Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
Just maybe they have some even more bonzo ideas than GDPR in the pipeline....
For all Boris's faults his insistence on no extension from 1st January has concentrated minds
Yes, an absolute masterstroke - not!
The reality is that if we had an extension to 31.12.25 we would be sitting here in late December 2025 wondering if a deal was going to be signed off. Its the nature of the beast we are dealing with.
We seem to be edging back to where Theresa May had us over a year ago. That's basically what she did, used the NI arrangements to achieve similar objectives for the whole of the UK. God damn the remainer Parliament. They caused so much unnecessary angst.
No, that's a different kind issue. This is essentially a trusted trader scheme which allows approved businesses to bypass customs clearance and tariffs subject to random inspections by customs agents of their warehouses to ensure standards are being met. It's something the UK proposed in 2016 that the EU has refused until now. It's actually a very big win for the UK negotiating team, probably bigger than anything else so far as the EU have agreed to the principle of trusted traders and the terms by which they can operate, which is not something they've been willing to do.
It was always the sanest solution to NI. It is what I advocated when May was still Prime Minister.
Now we've finally gotten here at last via a ludicrously drawn out process. I doubt we would have if it wasn't for the IMB, the IMB forced them to actually compromise - and this was the reasonable, rational, best compromise as we could tell four long years ago.
You could just as well argue that it was the IMB that has prevented compromise until now.
So that explains the last 3 months... what explains the other 3.75 years?
The ERG and the DUP
The Trusted Trader scheme that has been adopted was an idea strongly supported by the ERG though and opposed by the EU.
Now (thanks I would suggest to the IMB) we see the EU finally, belatedly and four years after the ERG have come around to accept the idea.
That's what compromise is about though. Just as Boris has now belatedly accepted that there will, after all, be paperwork involved in trading between GB and NI, and there will be EU observers in NI to ensure that the paperwork is done properly.
But the point is that the EU has also accepted that the paperwork can be minimised by a trusted trader scheme which is something they were refusing to do until now. Both parties compromised and we have a really positive outcome.
Yes, both parties have compromised to find a deal that is acceptable to both. Which is rather different from Philip_Thompson's insinuation that the EU have caved in to the UK's demands with no quid pro quo thanks to the IMB.
They have accepted our suggestion of Trusted Trader Schemes.
Given our suggestion is the one being used I think its fair to say they've moved more but if you disagree then feel free to say why.
“There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”
Very minimal forms have been agreed as a compromise along the lines we asked for.
Some forms (how minimal they are remains debatable) is not the no forms that we were insisting on a year ago, ergo we, as well as the EU, have compromised. Why is it so difficult for you to accept this?
What part of "as a compromise" makes you think I was not accepting there was a compromise?
There was a compromise along the lines we were asking for with Trusted Trader Schemes that were first suggested four years ago now - thank goodness.
Sensible compromise, I'm happy with it and it seems others here that were thinking like me are happy too.
Only idiots like Farage don't want any compromise. Sane people want a good compromise, though everyone's definition of good may vary.
Capitulation, Capitulation , Capitulation , write it 100 times Thompson and get it into your head.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
does the level playing field include a minimum wage across the EU at least equal to the UK NMV?
LOL, given we are bottom of heap on every measurement from salary , to pension , benefits , workers rights , etc that is a laugh. I await Bozo tripling the pensions to get to the EU average.
What on earth is Chris Bryant upto during PMQs today? Repeated vocal ticking offs by the Speaker.
It’s been a bad PMQs for labour. What is that about 8 in a row now, Johnson has won. Since Boris raised his game Captain Nasal can’t land anything on him.
Boris was confident today and Starmer is just not cutting it
I haven't seen it, but perhaps Starmer having a bad day. Bozo is shit on his feet, but every dog has his day. I wouldn't get too excited, much as you might hope he is good, let me let you into a not very secret secret: Johnson is not up to the job, and though Starmer may have a bad day he is massively more Primeministerial than Johnson, but then so is just about anyone.
Do you misunderstand what the role of a Prime Minister is? The great ones, Churchill, Thatcher, Boris, talked up the nations resolve, built morale, from the people up. Even Blair in his conference speeches talked up the great opportunity’s for UK of globalisation, ignoring the issues with globalisation. At what time do you imagine Starmer able to do any of that?
Everybody I know finds Johnson utterly depressing. There is no way that he and his gang of corrupt opportunists build up the nation´s morale.
That's a massive step forwards and hopefully such a scheme can be a pilot for a UK/EU version. Now I can see why the government dropped the the NI stuff in he IMB.
We seem to be edging back to where Theresa May had us over a year ago. That's basically what she did, used the NI arrangements to achieve similar objectives for the whole of the UK. God damn the remainer Parliament. They caused so much unnecessary angst.
No, that's a different kind issue. This is essentially a trusted trader scheme which allows approved businesses to bypass customs clearance and tariffs subject to random inspections by customs agents of their warehouses to ensure standards are being met. It's something the UK proposed in 2016 that the EU has refused until now. It's actually a very big win for the UK negotiating team, probably bigger than anything else so far as the EU have agreed to the principle of trusted traders and the terms by which they can operate, which is not something they've been willing to do.
It was always the sanest solution to NI. It is what I advocated when May was still Prime Minister.
Now we've finally gotten here at last via a ludicrously drawn out process. I doubt we would have if it wasn't for the IMB, the IMB forced them to actually compromise - and this was the reasonable, rational, best compromise as we could tell four long years ago.
You could just as well argue that it was the IMB that has prevented compromise until now.
So that explains the last 3 months... what explains the other 3.75 years?
The ERG and the DUP
The Trusted Trader scheme that has been adopted was an idea strongly supported by the ERG though and opposed by the EU.
Now (thanks I would suggest to the IMB) we see the EU finally, belatedly and four years after the ERG have come around to accept the idea.
That's what compromise is about though. Just as Boris has now belatedly accepted that there will, after all, be paperwork involved in trading between GB and NI, and there will be EU observers in NI to ensure that the paperwork is done properly.
But the point is that the EU has also accepted that the paperwork can be minimised by a trusted trader scheme which is something they were refusing to do until now. Both parties compromised and we have a really positive outcome.
The Irish seem to have got exactly what they wanted.
I think 15 customs agents in a WeWork is a pretty good deal for the acceptance of a trusted trader scheme. A very good compromise by both parties.
Sounds as if Gove has done an excellent job in these negotiations
It sounds like Gove believes he has done an excellent job in these negotiations, is more accurate.
A senior Tesco guy on WATO, positive but less than enthusiastic, "anything is better than nothing" is his assessment.
