Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[AngryOfTuebrook]

You know "EU expansion" wasn't a  conquest, don't you? There isn't a single Member State that didn't join freely. There isn't a single Member State that isn't free to leave.

 

Seems daft to use the language of imperialism. 

 

Also, it's not clear what EU enlargement has to do with that article. 

[Gnasher]

41 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

You know "EU expansion" wasn't a  conquest, don't you? There isn't a single Member State that didn't join freely. There isn't a single Member State that isn't free to leave.

 

Seems daft to use the language of imperialism. 

 

Also, it's not clear what EU enlargement has to do with that article. 

 

The article states surprise surprise Hungry, Romania and other crackpot countries were against criticising Israel.

 

As for EU expansion in general, I see it for what it is, a move into other regions to mop up cheap countries Labour whilst simultaneously poking a stick at Russia. Win win for the right wing free enterprise mob.

 

Angry if you really think people like Vonn der Leyen could give two fucks for working class people living in countrys like Latvia you might be interested in purchasing some of my Hungarian majic dust, works wonders for delusion.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Gnasher

[AngryOfTuebrook]

15 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

The article states surprise surprise Hungry, Romania and other crackpot countries were against criticising Israel.

As were the USA. As are the UK. It's not just ex-Soviet "crackpots" who support Israel. It also states that Germany is a close ally of Israel. 

 

The upshot is that the EU tries to have a unified Foreign Policy, but on some issues you can't get 27 independent sovereign states to agree. Hardly surprising, is it?

15 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

 

As for EU expansion in general, I see it for what it is, a move into other regions to mop up cheap countries Labour whilst simultaneously poking a stick at Russia. Win win for the right wing free enterprise mob.

You see it wrong. Every Member State joined freely and is free to leave. The Polish government decided that Poland should apply to join. The Slovakian government decided that Slovakia should apply to join. etc. Win-win for the elected governments of those countries.

 

15 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Angry if you really think people like Vonn der Leyen could give two fucks for working class people living in countrys like Latvia you might be interested in purchasing some of my Hungarian majic dust, works wonders for delusion.

*sigh*

There you go again, making shit up; pretending that I've said something and then posting some witty rejoinder to the thing you just made up. It's tiresome and it's silly. It's the reason people get pissed off and resort to insulting you.

[Ranxerox]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/17/handcuffed-detained-denied-medicine-eu-citizens-uk-border-ordeals

 

Seems like some of the cruelty was intentional and not just bureaucratic incompetence. Denying people medicine and making them sleep in vans and non-segregated holding rooms is pretty shocking behaviour on the part of the UK. My son is considering some overseas study/intern work next semester and I sure as hell will be suggesting he scratch the UK off his list. 

[Gnasher]

1 hour ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

As were the USA. As are the UK. It's not just ex-Soviet "crackpots" who support Israel. It also states that Germany is a close ally of Israel. 

 

The upshot is that the EU tries to have a unified Foreign Policy, but on some issues you can't get 27 independent sovereign states to agree. Hardly surprising, is it?

You see it wrong. Every Member State joined freely and is free to leave. The Polish government decided that Poland should apply to join. The Slovakian government decided that Slovakia should apply to join. etc. Win-win for the elected governments of those countries.

 

*sigh*

There you go again, making shit up; pretending that I've said something and then posting some witty rejoinder to the thing you just made up. It's tiresome and it's silly. It's the reason people get pissed off and resort to insulting you.

Im serious on the last point though Angry, do you think the likes of Der Leyen really give a fuck about the working class people in countrys like Latvia? And don't take the silly jokes to heart angry. 

 

My main point stands though Angry, once again, on every major issue the EU gets found wanting.

[stringvest]

The major issues? 

 

1.  the prevention of war.

2.  the enablement of a economic block able to stand up to and deal on a level playing field with the other major economic blocks.

3.  to provide a framework for acceptable standards and consistency in industrial and food production, working conditions etc.

4.  that's it.

 

 

[Gnasher]

49 minutes ago, stringvest said:

The major issues? 

 

1.  the prevention of war.

2.  the enablement of a economic block able to stand up to and deal on a level playing field with the other major economic blocks.

3.  to provide a framework for acceptable standards and consistency in industrial and food production, working conditions etc.

4.  that's it.

 

 

Errr but unfortunately for the poorest people in Europe that's not it ...their are a few more, that's not it...

 

5. Ensure their are enough available ( mainly young) workers to keep the the great the good and the ugly with a ready supply of cheap Labour to increase their profits.

