Well, I just hope they get the same, wonderful, unrestrained feeling Americans apparently have trading with the EU. I didn't know we could sell whatever we wanted without meeting EU standards, or so I've been told by you.Originally Posted by Yarin
Well, I just hope they get the same, wonderful, unrestrained feeling Americans apparently have trading with the EU. I didn't know we could sell whatever we wanted without meeting EU standards, or so I've been told by you.
I was speaking of restrictions beyond trade, however on the topic of trade only...
These restrictions you speak of must be pretty strong for you to name it a reason to not leave. In spite of the fact that these restrictions are currently enforced in member states. So then, if a leave happened, those same restrictions would no longer be a hindrance to trade with the rest of the world.
Stay => Trade with rest of EU, EU-restricted. Trade rest of world, EU-restricted.
Leave => Trade with EU, EU-restricted. Trade with rest of world, NOT EU-restricted.
What hard decision.
I rather clearly haven't been talking about that this whole time, but I recognize that in order to get most of the benefits of a good trade deal, you need to be an EU member. Britain getting control of its borders is apparently part of the rhetoric for Brexit, and in order to do that, it would have to cut itself off from Europe in much the same way the rest of the world does, i.e. visas and things like that.
I don't pretend to know everything about Brexit, but I do know that regulations on products for EU member states was one part of the rhetoric when the vote was happening. Given that the rest of Europe is probably a significant trading partner for Britain, it makes business sense that Britain would focus on products for Europe and sell the same garbage to everyone. Why would anyone lie and tout "economic liberties" when leaving the EU doesn't even help you escape such regulations?
I think it is a mistake, as this defies a unified europe with common laws, regulations, easy trade within borders, etc, etc, etc. But I know nothing about the politics or economics involved, so it's just an opinion on my side with no weight behind it.
Since when do citizens ever make informed decisions? If you aren't actually knowledgeable in the topic to be voted upon, you're just going to guess. Yeah, various parties tend to send out information about the vote, but those are all biased one way or another, so they're no help at all. I'm thinking that maybe public votes are evil, after all.
Good riddance to the bad rubbish that is the EU.
I am totally happy that BREXIT happened, and look forward to the day the whole of Europe is free from EUSSR.
Blow it out of your @ss Mario
There is NO democracy in the EU - all the people with the real power have NEVER been elected by popular vote. It's all just "jobs for the boys" for all those has-beens that have been kicked out of office at the national level.
The EU parliament (the one where the masses get to elect MEP's) is merely a talking shop and a rubber stamp machine. It has NO legislative power at all.
Enjoy your slavery to the EU.
If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.
If I learned anything, it's that if Alaska or Texas wanted to secede, the vote should absolutely be called USexit.
Last edited by whiteflags; 06-25-2016 at 06:06 PM.
Nonono. That looks like US would be leaving Texas and Alaska. Instead it's Alexit and Texit. As always you make the best word blends. We had Grexit before Brexit. Brexit sounds nicer. But still can't beat Texit or Alexit. Especially if the the main supporters are called Tex and Alex. Tex it! Alex it! You go mind numb with the possibilities here.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
Whoosh Mario! I believe whiteflags was going for a pun with "uSexIt". Here's a good theme song for it: You Sexy Thing (I Believe in Miracles) by Hot Chocolate - YouTube
Or should I just take my mind of the gutter?
You're more right than you know! Inspired by Brexit, Texas considers seceding via Texit - NY Daily News
Oh, I missed it completely!
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
In other news, 3 million people want a second chance: EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum - Petitions
I don't understand why the vote of the mass is taken for making such a critical decision. Individually, people might be brilliant but collectively people tend to go nuts. Also not everyone are great economists and could be expected to understand the consequences of this decision. Heck, even "experts" are pulling their hair out to understand the extend of impact this might have on the global economy. This is too dangerous of a power to give to the mass.
It would be much easier for the lay people to vote on the below:
Do you want your country to trigger a nuclear war which would result in total extinction of life as we know it?
