If this factory was closing due to the business winding up for good you’d have more of a point.
However, it is relocating to the EU. So it doesn’t matter what the “myriad” causes you’d like to blame this on are; it seems setting up a factory within the EEC is more economically viable now than just keeping one running within the UK.
Is there a reason you use “myriad”? I didn’t.
Did you read the article? The company is moving parts of its business to its previously existing facilities in the EU, it is not setting them up.
I’m not blaming anything; I’m just quoting the article.
I see your point.
And I think it weakens the argument when everything is pinned on Brexit.
And I say that as someone who thinks the whole thing was…misjudged, as in a mistake but also a result of faulty judging, which I am using here as a synonym for analysing and evaluating.
So, leaving aside the political chicanery for a minute, disgusting as it was, the reasons given for leaving don’t add up, the promised land seems more like a utopia etc etc.
But the pain is very real.
I the to day, or even think it, but Bojo must be quite thankful in a way for the covid crisis.
It affords the perfect scapegoat for any woes.
I used “myriad” because even if you didn’t use the word explicitly, it is fundamentally your point here:
Don’t get me wrong. I can agree there will always be a number of factors that lead to businesses needing to downsize various parts of their workforces and closing facilities. But there are differences in how those decisions are executed. So where I will disagree is; I don’t think the decision to relocate (or refocus) to the EU is mere coincidence. There is now a lopsided trend of businesses migrating from the UK to the EU regardless of how many factors are at play.
Brexit was sold as being the dawn of a new economic golden age for the UK wheelin’ and dealin’ across the globe. So why are any businesses doing this?
I did miss that bit. But it’s still fundamentally same take, EEC=viable, UK=not viable. I don’t think we can blame the outcome on COVID either because, well, the EU has that too.
Alstein
8935
I already know some folks who moved from UK to Germany due to this, in addition to some fears for their safety in the UK.
Well I hope he isn’t quite that nasty but it certainly helps to deflect blame.
I am not arguing against that. However in this case I looked at their website; while it is unclear what each facility does except for a central office in Belgium, I saw they have 12 sites in Europe across 7 countries vs 3 in the UK.
That’s not necessarily true as one business/segment can be struggling while others may not be, so covid (or brexit) could have worse effects.
I’m certainly not going to try and argue with anyone that Brexit is good for the UK economy. Cause it isn’t. Some of the things boggle the mind frankly - no more so than the guy mentioned upthread whose business was 100% in Europe but he voted for Brexit. Duh.
Really my focus was (what I perceived) to be the inaccurate attribution of Brexit as the reason why this factory is closing and my annoyance at this sort of “told you so reporting” when it isn’t accurate.
Sabotai
8937
There are so many articles of firms deciding to invest in Europa rather than the UK, it’s difficult to post them all. Like this one:
I tried to find articles of companies going the other way and investing in the UK, the closest I got is this one:
Not actual moving, but eyeballing a move.
Opportunistic rather than bath as such, although I think both directives apply to him.
I just started work this week in a factory building streetlights.
I wonder that it hasn’t moved to Europe.
I think I’m getting more and more into the Chinese mindset, when someone asked an official what they thought about the French Revolution, still too early to tell.
Do I think Brexit is an economic mistake? Yes. Do I think the EU should extract every single drop of concessions it can? Yes. Do I think the UK will end up after all of this as still one of the richest countries in the World? Yes.
It’s “done”, it’s too early to tell the results, there’s a lot of a German difficult to pronounce word feeling when reading about people voting to eat other people’s faces, I’m still more worried about the repercussions in my own country than in the UK, and at the end of the day the British people voted for it so they “deserve” to get it good and proper, I’m just sorry we need to get it too.
It was funny while it was just the “LOL, the British truly believe they’re still the Empire and everyone else needs to kowtow”, it’s just a PITA now and the EU has more stuff to worry about.
Good luck! I hope it stays that way for you.
Aceris
8941
It’s depressing that you believe spreading false defamatory stereotypes about other nationalities is funny.
Yeah, that statement is 52% true at most.
Oh man, false and defamatory, gosh. Every single European country has similar beliefs, because we’ve all existed for fucking forever and we all believe our past is glorious in some way, mostly because it is, since we’re still around and countries don’t keep existing unless they’ve mostly earned it someway in the past, it’s all glorious, just don’t look too much into it.
I’m not going to cry all that much for people who live in a country that has a higher standard of living than where I live, and it’s not like the “How dare they treat us this way, don’t they know that the World owes us” is a British disease, everyone is exceptional.
But it was funny, coming from someone who lives in a country that also had an Empire in the past, wth do you want me to say, we’ve laughed about it over lunch, but I’m sure many people thought the idea of seceding from the Catholic Church was funny, or fighting the Spanish Empire, and it turned out okay.
And there are much worse stereotypes than “still think the Empire is a thing”.
It’s the ones who say we should reclaim the empire, starting with Luton, that worry me.
FYI Luton is a town in the UK with a large Pakistani and Indian demographic.
Saying it needs to be reclaimed is basically saying it has become a foreign land and so should be reconquered.
It’s incredibly racist and also a bit silly imho.
To be fair, I’ve only heard this said once and it was couched as a joke.
Thrag
8945
This all seems a little fishy.
Banjax
8946
I’d assumed that a lot of it was Salmond, a man who seems in love with himself even when he’s not drunkenly poring at colleagues, bluster but it’s shaping into far more than that.
The quote that seems to be missing and I’ll need to find, suggested that the government lawyers feared for their reputation as the statements by their client were being contradicted by facts emerging in court… That suggests to me not only were they wasting taxpayers money but they were also lying to keep it going.
Potentially ruinous and a lucky escape for the union if she does resign (or is badly damaged) and goes into the next election.
It is not “relocating”, it is moving production to other facilities it has in Europe. They are not “setting up” facilities in Europe they already have them…
Is Brexit a factor, almost certainly. Is the factory closing “because of Brexit” almost certainly not…
We’ve been over this. The point is; why not ‘move production’* of one of the European factories to the UK, then? We’re like, super competitive now, right?
That a factory has to close probably isn’t to do with Brexit, you are right. But that it is that factory that has been chosen to close probably has everything to do with Brexit.
* Edit: These are real (British!) people losing real jobs. Fuck that terminology.
Because this factory has been shedding jobs steadily over the last few years? I’ll be in Barrow on Monday, Tuesday next week, I’m sure my partner who comes from 30 minutes down the road from there knows someone who works there…
