Britain just thinks it is reasonable that it should be treated as well as Canada, South Korea etc. Given what a huge market the UK is for EU goods (compared to those countries) that is not too much to expect, is it?
I think that the Germans will ensure there will be a reasonable deal, they'll override those within the EU (and those like you within the UK) who seek punishment for the UK from the EU, the Germans know how important we are to them.

There is vast scope for trade increases with the USA. If elements of competition , and therefore US in put ,are allowed within the NHS that can only be a good thing. When people bleat about how wonderful the NHS is they never compare it ,to say ,the German system...a German system that has been doing far better with this virus than the NHS.

There is only a tiny chance of being killed by covid 19 , almost all deaths are people already in a bad way in hospital and care homes...so releasing elements of the lockdown are a good idea.

There is only a tiny chance of being killed by covid 19 , almost all deaths are people already in a bad way in hospital and care homes...so releasing elements of the lockdown are a good idea.

Yes this is a great idea if you're Dominic Cummings, or a Tory Grandee. It solves the problem of the demographic time bomb which was going to bankrupt Brexit Britain, because they were going to have to foot the bill for looking after all the old folk. It solves the NHS crisis, what's not to like. It gets the economy going so we can steal an advantage over the Europeans. It's genius.

Oh until someone points out that there are 2 million vulnerable people currently shielding with health conditions, disabled, or on immunosuppressants who will have a mortality rate above around 18%. Might as well get rid of that lot as well, because they cost the NHS a lot by definition. Genius!

Britain just thinks it is reasonable that it should be treated as well as Canada, South Korea etc. Given what a huge market the UK is for EU goods (compared to those countries) that is not too much to expect, is it?
I think that the Germans will ensure there will be a reasonable deal, they'll override those within the EU (and those like you within the UK) who seek punishment for the UK from the EU, the Germans know how important we are to them.

The EU would happily give the UK a Canada like deal, they've said that all along. They were waiting two years for the Tories to fight it out amongst themselves about what kind of future relationship they wanted (and don't go blaming Labour, they were not in power throughout this whole sorry saga). Theresa May did a remarkable job of somehow squaring the circle of how to remain close to the EU and not in it. But the Tories skuppered every attempt to reach consensus. The EU looked on in bewilderment as the Tories descended into a group of cats in a sack squabbling and lashing out at the EU from time to time. It really is disgraceful the way the Tories have brought our country to its knees on the world stage. And you think any other countries would try and strike a deal with those clowns and sycophants. The only country that will is the US and their corporations will suck us dry like a spider devouring a fly.

The German car industry etc didn't come to the rescue did they when we kept forcing a cliff edge. Get this, if anything the Germans industrialists are not going to come to our rescue, they value the integrity of the single market far more.

There is vast scope for trade increases with the USA. If elements of competition , and therefore US in put ,are allowed within the NHS that can only be a good thing. When people bleat about how wonderful the NHS is they never compare it ,to say ,the German system...a German system that has been doing far better with this virus than the NHS.

I won't get into the folly of selling of the NHS right now, I don't have the time. I will point out that in the US patients pay about four times the price for the same US drugs we get through the NHS and they need private health insurance to afford it.

You are a typical leftist...you actually believe the Conservative party have hatched a plot to kill off millions of old people...complete delusion on your part. Do you believe the Spanish and Italians are also engaged in genocide of old and ill people, or is it just the nasty Tories? The death rate per million in the UK is less that Belgium, Spain or Italy...and Germany are probably counting differently. The CCP are the cause of the initial spread of this virus and they may be responsible for the virus itself...but you probably see the CCP as the model for a future UK government.

The fact that there are vulnerable people does not imply that the non-vulnerable can not start to have greater freedoms...but I have noticed that leftists like the population being locked down and controlled...it's your sort of thing .

You must be the only person in the UK that thinks May did a good job! She was the most hated PM in modern British history, you were literally her only fan lol. The UK does not need the EU to the point where it must surrender its sovereignty to it...Germany needs us more than we need Germany...and as I have shown , Germany is already undermining the single market with mass bail-outs (against EU rules) in the pipeline.

This obsession with leftists about the US healthcare system is merely to deflect from the fact that there are better healthcare models than their new religion the NHS...it's so fucking obvious.

You don't seem to be able to link a post to its response. I was agreeing with you that a few old people will die, but being a bit more realistic.

Nearly the entire population is a leftist to you, so calling me one is meaningless.

You really are stupid if you think Germany is coming to the rescue, or the US won't rip us off.

You only need to read up on the TTIP negotiations between the US and the EU to see how the US operates in this way. We will be eaten alive from a point of weakness, worse than What happened in Greece, because there will be no one to bail us out.

Wake up!

