Remind me again why we left the EU

[Bentley Bullet]

BST, remember the other day when I said the reason I write short posts is because you will scrutinize every word if you're struggling for a proper answer, and if you can find faults, or invent them in order to change the direction of the discussion, you will?

..........I rest my case!

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB. This doesn't need to go on any longer. Do you believe COVID is primarily responsible for the Jan trade figures? Yes or no?

One word answer required.

If you say "no", I entirely acceot that I misrepresented your views (as you accuse me of doing).

If you say "yes", then I was correct in my interpretation of what you said.

Over to you.

[Bentley Bullet]

I believe Covid is related to it like I've already said. Related means connected, I could have used either word. Neither of them means responsible. I'm related to my wife's sister's son, I'm his uncle, but I'm not responsible for him. (Least I don't think so!).

Regarding your question, I can't say just Yes or No. Because I don't know! However, I do believe that Covid has played a part in the trade figures to some extent, unlike NNK, who categorically stated that it hasn't played any part at all.

Do you agree with NNK, or me?

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB
Good. We are getting somewhere. Always takes a bit of effort but here we go.

If I interpret correctly this time, when you said "The trade figures are COVID related", you weren't saying that COVID was primarily responsible for the dire trade figures because you don't know how much of an effect there has been. In that case, I accept that I misrepresented your opinion.

Does leave me wondering why on earth you would bring up the COVID issue though. Given that our exports to the rest of the world actually rose in January while the exports to the EU dropped by nearly half. Only, that suggests to me that COVID was, at most a tiny effect in the numbers.

Which was the substantive point I was trying to make before you insisted on making this an argument about words.

And by the way, go back and read again what NNK said. You're misrepresenting him.

[Bentley Bullet]

I brought Covid up because I believe the trade figures were covid related.

NNK said the trade figures were "bugger all to do with Covid." Where have I misrepresented him?

He misrepresented me by saying I said that leaving the EU was a good thing.

Over to you....

[BillyStubbsTears]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

[SydneyRover]

Sydney, maybe a big part of the reason the UK voted out was that it was becoming like Australia used to be, a penal colony for foreign criminals, the difference being that foreign criminals volunteered to come to the UK.

Maybe one of the problems is the disorganised rabble of a tory government that couldn't run a raffle.

''Under Britain’s arrangements with the European Union, it is supposed to send other member states an alert when citizens of another European country are convicted of crimes in a British court.

But for five years, the Guardian reported, a British computer system failed to send the details of 75,000 such convictions to the offenders’ home countries, amounting to one in three of the required alerts.

The notification system is supposed to allow local European police agencies to monitor people convicted of serious crimes abroad and to prevent offenders from escaping their convictions by moving to another European Union country''

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/world/europe/uk-eu-75000-criminal-convictions.html

[SydneyRover]

Sydney, maybe a big part of the reason the UK voted out was that it was becoming like Australia used to be, a penal colony for foreign criminals, the difference being that foreign criminals volunteered to come to the UK.

And maybe the fact that there were/are 19,000 less police since 2010 to catch criminals played a big part in it.

''Reality Check verdict: Labour's figures are about right. Latest statistics show that police officer numbers in England and Wales have fallen by 19,000 since 2010.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said 20,000 police officers in England and Wales had been lost from the force since 2010''

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39779288

[Bentley Bullet]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

He said Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid. Then he gave his reasons in a quote that blamed border checks and summarised it by saying it was bugger all to do with Brexit.

That's how I interpreted it, and if he tells me he didn't mean that then I will withdraw it, although it is much easier to misinterpret that than it is his claim that  I said leaving the EU was a good thing. That is blatant misrepresentation.

[Bentley Bullet]

Sydney, maybe a big part of the reason the UK voted out was that it was becoming like Australia used to be, a penal colony for foreign criminals, the difference being that foreign criminals volunteered to come to the UK.

Maybe one of the problems is the disorganised rabble of a tory government that couldn't run a raffle.

''Under Britain’s arrangements with the European Union, it is supposed to send other member states an alert when citizens of another European country are convicted of crimes in a British court.

But for five years, the Guardian reported, a British computer system failed to send the details of 75,000 such convictions to the offenders’ home countries, amounting to one in three of the required alerts.

The notification system is supposed to allow local European police agencies to monitor people convicted of serious crimes abroad and to prevent offenders from escaping their convictions by moving to another European Union country''

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/world/europe/uk-eu-75000-criminal-convictions.html

Oh, so it's nowt to do with Tony Blair opening the floodgates to everyone and anyone then?

