The biggest vanity is export turnover – because it is often achieved by cutting margins to the bone 
Peter wrote:
The biggest vanity is export turnove
It is the easiest thing in the world to give stuff away. Everyone will accept it. Try to achieve a decent return on your product, and labour, and plenty will not touch it. Always remember my mother when my first business was starting to go well. Must be doing it too cheap she said. At the time I was pretty hurt, however decades later this was the same multi national that screwed me to the ground because I had become virtually their sole supplier. Learnt a lot from that. In essence my mother was right. Hard to turn business away, but a busy fool is a massive fool eventually. Cash in the bank is king and yes turnover is total vanity.
dublinpilot wrote:
As an outsider, I always found it strange that the UK government, following the Brexit vote, didn’t decide to have a further vote to clarify what type of Brexit the people wanted.
Indeed. But on the other side, given the lack political pragmatism in the UK, what other Brexit than a “hard Brexit” is possible? We don’t hear that much about Brexit in the news, but from what we do hear, the oddest thing is that people in the UK obviously think that the EU wants to punish them. It’s such a lack of sense of reality. The core of EU is the four freedoms – 4 – not one or two or three, but FOUR. How hard is that to get?
If you only want a pure free trade agreement, then why stay inside in any sort of way, like Norway and Switzerland. You have to get out. Canada just signed a free trade agreement with EU I think (which by the way, all EFTA countries, Norway and Switzerland included, have had for a decade already). With the 4 freedoms follows a whole bunch of economical and bureaucratic benefits, that’s the whole point with the 4 freedoms. If you only have one (free trade for instance), then you lose out on most of the benefits. But that is no punishment by EU, that’s a choice made by the UK citizens, by voting for Brexit.
It seems the UK in general, and politicians in particular, lack some sort of reality check. It’s like the UK still don’t believe this is for real (rather funny actually). That’s what I get whenever I see stuff about this in the news.
Timothy wrote:
And, “dear boy”, I have owned and run a multinational for 30 years.
That is really good to have continued in the same business for so long but given your extensive experience you really should know the difference between operating margins and return on investment and understand different business model dynamics. Not surprising that you get some criticism. Your contributions on aviation using your experience and knowledge are always valued by me and others but perhaps you should refrain from giving advice on finance or politics
Of course I do. The discussion went from margin to RoI and back again.
You might fancy being a little less patronising. A large chunk of the Brexit issue is mutual denigration.
LeSving got the issue nailed above. The cluelessness about the EU demonstrated by some UK posters in this thread mirrors very well the failure of the entire UK political and media elites to understand what the EU is all about (hint: it never was intended to be a free trade zone only! It’s all in Treaty of Rome (1957) wherein ever closer union is the central tennet) and most of you fail to grasp the political dimensions of Brexit which really dwarf the economical ones.
I’ve been following Brexit rather closely on both UK and German media, especially for someone who is by and large unaffected by it. It will be an utter disaster in the short term. The medium and long-term effects are harder to forecast but it is extremely unlikely that the UK will be better off in any relevant area by Brexit. Staying in with all the old opt-outs already was the best possible relationship from a UK POV.
The unfortunate aspect of this Brexit discussion is that EuroGA gets slagged off in certain mainland national aviation sites as “anti European”. That is of course wrong. I suppose there is no really free discussion… It is like religion.
MedEwok wrote:
failure of the entire UK political and media elites
Though I know where you are coming from, I would definitely not use the word “entire”.
Most of the UK Press is of the Right and has screamed for Brexit from the start. Others have been more measured, but they are in the minority.
The poor BBC is castigated by both sides for being too sympathetic to the other, so is probably balanced. (You will see in the posts below how strongly both sides feel about the BBC.)
Many, many politicians are very realistic about Brexit. One of the ironies of our creaking democracy is that a large majority of MPs were Remainers. Since the referendum, some of them have said “OK, the People have spoken” and have therefore reluctantly supported work towards Brexit, and have voted in Government Bills to support their Brexit strategy, but even they are still opposed in principle. My guess is that a free vote in Parliament tomorrow on “Brexit Yes or No?” would be 70/30 to Remainers.
So, while a large segment of the UK political and media elites have a Brexit agenda, it really isn’t right to say entire.
And do remember that the voting was close. In London, the Home Counties (the area around London), Scotland and Northern Ireland there were strong Remain votes. It was also very related to voters’ age. If you were to ask a random set of 20 somethings in London or Edinburgh what their views on Brexit are, you would probably get a 90/10 split for Remain or more.
So we need a little more nuance.
Peter wrote:
The unfortunate aspect of this Brexit discussion is that EuroGA gets slagged off in certain mainland national aviation sites as “anti European”. That is of course wrong. I suppose there is no really free discussion… It is like religion.
My feeling is that the tenor among Brits on this site is more towards Brexit than it is in the general public. That may be more related to age than anything else, as age was the strongest predictor in the referendum. It may also be wealth related.
The point I was hoping to make is that you may as well rant on about Islam versus Christianity. It will do as much good.
Let’s keep the topic of brexit to aviation related areas. Otherwise, take this to facebook or the countless other places on the internet.
