EU Vote

[Robert]

I'd like to see the whole lot of them do some work, Caz, and I'm sure we'll see a new era of industriousness and extra effort....just as soon as the next recess is over.

http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/business-faq-page/recess-dates/

[caz]

Hi Robert,

Maybe Theresa thought it was high time Boris should be made to earn his keep! I do hope he actually has to do some work in this new role.

Love,

Caz
X

[Robert]

Johnson is a clown and he should have been made conservative party chairman, where his job would have been to seek publicity, crack some jokes and raise party morale.

[John G]

Hi Robert,

Well he must have had an inkling, surely? Didn't he dangle the referendum like a carrot, to help him win the last general election? Only those who wanted to leave the EU would have wanted or needed this particular carrot, so he must have anticipated it would be a popular move with the electorate, and therefore a good career move for himself. But then he had the uphill task of trying to convince everyone who may only have voted for him so they could vote to leave the EU that actually doing so would be very much against their best interests and those of their country.

If Cameron had genuinely felt all along that it would be much better for us all to remain in the EU, regardless of 'popular' opinion, why did he promise a referendum in the first place, if it wasn't just a cynical ploy to get himself one more spell in Number 10 with Larry the cat?

Love,

Caz
X

Of course it all went wrong when Boris Johnson decided to back the Brexit campaign, despite previously saying "I'm not an outer." Then again, after the result was declared he didn't appear very jubilant- in fact, he looked more like someone about to attend a funeral! Which, I think,tells you everything you need to know about his actual motives.

[John G]

Hi John

Re the article(s) :

No one knows what the world will look like ten years, or even five years from now - least of all Governments. Mr Cameron didn't even know that his own people were going to vote Leave. Nor did the other EU bigwigs, for whom the result was apparently a profound shock. However, as a general principle, I think that tariffs are wrong. They're a sort of fraud on the consumer, and they encourage business inefficiency. If I wanted to go all internationalist and Guardian on you, I could even say that they're unfair to countries which aren't in the Cosy Club. It's up to British business to make good products, seek out markets and sell to them. I may be old-fashioned, but there you go.

Hello Robert,

Yes, I would send to agree with you about tariffs in general. However, the point is that if other nations apply tariffs to British goods then Britain is absolutely entitled to retaliate, particularly if the alternative is that an entire industry is eliminated.

[Robert]

Hi Svensson

One problem I have is that it's for these countries themselves to decide their own labour laws. Some of these countries - I suspect most - don't hold the same western values as us, don't have economies like ours, and are generally different from us. How can we just tell them what to do (even if it is dressed up as stick and carrot)? I myself would not want to buy clothing that some poor sod has been paid a pittance to make. But what if by doing that I help to shut down the sweatshop because it isn't selling its stuff? The poor sod will then have no income at all, because he'll be out of work. You can see how long it's taken for Europe to form some kind of union, with all the problems of reconciling different national interests, and you yourself admit that the time has come to call a halt to integration. That's with European countries who share a bedrock of values, even though there are marked differences between them. Now jump across to India and China. Different world.

[Robert]

Hi Caz

I don't think he had any inkling at all - if he had, he would never have called the referendum in the first place. I think he wanted to nobble UKIP by removing their raison d'etre. A win would have meant burying the issue for the next 40 years. I think he calculated that the same Project Fear that worked on the Scots, would work on the whole UK. According to an account I read, he and his aides were still in confident mood when they sat down to watch the TV coverage. It was only when the first results started to come in that the atmosphere turned sombre.

[Svensson]

I, as a consumer, don't want to buy good that have been crated in sweat-shops

Then don't buy them.

But you forgot to add 'and I'm going to make damn sure that no one else buys them either.'

It is very tempting to add this in fact. One part of me feels that we should quite rightly stop everyone from buying sweat-shop stuff, the other part of me recognises that this is not something that can reasonably be imposed on others. So what are we left with? We can incenticise sweat-shop economies to stop some of these practices. Stick and carrot maybe. But I feel that some principles need to be upheld otherwise it's a free-for-all where parts of society are continuously exploited with no possibility to a better life.

[caz]

No one knows what the world will look like ten years, or even five years from now - least of all Governments. Mr Cameron didn't even know that his own people were going to vote Leave.

Hi Robert,

Well he must have had an inkling, surely? Didn't he dangle the referendum like a carrot, to help him win the last general election? Only those who wanted to leave the EU would have wanted or needed this particular carrot, so he must have anticipated it would be a popular move with the electorate, and therefore a good career move for himself. But then he had the uphill task of trying to convince everyone who may only have voted for him so they could vote to leave the EU that actually doing so would be very much against their best interests and those of their country.

If Cameron had genuinely felt all along that it would be much better for us all to remain in the EU, regardless of 'popular' opinion, why did he promise a referendum in the first place, if it wasn't just a cynical ploy to get himself one more spell in Number 10 with Larry the cat?

