sevenair wrote:

ElPistolero wrote:

sevenair wrote:

A bit like remoaners and ‘chlorine chicken’ you mean?

As others have pointed out, the chlorinated chicken issue is about being forced to adopt weaker regulatory standards to satisfy larger trade partners in the hope of getting a deal. Post-Brexit deals will require accepting US standards instead of EU policy, and if you think America First DC is going to give a damn about London's concerns, good luck to you. I'd personally be more worried about the hormone-filled beef and milk, than about unhygienically processed chicken.

How does that compare to FR moving from GLA to EDI anyway? All we can gather is that the weaker pound (weaker than it was against the Euro a year ago) is affecting travel patterns in the UK, causing consolidation. Spin it however you want, 20 routes being cut with 5 moving and 11 being added to EDI still amounts to a 20% reduction in destinations from Scotland. "Global" Britain indeed.

Hardly complicated stuff.

Everything is possible. The consumer will choose which products it uses and which it avoids. We will wait and see.

Airlines seem to be doing a roaring trade. I don't know of any significant change in travel patterns. Let's have a quick look at what's been going on over the last year:

Yes, terminally I'll Monarch finally bit the dust, but airport and airlines are doing very well. Doesn't EDI use the pound? Is it not strange how the 'weak' pound impacts GLA but not EDI?

According to a quick glance at FR's press page, they've released what look like dozens of new UK routes since Brexit.

Ryanair's biggest base remains in STN, which is in the U.K., uses the pound and is leaving the EU too

Does easyJet not get hit by the 'weak' pound as they've added frames to MAN, EDI, GLA, LGW and BRS all of use the pound. MAN and LTN were their two biggest growing bases. They've added SOU as a new destination

I notice you neglect to mention that EDI is now overflowing with passengers including new routes from many airlines. Several transatlantic and MEB3 airlines (in addition to GLA's double daily 777 to DBX service).

EDI his passenger records last year, despite Brexit of course

UK-Iceland hit 1 million passengers for the first time ever

Jet2/Dart just released a very healthy set of results, despite Brexit.

Look to booming MAN with new TATL links, strong MEB3 links, new links to China and beyond.

WIZZAIR have added a new base with new routes from LTN including TLV and KEF so it's not just a matter of them Brexit proofing themselves.

Blue Air seem to be doing ok out of their relatively new LPL base.

EK has added STN flights.

BA has added new routes from London, returned to Bristol and offer a programme from MAN

Norwegian is expanding in the UK (a mature market) unlike ANY of the many countries they serve.

Air India had added a new Amritsar link.

China Southern have added Quindao to Brexit Britain.

Jet2 added 23 new routes to their UK network last year, with 2 new bases and leasing in A330s to cope with demand.

Last August the UK was the biggest market IN THE WORLD in terms of international seat capacity

Europe to Asia Far East and dominated by the UK and China, a market which grew 6% last year

UK-Spain market grew at highest rate in 20 years delivering Spain's biggest amount of tourists by far

Oman Air added its second UK service last year

Two of three new long haul bases for Primera Air are in England

Ryanair have added a new UK route to Rimini

Lyviv has been added by WIZZAIR

Qantas will start a new PER-LHR service this year. What was it you said about global Britain? Doesn't get much global than that's does it?

British Airways added its longest non-stop flight to Santiago. Again, global much?

It seems we have many more global links for a new global Britain. But yes. Ryanair moving to EDI is the end of world.

Time and time again we've seen this. "Team UK" does absolutely nothing, leaving all the running to the EU. Mr Barnier's negotiating team then moves in to fill the vacuum, whence the UK establishment bitches like mad because they don't like what the EU has produced.

In the particular case of the first draft of the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK was given every opportunity to come up with its own proposals.

This was set out in December's Joint Report which re-emphasised the UK's commitment to protecting North-South cooperation and repeated its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements, the report said, must be compatible with these overarching requirements.

At the time, it was intended that the UK should achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship, details of which it has been pressed to provide for some time. In the event that this was not possible, the idea was then that the UK should propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland.