 

6. Pump pump pump privatisation. 

 

[Gnasher]

1 hour ago, stringvest said:

The major issues? 

 

1.  the prevention of war.

2.  the enablement of a economic block able to stand up to and deal on a level playing field with the other major economic blocks.

3.  to provide a framework for acceptable standards and consistency in industrial and food production, working conditions etc.

4.  that's it.

 

 

But you forgot about this bit, the best bit.....if you're stinking rich

 

 

5.

https://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-europe-income-distribution-inequality-international-comparisons/rising-income-inequality

 

[stringvest]

13 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Errr but unfortunately for the poorest people in Europe that's not it ...their are a few more, that's not it...

 

5. Ensure their are enough available ( mainly young) workers to keep the the great the good and the ugly with a ready supply of cheap Labour to increase their profits.

 

6. Pump pump pump privatisation. 

 

the poorest people in Europe?  Who said they were being represented by their representatives?

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Gnasher said:

Im serious on the last point though Angry, do you think the likes of Der Leyen really give a fuck about the working class people in countrys like Latvia? And don't take the silly jokes to heart angry. 

Of course not: centre-right career politicians are much the same the world over.

1 hour ago, Gnasher said:

 

My main point stands though Angry, once again, on every major issue the EU gets found wanting.

Nobody denies that.

[Gnasher]

1 hour ago, stringvest said:

The major issues? 

 

1.  the prevention of war.

2.  the enablement of a economic block able to stand up to and deal on a level playing field with the other major economic blocks.

3.  to provide a framework for acceptable standards and consistency in industrial and food production, working conditions etc.

4.  that's it.

 

 

And you missed the bit below on eu  privatisation, what number we on now?

 

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/winners-and-losers-in-eu-s-great-privatisation-fire-sale/

 

[stringvest]

3 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

And you missed the bit below on eu  privatisation, what number we on now?

 

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/winners-and-losers-in-eu-s-great-privatisation-fire-sale/

 

what are you arguing here?  My point was that on the major objectives of the EU, they are not failing (yet).

[Gnasher]

5 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Of course not: centre-right career politicians are much the same the world over.

Nobody denies that.

OK fair enough angry, and as you're referring to the ammount of nonsense I get on here by certain posters at least I've got the bollocks of my convictions.  I've fought against injustice all my life, before football message boards were even thought of.

[Gnasher]

1 minute ago, stringvest said:

what are you arguing here?  My point was that on the major objectives of the EU, they are not failing (yet).

Im not sure i agree with the not failing part tbh.

 

Massive increase in European inequality suggests somethings gone seriously wrong.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Nearly five years after the Referendum and the Government are looking to hire someone to find anything positive to come out of Brexit.

 

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/westminster-news/boris-johnson-brexit-adviser-7980212?fbclid=IwAR3-W4DqsvzyKq6sEHDG3n7hOXif4XKcZp-6i9-eGZjEfrabMnIyZRW-ZMM

 

[Gnasher]

4 hours ago, stringvest said:

what are you arguing here?  My point was that on the major objectives of the EU, they are not failing (yet).

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/winners-and-losers-in-eu-s-great-privatisation-fire-sale/

[Gnasher]

8 hours ago, stringvest said:

the poorest people in Europe?  Who said they were being represented by their representatives?

 

 

That sounds like it's pass the buck time, the EU have pushed policies which have benefitted the top ten per cent whilst squeezing the rest.  The graphs are there. 

 

It's not my opinion that the gap between rich and poor has widened its an unfortunate stone cold fact. A lot of people give the EU a free pass when at the mention of gross inequality, others are a little more cynical;  when it comes to any political organisation that rules us I'm also very cynical..

[Gnasher]

It's not racist to be against the EU. 

[Ranxerox]

50 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

It's not racist to be against the EU. 

You're a raving anti-Eunite.

[stringvest]

15 hours ago, Gnasher said:

That sounds like it's pass the buck time, the EU have pushed policies which have benefitted the top ten per cent whilst squeezing the rest.  The graphs are there. 

 

It's not my opinion that the gap between rich and poor has widened its an unfortunate stone cold fact. A lot of people give the EU a free pass when at the mention of gross inequality, others are a little more cynical;  when it comes to any political organisation that rules us I'm also very cynical..

I’m not sure you’re understanding my position on this.  There are almost zero western countries who are doing anything about their poorest civilians.  Widening the gap between rich and poor is a characteristic of a non-socialist entity. 

[Gnasher]

1 hour ago, stringvest said:

I’m not sure you’re understanding my position on this.  There are almost zero western countries who are doing anything about their poorest civilians.  Widening the gap between rich and poor is a characteristic of a non-socialist entity. 

