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Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

bbc.com

291–300 of 324 posts

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#291
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"involve yourself" in this case is present the tax income declaration to the tax authority in the 2nd (3rd, etc.) country. Hardly a cumbersome experience.

In practice, you need to learn the tax code to find most suitable form of conducting business. For example, in the UK if you know what you're doing, you'll pay ~20% tax on your income as a contractor. If you don't, you can easily end up paying something like 30+%. Also, there are perpetual costs of having a company registered (such as monthly payments to an accounting company which handles paperwork, health care cont…

> In practice, you need to learn the tax code to find most suitable form of conducting business.

That has not been my experience.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note that I'm afraid you didn't even attempt to answer my extremely straightforward question. See I'm not a brexiter/leaver/whatever (Personally I think it's a terrible idea), but it's blindingly obvious to me that a lot of leave voters (maybe even the vast majority) thought the main issue was immigration and that Mrs May had a choice either exit the single market, or basically ignore the result of the referendum,…

Soft brexit (i.e. EEA-like access) plus spend the next 10 years figuring out a better exit deal would have been an option. UK spent 40 year entangling with the EU, disentangling cleanly in 2 years is a pipe dream. It is still a possibility though; declaring for hard brexit could very well be a negotiating tactic (as in 'nothing left to lose') as May hinted to the possibility of a transitional agreement.

I entirely agree the 2 year timeline is massively unrealistic (downside to something being written in a treaty agreement with no intention of it ever being excercised)

The challenge for me is that soft-brexit is basically no brexit 'cause EEA access == sign-up to the four fundamental freedoms and accept the primacy of EU law, which seems to cover most of the things that the leave campaign wanted to get rid of.

As you say this could well be a negotiating tactic though, and no-one will really know until they start the negotiations. I think it's entirely possible that once the details are fleshed out people might seek to change it.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#293
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah well any discussion of morals and politics (as practiced in most countries) is unlikely to go well ;o) The problem I see with reverting to a general election is that unless all parties campaign purely on an exact list of what they will and won't do with regards to the EU, the mandate provided would be no clearer than the one derived from the referendum. A general election would mess the EU issue in with things lik…

Indeed, such an election could not be seen as an interpretation of the will of the people purely on Brexit. But Brexit does represent such a seismic event in recent British history that the British people do deserve a say in the government that leads them on from it. You could for instance see a party campaigning on a platform of making government more democratic for instance, which wouldn't have anything directly to…

I guess it's the problem of unprecedented events, that there are no systems in place to deal with them, which leads to a bad fit as people try to make the event fit existing options.

At the moment, I just can't get past the fact that without leaving the single market, they can't address the core concerns of the winning side (at least as I see those core conerns, and here we're back to the problem that these were never really accurately articulated past political rhetoric), so this path seems inevitable.

I'd love to see political reform in the UK to get a more representative form of government, but I fear absent a major resurgance in the fortunes of the Lib Dems, that doesn't seem like a likely prospect...

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#294
post #289
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may ask what are your reasons of wanting to get out of EU? I'm interested if possible in an overview of short term and long terms objectives and gains/advantages.

I don't want to write a thesis here, but hopefully a bullet-pointed list will suffice: * The EU is not only undemocratic in the sense that the powerful European Commission is unelected, but is in fact antidemocratic in the sense that one generally has to have lost a democratic election in one's own country to be appointed to it. * The EU places an enormous regulatory drain on its member states, issuing a stifling num…

Weird that you as a German actually want data protection laws relaxed. I would have though given your history you would want more of it. I certainly do.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#295
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want my money back!" Margret Thatcher at the European Union summit in Dublin in 1980 "That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain, with her traditional strengths and global destiny, should ever have been part of it will appear a political error of historic magn…

> global destiny Does this mean what it sounds like it means?

Exceptionalism.

We all know how well that turns out.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> global destiny Does this mean what it sounds like it means?

People in the UK haven't quite gotten over that whole global empire thing. Every now and then they make documentaries about how they brought civilization to India or something.

Yup, and as a Brit I have to facepalm every time I recognise this in the people around me.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soft brexit (i.e. EEA-like access) plus spend the next 10 years figuring out a better exit deal would have been an option. UK spent 40 year entangling with the EU, disentangling cleanly in 2 years is a pipe dream. It is still a possibility though; declaring for hard brexit could very well be a negotiating tactic (as in 'nothing left to lose') as May hinted to the possibility of a transitional agreement.

I entirely agree the 2 year timeline is massively unrealistic (downside to something being written in a treaty agreement with no intention of it ever being excercised) The challenge for me is that soft-brexit is basically no brexit 'cause EEA access == sign-up to the four fundamental freedoms and accept the primacy of EU law, which seems to cover most of the things that the leave campaign wanted to get rid of. As you…

Soft brexit would only be a transitional state, with a set timeline or undefined. The hard brexiters would grumble at the former and be completley against the latter though.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#298
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to write a thesis here, but hopefully a bullet-pointed list will suffice: * The EU is not only undemocratic in the sense that the powerful European Commission is unelected, but is in fact antidemocratic in the sense that one generally has to have lost a democratic election in one's own country to be appointed to it. * The EU places an enormous regulatory drain on its member states, issuing a stifling num…

Weird that you as a German actually want data protection laws relaxed. I would have though given your history you would want more of it. I certainly do.

I live in Germany, but I'm not German.

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Have we had no wars in Europe since WW2 because of the EU, or because the generations before us were sick of war? Also the EU didn't stop a war in the Balkans…

The Balkans were not in the EU. The EU gives economic incentives to its members not to go to war. It does not magically prevent wars all around the world.

The original quote was "The EU seems to be pretty effective at preventing wars within Europe."

Last time I checked the Balkans were within Europe!

Look I voted to remain and I'm probably going to leave the UK as I don't want to live in the UK post Brexit.

That said there's as many crazy claims for the success of the EU as there were for the UK leaving.

As an institution the EU is very much out of touch with the needs of the common people, and you've only got to look at how they treated Greece as an example (and the whole stupid thing of moving MPs to Strasbourg once a month)

Re: Theresa May: UK must leave European single market

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is so selfish that it's the second largest net contributor to the EU budget!

Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate

Really… http://english.eu.dk/en/faq/faq/net_contribution
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