Westministenders: Talks Walk Out?

[RedToothBrush]

We are now on the countdown to whether we get a backstop Withdrawal Deal. May is hoping to get the EU to backdown on this saying that we will stay in the customs union until a deal is agreed on NI. That would mean come 29th March, we'd have no transistion period, but we'd still have a hard border in NI because we were out of the single market. And if the EU don't agree to it we are into the chances of accidental Brexit being sky high. The only way out would be revoking a50. May has hinted that if Tory MPs don't give her support we could end up with no brexit at all - whether she means revoking a50 or Beano isn't clear.

So onward to 18th October...

There are apparently 40 MPs who are willing to vote against a half in / half out Brexit or Brexit with a backstop.

This explains the change in plans in the EU.

There isn't going to be a Withdrawal Agreement in the next 6 weeks.

The EU appear to be acknowledging it. My suspicion they will back off its importance too now.

Why?

Because Parliamentary numbers mean the only way May will get a deal is with an eleventh hour deal where everyone has looked at how bad its looking and every MP is asked to play chicken.

How many Labour MPs would blink rather than hold a party line of not supporting the deal faced with that?

May might even push the line of a no deal being worse in cities and provisional towns which are strongly Labour somehow.

Or May takes the executive power route to a deal.

Both options Johnson has already set up in what he's said publicly as 'betrayal options', so if May takes them he looks good.

My point being, prepare yourself for a shift in focus from the EU and its approach and an announcement of no backstop.

It's definitely the state of play and what's about to happen. It's just not being said outright. Why the media aren't saying this kind of baffles me.

And it took the Aberfan tragedy to force the Coal Board to clean up the slag heaps.
Ditto now - flammable cladding on buildings is to be banned, but it's taken Grenfell to do that.

Red tape hey, such a nuisance.

I didn't quite follow - you mean no backstop as in off altogether, or no backstop because the whole UK is in the CU?

The media are being 'partial' by not being impartial. Reporting of 'general' stuff but not taking a hard look at what is really happening.
Police getting their shout out for massive investment to help them fight crime. Makes a bit of a mockery of the leavers who were maintaining that the EU needed the expertise of the UK police and security.

A realistic 'peoples vote' where the country were told, 'Full metal brexit' will cost every person in the UK £3,000 each for the next 10 years, do you want it?

I wonder how long it will be before the EU simply say 'goodbye,
pay the bill on the way out'.

Waves to Jas a fellow Cornish remainer.

Those hoping for Remain have to consider whether the EU would accept it:

despite the billion they have spent on Brexit - reportedly already the annual GDP of Greece - they would welcome a UK that had genuinely changed its mind

• but not a 52:48 Remain victory, or a govt just cancelling Brexit on its own at the last moment

Remainers, like Leavers, keep making plans while ignoring that the EU members have their own views & interests and have - with sadness - accepted Brexit will happen and have moved on.

Peregrina I think the RoI and EU would insist on a backstop, because the UK can pull out of the CU at any time.

Davies in the past and Gove very recently have basically said even if they sign up to things they don't like in the Withdrawal Agreement, they can cancel them right after Brexit

So the WA would have a backstop that would come into action, with the penalty for reneging on the backstop being that the UK would lose the goodies it wants

I think the 'genuinely changed it's mind' will be the sticking point.
While science and much of industry have a 'European head' and embrace being British Europeans, like German and French Europeans, when you look at the reports of how badly funded many parts of the UK are and the attitude of the government over the years it would be an uphill struggle.
I would support a view that if the UK were to remain then it would lose some of the opt outs. Keep the Pound and a couple of the more visible 'favourites' but lose much of the rebate. it would only be 'fair' given that many of the EU countries have had to waste so much on this ridiculous folly.

Unfortunately those who were very rich then decided that playing money markets was 'easier' than maintaining the industries that had made their wealth

Tbf inheritance had a lot to do with it too. The wealth was passed to multiple offspring. Offspring who didn't share the entrepreneural talent and experience their father or grandfather had. The companies of the victorian era who have survived had products where the item at the end had a unique selling point that others couldn't replicate easily and had invested heavily in the concept of brand loyalty.