It was only in the absence of agreed solutions – arising from one or the other of these activities – that the UK agreed "to maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 (Good Friday) Agreement".

As it turns out, the UK has not produced any formal proposals and has shown no signs of delivering anything which looks even close to a solution that the EU would be prepared to agree. And it is in the precise context that the Commission has decided to produce its draft which, it says, "translates" the Joint Report and Joint Technical note into a legal text".

What this amounts to is an eight-page protocol (which includes nearly two pages of recital), is what is being called a "backstop" option. And this small addition has the potential to blow the Brexit negotiations apart for, without agreement on this, there will be no transition.

In the protocol, Northern Ireland continues to be part of a functioning Single Market, joining a "common regulatory area" with the rest of the Union, thereby constituting "an area without internal borders in which the free movement of goods is ensured and North-South cooperation protected".

In jargon terms, the "common regulatory area" is the technical term for the Single Market (or internal market, if you prefer), although it has not been used before by EU institutions in this context.

The term made a single, guest appearance in 2007 in relation to the treaty creating the Energy Community extending the EU energy market to its southern European neighbours within what the Commission described as "a common regulatory area with shared trade, transmission and environmental rules".

In relation to the Single Market, I first used the term on 4 May 2016 and again a few days later. It is interesting to see the term now lodged firmly in the Union lexicon.

Of course, there is much more that Ireland in the whole draft, which runs to 119 pages, and must be agreed by the 27 Member States before it is formally put to the UK.

The whole thing would be (and doubtless will be) much longer, by a factor of many more pages, if the Annexes to the Irish Protocol were complete. In Annex 2, for instance, will be specified the entire list of EU law that will apply in the common regulatory area, aimed at ensuring the free movement of goods and protecting North-South cooperation.

Lifted from the EU acquis will be the laws which cover the free movement of goods, customs controls, VAT and excise duties, sanitary and phytosanitary requirements, the production and marketing of agricultural and fisheries products, wholesale electricity markets, environmental protection in relation to the control of the import into, release into, or transport within the Union of substances or material, or plant or animal species, and State aid.

By reference to the EEA acquis, this will be a list of about 5,000 measures, which will apply in perpetuity to Northern Ireland.

But it doesn't stop there. The Agreement also requires that customs duties on imports and exports, and any charges having equivalent effect, "shall be prohibited between the Union and the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland. Furthermore, quantitative restrictions on imports and exports and all measures having equivalent effect shall be prohibited.

If I understand this correctly, it opens a huge, tariff-free back door into the UK where any goods from the rest of the EU can pour into Ireland and thence to Great Britain via Northern Ireland.

With that, we are seeing the crunch point in the negotiations, as was always going to be the case. This is the point where May's stupidity, in committing to leave the Single Market without thinking through the consequences, finally meets reality.

Her ill-considered action meant that – short of non-existent technical solutions – there was going to be a "hard" border in Ireland, unless the UK agreed to move it to the Irish Sea, creating the so-called wet border, an outcome which has been evident for some time. And if Mrs May refuses that solution, she has on her hands an unsolvable problem. Strangely enough, I wrote in a blogpost recently, unsolvable means unsolvable. That is proving to be the case.

There is absolutely no point, therefore – as she did at PMQs yesterday in the prime minister rejecting, in toto the Irish provision. The draft legal text, she said:

… would, if implemented, undermine the UK common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK by creating a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea, and no UK Prime Minister could ever agree to it. I will be making it crystal clear to President Juncker and others that we will never do so. We are committed to ensuring that we see no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, but the December text also made it clear that there should continue to be trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, as there is today.

This is only something which her government agreed with the EU in December and, true to that agreement, the Commission has included (in Article 15 of the Protocol) a provision which states that,

Should a subsequent agreement between the Union and the United Kingdom which allows addressing the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, avoiding a hard border and protecting the 1998 Agreement in all its dimensions, become applicable after the entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement, this Protocol shall not apply or shall cease to apply, as the case may be, in whole or in part, from the date of entry into force of such subsequent agreement and in accordance with that agreement.