OK sorry I've probably mis read your post. I agree with your post above.

[Bruce Spanner]

Build Back Better laced with suitable irony...

 

'So concerned is he by the issue, he said there was an argument for the UK to unilaterally extend the transition period beyond the end of this year and he has already raised the issue in a meeting with construction minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan two weeks ago.

 

He said that Trevelyan did not comment on the detail of his concerns but told him that her team would look into the points raised.

 

From 1 January next year, all new construction products on the UK market must have the UKCA marking, which they must obtain with a test at a UK facility at a cost of up to £50,000. Previously, UK firms could obtain a CE mark for products by testing at a facility anywhere in the EU.

 

Caplehorn said the UK does not have enough testing facilities for each type of product, and for certain products, such as high specification glass and construction adhesives, there are no facilities to carry out the necessary assessments in the UK. He said there was now not enough time to get testing facilities for these products up and running in the UK before the end of the transition period. “If you play that out, when we get to the end of the year, when it will be only CA mark for the UK, we are in a bit of trouble, because any new products, or any products which have run out of their test legitimacy, will have to be retested. We don’t have the ability to do it at all,” he told Building Design’s sister title Building.

 

He added a governing structure to oversee UK technical assessment bodies had still not been set up because discussions had only started after the agreement of the Brexit deal in December last year.

 

Despite the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government now being in talks about setting up a UK version of the European Organisation for Technical Assessment, which authorises the use of CE marks, Caplehorn said the discussions have started too late. “We’re now in a position, where even if we had the capacity, we don’t actually have the organisational authorities in place yet.”

 

He added: “The challenge is effectively taking a system which was in existence across Europe for 40 years and cutting it into two and trying to make our version of that work in every aspect, because there are an awful lot of layers to this particular topic. “And it requires a lot of different agencies and organisations to be in place to make sure it all works. “Have we got enough time to get all these things in place by the end of the year? My judgement at the moment would say no.”

 

He admitted that the worst-case scenario would be that large parts of the industry would find themselves unable to operate because it would “rapidly get to a point where there would be significant shortages of key commodities”. And he added that while the construction industry had been leading the pack in raising the alarm, other industries are only “just about waking up” to the issue.'

 

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/uk-could-run-out-of-construction-materials-as-brexit-invalidates-certificates/5111794.article#.YJzmvxel2DI.twitter

[Chairman Meow]

24 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Build Back Better laced with suitable irony...

 

'So concerned is he by the issue, he said there was an argument for the UK to unilaterally extend the transition period beyond the end of this year and he has already raised the issue in a meeting with construction minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan two weeks ago.

 

He said that Trevelyan did not comment on the detail of his concerns but told him that her team would look into the points raised.

 

From 1 January next year, all new construction products on the UK market must have the UKCA marking, which they must obtain with a test at a UK facility at a cost of up to £50,000. Previously, UK firms could obtain a CE mark for products by testing at a facility anywhere in the EU.

 

Caplehorn said the UK does not have enough testing facilities for each type of product, and for certain products, such as high specification glass and construction adhesives, there are no facilities to carry out the necessary assessments in the UK. He said there was now not enough time to get testing facilities for these products up and running in the UK before the end of the transition period. “If you play that out, when we get to the end of the year, when it will be only CA mark for the UK, we are in a bit of trouble, because any new products, or any products which have run out of their test legitimacy, will have to be retested. We don’t have the ability to do it at all,” he told Building Design’s sister title Building.

 

He added a governing structure to oversee UK technical assessment bodies had still not been set up because discussions had only started after the agreement of the Brexit deal in December last year.

 

Despite the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government now being in talks about setting up a UK version of the European Organisation for Technical Assessment, which authorises the use of CE marks, Caplehorn said the discussions have started too late. “We’re now in a position, where even if we had the capacity, we don’t actually have the organisational authorities in place yet.”

 

He added: “The challenge is effectively taking a system which was in existence across Europe for 40 years and cutting it into two and trying to make our version of that work in every aspect, because there are an awful lot of layers to this particular topic. “And it requires a lot of different agencies and organisations to be in place to make sure it all works. “Have we got enough time to get all these things in place by the end of the year? My judgement at the moment would say no.”

 

He admitted that the worst-case scenario would be that large parts of the industry would find themselves unable to operate because it would “rapidly get to a point where there would be significant shortages of key commodities”. And he added that while the construction industry had been leading the pack in raising the alarm, other industries are only “just about waking up” to the issue.'

