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Having studied a spot or two of economic history, I believe there may be one or two examples to be drawn from what happened when France and other countries began to reject and circumvent the British Smithian opposition to trade barriers in the mid-nineteenth century. Certainly, there should be some useful data there with which to help predict the consequences of Britain's potential trade position when leaving the EU.

My issue with the HRA is the way in which it is sometimes abused by activist judges to circumvent Parliament, and how little emphasis is put on the human rights of victims of crime vs the over emphasis on the human rights of criminals.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35639157


...hmmm ...... Realistically a deal like this will have been worked on for ages but timing seems....

..well... who knows.


Another query : During the Scottish ref. I recall one of the arguments being put forward was that if they did go independent there would be issues with the banks as , by law, they're required to have a Head office/equivalent in an EU member state.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11089719/Why-will-Scottish-banks-move-south-if-theres-a-Yes-vote.html

http://www.cityam.com/1410443319/scottish-independence-now-tesco-bank-says-it-will-move-england


Now, assuming this is still the case -- and I haven't heard anything different but, TBH, don't really follow the ins and outs of international banking regulations that much -- said banks would be required to have an HQ in an EU country

-- perhaps say a German city with easy access to financial markets --

so would/will move or at the least set up elsewhere anyway ?

And , of course, if the whole of the UK pulled out, presumably Scotland would lose those banks that stayed due to them staying in the UK ?

 reds8n wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35639157
...hmmm ...... Realistically a deal like this will have been worked on for ages but timing seems....

..well... who knows.

That would result in foreign majority control of the FTSE. Bad news frankly.

Capitalism can be a good thing but most countries avoid pure capitalism, including the s and most of Europe. A lot of key UK industries have drifted abroad in merger talks in circumstances where other national governments would have blocked takeover by fiat.
This is big enough that even Cameron and his short term minded cronies might not like that, because the majority of their paymasters in the City wont like it either.

Deutsche Borshe, the proposed senior partner is a third of the size of the LSE. Agreeing to this is a crazy talk move similar to the takeover of RMC by Cemex in 2005, a classic case study of a much larger company being taken over by a smaller one, that couldn't actually afford it but happened because the share price was currently lower than expected it made a quick profit for some investors.
In any other western country there would have been a block of sale at governmental leve, but in the UK short term profit reigns.

Do not be surprised if the talks end quietly, after all its a third attempt.

Indeed, I more or less agree.


..... so.. back in the 90s there was a -- very good -- TV comedy show called The Day Today.

Quite ahead of its time in some ways, not least in its use of ridiculous graphics and essentially pointless " what the people think" features and so on.

One of their sketches was






.. and today .....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35644638

" BBC to stage EU referendum debate at Wembley Arena"

..

... did we all become fictional................ and no one told us ?

 Grey Templar wrote:
You could always create your own Bill of Rights.

I wouldn't trust our government to come up with one.

And really, why throw out one law just to enact a new one, which should be exactly the same, in its place?

There have already been calls to abrogate the Human Rights Act for the reasons that Shadow Captain Edithrae outlined above, and also complaints that the Human Rights Act was forced on the UK by the EU.

If there are defects in the HRA, these do not have to be addressed by leaving the EU.

I see the common misconception about the Human Rights Act is being repeated here. HRA has nothing to do with EU, it is to comply with the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate institution. Even Russia and Turkey are members.

Yes but doesn't the EU require its members to join the ECHR?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Yes but doesn't the EU require its members to join the ECHR?

It is a convention, there's no formal requirement. Anyway, leaving ECHR would look really bad. Do you really want to be country that says that the human rights requirements that Turkey and Russia have agreed to are too strident for you? What's next, deratifying Geneva Conventions?

So, is it the "ECHR" judges that (according to the papers) keep on overruling UK court decisions?

Or is it EU judges?

And yeah, just to state again, because we're on page 9, a lot of the questions I'm asking are not because of my own personal belief, but more me trying to find the root of the common complaints I'd hear in the pub.

Probably ECHR judges most of the time. European Court of Justice (the EU institution) deals only with interpretation of EU law. You cannot appeal decisions of national courts to ECJ.

Technically its the ECtHR that the Judges belong too. They enact the ECHR which explains the t in the name.


Basically, they inact rulings against "bad laws". For example.

The UK used to ban the import of sex dolls. This is against the free movement of goods and services. But you are allowed to deviate on 'moral grounds.' Sex dolls were immoral, or so the UK said.

The judges on the ECtHR said that because Britain was selling sex dolls made in the UK, the moral arguement was invalid so they couldn't bad the imports.

That's basically how the courts get about making the countries fall in line with the convention.

Well, that's eminently sensible ruling!

EDIT:
That was not ECHR, it was ECJ. The British court consulted the European court on how to apply the directive.

Ah my bad. The ECtHR only applies to human rights cases. It is in fact the ECJ that deals with the rest.

Same laws apply though. Do something against the convention and the ECtHR will make you fix it. Technically I suppose it would be possible to tell them to sod off. Its not like they have an army or anything to make you do it.

 Crimson wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Yes but doesn't the EU require its members to join the ECHR?

It is a convention, there's no formal requirement. Anyway, leaving ECHR would look really bad. Do you really want to be country that says that the human rights requirements that Turkey and Russia have agreed to are too strident for you? What's next, deratifying Geneva Conventions?

They agreed to it but ignore it when convenient in practice, so that comparison is laughable. Comparing the United Kingdom to Turkey and Russia is asinine.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Yes but doesn't the EU require its members to join the ECHR?

It is a convention, there's no formal requirement. Anyway, leaving ECHR would look really bad. Do you really want to be country that says that the human rights requirements that Turkey and Russia have agreed to are too strident for you? What's next, deratifying Geneva Conventions?