You can't do that so easily with textiles which dominated the North.

The cost of investing in ever better technology was expensive - at times prohibitively even for the most wealthy - and politically equally undesirable to government because it put workers out of business anyway. Those that did attempt it, were taking a huge gamble with their finances, that might have paid off for a decade or two allowing them to survive where competitors didn't before they faced the same repeating problem. Each time you increased mechanical productivity the number of companies the market could support declined and this was competition against cheap labour overseas which exploded with population growth allowing pay to stay low.

The problem was that globalisation of the markets and industrialisation eventually worked against the early success stories who had benefited from it.

I think your assertion that rich people played the money markets is one which neglects the reality of globalisation and industrialisation in which business has an initial period of boom and then gradual decline. Its a well known model to do with market saturation. Often what businesses aim to do and see as a success is to try and maintain a plateau rather than decline. But even then that's more or less seen as delaying inevitably of the economic cycle. Its seen as smarter to get out first.

The only way an economy as a whole had buck that is through innovation and science breakthroughs.

But there may actually be something of a limitation as to how much discovery can be used for economic growth too - a dip in the curve of innovation itself. Which would lead to some very serious economic and social consequences.

There are six or seven avenues I can think of where smart money and innovation might develop and be economic gold mines.

1. space mining, exploration and tourism (exploration and colonisation)
2. environmental and climate saving ideas (maintainence of land and shelter to maintain and control pressures of population growth)
3. development of the next generation of antibiotics and drugs (healthy)
4. development of new energy sources - think fission or something completely new (energy)
5. development of a cheap and easy way to produce water out of nothing (water supply)
6. development of new mass food sources (food supply)

And as always the safe bet

7. the arms sector

All are seemingly prohibitively expensive at present - with one exception which can be funded without question via government and patriotism, and politically humans are easier to exploit and more dispensable. That leads to mass scale social unrest and disruption and migration. And war. There is also a desire to stop decline through increased control of the market to suffocating development or innovation or prevent rising social unrest. That's expensive to maintain too.

These areas of breakthrough have been repeated throughout history. There's an eight area too - a means for the storage and passing on of human knowledge (communication essentially). That's the one that had the last big breakthrough.

Once you get through that or have a significant breakthrough in one or more of those other technologies you might start to see political will developing for more investment in those areas.

The point is that the information sector is reached or has reached a peak, and where it goes from here is an ever growing question mark (I see today that Google is shutting down Google + due to a data and privacy breach they told no one about).

Where are smart multi billionaires placing their money? It's not in maintaining the future of information. Sure there's plenty of money still to be made there, but social and political pressures are starting to catch up.

It's not where the next big gold mine is though.

Thinking about 'changing minds'. Fracking had been ruled out in Lancashire and many other parts of the UK. It seems that this has been overturned, against the will of the people and it is only plucky individuals coming up with last minute 'stays of execution' that the drills haven't started turning yet, while 3 protestors have gone to prison.
So much for democracy.

FWIW, if you wanted to have a Brexit opportunities you'd stack your national interest into cracking one of these new areas of development in the hope of being the first to provide an essential solution to a growing human problem. But you'd have to retain the knowledge and skills to do that.

I don't think we have the wherewithal to make that jump because we don't have the political leadership to manage it and invest in it.

red Germany manufacturing has thrived by looking to the longterm, instead of the next quarter's balance sheet and quick profits.

As well as keeping up to date with new tech, they invest a great deal in training, both new staff and annually keeping their current staff up to date

Their apprentice schemes are brilliant - kids without very academic qualifications have a clear way into secure, decently paid jobs

The mandatory Works Councils give workers a say in decisions affecting them, in new woprk practices etc.
Cooperation rather than conflict or domination.

