wasnt that per week?

yes - though it's easy to get confused - the bus had £350M/week on one side, £50M/day on the other.

So something popped up on my news feed about the Swiss currently in talks with the EU over a vote they had on immigration a couple years back with the deadline for action imminent. Anyone know any more about this?

Yeah, the Guardian has an article about that today:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ement-citizens

Cliffs: Doesn't look like the Swiss will be able to get any concessions regarding free movement, especially not after Brexit.

Pretty sure the House of Lords would have no chance of surviving a public vote so not sure how this is relevant at all

how is the house of commons more democratic than the EU parliament?

I talk about Chinese immigrants because they are people I work with (I help them sign up for health insurance). The situation frankly isn't much different for seasonal agricultural workers (on annual basis).

Not for the whole year. Seasonal work with long hours is very common, and not unique to agriculture. It's quite common even in office type jobs.

Uncertainty itself carries very significant costs. If you are going to create as much uncertainty as Brexit, you better make a strong case for the benefits.

The Brexiters, yourself included, ended up arguing UK will get the status quo minus a vote in the EU. And oh, nationalism.

This is just a lot of jumbled buzzwords. UK agriculture, and agriculture in most of the western world, is extremely efficient. In UK's case, not in small part thanks to EU regulations and subsidies. Renewable energy in agriculture... for what? Are you talking about dual purposing agriculture land with wind turbines? Last time I checked, the major use of energy in agriculture, is the use of fertilizers. Fertilizers actually compete with most "renewables" such as solar panels for raw materials.

If you're talking about near sci-fi hydroponics and other experimental agricultural farming techniques, read this: https://www.theguardian.com/sustaina...onmental-sense

But I am sure you will persist in your ways, oblivious to all facts and logic.

thanks... sounds like after two years of negotiations they are not close to agreeing anything and Brexit has further complicated things. Be interesting how that plays out...

osbourne trumpeted a treasury study which said we'll lose out on £36bn/year = 6.6%

--

re competely ****ed medium/long term:

i'm not saying everything is fine nothing to see here lalala - there's undoubtedly going to be a dramatic halt on short term investment due to the current uncertainty. i'm told that'll be a kick in the bollocks on a number of fronts. there will also be a gentler halt on long-term investment as a number of profitable investments under the old regime cease to be viable. bad bad bad

but in a few years the uncertainty will clear. our deal with europe will end up being worse than it was before but it'll be - crucially - defined. our trading relationship with the rest of the world will become defined.

meanwhile the public calls for frexit and netherlexit refeyendums probably aren't going to disappear. who's going to be dealing with more uncertainty in 5 years if remarkably well organised french hordes are marching through paris demanding their voices are heard, britain or france? britain or the eu?

Sorry misunderstood with you shoe horning the House of Lords into things.

I don't think the EU parliament is undemocratic as such but far removed from the public for anyone to understand what it stands for. Number of people that even know who the EU president is going to be low even after the referendum debate.

I made it a bit more realistic...

If we' cant find a way out of Brexit then UK could be getting in touch with Switzerland, Canada, Aus, NZ, Norway etc etc (USA?, Much of the Commonwealth?) and looking to form a 'simple as possible' Free Trade area with no PU. Then they could tell the EU they have to negotiate with this Free Trade area as a block. Let countries (including those in the EU) choose between Simple Free Trade or EU.

Or something else but don't let the EU see this negotiation as a no lose proposition for them. Unless they want to play nice of course.

and prosecute that ****er Tony Blair.

Great so we get tariffs on eight of our ten biggest trading partners for a few years whilst we hash out awesome deals with six of our biggest twenty trading partners to create a new trading block, when they all would be much better off joining the EU trade block and have not motives whatsoever to join us.

Seems perfectly logical to me. Just us and Switzerland in the smallest most meaningless single market.

