• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Politics, politics, politics

scaramanga said:
Events happen all the time that effect economies by 1% - that's well withing the natural cycle. It also completely ignores our ability to compete internationally with our services and assumes that all service providers will be unable to deal with barriers, will be unable to find a way around them and will be unable to continue any trade with the EU whatsoever. I'm sure you are intelligent enough to realise that such a situation is preposterous.

All countries compete on taxation and regulation. And no, it's not possible for the EU to stop that happening - not within the realms of what they would be both willing and able to make happen. That's why there are tax havens all over the world, that's why there are a handful of financial centres and technology centres around which those services gather. It's also why the EU is trying so hard (and currently failing) to force Luxembourg to align their tax and regulatory regimes with the rest of the EU.

The very suggestion that countries should all align in such a way should be clearly ridiculous to anyone with even a passing interest in economics.
Click to expand...

Yes downturns in economies happen. A drop of 1% in the UK economy is bad news for the UK whichever way you look at it.

Re. tax havens, there is momentum trying to bring them into line and its the UK who's resisted in the past as we have so many protectorate tax havens. Good luck trying to negotiate a FTA with the EU that allows us to undercut and undermine them to attract business over them. Why would the EU in their right mind accept that? If we were part of the EU and it was France proposing this, we would not have it.

As a paid up member of a political party who used to be wholly committed to free open trade you'll appreciate that impediments to free trade are bad.
 
What's the breakdown of the services sector anyway:

- Education, health and social work – won’t be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Public administration and defence – won’t be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Tourism – won’t be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Hotels and restaurants – won’t be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Real estate and renting activities – won’t be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Transport, storage and communication – wont be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Wholesale and retail – a minority of activity will be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Financial services – a minority of activity will be affected by non-tariff barriers
- Creative industries – won’t be affected by non-tariff barriers

So that's quite a small proportion that does any exporting to the EU, basically just some financial services and retail
 
SpurMeUp said:
Yes downturns in economies happen. A drop of 1% in the UK economy is bad news for the UK whichever way you look at it.

Re. tax havens, there is momentum trying to bring them into line and its the UK who's resisted in the past as we have so many protectorate tax havens. Good luck trying to negotiate a FTA with the EU that allows us to undercut and undermine them to attract business over them. Why would the EU in their right mind accept that? If we were part of the EU and it was France proposing this, we would not have it.

As a paid up member of a political party who used to be wholly committed to free open trade you'll appreciate that impediments to free trade are bad.
Click to expand...
Why the hell would we want to sign up to a free trade agreement that doesn't allow us to compete? There's no point in free trade without the efficiencies that are brought by competition.

Being able to compete with and shop externally for goods and services is the whole point of Brexit.
 
scaramanga said:
Why the hell would we want to sign up to a free trade agreement that doesn't allow us to compete? There's no point in free trade without the efficiencies that are brought by competition.

Being able to compete with and shop externally for goods and services is the whole point of Brexit.
Click to expand...

I guess we will see.

We haven't been able to call the shots in negotiations so far, in fact we've been dictated to, what do you think will change now? Fact is we have 65m consumers vs the EUs 500m.
 
SpurMeUp said:
I guess we will see.

We haven't been able to call the shots in negotiations so far, in fact we've been dictated to, what do you think will change now? Fact is we have 65m consumers vs the EUs 500m.
Click to expand...
The Cayman Isles has virtually no consumers, Luxembourg not many more.

Doesn't do them any harm whatsoever.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Do/will the Cayman Isles have a FTA with the EU? Luxembourg as an EU member has preferential treatment.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
Click to expand...
Why would they need or want an FTA? They get a metric fudgetonne of business by being a better place to do business.

The EU has made it clear they won't offer an FTA as well as allowing us to trade like it's the 21st century - on which basis they can stick their FTA. There is no acceptable deal that involves protectionism.
 
scaramanga said:
Why would they need or want an FTA? They get a metric fudgetonne of business by being a better place to do business.

The EU has made it clear they won't offer an FTA as well as allowing us to trade like it's the 21st century - on which basis they can stick their FTA. There is no acceptable deal that involves protectionism.
Click to expand...

They don't 'get business' - they don't have economic activity. They don't have people making anything, or even working there. They just help funnel cash to avoid tax, and take a tiny % of that cash. Most people who live in these blip island states don't see a penny. To suggest that this setup is appropriate for the UK is laughable. Even deluded Tories accept such a setup for the UK would be nonsense. We produce things, we make cars, we do work, people get up in the morning and work on things to earn money. No FTA with the EU would reduce a lot of our day to day economic activity - we wouldn't produce cars, financial services would decline etc.

