I'm pretty sure that this is a thing, but whatever, you know better.
Everything I said is right there in the first paragraph:
To participate in the EU's single market, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway are party to the Agreement on a European Economic Area (EEA), with compliance regulated by the EFTA Surveillance Authority and the EFTA Court.
Those nations are entirely party to the obligations of the EU with no say as to how or what these obligations are except with the threat of complete withdrawal from their agreements.
Radical status-quo changing proposals tend to require higher standards of evidence.
I call complete bullshit on that, any proposal, any belief requires a grounding foundation in reality otherwise it's just arrogance and ideology. The European Union is not an axiom that requires no evidence, and those who support it are not above having to prove their arguments have any merit. Elsewise, why break the status quo of nation states to found a supranational world hegemon? Why should anyone listen to a single thing you say if you're unwilling to do the absolute minimum and provide the factual basis for your beliefs? It should go without saying that merely expecting everyone to believe in what you believe because you say they should believe in the undisclosed merits of your argument is doomed to total failure; the UK will not be the last if European leaders act as you do.
The moment you stop believing that you require evidence for your beliefs is the moment you start believing in your own innate goodness, that you are inherently right because you hold those beliefs. That's how you get leaders stuck up their own arses pursuing their own self-destruction, because they stopped looking for what is good, and instead started looking for what made them look good. Arrogance, it kills things dead - the old leaders who once ruled the UK were so completely caught off guard by radical status-quo changing proposals because they refused to see what was so obviously looming before them, refused to see the possibility that they were wrong. This is an obvious flaw - if you don't know yourself, your enemies will defeat you, if you don't know why you believe what you do, you don't know yourself
First, UK had the right of veto in the EU and in fact was using it quite extensively, so I don't quite understand all your "enforced without the ability to object" complaints.
Oi no spreading fake news, secondly I have already explained rather clearly that being a member of the single market but outside the European Union is the worst possible deal for the UK; beholden to more obligations to the EU, having lost more sovereignty, whilst remaining in all the effective mechanisms of the EU.
Second, does UK really trade with the rest of the world more than with EU, despite these high tariffs?
YeahI thought that it was otherwise, since UK exports are supposed to be high-tech, consumed mostly by highly developed markets like the ones in EU, and that the cheap Chinese labor would prevent its exports from making their way elsewhere. What and with whom UK does trade?
The Americas, BRICs and the Commonwealth mostly. High EU tariffs raise the prices of imports from our American, African and Asian trading partners, with consequent effects on consumer and retail prices as well as increasing the cost of production for British industries relying on foreign resources; through EU tariffs often we must buy German electronics when otherwise we could buy cheaper from Japan, USA or China, lowering competition for German industry.
www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OverseasTradeStatistics/PublishingImages/Nov16_Import.gifThis is especially relevant for automobile industries. Export wise the tariffs do not work like that, but we are severely hindered in exporting to our trading partners in developing and developed economies abroad in that for as long as we are a member of the EU we cannot negotiate our own trade deals that are suited to the UK. There is one significant industry which I will draw exception to, and it is that of pharmaceuticals. Many foreign companies from India use the UK as a launching pad into Europe, bypassing the external tariff by manufacturing their drugs in the UK under UK regulatory standards, with the EU's pharmaceutical regulations set by regulators in Canary Wharf, London. This would not be an issue for India if the EU was not hesitant to give India a free trade deal, as the EU does not want to allow Indians to have freer movement in Europe and want the Indians to lower alcohol and automobile tariffs. If the UK is not able to secure a drugs deal with the EU early, many Indian pharmaceutical companies could be hurt, which in turn would hurt the UK's pharmaceutical industry, which at the moment is so attractive because of the density of expertise and industry - such expertise and industry obviously cannot be maintained without money. European continentals may rejoice that big pharmas does not decide their continent's healthcare supply but they'll still find a way, or else be replaced by bigger fish.
Next 3 years are going to be busy ones for the UK, electric energy in all senses of the word will be required to succeed
, better than slow decline in a decaying bloc.
Third, is EU really that protectionist? That's something I've never heard before about, and it doesn't make sense - why would all these economists talk about the benefits of "free trade" and the dangers of protectionism, if the supposedly driven-by-technocrats/experts EU is embracing all these protectionist policies?
