The Isle of Man is not in the UK • Hacker News Board

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#171

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #152

tristanperry wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point - I agree, and I'm really disappointed it didn't play out like that. Instead the UK has had political stalemate for 3.5 years and even now it doesn't look like we're closer to 'a deal'.

I don't think a renegotiation after the referendum could possibly have achieved anything. Discourse about the EU in the UK is not based on facts. The EU would never have given compromises on freedom of movement, or the single market, and there wasn't anything else specific that people were asking for.

It may not have achieved much at all, certainly nothing on freedom of movement, but like previous treaties he could have come back with something.

With a negotiating stance of "they just voted out, what can we give to avoid this?", I am sure some package that didn't compromise the aims of the EU too far, or cost billions, could have been worked out.

Now, whether a second referendum would have swung back to remain, now I'm clueless. :)

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#172

Post by stordoff » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

tristanperry wrote: post #62

growlist wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever the voters vote the wrong way the EU subverts it with the result in effect being overturned in one way or another, so the UK will probably end up staying in and this ATAD will be implemented.

For those downvoting, there is truth in this e.g.: * Ireland voting (twice) on the Nice Treaty - 2001 then 2002 * Denmark voting (twice) Maastricht Treaty - first 1992 then 1993 * Ireland (again) this time on the Lisbon Treaty - 2008 then 2009 There was also a case where the Labour government (in the UK) promised a referendum on a couple of EU treaty changes, before changing their mind after other countries' referend…

> Ireland (again) this time on the Lisbon Treaty - 2008 then 2009

It wasn't just a straight re-vote through. Selected reasons for voting no, according to The Times (bearing in mind it was only 53:47 to no):

> Protect neutrality - 10%

> Keep commissioner - 10%

> Protect tax system - 8%

And according to Gallop (for the European Commission):

> To safeguard Irish neutrality in security and defence matters - 6%

> We will lose our right to have an Irish Commissioner in every Commission - 6%

> To protect our tax system - 6%

> It would allow the introduction of European legislation in Ireland, such as gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia - 2%

Consequently, The European Council agreed that:

> the necessary legal guarantees would be given that nothing in the Treaty of Lisbon made any change of any kind to the Union's competences on taxation for any member state;

> the necessary legal guarantees would be given that the Treaty of Lisbon did not prejudice the security and defence policy of any member state, including Ireland's traditional policy of neutrality;

> the necessary legal guarantees would be given that neither the Treaty of Lisbon (including the Justice and Home Affairs provisions), nor the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, affected the provisions of the Irish Constitution in relation to the right to life, education and the family in any way;

> in accordance with the necessary legal procedures, a Decision would be taken to retain Ireland's Commissioner, provided that the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified;

> the high importance attached to issues including workers' rights would be confirmed.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#173

Post by simonh » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

IanPBann wrote: post #147

simonh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this theory a lot, but the fact is most of the support for Brexit came from low income households, and people in low skilled or manual work. Generally the higher the household income, the lower the support for Brexit, even at the higher income levels. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-...

That's not true. While most voters from low income households supported leaving the EU (as shown in the report you linked), 59% of leave votes came from middle class voters and only 17% of Leave votes were from skilled manual workers. The majority of middle class voters supported remaining, but because there are so many of them, middle class voters also made up the majority of leave voters. This 5 minute report [0] f…

I should have said they were the sting demographic.

Skilled manual workers is a very specific, carefully selected sub-group of manual and low income workers, chosen just for the purposes of the narative. Why that specific sub-group? A lot of skilled manual workers are even middle class.

Middle class voters are the majority of voters, so they account for well over 59% of remain voters as well. Manual labour and low income voters made the break though, no other significant demographic was more likely to vote for Brexit.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#174

Post by frobozz » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #164

frobozz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like when people say that all racists voted to leave, and someone pipes up with "I voted to leave and I'm not racist, that's really insulting". You are confusing the direction of if and then. The referendum was won because people were swung to the leave side by the case made by the leave campaigners. A case full of immediately demonstrable lies. If at least 650000 of those people were specifically swung that…

Every single thing you just wrote applies to both sides of any political issue. That's politics: you get out there and advocate for a position and then people turn up and vote (or not). People being convinced to vote for something is not a sign that their vote is somehow invalid. It's literally how the political process works.