Workers are more valued, more secure - e.g. 6 months proabtion only - and there is not the presenteeism culture - people work their contracted hours or get overtime paid / time in lieu.
Better sick pay & conditions too

All this leads to German workers on average being 20% more productive than British workers, in comparable companies - shown in multiple business studies over the years

when you look at the reports of how badly funded many parts of the UK are and the attitude of the government over the years it would be an uphill struggle.

But as I have said, until Farage came along, it wasn't especially laid at the door of the EU. After all, the vote to Remain in the EEC in 1975 was high. This is before Thatcher did her worst in the 1980s. I speak only of northern England. I don't know the West Country all that well, and I suspect that the mood was different there. They didn't have the heavy industry to lose in the same way.

British workers aren't less intelligent or hard working than German workers.
The difference is how business and the whole country is organised and its priorities

Hi RTB
I am not disagreeing with you, I am railing against the UK failing to manage decline, perhaps something that could come into very sharp focus if the UK truly does crash out.
Trying to discuss things somewhere between your and BCF's very detailed and thoughtful analysis and the 'I've got a blue passport' brigade, as a way of illustrating that despite leaving the EU, sunny uplands are a fair way off, and presenting some solid reasons for saying this.
Your 7 or so areas for development are great of course, but tend to involve relatively few very technical people, at least until it can be commercialised. Having experience and other points of view from international collaborators is of course very beneficial but the UK is not setting itself up for the best use of the worldwide skills resources.

imo, people - even in the regions deindustrialised in the 1980s by MrsT's policies - are unaware that this happened because of decisions by an elected British governent, not the EU and not immigration.

Local history & knowledge used to get passed down the generations.
Somehow, this has not happened properly - and that's not just about the economy, but whole swathes of general knowledge have not been passed down

Despite all the stress on qualifications, much of the public is far less "educated" / knowledgeable outside the narrow fields of study laid down by successive governments than my late father's generation,
where most wc kids like him had to leave school at 14 and many mc kids at 16.

I heard a programme on the radio about the financial crash. They said the problem was Osbourne acted like an accountant, trying to balance the books, rather than an economist, trying to stimulate growth.

Cornwall lost all her mining, but that was a depletion of resources and a fall in the price of tin, more than anything else. It's interesting though, to think the mining heartland of Cornwall was once the richest area in the UK. Gas lighting, safety fuse and Trevithicks steam engine were all developed here, it was a real STEM revolution. That was a long time ago but it shows how things can change.

Parts of the South west and wales had tin, copper, lead and slate mining (in their areas) at the early part of the industrial age. These were often distributing to the world, so pretty massive. Of course these resources got either worded out or more was discovered elsewhere (Rhodesia for copper). Morwhellam Quay was a port from where huge quantities of welsh slate got sent to the Empire.

red I remember Adonis set out key sectors which the UK should develop for the future
He included space tech - is that his list ? - I can't find his proposals atm

Worked not worded!

You mean the Chipping Sodbury international space command centre?

where most wc kids like him had to leave school at 14 and many mc kids at 16.

Many in that generation knew that they had been undereducated, and had a thirst for knowledge.

BigChoc I agree about the lack of general knowledge. I think there are two significant factors. One is the dumbing down of television and the range of programmes available. It is clearly not something people would wish to go back to, but when Panorama, World in Action etc were on everyone's television and there was little choice, I think there was far more discussion of the issues raised. The other thing is the loss of the WEA and LA education classes, which meant that people whose formal education had been limited, could continue to learn.

It's not just TV:
Somehow personal & family histories have not been passed down.

My dad told me about how he and his family suffered during the General Strike and Great Depression

His personal stories brought that time in the NE to life:
no shoes except for my grandad, who had to work on ships, how they were hungry all the time and no money to pay for doctors or meds - so some neighbours just died in agony

Despite his dying when I was still a child, I know what happened to that side of the family jin the early 20th century, and also his experiences serving right from the start of WW2 - and how families were broken up in the chaos