Originally Posted by TheSilverFox

Sorry but just having read your posts, your comments are amazing in their avoidance of reality.

I don't bemoan Brexit, I do lament it. No one is going to be better off, despite your bizarre argument about car brakes! The EU and the UK will suffer and until this is agreed then sensible debate cannot happen. (The residents in the UK are suffering already, as I pointed out above).

Having discussed Brexit with a number of EU Government officials, there is zero sympathy for the UK. That may be difficult to accept but Spain or Ireland or France will not be allowed make special deals on tourism, for example, unless the entire EU approve it. That's as likely as Mr Farage becoming Prime Minister.

It may feel better to be out of the EU club but whether it will improve the living standards of residents is unlikely, but you're free to believe anything you wish to.

Originally Posted by Miss Ann Thrope

I think that is chickensh@t false equivalence. Brexit is motivated entirely by ideology. There is no rational social or economic policy basis for pursuing Brexit, at least none that I have ever heard. That's fine if you subscribe to the ideology but not for those of us who don't or who attempt any form of rational analysis of the likely outcome. By far most of the BS in this argument is now being spouted by those in favour of Brexit largely about fanciful notions of Britain being liberated to take it's place in the world. It's already clear that the reality of that place is going to come as a profoundly rude shock to the delirious flag-wavers. You yourself have pointed out one implication that is bound to horrify many who voted for Brexit: as the UK continues to need immigration to maintain a working age population to pay for its social services, mostly white European immigrants will be replaced by mostly brown immigrants from elsewhere . After all, there will be a price to pay for this oft-touted free-trade deal with India....

Originally Posted by Miss Ann Thrope

The Brexit devaluation is almost certainly not going to save UK manufacturing industry because all of the raw materials and components required are still denominated in dollars and euro (steel, oil, gas, plastics, board etc), even when they are not imported. Therefore the cost base of UK industry is not going to alter all that much in trading currency terms. There ought to have been a short term benefit until the supply chains come back into balance but interestingly there does not seem to have been much uptick in UK hard goods exports since the devaluation. I'm old enough to remember the Black Wednesday devaluation in the early nineties and that didn't result in a huge boost for UK industry for exactly the same reason.

In my work I am involved in sourcing materials for and from a global network including the UK and other European countries. Already we have encountered an increasing number of UK manufacturers seeking to price their goods in euro in order to manage their currency risk (suck on that Farage). Some European manufacturers that we deal with are already openly discussing their efforts to develop alternative sources for components currently sourced from the UK on the expectation that they will be subject to WTO tariffs following a hard Brexit.

I have to say the general view I encounter in manufacturing industry, certainly with all non-UK businesses and, frankly, also with most exporting UK businesses, is: "what the hell is the UK doing to itself?"

As regards the destruction of UK agriculture: well consider the trading partners most often mentioned as replacements for the EU - US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. What is the one thing these economies all have in common? A highly developed and mechanised agricultural sector which is far more efficient than the geographically and historically constrained UK sector. Clearly a minimal price for a trade deal with any of these countries will be to open access to the UK market for their agricultural products, many of which are currently restricted, often, particularly in the case of the US, by EU consumer safety rules.

Again based on personal experience, I believe it will be increasingly impossible for much of UK agriculture, as it is currently set up (many family farms etc) to compete in this scenario. Having previously been part of an effort to revive the growth of a particular crop in the UK which had already been largely lost to the prairies of Canada, I know how quick and devastating these changes can be.

And all those unemployed factory workers won't be able to afford local artisanal produce especially when they can bulk buy BST beef and GMO tomatoes.

I dearly don't want it to come to this but the continued unbelievable cluelessness of the Brexit brigade that is leading the country leads to me to increasingly believe that is the sorry future that awaits us.

Originally Posted by BritInParis

Brexit was certainly motivated by ideology but then so is the European Union. As soon as the EEC became the EU and the pretence that the European project was primarily motivated by economics rather than the slow march towards a federal Europe came to an end, the UK was always going to leave. It was just a question of how and when rather than if.
Fair point, if you insist that strong effective nation states can't also reap the benefits of EU federalism (despite how how these are denied and distorted in the Murdoch press who want to keep the UK a separate backwater so they can maintain their withering influence). I would say that France and Germany in different ways thoroughly disprove this contention even for established large countries. The EU has also enabled the emergence of strong national identities and profiles under it's umbrella for Spain, Portugal and Ireland, for example, all of which have become much stronger and better functioning nation states since joining the EU as well as being fully integrated members of the EU. Many, though not all, of more recent joiners seem to be following a similar curve.