People being convinced by reasoned argument, and perhaps by skilled oratory is how the political process works.

People being convinced by outright lies is not how democracy works. If one side can gain the advantage by telling people that the other side currently forbids them buying four bananas at a time, and be believed, even given the extremely obvious evidence against it, then the system is broken.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#175

Post by cgiles » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #169

cgiles wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found the best source of information about Brexit, although it certainly has its own bias, to be eureferendum.com . They have long advocated for Efta/EEA membership as the first move for the UK before gradually disentangling from EU directives. IMV (I'm not British) the only sane option was some form of soft Brexit. Which was the only way to avoid most of the economic damage and also prevent hordes of Leavers…

See this is where it gets truly silly. You may not be wrong about some form of soft-Brexit, or EEA status, but whichever level of closeness you consider that is not "hard Brexit" would have required dropping one of the UK's "red line" issues. Anything else that was not Theresa May's deal needed the EU offering cake and cookies for free. It wasn't so much she couldn't sell it as the hardliners of the Tory party wouldn…

Yes, I've seen that slide. In fact, it was exactly what I had in mind when I said to pytester below that "Barnier has been crystal clear about what is required of the UK and what the options are". Certainly you are right about what has been the Tory negotiating strategy.

I meant, however, that she could have attempted to sell it to the hardliners in her party or, more likely, cross-party as described below. None of the red lines were inevitable, because no one knows why Leave won. Some say immigration, some say sovereignty, ECJ, payments that could "fund our NHS", and myriad other things. Some in Labour are even said to have supported it to get around state aid rules.

So there was a fundamental lack of clarity what the referendum had actually meant shortly after it passed. That was TM's window of opportunity to show some leadership and choose an interpretation of the referendum that could command majority support.

If she had presented a soft Brexit agreement to the house, yes, she would have thrown the DUP and ERG under the bus, but she also would have put Labour, LD, etc into an extremely difficult position. At the time, they all said "we should respect the referendum". If they had rejected a soft WA the blame would be all on them instead of, as it is now, on the Tories. She would have faced accusations of being a closet Remainer, but she got that anyway.

I am convinced everyone hates the DUP and very few like the ERG. Instead of tossing them, the Tories toss Ken Clarke and Nick Soames? Sounds like a bad plan.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#176

Post by pavlov » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #160

pavlov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the support for Brexit came from tabloid newspapers owned by the ultra-rich. Polls in the 2010-15 timeframe consistently showed that Britain's European relationship didn't even make the top 5 of issues amongst voters. Consistently fewer than 6% listed Europe as their most important issue: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/12/11/1544504400000/The-onl... Today more than 50% see Europe as the most important polit…

> Most of the support for Brexit came from tabloid newspapers owned by the ultra-rich. Aren't most newspapers owned by the ultra-rich? Couldn't you just make the exact same arguments you leveled against your political opponents (that they were hoodwinked by "the media") against your own position? At the end of the day, people showed up and voted for something. Twice (basically). That means something.

"At the end of the day, people showed up and voted for something. Twice (basically). That means something."

"Voted for something and it means something" is the portrait of Brexit.

A question was posed to the public but it was never explained properly, and so nobody knows what it means. Did people want a border in Ireland? A third-party status for UK products imported to EU? A separation from European scientific collaboration?