A less absurd, but also flawed model for the UK, is Singapore. Not a tax haven but a lower tax island that some in the Conservative party would like us to emulate. But they have oodles of cheap labour, a prominent geographical position close to China, have few worker rights, press freedom etc. In short not applicable to a developed economy such as ours.

What would you propose as a post Brexit trading setup, and would you seek a FTA with the EU?
 
SpurMeUp said:
They don't 'get business' - they don't have economic activity. They don't have people making anything, or even working there. They just help funnel cash to avoid tax, and take a tiny % of that cash. Most people who live in these blip island states don't see a penny. To suggest that this setup is appropriate for the UK is laughable. Even deluded Tories accept such a setup for the UK would be nonsense. We produce things, we make cars, we do work, people get up in the morning and work on things to earn money. No FTA with the EU would reduce a lot of our day to day economic activity - we wouldn't produce cars, financial services would decline etc.

A less absurd, but also flawed model for the UK, is Singapore. Not a tax haven but a lower tax island that some in the Conservative party would like us to emulate. But they have oodles of cheap labour, a prominent geographical position close to China, have few worker rights, press freedom etc. In short not applicable to a developed economy such as ours.

What would you propose as a post Brexit trading setup, and would you seek a FTA with the EU?
Click to expand...
I'd seek an FTA with the ability for us to trade as we wish with the rest of the world. I would agree to keep to EU regulations only on those products and services sold directly into the EU. If they wouldn't agree to that then I'd walk and save us all the time and effort.

I wasn't suggesting we follow the model of the Cayman Isles, merely that not having an internal market doesn't prohibit them from competing through low taxation and regulation. Trade barriers are small (as mandated by the WTO), and a very small relaxing of taxation and regulations would easily make us competitive again. Add to that the huge infrastructure advantage we have in London (for services) and far cheaper imports for manufacturing (trading with the world) and you have a very positive trade setup.

And again, you're still repeating the same suggestions that exports to the EU are a large part of our economy and that's simply not the case. I've repeatedly laid out what proportion of our GDP are EU exports and the tariff costs relating to those exports. The overall tariff cost is less to the economy than our (net) annual contributions to the EU. Should the government so choose, it could simply discount the cost of exports by the tariff value in tax rebates and still come out of the transaction better off.
 
@scaramanga with respect these calculations seem a little 'back on a fag packet' and don't factor in wider losses from reduced economic activity. Every credible economic analysis - from respected US and UK economic think tanks, the IMF, the CBI, and the UK government with all of its extensive data on the UK economy - have modelled a slow down as a result of Brexit.

Are they all wrong and you, Trump, Farrage, and Borris are all correct. Buffoonery wins! ?
 
SpurMeUp said:
@scaramanga with respect these calculations seem a little 'back on a fag packet' and don't factor in wider losses from reduced economic activity. Every credible economic analysis - from respected US and UK economic think tanks, the IMF, the CBI, and the UK government with all of its extensive data on the UK economy - have modelled a slow down as a result of Brexit.

Are they all wrong and you, Trump, Farrage, and Borris are all correct. Buffoonery wins! ?
Click to expand...
Strangely enough, remainer economists are suggesting Brexit will make us worse off, those who were pro Brexit are predicting a boost to the economy.

I actually don't care too much about the small margins people are talking about over the short term, the countries best placed to succeed over the longer term will be those most open to trade (with the whole world, not just a few local countries), those most able to attract business and those most friendly to business. It will also help massively not to be financially attached to the invevitable implosion of a currency that includes Greece, Spain and Italy.
 
Unfortunately for me, I spend a reasonable amount of time in Westminster and I can tell you that policy makers within some of the Government departments have been challenged to make the post EU policy changes more flexible and more reactive to change especially to allow the UK to implement trade agreements faster than the EU.
 
And now, qunts like Amber Rudd and Theresa May will be all over "fixing" this problem, yet they didn't really care about it until the victims of this immigration process started going to the media, with the public getting disgusted at their treatment. It's not like they have had any power to fix this or anything...

Under Theresa May's watch, The Home Office has become an absolute nightmare for people to deal with. Fuelled by media like The Sun and the qunts who read it. And now those same media outlets will act outraged on behalf of The Windrush immigrants, when it's their sh1t coverage of all things immigration combined with weak politicians that leads to people being treated this way.

I detest this government.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back