[SydneyRover]

How far back would you like to take to the debate to try and prove a negative, Disraeli?

[Bentley Bullet]

Sydney, maybe a big part of the reason the UK voted out was that it was becoming like Australia used to be, a penal colony for foreign criminals, the difference being that foreign criminals volunteered to come to the UK.

And maybe the fact that there were/are 19,000 less police since 2010 to catch criminals played a big part in it.

''Reality Check verdict: Labour's figures are about right. Latest statistics show that police officer numbers in England and Wales have fallen by 19,000 since 2010.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said 20,000 police officers in England and Wales had been lost from the force since 2010''

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39779288

How many new police officers have been recruited since Boris became PM?

[Bentley Bullet]

How far back would you like to take to the debate to try and prove a negative, Disraeli?

Well, to be fair to Boris Johnson, how about going as far back as when he became PM?

[BillyStubbsTears]

So after all that traipsing round the houses, I assume we can agree that COVID had a very small negative effect on the trade figures, and the primary cause was import/export frictions due to border controls. Which may hopefully improve over coming months. Although the OBR predicts that over the long term, the effect will be to cost us £100bn per year of economic output.

[SydneyRover]

In the normal course of events within a debate, a party puts up a debating point and another party would agree or not and put up reasons as to why they did or didn't. You put up your argument and I have put up a couple of supported reasons as to why you may be incorrect. Instead of you taking these points and examining why they are contributing factors or not you bring in another factor irrelevant to the original point you made and then you bring in a second point outside the dates of your original argument ................ over to you.

[Bentley Bullet]

So after all that traipsing round the houses, I assume we can agree that COVID had a very small negative effect on the trade figures, and the primary cause was import/export frictions due to border controls. Which may hopefully improve over coming months. Although the OBR predicts that over the long term, the effect will be to cost us £100bn per year of economic output.

I don't know to what extent Covid has had on exports, but then I said that before you went around the houses trying to find something that you can argue about. I do know there was some controversy over the hold-up of lorry drivers requiring tests due to the new strain of the virus. To what extent that affected trade export I don't know, but that is an example of something that might have had more than a small effect.

[bobjimwilly]

When can we expect to see the UK benefit from leaving then? In all this waffle and distraction, not just in this thread but any on Brexit, I cant see anyone refer to hard facts that show we are/will be better off?

[BigH]

BJW it depends on what you mean by 'better off'.

If it's to do with immigration, then the UK now has greater control over the number of immigrants it can allow in.

If it's to do with the economy, the UK is no longer expected to be better off. In fact we can now expect to be worse off.

[normal rules]

BJW it depends on what you mean by 'better off'.

If it's to do with immigration, then the UK now has greater control over the number of immigrants it can allow in.

If it's to do with the economy, the UK is no longer expected to be better off. In fact we can now expect to be worse off.

Except those taking the one way dinghy across the channel.

[Bentley Bullet]

I can't for the life of me understand why they want to cross the channel to a place with no future such as the UK. Surely they are better off staying on that side of the channel where they can be part of the great wealth and generosity of the EU?

[Not Now Kato]

We "managed" before we joined the EEC. Sure, we "managed".

But we went from being comfortably ahead of West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Holland on economic performance in the early 50s to well being them in the early 70s. And then we outpaced most of those from 1975-2010.

So yeah, we can "manage" outside the EU. But every credible economic analysis says that "managing" equates to "being significantly poorer over the long term than we would have been if we'd stayed in."

A start would be if those supporting Brexit would at least acknowledge these facts.

A start would be if you bad loser Remoaners accepted you lost and got on with it, instead of going on, and on, and on, and on. and on, and on, and f**king on about all the reasons why we should have stayed in the EU' and refusing point blank to shut the f**k up, accept it, and get on with it.

I find it quite amusing that on the football forum, people are told to f**k off and support Leeds if they slag the club off for, for instance, comparing the side now to the one under Sean O'Driscoll in the Championship. What makes it hilarious is it is often the very same people who on this forum slag the country off and talk about how great it was back in the EU.

I wonder what their reaction would be if they were told to f**k off and live in Germany?

You really ought to think before you post an analogy that destroys your own argument BB!
 
Before Brexit I could go and support Leeds if I wanted to. Similarly I could go and support any club in the football pyramid.
 
