Why are you using strange analogies like Bristol and Venezuela? Lets talk about the real world.
- The UK in the EU can trade with 0 tariffs with all of Europe. According to you 0 tariffs are a good thing, apart from when it comes to the EU and then it is bad
- The EU also allows the UK to trade more freely with the likes of Canada, Japan etc on terms that we probably could not emulate negotiating with our 50m consumers verses the EUs 550m.
- We know there is no utopia of complete free trade, apart from in Europe where we and 27 other nations have amazingly made it a reality.
Because you have so far failed to understand that the EU does not practice free trade and has protectionist borders and principles. I've used examples to try and simplify it for you.
What would you have done if your business bank account was with one of the banks that went bust? Or your personal account? Not only would people have gone to the cash machine and had nothing - no money - but the remaining banks would also have seen a run. Undermining them too. Undermining capitalism as we know it. It would have been fascinating. But would have destroyed businesses etc. Real anarchist stuff. I didn't have you down as an anarchist, but that is where your belief in doctrine seems to have placed you. And it is an interesting position. Longer-term you would probably get renewal and evolution. But short term, wow there would have been complete economic breakdown. That is what you favor?
That would be my responsibility for using a bank that did not properly protect its assets. Under no circumstances would I ever have used a bank such as Northern Rock for personal or business banking.
There would certainly have been some disruption, but all bailing out has done is bake in the same old problems that were always there. If banks had failed at the time, do you think there'd be a single responsible bank out there not publishing how much more secure one's deposits would be there than with their competitors? Do you not think there would be a massive opportunity for independent "deposit security" rating agencies to spring up and make this clear?
Instead nobody has learned anything and everyone continues to do precisely what they did before.
You appear to have a little difficulty separating disruption and economic breakdown. They are two very different things and neither Brexit nor a couple of failing banks will result in the latter. Businesses get past disruption, they find a way around the problem and they fix it. Those that don't will not be there tomorrow.
Animated how so? I think you are maybe shifting the argument because you don't have an answer.
I've already given you my answer - I don't care. I don't care about how chicken is made safe, I don't care how beef is made to grow quickly. I'm a consumer and I want the best product for the best price. Ideologically, I want all consumers to have all the choices the market offers and be able to make their own decisions.
My point was, how can consumers choose whether to have beef that has been injected with steroids or not, when you would have no regulation to say it has to be displayed on the packaging? The other options is you don't allow meat to have chlorine or steroids. Which is what we have now. It also means we have less food miles on our beef and chicken. The simple point is: markets need some regulation to shape and control them. It should be minimal and unobtrusive, however. But I don't feel EUs regulations intrude on my life. Maybe you want cheap beef from the US? Or is there any EU regulation that you are affected by that is obtrusive?
I'm fairly sure we have all kinds of food labelling regulations that are nothing to do with the EU. As with everything else, we don't need the EU to do what we can do for us.
I don't care about how my food is made, I just care about the end product. If people care enough, then the government will have it labelled. If they don't (and I suspect they won't) then there's no problem anyway.
You maintained that leaving the EU would allow us to go back to something better. All you've outlined is post-war history. Maybe you are simply saying we need a smaller state. Which in itself is not really dependent on the EU. We control what we spend on welfare in the UK now, not the EU.
In order to become the kind of strong economy that doesn't need a large welfare state, we need to massively reduce taxes and regulation. We can't do that from within the EU. The EU didn't make us spend it, but it's stopping us reversing it.
Separately, how do you now feel about Boris, with him seemingly shelving your tax cut, increasing borrowing and spending, while putting up the minimum wage?
I think it's all ridiculous, terrible and never going to happen. I'm no fan of Johnson, I've been clear that he gets my vote with tax cuts. I suspect that he will need to make those cuts at some point in the near future to keep his job, so I can see it happening still.