The pound is rocketing upwards so others have more faith
As far as the markets are concerned, any deal is better than no deal.
They must be fairly confident.
Unusual for currency and shares to improve together. It's all relkative of course. The £ is now only 19 or so points below pre-referendum levels. Keeps that improvement up some of us might be able to go abroad again next summer.
If there is a deal (big if) I expect the pound to go north of 1.40 USD and moderately strengthen against the Euro too.
For most Brits they will just want to go on holiday to Europe easily so I'd hope HMG being wise to this has got the pragmatics of that included in the Deal.
Pound is back up to 100 roubles again which is good news for my second attempt to get to St Petersburg for the White Nights
Great way of passing the blame if the vaccine doesn't work.
That rather cynical thought crossed my mind. Since AFAIK there are no alcohol contraindications for other vaccines (happy to be corrected) its curious why this one uniquely has such stringent conditions - in particular "14 days before" if you're given notification within that window....
Although it does appear to be a "developing story":
His suggestions contradict Russian officials’ previous recommendations to avoid immunosuppressants like alcohol for 14 days before and 42 days after inoculation.
Gintsburg had said that “a single glass of champagne never hurt anyone” shortly following Tuesday’s instructions of 56 alcohol-free days by Anna Popova, who heads Russia’s consumer safety watchdog and is a senior Covid-19 response official.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
I don't get the Lower Taxes bit of that.
The EU is full of different tax levels and systems - eg Irish Republic and Netherlands are tax havens.
If they allow tax differences inside, why is outside a problem?
It's definitely a problem inside too - for example Luxembourg has cheap petrol prices and everyone near the border drives there to fill up, which is obviously a bad outcome overall, since people are making these otherwise pointless journies creating pollution to game an anti-pollution measure.
However it's true that there's not currently a *huge* amount of harmonization - there are some bits like VAT levels, but not that much. I don't think the EU will be demanding much tax harmonization as a condition of single market access, but it is potentially a thing they'd worry about.
What on earth is Chris Bryant upto during PMQs today? Repeated vocal ticking offs by the Speaker.
It’s been a bad PMQs for labour. What is that about 8 in a row now, Johnson has won. Since Boris raised his game Captain Nasal can’t land anything on him.
Boris was confident today and Starmer is just not cutting it
I haven't seen it, but perhaps Starmer having a bad day. Bozo is shit on his feet, but every dog has his day. I wouldn't get too excited, much as you might hope he is good, let me let you into a not very secret secret: Johnson is not up to the job, and though Starmer may have a bad day he is massively more Primeministerial than Johnson, but then so is just about anyone.
Do you misunderstand what the role of a Prime Minister is? The great ones, Churchill, Thatcher, Boris, talked up the nations resolve, built morale, from the people up. Even Blair in his conference speeches talked up the great opportunity’s for UK of globalisation, ignoring the issues with globalisation. At what time do you imagine Starmer able to do any of that?
Everybody I know finds Johnson utterly depressing. There is no way that he and his gang of corrupt opportunists build up the nation´s morale.
You need to get out more .
I am reminded of the lady, who in 1984 was shocked that Reagan won. because everyone she knew was voting for Mondale.
Carnival and Cunard have just cancelled their voyages through to late May 2021. Which seems somewhat rash, given that the key demographic of their customer base should mostly have been vaccinated by then. Anyhow I have sold the Carnival shares that I bought last summer, today for a 50% profit.
It looks like an early sign that the economic fallout from the virus is going to last well through next year.
This is very reminiscent of Bill Clinton's definition of 'is' during the Lewinsky affair.
To be fair I have all sort of apps on my phone I don't use. I don't use Whatsapp either, I don't see a need for it and use Facebook Messenger most of the time for what others may use Whatapp for. If someone asked me if I use Whatsapp I'd say no even though its on my phone.
Last time I used it was about a year or so ago when a local Councillor asked me specifically to send a message to him via Whatsapp. The app has been left untouched since then.
I would say that makes you quite unusual, in this country, at least. Almost everybody I know uses WhatsApp as their primary means of textual communication. That includes both work and social contacts.
I think it is personal group bias - some people I know are very WhatsApp. Others only communicate in their group(s) via Messenger/Facebook. Then there is Signal - the WhatsApp for those who hate what WhatsApp has become...
What on earth is Chris Bryant upto during PMQs today? Repeated vocal ticking offs by the Speaker.
It’s been a bad PMQs for labour. What is that about 8 in a row now, Johnson has won. Since Boris raised his game Captain Nasal can’t land anything on him.
Boris was confident today and Starmer is just not cutting it
I haven't seen it, but perhaps Starmer having a bad day. Bozo is shit on his feet, but every dog has his day. I wouldn't get too excited, much as you might hope he is good, let me let you into a not very secret secret: Johnson is not up to the job, and though Starmer may have a bad day he is massively more Primeministerial than Johnson, but then so is just about anyone.
Do you misunderstand what the role of a Prime Minister is? The great ones, Churchill, Thatcher, Boris, talked up the nations resolve, built morale, from the people up. Even Blair in his conference speeches talked up the great opportunity’s for UK of globalisation, ignoring the issues with globalisation. At what time do you imagine Starmer able to do any of that?
Everybody I know finds Johnson utterly depressing. There is no way that he and his gang of corrupt opportunists build up the nation´s morale.
I'm sure everybody you know is typical of the country that only this time last year gave him a landslide majority then. With almost 50% of the vote in England. Or perhaps you come across as dogmatic and unreasonable in real life as you do here that people say what you want to hear to you.
I know people of all sorts of beliefs. Left or right, liberal or authoritarian, indifferent or interested, religious or atheist . . . if everyone you know has the same belief then your window to the world is ludicrous restrictive.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
We seem to be edging back to where Theresa May had us over a year ago. That's basically what she did, used the NI arrangements to achieve similar objectives for the whole of the UK. God damn the remainer Parliament. They caused so much unnecessary angst.
No, that's a different kind issue. This is essentially a trusted trader scheme which allows approved businesses to bypass customs clearance and tariffs subject to random inspections by customs agents of their warehouses to ensure standards are being met. It's something the UK proposed in 2016 that the EU has refused until now. It's actually a very big win for the UK negotiating team, probably bigger than anything else so far as the EU have agreed to the principle of trusted traders and the terms by which they can operate, which is not something they've been willing to do.
It was always the sanest solution to NI. It is what I advocated when May was still Prime Minister.
Now we've finally gotten here at last via a ludicrously drawn out process. I doubt we would have if it wasn't for the IMB, the IMB forced them to actually compromise - and this was the reasonable, rational, best compromise as we could tell four long years ago.
