Brexit matters

[ainsworth74]

The key phrase in that is "one in seven 2016 Remainers would vote not to rejoin the EU".

What about those who have since become old enough to vote?

The poll I saw suggested a 51/49 split on re-join generally but skewed heavily in ages. So 18-24 was something like 75% in favour of re-join whilst 65% was something like 30%.

That’s still not a very big difference in terms of percentage, indicating that the country is still split.

Indeed. Claiming that a poll which shows that you're still well within any sort of margin of error on re-join or not re-join is hardly a ringing endorsement (of either argument to be fair) and shows that the polarisation that has been introduced is alive and well even if it isn't plastered across our screens quite as much as it was in 2019.

 

[Revilo]

Exactly - as people get older and more experienced they are more likely to turn to Leave.

 

[alex397]

Exactly - as people get older and more experienced they are more likely to turn to Leave.

I think this has more to do with generational difference rather than age.

 

[ainsworth74]

Exactly - as people get older and more experienced they are more likely to turn to Leave.

Quite so! Let's just restrict to those aged say 60 or older due to their experience. I'm certain nothing bad can come from disenfranchising millions of people. After all there's nothing wrong with insulting their intelligence apparently.

 

[Revilo]

Who’s suggesting disenfranchising people?

 

[jon0844]

Well, who would have guessed that roaming charges are coming back within the EU!

Okay, so you can get up to 25GB included depending on the plan you're on, but depending on your allowance you may soon be having to pay more to use data - just like you did when going beyond the EU.

Vodafone is also changing plans to exclude roaming on lower end plans, and I expect others will follow with their own take on things.

Give it a year or two and you'll either pay a fee (bolt on style) for roaming, have less data included, have speed capping imposed and totally lose the ability to tether (again with a fee).

And they said nothing would change on roaming!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Well, who would have guessed that roaming charges are coming back within the EU!

Okay, so you can get up to 25GB included depending on the plan you're on, but depending on your allowance you may soon be having to pay more to use data - just like you did when going beyond the EU.

Vodafone is also changing plans to exclude roaming on lower end plans, and I expect others will follow with their own take on things.

Give it a year or two and you'll either pay a fee (bolt on style) for roaming, have less data included, have speed capping imposed and totally lose the ability to tether (again with a fee).

And they said nothing would change on roaming!

Is this roaming anything to do with what Harry Lauder sang about?

 

[edwin_m]

A significant part of the population probably doesn't have a strong view either way and would prefer not to change for change's sake, so would have supported remaining in 2016 or just not bothered to vote, but now wouldn't support re-joining. So if polls show 49% in favour of re-joining then it's more evidence that an underlying majority were content with remaining in 2016, and there would be a clear majority today to remain if we hadn't left.

 

[daodao]

Brexit should have given the UK the ability to pursue an independent foreign policy, in particular to disengage itself from the EU agenda of poking the Bear. Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission?

 

[HST274]

Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission

Perhaps cause they didn't want to pay for data roaming so couldn't use Google maps and went wildly off course?

 

[yorksrob]

Brexit should have given the UK the ability to pursue an independent foreign policy, in particular to disengage itself from the EU agenda of poking the Bear. Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission?

Why not. The Russians are always buzzing our air space and bumping off people on our territory.

It's NATO's job to poke the bear.

 

[AlterEgo]

Brexit should have given the UK the ability to pursue an independent foreign policy, in particular to disengage itself from the EU agenda of poking the Bear. Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission?

Probably to gather SIGINT on a new type of warship.

 

[JamesT]

Brexit should have given the UK the ability to pursue an independent foreign policy, in particular to disengage itself from the EU agenda of poking the Bear. Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission?

Because they’re not Russian? Nobody recognises their occupation of Crimea as legitimate so those waters are Ukrainian. If countries don’t continue using their right to sail through international waters it ends up becoming Russian in practice.
It’s not as if the Russians are going to leave us alone if we don’t do anything. Salisbury come to mind? Or more recently Russian hackers going after vaccine developments in our universities.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Why not. The Russians are always buzzing our air space and bumping off people on our territory.

It's NATO's job to poke the bear.

Glad to see that someone else realises that NATO is a different entity than the EU.

 

[daodao]

Glad to see that someone else realises that NATO is a different entity than the EU.

NATO is obsolescent, as the US president stated a few years ago. It no longer has a real purpose post the demise of the Warsaw Pact. The EU should look after the defence needs of Europe.

 

[edwin_m]

NATO is obsolescent, as the US president stated a few years ago. It no longer has a real purpose post the demise of the Warsaw Pact. The EU should look after the defence needs of Europe.

The president in question was Trump, so few people are going to place much credence on this statement.

