The U.K. is prepared for nothing

Mokryna no one would accept the result even if we were to go down that route.

I appreciate the sentiment behind mokryna’s post, but I think mollygo is right.

Personally I think it is time a government recognised what harm has been done and begin the long process of at least much closer working or full membership.

Putin has proven much more adept politically snd in matters relating to security than any in the west.

I must say I am liking this thread. Perhaps I am speaking too soon, but what a joy not to have any arguments for the sake of it. But measured tones and good posts.

yogitree

WWM2 I was just 'looking about me' when I was out this morning. What a state our roads/pavements/infrastructure is in. I remember when everything was neat, repaired, painted, unbroken and in working order. Subsequent governments haven't been up to taking on the task of keeping it shipshape, or getting it all back to 'acceptable' again.

Lack of 'Planned Maintenance' yogitree although there is often a flurry of road maintenance in the New Year to spend the money before it disappears!

The Council has actually resurfaced an area of country road we have to travel along reasonably often. It had been a a dire state for years, pitted, rough and with huge pot holes.
What a difference it has made.

mokryna

First thing the UK should do is to hold another referendum asking whether to join the EU.again.
I am sure people can see how both Russia and the USA and their UK followers, one earns £1m per year, wanted to make the EU weaker. People told lies, as did the newspapers moguls living abroad.
The UK is weaker as is the EU, together the block will find it easier to trade in all aspects and fight.
The UK’s closest richest ally was supposed to be the USA but they want to cosy up to Russia.

First thing the UK should do is to hold another referendum asking whether to join the EU.again.
I thought so too, especially in the light of what has been proven in court in the case of Nathan Gill.
The problem is that much of Europe seems to be in disarray too.

But as far as trade is concerned they have strength in numbers and they don’t need to appease Trump.

We constantly bash our heads against the brick walls of politicians who only want to look at short term answers, no long term planning as they dont think they will be in power by then. Builders who are still being allowed to build poor quality houses, without the best of insulation and up to date heating and triple glaze windows. If it was made law that any new house now had to be up to decent standards, we would be helping ourselves and the climate . Not only that. In the 1960's I was living in the Nottingham area and builders wanted to put houses next to the river Trent in what where actually called the flood meadows. We argued about it and just because there had not been a flood in the previous 9- 10 years they were allowed to build on the fields. Of course then the builders were long gone when the river flooded, not only the new places on the flood meadows , but also houses that had never had any problem before the flood meadows were built on. Why are we also now letting solar panels be put over good land which should be helping to make us self sufficient, and the solar panels could go on brownfield sites and again all new houses should have solar panels as the norm. It doesnt matter which group are in power , they should be looking at longterm goals not these sticking plaster ideas that they have now

Short termism indeed - as something that's very prevalent.

At least that's one thing that can be said about, say, the Victorians - some of those "captains of industry" set out to make a difference.....a lasting difference and tribute to their memory decades later.

No-one seems to think in terms of what "legacy" they are leaving behind them now - either in terms of property or ideas.

Allira

mokryna

First thing the UK should do is to hold another referendum asking whether to join the EU.again.
I am sure people can see how both Russia and the USA and their UK followers, one earns £1m per year, wanted to make the EU weaker. People told lies, as did the newspapers moguls living abroad.
The UK is weaker as is the EU, together the block will find it easier to trade in all aspects and fight.
The UK’s closest richest ally was supposed to be the USA but they want to cosy up to Russia.

First thing the UK should do is to hold another referendum asking whether to join the EU.again.
I thought so too, especially in the light of what has been proven in court in the case of Nathan Gill.
The problem is that much of Europe seems to be in disarray too.

EU wouldn’t have us as full members it needs a unanimous vote of states, plenty them dislike us.

Whilst I agree that it is not likely to happen very soon, I do think that the U.K. would indeed be welcomed back into the EU, but not on the very favourable terms that we had prior to leaving (what idiots we were).

Politically we have such a wimpy lot of politicians who flap about on the sidelines that no decision will be made in the immediate of mid-term future.

The Buffoon may have been given good expert advice but as the Chief Muppet he was entitled to ignore it.

yogitree

WWM2 I was just 'looking about me' when I was out this morning. What a state our roads/pavements/infrastructure is in. I remember when everything was neat, repaired, painted, unbroken and in working order. Subsequent governments haven't been up to taking on the task of keeping it shipshape, or getting it all back to 'acceptable' again.

Just a thought.

When a Country gets above a certain level of population, does the whole thing become too big to manage properly?

Unless they act dictatorlike of course.

fancythat

yogitree

WWM2 I was just 'looking about me' when I was out this morning. What a state our roads/pavements/infrastructure is in. I remember when everything was neat, repaired, painted, unbroken and in working order. Subsequent governments haven't been up to taking on the task of keeping it shipshape, or getting it all back to 'acceptable' again.

Just a thought.

When a Country gets above a certain level of population, does the whole thing become too big to manage properly?

China, India, USA, Brazil, all have populaions many times the size of ours. germany and Japan also have a alrger population.

I am talking about the leadership of bigger countries.