You could just as well argue that it was the IMB that has prevented compromise until now.
So that explains the last 3 months... what explains the other 3.75 years?
The ERG and the DUP
The Trusted Trader scheme that has been adopted was an idea strongly supported by the ERG though and opposed by the EU.
Now (thanks I would suggest to the IMB) we see the EU finally, belatedly and four years after the ERG have come around to accept the idea.
That's what compromise is about though. Just as Boris has now belatedly accepted that there will, after all, be paperwork involved in trading between GB and NI, and there will be EU observers in NI to ensure that the paperwork is done properly.
But the point is that the EU has also accepted that the paperwork can be minimised by a trusted trader scheme which is something they were refusing to do until now. Both parties compromised and we have a really positive outcome.
Yes, both parties have compromised to find a deal that is acceptable to both. Which is rather different from Philip_Thompson's insinuation that the EU have caved in to the UK's demands with no quid pro quo thanks to the IMB.
They have accepted our suggestion of Trusted Trader Schemes.
Given our suggestion is the one being used I think its fair to say they've moved more but if you disagree then feel free to say why.
“There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”
So it's a bad thing that we compromised? I'm not understanding the point you're trying to make.
No, of course it's not a bad thing that we compromised. I'm not even arguing with you! My posts are directed at Philip_Thompson, who appears to be under the delusion that the EU have simply accepted everything we proposed 4 years ago after being threatened with the IMB, without us having to compromise at all.
I have said more times than I want to count that we compromised. What part of that are you struggling to understand.
I shall say it again: we have reached a compromise.
Yes, we have reached a compromise, one which has involved us accepting that there would, after all, be paperwork involved in GB/NI trading - a position we were resisting just a year ago. It's been a slow walk back from your initial claims that this compromise is something we were suggesting 4 years ago and that it was only the threat of the IMB that forced the EU to accept this compromise. But you got there in the end. Well done.
The Trusted Trader core of the deal is something we were suggesting 4 years ago and it was I strongly believe the threat of the IMB that forced the EU to accept this compromise yes.
It is not very credible to suggest that the small amount of paperwork that got the EU to 4 years on and with only days to go got them to accept a Trusted Trader scheme.
We were suggesting it for the Irish land border, not the sea border. The UK has just accepted Barnier's strategy of 'dedramatising' an internal customs border.
Oops, it seems I was labouring under the misapprehension that Philip had a clue what he was talking about. Lesson learned.
does the level playing field include a minimum wage across the EU at least equal to the UK NMV?
LOL, given we are bottom of heap on every measurement from salary , to pension , benefits , workers rights , etc that is a laugh. I await Bozo tripling the pensions to get to the EU average.
I highly doubt that!
I expect whether you look by mean average, median average or mode average the UK's average pensioners will be getting more than the EU's average pensioner.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
We seem to be edging back to where Theresa May had us over a year ago. That's basically what she did, used the NI arrangements to achieve similar objectives for the whole of the UK. God damn the remainer Parliament. They caused so much unnecessary angst.
No, that's a different kind issue. This is essentially a trusted trader scheme which allows approved businesses to bypass customs clearance and tariffs subject to random inspections by customs agents of their warehouses to ensure standards are being met. It's something the UK proposed in 2016 that the EU has refused until now. It's actually a very big win for the UK negotiating team, probably bigger than anything else so far as the EU have agreed to the principle of trusted traders and the terms by which they can operate, which is not something they've been willing to do.
It was always the sanest solution to NI. It is what I advocated when May was still Prime Minister.
Now we've finally gotten here at last via a ludicrously drawn out process. I doubt we would have if it wasn't for the IMB, the IMB forced them to actually compromise - and this was the reasonable, rational, best compromise as we could tell four long years ago.
You could just as well argue that it was the IMB that has prevented compromise until now.
So that explains the last 3 months... what explains the other 3.75 years?
The ERG and the DUP
The Trusted Trader scheme that has been adopted was an idea strongly supported by the ERG though and opposed by the EU.
Now (thanks I would suggest to the IMB) we see the EU finally, belatedly and four years after the ERG have come around to accept the idea.
That's what compromise is about though. Just as Boris has now belatedly accepted that there will, after all, be paperwork involved in trading between GB and NI, and there will be EU observers in NI to ensure that the paperwork is done properly.
But the point is that the EU has also accepted that the paperwork can be minimised by a trusted trader scheme which is something they were refusing to do until now. Both parties compromised and we have a really positive outcome.
Yes, both parties have compromised to find a deal that is acceptable to both. Which is rather different from Philip_Thompson's insinuation that the EU have caved in to the UK's demands with no quid pro quo thanks to the IMB.
They have accepted our suggestion of Trusted Trader Schemes.
Given our suggestion is the one being used I think its fair to say they've moved more but if you disagree then feel free to say why.
“There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”
So it's a bad thing that we compromised? I'm not understanding the point you're trying to make.
No, of course it's not a bad thing that we compromised. I'm not even arguing with you! My posts are directed at Philip_Thompson, who appears to be under the delusion that the EU have simply accepted everything we proposed 4 years ago after being threatened with the IMB, without us having to compromise at all.
I have said more times than I want to count that we compromised. What part of that are you struggling to understand.
I shall say it again: we have reached a compromise.
Yes, we have reached a compromise, one which has involved us accepting that there would, after all, be paperwork involved in GB/NI trading - a position we were resisting just a year ago. It's been a slow walk back from your initial claims that this compromise is something we were suggesting 4 years ago and that it was only the threat of the IMB that forced the EU to accept this compromise. But you got there in the end. Well done.
The Trusted Trader core of the deal is something we were suggesting 4 years ago and it was I strongly believe the threat of the IMB that forced the EU to accept this compromise yes.
It is not very credible to suggest that the small amount of paperwork that got the EU to 4 years on and with only days to go got them to accept a Trusted Trader scheme.
We were suggesting it for the Irish land border, not the sea border. The UK has just accepted Barnier's strategy of 'dedramatising' an internal customs border.
Oops, it seems I was labouring under the misapprehension that Philip had a clue what he was talking about. Lesson learned.
Given that the EU's strategy for the endgame seems to be EU-proposed structures (border in Irish Sea, Euro customs people around to check the scheme) and UK-proposed superficialities (call it "Trusted Trader", don't let them have an office), and that is roughly what got Boris to accept the WA last time, it might be best to keep quiet until it's all signed.
