Fenland_Flyer wrote:
Well here is a fact for the doom and gloom merchants. In the year to June 2018 our exports hit a record high of over £600 billion
Brexit hasn’t actually happened just yet. It remains to be seen whether they hit a record high in the year to June 2021.
You also must factor in that the pound is worth a lot less than it used to be. This has meant that most of us have suffered an effective fall in income.
Those 15 years will be miserable.
Many people want that. It might be better to stop banging on this old drum. Facebook is quite popular for that.
Obviously many mainland Europeans want to punish the UK but I suggest that “we” believe a bit more in the country in which we live.
You also must factor in that the pound is worth a lot less than it used to be. This has meant that most of us have suffered an effective fall in income.
Worth less relative to what? Domestically little has changed. Imports have gone up, perhaps 10-20%, but taking a perspective longer than this year or last, I remember £1 being anything from USD 1.01 to USD 2.40… Life adjusts to all that. Trade patterns change. Life is not constant…
For people with working class incomes, inflation outstripping income rises does get noticed, and right now pretty much all the blame for that can be put on brexit. Had the vote gone the other way, it’s quite likely the £ would be worth about 25% more than it was now. An immediate way this is reflected is the cost of fuel is high, and this affects everything since we import a lot of oil. Fuel being expensive also makes everything else more expensive. It’s likely to mean continued austerity.
Even for people with disposable income, I’m certainly wishing I had bought my new transponder in May 2016 rather than August 2018. The whole installation would have been several hundred £ cheaper.
It might be better to stop banging on this old drum.
You mean that the more something is repeated by more people the less true it becomes.
Perhaps we could stop with the “Project Fear” blind faith stuff as well. My friend the food distribution mogul has tried to talk to Ministers about his well founded projections and expectations and all he gets is religious fervour which sounds like “God will provide” with no substance whatsoever.
I think it is really important every argument can be voiced. That is what is so good about this forum. In honesty I dont think any of us know what the future holds but it seems to me it is probably easier to predict what it would be like to stay in, than leave. Leaving is uncharted territory so by definition there isnt a model.
When I was young I lived a long way from England, but was from a very English family. My youth was essentially through the collapse of the Commonwealth – and I recall asking my Dad (who was of course of a very different generation) why we had allowed the Commonwealth to collapse. I still well recall his reply – well son, he said, the disadvantage with the Commonwealth is the huge distances involved, shipping costs are a big factor both in terms of cost and logistics. I recall in those early days as a very young boy it took 24 flying hours to get to were we were, today it is 8 hours. Dad could remember not that many years before, when you sent a message by steamer to the local office from London – the message took two weeks to get there, and two weeks to get back – if you were lucky!
The point of all this you may ask. Well, the Commonwealth and so many of our markets outside Europe, are still a long way away, but shipping has got quicker, and, significantly, a lot cheaper in real terms. My son is an international ship broker, and so I hear and discuss how prices for cargo change and how of course prices are still so much linked to bunker prices. We have been lucky to have passed through a time of relatively cheap fuel and far too many people jumping into to buliding ships when there was vast amounts of money to be made. The time may come when shipping prices rocket again. If it happens, the world suddenly becomes a bigger place again and local markets perhaps more important. Whilst costs are low, the world is a small place.
I think however it is easy to forget how much our economy is also based on imports. The danger of looking inward is that we are far from self reliant, unlike for example Europe and the States, which, I think if push comes to shove could put the shutters down and get on with it.
I think there is no doubt with Brexit we will need to find a new place in the world order which will obviously be a huge challenge – the European market will be less available to us, you can bet. Economically it will be a huge challenge.
If I have one single concern, it is that while I find many wonderful people I meet in Europe, I think some of the political set are more than capable of being spiteful (to be very basic about it). There is a real risk I think they will be difficult for their own means, or you could argue, spite aside, take the opportunity to grab as much of our invisible trade as possible (banking, insurance etc), and why not – that is business. I think we have been good at this for a very long time because to generalise we have the best people, in some way the best established law, BUT being part of the EU has made it very difficult for the business to be taken from us. Brexit may change that. I think there is a real risk, especially as so much of our GDP comes from invisible earnings. Shipping is a good example. We were the centre of the Universe. Our shipping contract law was the Law, disputes were settled in London, deals were brokered in London, the ships and cargo were insured in London. No more. London is still very important but many of the markets are no longer centred around London – there has been a shift.
I have just bumped into Kieran Hodgson in a bar.
He will be doing the show at The Soho Theatre in London in January. I do recommend it.
Last time I was in Soho it was in the basement of a sex toys warehouse, negotiating with a very slippery accountant (of interesting geographical origin) for the return of a load of electronics which my then firm sold to someone who didn’t pay for it. The basement was stacked to the ceiling with such “stolen” computer stock, all under dodgy ROT clauses; millions of GBP worth. I was quite careful exiting the basement and getting into the car parked outside… Those were the days when one could park a car in London – regardless of the location!
From here
gallois wrote:
there different rules for driving a Brit reg car in France from driving a French reg car?
No – one would actually with they’d stick to the annoying habit of staying in the rightmost (fast) lane, which would be the slow lane in continental europe, but they definitely seem to be scared by the outer lanes of highways.
It’s been extremely noticeable as a (too fast) motorcycle rider that did a few trips in & out of the UK. As soon as you approach Calais, the fast lane starts to be more dense than the slower ones.
There are time limits on doing it – largely IMHO because you are immune from going through speed cameras, and you pay no road tax 
The UK is something like 3 or 6 months…
I wouldn’t be too sure about speed cameras in France as they are setting up cross licensing agreements. Now that the speed limit on non-dual carriage ways is limited to 80 km/h I would be careful. Most French regard it as a stealth tax rather than a safety measure. It has brought in a lot of money since being lowered from 90 km/h on 1st July.
There was a road tax in France called the Vignette instituted in 1956 to finance pensions and removed in June 1981 for motorcycles and in 2001 for all other vehicles. There is talk of reinstating it to finance infrastructure maintenance after the Genoa bridge disaster.
Simon
