Brexit: the rotting corpse of a unicorn

It is a complex issue that has allowed our standards to fall.
Formally ALL building work was authorised and inspected by local authority engineers and surveyors, These people had decades of experience and not a single stone was left unturned.

The policy of allowing surveyors not chartered within the UK to practice here was largely EU driven, as was the policy of allowing construction companies to appoint their own surveyors, a clear conflict of interest.
These surveyors produced the reports, so as a result, the local authority simply dealt with the administration without making site visits. This lead to the authorities no longer needing competent staff, so costs were cut and the senior surveyors were often offered a redundancy or early retirement package. Replacing these people today would be near impossible.

This shambolic mess was the underlying cause of the Grenfel fire.
We can blame the supplying companies, but they supplied what the customer ordered and no one stopped it. Correctly installed, the cladding would have required around 800 fire barriers, but not a single one was specified, ordered or fitted. The cladding was of the wrong type, but again, the supplier delivered what the customer ordered.
If you suggested American cladding to me, you would only need to look at a few You-Tube fire videos to see why I would fall off my chair laughing.

My point is that the EU dictate so much in our everyday life, including air pollution, what crops we produce for export, the types of crops grown and even the curvature of our cucumbers.
This interference has ALLOWED (not caused) the current shambolic mess and created an environment for the perfect storm.
Sadly, the residents of Grenfel paid with their lives.

I do feel very strongly about Grenfel for several reasons. The first was that I could see something like that coming, most frighteningly in a theatre. The second was the close proximity to our home. Lastly, but not least, the 6 months that our daughter spent inside the building following the fire. She still suffers traumatic moments and they will probably haunt her for the rest of her life. Working during the nights after the building became infested with pigeons and rats was horrendous.

 

Wil

But you said it wasn’t complex at all - you came right out and used it as a benefit of Brexit - it was the EU’s fault that so many people died - plain and simple.

Why did that changed? Was it due to the EU or the right wing obsession with outsourcing and privatisation along with the right wing policies of austerity?

Can you please back this up? In what way do you directly link that to Glenfell?

[edit] Someone has told me that the UK/EU agreement carries on with the - mutual recognition of professional qualifications (which they thought would includes surveyors)

[edit] here is the continued UK recognistion of architects form the EU
The system for recognising EU qualified architects in the UK

The EU was often trying to get the UK government to improve air quality – are you championing worse air quality?

UK taken to Europe's highest court over air pollution

I mean also EU ‘interference’ was also instrumental in improving the quality of UK seas and beaches

What has the EU ever done for my … beach?

And what has air pollution and cucumbers got to do with Grenfell.

Sorry but again you seem to be claiming that but not putting up any evidence

That sounds terrible and I’m also angry about what happened - but whereas I pointed out there was a lot involved, the council, the companies plus the detrimental effects of state and local government policies of austerity, outsourcing and privatisation – you jumped right in and blamed the EU.

To me the Grenfell tragedy had nothing to do with our EU membership (and so far you have not shown otherwise) I mean to make it do so you really have to squint at it while wearing blinkers while mumbling some extremely unrelated things about air pollution, cereal crops and cucumbers.

 

Oh and another view on cucumbers - HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media

Well, this story is wrong for three reasons. First and foremost, it is not the European Union that has developed the current standard for cucumbers. It is the UN. Or to be more specific my organization, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). In fact, the European Union does not have a specific cucumber standard but traders can refer to the UNECE standard to meet the EU's general marketing requirements. Therefore, don't blame the EU, blame us.

The second reason is that the standard does not force all cucumbers to be equally straight. It is correct that an Extra Class or Class I cucumber can only bend 1 centimeter for each 10 centimeters. But a Class II cucumber can actually bend 2 centimeters for each 10 centimeters. There are straight cucumbers and not so straight cucumbers.

But the third and most important reason for why the story is wrong, is because these agricultural standards, covering some than 100 fruits and vegetables, are very useful and widely used. The standards not only facilitate trade, they also help producers get a better price for better quality. Traders in the UK can buy cucumbers from Spain or Morocco, or any other country by simply referring to the standard.

 

Again the post by Wilsjane highlights the problem in discussing Brexit in any objective way – the warnings given my those that looked into it (and were then called remoaners and project fear) have on the whole turned out to be correct.