Love,

Caz
X

[Robert]

I, as a consumer, don't want to buy good that have been crated in sweat-shops

Then don't buy them.

But you forgot to add 'and I'm going to make damn sure that no one else buys them either.'

[Mayerling]

then again, call me even more old-fashioned as I believe that tariffs have their usefulness in the global economy.

Not all economies work on the same principles. Goods manufactured in Europe has been manufactured in an environment that makes the product expensive. For example:

- Fair pay-conditions of the labour-force (40 hour week, paid holiday, paid overtime, employment protection laws, social security, etc.)
- Safe and secure working environment (use of safe equipment, fire-exits, heating of the factory, etc)
- Environmentally friendly (don't dump industrial waste in the river, have generators and power stations fitted with filters to cut down air-pollution, etc).

Even if the end-product itself complies with all the standards, the way it is manufactured in other parts of the world may be highly unethical or dangerous. This makes the end-product cheaper and unfairly competitive. Which means that tariffs should come to the rescue to discourage such practices.

There is also the need sometimes for a government to protect its own industries. This is not necessarily about just preserving jobs, but also about preserving capabilities.For example, when the last steel plant closes down, the knowledge and expertise to run a steel plant will go with it. Gone. Forever. And if a steel plant were to open again in 30 year's time, there will be no one left in the country who knows how to run one (except from Wikipedia ). So knowledge and capabilities need to be preserved, sometimes artificially and at a higher cost.

I'm all for the principle of tariffs but in an ideal world, we shouldn't need them.

There seems to be an historical trend in all this - In the 19th Century the protectionists like the Unionists under Joseph Chamberlain tried to make the British Empire a solid trading block for goods and raw materials throughout the world, and tariffs protecting it's industries - a kind of 19th Century mercantilism that seemed fairer to it's units on paper. Opposed were the free traders going back to Richard Cobden and John Bright (and led by Gladstone in the 1870s to 1890s) who wanted to get rid of all those tariff walls between nations. No unified Europe in the 19th Century (as it seems there may be today under the EU) but OCCASIONALLY a government from the opposite side of a border (real or theoretical) would respond favorably: the U.S. in the late 1880s under Grover Cleveland did reduce tariff walls towards foreign goods, but the Republicans reinstalled them when they came back into power.

The twist is that the high/low tariff issues in the 19th Century were basically meat-and-potato economic issues, whereas the current brouhaha is tied to calls of super-patriotism because "those foreign devils" are trying to dictate how we have to behave in our own country!

Jeff

[Svensson]

Not so. I, as a consumer, don't want to buy good that have been crated in sweat-shops. And while I think that someone should actually be able to tell other countries that workers must be treated humanely, I accept that this is not possible. So I want a tariff as a signal that such despicable practices should not pay off.

And what exactly is wrong with suggesting that other countries treat their people correctly? Am I missing something?

[Robert]

Svensson, now you've conjured up nightmare visions of EU officials on tours of inspection telling other countries how to make their goods and what is and is not acceptable. That's if it's not already happening.

[Svensson]

then again, call me even more old-fashioned as I believe that tariffs have their usefulness in the global economy.

Not all economies work on the same principles. Goods manufactured in Europe has been manufactured in an environment that makes the product expensive. For example:

- Fair pay-conditions of the labour-force (40 hour week, paid holiday, paid overtime, employment protection laws, social security, etc.)
- Safe and secure working environment (use of safe equipment, fire-exits, heating of the factory, etc)
- Environmentally friendly (don't dump industrial waste in the river, have generators and power stations fitted with filters to cut down air-pollution, etc).

Even if the end-product itself complies with all the standards, the way it is manufactured in other parts of the world may be highly unethical or dangerous. This makes the end-product cheaper and unfairly competitive. Which means that tariffs should come to the rescue to discourage such practices.

There is also the need sometimes for a government to protect its own industries. This is not necessarily about just preserving jobs, but also about preserving capabilities.For example, when the last steel plant closes down, the knowledge and expertise to run a steel plant will go with it. Gone. Forever. And if a steel plant were to open again in 30 year's time, there will be no one left in the country who knows how to run one (except from Wikipedia ). So knowledge and capabilities need to be preserved, sometimes artificially and at a higher cost.

I'm all for the principle of tariffs but in an ideal world, we shouldn't need them.

[Robert]

Hi John

Re the article(s) :

No one knows what the world will look like ten years, or even five years from now - least of all Governments. Mr Cameron didn't even know that his own people were going to vote Leave. Nor did the other EU bigwigs, for whom the result was apparently a profound shock. However, as a general principle, I think that tariffs are wrong. They're a sort of fraud on the consumer, and they encourage business inefficiency. If I wanted to go all internationalist and Guardian on you, I could even say that they're unfair to countries which aren't in the Cosy Club. It's up to British business to make good products, seek out markets and sell to them. I may be old-fashioned, but there you go.