 

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/uk-could-run-out-of-construction-materials-as-brexit-invalidates-certificates/5111794.article#.YJzmvxel2DI.twitter

 

From this thread. The bold bit being the most relevant portion. 

 

On 09/06/2019 at 09:19, Chairman Meow said:

No it will be fine Rico, the stuff about regulations that I was on about on here ages ago which they've also mentioned is nonsense. The rest of the world will just bow down to our superiority, we used to have an empire don't you know, at least until those uppity foreigners forgot what was best for them and decided they didn't want it.

 

Anyway, what the fuck would the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders know about what affects selling and making cars? They clearly can't know as much as a genius like Boris or the clearly insightful and not at all disingenuous Farage.

 

As I was saying ages ago on the regulations thing we're going to be bound by them anyway if we still want to sell to the EU (and surely everyone no matter where they lie in the debate realizes we still will have to sell to our biggest export market) means we're stuck with it anyway. Just like the rest of the world is stuck with making right hand drive cars if they want to sell here.

 

The biggest issue I see on the regulations side is simply that British Standards probably can't cope, much of the regulatory side was just ceded to the EU and had almost no oversight by the UK, something none of the politicians want to admit while they are slagging the EU of for something that they simply ignored. 

 

With the fire safety side of things we had waiting times of several months to get things tested for approval as there was one person available to test our kit. If she was off you couldn't even get a simple query answered as she was the only person who knew about those regulations. 

 

At the moment you can also use the European testing houses, but if British regs then don't match theirs it may not be possible. Unless we have the European testing houses also testing for things to come over here if we do indeed have our own regs.

 

We're going to end up like Swanson sorting out his workshop, "no we're making people manufacture things to the British regulations, if that happens to overlap with the EU regulations......"

 

 

 

 

From the Corbyn thread.

 

On 07/07/2017 at 11:03, Chairman Meow said:

 

Sorry, long winded reply incoming. 

 

I was referring to how the standards work, a product is either tested and certified or it isn't. The products have to go to an approved testing house who say yay or nay.

 

Once we are out of the EU the products will still be either certified or not. The only way the Government could influence that is if they banned the use of a material in the UK which the EU specified had to be in a product, making it impossible for a company to make a compliant product.

 

The stuff I was working on was predominantly Fire Alarm and safety related Air Vent systems, we also did custom power supplies for various other applications also, my experience was that the majority of the industry chose cost over quality most of the time. I can say with pretty much 100% certainty that you will have been in a building which has products in it that I either actually designed or ran the project on.

 

We had a few exceptions, like some stuff that was used in remote locations, for instance we had stuff out in the middle of nowhere in Dubai running unmanned stations, stuff in the Arctic and bits out on Rigs. With those, the tendency was that they wanted something they would fit and would never have to repair, at which stage quality went out of the window and I used to more or less pluck prices out of thin air to make it worthwhile us taking the job on or to put them off.

 

The component side is a little different, not all of the components are necessarily under any kind of approvals. But, they are then going into a product which would be tested to the standards by an approved testing centre so need to be of a quality to pass those tests. 

 

So for instance, in a power supply we may have had a Toroidal transformer, which was UL approved on its own, a collection of components such as circuit boards, resistors, switches etc. which may or may not have some kind of approval on them, in a container which most likely has its own IP rating (how well sealed it is) and potentially none of them would fall under an EU regulation. However, the completed product would have to be certified in it's own right. Obviously depending on the standards you are working to it is possible that some of the materials would have to be made to a certain standard, this would be something the testing house would, or should, pick up when testing for compliance.

 

So as far as I can see, the only impact on people who have to manufacture or design to EU standards now is whether us leaving the EU affects the cost of import/export.

 

TLDR: Us leaving the EU shouldn't change how products are approved so it shouldn't affect us on that basis. However, import taxes, currency rates etc. would.

 

Who could have possibly predicted that something that the British government have basically ignored would then need a load of effort to sort out.

 

There are two options here as for as the politicians are concerned, either they knew and didn't give a fuck, or they didn't know and they are clueless about how regulations work.

 

 

The big elephant in the room that still exists and I am sure will become more and more prevalent is the fact that we've now switched from the EU making rules and us having an input to the EU making rules and us just having to suck it up. 

[Gnasher]

On 18/05/2021 at 23:04, scottthecanuck said:

You're a raving anti-Eunite.

I'm going to pinch that. 

[Gnasher]

If Labour goes down this road they're well and truly fucked....

 

 

 

Real world, not bollocks.