Brexit: give me a positive effect... XV

[TheDecameron]

5 years after the vote and 12 months after leaving it's still nowhere near done yet causing incalculable damage.

They can’t even get their own mandatory customs systems in place and they’ve had five years to do it. They said we needed 50,000 extra pen pushers to run Brexit Island’s ports- where are they? Actually they might need fewer now they’ve wrecked the economy. Bit of belt tightening never did anyone any harm I suppose. I’ll stick to British cheese thank you.

 

[Enfield boy]

British jobs for British workers too. Steady on, that will be taken by some as a positive!

 

[TheDecameron]

I can think of some excellent candidates- they’d love the extra authority, the new clip boards, hi viz jackets and the hard hats. Proper step up in the world

 

[Enfield boy]

LOL, "you can take that bloody foreign wine back for starters!"

 

[Darth Vader]

I take my input from the Office for National Statistics and there are a lot of positives over the last 12 years. If you study these figures the only real hiccup was due to Covid especially in the early stages of the pandemic. Leaving the EU basically changed our trading patterns- less to the EU and more outside the EU and GDP is on the up.

Employment keeps rising and unemployment is falling and earnings have rapidly risen all good signs. A real eye opener is that leaving the EU hasn't stopped the increasing investment into the UK a real sign of the Worlds confidence in us.

You need to go to the government web site for the real facts and not the web gossip communities where everyone who has access to the web thinks they are the experts.

Also my investments have continued to rise and I've not seen any lasting negative effect after leaving the EU.

Of course times are getting tough especially for low earners but this is essentially due I believe to the World starting to recover from the pandemic. Time will tell.

DV

 

[Nick_G]

^All of the above is based on the assumption that the government is trustworthy. Their behaviour since the Brexit vote, and especially since Johnson became PM, show that to be a foolish mistake.

 

[Brian]

They can’t even get their own mandatory customs systems in place and they’ve had five years to do it. They said we needed 50,000 extra pen pushers to run Brexit Island’s ports- where are they? Actually they might need fewer now they’ve wrecked the economy. Bit of belt tightening never did anyone any harm I suppose. I’ll stick to British cheese thank you.

They haven’t had 5 years to do it. A large chunk of that time has been wasted amidst uncertainty caused to business by people trying to overturn the result of the referendum, though you already know that, of course.

 

[TheDecameron]

A real eye opener is that leaving the EU hasn't stopped the increasing investment into the UK a real sign of the Worlds confidence in us.

You need to go to the government web site for the real facts and not the web gossip communities where everyone who has access to the web thinks they are the experts.
DV

You were saying,

From a well known gossip community.

 

[Somafunk]

Also my investments have continued to rise and I've not seen any lasting negative effect after leaving the EU.

Anyone else hear “I’m alright Jack”?

 

[PsB]

A real eye opener is that leaving the EU hasn't stopped the increasing investment into the UK a real sign of the Worlds confidence in us.

Eh??? FDI into the UK has cratered in the last couple of years. Or did you mean something else than FDI? Random Google:
"According to the World Investment Report 2021 published by UNCTAD, FDI inflows into the UK declined for the second year in a row, reaching USD 20 billion in 2020, compared to USD 45 billion in 2019 (-57%). Equity investments decreased by 35%, mainly due to some divestments (e.g. Swiss Re sold its ReAssure group to Phoenix Group Holding for USD 4, 2 billion). The stock of FDI in 2020 was about USD 2.2 trillion. The UK was the 16th largest recipient of global FDI flows, losing five positions from the previous year. The Brexit process has raised many concerns from some investors about increased trade costs with Europe and the volatility of the pound sterling." And that's just 2019, versus 2018 it is down 70%, from $65.3 to $19.7 billion.
https://santandertrade.com/en/portal/establish-overseas/united-kingdom/foreign-investment

OK, you did say to take the stats from the ONS, so I went to look there.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindu...nvestmentinvolvingukcompanies2013inwardtables
I'm not an economist, so I may be getting confused by some of this stuff, but here are the inflows of foreign equity into the UK, net of the outflows, reported by the ONS:
2017: £52.9 billion. 2018: £21.3 billion. 2019: £16.1 billion.
And foreign subsidiaries' retained earnings (what they earned versus what they sent back to HQ overseas) was -3.9 billion, i.e. they took more money out of the country than they earned there. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

 

[tonerei]

Assume if you don't get an explanation or detail then the comments are atypical of Bojo's and Farage's Brexit campaign. All soundbites and assertions that have no data behind them.

