So, EU represent about 50% of UK trade, UK represent about 8% or rEU trade, so the rEU is going to bow backward to Westminster because we need them so much? Welcome to the wonderful world of LW logic.
Ha, I do not want or need domination of the EU so the EU bending backwards is not the goal, the EU represents less than half of our imports - do you know what happens when we don't buy German? We buy America, we buy Chinese, we buy British, we buy Japanese - tell me how Germany can compete, and what happens when Germany cuts itself off from British money and gas? Because for us, there is literally the entire rest of the world and the Commonwealth. All I need is the EU to stop trying to destroy my country, which is much more achievable than domination.
Also, I love how you're spinning that as a trade war. The thing is that if the UK leaves the EU, it leaves the common market. Spoiler alert, when you leave the EU, you leave the benefits associated with the EU.
Yeah and Russia never went to war with Ukraine and the US was just policing Iraq, news at 10 a trade war is not a trade war when we call it punitive action
The Eurosceptic fantasy that they can leave the EU but still keep all the parts they like is just a fantasy. It's be hilarious if the Brits ended up paying more to the EU budget when outside than in, like the Norwegians. :p
Please don't, Dorsidwarf? If somebody is ignoring somebody, trust that it's for a good reason.
Yeah I'm not the only one noticing you actually ignored my entire argument in favour of strawman fantasies
Sheb u bein a pleb sheb m8 u muggy blot i swer on me nan lik im gettin shekels wiv me m8s down guandong if u kno what i mean cos u takin liberties get in the bin
I am just disappointed with you
Seriously if we can have
free trade with China without China controlling our government then we'll just trade with China and let Germany's fiscally unbalanced and stagnant economy falter, because it is increasingly self-evident that Germany is not our friend. I say Germany as well, because as I have said before only now the countries Germany hasn't isolated itself from are Sweden, Netherlands and Belgium. Heck, I say Germany when really I should say German government, and when I say that it's loads of muppets you don't even get to vote for
In the last few years we have made a huge difference and built a much stronger bilateral trading relationship between our countries. The figures tell the story - bilateral trade at record levels, our exports to China up 15% in 2013, they have more than doubled in the last 5 years and at £1 billion a month, they are growing faster than France or Germany.
These figures prove once again that Britain is the most open economy in the EU, the most welcoming to Chinese investment including in our nuclear industry and our infrastructure and I’m determined to keep it that way.
You would have to divorce the US-UK special relationship, bankrupt the banking capital of the world (hehehehehe), turn the ambivalent Chinese against making money in their most popular investment site, unite all of the EU in common policy necessitating ludicrous power grabs (though once the UK is out that's really your call) and assumes there won't just be some glorious mockery of the sanctions the same way Russia at the end of the day got everything through Serbia and still had a Germany dependent on their gas.
Also top kek, Norway's shekels to the EU are humanitarian
http://www.eu-norway.org/eu/Financial-contribution/#.VsNWpeYaqrJHonestly if Norwegian politicians weren't all proggy (with even their eurosceptics being left-wing) and they had the shekelry of the UK zero fucks would be given, if even progressives in Norway will not put a price on their democracy then I will be damned ten fold if I with more means deny myself.
Now I wonder why you didn't address my numbers but retorted with an uncited conglomeration, so here's the Dorsidorf edit again
the Metro. pro-EU paper posts headline:
Brexit: EU 'will punish Britain'
BRITAIN will be punished by spurned allies if it quits the EU, foreign secretary Philip Hammond warned yesterday. The minister was accused of 'blackmailing' voters after claiming Europe might put up trade barriers to stop us succeeding alone. He said EU leaders were worried that, if Britain left, the 'contagion' would spread and more countries would drop out.
Philip Hammond is a UK MP, he is likeminded with our Prime Minister, pro-EU,but was formerly eurosceptic. In 2015 he was the one to introduce the European referendum bill to Parliament.
He might be taking bribes, but the most logical explanation is that he's waiting to see how Cameron's negotiations with Merkel turn out while retaining a political safety-net if they do work.
(continuing)
'they will not have an interest in demonstrating that we can succeed outside the EU.' he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
An MP leaked a delightful conversation with Germany's EU Affairs Chairman Gunther Krichbaum where Gunther Krichbaum threatened the UK with trade war and economic collapse during a meeting.
'It is impossible for the EU to launch a trade war against a departing member under World Trade Organization rules, (...) not that French wine producers or German car manufacturers would allow their governments to threaten access to a market as important as the UK anyway.'
I would love to see Germany try to enact a continental blockade upon the UK, but that argument would apply in reverse. Less than half of our exports go to the EU but that's still a good share, so who would be willing to back down first? With Germany's spending having already created a debt timebomb and their immigration expenditure having risen to 50 Billion Euroa, I am comfortable in saying the answer is set.
