People seem so poor at economics and causation after EU ref

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Before too, but it doesn't exactly take a genius to figure out that since the UK hasn't actually exited yet that ramifications can't start happening straight away... the same papers which claimed all problems from A to Z will be solved as soon as the country is out apparently thinks that, suddenly, despite the country not being out, all problems are solved after all, or that there are absolutely none. The extremities of these arguments are astonishing... it's not like all industries will be affected, but how would journalists care if it's not theirs and their specific lives, anyway? Selfishness is, of course, probably the primary reason of the vote. And, ultimately, suddenly, plebs will find out no problems are solved after all because they were all caused by their own government anyway.

What is good economics? Neoliberal globalism? That's the problem with taking any of these 'economists' seriously, I think the current state of the world is evidence that these people are clueless. Brexit was sold as doomsday and the fact that the UK can come out ahead just completely turns their BS arguments on their heads.

Do you use welfare Mootoo? How would you like the share the resources you got now with 100,000 others?

You mean, the world being better than it has ever been?

They seem to be damn certain they don't want no dirty foreigners. That's something.

I wonder if the Gibraltarian verja will be closed again, this time from the British side, to keep Spanish vermin out. It'd be pretty funny to watch.

I have to say it: if it hadn't been for the help of many other countries in the past, the official language of the UK would be German. There was little loyalty later on to the Commonwealth countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. We were suddenly directed to enter the UK via the "aliens" gate when we visited England in the 1970s (and this continues). The sacrifices made at places like Gallipoli and The Somme counted for nothing at all when the UK saw a trade advantage to itself by entering the EEC, dumping its former trading parties suddenly and callously. It caused a major recession in New Zealand, not that the British cared, and now, suddenly the UK wants to be our trading buddy again (because it suits their interests, rather than ours). A convenient long term memory loss going on there. The Brexiteers who claim our countries will be eager to give them favourable trading agreements now are sadly mistaken; we all have other, and larger, markets in Asia and elsewhere now, we don't need Britain's trade anymore. It was telling how fast the proponents of Brexit - Gove, Johnson and Farage - couldn't scuttle away fast enough - like rats in the night - when their self-aggrandising ego-trips, (which had been laced with lies like the $300 million plus a week lie) came full circle. They knew how rough it was going to be, and wanted to minimise themselves from the flak before their supporters realised the deceptions and what the real cost and impacts of Brexit on themselves will be.

Yeah, it's the real end of history right?

But this is exactly my point, it's actually BS in itself to think that the country already came out ahead when it's not even out yet. Businesses just gradually move away, jobs could disappear, even see unemployment go up when just before it went down, as this is what happens when there is uncertainty, and this country relies especially on services, so if there is no passporting then London will barely function, and as much as that concentration of wealth is in need of dissipating if London suffers then so will GDP generally.

Also, I don't personally see sharing as any sort of horror like you seem to do, in fact what will happen once the country is out on a superficial level is for no one to be able to go easily anywhere. Imagine having to need a visa to go from Louisiana to Texas (because apparently it wants to whip out its weapons and Jesus and float away as some island).

And it's not so much globalization that is at fault but unfettered capitalism which sees the biggest corporations stash their profits in tax havens. And no, I doubt a tax dodger will do anything about closing that loophole.

B19, indeed this country has historically been selfish and should now reap its just deserts...

Unfortunately those who saw through the lies will be affected too, and just as severely. In a year's time I think the impacts will have become manifestly clear.

I should have mentioned, as an important postscript to my earlier post, that New Zealand and the EEC have been negotiating and finalising a free trade agreement for several years, and this is very well advanced now. It represents another huge, extra market for New Zealand, worth billions. No way that the NZ Government will agree to small time trade with the UK which would jeopardise that. Quite an irony, really. I doubt the Brexiteers were informed of unfortunate facts like this though, though the ratboys would have known.

The EU will capitulate to the UK on exit terms and have already said as much, this idea that the EU is going to try to punish the UK for leaving is cutting your nose off to spite your face. Why would the European countries that depend on tourism want to lock the wealthy UK out of Europe? It doesn't make a lot of sense and the only reason they expressed such an extreme sentiment was to scare people, Brexit is not doomsday and I don't think anybody can argue it anymore even if there are some marginal losses which I doubt really in the long run. The UK has too big and dynamic of an economy for it to be so kneecapped by being outside the EU, they will be better off than the next rounds of exits. Them escaping EU regulation while the rest of the Europe toils under them will put the country at an advantage.

The political union that is the EU is a walking corpse, 2017 will be a very important year for Europe with the French/Dutch/German elections and I'm sure you know that they all have a significant backlash coming against their Eurocrat leaders coming. The EU trade deal with the US is dead, if Trump becomes president then the UK would get their own individual deal most likely. Even Jeremy Corbyn said the scaremongering was ridiculous, you have to admit the sky is not falling. There'll always be an England!

You can't compare Europe to American states, we have a shared language and culture and to be honest at this point the lines that divide our states are mostly arbitrary. A better comparison are the border communities in US with Mexico and Canada that now require a passport to travel in between. It's been that way since 2001, we're fine. I think the UK will survive not being in a political union with Moldova. Without borders, without language, without a shared culture there is no country; the idea of a United States of Europe has always been a joke. The EU is not stable going forward, we all know Greece has it's problems but so do Italy and Spain which are too big to ever bailout. The immigration issues can't be solved, it is causing some EU states to start rethinking the whole as they do not appreciate Merkel's rule by decree that Europe's borders were open.

