Brexit: A New Era for the UK?

[obslam]

I woke up this morning for the first time in 47 years in a country that is no longer part of the European project that was launched in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome.

You must have had a long sleep as the UK left the EU on 31st January 2020. Not 31st December 2020.

[broncofan]

You must have had a long sleep as the UK left the EU on 31st January 2020. Not 31st December 2020.

He said no longer part of the European project launched with the Treaty of Rome. It participated in the single market and the customs union until the end of 2020.

[Stavros]

You must have had a long sleep as the UK left the EU on 31st January 2020. Not 31st December 2020.

I was wide awake, and as for the intricacies of the relationship, allow the UK Govt to clarify-

"The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. The transition period that was in place – during which nothing changed – ended on 31 December 2020. The rules governing the new relationship between the EU and UK took effect on 1 January 2021."
https://www.government.nl/topics/bre...european-union

[Stavros]

Meanwhile, the former French Ambassador to the UK has said some sharp things about Mr Johnson

"Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.

She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.

Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”

Asked at a Royal United Services Institute thinktank event about her description of him as an unrepentant liar, she said: “He would not object to being called that. He knows he is a liar. He has always played with that. He was fired from his first post for that reason.”

Full report here-
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-says-diplomat

[obslam]

I was wide awake, and as for the intricacies of the relationship, allow the UK Govt to clarify-

"The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. The transition period that was in place – during which nothing changed – ended on 31 December 2020. The rules governing the new relationship between the EU and UK took effect on 1 January 2021."
https://www.government.nl/topics/bre...european-union

The UK ceased to be a signatory to the Treaty of Rome on 31/1/20 - but I'll let you get back to your solitary thread to post to yourself.

[Stavros]

The UK ceased to be a signatory to the Treaty of Rome on 31/1/20 - but I'll let you get back to your solitary thread to post to yourself.

I post items and create threads which interest me, as others do, and as you have been a member for 13-14 years with 67 posts I think you will agree that a lot of members read, but do not comment on posts, which is their choice. It is up to others to join in a thread if they want.

I could thank you for joining the debate on Brexit, but so far you have only expressed an interest in my evident confusion over when the UK 'left the EU' depending upon which pinhead you wish to dance. If you feel that my error renders my posts invalid and of no interest, that is a consequence of the way I present things, and is entirely my fault, whatever it is that the Govt says.

What is clear so far, is that you do not appear to have an opinion on Brexit, and may not reveal it to us at any time, happy as you are to condemn me to this isolation, shaped as it is by your own apparent indifference to engage with the topic.

[obslam]

I post items and create threads which interest me, as others do, and as you have been a member for 13-14 years with 67 posts I think you will agree that a lot of members read, but do not comment on posts, which is their choice. It is up to others to join in a thread if they want.

I could thank you for joining the debate on Brexit, but so far you have only expressed an interest in my evident confusion over when the UK 'left the EU' depending upon which pinhead you wish to dance. If you feel that my error renders my posts invalid and of no interest, that is a consequence of the way I present things, and is entirely my fault, whatever it is that the Govt says.

What is clear so far, is that you do not appear to have an opinion on Brexit, and may not reveal it to us at any time, happy as you are to condemn me to this isolation, shaped as it is by your own apparent indifference to engage with the topic.

OK, apologies for being pedantic and wanting to correct what you wrote - and I am sorry if you are struggling with Brexit.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that I have had enough of people (not necessarily you) who still want to moan about a referendum with a clear result that took place almost five years ago. They would be better concentrating on their own lives, when the true affects of Brexit will only have any long-term meaningful affect on the lives of a very, very small handful of people.

For the vast majority, virtually nothing material will change for them...

For a good example, a large part of the moaners can't even tell you when we left the EU - yet they want to claim that life worsened markedly when we did! It's pathetic.

[Jericho]

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that I have had enough of people (not necessarily you) who still want to moan about a referendum with a clear result that took place almost five years ago.

I feel like that when I hear certain quarters twanging on about the "blitz spirit" .

when the true affects of Brexit will only have any long-term meaningful affect on the lives of a very, very small handful of people.
.

Yeah, I imagine that second billion will be very 'meaningful' to 'em!

As for the "vast majority", I don't give a fuck about them.
All I know is, I can no longer just jump in the car and bum around Europe for a couple of weeks any time I feel like.
And as for my plans of retiring to Portugal...
But no, that's all up in smoke because "the vast majority" were too stupid to know any better and followed a bus driven by a liar, over a cliff edge.

[filghy2]

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that I have had enough of people (not necessarily you) who still want to moan about a referendum with a clear result that took place almost five years ago. They would be better concentrating on their own lives, when the true affects of Brexit will only have any long-term meaningful affect on the lives of a very, very small handful of people.

For the vast majority, virtually nothing material will change for them...

It's interesting that back in 2016 the Brexiters claimed there would be great benefits from leaving the EU. Now their best argument seems to be that most people won't notice any difference.

I'm willing to bet that most people's lives were unchanged in 1973 when the UK joined the EU. Is there a difference between people moaning about Brexit and people who previously moaned about the EU?

[Stavros]

It's interesting that back in 2016 the Brexiters claimed there would be great benefits from leaving the EU. Now their best argument seems to be that most people won't notice any difference.

I'm willing to bet that most people's lives were unchanged in 1973 when the UK joined the EU. Is there a difference between people moaning about Brexit and people who previously moaned about the EU?

The most immediate change that was notieable when the UK entered the Common Market/Euroepan Economic Community in 1973, was the repacement of the old 'Sales Tax', by VAT. Decimalisation that meant the UK making calculations as they did in the CM became law in 1966 and in effect since 1971 so had nothing to do with membership of the Common Market/EEC.

I was able to work in the South of France in the mid-1970s because seasonal, temporary work was exempt from labour/residency laws that required work permits, which meant that from May to October coach loads of Spaniards would pick their way through the season frm Cherries to Olives without any need for work permits. In that sense, the free movement of people under the Single Market Act merely made it easier for people from member states to work in the EU, but in all forms of work, qualifications being the most obvious criterion.

Yes, it was gradual. When I was living in North London before the aborted move to France, the supermarkets did not sell a variety of cheeses, other than the staple English cheeses -the only challenger to Stilton was Danish Blue, which smelled and tasted as if it had been made from petroleum. If you wanted Camembert or Brie and could not get to a shop in Ambleside in the Lake District (their clientele I was told, were the nuclear scientists who worked at nearby Windscale), or Paxton & Whitfield on Jermyn St off Piccadilly, there were a small range of delis in places like Chelsea and Hampstead, or there were the Italian delis -at one time in Soho alone there were at least five that I can recall, and all of them have no gone. I had never heard of goat's cheese until working in France, but then in those days if you wanted Houmous and didn't know how to make it, you either had the -mostly Cypriot- tavernas in North London (Greek in Camden, Turkish in Islington), or a trip to the Eastern Med.

These days the UK or rather London is spoiled for choice, though someone I know was taken to an Ethiopian restaurant a few years ago and says the food was, in a word, 'horrible'....other establishments are available (but can't recall the name of the offender...)