Currently the EU is more dependent upon the UK than the UK to the EU, because the UK imports more from the rest of the world (the EU's share in the UK having fallen 10% lately) and the UK is not an industrial economy like Germany, it is a post-industrial financial economy. I think that most countries and economic groups within the EU wouldn't join any blockade. Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden seem to still be more or less with Berlin. A trade war would destroy Germany not the UK.
Also from the article:
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
Germany is not just willing to sacrifice themselves for the Commission project, they are willing to sacrifice others unwillingly too. So far Russia has been non-stop probing UK defences to find weakness and they've treated us with more respect and cooperation than Germany. Gunther Krichbaum also threatened our Prime Minister with dire consequences if he limited immigration to the UK, like I said Germany has been at the centre of this trying to sabotage anyone's effort at stopping the crisis from day 1 till Kingdom come.
Gunther Krichbaum probably was not trying to make a statement to the UK and just let his ambition out in a Freudian slip, and that he probably does not represent a good load of Germans who just want to be culturally enriched in peace. But I always love the irony that Germany is led by people who desire more sanctions to be placed on the United Kingdoms than on the Russian Federation.
UK exports/imports:
The top exports of the United Kingdom are:
Cars ($40.7B)
Refined Petroleum ($29.8B)
Crude Petroleum ($22.7B)
Packaged Medicaments ($20.3B)
Gas Turbines ($17.2B)
Its top imports are:
Cars ($40.3B)
Crude Petroleum ($39.6B)
Refined Petroleum ($28.8B)
Packaged Medicaments ($18B)
Computers ($16.2B)
The top export destinations of the United Kingdom are:
United States ($50.2B)
Germany ($46.6B)
the Netherlands ($36B)
France ($28.8B)
Belgium-Luxembourg ($25.1B)
The top import origins are:
Germany ($88.8B)
China ($55.2B)
the Netherlands ($52.1B)
France ($39B)
United States ($37.8B)
The UK has a powerful car industry, and Germany is uninterested in nuclear power recently. I think if the USA imploded for some reasons things would be different. China would not be subject to a ban and would swoop in.
I'd rather be in the company of friends like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Japan. Those countries don't try to destroy the UK, they give us money, cultural enrichment and good exports, and when it comes to defence we actually defend one another instead of trying to destroy one another.
Germany is still dependent upon the UK, Norway and Netherlands for its alternative gas imports, the rest it is getting from Russia. If the Germans want to shoot off their legs more then that's fine by me, UK gas production is slowing down anyways so it'd really just be speeding up the inevitable and just handing the keys to Russia faster.
German Gas import origin market share:
This is without even noting that
foreign trade has had a negative effect on German economic growth. You have no idea how much fun I have seeing people who should know better threatening people who know their strengths, someone is needed here and it doesn't rhyme with Sherman. German industry has so many competitors, British money has none, a shekel here is a shekel anywhere in the world - dollar is King. The UK in this regard is quite lucky because we also do our own free trade negotiations or the opposite, Italy for example because they are within the EU gets no say on whether their tariffs stay or go to protect Italian industry from cheap Chinese goods. They have no say because they cannot decide for themselves any EU policy, that being decided for Germany, and if interests do not align - who loses out there? For Greece, for Portugal, for Ireland and now Italy, the answer is consistent. You pay the toll you get the troll, whilst the UK gets some very nice merch!
Also top kek UK imports from
MINT and
BRIC fill my taste buds with joy.
A long time ago the first British Empire arose, the one that was all about the Americas with Newfoundland, the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies. The problem was however in that the Colonies were exceedingly expensive and producing no profit. How could that be the gov wondered? English wool sold so well! So they investigated and found out that the Dutch had been doing something rather sneaky - they had been conducting free trade, capable of procuring and selling their own wool to English colonies three times cheaper!
And so begins the next three Anglo-Dutch wars, with the English actually at several points in spite of having the Royal Navy at their disposal against the Dutch, were so incapable of financing themselves against the profit of Dutch free trade they could scarcely afford victory.
In the East Indies however there was another British outpost, far away from Britain that was acting in quite the opposite fashion. The reason why ports like Manila, Johor or Macau were not the go-to ports of Asia and Singapore and Hong Kong were (with both literally turning from useless rocks to the bastions of international finance they are today, Hong Kong was even given away as a joke), is for the very reason that the governor of it destroyed all tariffs and no one wanted to go to Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese ports that did have tariffs, it was much cheaper to run at Singapore. So they did.