Because these economists have a conflict of interest; when the UK entered into the EEC, it was sold back then as a free trade union by many economists, even our own, despite it ultimately turning into a protectionist political union by design - such designs, known and planned for from the start. It's just the same line again, the EU is about free trade, and imagine if you are one such person capable of influencing public opinion. You're an "economist," you're an expert, people trust in you because they trust your professional expertise. People want an authoritative person to tell them how to value things, but they don't choose this authority on facts or results, they choose this authority on what is familiar, what seems authoritative.
Thus if you have a white man in a grey business suit sitting on the television news talking about how the EU is for free trade, people take his word for it until someone provides a rival white man in a grey business suit. Few have the time nor interest to check, or even validate their own beliefs, which perhaps explains why in the era where experts and MSM have no credibility, there has not been a surge in the individual drive for truth - rather, the grip experts lost, was picked up by demagogues. That's a disheartening derail for later though, the point is, a generic unnamed band of "economist" need not tell the truth anymore than someone reporting that "scientists say".
Part of my great fear with the EU is that it has sold the Europeans a lie - promising them that the greater trade between European nations has created a great blooming of trade and cooperation, when I suspect it has only managed to divert trade, not create new trade. Thus the UK for example must buy more from European industries than in countries where there is more innovation, quality, lower energy and labour costs, probably the biggest cost to the UK for European membership is simply that we pay far more for agricultural produce from NAmerica, SAmerica and Africa than we need to, which especially hurts us as we're a net importer of food. This is what I talk about when I talk of trade diversion and not creation, why cannot the UK buy cheaper, better and higher quantity produce just to artificially prop up a few noncompetitive European agriculture industries? I could better sympathize with this cost if it would guarantee those farmers their job security, but it doesn't, merely postponing the problem for a future collapse whilst damaging developing economies and hurting British economic growth. This has also been a great sticking point for the European continentals, who argue that Germany has not done well by creating trade within the EU, it has merely diverted trade and capital from the European states
by using its political clout to enforce mercantilism and maintain its large trade deficit using European consumers, which the poorer states obviously can't do shit about because they don't even control their own currency. I do worry sometimes that jihadis will be the least of Germany's concerns, and that it is propping Europe up for inevitable recession, perhaps even - war. To that end the EU must reform or Europe is in for calamity, and none of this bullshit where the EU simply reforms by centralizing even more power and continuing on as normal - it's not working, but the leaders have the ideological conviction that more European Union centralization will fix everything somehow.
Come to think of it, it's not all that surprising to see EU doing the retarded thing, after Greece and austerity-enforcing crisis-prolonging measures, but still. Are the EU proponents doing the Hillary Democrat thing, with their "99% victory everything is fine it will be a glorious landslide" circlejerk?
No idea, I wish them the best though, just without the UK
Yet, isn't that what is currently happening? I've been led to believe that there's been this ongoing cycle of "defund NHS => NHS failing more => argument towards NHS ineffectiveness => defund NHS more", and that this cycle is currently entering its final iterations, as NHS is starting to fail completely.
They haven't made many cuts (cuts are vehemently unpopular) rather redirected funds towards low-priority reorganization whilst not raising the budget. Factoring in inflation and an increasingly sick populace, sick from age, obesity, smoking, alcohol, drugs and inactivity - the NHS needs drastic increases in budget just to stay afloat. Thus keeping the budget as is is in effect, stealthily dooming it to failure, it simply will not be able to cope without either ignoring a set number of patients or excluding certain patients.
Or the third option - privatization, which the neocons were gunning for. Ostensibly most of the neocon leadership is gone but I still reckon there's a sizeable lobby for that with enough receptive ears in the Tory and Libdem parties. Probably not Corbyn's People party, he purged his party of everyone who wasn't full socialist. So it's technically not a cut, but it's still ensuring the NHS will fail, and using their inevitable failure as an argument for privatization. Deliberate sabotage just to score points and serve their donors,
even the Tory party itself is in rebellion over this yet little has been done. Somewhat ironically a Tory failure to save the NHS will mostly kill the elderly, who tend to vote for the Conservative party, a terrible betrayal :/
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