Your list kind of makes my point!

fancythat

yogitree

WWM2 I was just 'looking about me' when I was out this morning. What a state our roads/pavements/infrastructure is in. I remember when everything was neat, repaired, painted, unbroken and in working order. Subsequent governments haven't been up to taking on the task of keeping it shipshape, or getting it all back to 'acceptable' again.

Just a thought.

When a Country gets above a certain level of population, does the whole thing become too big to manage properly?

Do you mean like the USA, India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia?

WWM2
Whilst I agree that it is not likely to happen very soon, I do think that the U.K. would indeed be welcomed back into the EU, but not on the very favourable terms that we had prior to leaving.

Favourable terms. Hmm yes, circa 17 billion contribution we made to the EU, though we did get around 4billion back.
^In 2020 the UK made an estimated gross contribution (after the rebate) of £17.0 billion. The UK received £4.5 billion of public sector receipts from the EU, so the UK’s net public sector contribution to the EU was an estimated £12.6 billion.

On that basis, we could well be welcomed back, because I’m sure they’ve missed that money from us.
Indeed, people we met in EasternEurope e.g. Romania last year were full of praise for all the money they receive from the EU to rebuild their country.
They were sorry we’d left the EU.

NB I expect the EU would charge us extra for changes they’ve had to make e.g. for all the faffing about they’ve had to set up with passports at customs etc.

I was horrified when the UK left the EU but if you were going to leave why wasn’t it done completely? Make your own rules up, why have the European ones stopping what the government has decided on deportations? I don’t get it - all the negatives, none of the positives.

Realistically when it comes to accepting EU rules including freedom of movement I don’t think a vote to rejoin should be taken for granted in the UK. We lost a lot of friends when we left so acrimoniously.
Maybe in 10 yrs time we will go back cap in hand with some chance of rejoining, until then we make the best of what we have.

I will come back to my posts.
But not for a couple of days.

fancythat

yogitree

WWM2 I was just 'looking about me' when I was out this morning. What a state our roads/pavements/infrastructure is in. I remember when everything was neat, repaired, painted, unbroken and in working order. Subsequent governments haven't been up to taking on the task of keeping it shipshape, or getting it all back to 'acceptable' again.

Just a thought.

When a Country gets above a certain level of population, does the whole thing become too big to manage properly?

A thought that hadnt basically occurred to me - but I can follow the logic, ie maybe/probably there's more "layers of management". Well I can certainly think of places where there's a surplus layer of "management" in place - costing quite a bit of money, meaning there's more things that can go wrong imo - but serves to give a group of people some jobs that have status and a good salary.

There's likelihood of conflict of interests between different management layers - and a lot of it down to those individual people in the layers wanting their money/status.

nanna8

I was horrified when the UK left the EU but if you were going to leave why wasn’t it done completely? Make your own rules up, why have the European ones stopping what the government has decided on deportations? I don’t get it - all the negatives, none of the positives.

Would you mind being more specific, please - which European rules are preventing us from deporting people?

Assuming the figure quoted above are correct, and I’m too lazy to check, one wonders where all this money has gone, as it certainly has not apparently been used to boost public services, or even help pay off the U.K. debt.

In point of fact, when the trading club was started up. It was realised that some richer countries were in a much better position to take advantage of the free trade than others. In order to mitigate this and make the market as fair as possible (level playing field) it was understood that stuff like infrastructure, grants for various projects, business start up schemes etc were necessary and these needed financing. Every country in the EU contributes towards this according to their ability (this is one area where the U.K. actually had got a reduction). So when you travel to other EU countries, you can see big infrastructure projects taking place. There was a lot done in the U.K. using “club” money - one was the A30 upgrade around Bodmin. Hastings also got a good deal of money as it was deemed an area of deprivation and if course many others that I could quote. I have no doubt that HS2 would have received a huge amount of money and many other infrastructure projects.

So you see the money doesn’t go into a bottomless pit it is used for positive help to every country in the EU to ensure as far as possible business activity thrives within its territory.

WWM2
If you mean the figures I mentioned, I got them from a government page. So they could be right, or it could be an administrative error or even a husband’s memory problem.
There’s so many excuses to choose from.
I agree about “where has the money gone? though. There’s no evidence of it suddenly being used to help here in the UK.

I think it was a terrible shame that the argument against membership was reduced to a simplistic one of how much we paid for our membership and how much we 'got back'.

Conversely, when the pro remain people pointed out the benefits of free movement, such as Erasmus, being able to work without restraints in Europe, etc. it was reduced to a culture war with sneering at the middle class 'elites' who wouldn't be able to have cheap European nannies and send their children to European universities any more ...

Leaving has adversely affected those businesses which traded in Europe, whole industries, such as the music industry, which is a very valuable contribution to our trade balance, have had to curtail or cease touring in Europe; or, as is the case for some of my friends close relatives, professional musicians have had to leave the UK and move to a European country with a view to taking citizenship because opportunities are better for them there.

The costs of trading with EU countries have risen to the extent that only really large businesses can absorb them, Hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses have ceased trading because of the costs. This all affects our national income.

Notably, as Whitewave and Mollygo have pointed out, for all this money that we are supposed to have 'saved' doesn't seem to have done anything to help us in the UK. Where has it gone, indeed...