Our deal is the only one on the table. It is signed, sealed and ready. It puts the whole country on a path to a new free trade agreement with the EU. This will be a new relationship based on free trade and friendly cooperation.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Starmer telling Boris he must secure a Deal as he promised, if he does Labour will vote in the national interest
Very disappointed. Starmer genuinely has confirmed he is not up to the job. Abstain, free vote, anything but whipping for Johnson's omnishambles.
Starmer really has little choice but to support a deal otherwise he is de facto backing no deal
Furthermore Labour would not gain red wall seats by sitting on the fence
Prime Minister Jacob Rees Mogg can turn to Starmer and correctly state. "I am a Conservative and I did not vote for this deal, it was a disaster. You (Starmer) voted FOR this disastrous deal. This is your deal, this is a Labour deal. This is not a Conservative Brexit, it is a Labour Brexit and this is why it has gone so badly wrong".
Labour will likely abstain if we get a Deal, so they do not oppose it leading to No Deal but Boris owns it and gets it through only via Tory votes while facing a significant rebellion from the ERG who join the DUP, the SNP, the LDs, the SDLP, Plaid and Lucas in voting against it
Hasn't Sir Keir Plonker already confirmed he will whip his MPs to support Johnson's world beating trade deal, whatever it may be?
No, he has just said he will act in the national interest, if that means abstaining so be it from his point of view
Abstaining is fine. Whipping to support Johnson's deal will see Starmer as a Vichy style collaborator come the Remainer Nuremberg trials! When that time comes I see myself as Lord Birkett.
A deal is looking imminent. Once agreed, Boris will be riding on a golden chariot for months to come - master of all he surveys. There's absolutely no point Sir Keir trying to rain on Boris parade - if he gets noticed at all he'll just look like a grump and a nit-picker. Better just to hunker down and tell himself that Boris won't be around for ever.
I agree Johnson's stock with go stratospheric on news of his inevitable deal, particularly in the back of his 'inventing' vaccines.
It is a coat tail, Starmer does not need to hang on to.
If he gets a good deal he will deserve the credit too.
I remember when I wanted May out and wanted Boris to replace her the almost unanimous opinion of this site was that renegotiation of May's deal was impossible. That Boris could never get a better deal.
From a Brexiteers perspective he got a better deal last year and now looks on the brink of either a clean Brexit or a good deal now.
Credit where credit is due. He's done good.
And so have I. The inevitable deal is at long last shedding its cunning disguise as a tough-to-achieve aspiration - a disguise which has fooled so many - and is about to reveal itself to our critical/loving (delete as appropriate) gaze.
But this is not why I write. I write to inform that your sentence for yesterday's (Burley/Cummings) double standards misdemeanor has been duly served and your integrity is thus available to be returned to you. It's in a bag at reception.
I find myself, in reference to the deal not PT I hasten to make clear, wondering whether it is meaningful to praise a shite sandwich to the skies when it has been clear for months that the only alternative for dinner is plain unadulterated jobbie.
This is an important point you make. Neither Leavers nor Remainers must allow their respective admiration or relief - both cynically manufactured by Johnson and others - to get in the way of a thorough scrutiny of the deal. What are we tangibly gaining from it in a timeframe we can picture without talk of "our kids and our grandkids"? How does this stack up against what we'll be losing and against all the time and effort and grief involved in getting here? That's the exercise I'll be doing.
The other question is - which of us are the flies, so to speak, and which of us the ones who like bread?
What on earth is Chris Bryant upto during PMQs today? Repeated vocal ticking offs by the Speaker.
It’s been a bad PMQs for labour. What is that about 8 in a row now, Johnson has won. Since Boris raised his game Captain Nasal can’t land anything on him.
Boris was confident today and Starmer is just not cutting it
I haven't seen it, but perhaps Starmer having a bad day. Bozo is shit on his feet, but every dog has his day. I wouldn't get too excited, much as you might hope he is good, let me let you into a not very secret secret: Johnson is not up to the job, and though Starmer may have a bad day he is massively more Primeministerial than Johnson, but then so is just about anyone.
Do you misunderstand what the role of a Prime Minister is? The great ones, Churchill, Thatcher, Boris, talked up the nations resolve, built morale, from the people up. Even Blair in his conference speeches talked up the great opportunity’s for UK of globalisation, ignoring the issues with globalisation. At what time do you imagine Starmer able to do any of that?
Everybody I know finds Johnson utterly depressing. There is no way that he and his gang of corrupt opportunists build up the nation´s morale.
I think you'll find that the current Tory strategy is to project an expectation of starvation in January, while setting the standard of success at no one actually starving to death. So if no one actually starves to death in January (or if they can prevent the papers from covering it), it will be viewed as a great triumph.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Our deal is the only one on the table. It is signed, sealed and ready. It puts the whole country on a path to a new free trade agreement with the EU. This will be a new relationship based on free trade and friendly cooperation.
But who would be so unreasonable as to penalise politicians for telling lies? It's virtually part of thei job description.
Our deal is the only one on the table. It is signed, sealed and ready. It puts the whole country on a path to a new free trade agreement with the EU. This will be a new relationship based on free trade and friendly cooperation.
Which parts of "on a path to" and "new relationship" are unclear?
God I hope that some no mark minion put this out in his name to bolster his man of the people image. He surely has at least 1 more important matter to focus on.
does the level playing field include a minimum wage across the EU at least equal to the UK NMV?
LOL, given we are bottom of heap on every measurement from salary , to pension , benefits , workers rights , etc that is a laugh. I await Bozo tripling the pensions to get to the EU average.
I highly doubt that!
I expect whether you look by mean average, median average or mode average the UK's average pensioners will be getting more than the EU's average pensioner.
So as I understand it the thing with Murrell is he allegedly sent WhatsApp messages suggesting deeply inappropriate action in the Salmond investigation .
So the question is did he send them, and more importantly who to?
Both of those questions seem far more important than whether he has WhatsApp installed on his phone or not.
And Shirley if these messages exist they can be produced via the recipients phone. And if the recipient doesn't want to share the messages then how on earth does anyone know about them and their content?
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
The peculiar Brexit coalition which delivered the 80 seat majority and which Johnson will do very well to keep intact for much longer. For many it's about immigration but for others it's about small state and slashing regulations on business. There's an overlap, where you find the old school reactionary right, but it's probably not that big of a one.
So as I understand it the thing with Murrell is he allegedly sent WhatsApp messages suggesting deeply inappropriate action in the Salmond investigation .
So the question is did he send them, and more importantly who to?
Both of those questions seem far more important than whether he has WhatsApp installed on his phone or not.