 

[-alan-]

From the article...


It is sensible not to implement unnecessary checks, now if only the other side was sensible...

I'm not sure sense has played much of a part in any of this whole episode

 

[tonerei]

I'm not sure sense has played much of a part in any of this whole episode

The EU side acted with sense. It was pointed out the way to avoid checks of this nature and the hassle it causes was by making an agreement that had close enough ties to prevent this. Brexit cheerleaders wanted none of this. Full monty Brexit was the choice.

The postponement of these checks is not to facilitate Irish exporters but to prevent empty supermarket shelves and the picture of success that would demonstrate.

 

[KrisW]

They haven’t had 5 years to do it. A large chunk of that time has been wasted amidst uncertainty caused to business by people trying to overturn the result of the referendum, though you already know that, of course.

Apologies for the coarse language that is about to be used, but: bullshit.

Next door to the UK, the Irish government started planning for the worst effects of Brexit right after Cameron set the date for the referendum. Each affected government department had to produce contingency planning and modelling of what would be needed in the event of the various outcomes from remain all the way down to complete and sudden detachment of the UK from the EU. What happened isn’t as bad as the worst case scenario that was planned for, but it’s still worse than the worst expected outcome.

I’ve mentioned this story before, but a family member works at a quite high level for the Irish Department of Finance, specifically in customs, and as part of this role, they had always had monthly meetings with British Government counterparts. At the first meeting following the Brexit vote, the Irish delegation brought in a stack of box-files containing outline policy documents and contingency measures with the comment “Let’s not waste time with Brexit until we’re properly briefed: here’s our planning and concerns; we’ll take yours, we’ll both go away and review each other’s documents and discuss at the next meeting”. The response was a sheepish admission that there were no documents, because there had been no planning done at all for a Leave outcome.

Later it transpired that this wasn’t negligence, but actually by order of the Cabinet. Apparently, they were worried that if planning documents were to leak out of the civil service before the election, it might sway the vote.

From friends and family who work in companies here with dealings with UK-based businesses, it would appear that the UK government has abdicated its responsibilities to help UK business through this mess: a lot of companies learned about their export and import requirements by speaking to customers and suppliers in the EU, not from anything HM Government did. Perhaps part of the problem is any explanation of the effects of Brexit to businesses is effectively an admission that Brexit is an economic disaster for the UK. It seems that Boris Johnson’s famous “**** business” comment may well have been an instruction...

You don’t wait until you can smell smoke before installing a sprinkler system and ordering fire extinguishers.

 

[Brian]

Apologies for the coarse language that is about to be used, but: bullshit.

Next door to the UK, the Irish government started planning for the worst effects of Brexit right after Cameron set the date for the referendum. Each affected government department had to produce contingency planning and modelling of what would be needed in the event of the various outcomes from remain all the way down to complete and sudden detachment of the UK from the EU. What happened isn’t as bad as the worst case scenario that was planned for, but it’s still worse than the worst expected outcome.

I’ve mentioned this story before, but a family member works at a quite high level for the Irish Department of Finance, specifically in customs, and as part of this role, they had always had monthly meetings with British Government counterparts. At the first meeting following the Brexit vote, the Irish delegation brought in a stack of box-files containing outline policy documents and contingency measures with the comment “Let’s not waste time with Brexit until we’re properly briefed: here’s our planning and concerns; we’ll take yours, we’ll both go away and review each other’s documents and discuss at the next meeting”. The response was a sheepish admission that there were no documents, because there had been no planning done at all for a Leave outcome.