Being told to wake up by a hard core leftist is a bit rich...you're still living the 1970's over and over like the fucking ground hog day lol. Most of the English population are politically conservative by nature. The old labour party once had the well being of workers at its heart (though it often had the wrong answers to problems) but now it is more about promoting the rights of certain groups over others. I fall into the white, middle-aged, straight, working class bracket ...that means that the Labour party does not represent my interests in any way...it also explains why a working class area (like where I live) constantly returns Conservative MP's. The "red wall" has also collapsed up north because the only people that vote Labour are public sector workers (teachers etc), students and transexuals. The Labour party is dead , it has abandoned its base.

The Labour party is in a bad way, but there are many public sector workers/students who have nothing to lose by voting for the cretins so it will not drop below a certain level...the staunchly pro-EU lib dems are politically finished...what's that say about the English "love" for the EU?

Germany isn't coming to our rescue, it will come to its own...it needs our market more than we need its.The threat facing Germany is that we can source much of what we get from there from the US and elsewhere.

We already have a great trading relationship with the US, a far better one than we have with Germany...an extension of that relationship will almost certainly bring benefit to both countries.

There you go again having a rant about the Labour Party, while the clowns in government are going to drive us of a cliff in December. Oh yeah it's all the Labour party's fault.

They couldn't (or wouldn't) prevent the carnage in the carehomes, what makes you think they can get something workable with the EU. Everything Johnson touches turns to dust.

The way it works on this forum is you ask or answer a debating point and someone responds on that point. It's not a place for ranting and ignoring the questions or answers provided.

Going back to Germany(which has one of the best healthcare services apparently, (with a socialist government)). Put this in your pipe and smoke it. Germany doesn't need our custom, with tariffs and mountains of red tape etc attached. It has a massive emerging market in the Eastern European accession countries. And the great thing is, these countries are fully integrated members of the single market. What's not to like.

The labour party are an absolute disgrace...they have abandoned the very people they were originally created to represent...they have moved on to represent middle class public sector "workers", students and any minority group that it can stir up against the majority.

How ironic it will be for you if that leftist religion , the NHS, turns out to be responsible for unloading old people with covid 19 into the care homes.

Did you know that the German healthcare system is a public / private partnership? That very thing that leftists like you despise, that you do all you can to block in the UK.People like you must take some of the blame for the poor performance of the NHS...your dogma has handcuffed it.

We have great trade with the US on WTO, we trade more with the US than we do with Germany...explain to me why we can't trade just as well with Germany outside the EU as we do with the US. Do you literally think the Germans are going to stop selling us stuff and that they will also block our sales to them?

Look at it this way the US manufactures its cars for sale in the UK actually in the UK, so as to avoid the costs of importing them from a third country, so does Japan. In fact Japan manufactures cars in the UK to sell in the EU. When we leave with no amenable deal with the EU, those Japanese factories will relocate into the EU. If Germany wanted to sell large numbers of Mercedes, or VWs in the UK after we leave with no trade deal, it would only be cost effective for them to build new factories in the UK to manufacture them. But they won't, it's not profitable enough to justify building new factories. They will just develop their markets in Eastern Europe instead, with the added benefit of consolidating and developing those markets inside the single market.

All this stuff is basic economics. Something that the Tory Brexiters don't want you to know. They just want you to keep going on about sovereignty, or hating on immigrants, while they do their shady tax haven deals with their billionaire palls. They don't give a shit about ordinary British workers. We will just become a cash cow, like the US population is over there.

I'd shoot myself in the head before I took economic advice from a socialist.

I see Nissan are suggesting that Renault should manufacture in the UK....it's fantastic that foreign businesses manufacture here in order to sell here.

Checkers

Do'h, I'm failing to make the connection...

I see Nissan are suggesting that Renault should manufacture in the UK....it's fantastic that foreign businesses manufacture here in order to sell here.

Duh! You've just agreed with me, that car manufacturers need to manufacture in the market they need to sell into to be cost effective. Renault obviously wouldn't expect to sell many cars here which it manufactured in France because of tariffs, red tape etc. So they would contemplate building an expensive factory in the UK to do so.

Can't you think rationally, your arguments don't compute, you constantly contradict yourself.

Human beings are tribal creatures. I, We, and Them are the categories of social life, like space, time and causality in the natuof ral order. Where the lines are is a matter of sentiment (as Mill saw). Very many Brits think of thems as Brits rather than Europeans, and I suspect the same is true of many people elswhere in Europe (Greece for example). Lovers of democracy should not lament the decline of the
EU, in which bureaucrats ruled on behalf of bankers.

It looks like the government is now descending into chaos. There are rows in cabinet around plans to unlock, some schools refuse to open and many distrust the government. A report has come out this morning that HS2 is becoming derailed, the costs are spiralling and the first stage won't be completed until the 2030's. The Brexit talks have gone no where fast this week as predicted, as it is becoming evident that the British negotiating stance is a sham, a concoction designed to skupper the talks and blame the EU for the chaos and the resulting economic hit to come.


