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Merged Now What?

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Airfix said:
And the EU let her.
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Now the EU should have stopped her ? That from the guy which want less EU and find its reach too deep in UK ?
Are you kidding me ?

YOUR politician. You elected them. Take responsibility for them.

And you don't even want to do that ?

ETA: and for somebody which want "democratic" institution, asking the EU to stop her, rather than have UK citizen take that government to the courts , is funny.
 
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Airfix said:
And the EU let her.
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Um, should they have stopped her?
Well, the EEC or whichever acronym it was at the time.

I mean I'm confused here. The worker protections from the EU came in post-Thatcher. Should the EU not have done that?

I'm just plain lost as to whether you think the EU should play a part in a member countries laws or not...
 
Aepervius said:
Most social advance lost by worker were by thatcher independently on EU. The only things which did not dare touch was NHS. Not so much in the last decade various Uk government have had their hands in the cookie jar trying to promote privatization of part of NHS or at least add competition. This is an UK politician things by the way there is no such mandate EU wide.
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Airfix said:
And the EU let her.
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Because, at the time, that was not the purview of the EC. At the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, John Major negotiated an opt-out of the Social Chapter of the EU Treaty. To the credit of Blair, he signed the UK back up for it in 1997. And Cameron wanted to take the UK out again.

Reread my rant from yesterday:
ddt said:
You know, I'm 50 and I've been following this since the days of Mrs. T and her handbagging of the other EC leaders and her "I want my money back". Ever since, every British PM has been acting as a petulant child in the EC/EU and complaining that they're still paying too much into it, and that they don't want to participate in Schengen because it brings rabies, and don't want to participate with the Euro because the vaunted Sterling is still world currency, and don't want to participate in the Social Charter because British employers must be able to exploit their workers like in the days of Marx and Engels. And so on and so on. And ever since, there's been this constant droning voice in British politics, in both major parties, that they want out again.
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(it's the Social Chapter, not the Charter - that's part of the CoE treaties).

I'm probably as left-wing as you and would quote Tony Benn approvingly on a lot of issues. But I agree with The Don when he says that the EU forms a bulwark against the baser instincts. Clause Four is not going to come back, there'll never be a majority for a socialist workers paradise and the current leader of the Labour left-wing is a bumbling clown who rather spends his time sympathizing with authoritarian Latin-American regimes than with grilling the PM during PMQ and formulating a viable left-wing alternative to Tory policies. The latter is a problem not just in the UK, social-democracy has a problem ever since Nu Labour all over (Western) Europe capitulated to the neo-liberal dogma that the market fixes everything, back in the early 1990s.

(Funny anecdote: in Dutch political discourse, there's an iconic speech of Labour PM Wim Kok from 1995 where he says the Labour party has to "shed its ideological feathers". Two years ago, at the departure of Euro-Commissioner Neelie Smit-Kroes, I heard the origin of this turn of phrase. Wim Kok wasn't much of speechwriter, so he left that to party prominent Bram Peper. Peper, at the time, was married with Neelie, and it was her turn of phrase).
 
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The Don said:
One of the things I found interesting was the portrayal of the left-wing Brexiteer. I hadn't really thought of it beyond a few fossils like Dennis Skinner but there really is a minority view out there that, free of the shackles of the EU, the UK would be free to:

- stop being a capitalist state
- renationalise the means of production
- kill the banks

and a host of other ideas that I had wrongly assumed had died at some point in the 1980's.
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Well I'm sorry for believing in state owned passenger rail services.

I am not in favour of nationalising every single producer, just things like steel which are in genuine trouble at present.

I would have renationalised Kellingley Mine for the same reason.

I would temporarily nationalise BHS to save jobs.

In 2000 I would have renationalised Rover group instead of letting John Towers get his hands on it.

There's a time and a place for private ownership and of public ownership.
And I don't care about rules which say:
aid granted by a Member State or through State resources in any form whatsoever which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain undertakings or the production of certain goods shall, in so far as it affects trade between Member States, be incompatible with the internal market.
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If state aid can save thousands of jobs, do it.
 
Airfix said:
Well I'm sorry for believing in state owned passenger rail services.
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...and the EU does not stop this as has repeatedly been explained to you

Airfix said:
I am not in favour of nationalising every single producer, just things like steel which are in genuine trouble at present.

I would have renationalised Kellingley Mine for the same reason.

