Westminstenders: Move Your Business To The EU

[RedToothBrush]

The government is advising people to move their businesses to the EU to avoid UK taxation and red tape.

Why would you do this?

For the interests of the uk?

Or is it about power WITHIN the uk?

@HannibalHayes also I didn't realise this was some long term thread thing that appears to be ongoing

Oh do stop "@"ing me. I can read, thanks.

But I don't consider you worth responding any further to.

I don't know how to copy on phone app and I do want to learn from both sides as people post different things like with the contract .
Like I said i apologise if i have come across aggressive and that wasn't my intention , just very concerned this could all blow up and we all loose out , it has to be a worldwide effort long term

@usuallydormant i apologise if i came across aggressive to you earlier in a post that was not my intention And i didn't know what this thread was

@mistigirl i apologise for
Mixing up your post with someone elses earlier you did not say eu hadn't messed up , i was confusing threads

Did anyone notice that David Frost will no longer be the UK National Security Advisor?

Frost has now been given the job “to maximise the opportunities of Brexit, including on international trade and economic issues” (aka sorting out the mess you’ve made ) and Sir Stephen Lovegrove gets NSA.

www.gov.uk/government/news/international-affairs-appointments-in-no10-and-cabinet-office

We know the Irish are likely to play the role of the bridge between the EU and the US now the UK is outside.

They are also now the mediator between the UK and the EU.

I hope they will dodge this opportunity because it's a poisoned chalice.

It will win no friends in Brussels, and Dublin knows well what side its bread is buttered on. Ireland's only interest in maintaining a high profile in the halls of power in the US is keeping NI and the GFA front and centre.

I sincerely hope the lesson Ireland has learned from the last four years of American politics is that the political tectonic plates under North America are shifting fast, and that it's best to stick with proven, stable friends.

Ireland has a vested interest in keeping the EU together and not becoming the messenger boy of a power run by puppet masters who have shown they are engaged in destroying the EU. I am talking about the major businesses who back the GOP, and the billionaires who cast their lot with Trump. They could be restored to power in 2024 and if they are, the assault on the EU will resume.

Bloody hell, it was like Liverpool Street Station in pre-COVID rush hour on here last night, except with angrier people

Blimey!
All the 🐿🐿🐿🐿!!!

Oh, my.
Got a bit hectic in here.

No one is coming out of this thing looking good: neither AZ, the UK, nor the EU.

Macron has a very tricky hand to play: the debate on here the other day about the lack of a left-wing party in the UK is even more relevant in France.

He knows that he was elected by many who just had no choice because of the alternative, that his party is hard to hold together and that he's lost support from lots of people who tend to vote left (teachers and academics, among others) and who are orphaned by the death of the Parti Socialiste.

He also cannot fail to be aware that the vaccine chickens are coming home to roost in terms of investment in fundamental research over the last 20 years (so NOT just under his responsibility, but his gvmt has exacerbated things and the latest reforms, voted mid-pandemic in an almost-empty parliament, will make things even worse). Part of the Pasteur failure is bad luck, but it happened against a backdrop of chronic underfunding, worsening working conditions, very poor pay and serious brain drain (cf the French scientist leading the Moderna vaccine project and Emmanuelle Charpentier who clearly said she couldn't have done her Nobel research in France due to huge structural problems).

Now Macron is making v odd decisions, such as issuing a decree that all students have the right to 1 day's teaching a week and universities have till Feb 8th to implement it, because students were demonstrating about their right to learn.

Only someone who thinks students all live in the Quartier Latin and saunter along the road to Panthéon-Sorbonne could possibly think that is workable in terms of logistics and timetabling (18,000 students on my campus...) and the shit will hit the fan in terms of Covid spread pdq. We know there are lots of anti-maskers in my faculty and that in September students who'd tested positive were still attending classes during the 2 weeks we did hybrid teaching, because they were so worried about failing.

Many have given up their accommodation and returned home to follow online classes with a proper wifi connection, and are not keen to return, when the figures are so bad that national lockdown is in the air, for 1 day a week...of what out of the hours and hours of classes they usually have? Staff are on their knees already and if they start getting Covid, they'll go down like ninepins.

It's a shitstorm in the making. [Can't wait for the squirrels to pile in, crowing 'But I though you loved the EU and no one connected with it could do any wrong, you UK-bashing traitor?']

All the older people I know seem to of been given pfizer so far ( not that I know hundreds )

My 84 year old dad was given the AZ vaccine on Thursday. As was the 90 year old dad of my friend (although as he was vaccinated earlier the same day in the same place, you'd expect that he was given the same vaccine )

Auld, I don't know how the 1 day a week will work in universities at all, in fact I think it's pretty much unworkable.

At my DD's French uni (in the Latin quarter as it happens - or at least partly ) everything is on line. All the students have a mix of classes, a lot of them are doing double degrees in various different combinations, they have 26 hours of class a week & with the enormous choice of options they all have different timetables. So in-person lessons a day a week are a non-starter.

At my DS's engineering school the first years are having 100% in person classes.

I suspect the spread in class is negligible tbh - my French medic sources say that an awful lot of the transmission going on is happening in hospitals & anywhere people eat together (school cantines etc).

Saw my own GP last night and he's hardly seeing any Covid (though our local figures are around the national average) and indeed very little infectious disease/other respiratory illness at all, due to mask wearing. He was intrigued to learn that mask wearing is patchy in the U.K. and often not enforced in the classroom.

And a note on French opinion data.... I love France but they do moan they consistently rate every thing worse than anyone else in polls. There are definitely a lot of vaccine skeptics but at the end of the day, I am constantly photocopying my kids' vaccination certs so they can go to school, daycare, holiday camp... I can't walk out of the doctors without a prescription. The take up rates will be a lot higher than polls suggest IF people have confidence in the drug.