1. Yes 2.No
Because the EU is about a whole lot more than the problems it currently faces, Yarin. It is about an united Europe, a peaceful Europe. A Europe that works together to solve its problems and face the challenges of an increasingly economic and political hostile world. An Europe that needs to face its dependency of the Russian oil pipeline or the increasingly dominant Chinese economy in the face of the dwindling and indebted American economy. You don't solve those problems by following an isolationist pattern and turn tail when things don't go you way. Things have never gone the Portuguese way, or the Spanish way, or the Greek way, but along with all the other state members, especially those for whom the option to leave was put on the table, the decision was always that in face of all the problems inside the EU we are still better working together than on our own way.
You may be irritated about lack of border control, about an apparent lack of sovereignty, about restrictions to your economy. Regardless of how much of that you consider so important to your life that demands this radical decision, it still faces the fact that is just a small portion of what an united europe can represent to the countries that accept to be a part of it. As a citizen of this Europe I can work to make it better from within. Not from the outside. As soon as I leave I won't be able to do that anymore. And you left, washing your hands of 40 years of policies you helped implement and that now you call out against, and telling everyone who cares to listen you don't care about this whole idea of an united europe. Let someone else do it, we are out.
It's not by mere chance that you found your biggest supporter oversees in the figure of Donald Trump, who hailed your decision as "Excellent news!". His isolationist and radical nationalistic speech is only matched by the communists and the ultra-nationalists, all extreme wings that within the European countries are the only ones raising their voices against the EU. It's them who think that "Alone we stand, united we fall".
You seem to think your sovereignty is being questioned because of the open borders policies, but you don't push for changes within the EU, you leave.
You seem to think that trade agreements that benefited you for decades are now penalizing you, but you don't push for changes within EU, you leave.
You seem to think those leading the EU are not your legitimate representatives, but you don't push for changes within EU, you leave.
You turn tail and leave. Instead of working to change the Europe you belong to you adopt a pure isolationist approach.
And yet, I still have to see one argument, a genuine argument that any of these things are actually damaging England.
- Your government thinks not. They are resigning en masse.
- A large sector of your population thinks not too and are petitioning for a fairer popular consultation.
- Scotland thinks not and is preparing for a referendum on independence from England.
- Gibraltar thinks not where 19,000 voted For EU and 800 against.
It's just a certain political party in your parliament that successfully pushed a radical and ultra nationalist speech out of the door and that lead to a 52% final result and a low turnout. So blind you are for your idea that you won (what exactly you won you can't even describe precisely) that you even fail to realize your country is completely divided on this matter and should not take radical steps without a more clear popular decision. The only reason you decide to ignore the low turnout and the marginal win is because it serves your purpose.
Farrage had this to say when the final results where coming to a close: "Will get our country back, our independence back and our borders back". You must be very proud to align yourself with this cheap populist and radical speech about an European organization that no one but you thinks is questioning its member states sovereignty.
Face it! You, Salem and others fell to the populist and radical speech, ala Donald Trump, that preys on people's fears and yet tells them nothing of how exactly they future will be and what exactly the alternative measures are. Except that there will be walls. May your wages increase and all Brits be more rich, with plenty of job opportunities, healthier and safer with your decision.
Last edited by Mario F.; 06-27-2016 at 12:01 PM.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
Quoted from Slashdot (UK Tech Sector Reacts To Brexit: Some Anticipate Slow Down, Some Contemplate Relocation - Slashdot
Had no idea about the EU (non-UK) people working in the UK...that's crap.I can't share the exact quote with you, but my girlfriend is a Dr in a London hospital department. Her lab basically tells you if you have cancer if you are one of the millions of people who live in or around London.
In her department, which requires high-end medically-skilled professionals, her boss posted after Brexit. The basic gist was "Don't worry, everyone, your cancer diagnosis will still be safe in the hands of our department consisting almost entirely of Spanish, Italian, German, French, Polish, Greek, ...... personnel for the time being".
Throughout the NHS the picture is the same. Majority EU and then Non-UK workers. Or universities. Almost all the major universities have majority non-UK lecturers and professors (which actually means something here - a professor is a much higher grade of personnel than in the US, you'll be incredibly lucky to meet a professor outside of academia).
