What have we gained by Brexit/leaving the EU?

[Elephant4]

In simple terms.

I've read so much about what we've lost.

Please no sarcastic comments. I just want to know what we've gained - probably best if those who think Brexit is a positive thing post.

Bythemillpond without derailing too much, if your employment/income has been adversely affected due to the pandemic did you receive furlough payments from any of your employer(s)?

Genuine question, as you would be entitled to ask your employer(s) to furlough you so you get at least part of your income, they shouldn’t just be cutting you adrift because there is no work.

As part of my job I run payrolls and have a couple of companies with zero hours contract employees and they have furloughed/flexi furloughed them as and when since March.

Caveat - your employer(s) need to be using PAYE though, if not that’s a whole other issue!

The EU set floor standards
which the UK was always free to exceed

Many of the champions and promoters of Brexit - like Rees Mogg
explicitly said from early on that leaving the EU was about the freedom to REDUCE standards
of air quality
of water quality
of employment protection
of workers rights
of food quality

Why is anybody surprised that they are getting on with exactly that ?

Bythemillpond without derailing too much, if your employment/income has been adversely affected due to the pandemic did you receive furlough payments from any of your employer(s)

Genuine question, as you would be entitled to ask your employer(s) to furlough you so you get at least part of your income, they shouldn’t just be cutting you adrift because there is no work

We are self employed and do agency work.
So no particular employer. None of us has been self employed for long enough

We are self employed and do agency work.
So no particular employer. None of us has been self employed for long enough

That is the risk you take with self-employment though. Now admittedly much of the self-employment is really bogus, and it's a way for firms to get out of paying NIC and being unpaid tax collectors for the Government. Hasn't there been at least one group of people who got together and challenged this, and got a ruling that they weren't really self-employed and would be entitled to employee benefits?

This is why we had Trade Unions - rights had to be fought for. If Rees-Mogg can make fortunes on Currency speculation then I don't see why the F* workers can't be paid properly for an honest days work.

It may not have crossed your mind, but I was quoting from my own experience. In one particular case when a person was grumbling '"you're doing all right for yourselves with your holidays and sick pay.", he was treated to a lecture on how those rights had been fought for and that there was nothing stopping him doing the same. The grumbler shut up

But are you doing ok?

And as for nothing to stop us doing the same.
How. We have over the years applied for every job going and got rejected over and over. It isn’t easy trying to get work when you have no qualifications.

The grumbler in question was something of Boris Johnson, who like BJ thought the world owed him a living and was a bit surprised when the World said, no, we don't think so.

@Bythemillpond
You sound like you're not happy with ZH work (ZHC are illegal in some EU countries I might add as an aside) ? But earlier you wrote this -

Personally we wouldn’t want f/t jobs in one company for a set amount of hours per week. We also worked (pre Covid) much more than 48 hours per week some weeks and others weeks we might only work 3 days. It was up to us how much work we did. We liked the flexibility.

I think that there is a lot of people in our position. Zero hours contracts can be really lucrative if you aren’t tied to one company.

The above seems to imply that you like the flexibility of ZH and find them really lucrative. I'm a little confused by your position on them. Personally, I think they should be banned and that workers need certainty and that ZH shift too much business risk away from the employer and onto the employee, that's just me though.

Kendodd - these are all the sorts of things which infuriate me. We and previous generations worked hard to get decent work conditions and benefits such as holiday pay. It's now abundantly clear that the 'Make our own Laws' was exactly as we thought, a desire by the Brexiters Mogg, Johnson the whole sorry moneyed crowd to rip up laws which benefited ordinary working people. And sadly it appears that those who voted Leave didn't see this coming.

It isn’t easy trying to get work when you have no qualifications

Use your new found wealth to get some?

I left school without even a CSE, i got qualifications via evening classes and FE college, both free, i got £620 per term as a mature student...... guess who took that route out of poverty away?

This is what gets me, the very people who had some protection from the extremes of the tory party, then voted to lose even that minimum standard.

It isn’t easy trying to get work when you have no qualifications.
Having just submitted the tax return of a client who has no qualifications and can barely read or write
but earns over £20,000 a year
I call bullshit

There IS work out there for those who want it.

If an immigrant who does not speak the local language
takes your job
they are not the problem
you are

Well that's the good thing about everything going tits up at the same time, it gives an infinite amount of stuff for people to grind their chops on.

Is it Brexit, is it Covid or is it da,da,da,da,da,da....Batman!

Given that most of the world are making it up as they go along, I'm adopting survival technique and going with the flow until it gets too adverse and I Judo the counter flow.

