Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Re: Speculation

That iconic symbol of Indian motoring technolgy.

Indian motoring money.

British motoring technology.

Re: Passport, driving licence validity

it will have to be printed in French.

I'll get mine printed in one of the official languages of another EU country, Ireland. That would be, let's see, English.

Re: Trucks

All the new ones are required to be fitted with a 56mph speed-limiter.

Wouldn't be surprising. The EU limit is 90 km/h, which is 56MPH, so probably easier to limit all international lorries to 90 km/h.

The real nuisance is that these are only accurate to 2% or so, due to tolerances and tyre wear, so you get the situation where lazy drivers just push their foot to the floor and let the limiter hold the speed. One lorry ends up doing 88 and the other 90, and the faster one tries to overtake, on a two-lane motorway. It surely wouldn't have been impossible to permit brief overtaking bursts of 100km/h?

Also, there is a new rule in regards to non-EU cars driving in the EU. Lots of people renting cars in Switzerland and driving in to France etc are getting slapped with massive fines.

Goit a source for that ludicrous claim? Switzerland is in Schengen, and in the EEA.

Are you sure you're not confusing it with cars rented in France being driven on Swiss autoroutes without paying for the little Swiss toll sticker? That will net you a hefty fine.

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

Or we could grow up,

Yes Daddy. I'm sure you know what's best for us stupid little children.

look at the realities, decide that economic suicide isn't a good plan and ignore the referendum result. You know, like the Greek referendum on the bailout. Or the Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty. And the Lisbon Treaty.

Yes, and while we' re at it we could forget those "election" things, we obviously don't know enough to make the right decisions about who will rule us. Let's just name Vati Juncker "King of Europe" and go back to minding our sheep.

Re: Even here at the bottom end it's a mess

A shrinking economy to the tune of 2 trillion USD in a couple of days is not a problem?

Two days isn't long enough to decide if the economy is shrinking at all, and a twitchy stock market doesn't define a 'shrinking economy" anyway, so no, I don't think there's a problem yet. The markets are still in passably healthy shape over the year so far. We see the same twitchiness after general elections, give it a few months and then review the situation when heads have cooled.

Re: Project FUD is alive and well

Interesting. I've got 7 downvotes already just for asking a question, and the only attempt at an answer starts "Not got the figures to hand, but I suspect..."

Anyone who has the figures to hand want to take a stab at an answer?

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

Remainers have to do nothing. YOU fix it!

Fine, if the remainers will agree not to keep kicking more holes while saying "we're sinking, told you so"

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

the pound would fall, unemployment would go up, there'd be a recession, we wouldn't be able to get access to the common market without following all the rules anyway, hell, even that the price of holidays would go up. Y'know, all the stuff that's actually happened over the last few days.

No, almost none of it has happened.

The pound has dropped. A little. Three months ago it was $1.43, now it's $1.37. Not surprising with all the uncertainty, it's only been two working days since the result. It's way too soon to speak of unemployment (which was the lowest in Europe anyway) or a recession, or holidays, or access to the common market.

Just about the only thing that hasn't happened is Osborne's Brexit Budget

That was just Remainer FUD.

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

I do think that some of them were duped possibly even conned by the Leave campaign with promises that are patently impossible even after several years of nogotiations;

You could say exactly the same about the Remain campaign, where promises about more control and more independence were just so much hot air.

The vote was Leave, now we have to make it work. Regretting it, or hoping it was just a bad dream, won't change anything, and trying to make leaving more difficult will only make things worse for everyone.

We have a once in a generation opportunity that we didn't have a week ago. Sad days perhaps, for those who want an easy life. Happy days for those willing to take that opportunity.

Re: Even here at the bottom end it's a mess

@ Phil O'Sophical A devalued Pound is only beneficial if none of your purchases are in another currency.

Indeed so, but as the original poster clearly said, his company buys parts from Belgium, and sells finished goods to Germany. He wil lose one one, but gain on the other. The sky is not falling.

Re: Even here at the bottom end it's a mess

Also we've now got the fun situation of having to fix a £/€ exchange rate, to be able to quote people in £ for new machines to be ordered in a month or more, to be paid for in €.

So talk to your accountant about currency hedging, there's nothing new or Brexit-specific about that.

Re: Even here at the bottom end it's a mess

our biggest single customer is German and some huge proportion of our business trickles down from [unnamed motor manufacturer

So, your exports just got 6% cheaper as well, or to put it another way every EU sale now gets you 6% more income. Swings & roundabouts.

I've never seen such a bunch of glass-half-empty pessimsists :)

Moody's actual statement

These are the reasons that Moody's has already set the outlook for the UK to negative.

Not exactly true.

Their statement said "Moody's expects a negative impact on the economy unless the UK government manages to negotiate a trade deal that largely replicates its current access to the Single Market." (my italics)

and they confirmed that "Britain would remain on an AA+ rating, three years after it cut it from AAA"

Re: "Never was so much lost by so many due to one stupid decision"

I really thought that the British public had a few more brain cells than they obviously have. Stupid, selfish and short sighted.

Way to go. Insult 17 million people just because they don't agree with your point of view. I think that really only demonstrates that it is you who are "selfish and short sighted".

The people I feel sorry for are the young ones. They will have to suffer the consequences of this appalling mistake.

On the contrary, they will be the first people in a generation to have the opportunity to fix the mess their parents created. Whether they will actually fix it only time will tell, but at least they have that chance now. Let's hope they don't screw it up.

