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?

(My last MP Gisela Stuart also kept trying to call. She wanted a photo op with DW outside the post office she voted to close was fighting to keep open. So pleased I told her to shove it.)

I never thought an independent Scotland or a reunited Ireland would happen in my lifetime (in my 50s). Didn't lobby for it/didn't see the point.

• Fall of Berlin Wall
• Fall of USSR
• reunification of Germany
• Good Friday Agreement
• End of Apartheid
• Nelson Mandela becoming President

to name a few things I never imagined in my life.

Sadly Brexit is also one of those things.

So an independent Scotland doesn't really tax my imagination as it might have my forebears. And in for a penny, in for a Euro, independent Wales and united Ireland too.

It's notable that the decline of people who lived through WW2 seems to mirror a decline in the willingness to dream ? Or is that just me ?

@HannibalHayes

Andrew Neil is going full on hardcore right-wing Brexit loony now that he's no longer constrained (as far as he was) by working for the Beeb.

Hopefully he'll soon dispel any of the gravitas he earned in his previous roles...

Hes starting a new tv station. Hes got to brand it.

I agree with that list DGR.

Not on your list, but think of how the end of WW1 destroyed the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. At a stroke bang, gone, and new countries came into being.

However, proving that even a stopped PM can occasionally have it's uses:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55791179

The public's trust in the way the UK is run is breaking down, former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has warned.

He said Covid-19 had exposed "tensions" between Whitehall and the nations and regions, who were often treated by the centre as if they were "invisible".

Mr Brown is urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to set up a commission to review how the country is governed.

(contd)

a written constitution would probably be a start - and maybe end. We could lift the US one verbatim and dump the monarchy at the same time.

@Peregrina

I agree with that list DGR.

Not on your list, but think of how the end of WW1 destroyed the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. At a stroke bang, gone, and new countries came into being.

I still think our pisspoor leaders are a sad result of managing to eliminate two successive generations of the brightest and best and having to endure the dregs that got left behind. Sadly raising an entire nation with a ruling class that really was there by luck, rather than ability.

Brown was an dire Chancellor and an atrocious PM
I do not listen to him I'm afraid.

If Andrew Neil loses gravitas
it will not be a new thing
www.private-eye.co.uk/blog/?m=201101

Brown was an dire Chancellor and an atrocious PM

We cannot afford to throw tools away because we don't like their design ...

I do not listen to him I'm afraid.

When other people do, I try. Although in hindsight and at 2x speed. Lifes too short.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/post-brexit-shoppers-pay-a-third-extra-to-get-hold-of-eu-goods-qkrdxvkx3

Tens of thousands of internet shoppers are being hit with unexpected customs, VAT and delivery charges on orders from the EU as retailers on the Continent struggle to cope with Brexit red tape.

British customers are facing demands to pay up to a third extra to release their goods from bonded warehouses once they arrive in the UK.

The delivery company DPD asked one shopper to pay £77 in tax and charges to release £245 of clothes bought from a French website.

Customers say they are not being advised at the checkout that they will be liable for extra costs and many are refusing to pay, forcing delivery companies to return the items.

The problems have been caused by rules introduced since the end of the Brexit transition period that require VAT on purchases from the EU to be collected at the point of delivery if the goods cost more than £135. There may also be customs duties if the goods originated, or partly originated, outside the EU.

In many cases retailers themselves are unaware of the rules. In some cases customers may be paying VAT twice — the local rate at the point of sale and the UK rate at the point of delivery

The simplest thing you can do is to only shop on websites that fulfil orders from within the UK. However, this is not always easy to tell as lots of foreign websites have bought .co.uk web addresses and operate in English to serve the UK market.

It's all going on.

In fairness Mastercard cant be making much on EU - UK transfers atm...

Conservative "and Unionist" Party. Yeah right.

Why are they so surprised that Scotland is seeking independence from a shit regime that dragged them out of the EU against their will?

@DGRossetti

Brown was an dire Chancellor and an atrocious PM

We cannot afford to throw tools away because we don't like their design ...

I do not listen to him I'm afraid.

When other people do, I try. Although in hindsight and at 2x speed. Lifes too short.

Brown was actually good on the following points:

1. Not joining the Euro.

1. Management of the financial crisis.

Agree tatania

An interesting read about Demography over the next 50 years
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/as-birth-rates-fall-animals-prowl-in-our-abandoned-ghost-villages
in the EU, an area the size of Italy is expected to be abandoned by 2030. Spain is among the European countries expected to lose more than half its population by 2100; already, three- quarters of Spanish municipalities are in decline

@ListeningQuietly

An interesting read about Demography over the next 50 years www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/as-birth-rates-fall-animals-prowl-in-our-abandoned-ghost-villages in the EU, an area the size of Italy is expected to be abandoned by 2030. Spain is among the European countries expected to lose more than half its population by 2100; already, three- quarters of Spanish municipalities are in decline

Here is an interesting debate - from the days when it was reasoned and relatively polite - which touches on demographics in a quite unique way

(The whole show is worth watching as some points being made are extremely prescient, no matter what you think of the way in which they are articulated)

What about the nation we have pulled back from the dead that are also of a different mindset and outlook as people from different ethnic backgrounds ????