And Shirley if these messages exist they can be produced via the recipients phone. And if the recipient doesn't want to share the messages then how on earth does anyone know about them and their content?
I thought (might be wrong) that the recipient(s) had already published them which is why they are trying to find the sender
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
So as I understand it the thing with Murrell is he allegedly sent WhatsApp messages suggesting deeply inappropriate action in the Salmond investigation .
So the question is did he send them, and more importantly who to?
Both of those questions seem far more important than whether he has WhatsApp installed on his phone or not.
And Shirley if these messages exist they can be produced via the recipients phone. And if the recipient doesn't want to share the messages then how on earth does anyone know about them and their content?
The belief of the Salmondistas, AIUI, is that Murrell was encouraging members to complain to the police to encourage them to take action against Salmond which ultimately resulted in his trial in revenge for his humiliation of the Scottish Government in the Judicial review. Murrell doesn't seem to dispute sending tweets to this effect but claims that they were irrelevant because Salmond had already been charged at the time.
There may be timing issues here because my understanding is that not all of the complainers came forward at the same time but the slightly desperate search for other social media platforms does seem to suggest that the evidence supporting this belief may be slight.
Or just maybe Murrell has not survived as the Chief Executive of the cesspit that is the SNP for more than 20 years without being a bit more careful about covering his tracks.
So as I understand it the thing with Murrell is he allegedly sent WhatsApp messages suggesting deeply inappropriate action in the Salmond investigation .
So the question is did he send them, and more importantly who to?
Both of those questions seem far more important than whether he has WhatsApp installed on his phone or not.
And Shirley if these messages exist they can be produced via the recipients phone. And if the recipient doesn't want to share the messages then how on earth does anyone know about them and their content?
IIRC If you delete messages in WhatsApp, which have been read by the recipient, then they still have the message.
So if you have an account, you can be forced (under UK law) to unlock your account for the court. If you delete messages, that leaves a "deleted" indicator... and if the recipient still has them....
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
True to an extent - but how come China sells so much to Europe and the US?
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
God I hope that some no mark minion put this out in his name to bolster his man of the people image. He surely has at least 1 more important matter to focus on.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
Export not import, why only look at one of of the equation? Was your phone, tablet or computer you typed that on imported from Ireland or from China? Do we import more from Ireland or China?
Absolutely we may trade more with neighbours but that is irrelevant to competitive advantage being a good thing. That doesn't excuse protectionism.
What on earth is Chris Bryant upto during PMQs today? Repeated vocal ticking offs by the Speaker.
It’s been a bad PMQs for labour. What is that about 8 in a row now, Johnson has won. Since Boris raised his game Captain Nasal can’t land anything on him.
Boris was confident today and Starmer is just not cutting it
I haven't seen it, but perhaps Starmer having a bad day. Bozo is shit on his feet, but every dog has his day. I wouldn't get too excited, much as you might hope he is good, let me let you into a not very secret secret: Johnson is not up to the job, and though Starmer may have a bad day he is massively more Primeministerial than Johnson, but then so is just about anyone.
Do you misunderstand what the role of a Prime Minister is? The great ones, Churchill, Thatcher, Boris, talked up the nations resolve, built morale, from the people up. Even Blair in his conference speeches talked up the great opportunity’s for UK of globalisation, ignoring the issues with globalisation. At what time do you imagine Starmer able to do any of that?
Everybody I know finds Johnson utterly depressing. There is no way that he and his gang of corrupt opportunists build up the nation´s morale.
I think you'll find that the current Tory strategy is to project an expectation of starvation in January, while setting the standard of success at no one actually starving to death. So if no one actually starves to death in January (or if they can prevent the papers from covering it), it will be viewed as a great triumph.
I think that is just about right. The Tory fanboys will faint with delight... and then swarm onto sites such as this to intone Johnson´s praise.
The reality is not important. It is just a matter of PR and how to spin things. The rest of us have to pick up the pieces and foot the bill.
Whether it is the despicable Cummings who is behind this cynicism or Princess P P is not really relevant. It is the non-tax dodgers who wll be left to pay the price.
Youngest has had 3 of the timetabled 8 classes in Sixth Form this week so far. One per day. He's beginning to wonder why he bothered getting out of bed. Can't say I blame him.
God I hope that some no mark minion put this out in his name to bolster his man of the people image. He surely has at least 1 more important matter to focus on.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
True to an extent - but how come China sells so much to Europe and the US?
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
It is not "true to an extent" - it is true. The gravity model of trade has phenomenon explanatory power. The variables in the model are the inverse of the distance and the size of the two economies in question. So China exports a lot to the US and EU despite the distance because all three economies are large. We sell a lot to China too, even though it is far away, because it is large. Eg we export 5x more to China than to Korea. But because we share a border with Ireland we export a lot more to them, even though their economy is a fraction of the size of China's.
the cesspit that is the SNP for more than 20 years
You seem to be getting a bit unhinged about this lately. Coming from a Tory it also inspires cogitations upon motes and beams.
I am not a member of the Tory party. And their decision to cancel the exams yesterday really pissed me off.
But even the SNP themselves have acknowledged that some of their keyboard warriors are less than helpful to the cause.
Yep, well keyboard warriors do not a party make, as I'm sure the SCons would be the first to claim when the assorted Union flag shaggers, racists, Trumpers, sectarian bigots and bleach drinkers who tweet support for them are highlighted. Well, the SCons who aren't any of these things anyway.
Yep, Safe Harbor Day has come and gone, giving yet greater certainty to Biden's win, and the Betfair market has duly reacted -
Trump steams in to 20s.
It may not appear much in the news but the State of Texas, with the backing of a number of other states, is suing PA, GA Wisconsin and Michigan.
I'm no lawyer but the case involves changes to election rules made by the states being sued, which Texas alleges are illegal.
Only the Supreme Court can deliberate in legal disputes between states, as I understand it. This is serious.
Much as you would like to see a Trump coup (for reasons that are entirely beyond me) this case is not serious, it's frivlolous. It has zero chance of success.
If only because there's no way SCOTUS is going to open the door to states suing each other for enacting laws they don't like: for a start, states like NY with strong gun control laws would see the door open to sue states with weak gun control laws for enabling a supply of illegal firearms across state lines.
the cesspit that is the SNP for more than 20 years
You seem to be getting a bit unhinged about this lately. Coming from a Tory it also inspires cogitations upon motes and beams.
I am not a member of the Tory party. And their decision to cancel the exams yesterday really pissed me off.
But even the SNP themselves have acknowledged that some of their keyboard warriors are less than helpful to the cause.
