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+ A distinct lack of care for May saying parliament will get a vote on it.
Given the constant moaning and the court case, you'd have thought sh'ed be congratulated on the decision.
Last edited by Wales-Bales; 17-01-17 at 13:32.
How many people are able to write an intelligent list of ten pros and cons of membership of the EU?
The problem is that a hard brexit is against the majority of the population. Add to that the endless polls since the referendum that suggest far more leave voters would now change their mind than those who voted to stay, and a hard brexit shouldn't be on the agenda at all.
Soft brexit is not brexit. Its the worst option. Be outside the decision making process, but tied to its rules. Why would we want that. Its a terrible position to be in.
I find your view on it all can depend on where you read your stories about it.
Been reading guardian and telegraph recently and it's like 2 completely different events. Guardian is so full of scare stories many are so bad that they are laughable. Full of inaccuracies where things have either purposely been taken out of context or just massively misunderstood. A few but extremely limited articles actually look at facts of what can happen.
Some of the telegraph stories really believe that brexit can be good for business. But they have a more balanced approach and understand things could go wrong for us and the economy.
I would recommend looking around for your stories on brexit. Otherwise you are only looking at a tunnel vision view of it all.
Maybe some companies will flourish under Brexit, I don't know.
What I do know is that if we end up having to prepare customs paperwork before working in Europe, our company is going to end up losing a lot of work.
At the moment, a client can call us, we put some equipment in a van and go and do the job - doesn't matter if it's in Brighton or Berlin.
I'm old enough to remember having to get a customs carnet to work in the E.U. It was a paperwork nightmare.
Don't know if this is a scare story, but I am genuinely scared for the future of our business
I'll have a go...
Cons
Collapse of the pound against the Dollar and Euro
Cost of imports higher
Increased Inflation
More difficult for us to travel to European Countries
The end of the European Health Insurance card
Global financial institutions may move out of London
No more European structural funding
My summer holiday is now going to cost a feckin fortune
Pros
No European influence over our legal system
Collapse of the pound against the Dollar and Euro
Cost of exports more attractive to foreign companies
Reduced European legislation over consumer goods standards eg reducing power output of vacuum cleaners etc
No, sorry failed, couldn't find ten intelligent pros and cons without further research and I suspect my poor effort will end up being far better than 75% of the population.
Pros
-Being a member of the EURO allows germany to have a significantly weaker currency than it would have if it had its own currency. Making its exports cheaper than they should be, strengthening the economy.
Cons
-Being a member of the Euro the poorer 25 states have a stronger currency than they should, causing problems where exports are more expensive than they should be. This problem is then further added to by not having its own central bank to help revive the economy. See Italy Greece Spain for examples.
Being a member of the EU.
Pros
-Frictionless trading between a big bloc of nations
-Reduced costs for business as you can move and employ the cheapest labour
-Business can move tax around to the lowest tax economy like Belgium and Ireland easily (still possible outside, but more paperwork)
-Human Rights many of the less developed economies have greater protections for their people
Freedom of movement of labour allows you to move further afield to find a good job
-Common legislation amongst member groups allows items around the bloc to be the same, allowing reduced costs by economies of scale
-An unused potential to come together exert influence around the world
-Freedom of movement of labour allows expertise to come together to increase talent. Such movement of labour increases the wages of the highly skilled workforce
-ability to carry out large scale scientific projects (though feasible without EU)
-an attempt to level out the playing field in terms of european grants for the poorest areas of the bloc
Cons
-business can play off countries easily to reduce taxes and not pay them where they are morally due
-labour movement encourages business to employ the cheapest labour suppressing the lowest wages in society
-Unnecessary laws on fruit increasing costs and waste, laws on weigh units (have to use grams). 0-60, is now 0-62 (100kph)
-An inability for countries like France Spain and the UK to create trade deals with its former colonies/countries that it has historic ties with
-A one size fits all approach
-Globalisation means such trading blocs are not as necessary as they were.
I struggled more with the negatives and I was a leave voter. But if you consider several of the Pros are possible without the EU existing and that is part of the view of leave. Many parts of europe are great, but we dont requite a political bloc to have them.
Nicely presented post Barry. I had similar thoughts myself, but came down on the other side of the argument - Maybe I'm too risk averse!
I guess like most I have no love of the EU "apparatus", and if we can as you suggest keep most of the pros without being part of a political block, then that would be the best of both worlds.
I guess we will have to wait and see