 

[birchesgreen]

Brexit should have given the UK the ability to pursue an independent foreign policy, in particular to disengage itself from the EU agenda of poking the Bear. Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission?

It's the EU agenda to poke the Bear? Doesn't Germany have a gas pipeline from Russia?

Anyway British foreign policy is whatever the POTUS wants, that hasn't changed.

 

[yorksrob]

Glad to see that someone else realises that NATO is a different entity than the EU.

Indeed.

The EU should look after the defence needs of Europe.

The EU should look after the defence needs of the EU, In conjunction with other Western European countries looking after the defence needs of Western Europe as a whole, and the other Western allies (as formalised in NATO).

 

[najaB]

That’s still not a very big difference in terms of percentage, indicating that the country is still split.

Indeed. I suspect it's because not much has actually changed yet. If, as is becoming increasingly likely, there are severe supply-chain disruptions later on in the year we'll probably see the pendulum swing back towards being inside the Single Market and Customs Union at the very least.

 

[ainsworth74]

Who’s suggesting disenfranchising people?

Surely that the the logical conclusion of your line of reasoning? If experience = better voting outcomes (presumably as you're a Brexit support yes?) then by that logic having younger people able to vote leads to worse outcomes? Therefore to ensure the best outcomes it is logical to restrict the franchise to those with the most experience therefore older people?

Brexit should have given the UK the ability to pursue an independent foreign policy, in particular to disengage itself from the EU agenda of poking the Bear. Why did a British destroyer enter Russian territorial waters off the Crimean coast without permission?

Well I think firstly they're Ukrainian territorial waters unless you're suggesting that the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 was legitimate?

Secondly we are a member of NATO and NATO's responsibilities to help ensure the security of both Europe and the wider Western world haven't gone away and that involves "poking the Bear" from time to time. Whilst the EU should worry about it's security needs (and boy should it, the ramshackle state of many EU militaries is pretty appalling) the reality is that the security of Europe (where we still are you know, we haven't suddenly become an island in the middle of the Atlantic) requires NATO. Previous Presidential incumbents might not have had the intellectual ability to understand how NATO works (I'm fairly certain he never did understand that no-one is paying money to the US for protection) but that aberration has come to an end and those before and after him, as well as US politicians in general and the wider US security establishment, still see NATO as important (obviously and rightly China is taking up more of their focus, time and resources currently however). As indeed it is. Plus it's not as if Russia doesn't do the same to us. Russian long range aircraft regularly probe UK airspace, Russian ships and submarines transit the English Channel, etc etc.

Plus, whilst we can now pursue and independent foreign policy, in what way would ignoring Russia serve our interests? Allowing Russia to continue to destabilise our closest neighbours (and putative allies despite all efforts to the contrary from some quarters) is surely going to be a bad thing for UK security? Let's not forget that we're not that many years removed from Russian agents poisoning four people and killing one using nerve agents on British soil. And it wasn't that many years prior to that that Russian agents killed someone else using radioactive materials again on British soil. That's quite apart from any disinformation campaigns they may be running using social media to attempt to destabilise and sow division. As well as being quite apart from whatever they might get up to when it comes to elections and ours (and others) political parties (see the elevation of the son of an officer of the KGB to the House of Lords or the seeming infiltration of the NRA by Russians in the US). Russia is quite clearly a hostile power and as we are supposed to be "Global Britain" surely this means we should be looking out into the world not just bolting the doors and hoping that everyone just leaves us alone?

I must I am puzzled why Brexit means we should suddenly reverse course on 70+ years of foreign policy when it comes to Russia? Especially when all signs point to them still being a significant threat to peace and stability.

 

[najaB]

The EU should look after the defence needs of Europe.

Funny how one of the main reasons given for leaving the EU was to avoid being drawn into an EU army...

 

[YorkshireBear]

I think with COVID we still really don't know what the impact of Brexit is going to be. So much of the impacts are tied together too in terms of borders, travel and trade.

This makes polls rather meaningless as we haven't really got any idea what the impacts are yet. The only impact on me so far is increase in import costs and deliver timescales from the EU so I'm obviously going to be negative. And while I am a remainder, the benefits of Brexit haven't had time to be proven that wrong or right yet.

Well, who would have guessed that roaming charges are coming back within the EU!

Okay, so you can get up to 25GB included depending on the plan you're on, but depending on your allowance you may soon be having to pay more to use data - just like you did when going beyond the EU.

Vodafone is also changing plans to exclude roaming on lower end plans, and I expect others will follow with their own take on things.

Give it a year or two and you'll either pay a fee (bolt on style) for roaming, have less data included, have speed capping imposed and totally lose the ability to tether (again with a fee).

And they said nothing would change on roaming!