The UK didn’t get a fantastic trade deal we got a rather thin and mediocre one that if anything favours the EU rather than the UK, we haven’t even ‘got Brexit done’ as the agreements are open ended, short term, open to challenges and not finalised.

Red tape has expanded greatly for UK businesses and haulers rather than been diminished causing logistical delays. Having an internal customs border within the UK is having the detrimental effects that all professional trade experts predicted.

I could go on.

So when leave supporters are asked for the supposed benefits to the UK of this hard-line Brexit they have nothing

Clearly the Grenfell fire had nothing to do with our EU membership it was a tragedy brought about by purely UK policies and circumstance, but the lie is out there and those desperately seek some reason for Brexit are going to latch onto that because there is little based on reality to do so.

Those that opposed this mad policy seem to be still getting the same dubiously based arguments that have long been debunked, bendy bananas bendy cucumbers the laws forced on the British people my faceless bureaucrats that turn out to be beneficial to people, the same stuff that didn’t stand up to scrutiny five years ago still been peddled like someone still trying to sell you a fidget spinners as been ‘cool’.

 

Wilsjane

When asked to tell us what people have benefited from this hard-line Brexit you said – where do I start

Well you started with the Grenfell Tower fire – but as seen when looked at there is no evidence of that been connected to EU membership and a lot to do with right wing local and national political policies.

Now - where do I start – would seem to imply you had a number of what you think of as benefits to this Brexit – have you any that have anything of substance to back them up?

 

David

So can you answer the question - what have we gained

 

Some of the problems that have arisen due to Brexit to are going to be due to teething problems - with new systems - for example people will get better at filling out the paperwork BUT and it’s a big one – the paperwork is not going away.

Businesses are going to work to absorb the new cost by cutting profits or increasing prices (or stop selling across border) BUT those cost are not going away meaning long term been uncompetitives or reduced profits.

Brexit has made it more difficult to trade with the EU for most of the UK (Northern Ireland has basically remained in the EU’s customs area while the other parts of the UK have not)

That is not going to end until we begin to re-join.

And other things are going to get worse - for example at the moment the UK is not checking goods coming into the UK they are just getting waved through - but the UK can only do that for a limited time as it is against international law so I believe it is due to end in July after that it will become even more difficult to trade across the border.

 

What did we win in Brexit?

Annual £7.5bn cost of EU trade as bad for business as no-deal Brexit

British businesses will spend £7.5 billion a year handling customs declarations — as much as they would have done under a no-deal Brexit — the tax office admitted yesterday.

Jim Harra, chief executive of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), told MPs that the number of customs forms needed to trade with the European Union under the Brexit deal “is not materially different from a no-deal situation”.

 

What did we win in Brexit?

Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, firms told

Exporters advised by UK Department for International Trade officials to form EU-based companies to circumvent border issues

Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, firms told

 

Remember when leavers told anyone giving any warning about the downside that any kind of Brexit was likely to cause was a liar and even traitor trying to put England down by spreading scaremongering Project Fear.

Do you think any leaver is now going to apologise?

 

The reason for Brexit is because of the EU's immigration rules and otherwise Britain not having a identity. There's also a reason that they built 2 of the biggest aircraft carriers ever made. Britain does not feel that their share of the EU softmoney is going to benefit them. The EU is all about softmoney and or keeping Mainland Europe out of confict.

 

This was posted by Alonso376 in a thread where it didn’t fit - so have re-posted here, so I can reply to it without derailing the other thread

 

Alonso376

In what way is it the best thing to happen to the UK since VE day?

Yes VE day was a celebration of the allies’ victory in Europe but as Allies indicated that was a group that included the U.S., France, USSR, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia and was dominated not by the UK but by US and Russia.

It also left the UK exhausted and deeply in debt (we didn’t pay off our debt to the US until 2006) and it had to carry on suffering rationing until 1954 (and in fact in many ways the rationing got worse after VE day than before). A lot of our industry was decimated, and cities partially destroyed and while places like Germany and France used the Marshal plan money to rebuild and upgrade many UK governments often wasted the money on propping up our failing empire.