We will stay in the EU single market, keep free movement of people and Europe will give concessions that new members have to wait x amount of time longer before they are counted under that. Essentially Norway+ and the plus is pretty irrelevant provided it is something.

It is currently seven years. They will round it out to ten maybe. Or just leave it as seven and claim victory **** it the leave idiots won't know any different.

We might get other concessions that look good but are basically meaningless like right to claim benefits.

There is no other reasonable deal possible. Switzerland confirmed what us in the remain camp said before the referendum, that migration will be essentially unchanged.

Why not leaving the whole lot while you're at it?

Take Britain back! Is Donald Duck British? Don't think so. You need to take some space for your own.

Is there by way we can move Britain to the moon. How much is a moon base for 70 million or so people, probably more than 300 million a week but it solves immigrants coming over here enriching our lives and culture, growing our economy.

Edit, that crappy tv show under the dome might have an idea. How much to expand the eden project to cover the entire country?

We can leave the top of the dome open so every week American can parachute in trainers and x box games. To fund it we can just broadcast it like Truman Show. We'll take donations for other countries to pull harmless pranks like ten million gives someone weather controls of Birmingham for the day.

God is sending a perfect asteroid to destroy the UK for leaving the EU. That the paltry and equally annoying Irish get flogged in the process is an added bonus. See pic below for a prelude to your ultimate doom. This fact will be acknowledged by the EU Aristocracy in an upcoming press release. Prayers and demonstrations will be of no avail. Accept your fate.





If the UK'ers can negotiate an acceptable appeasement and withdrawal from the EU and then go on to form their own trade alliances, then the asteroids path will be altered and hit and destroy Brussels only.

Let's all pray for the second option.

Phill your meds are failing. Please don't have an embolism or stroke

cursory read of the bible will show that god is very much in favour of native tribalism. no asteroid incoming

It wouldn't be that small but that's besides the point

I want Political Union so much I'd easily accept Blair being knighted, let off and given a statue in return. But for countries, and sadly we may have to accept being one of them, that reject PU then a simple Free Trade area (SFTA) is a good thing. If the EU wants to push it's weight around as a block and cherry pick what suits it best then SFTA should do the same.

The sad truth is SFTA may be more popular than the EU as a trading block but whatever, let the EU countries who want full PU go for it and those that dont can have another Free trade route.

More importantly from a negotiating pov the EU cannot be the only game in town for the UK unless both sides go for a no harm no foul type approach - which I hope they will if we actually Brexit.

God must have meant Britain when he created Eden. Just semantics.

Came to think about that Britain managed to get into the spotlight because of the vote. That hasn't happened since Breatles.

Enjoy your short stay under the sun. It'll become thunder.

I agree that a two-tier EU based on PU is plausible, but how many countries would sign up to the full blown PU EU given the resistance to the current state of the EU at present?

When Maastricht was written and signed no one could have foreseen the economic paralysis that the world has been experiencing for the past 8 years. Thinking pragmatically, the EU needs to adapt to the current economic situation that's caused the far right to grow in most member states by changing its stance on the free movement of people until such a time as EU economies are growing at normal rates again.

Indeed. If we look back at EFTA which was a similar alternative to the EU type proposition it looks really bad for an alternative like the SFTA I suggest.

But although it looks far worse in trade terms the politics are considerably different. Back then the EU was seen as the future with very solid support, now many of it's member countries have populations who are far more skeptical - not least the big ones.

Brexit has added to an already horrible situation for the EU. We should be looking for a mutually beneficial solution as friends who rely on each other. The UK doomsayers keep making the mistake of thinking the EU is in some super strong position with all the cards when it's nothing like that clear.

The problem is that most countries dont want too much free trade area. It'S good for countries who depend on exports but not for countries which have more imports. You can see it with CETA and TTIP how difficult it is to make these trade agreements. There are a lot of conditions attached.

In 2014 the manufacturing industry in the UK was down to a 9.4% share on the GDP. Dont know if that has changed much but that's worrying.