When the Ottoman Empire freely traded with the Europeans, they were dependent upon them for their manufactured goods and the Europeans desired greatly the raw materials of the Empire - however in their glut for manufacturing materials, they had also driven up the price which was making it hard for local Ottoman craftsmen to make a living. The Ottoman Empire then started imposing trade barriers that were ignored by corrupt officials and the Europeans actually increased their market share as a result and ensured the Economic decline of the Empire and its increasing dependence upon rival European powers.
The USA in its infancy faces a stark divide between the North and South, the United versus the Confederacy, the battle for free men or slaves - the Confederates withheld their cotton from exporting to Europe assuming that the Europeans would be plying for American cotton for their factories and would be quick to intervene and restore stability to the USA and a return to the status quo that protected American cotton farms and slavery. To their dismay the Europeans just begin growing their own cotton, and do not aid them. They are defeated.
Perhaps most relevant is when Napoleon tried economically destroying Great Britain.
The Napoleonic Empire had at this time conquered all of continental Europe or else had forced the compliance of all the nations of Europe, Ottomans aside. One nation remained because of that fucking ditch, the United Kingdoms. Being the first to undergo the Industrial Revolution, every brick of tea, every bar of soap and every engine had a little print saying 'Made in Britain' fashioned by the hands of an English sweatshop child, (though today that role has been outsourced to China), some things never change. Another thing that hasn't changed is that as a result of this Revolutionary headstart, London had become the Industrial and Business centre of Europe. Not being able to subjugate, destroy or coerce the United Kingdoms militarily or politically, Napoleon tried his hand at economics. He issued the Berlin Decree, forbidding his allies and his conquered states to do any business with the United Kingdoms. Further than that, he even declared that any neutral shipping paying British service at their ports would be considered British and seized.
Napoleon Bonaparte in charge of the French Empire had just roflestomped the European continent. The French had trouble with corrupt customs officers and with controlling their allies, but overall the Berlin Decree was successful in reducing British exports to the Continent by almost a quarter to a half.
To his dismay this did not result in the economic collapse and hyperinflation of the United Kingdoms.
The British just increased trade to North and South America.
Napoleon's blockade caused much suffering for the French and Dutch though and turned most of Europe against France when they realized the embargo had not hurt the UK and they had inflicted this suffering upon themselves in vain. Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Iberia and Russia ensues as they withdraw from the blockade. Quite symbolic really, that installing a blockade upon Britain walks hand in hand with invading Russia during winter.
The parallels today are quite obvious. London is the business and financial centre of Europe and now also the world. It conducts more tons of commercial shipping than it has at any point in its history. And an upstart continental is assuming it has some arrogant right to decide it can conquer the UK through trade war. Germany doesn't even have the uboats to try and stop us trading with the rest of the world anymore, whilst our blue water navy is still mucking about. Trade with Germany is good because Germans make some good stuff, but if they're going to not treat us like allies and treat us like contagions to be exterminated with Mengelian nazi pride the UK is dropping Berlin faster than you can say scheiße :
P And that honestly goes for whether we choose to drop the Commission or uphold it in the end, you cannot treat your allies like Greece, least of all ones with teeth. It's immoral, and worse - it bites you in the arse. I do love the irony in island nations being free to associate with the world whilst continental ones are isolated in their midst.
P.s. I'm no shekelphobe Dorsidorf, I am very shekelprogressive, all shekels are good whether you call them euroshekel, sterlingshekel, dollarshekel, shekelshekel e.t.c.
Eh, I do admit that I've developed the habit of more or less just skimming LW's posts. Dorsi's right though, that one was both readable and somewhat interesting. I'd like to remark though that it is somewhat misleading to list the Continental countries separately instead of as one 'EU' block.
It is misleading to list the countries as one bloc, when they do not act as one. It is why I always point out the insanity of trying to use holistic EU statistics for Sweden and Germany's humanitarian crisis when they are alone on this. France is not threatening us with trade war, Portugal is not threatening us with trade war, Denmark is not, Poland is not, Hungary is not, Austria is not, Spain is not, Italy is not e.t.c.
Only German ministers, with Gunther Krichbaum being a repeat offender.
I'm really rooting for UK to leave the union tho, simply to see what comes of it afterwards, hopefully such a huge thing might be a wake-up call to the other member states to get their shit together and stop this madness, or atleast, mitigate the horrible mess as best they can, because it feels like the train has left the station and nobody bothered to check if it had any brakes.
Indeed. Whether any other nations follow suit or not the EU would have to take into consideration that they actually have to care for their people instead of take it for granted that they'll give them power in exchange for exploitation. There's a silver lining to everything, I sort of want to at least see France, Belgium and Germany fuse together by the end of this century or the next at the very least. The borders would look a lot neater, and the extra reich (less Adolf, more Charlemagne) would be a country for the history books.
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Topic: The friendly and polite Europe related terrible jokes thread (Read 1098603 times)