I would have the governance of the EU anytime compared to the shower of chaos the UK is having to endure at the moment.

The fact remains. The EU is fundamentally unsound. The only basis for union I know of -- Europe's shared Christian heritage -- the Eurosecularists scornfully reject. And the European Union was as much a defeat for democracy as the fall of Communism was its triumph. (As a philosopher, I had better not advise the Brits on how to handle their economic problems.)

Europe's shared Christian heritage -- the Eurosecularists scornfully reject. — Phil Devine

Yeah, maybe because we were done with the Christian lies and bullshit somewhere around the Enlightenment.

So what are you going ro replace it with? If you didn't know, the stock of the Enlightenment is very low, especially in Europe (the collapse of Marxism is part of the story). And there are still lots of Christians in Europe, if only you would stop dumping on them. Pope Francis, for one.

what needs replacing? I function spectacularly well without religion as do 60% of Dutch people. There will always be people that believe in fairy tales. Not a good reason to start to take them seriously.

What Christianity used to do for Europe was to provide it with an understanding of what it meant to be European. Personal belief is another matter: many atheists and agnostics have acknowledged the cultural value of religion, And quite intelligent people believe in "fairy tales" (and for that matter fairy tales like Snow White may encode significant truths). So far as I can see all the EU has to offer is the rule of bureaucrats on behalf of bankers.

Yawn. The EU wasn't started to give people a feeling of being European but to avoid wars. And Christianity certainly didn't provide an understanding of what it was to be European, pace every fucking war fought since 0 AD.

Talking about a shared European identity is as misplaced as talking about an Asian one. It's not interesting because it's a stupid idea currently gaining traction because it's easier to then go on and say, "oi, no Muslims wanted here because they're not like us".

Meanwhile, we have enjoyed the longest period of peace since written history thanks to the EU. It's the most successful peace initiative the world had known. Unsound my ass.

Yesterday Priti Patel said in reference to the immigration bill,
"It will end free movement and open up global Britain".

Today Mat Hancock said the second time,
"We put a protective ring around care homes".

Priti Patel in one swoop ended our privelidge of free movement around Europe and made anyone who earns less than £25,600 per annum a second class citizen. Interestingly Polish builders who are allowed to stay here are more privelidged than us, they will get a British passport and retain full privelidges throughout Europe.

More evidence that Brexit is an act of self harm. Most of our privelidged access to the European market will thrown under the bus in the next few months to be replaced with a begging bowl to hold out for Trump to throw some scraps into.

Mat Hancock has now fallen from grace in uttering those words in the house.

The way this virus is playing out the last thing we are going to need are vast numbers of eastern Europeans (or third worlders for that matter) milling about in a society with huge numbers of people out of work. Same goes for the rest of the Western world too. Free movement must end, anyone with common sense can see that, it's just that Brexiteers were ahead of the curve, we could see the problems that are inherent to open borders...especially in times like this.

Times like this happened after the referendum. And all those immigrants who came here before the end of Jan 2020 from Europe will be able to stay and have free movement and privelidges throughout Europe. They will have the best of both worlds. It's only the British who will be denied freedom of movement throughout Europe.

Although it will prevent EU nationals who are not already here, moving here, if they earn less than £25,600, they still retain their freedom of movement around Europe. And now there are going to be exceptions for nurses, care home workers farm labourers, the list gets longer and longer. Alongside more people coming in from the rest of the world, there will probably be about the same number coming in anyway and we will be stuck here with them.

Well when Scotland leaves, at least I won't be stuck, I will be rejoining the EU.

Well when Scotland leaves, at least I won't be stuck, I will be rejoining the EU. — Punshhh

How likely is that in the meantime? I haven't been paying much attention to that for awhile now.

My bet is that there will be another independence referendum in the near future. And that it will be very close, but edge on leave. Scotland is very very pro-EU.

Europe wasn't created to give people an identitty but it needs an identity to to support solidarity among its members (and thus prevent war). Between Germans and Greeks, for example. Not everyone accepts such an identity: the majority of the English do not, and others are likely to join them as the rulers of Europe, who are in no sense democratic, become more and more intrusive in their demands. The one definition of Europe -- God's Continent as Phillip Jenkins called it -- has been treated with scorn by the people on this site. It is not a matter of belief, necessarily: people are sometimes united by the religion in which they do not believe. As witness the Irish joke, "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant atheist?

Solidarity is a socialist concept. Definitely an issue now but so is Southern Europe's repeated flaunting of various rules. The Dutch would be happy to help the Italians if they agree to adhere to other agreements already made in the past. Without those assurances I'm afraid the solidarity will not be there.

The one definition of Europe -- God's Continent as Phillip Jenkins called it -- has been treated with scorn by the people on this site. — Phil Devine

Of course, because it's regressive. Reducing EU cultural identity to Christianity is simplistic. Why not Greek philosophy, Enlightenment and humanism?

Say no to "memento mori".