Freedom of movement will end but the UK can set its own immigration policy regarding EU citizens going forward. Even at the peak of immigration from the A8 countries the number of non-EU migrants into the UK has higher. If the government decides to continue to let in large numbers of EU migrants then that will its decision for which it can be held accountable at the ballot box.
As it can currently.

Also the argument that we need higher and higher levels of immigration to support an ageing population and supplant a falling birth rate is a false one. The migrants get old too and you end up with an unsustainable immigration Ponzi scheme. Enabling British women to have more children by increasing the availability of cheap or free good quality childcare and reducing the cost of living, particularly housing.
Who said anything about higher and higher levels? That's a classic right-wing press distortion of any attempt to articulate a sensible immigration policy.

So UK manufacturing will become suffer as raw materials will be too expensive but UK agriculture will be destroyed because foreign imports will be too cheap? Not sure the reasoning is entirely consistent on that one. UK agriculture will need to be continued to be subsided as it is along with the rest of the EU under the CAP. I would anticipate that certain sectors will be need to be protected or offset under any FTA that is negotiated.
Two entirely different points conflated into meaninglessness there. The issues are separate: manufacturing won't benefit much from a devaluation because it has to import it's primary materials; agriculture will be hit by the competition at consumer level (intensified as there won't be an easy export market in the EU and no more CAP subsidies).

Whilst I'm not old enough to remember Black Wednesday the sharp devaluation in the pound did provide the stimulus to revive the UK economy which meant Labour inherited a much stronger economy in 1997 then it would otherwise have done. The drop in the pound after the referendum has produced a mini-repeat performance. A weaker pound has made raw imports more expensive but equally exports of finished goods are cheaper and therefore manufacturing has risen.
Statistics please to prove any of that? Specifically UK manufactured goods and components exports. The 1990s recovery came well after Black Wednesday and was due primarily to global economic recovery (and after the pound had recovered quite a bit of value versus the DM). Where is the recent export mini-boom you speak of?

Originally Posted by BritInParis

Also the argument that we need higher and higher levels of immigration to support an ageing population and supplant a falling birth rate is a false one. The migrants get old too and you end up with an unsustainable immigration Ponzi scheme. Enabling British women to have more children by increasing the availability of cheap or free good quality childcare and reducing the cost of living, particularly housing.

Originally Posted by uk_grenada

On BRITISH radio 4 last week, they discussed the fact that brexit has caused a lot of truly vitriolic incidents with friendships breaking up, neighbours at war and generally un stiff upper lip behaviour. They tried to analyse why as a subject it was so divisive, there was a lot of talk about the mild left not often getting a good slap in the face, the modern phenomenon - oft blamed on the eu of 'well if they didnt vote correctly make them do it again', fake news abounding from everywhere and about the perceived unpleasantness of some of the characters like may bliar and junkers.

I rest my case...

Originally Posted by Dubaiexile

multiculturalism is a bloody big failure, and do not speak up about it as you will be a bigot

Originally Posted by uk_grenada

On BRITISH radio 4 last week, they discussed the fact that brexit has caused a lot of truly vitriolic incidents with friendships breaking up, neighbours at war and generally un stiff upper lip behaviour. They tried to analyse why as a subject it was so divisive, there was a lot of talk about the mild left not often getting a good slap in the face, the modern phenomenon - oft blamed on the eu of 'well if they didnt vote correctly make them do it again', fake news abounding from everywhere and about the perceived unpleasantness of some of the characters like may bliar and junkers.

I rest my case...

Originally Posted by uk_grenada

See, even when you mention a discussion on the level of vitriol seen ..... Think i need that irony meter.

Seconds out round 132

Originally Posted by uk_grenada

With regard to that debate and bashing equality of left vs right, the discussion on levels of vitriol didnt go into that apart from specific people in power, and the idea of the soft left not having been bashed in a long while. This wasnt about the argument itself but about its fallout. Its quite possibly available on their website.

Originally Posted by Scamp

I see.

Many things haven't been abused, bashed or beaten in a long while but it doesn't mean they deserve to be.

Things like this seem to have just made people move further from the centre. Average Joe might have been anti or pro immigration and through the course of Brexit, the bullshit, the vote and the aftermath is likely to have developed stronger views on that particular topic....among many others.

I hope that the UK makes a success of this. I'd like to live in the UK again one day, I would like it to be a prosperous, economically strong, thriving, safe and enjoyable place to live and perhaps raise a family if I'm that lucky.
I don't believe that Brexit will aid these things, I think it could potentially hamper the future of the UK.
I'd very happily be wrong for selfish reasons.