Yep, well keyboard warriors do not a party make, as I'm sure the SCons would be the first to claim when the assorted Union flag shaggers, racists, Trumpers, sectarian bigots and bleach drinkers who tweet support for them are highlighted. Well, the SCons who aren't any of these things anyway.
So there are 2 hinges on this gate then and both of them a bit loose? Ok.
Mr. L, Hamilton's keen to return. But Abu Dhabi is apparently pretty strict.
The Mercedes-Hamilton combination is immensely successful, but also rather tedious.
Best driver, best car, very hard to beat unless something goes seriously wrong. I agree. But I would also like to see Russell in the second car next year pushing Hamilton a lot harder than Bottas is ever going to.
Please tell me that's actually a claim filed before SCOTUS. Not only for it's gratuitous falsehood, but I'd love to see XKCD entered as evidence in a SCOTUS case.
Mr. L, Bottas must be relieved he's already got a contract, but he's been making lots of mistakes lately. Struggling in traffic, bad starts, unable to compete on pace, and he's had bad luck to top it all off.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
Export not import, why only look at one of of the equation? Was your phone, tablet or computer you typed that on imported from Ireland or from China? Do we import more from Ireland or China?
Absolutely we may trade more with neighbours but that is irrelevant to competitive advantage being a good thing. That doesn't excuse protectionism.
We import more from China than from Ireland, but imports from Ireland are 60% of those from China, while the Irish economy is 3% of the size of China's. So why do we import 20x more from Ireland than from China, relative to the size of those economies? Because we are neighbours of Ireland, and on the other side of the globe from China. Your argument was that "Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe." The garbage argument is your claim that distance is an irrelevance.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
Export not import, why only look at one of of the equation? Was your phone, tablet or computer you typed that on imported from Ireland or from China? Do we import more from Ireland or China?
Absolutely we may trade more with neighbours but that is irrelevant to competitive advantage being a good thing. That doesn't excuse protectionism.
We import more from China than from Ireland, but imports from Ireland are 60% of those from China, while the Irish economy is 3% of the size of China's. So why do we import 20x more from Ireland than from China, relative to the size of those economies? Because we are neighbours of Ireland, and on the other side of the globe from China. Your argument was that "Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe." The garbage argument is your claim that distance is an irrelevance.
It is not irrelevant to volumes of trade, it is irrelevant to whether trade is good or bad.
If you believe as I do that competitive advantage is real and a good thing then that applies for your nearest neighbours and furthest partners.
If you believe as Trump does in protectionism then that applies to near neighbours or distanced nations.
Distance shouldn't change principles. There is no reason why distance imports are magically better or worse, safer or more dangerous than near ones.
My point if you read what I wrote was about "principles" not volume.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
True to an extent - but how come China sells so much to Europe and the US?
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
(They keep imports down by suppressing domestic consumption,)
There are formulae that forecast the amount of trade countries do with each other that are pretty predictive - and distance, is an important component of them. For some sectors, like auto, it's pretty obvious why this is the case: simply inventory sitting on ships is expensive in terms of carrying cost, and you can't run just-in-time production if there's a big lag between ordering and receiving.
Distance is not dominant, of course, because there are other factors (such as import-export product fit, size of economy, services-vs-goods, fungibility of export/imports, existence of an FTA etc).
Nevertheless, you would expect that the UK - irrespective of any future arrangements with the EU - to have lots of trade with it because it is: (a) big, (b) rich, (c) close, and (d) quite a good fit with us.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
True to an extent - but how come China sells so much to Europe and the US?
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
It is not "true to an extent" - it is true. The gravity model of trade has phenomenon explanatory power. The variables in the model are the inverse of the distance and the size of the two economies in question. So China exports a lot to the US and EU despite the distance because all three economies are large. We sell a lot to China too, even though it is far away, because it is large. Eg we export 5x more to China than to Korea. But because we share a border with Ireland we export a lot more to them, even though their economy is a fraction of the size of China's.
The problem with the gravity model of trade is that it doesn't take into account deliberate policies on trade flows.
We (and the rest of the Western world) quite deliberately opened up trade, specifically, with China.
the cesspit that is the SNP for more than 20 years
You seem to be getting a bit unhinged about this lately. Coming from a Tory it also inspires cogitations upon motes and beams.
I am not a member of the Tory party. And their decision to cancel the exams yesterday really pissed me off.
But even the SNP themselves have acknowledged that some of their keyboard warriors are less than helpful to the cause.
Yep, well keyboard warriors do not a party make, as I'm sure the SCons would be the first to claim when the assorted Union flag shaggers, racists, Trumpers, sectarian bigots and bleach drinkers who tweet support for them are highlighted. Well, the SCons who aren't any of these things anyway.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
True to an extent - but how come China sells so much to Europe and the US?
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
(They keep imports down by suppressing domestic consumption,)
There are formulae that forecast the amount of trade countries do with each other that are pretty predictive - and distance, is an important component of them. For some sectors, like auto, it's pretty obvious why this is the case: simply inventory sitting on ships is expensive in terms of carrying cost, and you can't run just-in-time production if there's a big lag between ordering and receiving.
Distance is not dominant, of course, because there are other factors (such as import-export product fit, size of economy, services-vs-goods, fungibility of export/imports, existence of an FTA etc).
Nevertheless, you would expect that the UK - irrespective of any future arrangements with the EU - to have lots of trade with it because it is: (a) big, (b) rich, (c) close, and (d) quite a good fit with us.
There is, in China, quite a bit of targeting what they see as an unacceptable rise in an area of imports - by tariffs, internal legal games, encouraging domestic alternatives.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
Export not import, why only look at one of of the equation? Was your phone, tablet or computer you typed that on imported from Ireland or from China? Do we import more from Ireland or China?
Absolutely we may trade more with neighbours but that is irrelevant to competitive advantage being a good thing. That doesn't excuse protectionism.
We import more from China than from Ireland, but imports from Ireland are 60% of those from China, while the Irish economy is 3% of the size of China's. So why do we import 20x more from Ireland than from China, relative to the size of those economies? Because we are neighbours of Ireland, and on the other side of the globe from China. Your argument was that "Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe." The garbage argument is your claim that distance is an irrelevance.
It is not irrelevant to volumes of trade, it is irrelevant to whether trade is good or bad.
If you believe as I do that competitive advantage is real and a good thing then that applies for your nearest neighbours and furthest partners.
If you believe as Trump does in protectionism then that applies to near neighbours or distanced nations.
Distance shouldn't change principles. There is no reason why distance imports are magically better or worse, safer or more dangerous than near ones.
My point if you read what I wrote was about "principles" not volume.
