So that is saying the economy has shrunk, or that the rate of growth has slowed?
The former is pretty serious, the latter less so.
And it won’t matter at all to people who voted leave, because even if the economy contracts, big companies leave and people get screwed, they’ll just blame Europe/big business/immigrants from who knows where.
As dumb as Brexit might be economically, it’s not like it’s an uniquely British problem, several other European countries are facing challenges and thinking the EU is at fault. I’m not entirely sure it’ll survive, dumb as it would be to break up and try to navigate the world as a bunch of middle to small economies…
It’s saying since that since the before times when the Brexit referundum was a figment of David Cameron’s imagination, every other country in that list apart from Japan has either accelerated its growth or maintained much higher growth. The UK has neither. Growth has in fact shrunk dramatically.
Brexit will hurt UK and the rest of the world will not miss a beat.
But it’s still growth.
And that’ll be enough for Brexiteers, who’ll first diminish the impact and then claim it is a worthwhile sacrifice as we head towards better trade deals.
To be fair though, Trying to steer so many disparate countries in the same direction was never going to be easy. Honestly I think they should have admitted the ascension (here I mean Poland, Lithuania etc, basically former Soviet bloc) countries, and Greece, at the rate of 1 every 3 years max speed, and had much more stringent controls, and a much better plan for integration.
plus there should have been a trial period of limited membership before full membership, and an agreement in place beforehand a to how to distribute immigrants etc. It’s simply crazy and bound to cause problems when you have 1 million Poles and 1 million other eastern Europeans arrive in the same country (Britain) in the same year, when said country was expecting (and had a blurry half assed plan to accommodate) 200,000 extra people tops.
Plus a plan onjhow to distribute new immigrants from outside the EU. Italy is ranting and railing right now and I can understand their point of view. Plus, what happens to those 1 million Syrians living in Germany once they get EU passports, and decide to go into Belgium etc? Building up problems here.
I also think it is more than slightly odd that different countries get different levels of subsidies etc. That was always bound to create a bit of resentment, and accusations of one rule for them and another for us.
Plus the rules that doe xist don’t seem universal. I’m a UK citizen living in the Canary islands, and to register myself as a resident here I had to take out health insurance.
As an EU citizen I have the right to healthcare accross the Union, but the government here made me pay, but not the government in Madrid when I was resident there. the canary islands are an autonomous region, so it appears a sub national law overrides EU law.
PLUS I get taxed if I import anything from Britain, but not from Germany…even though they’re both EU countries…
So, tldr: one could easily make the argument that the EU is not doing a very good job right now! And from that one can lead onto the next step in the argument, whihc is to say that perhapsany individual country would do better itself.
Then throw in jingoism + patriotic nostalgia + stoked fear of prominent immigrants + blatant lies…
No wonder people voted leave :(
For the record, I voted remain, for the simple reason that i didn’t see anyone with any sort of germ of an idea of a possibility of a consideration of an actual plan to manage an exit, and one simply doesn’t gamble with this stuff at a(n) (inter)national level.
Farage and Johnson should be hung, drawn and quartered.
If they can’t compete with Germany, then I guess it is Germany’s fault. Amirite? I mean, EU countries are not supposed to compete!
This is really weird, probably illegal (there have been reported abuses of healthcare regional systems illegally refusing assistance hoping people don’t know the laws. They are generally sued).
As long as you are working or have worked at least once in Spain (and thus paid into social security through taxes), you get access to social security/healthcare for everything. Note that this is the same for everybody, even Spanish citizens. If you have never worked you have to access healthcare through your parents.
If you have never paid into the system, you still have to be granted healthcare, but you have to go through hurdles and service is slower. Basically you have access to ER procedures and they will treat serious conditions discovered in the ER as long ass you need, but no on-request consultations.
This is not even EU law, this is Spanish law. As long as you are a fiscal resident (pay local taxes) you have full healthcare.
However…
EU article 7 does forbid traveling to another country just to get healthcare, so the fiscal residency requirement is actually a way to check this (imperfect, though).
I also don’t understand your import tax comment. In the Canary Islands you get taxed if you import anything from mainland Spain and/or anywhere else. Some large carriers (Amazon) are able to fudge customs and avoid taxes, but as far as I know (I don’t live there) it depends on the sender, customs diligence and the type of good brought into the island, but country or region of origin is not significant.
Amigo!
I’ve never been taxed on stuff from Germany or the peninsula.
I have been taxed on stuff from the UK, namely my computer (value £1500) and some books (value £50) but not my monitor (£100.)
It seems pretty random.
Regarding the health insurance requirement, I know Spaniards coming to the UK area subject to any such requirements, hence the feeling of one rule for some and another for others.
That can’t be a good sign.
Trumpian “unfair trade deals” strike once again.
Depends on your viewpoint. David Davis is a hard brexiteer, so anyone on the soft brexit (or no brexit) side has to be pleased to see him go. There’s going to be more chaos than usual for a week though, I’d imagine.
Davis is notoriously lazy and thick as shit.
In his time as Secretary he refused to work more than 3 days a week. Met his EU counterpart once. He hasn’t done anything much really.
His replacement Raab is a notorious misogynist and all round shitweasel.
That was Britain’s “fault”, though. We chose not to impose the requirements that are allowed (indeed supposed to happen) under EU rules, then complained about foreigners scrounging off the NHS. It caused quite a situation when the “settled status” category was first being discussed, because one of the requirements was having maintained comprehensive health insurance, which many people hadn’t done, because the UK hadn’t previously required them to (and obviously they weren’t expecting Brexit would happen and take away their right of residence).
True, but however bad Davis may have been, the fact that this shakeup is happening so late in the game is a bad sign for the process. Not that anyone that’s been paying attention needed a sign to see how things are going, of course.
All I know about David David, Brexit Bulldog, comes from Dead Ringers, but I guess it’s pretty accurate.
Rumours swirl that Boris Johnson is to resign, too.
May might face a leadership challenge, but is unlikely to lose. On the other hand, if she can’t pass legislation in the commons, that’s a real mess too.
Really there should be a vote of no confidence in the Commons at this point, but there aren’t enough truly unhappy Tories to do that and risk a Corbyn government.
So on we go.
A lot of this is showing that in many countries, it seems that the problem isn’t so much that one party vs. another is in control.
The problem is that we have elected men of low moral character. Much of the national leadership across the globe in democracies seems to just lack any kind of moral fiber. They’re a bunch of charlatans, who care more about themselves than the nations they were elected to serve.
I see it with the Brexiters in the UK, as well as the GOP in the US.
Actually the word ‘men’ stood out for me on reading your post. Of course women can have wrong prejudices just like men, but it seems less common.
Some people are forgetting who the leading “Brexiteer” candidate for the Tory leadership was, it seems.