Brexit, gimme a break.

[Workingman]

Post WWII occupied Japan was rebuilt using allied money. Its political, military, social and economic structures were reformed. A lot of time, effort and money was spent in turning Japan into an industrial powerhouse in order to prevent the economic collapse of the western pacific region. It remains an industrial manufacturing giant to this day.

Australia, on the other hand, supports a population well below what it could easily maintain. It is vastly rich in mineral resources, which it exports around the globe. It is a net exporter of agricultural produce. It is also a net exporter of energy and related products whilst its domestic consumption has declined relative to economic growth.

The UK is none of those things, so let us not compare apples and pears, eh!

We are an overpopulated and full up energy and food importing industrial wasteland living on our past. The sooner we accept that the better it will be for all of us.

When it comes to the next GE, if May can hang on, who knows, it will be after we have left the EU. The only way back in will then be to go to the back of the queue, join Schengen, join the €, submit totally to the ECJ and have no rebate. Some plan that is!

[AliasAggers]

We are an overpopulated and full-up energy and food importing industrial wasteland living on our past.
The sooner we accept that the better it will be for all of us.

What a thoroughly depressing outlook. I give up.

[Workingman]

Depressing yes, John, but unfortunately true; all that I am trying to do is inject a modicum of reality into the situation.

The UK's balance of trade has been in the red every year for the past twenty years: that cannot continue. It is fine to talk of free trade deals and WTO rules and the likes with the rest of the world, but we have to have something to trade!

Thatcher, remember her, almost did away with manufacturing in favour of service *industries*. They then largely became concentrated in the Greater London area at the expense of the rest of the country. We now have all our eggs in one basket and if London falls, and there are no guarantees it will not, then the whole country falls.

Post Brexit the UK is going to have to massively reinvest in making products people want, and to make them in numbers large enough to keep people employed. However, in reinventing the wheel it faces many problems. Where is the money coming from for the reinvestment? Borrowing? Tax breaks? Most of the manufacturing, if it can be created, will more than likely be automated. We are not rich in raw materials so they will have to be imported and if the £ falls they will be more expensive. And our goods will be going up against those from low wage economies. It cannot be dressed up as a rosy picture: sorry.

[Kaz]

Depressing, yes! Realistic, also yes - unfortunately - and all totally unnecessary and self inflicted

[Suff]

Depressing? That depends on how you look at it.

The Remain camp, plus the Labour movement have tried their damndest to convince the British people that they are some latter day has been with no power, no voice and no economy. Dependent on the "Largesse" of the EU, for which we seem to pay some nominal sum for... Well to be shafted if we want to tell the truth.

So let's see. We import food. Yes we certainly do. So why don't we join the club. With all those other countries in the world.

The only country in Europe that’s self-sufficient is France. Other countries in the exclusive club of self sufficiency: Canada, Australia, Russia, India, Argentina, Burma, Thailand, the U.S. and a few small others.

Out of some 200 countries recognised by the UN, that is a shockingly short list. Even more notably is that Spain, from whom we get the majority of our vegetables, is also NOT on that list.

There is more food outside the EU than in it. It's just a hell of a lot more expensive to import it Into the EU than it is to import it when you are outside the EU. One of the strongest trade barriers the EU has with Everyone (even CETA), is agriculture.

Even Australia, due to a decade of severe drought, has started sucking in food to the point that increasing numbers of it's farmers have gone bust.

As for a service economy? Now let's talk about that. Maggie wasn't it? Who destroyed our economy, raped industry and moved us all to that worthless service stuff...

So let me see.

The nature of the labour market has changed considerably over the last 170 years. In 1841 most people worked in manufacturing, but by 1881 those working in services overtook manufacturing.

That is 1881, NOT 1981. The fact that the incurably inept Labour government of the 1970's managed to create so much inflation, so much damage with price controls, so much capital flight and so much absolute mayhem in the economy with 90% taxes, essentially strangling the remaining UK businesses only just hanging in there, seems to be lost in the community charge fiasco. Or, maybe, those who still believe in the Labour fairytale simply can't face the scrutiny.

Then we have this German Paper, which expands greatly on how services are the "modern" economy and how Germany has had to embrace them in order to become more "modern"

Preface
Services have long been the most significant sector of the economy in all highly developed
countries. They are continuing to account for more and more of the world’s GNP. Some of the
most dynamic fields of international trade are in the tertiary sector. One-fifth of all world
trade is now in services. The competitiveness of national economies is increasingly determined
by their performance on the services side. This is also true of decidedly industrial countries
like Germany.

Hardly sounding like services are the anathema of a countries economy. Read down the article. When you get to the point where the UK economy is better balanced on services than France and Germany, let me know....


The remain refrain stays the same. It is always in the same mould. Do the UK down and we'll go crawling back to the EU and do their bidding.

Not in my lifetime, not in the lifetime of my children, grandchildren or great grandchildren. The more years we get past 2019, the more our children grow out of the EU, the more the population as a whole will realise just how toxic the EU really is.

It is a fact that People in the USSSR believed that they were safer, better off and living in a far better world. The fact that they had to queue, sometimes for hours, just for basics of life, was simply a price you had to pay. Like the secret police turning up in the middle of the night with trucks and guns.

The people of the Ex USSR states, today, cannot imagine life in the USSR. When they are told about it, they can't put themselves into that situation, it's like a bad dream world and they choose to just dismiss it.

There will come a time, in the UK, where the people will look back on the EU and say "You want us to join What!!" I hope I'm lucky enough to live that long.

[AliasAggers]

There will come a time, in the UK, where the people will
look back on the EU and say "You want us to join What!!"

That's what I think.
I can understand that one of the reasons why we were 'hoodwinked' into
joining the EU was the idea that it would prevent a third world war, but
at the time there was no indication that we would, thereby, be giving up
control of our own country to unelected foreigners. We would never have
agreed to join, I'm sure' if the consequential outcome had been visualised.

Personally I would sooner we had become the 51st state of the USA.