Before Brexit I could freely go and live in Germany. Similarly I could freely go and live in any of the 27 member states.
 
After Brexit I can still go and support Leeds if I wanted to. Similarly I can still go and support any club in the football pyramid.
 
But after Brexit I can no longer freely and simply go an live in Germany. Nor can I freely and simply go and live in any of the 27 member states.
 
And when you use the word 'Remoaner' it shows how weak your arguments are!

[Not Now Kato]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

He said Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid. Then he gave his reasons in a quote that blamed border checks and summarised it by saying it was bugger all to do with Brexit.

That's how I interpreted it, and if he tells me he didn't mean that then I will withdraw it, although it is much easier to misinterpret that than it is his claim that  I said leaving the EU was a good thing. That is blatant misrepresentation.

BB, as BST has already pointed out, my 'bugger all' reference was about the changes to border controls which have indeed got 'bugger all' to do with Covid! They are all down to issues relating to Brexit which should have been addressed in the Transition Period - only this pathetic government used up the whole of that time to continue to negotiate for something it was never going to get instead of using it for what it was intended, a smooth TRANSITION between what we had and what we would be getting as a result of the negotiations!

[Bentley Bullet]

Shame you went to all that trouble explaining why my analogy destroyed my own argument with examples that had nothing to do with the analogy!

Hey ho! You Remoaners will try owt!

[Bentley Bullet]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

He said Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid. Then he gave his reasons in a quote that blamed border checks and summarised it by saying it was bugger all to do with Brexit.

That's how I interpreted it, and if he tells me he didn't mean that then I will withdraw it, although it is much easier to misinterpret that than it is his claim that  I said leaving the EU was a good thing. That is blatant misrepresentation.

BB, as BST has already pointed out, my 'bugger all' reference was about the changes to border controls which have indeed got 'bugger all' to do with Covid! They are all down to issues relating to Brexit which should have been addressed in the Transition Period - only this pathetic government used up the whole of that time to continue to negotiate for something it was never going to get instead of using it for what it was intended, a smooth TRANSITION between what we had and what we would be getting as a result of the negotiations!

So, you were not saying that the effect on trade export had bugger all to do with Covid. You were saying that it did. In that case, I apologise for misrepresenting your view.

Now, how about you apologising for misrepresenting me when you said that l think what is happening is a good thing for this country?

[bobjimwilly]

I can't for the life of me understand why they want to cross the channel to a place with no future such as the UK. Surely they are better off staying on that side of the channel where they can be part of the great wealth and generosity of the EU?

Or maybe their family is already here and they want to re-unite with them for the first time since leaving their own war-torn countries?

[normal rules]

I can't for the life of me understand why they want to cross the channel to a place with no future such as the UK. Surely they are better off staying on that side of the channel where they can be part of the great wealth and generosity of the EU?

Or maybe their family is already here and they want to re-unite with them for the first time since leaving their own war-torn countries?

Because those from countries such as Eritrea, Iran, Afghanistan,Syria and Iraq know that the uk govt cannot deport them back to their home countries. Or any other country for that matter. Once they get here, they are here to stay.

[Not Now Kato]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

He said Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid. Then he gave his reasons in a quote that blamed border checks and summarised it by saying it was bugger all to do with Brexit.

That's how I interpreted it, and if he tells me he didn't mean that then I will withdraw it, although it is much easier to misinterpret that than it is his claim that  I said leaving the EU was a good thing. That is blatant misrepresentation.

BB, as BST has already pointed out, my 'bugger all' reference was about the changes to border controls which have indeed got 'bugger all' to do with Covid! They are all down to issues relating to Brexit which should have been addressed in the Transition Period - only this pathetic government used up the whole of that time to continue to negotiate for something it was never going to get instead of using it for what it was intended, a smooth TRANSITION between what we had and what we would be getting as a result of the negotiations!

So, you were not saying that the effect on trade export had bugger all to do with Covid. You were saying that it did. In that case, I apologise for misrepresenting your view.

Now, how about you apologising for misrepresenting me when you said that l think what is happening is a good thing for this country?

I think you're twisting my words BB. I said "Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid, though the right wing media would have you believe otherwise.", so yes, Covid will have had an effect on trade figures, but it would only have been a minor one compared to the effects Brexit has had on trade. I then went on to point out a number of major changes to our border control measures being put back which could ONLY be put down to Brexit.
 