It remains entirely open for the UK to come up with its own proposals and negotiate a separate solution – not that any such solution exists. But Mrs May has boxed herself into a corner and she only has herself to blame.

If things get too bad, however, she can always turn to the "safeguards" in Article 13. Presumably, with unintended irony, the Commission has copied out almost word-for-word parts of Articles 112 and 113 of the EEA Agreement, covering safeguard measures. We thus see:

If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties liable to persist, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate measures. Such safeguard measures shall be restricted with regard to their scope and duration to what is strictly necessary in order to remedy the situation. Priority shall be given to such measures as will least disturb the functioning of this Protocol.

This, of course, is a measure so many pundits have been telling us could only apply to the likes of Liechtenstein, because it is such a small country, and could not possibly apply to the UK. Yet here we find it, the catch-all provision, without which no treaty should be considered compete.

sevenair wrote:

Toyota to build new Auris in Brexit Britain.

#DespiteBrexit

JJJ wrote:

It just means the taxpayer will pony up the difference.

sevenair wrote:

Amusing watching the liberal remoaners bitching about spending a fraction of what we spend on membership of the EU just so that they can sell their products to us yet forget their Marxist sympathising dear leader would do exactly that. Nationalise everything. Tax everything.

sevenair wrote:

It makes me chuckle. A bit like the dems who claim Trump is illegitimate as a president as he wasn't a politician yet those very same people then champion Oprah running for president in the next election.

An odd yet eternally amusing bunch.

Aesma wrote:

So sevenair, are you happy that UK made cars being sold to the EU marketwill still have to follow every single EU car regulation ? (Fixed it for you)

sevenair wrote:

Amusing watching the liberal remoaners bitching about spending a fraction of what we spend on membership of the EU just so that they can sell their products to us yet

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

Amusing watching the liberal remoaners bitching about spending a fraction of what we spend on membership of the EU just so that they can sell their products to us yet

The 8 billion saved are already wiped out by less GDP growth. You had the market access for free, or how Boris put it: you paid penuts on for the benefits.

The illegal subsidies your government promised go on top of saving nothing.

Best regards
Thomas

sevenair wrote:

Please provide full details of the ‘illegal subsidies’. You must have full details of the them if you’re able to make such a claim.

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

Please provide full details of the ‘illegal subsidies’. You must have full details of the them if you’re able to make such a claim.

Bold from a guy that doesn't back up his claims even when asked multiple times.

Giving tax payer money to manufacturers to enable lower sales prices are illegal subsidies. That is common knowledge, no sources needed.

And funny that you bring up marixism, considering
how much you ignore reality to stick to doctrine.

Best regards
Thomas

sevenair wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

Please provide full details of the ‘illegal subsidies’. You must have full details of the them if you’re able to make such a claim.

Bold from a guy that doesn't back up his claims even when asked multiple times.

Giving tax payer money to manufacturers to enable lower sales prices are illegal subsidies. That is common knowledge, no sources needed.

And funny that you bring up marixism, considering
how much you ignore reality to stick to doctrine.

Best regards
Thomas

Have the 'subsidies' be made? If so when were they made? How much were they for? What did they guarantee? What were the terms? Were they loans? Was it a subsidy at all? As a tax payer I'd love to know. Perhaps you could provide evidence comrade?

sevenair wrote:

May has offered 'guarantees' and 'reassurances'. At this time I'm not aware of any payment having been made. If we have left we are free to set our own rules when it comes to 'state aid' as you put it.

sevenair wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

Please provide full details of the ‘illegal subsidies’. You must have full details of the them if you’re able to make such a claim.

Bold from a guy that doesn't back up his claims even when asked multiple times.

Giving tax payer money to manufacturers to enable lower sales prices are illegal subsidies. That is common knowledge, no sources needed.

And funny that you bring up marixism, considering
how much you ignore reality to stick to doctrine.

Best regards
Thomas

Have the 'subsidies' be made?

tommy1808 wrote:

JJJ wrote:

It just means the taxpayer will pony up the difference.