To be honest I can't even understand what you are trying to argue, but you certainly said that distance was unimportant for trade, which is patently false. Whether trade is "good" or "bad" is a question for a theologian, not an economist.
Well, in fairness we are talking about the Punjab, about Muslim farmers, a very Hindu dominated government and religious tensions. It would be a bit naive to think that the relationship between Pakistan and India was irrelevant to that or indeed our interest in the matter given that both sides are nuclear powers.
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
True to an extent - but how come China sells so much to Europe and the US?
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
It is not "true to an extent" - it is true. The gravity model of trade has phenomenon explanatory power. The variables in the model are the inverse of the distance and the size of the two economies in question. So China exports a lot to the US and EU despite the distance because all three economies are large. We sell a lot to China too, even though it is far away, because it is large. Eg we export 5x more to China than to Korea. But because we share a border with Ireland we export a lot more to them, even though their economy is a fraction of the size of China's.
The problem with the gravity model of trade is that it doesn't take into account deliberate policies on trade flows.
We (and the rest of the Western world) quite deliberately opened up trade, specifically, with China.
You can augment the gravity model to improve its fit, by putting in variables like having an FTA or being in a single market together. We trade even more with EU countries than you would expect based on distance and size alone, for instance, because we are in the single market together (for another 3 weeks anyway).
Why are the French and Germans so paranoid that a post-Brexit UK is going to have such a massive trading advantage over the EU when we are no longer bound by EU regulation?
We know that some regulations have a cost in competitiveness, but are still worth doing. The reason the EU has common standards is because otherwise there's a perverse incentive to try to undercut each other, particularly on health and environmental issues. The same goes for tax - if the ideal rate to maximize welfare is X but you split governance up into competing zones, they'll set it to below X.
A lot of Brexit enthusiasts have been pretty clear that if they can get market access they plan to undercut the EU with lower taxes and regulations. The EU won't grant the market access they want under these conditions, because they're not total and utter idiots.
But the amusing thing is that the main people who are aghast at the idea the UK may gain from lower taxes are the same people who deny the existence of the Laffer Curve.
Anyway they are total and utter idiots if they think they can hold back the tide by making everyone equally uncompetitive. There's a reason much of manufacturing has been exported to the Far East - we operate on a global not local market. The "Single Market" and access to it is more a polite fiction than reality.
You don't insist on everyone in global trade having *equal* standards because people understand that poorer countries will have lower standards than rich ones, and it matters less if the other countries are more distant and more different. But other trade agreements like the TPP also have requirements for environmental and labour standards. It's just not true that there's completely seamless world trade or that there's nothing countries can do to stop themselves being undercut.
So countries like South Korea, Japan etc that we import a lot from have lower standards because they're poorer do they?
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
Japan and SK are further away, more different (so less likelihood of being undercut in a market you compete in directly) and have less seamless trade, so it's less important to - say - Germany to align regulatory standards than with France or the UK. However I don't think it's true to say the countries you mention are less regulated than the EU, and Japanese businesses definitely aren't less taxed.
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
Distance is one of the main determinants of bilateral trade flows, as any trade economist will tell you. The gravity model of trade is extremely powerful. There is a reason why we export more to Ireland than to China...
Export not import, why only look at one of of the equation? Was your phone, tablet or computer you typed that on imported from Ireland or from China? Do we import more from Ireland or China?
Absolutely we may trade more with neighbours but that is irrelevant to competitive advantage being a good thing. That doesn't excuse protectionism.
We import more from China than from Ireland, but imports from Ireland are 60% of those from China, while the Irish economy is 3% of the size of China's. So why do we import 20x more from Ireland than from China, relative to the size of those economies? Because we are neighbours of Ireland, and on the other side of the globe from China. Your argument was that "Distance is irrelevant. It is a garbage argument used by pro-Europeans as an excuse to try and get the UK aligned with Europe." The garbage argument is your claim that distance is an irrelevance.
It is not irrelevant to volumes of trade, it is irrelevant to whether trade is good or bad.
If you believe as I do that competitive advantage is real and a good thing then that applies for your nearest neighbours and furthest partners.
If you believe as Trump does in protectionism then that applies to near neighbours or distanced nations.
Distance shouldn't change principles. There is no reason why distance imports are magically better or worse, safer or more dangerous than near ones.
My point if you read what I wrote was about "principles" not volume.
To be honest I can't even understand what you are trying to argue, but you certainly said that distance was unimportant for trade, which is patently false. Whether trade is "good" or "bad" is a question for a theologian, not an economist.
Bullshit that is not what I said. I said that closer distance helps with trade.
Whether trade is good or bad is absolute an economic question. Or was David Ricardo a theologian?
the cesspit that is the SNP for more than 20 years
You seem to be getting a bit unhinged about this lately. Coming from a Tory it also inspires cogitations upon motes and beams.
I am not a member of the Tory party. And their decision to cancel the exams yesterday really pissed me off.
But even the SNP themselves have acknowledged that some of their keyboard warriors are less than helpful to the cause.
Yep, well keyboard warriors do not a party make, as I'm sure the SCons would be the first to claim when the assorted Union flag shaggers, racists, Trumpers, sectarian bigots and bleach drinkers who tweet support for them are highlighted. Well, the SCons who aren't any of these things anyway.
The SNP is apparently an organisation campaigning for independence. Why knew? 🤷♀️
It certainly induces a weary sense of déjà vu. Since a goodly portion of indy support appears to believe that the SNP are not campaigning for independence, perhaps Union Jack should try the SNP are anti independence line, for variety if nothing else.
Well, in fairness we are talking about the Punjab, about Muslim farmers, a very Hindu dominated government and religious tensions. It would be a bit naive to think that the relationship between Pakistan and India was irrelevant to that or indeed our interest in the matter given that both sides are nuclear powers.
Must say the Indian agricultural reforms had passed me by till WATO today. But then, I'm not PM or an ex-FS. The WATO report seemed to suggest it was far more than Moslems in Punjab who were upset. A large part of Modi's voter base too. PS, was astonished to learn India still has more than half the population employed in agriculture.
Comments
Although it does appear to be a "developing story":
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/12/08/no-alcohol-for-2-months-russia-tells-coronavirus-vaccine-recipients-a72280
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/12/09/6-days-off-booze-is-enough-for-russias-coronavirus-vaccine-developer-says-a72285
His suggestions contradict Russian officials’ previous recommendations to avoid immunosuppressants like alcohol for 14 days before and 42 days after inoculation.