Yep this is spot on. There's a big difference between saying you won't take a vaccine that you can't have yet, and refusing it when it's finally offered. I don't expect there to be a problem with uptake (or at least not worse than other large European countries). Already intention to vaccinate in the over 75 group that's being vaccinated is very high.

Bizarrely the vaccine resistance to watch in France will be healthcare workers - nurses and paramedical professions. Employers may at some stage have to require it.

I don't have a view on the AZ contract (other than it might not be what's in the contract that ultimate matters) but this is why the EU is so outraged, and on the face of it it's hard to argue with that:

Misti I think another question that should be answered is where were the earlier stages manufactured?

And we don't know the conditions of the UK contract.

The EU knew the UK had already signed and knew they would approve 1st (or should have) so why were these problems not forseen?

Where was that from Misti?

The EU knew the UK had already signed and knew they would approve 1st (or should have) so why were these problems not forseen?

The date of signing and of approval are not really relevant. Nothing stopping the EU buying doses pre-approval and indeed this is what they thought they had done.

We know U.K. vaccine was made partly in the EU. The fundamental question - which quite honestly I am no closer to understanding - is whether there is a national priority clause in AZ's contract with the U.K. that prevents AZ fulfilling the EU order from U.K. production.

This is problematic because the supposed existence of a national priority clause is what has set off this whole crisis. The EU is effectively saying "if you are claiming national priority over your vaccines, we will claim national priority over all vaccines produced on or imported into EU territory".

(The EU export ban would have a very long list of exceptions by the way - including 92 low and middle income countries.)

Mrslaughan Irish Times I think. Not my screenshot.

I thinknwe also need the British press to point out that many of the comments from the EU are because they havebmade mistakes.

They have seemed a little out of control over the last few days, and it is understandable as they have made serious mistakes and they are facing a serious shortfall in the vaccine.

The Germans have chosen to only approve AZ for over 65's and they have valid reasons for this. But many comments coming from Germany and France especially regarding the AZ vaccine are unfounded and sound like sour grapes and them throwing their toys out of the pram because they never got their way.

(And yes, I know BJ would do the same).

The issue here though is that it has the potential to be very damaging to the British vaccine campaign. We cannot afford for more people not to get the vaccine.

We already have many people who will not get the vaccine, especially in the communities most vulnerable to the vaccine.

This silliness from the EU is not going to help that.

If we take rabid anti EU Mail, Express, Telegraph etc out of the equation, you can definitely see a different tone in other press.

We need a bit of nationalism here, because we need our population to trust the vaccine we have available to us, which will save lives.

@Mistigri

I don't have a view on the AZ contract (other than it might not be what's in the contract that ultimate matters) but this is why the EU is so outraged, and on the face of it it's hard to argue with that:

Whats in the contract hardly matters.

We have crossed that point. The EU needs vaccine. It will use whatever power it has to get that. It will not rely on law alone. Law is slow. Politics are immediate.

I recall a quote from somewhere, a couple of years ago to the effect that "Leavers think the EU is weak; Remainers think the EU is nice; both are wrong" - this is, I think, slightly off the mark.

It's Leavers who appear to simultaneously think that the EU is weak (TheyNeedUsMoreThanWeNeedThem DontTheyKnowWhoWeAre) and strong (BullyingPunishment); they also simultaneously think that the EU is nice (BMWsProseccoTrade NoDownsides) and nasty (BullyingPunishment).

Meanwhile, there are doubtless some people who voted Remain thinking that the EU are lovely fluffy kittens, and who are therefore surprised and disappointed today. Fertile ground for new Brexitatious conversion.

That's why there has been a flurry of excited Leaver activity these few days - "You see how they are flawed and make mistakes and mess stuff up? Eh? Eh? Therefore... Brexit is great!"

Also we in the UK might be mindful that a trade war is a bad idea for the UK.

Not least because the Deal with the EU is NOT finalised. At the moment it is still being applied provisionally with the European Parliament wanting to scrutinise its detail.

Last night a key clause in it was triggered and then reversed. There are much grumblings about its implications all round.

Those that wrote the documents triggering it, clearly did so deliberately. It was about the interests of the big EU countries first ahead of Ireland. And from what Raoul Ruperal was saying last night these are people who are not ignorant of the border issue because they are the same people who were involved in the writting and negotiating of it.

A re-emergence of a No Deal scenario is in play.

RTB - yes, I agree.

This is quite good, and level headed, from CNN. There is very little good coverage of this in English, and none at all that I have seen from the U.K.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/30/europe/uk-eu-astrazeneca-vaccine-nationalism-gbr-intl/index.html

"But the EU's contract with AstraZeneca states that doses for the bloc could indeed come from a supply chain that includes UK-based plants. Equally, the UK is receiving doses from Europe as well -- a person familiar with the matter said that the UK is still receiving small numbers of vaccines made in European plants, and that its initial doses had come from Europe too."

A re-emergence of a No Deal scenario is in play.

You know what, I'd be surprised about this, because the U.K. govt reaction has been relatively sensible so far.

They probably realise that this will crystallise Brexit as "done" and they are happy to take that win.

There are huge problems with exports that will start to show up in economic stats quite soon, and big problems with imports coming this summer - they need to take their wins where they can get them, without making the Brexit aftermath even more complicated.

Mistrigri at the moment i think it unlikely BUT its in play.

It really depends on how much a trade war ramps up.

Central to any trade war has to be the Nuclear Option for the EU.

Timescales are the key here. The EU parliament wants months to scruntise the deal. Its the Commission that wants it done quicker. Where this deadline fails matters. If it falls just at the height of a vaccine shortage crisis thats not good. If matters are resolved thats less worrying.

But it could change dynamics...