Brexit - the end of the beginning - the negotiations begin

Gina Miller has considered standing in Theresa May's constituency.!!! Not sure if she has come to a final decision on that.

Sorry, Fitzy, but I can't beleive you said that.
We give the poor countries some of our wealth? And that's why we have suffered?
Bloody hell!
You appear to have forgotten a lot of our colonial history, and what we took from those countries in the first place, and still are.
Worldwide poverty has reduced massively? Not in those countries that we have helped to bomb by selling them planes and ammunition. Not in those countries where we are taking their land to grow crops to feed our animals and ourselves.

I'd love to see that, Welshwife, and other parties give her a clear run.

Personally I think coming out and staying in are fraught with negatives. Staying in isn't working and coming out is into a lot of unknowns. One good thing about leaving is our governments will not be able to hide behind the EU. It's happening already. We are far more conscious of what the parties are saying and offering. It's scary for me because I don't like what any of them are saying or not as the case may be. We can just walk away from the EU. I must admit the way they are speaking to us and about us is so disrespectful considering we have put the most money in other than Germany. And it's the people's decision. What does get me is people talk about the EU and the market we deal with and there might be tariffs, the country is going to full apart. Doom and gloom.when very few actually sell anything overseas. How do these people think it happens. By magic. It's individuals with vision plus hard work. Everyone should be thinking how can I improve things.

This is worldwide poverty reducing dramatically, is it?
Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.

At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.

According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they "die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death."

The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.

Let's just be done with it

Are you going into purdah for the next five years, gagsy?

Why do people keep saying we are only a tiny little island ? We have always been a tiny little island, but we have done great things.....and yes I know some bad ones too. We still have a voice in the world, and if we all pull together we can have a greater one.

I'm really sorry but comments like this make me want to tear my hair out.

The reason this tiny little island did great things was that it had an Empire. To put it very simply, we imported cheap raw materials from the Empire countries, made things with them and then sold the manufactured goods back to the countries of the Empire and made a profit on the transaction.

I don't think some people have quite understood that we don't have an Empire any more and that we don't have the same opportunities to buy cheap and sell dear that we had in the past. We are now a tiny little island with no cheap resources to exploit who is about to put in jeopardy 44% of our exports...

We don't even really make anything these days. Someone upthread mentioned kitchens full of German made appliances. If we don't even want to buy our own home produced manufactured goods why would we think the rest of the world would want stuff we clearly regard as inferior?

All we seem good at exporting now in any meaningful way (i.e good earners) are financial services and arms. The export of the first is going to be severely curtailed after Brexit and the export of the second leaves a very nasty taste in many people's mouths..

DJ I didn't say rich countries had not contributed to poverty through colonialism, or that there were still not a lot of people in terrible poverty. But of course you know I didn't. But here are a few links:
www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/10/04/world-bank-forecasts-global-poverty-to-fall-below-10-for-first-time-major-hurdles-remain-in-goal-to-end-poverty-by-2030
amp.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-reduce-acute-poverty

m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/6212494

Mazie the empire certainty helped but let's give ourselves some credit for being the first country to industrialise - and that was after being first to undergo an agrarian revolution. Britain was the workshop of the world - not just its empire - in the mid 19th Century.
Not sure what this has to do with the subject in hand, but I always enjoy a nice history break!

We import more from 21 EU countries than we export to them. I think that's a good bargaining tool.

We may have been the first country to industrialise, Fitzy, but that was, to a certain extent, because of the Empire. We had the raw materials and the market, so, how could we get goods made faster and more cheaply and make more profit... I think that had we been serving just the home market we would probably not have industrialised so fast.

But that doesn't invalidate my point that it was Empire that enabled us to punch far, far above our weight.

Lyndie

We import from 27 other EU countries. Each country's 'share' of our total imports will be much smaller than the 44% we export to the EU. Loss of 1/27th share of exports to the UK isn't going to bother countries as much as our potential (as estimated by experts, I'm afraid) loss of 10 - 15% of our current EU exports.

Mazie, no, it was Britain's engineering and commercial genius that sparked the industrial revolution, and yes, the empire was a great market for the goods we produced.

Oh, apologies, Lindie. Misread your post. But I'd like to see comparative figures. Have you a link.

And what about the other 6 EU countries which presumably we export more to than we import from?

Maizie, if May wins the election we may have the chance to find out how we can manage without the countries of the empire and the EU.

Lyndie, it will hurt them but not as much as it will hurt us. Boris etc. worked on the basis that they wouldn't cut off their nose to spite their face. But I think he underestimated the terrible fear they have of other eurosceptic parties in EU countries being in a position to point to a leaver like us getting a good deal. What would it do for Le Pen, that 5Star clown in Italy, and all the others breathing down the necks of the Europhile parties, if they could say " look at the British. They left and have lost nothing other than control by the Eurocrats". Their currency would shoot through the roof in a heartbeat. Juncker & Co can't accept the political risks involved in giving us a good deal.
Having said that I still have some hopes. If all the elections go substantially in favour of EU friendly parties, maybe they J & co will get a little less paranoid.

Would someone.....anyone.....go and tell all the migrants who have come here, and risk life and limb to come here that we are "only a tiny island" and that after Brexit we shall all be in the suds and it is not worth their while coming.. please? At the same time could they tell our scientists in and around Cambridge who are doing wonderful things that they are an irrelevance. Also tell the commonwealth that we are very bad peoples and not to trade with us, ignoring the fact that one country which left has now applied to rejoin it. Why do you all look on the glass as half empty all the time? Give our people credit for what they have done and can do. Maybe we shall have farmers growing crops in fields to feed us instead of being paid set aside in order to protect the French farmer. Maybe bent cucumbers and bananas will no longer be thrown away, life is what you make it, if you look for doom and gloom you will find it. And a parting thought, if we are such a dead loss why are they so furious we are leaving?

They are not furious we are leaving. They are sad and sorry for us.
However, they will stand up for their own union and do things by the book.

By the way, bananas have nothing to do with the EU. Ask daphne.

Nobody ever really believed the bent bananas and cucumbers myth - did they?

Apart from David Miliband...

The UKs independent factchecking charity. Is where I read the information. The other countries we export more too, are very small. it's all very tricky. Politicians can skew anything they say to the point of view they want to put across. So we can only go on stats, who we believe and life experience.

This has been an interesting half an hour reading this thread especially as I live in Germany and don't recognise the country I live in (and now love) in some of the comments.

Some Brexiteers have a lot of anger showing in their posts
and some of the language is disgusting.
No doubt I shall get some thrown at me now.

All the contracts in the EU were signed by the Uk and a lot of it was thought out by the UK. It is quite simple:
The Uk can leave but has to fullfill the rules it signed up to. How can you expect a different method?
You can't just leave, just like you can't just get a divorce. The Uk's behaviour can not be at the expense of the other EU members.
Why should we pay for the administration of this difficult seperation?

As for Germany it always was a great nation, famous for its science and engineering and cultural life and it is so again and probably always will be. It made a terrible, unforgivable mistake but has done all it can to make reparations and still makes them and it costs millions. The present generations are not to blame.

Each German working,also pays from his salary or wages, money to the reconstruct the East. They have been paying for 20 years
understandably they don't want to pay for the UK to leave but think the UK should pay their own divorce bills.

As for this Greek man (I forget or can't spell his name) i saw him on talk shows here and he is a millionaire with a German wife who just likes to be in the spotlight and lives from that. So I am not surprised he has chimed in again- stirring up trouble like he did before.

That was the least of our worries about the EU.????????