And it's not just as simple as "things will carry on". My girlfriend came over as an EU citizen. She has "leave to remain", so she can stay and live and work in the UK. But to get permanent citizenship, she would have to marry or go through a lengthy immigration process (including a stupid test asking questions about kings and queens that I, as a natural Brit, would be baffled by). Coming out of the EU could revoke that leave to remain. Nobody's sure at the moment and we only have two years to work that out.
If that's taken away, or the paperwork involved in heinous, or even if the process that's required is overwhelmed by all the EU people working in the UK suddenly applying to stay here, then you have quite a situation that is an awful lot of effort to sit through. And they are already disgusted and feeling unwanted because of the Brexit vote.
It's like a state voting itself out of the USA. Imagine how you'd feel as the out-of-state worker who's just been voted against, made to feel unwelcome, contemplating being in a "foreign" state, and may have to jump through all kinds of hoops to carry on your normal life that you've had for YEARS.
We're going to lose an awful lot of talent, from students coming to our universities to the lecturers teaching them, from the waitresses on minimum wages to the doctors earning a fortune. And there's no way that it will become a zero-paperwork process for any of the above, which just adds costs and hassle.
We're now basically a foreign country. If you're American you may not understand that - do you have automatic right to live in any other country in the world? Because before the vote, we have had that guaranteed for decades. We can just up sticks, go to Sweden and start up a life like anyone else, without even bothering with paperwork or visas.
We've (potentially) just thrown that in the bin, which means a lot of people who found that convenient and wanted to live in Britain are now unwelcome and may be forced to leave, or put under such scrutiny that they decide to go to one of the other dozens of countries just 30 miles away, where they don't have any of that hassle.
Watch the NHS, education, and the large businesses. They're all about to suffer, even if they don't immediately collapse.
Glad you asked. Because I'm finally given a chance to speak in UK favor in all this mess.
Schengen Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's an old agreement that has been evolving through the years and was eventually fully incorporated into the EU. It comprises the so-called 'open borders policy'. It has two fundamental effects:
1. Any EU citizen can travel freely within the EU, without visas or border checks.
2. Any EU-foreign citizen wishing to enter the EU region is granted a Schengen Visa that gives that citizen the right to travel freely within the EU. So you don't get a Visa to Spain when you want to go to Spain. You get a Schengen Visa that allows you to go to Spain and spend the remainder of your vacations in Italy. That's how you travel to the EU for the last 15 years or so.
Note that the UK belongs to the opt-out group. They are not formally a part of the Schengen region (see that link map for an appraisal) and can decide to participate or not. Historically UK has been participating. You may wonder though, why is the UK claiming the loss of their borders when they can just opt-out? The answer is that it is unfortunately not that simple. UK wants to participate but with certain limitations. This is particularly important in the current climate of terrorist threats and the predominant position the UK takes in the War Against Terror. We cannot forget the 2005 London Bombings (although we cannot forget also the many other attacks on European soil, like the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the Madrid Commuter bombings, or the very recent Brussels bombing).
There's a growing feeling within UK and many other countries of the EU that EU security agencies are either incompetent, insufficiently equipped or downright incapable of dealing with the growing threat. This is aggravated by the feeling that the EU bureaucratic representatives aren't doing enough to implement more rigid policies.
On the particular case of security, UK wished to remain a participant of the Schengen space, but in the context of their opt-out status implement certain measures to limit entry. The problem is that the current law limits the whole matter to either acceptance or refusal of the opt-out countries and gives UK no room for altering or lobbying for alteration of the legislation. What EU is essentially telling UK is this: "You cannot just be a Schengen member and impose limitations. You are either fully in or fully out of the Schengen space. Oh and btw, we don't wantt to hear to your proposals for change. Now, leave us alone."
This battle has been going on for a while and it's been a major source of aggravation particularly to the conservative sector of the UK society. As the years moved on UK has been gaining some alies. Spain, Germany, some eastern countries and just recently Italy have been vocal about supporting changes to the Schengen rules to implement tighter border controls in the vein of what UK has been asking for a long time. Other countries remain stubborn.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
I think Britain's vote for Brexit has major implications, and will likely cause more harm than good.