Dr. Jonathan Miller - legend.

More winning

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/northern-ireland-horticulture-sector-facing-disarray-amid-brexit-trading-rules-40005004.html

The Northern Ireland horticulture sector faces “disarray” this spring due to post-Brexit trading rules, a garden centre owner has warned.

Robin Mercer, owner of Hillmount Garden Centre in Belfast, has called on the Government to help the industry as it grapples with trade issues caused by the UK leaving the EU.

Northern Ireland has remained in the EU’s plant health system post-Brexit, while the rest of the UK is not, meaning the region must apply EU rules on all horticulture products entering from Great Britain.

Some plants now need a plant health certificate before they can enter Northern Ireland. Other products have been completely banned, including soil as it can carry pests and diseases.

It has resulted in some businesses in the rest of the UK halting sales to Northern Ireland customers.

(contd)

• brown Removed rate setting from politicians by handing control to the bank.

Drove a significant reduction in child poverty that had been trebled in the previous tory administrations and since the tories abolished the child poverty act has now resumed its upward path.

He wasnt a charismatic pm but far better than any that followed him.

Tory corruption stated in plain terms.

He wasnt a charismatic pm but far better than any that followed him.

Yep. These things are relative. He was a good chancellor, he wasn't the right personality for a PM. But then neither were Cameron, May or Johnson. Brown wouldn't have done anything so bloody stupid as call a referendum, pursue a hard Brexit, throw industries under the bus with a shit deal.

When Harold Wilson called his referendum, for similar reasons to quell rebellions in his ranks, he had the gumption to keep out of it, because he knew that his intervention would make it a opinion poll on his premiership. How many people voted leave to give Cameron a kick in the teeth? I nearly did, but then thankfully thought better of it.

Wilson was a crafty devil and renowned for it. Cameron and Johnson are entitled moneyed tossers. May was someone completely out of her depth, but could have been a competent enough PM in a more stable time.

Private Eye used to love publishing that Andrew Neill photo at regular intervals.

I stand by my position that the four countries of the Uk would be better served by a decent federal constitution that offer more accountability and independence to their respective electorates. It would also mean more powers (including fiscal ones) going to parts of England. Why should Yorkshire be ignored and overlooked, for example, when it has a bigger population than Scotland?

As that seen screamingly unlikely, I wish Scotland well with their independence drive and Northern Ireland with the reunion.

You can't talk about the "will of the people" for Brexit, but not for Scotland if Sturgeon's referendum returns a thumping majority.

I will not enjoy the break-up of the UK, but I will get the popcorn out to watch the Tories panic.

ABC - I think you may be right, but I suspect that 'that ship has sailed'. All the more so with Johnson and cronies' belligerent attitude to Scotland, and total indifference to N Ireland.

OH FOR FUCKS SAKE

www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/angela-merkel-is-responsible-for-brexit-the-telegraph-reckons/25/01/

Angela Merkel is responsible for Brexit, The Telegraph reckons

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is squarely to blame for Britain’s divorce from the European Union, a Daily Telegraph columnist has suggested.

According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Merkel is “more responsible for Brexit than any other political figure in Europe” – writing that the chancellor’s pro-Europe policymaking has “sown the seeds of British exasperation”.

“This mismanagement of monetary union altered British perceptions of the EU before the Brexit referendum,” he wrote, claiming that Merkel’s handling of the Eurozone debt crisis “led to the migration of several hundred thousand economic refugees from southern Europe, and displaced flows from eastern Europe into the UK”.

Evans-Pritchard went on to claim that Merkel “meddled enough with the constitutional machinery of Europe to irritate the British, but not enough to sort out the EU’s real problems or to make the monetary union fit for purpose”.

He added: “She installed ultra-integrationist Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission chief against British objections. This violated the Brussels convention that no major state is ever overruled on this key post. She refused a compromise despite warnings from David Cameron that a taste of Junckerism would further erode British consent for the EU, as proved to be the case.”

“‘Mutti’ is an admirable person and a canny, tactical politician but she will leave a set of unstable equilibria, a polite way of saying a trail of wreckage,” he concluded.

Merkel’s party, the centre-right CDU, last week anointed centrist Armin Laschet as its new leader – making him the favourite to succeed the long-serving leader as chancellor in September.