Noticed this yesterday in an email from 02, slippery slope is on its way back to how it was.

 

[StKeverne1497]

Indeed. I suspect it's because not much has actually changed yet. If, as is becoming increasingly likely, there are severe supply-chain disruptions later on in the year we'll probably see the pendulum swing back towards being inside the Single Market and Customs Union at the very least.

Quite a lot seems to have changed in Northern Ireland (supply chain disruptions particularly), and very quickly after the final-final-we're-really-really-out-now date earlier this year.

Anecdotally, I drive a section of the M4 quite a lot and it has been noticeable how the number of EU-plated lorries has reduced, certainly over the last year, but definitely since the start of 2021. It seems that hauliers running goods from the mainland to Eire are putting their lorries on to the new ferry routes directly from France to Eire, with all the additional costs involved there, rather than having to produce the reams of paperwork required and run the risk of customs checks and delays by sending lorries via the UK route. Presumably this also reduces the ability of hauliers to "multidrop" en-route and therefore possibly means more lorries on the road in total as separate loads are sent for the UK and Eire.

On a personal level, I have needed to buy a specialist water pump this month. There are one or two UK-based companies which supply pumps by the same Italian manufacturer, but none stocks the exact model I need. Instead I had to order it from a supplier in Germany, who were extremely helpful and gave excellent advice about the pump.

However, they were not entirely sure of the intricacies of exporting, other than knowing that they would charge me an ex-VAT price (German VAT is 19% on this item) and hand the parcel over to their usual courier. Instead of placing the order and waiting three days for DHL to deliver, it was six days later that Parcelforce sent me a letter asking not only for VAT (fair enough) but also for £7.53 Customs Duty and a £12 "Clearance Fee", whatever that is. Those two items make the cost of this pump about 5% higher than it would have been without Brexit, and I am hoping that the pump will be delivered today, ten days after placing the order.

M.

 

[ainsworth74]

However, they were not entirely sure of the intricacies of exporting, other than knowing that they would charge me an ex-VAT price (German VAT is 19% on this item) and hand the parcel over to their usual courier. Instead of placing the order and waiting three days for DHL to deliver, it was six days later that Parcelforce sent me a letter asking not only for VAT (fair enough) but also for £7.53 Customs Duty and a £12 "Clearance Fee", whatever that is. Those two items make the cost of this pump about 5% higher than it would have been without Brexit, and I am hoping that the pump will be delivered today, ten days after placing the order.

Sovereignty in action my friend. Don't you just love it?

 

[berneyarms]

Anecdotally, I drive a section of the M4 quite a lot and it has been noticeable how the number of EU-plated lorries has reduced, certainly over the last year, but definitely since the start of 2021. It seems that hauliers running goods from the mainland to Eire are putting their lorries on to the new ferry routes directly from France to Eire, with all the additional costs involved there, rather than having to produce the reams of paperwork required and run the risk of customs checks and delays by sending lorries via the UK route. Presumably this also reduces the ability of hauliers to "multidrop" en-route and therefore possibly means more lorries on the road in total as separate loads are sent for the UK and Eire.

I don't want to be particularly picky, but can I point out that firstly the name of my country in English is "Ireland" and in the Irish language is "Éire". If you are writing/speaking in English it's "Ireland". I'm assuming that you don't speak Irish!

 

[daodao]

Funny how one of the main reasons given for leaving the EU was to avoid being drawn into an EU army...

The UK would not be in the EU army - one of the benefits of Brexit. NATO would be replaced by a EU force for defending the European continent.

Also I don't think anyone in Ireland really appreciates GB being referred to as the "mainland"!! Ireland is an independent state.

I presumed that "mainland" in the context of StKeverne1497's post meant continental Europe.

 

[najaB]

NATO would be replaced by a EU force for defending the European continent.

Fog in Channel, Europe cut off...

 

[yorksrob]

NATO would be replaced by a EU force for defending the European continent.

I've not seen this policy proposed anywhere by anyone.

 

[daodao]

unless you're suggesting that the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 was legitimate.

It is the de facto situation and was endorsed by an overwhelming majority in a referendum. Possession is 9/10th of the law.

It is provocative to send one's warship into disputed waters.

 

[WelshBluebird]

The UK would not be in the EU army - one of the benefits of Brexit.

Again that is not a benefit of Brexit because when we were in the EU we could have opposed and vetoed such a thing.
Now we can't and don't have any say at all in such matters.

It is the de facto situation and was endorsed by an overwhelming majority in a referendum.

Do you honestely believe that referendum was fair and accurate?

It is provocative to send one's warship into disputed waters.

Surely it was even more provocative for Russia to invade another countries actual land? Who cares about bloody water when that is happening!