Well that's the good thing about everything going tits up at the same time, it gives an infinite amount of stuff for people to grind their chops on.
Definitely

but once the Vaccinations rate rise
and the infection rates start to small
and the lockdowns end elsewhere
Brits will realise that Brexit is here to stay
with all that groovy world beating red tape

It isn’t easy trying to get work when you have no qualifications

Use your new found wealth to get some

What wealth. We haven’t worked since March last year.
Do you mean buy a qualification?
Also I think taking English GCSE 8 times and getting a U each time should say I am not going to get a qualification.

I would love to know how you get these jobs. I have applied for so many.

Obviously it is me if others can get jobs and I can’t.
No idea what I can do.

Well that's the good thing about everything going tits up at the same time, it gives an infinite amount of stuff for people to grind their chops on

There is nothing good about any of this, Brexit or CV.

I suspect the fishermen stuck in port with rotting shellfish know that Brexit is why they can no longer make a living.

37 pages and still no brexit positives!

I think your problem Bythemillpond was saying how the gig economy wasn't bad, the flexibility allowed you to make a good living. But in the next post the Covid lockdowns have made it well nigh impossible for you to do so.

It's a hard lesson to have learnt but at the times when your earnings opportunities were good, you needed to be making provision for the times when they might not have been.

Leavers now especially need to learn this lesson, because the Government is looking to downgrade worker protections.

Well, you did say .....
Zero hours contracts can be really lucrative if you aren’t tied to one company

So i assumed you were doing well and earning decent money?

How an earth did you manage to take 8 GCSE English exams?

Well, one thing we gained was acting efficiently and quickly as a nation state to procure vaccines.

Now, of course you can cavil and say that, legally, we could have done it within the EU. However, the reality was that while the rest of the EU were discussing a pan EU vaccine programme and trying to buy within the EU, we efficiently bought every vaccine we could.

So we have vaccinated over 5% of our population whilst Germany have vaccinated just over 1% and France 0.6%.

That's a good achievement but it's not a Brexit bonus. A Brexit bonus should be something which only happened because of Brexit. Like Rees-Mogg making Millions on the £.

@Peregrina

That's a good achievement but it's not a Brexit bonus. A Brexit bonus should be something which only happened because of Brexit. Like Rees-Mogg making Millions on the £.

How so, Peregrina?

@TheReluctantPhoenix

Well, one thing we gained was acting efficiently and quickly as a nation state to procure vaccines.

Now, of course you can cavil and say that, legally, we could have done it within the EU. However, the reality was that while the rest of the EU were discussing a pan EU vaccine programme and trying to buy within the EU, we efficiently bought every vaccine we could.

So we have vaccinated over 5% of our population whilst Germany have vaccinated just over 1% and France 0.6%.

Very true @TheReluctantPheonix. The EU have suffered from political pressure to manage vaccine procurement centrally, insisted upon by Merkel to the fury of Germans. It is without doubt that this is a real tangible benefit of Brexit for us.

It is without doubt that this is a real tangible benefit of Brexit for us

Fantastic achievement but as Peregrina says, not Brexit related.

For all of europe, we are, at present, going to see the back of this Pandemic, what then?

Considering our death and infection rates, we really do need to be ahead of europe on this.

I think expecting a Brexit bonus two weeks into January may be over-optimistic, but my preference for keeping the UK at arms length arises from being unconvinced that the EU is as solid and united as some believe.

There are some fairly alarming trends and fissures in Europe, like the enormous structural youth unemployment figures in all the Latin countries (10% seems to be regarded as acceptable). There's Italy's precarious debt figures and lack of leadership. What about the divisive social unrest between urban/rural populations in France where Macron faces a general election this year. The FN remains a force to be reckoned with: I hope they fail but they will make a strong showing. There's no real front-runner among Angela Merkel's potential replacements yet, and Germany's financial muscle is looking a bit atrophied. The frugal Northern states are not keen on funding the laggards or the catch-up infrastructure needed by the accession countries. The Netherlands' government has collapsed today, over a child benefit scandal.

I would like to be persuaded that the Commission and the EU bureaucracy are equal to the challenges they will face but suspect that watching from the sidelines may prove the more comfortable situation over the decade ahead.

Given that the European Parliament has extremely limited powers to initiate policy or legislation to solve any of the above...

Why should expecting a Brexit bonus two weeks into January be optimistic? We held all the cards, there were no downsides only upsides as I recall. We ought by now to have seen firms rushing in to get established here. Even if they can't physically move yet because of Covid. We ought not to have seen the Euro stock trades disappear as soon as the market opened on 4th January. We ought to have seen the 700,000 non UK born people stay here to wait Covid out not as assumed go back to their own countries. We ought not to see fishermen complaining that they have been sold out. What happened to the wonderful trade deal with the US?

Should we be claiming record death rates from Covid as a Brexit gain? After all if our Government hadn't been preoccupied with Brexit, they might have given a moments thought to tackling Covid promptly. But then again, with Johnson in charge, they might not.