Thats exactly it.

The issue is not about Britain being free of the tyranny of belonging to a multinational club. Its about WHICH international club Britain prefers to be "tyrannized" by. Its an identity crises.

Does Britain wanna be part of Europe, or be part of the British Commonwealth of nations? Pal around with its offspring nations (spread around different continents)? Or does it wanna join with its unrelated neighbors on the same block in Europe?

The Brexit voters hoped to rejoin the extended family after rejecting the neighbors. But now the kinfolk on other continents wont speak to Britain anymore.

Even Mr 7/10, who appointed a Maoist as Shadow Chancellor? Well I'm convinced...

It's only wise for a country to bully and tyrannize others when it can, rather than be tyrannized by them.

Schengen was agreed upon about a decade before she assumed office.

Also, I don't think identical language is any pre-requisite for a union... it's not one can say the states are currently an idyll of perfect communication, and as long as translators exist differences are minimal. A central bank on the other hand, similar to the Fed, would be more useful than having individual ones despite a common currency, and I think that may contribute to financial problems, but only as a result of a lack of federalization. The states are a federation, so unless you think that system absolutely doesn't work...

There will be advantages for the UK only if businesses think that being headquartered here, thus needing to fill out forms for each individual country on the continent, is somehow advantageous when it comes to efficiency, money, and time spent...

A common language is a consequence of a union, not the other way round. If every mainland European country stopped imposing its currently official language or languages, and borders were kept open or eliminated, even without the UK or Ireland in the union, you can bet all those languages would decline pretty quickly and, in a hundred years, it'd be damn hard to hear anything but English spoken.

There's nothing new about this process; it's what happened to languages like Welsh and Gaelic in the UK and Ireland; Breton, Occitan, Catalan and Basque in France; indigenous languages on the whole American continent, and so on.

Of course, if the UK keeps all contact with mainland Europe shut off, continental English may diverge quite wildly from the British varieties. Britons would largely understand it, but its "dirty foreigner" scent would be unmistakable and probably revolting to them

Is that what Europe wants, to have it's culture and history sent to the dust bin of history in the name of globalism? Do you want to the continent to be one big Super Walmart? It's hard not to look at Europe and be disgusted by their self-hating suicidal politics, what kind of future does a country like Sweden or Germany want? I know the Germans have been taught to hate themselves so I suppose there are a lot of Germans that probably think they deserve this and feel it absolves of the sins of their fathers. A shared language I think is integral to forging a shared identity, that is often the dividing line these countries.

Schengen was agreed to but that just involves the EU's internal borders doesn't it? How does the German Chancellor have the authority to declare that Europe's borders are open to 'refugees' and that all EU nations are obligated to take in a certain quota?

The EU is too economically integrated with the UK to really want to punish them, maybe they could punish a country like Greece or Serbia or whatever but they can't punish the large powerful European countries like the UK, Italy, Spain, France, etc. without hurting themselves. If the EU would like to be vindictive then we couldn't the UK increase it's ties with Russia which has been isolated in recent year and as well as the commonwealth? What advantage does the EU gain by waging economic warfare against the UK? Just as a warning to other member states is shortsighted and I think would backfire. The EU is far too anti-democratic to survive, you can only go against the will of the people so long before they rebel. What will happen to the EU when a populist leasder Marine Le Pen or a Geert Wilders is elected? There is someone of that stripe in almost every EU country and their support is only growing, countries will be able to effectively govern without their cooperation. It was a good time to leave, the writing is on the wall so you are ahead of the curve.

That’s a false dichotomy: cultural changes don’t force you to forget history. In fact, history teaches us that’s the way to succeed. The US threw away its indigenous cultures in the name of liberty a few centuries ago; why would the rest of the world not want to do the same? Why wouldn’t they do it as soon as there’s no tyrant stopping them?



It’ll be one only if they want to make it so, which is their prerogative.



If you’re disgusted, too bad, or do you want the US to get involved militarily to … what exactly? To force them to stay divided and isolated, to keep their economies stagnant and them easy to conquer? Oh, now that makes sense.



Germans can think for themselves, too.



It wasn’t very integral to forging essentially any country existing today. The norm was the opposite: a sovereign grabbed as much land as he could, by warring with other sovereigns, without caring what languages his distant subjects spoke. Over time, the language spoken at the biggest power center—usually the sovereign’s capital city, of course—became dominant and the only one written and used as a serious vehicle of culture, the others relegated to being the speech of the common folk, sometimes preserved for centuries due only to widespread illiteracy, but quickly replaced by the dominant language as soon as the speakers needed to talk frequently to people coming from another part of the country. In recent times, of course, language shift in favor of national languages sped up massively thanks to the near-eradication of illiteracy, the mass media and the increased ability of almost everyone to move anywhere within their country.

This is how language boundaries came to coïncide with political ones—not the other way round. As soon as there’s freedom to mingle, the dominant language becomes more and more dominant and the others die out. There’s no reason to want the process to stop at its current stage—unless, of course, you don’t want the people involved to be free. This is seldom the case when you’re one of them.