They agreed to it but ignore it when convenient in practice, so that comparison is laughable. Comparing the United Kingdom to Turkey and Russia is asinine.

Agreed. Most of the cases that the ECtHR deal with come from Turkey and Russia.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here we go. I found a nice table.


http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Stats_violation_2015_ENG.pdf

If the ECHR is not part of the EU then it's not part of the topic of this thread.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If the ECHR is not part of the EU then it's not part of the topic of this thread.

Spoiling my fun.

But it's true, if the UK leaves the EU we still remain accountable to the ECHR, so no need to worry about the Tories removing the right to habeous corpous.

That point is relevant to the thread on the grounds that if you dislike the EU because of the Human Rights Act, and want to leave the EU in order to get rid of it, you're on the wrong track.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Instead, like I said earlier, we'll get a gutter war. Out voters will be branded little Englanders and xenophobes. In voters will be accused of being on the EU payroll. The debate will suffer, and the big ideas will go out the window.

From now until June, all you'll hear from IN is jobs jobs jobs. Economy. Economy. Economy.

and from the Out side: Migrants. Migrants. Migrants. 55 million a day. 55 million a day.

I love political debate, but even for me, this referendum is getting FETHING depressing...and it's just started...

I fear you are right. Like you, I am voting Leave but I remain to be convinced of the unique benefits of staying. Can't see either side engaging in a positive campaign though. And any other results beyond a colossal landslide for either side will mean that this decision will be a sore point for years and, no doubt, bitter recriminations.

I don't think there are any unique benefits of staying. After all, everything that we do in cooperation with the EU is stuff we could do by individual treaties. Basically it's all under one treaty at the moment and that saves a lot of trouble.

After leaving, though, we probably would continue to make treaties with the EU, to avoid having to make treaties with all the individual member nations. Obviously we would have to make separate treaties with places like Switzerland and Norway, who at the moment deal with us mainly via the EU. In fact, these countries are a good model for how to deal with the EU while not a member.

However I don't think there are any unique benefits of leaving either.

I say this in reply to zedmeister, Kilkrazy, or anybody else in this discusion.

Regardless if you're IN or OUT, this is a once in a generation opportunity for somebody to stand up and present a bold vision for Britain's future for the next 40-50 years.

We face economic challenges from the rising nations of India, China, Brazil etc etc, so will we adapt our economy our change our education system to cope with these?

Security issues will dominate as they always do (Russia, Middle East, North Korea, terrorism etc)

Climate change and demographic problems affecting Britain, will also have to be addressed.

And in Britain itself, the problems of Scottish nationalism, the concentration of power in London, an unelected house of lords, and the erosion of civil liberties will present further challenges.

Now, some of these do not concern the EU, but most are effected by it.

We need a leader or a political party to rise to face these challanges. Instead, we have idiots like Cameron and Osborne working for their friends in the city of London, buffoons like Boris Johnson fawned over by a media populated by lackeys, and lame ducks like Jeremy Corbyn who can't even run his own party, never mind the UK. and something called the Lib Dems who would sell their grandmothers for a whiff of power.

No wonder I'm depressed, beause this referendum is a golden opportunity that will be squandered to settle an internal squabble that's being going on in the Tory party since the 1970s.

I'm torn on the matter.

In the stay camp: At this stage, it's only really the EU keeping the Tories in check, when we leave, it's going to get awful.
In the go camp: This should be enough to trigger a new Scottish Independence referrendum, and ideally would allow us to break away from the Tories and re-join the EU. Win-WIn.

Herzlos wrote:

In the go camp: This should be enough to trigger a new Scottish Independence referrendum, and ideally would allow us to break away from the Tories and re-join the EU. Win-WIn.

Well, the Scottish independence supporters tactically voting for leave really isn't a great plan, as the whole argument for another referendum relies on Scotland voting overwhelmingly to stay in the EU while the rest of the UK votes differently.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
You could always create your own Bill of Rights.

We've already got one, it's called the Human Rights Act, but because it was brought in to comply with EU legislation on human rights apparently it is bad and should be repealed.

Actually its because the human Rights Act is heavily lobsided. It means that dangerous terrorist sympathisers that arrived illegally have a right to a family life and cant be deported but actual human rights like a right to silence or right to free speech are largely missing and the courts dont care.

I don't blame the EU for that though, I blame New Labour. But the EU prevents us from reforming.

The Human Rights Act brings UK law into conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights (1949.) This predates the formation of the EU and is not administered by the EU but by the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe.

if the UK left the EU it would not affect the HRA at all, and we would still be under obligations to the Council of Europe..

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Human Rights Act brings UK law into conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights (1949.) This predates the formation of the EU and is not administered by the EU but by the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe.

Not really. the Uk was a founding signatory of the 1949 ECHR and it has been binding on us throughout.

The Human Rights Act catalogued what the human rights that mattered to the (New Labour) government were. Free speech is not on the list.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

if the UK left the EU it would not affect the HRA at all, and we would still be under obligations to the Council of Europe..

Correct.

It's irrelevant to the EU debate, and off topic.

 Crimson wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

In the go camp: This should be enough to trigger a new Scottish Independence referrendum, and ideally would allow us to break away from the Tories and re-join the EU. Win-WIn.

Well, the Scottish independence supporters tactically voting for leave really isn't a great plan, as the whole argument for another referendum relies on Scotland voting overwhelmingly to stay in the EU while the rest of the UK votes differently.

I don't think the Independence supporters will vote no just to get another referendum. But generally, England and Scotland have very different political leanings and if they naturally vote differently, it might be enough to trigger it.