These are just a few of the hundreds of open questions. The UK government hasn't figured it out in three years. Yet the vote definitely means "something", so "something" should happen.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#177

Post by cgiles » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

pytester wrote: post #163

cgiles wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do they actually want from the deal? The conventional wisdom is that the party is split between Remainers and Leavers, and that Corbyn himself is a closet Leaver who wants to leave so he can get out from under EU rules on state aid and bring about a glorious socialist revolution. If this is remotely true, then Corbyn's personal aim is to help the Tories to a no-deal Brexit, or even a hard Brexit under the WA,…

>The conventional wisdom is that the party is split between Remainers and Leavers, and that Corbyn himself is a closet Leaver who wants to leave so he can get out from under EU rules on state aid and bring about a glorious socialist revolution. More of an absurd conspiracy theory than conventional wisdom, that. >If this is remotely true, then Corbyn's personal aim is to help the Tories to a no-deal Brexit Which I sup…

OK, I confess that no one really knows what is going on in the mind of Jeremy Corbyn, possibly not even the man himself. What is unquestioned fact is that the party is split on Brexit. Known facts about Corbyn are:

- He has opposed expansion of the EU throughout his political career

- After the referendum, he urged rules on state aid to be jettisoned on the grounds they would no longer be valid after Brexit anyway

- He is a self-identified socialist and is far left, even by Labour standards

My take is that overall, he is anti-EU but has been forced into a publicly neutral or pro-EU (during the referendum) position because that is the position of the majority of his party. What are his precise motivations for this, I do not know.

Thus I read his whipping against no-deal and his new stance on a referendum as more of a forced concession to his party, and as a tool to beat the Tories over the head with, than as something arising out of his personal convictions. Especially because of how long it took him to arrive at those positions. But no one can know for sure.

Keep in mind "no no-deal", which was JC's only position for so long, is not really a position, as pjc50 pointed out. This was made painfully obvious during the series of indicative votes during the spring.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#178

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #167

marcus_holmes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does it matter? there were some rules, that I was obeying, then there were some other rules, that were retroactively enforced. From my point of view, same same ;)

Yes, I think it does matter. It's arbitrary and capricious if HMRC can change the rules and retroactively apply them. It's totally reasonable (absent a statute of limitations lapse) IMO for them to go back and retroactively enforce rules that you weren't following once they detect that. (I would even entertain that it would be unreasonable for them to not do so.)

[deleted]

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#179

Post by cgiles » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

frobozz wrote: post #174

toasterlovin wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single thing you just wrote applies to both sides of any political issue. That's politics: you get out there and advocate for a position and then people turn up and vote (or not). People being convinced to vote for something is not a sign that their vote is somehow invalid. It's literally how the political process works.

People being convinced by reasoned argument, and perhaps by skilled oratory is how the political process works. People being convinced by outright lies is not how democracy works. If one side can gain the advantage by telling people that the other side currently forbids them buying four bananas at a time, and be believed, even given the extremely obvious evidence against it, then the system is broken.

> People being convinced by reasoned argument, and perhaps by skilled oratory is how the political process works.

In utopia. But in reality, it is possible to simultaneously hold that many people vote for very stupid reasons, and that their votes should be respected anyway.

Personally I am convinced that there never has been an election anywhere where the majority of voters on all sides were properly informed by facts and not motivated by ideology or outright lies.

Some in the UK imply that the referendum should be re-run because of those lies, just like some in the US imply the 2016 election was illegitimate because of Russian interference. That way lies madness, since every side in every election lies and manipulates, and every election would have to be re-run ad infinitum.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#180

Post by Rebelgecko » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

jermaustin1 wrote: post #158

peteretep wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that, there's FEIE, and moving your residence to Puerto Rico

FEIE phases out at just over $100k for singles, $200k for marrieds, and then you are taxed at the typical bracket for earnings in excess of. Keeping things in USD for simplicity then converting at the end. So say you live in the UK, and you + spouse earn $350k USD, UK will tax just under 40%, but lets go ahead and round it to 40%, then the US will tax the $150k at 24% to $315k and 32% to $350k. So back of napkin calc…

Wouldn't the $40k that you owe the US get wiped out by the foreign tax credit?