And that would exceed the mere higher cost, as those cars are then made with tax payer direct cash subsidies.

Best regards
Thomas

Going back to state aid, its advantages over over,stick or local producers that's the issue. If the government is (for example) given an incentive so that the car in the EU costs exactly after Brexit the same as it does now that constitute an unfair advantage and how does that distort competition?

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

Bold from a guy that doesn't back up his claims even when asked multiple times.

Giving tax payer money to manufacturers to enable lower sales prices are illegal subsidies. That is common knowledge, no sources needed.

And funny that you bring up marixism, considering
how much you ignore reality to stick to doctrine.

Best regards
Thomas

Have the 'subsidies' be made?

you need to start reading more careful:

tommy1808 wrote:

JJJ wrote:

It just means the taxpayer will pony up the difference.

And that would exceed the mere higher cost, as those cars are then made with tax payer direct cash subsidies.

Best regards
Thomas

no one ever claimed they already do.

Going back to state aid, its advantages over over,stick or local producers that's the issue. If the government is (for example) given an incentive so that the car in the EU costs exactly after Brexit the same as it does now that constitute an unfair advantage and how does that distort competition?

Without Taxpayer subsidizing the additional costs, that only happen because of a unilateral UK decision, is an unfair advantage, even if the end price on the EU market is the same.

best regards
Thomas

sevenair wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

Have the 'subsidies' be made?

you need to start reading more careful:

tommy1808 wrote:

And that would exceed the mere higher cost, as those cars are then made with tax payer direct cash subsidies.

Best regards
Thomas

no one ever claimed they already do.

Going back to state aid, its advantages over over,stick or local producers that's the issue. If the government is (for example) given an incentive so that the car in the EU costs exactly after Brexit the same as it does now that constitute an unfair advantage and how does that distort competition?

Without Taxpayer subsidizing the additional costs, that only happen because of a unilateral UK decision, is an unfair advantage, even if the end price on the EU market is the same.

best regards
Thomas

I don't agree. If the product isn't the same cost as it was pre Brexit then it would be very difficult to argue that it would be unfair. But that's my opinion as you have yours.

We don't know anything about the so called 'state aid'. It could be marketing support, r&d, regional development or anything else. It does not mean they are directly subsidising the cost of the cars directly.

sevenair wrote:

I don't agree. If the product isn't the same cost as it was pre Brexit then it would be very difficult to argue that it would be unfair. .

However, it was the failure of the UK prime minister to offer any fresh thinking on avoiding a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic that received the harshest response.

May repeated a suggestion made last year that the government would mirror EU requirements on non-EU imports arriving in Britain and Northern Ireland that were destined for the rest of Europe, so there would be no need for a customs border between the UK and the union.

Alternatively, the prime minister said, there could be a technological solution that could make customs checks unnecessary on the island of Ireland and elsewhere.

One diplomat said the UK was simply not trusted enough for such arrangements to work. “The prime minister’s proposals are non starters,” he said. “Her customs idea is fantasy – we’d never do that. Mad cow disease originated on UK isles and [the country] is the biggest entry port for counterfeited goods.

“The hi-tech arrangement is sci-fi. No-one has seen it yet on Planet Earth. So back to square one on Ireland.”

May’s request for the UK to become “associate members” of EU agencies, such as the European Aviation Safety Agency, was additionally dismissed with the now familiar accusation that the UK was “cherry-picking” aspects of membership.

The US is offering Britain a worse “Open Skies” deal after Brexit than it had as an EU member, in a negotiating stance that would badly hit the transatlantic operating rights of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

tommy1808 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

I don't agree. If the product isn't the same cost as it was pre Brexit then it would be very difficult to argue that it would be unfair. .

Nothing is easier to argue. Domestic, that is car makers in the EU, see less sales if the, Yaris in this case, doesn´t get more expensive due to the higher costs. That is hard damage to the EU economy.

That would be in no way different from the Chinese Taxpayer subsidizing their Solar Panel Sales. EU Panel makers can, and do in tenders, meet the same price...... apparently that is considered an unfair business practice and leading to tariffs.