Later it transpired that this wasn’t negligence, but actually by order of the Cabinet. Apparently, they were worried that if planning documents were to leak out of the civil service before the election, it might sway the vote.

From friends and family who work in companies here with dealings with UK-based businesses, it would appear that the UK government has abdicated its responsibilities to help UK business through this mess: a lot of companies learned about their export and import requirements by speaking to customers and suppliers in the EU, not from anything HM Government did. Perhaps part of the problem is any explanation of the effects of Brexit to businesses is effectively an admission that Brexit is an economic disaster for the UK. It seems that Boris Johnson’s famous “**** business” comment may well have been an instruction...

You don’t wait until you can smell smoke before installing a sprinkler system and ordering fire extinguishers.

My point was in reference to the UK govt, not the Irish govt. It is not bullshit to suggest much uncertainty was created while the UK govt was facing challenge after challenge from hard remainers intent on overturning the result of the referendum. It is bullshit to think this did not cause uncertainty for business, many times I heard business leaders complaining that all they wanted was some certainty which would enable them to do proper planning.

Sorry if you disagree but we’ll just have to agree that we disagree on it.

 

[KrisW]

It’s bullshit to claim they had less than five years to prepare.

 

[Brian]

It’s bullshit to claim they had less than five years to prepare.

When a lot of that time was wasted by diversion it’s bullshit to say there was 5 years to prepare. There would have been 5 years if everyone had accepted the outcome of the referendum and govt + business had planned for it from there. We had 2 GE’s during that 5 years when we could have ended up with a different govt! It’s not even a controversial point, it’s so obvious.

What do you think business leaders meant when they were complaining about a lack of certainty over whether brexit would happen, whether it would be a hard brexit, a soft brexit or any other kind of brexit? In what way was there genuinely 5 full years to prepare properly?

 

[russel]

I take my input from the Office for National Statistics and there are a lot of positives over the last 12 years. If you study these figures the only real hiccup was due to Covid especially in the early stages of the pandemic. Leaving the EU basically changed our trading patterns- less to the EU and more outside the EU and GDP is on the up.

Employment keeps rising and unemployment is falling and earnings have rapidly risen all good signs. A real eye opener is that leaving the EU hasn't stopped the increasing investment into the UK a real sign of the Worlds confidence in us.

You need to go to the government web site for the real facts and not the web gossip communities where everyone who has access to the web thinks they are the experts.

Also my investments have continued to rise and I've not seen any lasting negative effect after leaving the EU.

Of course times are getting tough especially for low earners but this is essentially due I believe to the World starting to recover from the pandemic. Time will tell.

DV

Money from organised crime coming into the U.K. to get laundered is investment, are you sure it’s not just that that has increased? because as has been pointed out investment in other areas has fallen off a cliff.

 

[Nick_G]

When a lot of that time was wasted by diversion it’s bullshit to say there was 5 years to prepare. There would have been 5 years if everyone had accepted the outcome of the referendum and govt + business had planned for it from there. We had 2 GE’s during that 5 years when we could have ended up with a different govt! It’s not even a controversial point, it’s so obvious.

What do you think business leaders meant when they were complaining about a lack of certainty over whether brexit would happen, whether it would be a hard brexit, a soft brexit or any other kind of brexit? In what way was there genuinely 5 full years to prepare properly?

Boris gave them a clear answer. "F***k business."

 

[russel]

When a lot of that time was wasted by diversion it’s bullshit to say there was 5 years to prepare. There would have been 5 years if everyone had accepted the outcome of the referendum and govt + business had planned for it from there. We had 2 GE’s during that 5 years when we could have ended up with a different govt! It’s not even a controversial point, it’s so obvious.

What do you think business leaders meant when they were complaining about a lack of certainty over whether brexit would happen, whether it would be a hard brexit, a soft brexit or any other kind of brexit? In what way was there genuinely 5 full years to prepare properly?

Brian there is a saying “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics” Brexit didn’t really have an objective, except a barely hidden one to allow the spivs to hide their money offshore which is why it is such a fvcking road crash, leave didn’t know what they were voting for and had even less of a clue what to do when it happened.