Pan B == Plan A-

[Suff]

Part and part. Osborne promised a punishment budget immediately after the vote. The CBI said the UK economy would collapse, before leaving the EU.

JLR was already in the works and has been facilitated under EU conditions. Essentially the world slowdown has hit extremely expensive JLR vehicles so they are moving them to cheaper manufacturing in Eastern Europe. This would have happened whether or not Brexit had been called. As for Dyson? They use the UK for R&D, China for manufacturing and moving the HQ to Singapore wont change that much after the EU tantrum over Apple earnings domiciled in Ireland for sales in other countries.

As for the long term impact of Brexit? Back office moves will not tell us much. HQ moves and business residency is much more of an indication and that is still as unclear as the solution to Brexit.

I agree, thought, that May is now the problem. They need to fix that first.

The Leave campaign may have banged on, constantly, about immigration. But they also talked about job stripping, industry stripping, sovereignty and a host of other issues. It was the press who constantly only repeated the Immigration issue. There were a host of issues including money and respect. The only part of money that got air time was 350, respect got absolutely none. Nobody I talked to about it had Immigration as their #1 issue. An additional issue, yes, core? No.

[cromwell]

One of my issues with the EU also applies to the UN. The drift of power from the elected to the unelected.
They may set up as nations working together but over time the beaurocracy that is set up comes to regard itself as being the ruler of the nations below them.

[Suff]

Actually, to be brutally fair, the EU Ordinary Legislative Procedure has been moving towards a more democratic and less autocratic approach. My main issue with EU legislative procedure is that, when it gets to really serious stuff, OLP does not apply and the Parliament is simply left as advisory and not a mandatory chamber. Which is somewhat backwards.

My bigger issue with the EU is that it is incompatible, with views and opinions, to the UK ethos and way of life. This causes constant friction and conflict and the UK has only one recourse, veto. The veto is being pulled back in every revision of the treaties and, eventually, the UK will wind up with a stark choice. Change or be consumed. I see no reason for the EU to consume us so my take is we leave.

My even bigger issue is that most remain voters have no clue, whatsoever, that this is even going on. Even worse is that even if the people of the UK understood what was going on, even less of them understand who to vote for in UK and EU elections to stop the rot.

So whilst it is, essentially, more democratic than it used to be, the EU is not a good fit for the UK. Therefore the EU appears as undemocratic to those in the UK who see the EU as imposing their will on us. In fact it is mostly a matter that what the UK does not agree with, most of the rest of the EU see as normal.

I still find the whole process less democratic than I would like, especially with the games played in the Council, but I can't say that it is a system which is increasingly stealing power without giving representation; because it is actually moving in the opposite direction. Slowly, but moving.

It doesn't change my opinion that the UK should leave, but it does mean I do know why I think the UK should leave. It also doesn't change my opinion that the EU is, today, still not democratic enough; with significant power held by too few appointees rather than elected officials.

[Workingman]

My bigger issue with the EU is that it is incompatible, with views and opinions, to the UK ethos and way of life.

That can easily be turned on its head to read that the UK is incompatible, with views and opinions, to the EU ethos and way of life.

My even bigger issue is that most remain voters have no clue, whatsoever, that this is even going on.

Ah yes. We all know that leave voters have an in-depth knowledge about the machinations and what is going on in the EU. They miss no opportunity to tell the world how knowledgeable they are and how thick and traitorous we Remainers are.

When it comes to the OLP things are in flux. Consultation on proposals and laws is carried out in three phases. The first reading is biased 2:1:1 in favour of adoption over further consultation and non-adoption. The second reading follows a similar pattern of 2:1:1. The third reading, conciliation, swings to an even split of adoption or non-adoption. Parliament and Council are involved in all three phases.

It is worth noting that 95% of proposals and acts were supported, and some even proposed, by the UK. We abstained on 3% and lost on 2%, Those are Official EU voting records published since 1999 or more commonly known as 'facts', but leavers don't like facts.

As a thick Remainer I am not supposed to know any of this, but I found it all in the Remainer's Encyclopaedia of EU Fantasies.

[Suff]

You know wha I mean WM, most Leavers dismiss it as totally undemocratic, most remainders just trust that it is all OK.

I have no issue with the EU being out of step with the UK, it is all the same to me. We are not a fit for the EU.

It was all in Cameron speech. The pertinent point was that he said the EU needed to reform for the UK to stay. Yet the EU said that this EU is not for reforming. We voted to leave and now we are expected to believe that an unreformed EU is now, somehow, OK.

Sorry that does not work for me.

[Workingman]

Suff, the point for me is that the EU can be reformed, but it will take alliances of the willing. There was a time when the UK could have made those alliances had we tried, but we did not. From the outside we cannot influence the EU so any reformation will be without our input.

Can the EU be reformed? Yes. Will it be? That is up to its members, but they are going to have to get together with a 55% majority and agree. It could happen, but then again.....

[cromwell]

Anyway WM, I don't think you have much to worry about. The plan is now obviously to delay Article 50 for nine months, crank up Project Fear again, and then ask us to vote again and this time get it right.

British democracy at it's finest.

The media is obviously onside with this too. On radio Leeds the other day we had how a no deal Brexit "may damage children's health" and /2may threaten Ledds' clean air zone", whilst the national media carried dire warnings from the firm Airbus.

What they didn't mention was that Airbus has received sixty four million euro from the EU in the last five years. Gotta love balance!
https://order-order.com/2019/01/24/eus- ... qus_thread

Honestly, the people who run this country are a disgrace.

[Workingman]

Oh, come on Cromwell, Airbus is a €67 billion industry. €13 million per year is chicken feed and probably goes to R&D for the almost non-profit defence division where it makes relatively few aircraft, most of which are transport types. I mean it is not as if Boeing, Lockheed, BAe, Sukhoi / MiG and Comac do not receive government funds for military R&D.

When it comes to Ref2 I have been quite clear that I am against such a move, and I have also been clear that if it did happen and Remain won it would allow Brexit to be re-set so that we could start again with clear plans.

Brexit is out of the box and will not be pushed back in. It is going to have to be resolved at some time and that resolution is going to upset a large portion of the people who will have to live with it regardless of their views.

[Workingman]

Meanwhile we now learn that the military has spent £23m on 'forward purchased goods'- food, fuel, spare parts and ammunition - on Gib, Cyprus, the Falklands and at strategic UK bases in case of a no-deal scenario.

This is not due to Remainer 'Project Fear' but the military covering all eventualities as best it can. No doubt Leavers will claim this is unnecessary panic buying, but my bet is that military planners know what could happen and are working to mitigate it.

I am certainly thinking of getting in a stock of tinned and dry goods, just in case. They will save and can be used up over time if all goes well.

[Suff]

No military person in the world will waste a good crisis..

The lie to that situation is the fuel. Who produces the vast majority of the fuel we use?? We do. If we need more, we can go to Norway who is the nearest, but the US is a net exporter of fuel now and it would only take 6 days, from order, to ship it to mainland UK.

Almost everyone gets their heavy crude from the middle east.

These supplies are not due to shortages. They are standard planning to dissuade anyone from trying to take advantage and to deal with potential civil unrest.

When the problems do not occur, the military will have increased their training budget by 23m free and gratis. Training budget is the first to be cut which is plain stupid, but our politicians were never that clever to start with.