BBC - History - British History in depth: The Wasting of Britain's Marshall Aid

So it seems to me that only someone that didn’t really understand or even know history would compare the two things.

 

Alonso376

But the whole Brexit campaign in 2016 was based on the premise of the British people been better off immediately after leaving the EU.

We would have our cake and eat it, we would enter the sunny uplands we would have bucket loads of extra cash to spend on public services and so on and so on it was going to be almost instant gratification and anyone that said differently was accused of spreading Project Fear.

Yes a few after the referendum began pushing back on those promises and hinted that there could be problems but that was AFTER.

 

Alonso376

Its always hard to gauge the length of a generation – some put it 20 others 30 or 40 or 50 years.

But what you seem to be saying here is that there will be hardships caused by Brexit for a generation and then maybe, possibly, there might be benefits say in 20 to 50 years.

Can you explain where these Brexit benefits are going to come from?

I mean you are admitting nothing will be coming soon so why do you think they will come later?

 

Alonso376

The UK government thought the initial treaty that began the Project and EU was going to crumble within 10 years ack in 1957. Less than and then ten years later (1963 and 1967) because of its success the UK wanted to join but got vetoed . Over ten years later the UK after a referendum (1975) joined the project.

And in all that time certain groups on the right of English politics have always claimed the EU was just about to collapse and they kept saying it in the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, and so on in fact one of the reasons many of them pushed for Brexit was the belief that it would bring down the hated edifice.

But no the EU carries on and carries on becoming stronger

I mean in trade the new unleashed Britain was meant to go out and get better and more advantageous trade deals showing everyone that an independent Britain could do better than one shackled to the EU

But no the EU carries on and carries on becoming stronger, while the UK is been dragged down.

The UK is having to do catch up on all the trade deals we once had through the EU (some 40 covering over 70 countries) and the many more trading agreements that we already had as part of the EU and will lose once the transition period is over. So far the largest economy the UK has successfully brokered a trade deal with is Switzerland. In the meantime the EU has new agreements with Singapore, Japan and Mercosur (the South American trading bloc) and it has been calculated that these give the potential of some 500 billion in trade about the same amount that would be lost if the UK stopped all together with trading with the EU. Added to this the EU has other agreements already in the pipeline most notably Australia and New Zealand.

 

undermined

Sorry unsure what your argument is –

Are you saying that EU immigration is a threat to British identity?

What aircraft carriers are you talking about is this about the Queen Elizabeth class carriers built by the UK and if so what is your point?

What soft money?

 

Oh isn’t it strange all those things the so called remoaners warned about what would happen in a Brexit have or are becoming true

And oh haven’t the leavers gone so quiet – no crowing about winning – maybe even they have begun to work out we have all become losers from leaving.

 

Here's a utube interview that hits on the subject.

In WW2, Every country wanted a war with Germany but they did not want to be involved. They wanted to benefit form it but not pay for it. That's also why you have the late entries into a war to claim some spoils from the loser. Britain wanted France to do the work and France wanted Britain to do the work. Poland did not fall back because they thought Britain/France would just give Germany the areas that they fell back to and not defend them. It's self centered human behavior that won't go away on it's own. Britain wants the benefits of being off shore to Europe but that is all. The EU is mostly German soft money. Softmoney buys you control without using a gun. It's influence. Every big country always want's protection money from the smaller countries around them. The members of the British Empire had to buy their share of Naval ships so the British could rule them. How diabolical is that? This is also how the smaller countries get turned into a buffer zone for countries like Russia. The smaller countries that exploit the larger countries for protection get a higher standard of living because they want to just be a bystander. You can not be a bystander in Europe.

Immigration is not welcomed by the working class because they lose earning power and their tax money goes to the people that cause it. If you own a business it's great. You get to pay your people less and have more customers. Syria is a big mess because it is part of a oil trading route for Russia.

This should provide enough of an insight for you. It's mostly about who provides privileges/entitlements and who receives them.

 

Undermined

Sorry but can you first answer the questions I’ve already asked so we can get a bit of clarity?

Are you saying that EU immigration is a threat to British identity?

What aircraft carriers are you talking about is this about the Queen Elizabeth class carriers built by the UK and if so what is your point?

What soft money?