Gintsburg had said that “a single glass of champagne never hurt anyone” shortly following Tuesday’s instructions of 56 alcohol-free days by Anna Popova, who heads Russia’s consumer safety watchdog and is a senior Covid-19 response official.
However it's true that there's not currently a *huge* amount of harmonization - there are some bits like VAT levels, but not that much. I don't think the EU will be demanding much tax harmonization as a condition of single market access, but it is potentially a thing they'd worry about.
It looks like an early sign that the economic fallout from the virus is going to last well through next year.
I even have a Farcebook account - again acquired for a previous job, but not used in years.
I know people of all sorts of beliefs. Left or right, liberal or authoritarian, indifferent or interested, religious or atheist . . . if everyone you know has the same belief then your window to the world is ludicrous restrictive.
My favourite is their description of a Selfie Stick as "Tongsis" - a combination of "Tongkat" (stick) and "Narsis" - narcissist!
Labour and environmental standards in TPP are nothing like the standards required in the EU because the TPP quite rationally as a modern, sane, 21st century trade accord recognises the bulk of that to be issues for national governments not a trade agreement. That is part of what makes the TPP a far superior trade body to the EU going forwards and one I hope the UK joins imminently.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1336680606596521991
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1336683534208077825
I expect whether you look by mean average, median average or mode average the UK's average pensioners will be getting more than the EU's average pensioner.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1336680606596521991?s=20
Anyhow where I came in wasn't about how much alignment you want to be operating under, it was somebody wondering why the EU was worried about this. A common theme we see with British people who don't like the EU is that despite arguing about it a lot they don't seem to understand why it exists, which makes their expectations of what it will do very unreliable.
Our deal is the only one on the table. It is signed, sealed and ready. It puts the whole country on a path to a new free trade agreement with the EU. This will be a new relationship based on free trade and friendly cooperation.
If anyone disagrees with this then please do so using an electronic device made in Europe and not shipped in from a distance away.
Yes closer distance helps with some trade but the principles of trade and competitive advantage span the globe for good reason.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=38&LAB=38&LIB=6&Brexit=3&Green=5&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVBrexit=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=19.3&SCOTLAB=19&SCOTLIB=5.7&SCOTBrexit=1&SCOTGreen=1.7&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=51.7&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019
So the question is did he send them, and more importantly who to?
Both of those questions seem far more important than whether he has WhatsApp installed on his phone or not.
And Shirley if these messages exist they can be produced via the recipients phone. And if the recipient doesn't want to share the messages then how on earth does anyone know about them and their content?
There may be timing issues here because my understanding is that not all of the complainers came forward at the same time but the slightly desperate search for other social media platforms does seem to suggest that the evidence supporting this belief may be slight.
Or just maybe Murrell has not survived as the Chief Executive of the cesspit that is the SNP for more than 20 years without being a bit more careful about covering his tracks.
Anyone care to put a price on whether BJ has watched a full episode of Corrie in the last 20 years? 100/1?
I feel sure if he had he would have injected some pseudo classicist bullshit about Aeschylusean tragedy and Plautus like comedy.
https://twitter.com/PipsFunFacts/status/1336624591461036036
So if you have an account, you can be forced (under UK law) to unlock your account for the court. If you delete messages, that leaves a "deleted" indicator... and if the recipient still has them....
There is also the small matter of tariffs and other walls - the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort in reducing/keeping imports down.
But even the SNP themselves have acknowledged that some of their keyboard warriors are less than helpful to the cause.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1336691981981016066
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/20/deirdre-rachid-free-the-weatherfield-one-coronation-street_n_6505414.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAJQG3ACQB0IyoZt_6YWj5tu3fKmgwhMPPPdp-q9jlO542fCDiqyY7i_VkZsj_AKd2Ib3HjGZzDHOg6bIPFPAr8ewtzXZO_mVyNawEkAvjkYHYF9sFT3yDj4U4Kaf9Lrsp5ozSOa4sNFdE6-fo2uLRIGZnZa2FePRU1YFDfXs_vr
Though none went as far as Wilson who I believe asked the BBC to cancel Steptoe and Son on election night 1964 to maximise Labour turnout
Absolutely we may trade more with neighbours but that is irrelevant to competitive advantage being a good thing. That doesn't excuse protectionism.
The reality is not important. It is just a matter of PR and how to spin things. The rest of us have to pick up the pieces and foot the bill.
Whether it is the despicable Cummings who is behind this cynicism or Princess P P is not really relevant. It is the non-tax dodgers who wll be left to pay the price.
'"I intend to be the first to be injected with this vaccine in the state of Israel,” Netanyahu told reporters.'
Selfish or what?
He's beginning to wonder why he bothered getting out of bed.
Can't say I blame him.
The Mercedes-Hamilton combination is immensely successful, but also rather tedious.
https://twitter.com/robelinda2/status/1336140055425892352
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1336692872331059200
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1336698755152801797
If you believe as I do that competitive advantage is real and a good thing then that applies for your nearest neighbours and furthest partners.
If you believe as Trump does in protectionism then that applies to near neighbours or distanced nations.
Distance shouldn't change principles. There is no reason why distance imports are magically better or worse, safer or more dangerous than near ones.
My point if you read what I wrote was about "principles" not volume.
There are formulae that forecast the amount of trade countries do with each other that are pretty predictive - and distance, is an important component of them. For some sectors, like auto, it's pretty obvious why this is the case: simply inventory sitting on ships is expensive in terms of carrying cost, and you can't run just-in-time production if there's a big lag between ordering and receiving.
Distance is not dominant, of course, because there are other factors (such as import-export product fit, size of economy, services-vs-goods, fungibility of export/imports, existence of an FTA etc).
Nevertheless, you would expect that the UK - irrespective of any future arrangements with the EU - to have lots of trade with it because it is: (a) big, (b) rich, (c) close, and (d) quite a good fit with us.
We (and the rest of the Western world) quite deliberately opened up trade, specifically, with China.
The SNP is apparently an organisation campaigning for independence. Why knew? 🤷♀️
https://twitter.com/RajeshThind/status/1336697377231499264?s=20
https://twitter.com/RajeshThind/status/1336698850229280769?s=20
Whether trade is good or bad is absolute an economic question. Or was David Ricardo a theologian?
Since a goodly portion of indy support appears to believe that the SNP are not campaigning for independence, perhaps Union Jack should try the SNP are anti independence line, for variety if nothing else.
But then, I'm not PM or an ex-FS.
The WATO report seemed to suggest it was far more than Moslems in Punjab who were upset. A large part of Modi's voter base too.
PS, was astonished to learn India still has more than half the population employed in agriculture.