scrubbedexpat141

Don't be silly. Telling people they're wrong is much easier.

scrubbedexpat141

That all sounds pretty much spot on. If both sides of every argument were that self aware the world wouldn't bother arguing and would just accept differences perhaps.

Arnold S

Genuinely interested. Based on that, what do you think the actual benefits will be forthcoming?

Irishbeekeeper

I know lots who have left and are leaving. One guy left today matter of fact.
Sales are down 50% and I forecast a blood bath with the VAT / Ramzan / Summer combination coming up. I am not a financial pundit but I am a business man and I can easily see what most adults with common sense can see i.e. this is a recession.
I can write paragraphs about which company has cutdown where or which company has ran away or how or why it is happening but I would just be repeating everything most sane people have already said. Just keep yourself liquid and try and bear out the storm till the end of the year. I myself am seriously looking at trying to cut down overheads like rent and school fees as I dont want to go back just yet. Ajman maybe.

IKnowNothing

It's certainly cheaper - if you can "Work from home" there's no problem with traffic either if you time it right.

And the Outside Inn's Pork brunch is AED115 for 4 hours, slip the waitress a 20 and your wine glass never drops below half full.

Quite a few Brits/Westerners there too, sports bars, 5 star luxury at the Saray (great Shisha).

Bargain.

scrubbedexpat141

Time are tough, we've just had a client cancel two projects. Lots of people to rehouse into roles that don't really exist....

littlejimmy

******' Awesome!

Millhouse

Well my update is that the meeting went well and Ollie and I will be able to keep drinking champagne for probably another year.

weasel decentral

Good for you, but now the seed of change has been planted so I expect you to have a new job in less than a year

Bahtatboy

Miss Ann Thrope

Me. Voluntarily. Mid-year.

captainflack

This will not happen, and even if it did, it is simply no replacement for the EU.

NZ is a small agricultural nation. Australia is small (in terms of population/economy, by European standards) and is largely a raw materials producer. Canada the same. The US is a huge economy, but any trade deal with them would be entirely one sided, and would involve the UK bending over and parting its cheeks wider than anything the UK has ever done before.

Curiously, Germany just posted record exports again in 2017.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ge...ion-2018-02-08

But of course, the UK cannot trade with the rest of the world.

At what point does the UK admit that the problem is not EU membership, but the fact that the UK is run by spivs and accountants, and what stuff it does make is either overpriced, or just plain rubbish?

al dente

I know of a couple of families leaving (schooling, national identity for children being cited). However, the restaurants are empty. We went to a lovely brunch at St Regis Sadiyaat at the weekend. Last year we wouldn't have got a table. This year we got one for 12 people the day before, on the terrace. It was quiet. Outside was mostly full but inside very empty and no tables set up in the satellite areas.

Now this is probably a combination of people being careful with how they choose to spend their money these days, although a SPG card got you 20% off. But it seemed to me that footfall was down massively.

littlejimmy

In the 4 weeks I've been back I've really noticed how quiet restaurants are in the main. When I was in the Metropolitan, the Red Lion got busy a few nights, but was never packed out...the busiest night was when there was a Man Utd match on. The Italian was always virtually empty. Now that I'm out of the hotel, I have noticed that a lot of restaurants and bars never seem to be mad busy. Even the malls seem quieter.

Miss Ann Thrope

For someone who rather self-righteously claims to value logic and facts over opinion and belief, there is an awful lot of magical thinking and wish-fulfillment expectation in the above. Not to mention a worryingly Trumpesque view that the media should be doing "PR".

The instability is not because of the media, most of whom are the brainless lying tribunes of Brexit anyway; it's because the UK government hasn't a clue what it's doing and is spouting inconsistent nonsense. Business, investors and the public have no idea what Brexit will ultimately entail so of course there is instability. The instability is actually tempered by the view that it will have to be a soft Brexit because anything else is nonsense. If we get a hard Brexit with the UK crashing out of the EU with no deal, then you ain't seen nothing yet instability-wise.

Brexit is a purely ideologically driven project based on deluded nineteenth century nationalism. There is no economic case for Brexit whatsoever. NONE. Brexit will make the UK poorer than it would otherwise have been; about this, there is no doubt. That is not to say that Britain can't make it's own way in the world: clearly it can, but with (potentially significantly) diminished stature and wealth. The Brexit "argument" that the UK will somehow be better off alone is the equivalent of saying that it will do us good to cut off our right hand because that will force us to make better use of our left hand.

And as regards a free trade bloc of the Anglophone countries, well that is the ultimate wishful thinking - though even using the term "thinking" is giving this notion far too much credit. For a start, English is already the language of international business so there is no innate basis for such a group having any specific cohesion. Meanwhile the UK has squandered the significant advantage that this fact already gave it's economy, institutions and working citizens within the EU. There is one specific feature that defines all of the major trading blocs in the world: the EU (which is by far the most successful one and remains the model for all others), NAFTA, EFTA, ASEAN, Mercosur, SAARC, Comesa, CIS, GCC, Ecowas, Caricom etc etc. While these are of varying levels of maturity and success, they all have one common feature: have you spotted it??? They are made up of physical NEIGHBOURS!

If a country has a defined advantage in the production of any item or the provision of any service then it doesn't need a trading bloc or preferential relationship to be successful. It is for the myriad of other goods and services that these trading blocs provide advantage and physical logistics plays a critically important role in this. What exactly is the UK going to be able to sell to Australia that it currently sells to the EU? Australia and NZ will be more than happy to offload their agricultural surpluses into the UK but maybe that's just as well as there will be nobody available to work on UK farms anyway. And culturally, Australia, Canada and NZ would all make very good fits with the EU (like Ireland). Meanwhile I'm not sure that the NHS would be such a good cultural fit with the remaining member of the "Angloshpere", Trumpistan...

But the biggest fallacy in this mystical notion of a new trading bloc is that these countries will somehow jeopardize their extremely valuable trading relationships with the EU to rush and offer the UK some preference. In every single situation the UK will be massively weaker in all of these negotiations and will have to settle for whatever crumbs fall from the table.

That's not media PR or "remoaning". That's cold hard obvious f**king logic.