Being outside the common market quite literally has a price.

best regards
Thomas

sevenair wrote:

A quick search unveils no protest from you regarding the €100million cash injection (which is what it really was) nor could I find you protesting about the dodgy deals which kept Alitalia flying and which continue to do so to this day. I'm sure you'll happily provide me with quotes of your posts protesting this state aid and subsidies pay to by failed airlines. Why is that ok but provision of marketing support, start up grants and the like offends you so?.

sevenair wrote:

Mad Merkel kept AB flying just long enough for the election to take place. It wouldn't look good for her to have stranded families around Europe in the summer holidays.

sevenair wrote:

Will you be pressing your MEP to get Ireland to pay back the taxes owned on dodgy tech giant tax avoidance and will you also be pressing the MEP to get similar investigations into deals in Luxembourg and the Netherlands expedited and the money recovered?

sevenair wrote:

Mad Merkel kept AB flying just long enough for the election to take place. It wouldn't look good for her to have stranded families around Europe in the summer holidays.

It's been five years since the dodgy post office deal which kept Alitalia going and it seems to have received money in addition to the EY money pumped into it. You're ok with Alitalia having billions pumped into it for years putting other euro airlines at a competitive disadvantage but seem to be the only person in the UK (apart from May) privy to the car manufacturer deal and you're not happy with it.

Will you be pressing your MEP to get Ireland to pay back the taxes owned on dodgy tech giant tax avoidance and will you also be pressing the MEP to get similar investigations into deals in Luxembourg and the Netherlands expedited and the money recovered?

Arion640 wrote:

sevenair wrote:

Mad Merkel kept AB flying just long enough for the election to take place. It wouldn't look good for her to have stranded families around Europe in the summer holidays.

It's been five years since the dodgy post office deal which kept Alitalia going and it seems to have received money in addition to the EY money pumped into it. You're ok with Alitalia having billions pumped into it for years putting other euro airlines at a competitive disadvantage but seem to be the only person in the UK (apart from May) privy to the car manufacturer deal and you're not happy with it.

Will you be pressing your MEP to get Ireland to pay back the taxes owned on dodgy tech giant tax avoidance and will you also be pressing the MEP to get similar investigations into deals in Luxembourg and the Netherlands expedited and the money recovered?

sevenair, there's a Brexit discussion going on on the civil aviation forum about Open skies, I think you may want to take a look if you haven't seen it!

The U.S. has offered the U.K. a more limited “Open Skies” aviation deal after Brexit than it has as a member of the European Union, but participants expressed confidence that the lucrative transatlantic market would continue unimpeded.

sevenair wrote:

We are leaving the SM. Its in everyone's best interests to make things work.

All businesses - even the food industry that risk loosing half its export to the UK - are more concerned with keeping the integrity of the internal market than any loss of UK market access #Brexit #eudk

sevenair wrote:

"The US also played down fears of a looming crisis."

"Both sides have a strong interest in reaching an agreement and are very close to one”.

LTenEleven wrote:

Brexit free trade deal cannot include financial services: France

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/brexit- ... oc-1212kl1

Dutchy wrote:

LTenEleven wrote:

Brexit free trade deal cannot include financial services: France

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/brexit- ... oc-1212kl1

Of course not, if the financial services are included, they need to conform to the same EU rules. We have learned from the Icesave debacle and 2008 (hopefully).

LJ wrote:

Dutchy wrote:

LTenEleven wrote:

Brexit free trade deal cannot include financial services: France

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/brexit- ... oc-1212kl1

Of course not, if the financial services are included, they need to conform to the same EU rules. We have learned from the Icesave debacle and 2008 (hopefully).

Probably not the most important reason why the French (but also the rest of the EU) doesn't want to include financial services in a free trade deal. Such a deal would mean passporting rights for the UK and that's something which is a no-go area for EU members (who already don't like the fact that London is a big player in the EUR market). Not to mention that France seems to gain from the Brexit as firms are moving some business to Paris.