Now if you're saying that you accept Brexit is bad for this country then yes, I will accept that I misrepresented you and will apologise.  Is that what you're saying?

[Not Now Kato]

Shame you went to all that trouble explaining why my analogy destroyed my own argument with examples that had nothing to do with the analogy!

Hey ho! You Remoaners will try owt!

Perhaps you should try reading your own post, then mine again.

[Bentley Bullet]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

He said Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid. Then he gave his reasons in a quote that blamed border checks and summarised it by saying it was bugger all to do with Brexit.

That's how I interpreted it, and if he tells me he didn't mean that then I will withdraw it, although it is much easier to misinterpret that than it is his claim that  I said leaving the EU was a good thing. That is blatant misrepresentation.

BB, as BST has already pointed out, my 'bugger all' reference was about the changes to border controls which have indeed got 'bugger all' to do with Covid! They are all down to issues relating to Brexit which should have been addressed in the Transition Period - only this pathetic government used up the whole of that time to continue to negotiate for something it was never going to get instead of using it for what it was intended, a smooth TRANSITION between what we had and what we would be getting as a result of the negotiations!

So, you were not saying that the effect on trade export had bugger all to do with Covid. You were saying that it did. In that case, I apologise for misrepresenting your view.

Now, how about you apologising for misrepresenting me when you said that l think what is happening is a good thing for this country?

I think you're twisting my words BB. I said "Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid, though the right wing media would have you believe otherwise.", so yes, Covid will have had an effect on trade figures, but it would only have been a minor one compared to the effects Brexit has had on trade. I then went on to point out a number of major changes to our border control measures being put back which could ONLY be put down to Brexit.
 
Now if you're saying that you accept Brexit is bad for this country then yes, I will accept that I misrepresented you and will apologise.  Is that what you're saying?

Brexit might be bad for this country, then again it might be good. It might turn out bad in some ways but good in others. I don't think it is the right time to accurately predict or assess what the future will bring especially during a pandemic.

Now, I will ask you again. Will you apologise for saying I said that l think what is happening is a good thing for this country?

[Not Now Kato]

No he didn't BB.

He he said the figures were "largely due to Brexit, not COVID" which is undeniably correct. He then gave a list of Brexit-related border/import-export restrictions and said "bugger all to do with Brexit". And they ARE bugger all to do with Brexit.

He said Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid. Then he gave his reasons in a quote that blamed border checks and summarised it by saying it was bugger all to do with Brexit.

That's how I interpreted it, and if he tells me he didn't mean that then I will withdraw it, although it is much easier to misinterpret that than it is his claim that  I said leaving the EU was a good thing. That is blatant misrepresentation.

BB, as BST has already pointed out, my 'bugger all' reference was about the changes to border controls which have indeed got 'bugger all' to do with Covid! They are all down to issues relating to Brexit which should have been addressed in the Transition Period - only this pathetic government used up the whole of that time to continue to negotiate for something it was never going to get instead of using it for what it was intended, a smooth TRANSITION between what we had and what we would be getting as a result of the negotiations!

So, you were not saying that the effect on trade export had bugger all to do with Covid. You were saying that it did. In that case, I apologise for misrepresenting your view.

Now, how about you apologising for misrepresenting me when you said that l think what is happening is a good thing for this country?

I think you're twisting my words BB. I said "Trade figures are largely down to Brexit and not Covid, though the right wing media would have you believe otherwise.", so yes, Covid will have had an effect on trade figures, but it would only have been a minor one compared to the effects Brexit has had on trade. I then went on to point out a number of major changes to our border control measures being put back which could ONLY be put down to Brexit.
 
Now if you're saying that you accept Brexit is bad for this country then yes, I will accept that I misrepresented you and will apologise.  Is that what you're saying?

Brexit might be bad for this country, then again it might be good. It might turn out bad in some ways but good in others. I don't think it is the right time to accurately predict or assess what the future will bring especially during a pandemic.

Now, I will ask you again. Will you apologise for saying I said that l think what is happening is a good thing for this country?

Thank you for a more considered post BB, I withdraw my comment about you thinking Brexit is good for the country and apologise accordingly.  It is also certainly true that Covid isn't helping at all.
 
Time will tell if it turns out to be good in any way, shape or form; and I genuinely hope that it will - though all the signs would indicate otherwise.  But just as I hope people will post any positives as they occur, people should also respect the right of others to point out the negatives as they too occur - and to date there's been an awful lot of them.