costs.

Am I wrong about this? It seems a very tory thing to do.

[gilesgoat]

*SNIP*.that could well kill home-grown industry

I tought that was already dead and will die even more when they'll stop receiving all the money that is coming from EU NOT the UK government to sustain it ?

(and if they're happy to drop all tariffs completely, then we can expect that they'll also just drop all regulation for similar logic, and we're all eating chlorinated chicken - and be unable to export food to the EU, as American GM crops will enter our supply chain that the EU standards will refuse to toucb).

This means we'll have to check 4 times whatever we buy, scrap 70% of the food ( that will come from USA ) and be surrounded by utter shit ( of food ) ?

Or worse have food with no indication whatsoever of what it contains, how is made, what is made of and where is made ???

[merman]

... soooo .. 25 days about to the big crash .. I lost track of what they are doing ?

Offering "struggling towns" a Brexit bribe - which works out at being substantially less than the EU was investing in deprived areas.

Channel 4 has fact checked the "struggling towns fund"

- it represents less than 10% of what councils have LOST in central Government funding since 2010
- looking at the seven poorest areas, the EU would have invested more than SIX TIMES what has been offered by this new fund/bribe/desperate tactic

[Little stoned kiwi]

It's a little worrying that tariffs will still be applied to food imports as farming here is a protected industry. So for the bottom end of the population with the least money, their food bills will continue to rise while goods for the more well-off (technology etc) will get a break in their costs.

Am I wrong about this? It seems a very tory thing to do.

It raises living costs while keeping inflation capped. Rent, food, transport keeps living costs cranked up while it's cheaper to buy a TV or washing machine. Interest rates can stay lower when debt isn't being inflated away. Low interest rates help fuel the property market to keep rents buoyant.
And yeah, those at the bottom struggling to pay rent and buy food don't have a disposable income to take advantage of the luxuries or interest rates.

[KlaxonCow]

I'm also now wondering, as I mull this over some more, how the hell you feasibly reverse the policy later?

For example, we try to get a trade deal with some country who's currently paying, due to this policy, no tariffs whatsoever.

What do we offer them in return for them lowering their tariffs on us? You can't get a better tariff than no tariff at all.

Basically, zero tariffs means there's no room for improvement. No wiggle room for negotiation. We'd be already offering the entire planet the best tariff that's possible.

How would this work?

In return for you dropping your tariffs from 10% to 5%, we'll do nothing at all because you can't improve on 0%? Or, worse, we wish to reverse the deal later - you lower your rates from 10% to 5% and we'll, umm, raise ours from 0% to 5%?

Well, that's an obvious "no deal" there, because why would you offer the UK a better rate in exchange for a worse rate than you've already got without a specific trade deal?

Which raises the prospect that the only bargaining chip in a trade deal, when your tariffs cannot be improved beyond 0%, is to offer "greater market access"... in other words, reducing regulation, allowing the butchering of the NHS and chlorinated chicken.

Because, simply, when your tariff is zero, where else can you concede something to make a deal tempting enough to take? If you ser what I'm saying.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Deal tempting to make? If a country has products and services to sell, they will sell them. If you have products and services they want, they will buy them.
It doesn't get an fairer than that. Charging tariffs across the board for future negotiation leverage won't help improve trade in the short or long term.

[gilesgoat]

.. it's going to be fun ..

For "technical reasons" I HAD to book a flight in April for Italy .. we'll see what's going to happen with Brexit .. I hope at least in case of "no, nobody can flight" they are going to rembours me ..

Speaking of which "interesting lectures for the night" : https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... rexit-deal

Fundamentally "no deal" == NOBODY moves in/out EU and/or any EU flight company is allowed fo fly on UK airspace "until re-negotiations are done" .. company by company .. state by state ...


After March 2019 if there’s no deal

If the UK leaves the EU in March 2019 with no agreement in place, UK and EU licensed airlines would lose the automatic right to operate air services between the UK and the EU without seeking advance permission. This would mean that airlines operating between the UK and the EU would need to seek individual permissions to operate. EU-licensed airlines would lose the ability to operate wholly within the UK (for example from Heathrow to Edinburgh) and UK-licensed airlines would lose the ability to operate intra-EU air services (for example from Milan to Paris).