Re: don't blame me. I voted to remain

Personally it looks as though there may be enough pressure to force a second referendum or dicount this one, so leaving may not actually happen.

That would be the worst possible outcome. It would simply label the UK as a country that doesn't know what it wants, can't make it's mind up, and so can be completely ignored by the EU steamroller. We'd be stuck in the EU, with no credibility, and no power to change it (not that any individual country apart from Germany has any power to change it anyway).

The only option we have now is to make exit work. The defeatists who won't do that, and who seem to want the UK to fail just to prove that they were right, have made themselves part of the problem.

Re: 'EU' -> 'UK' -> 'K'

Ununited, silly!

Just make a small letter order change. The Untied Kingdom.

Re: "Never was so much lost by so many due to one stupid decision"

I would have voted Leave if I could have, and although I'm happy about the result I'm not crowing. My biggest concern now is that Remainers who won't accept the decision will fuck everything up just to "prove" they were right.

As for things not improving "since the vote" it's only been 30 hours since the result, FFS! Everyone will be holding their breath for a few weeks at least before making big decisions or changes, it would be foolish to do otherwise.

The next steps will be to identify a cross-party negotiating team, with business and financial leaders as well as politicians, and start sounding out EU partners to find out if they're going to be pragmatic and helpful, or petty and difficult. A long chat with Norwegian leaders wouldn't hurt either.

Re: And so it starts.

Except that "refoulement" in that sense refers to returning them to their country of origin, which generally isn't France. If the French applied international law, and abided by the Dublin agreement, they would require those asylum seekers to request asylum in France.

Once the migrants/asylum seekers are in Europe, EU or otherwise, it's too late to deal with the problem anyway. The only real solution is to prevent them from leaving their own country, preferably by stopping that country from being a war zone. Encouraging them to run away from the problem and export it to Europe doesn't help.

That solution, of course, is independent of the EU, and of UK membership of the EU, which is why the whole migrant issue is a red herring as far as Brexit was concerned.

Re: It was a very, very close decision...

How exactly is "didn't give a shit either way" different from "OK with the status quo"?

"OK with the status quo" is a choice. "didn't give a shit either way" is "Meh, do whatever the fuck you want", not the same thing at all.

Re: Gutted

I've grown up with the European project as it evolved into a single market and a free movement area. For the past 20 years I've exercised my right to live and work in another member country.

Me too, and if I'd had the vote that Cameron promised me when he was elected I'd still have used it to vote "Leave".

And for what? To spite foreigners?

For some, maybe. For me it's because the EU has lost its way and has no justification for existing in its present form. It's a train heading for a cliff, and the drivers show no sign of even wanting to open their eyes to look. Brexit will hurt, but not half as much as Remain would have done in 10-15 years time when the crash happens. Maybe Brexit will be the wakeup call the eurocrats need, somehow I doubt it.

If the benefits of staying in the EU were so clear and so numerous it may have paid for the Remain camp to tell us what that are rather than adopt the "sky will fall in" tactic.

When the only argument a politician can give you is "vote my way, because the others are all worse" you know it's time to ignore him.

Re: Gutted

My father who has lived in France for 20 years is not only gutted but fucking terrified.

He shouldn't be. After 20 years he's probably eligible for French citizenship if he wants it (assuming he's integrated, speaks French, etc.) but in any case he'll be covered by all the usual guarantees of "acquired rights" (see the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, for example, which says that ending a treaty doesn't affect prior rights granted under that treaty). Even if France stops accepting UK citizens as automatic residents, people who are already established residents have no need to panic.

if you were France, with all the internal problems you currently have, would you keep hundreds of police at Calais protecting the UK border

Right now I suspect they're much more worried about the idea that all those migrants might not want to go to the UK any more.

or would you allow EDF to risk going bust by building Hinckley Point.

Hardly related to the EU, that particular argument has been raging for months anyway.

If you were Germany and you're now left being the biggest and most pwerful member by default.

They were that already.

what do you do next?

Try not to be seen rubbing my hands with glee in public, while also figuring out how to keep selling expensive cars to my biggest European market without upsetting French plans to bring in swinging anti-UK import duties?

The Remain portion of the campaign/political class has no mandate - the electorate charged the Brexiteers with taking action and it is up to the politicians of that flavour to now pick up the baton and get all the ducks lined up and lead the charge

Very true. Brexit was never the solution to the EU, it's just the opportunity to find that solution, if people are willing to work together to do so. That will take hard work from both Remain and Leave camps.

It’s a catastrophe for the European Union,

A self-inflicted one.

And I've already heard the word "repatriation" used in connection with those European workers over here.

Which is complete bollocks. There are twice as many EU workers in the UK as there UK workers in the rest of Europe. No country, including the UK, is going to be so stupid as to start playing that game, the resulting tit-for-tat would be a guaranteed lose-lose result. It's probably also illegal under "acquired rights" from the existing treaties anyway (but IANAL)

The big question now is whether the "remainers", in the UK and Europe, are willing to make the result work, or are they just going to whinge about how terrible it all is, while doing sweet FA to actually solve the problems as they arise?

At least Cameron did the right thing, if he truly was in the "remain" camp he'd never be able to put his heart into negotiating a proper exit strategy, especially since we've already seen how useless he is at negotiating for something he said he does believe in.

I'm not sure Boris would be an improvement, though. Perhaps better to find a safe pair of hands as PM (from where?) and leave Boris as the bolshie, French-speaking, leader of "team negotiate Europe".