I would temporarily nationalise BHS to save jobs.
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Is there any need to throw good money after bad ? I agree that attempting to save a failing industry can be a good idea but only if it's either in the national strategic interest to do so or it's a viable industry experiencing exceptional operating conditions.

Based on that a prima face case could be made for the steel industry if we decide that's what we want to do. OTOH the coal industry is, sadly for those who work in it, going the way of the horse and cart.

The generation of electricity using coal is being phased out because it isn't efficient enough (compared to other fossil fuels) or clean enough (compared to renewables) - supporting the coal industry would be a foolish move IMO - if money is available, invest it in developing a renewables engineering sector
rather than buying it in from abroad.

Supporting a failing retailer, when there are a host of competitors out there is IMO a complete waste of time.

Airfix said:
In 2000 I would have renationalised Rover group instead of letting John Towers get his hands on it.
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I disagree, the issue for Rover is that they were too small and didn't have an attractive set of cars to buy. They couldn't afford to invest the £billions it would have taken to develop new models and in any case did not have the brand value to succeed overseas.

To have spent hundreds of millions or billions propping up Rover as it circled the drain would have been IMO a very poor decision.

Airfix said:
There's a time and a place for private ownership and of public ownership.
And I don't care about rules which say:


If state aid can save thousands of jobs, do it.
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I've highlighted the critical word. Throwing public money at a failing company just to keep the doors open and the lights on makes no sense to me. If hundreds of millions or billions were available to prop up Rover or the coal industry, I think that money would have been better used developing the industries of the 21st century not keeping those of the 19th and 20th on life support.
 
Airfix said:
Well I'm sorry for believing in state owned passenger rail services.

I am not in favour of nationalising every single producer, just things like steel which are in genuine trouble at present.

I would have renationalised Kellingley Mine for the same reason.

I would temporarily nationalise BHS to save jobs.

In 2000 I would have renationalised Rover group instead of letting John Towers get his hands on it.

There's a time and a place for private ownership and of public ownership.
And I don't care about rules which say:


If state aid can save thousands of jobs, do it.
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Are you happy for Uk businesses to be undercut in price because foreign governments subsidise their businesses.

Why do you not celebrate the decline of the UK steal industry because of China's dumped steel? After all, think of the thousands of Chinese jobs saved had the state not aided them.

Or do your perhaps think only the UK should be able to provide state aid?

This should not be about which country can subsidise its industry the most. There are better things to spend money on.

Note: that there is nothing in that directive about supporting an industry. What is not allowed is state intervention which "distorts competition", allowing undercutting on price against unsupported industries. We have seen the state intervene in banks with no question of sanction against state aid rules.
 
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Lothian said:
Are you happy for Uk businesses to be undercut in price because foreign governments subsidise their businesses.

Why do you not celebrate the decline of the UK steal industry because of China's dumped steel? After all, think of the thousands of Chinese jobs saved had the state not aided them.

Or do your perhaps think only the UK should be able to provide state aid?

This should not be about which country can subsidise its industry the most. There are better things to spend money on.
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IMO the belief is that state intervention will magically save businesses or industries (despite the evidence to the contrary). If necessary protectionist measures will be applied against other countries (unless they're being decried on the grounds that they are unfair against emerging third world nations). :rolleyes:
 
The Don said:
IMO the belief is that state intervention will magically save businesses or industries (despite the evidence to the contrary). If necessary protectionist measures will be applied against other countries (unless they're being decried on the grounds that they are unfair against emerging third world nations). :rolleyes:
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I think the rule quoted by Airfix is a good one. I support nationalisation and see no conflict in the two positions.

The problem with steal is that China undertakes the kind state aid the EU law prohibits. The EU tried to stop the steel being dumped but the UK applied it's veto to prevent action, see here, here and here.

Quoting the steel industry as something a brexited Uk would be in a better position to save is a very strange thing for Airfix to imply.
 
Airfix said:
Well I'm sorry for believing in state owned passenger rail services.
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Oh, I do too. I don't like the direction all these EU directives concerning rail, utilities etc. are suggesting, but really, there's a lot of leeway there on how to implement them, including continued state ownership.

Airfix said:
I am not in favour of nationalising every single producer, just things like steel which are in genuine trouble at present.
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Not happy with Indian ownership?

Or maybe British Steel has never been run efficiently enough to compete. The Dutch wiki tells me that at the time of the merger with Dutch Hoogovens, in 1999, British Steel had a revenue of NLG 21bn with 50,000 employees, while Dutch Hoogovens had a revenue of NLG 10.8bn with 20,000 employees. I think you can see an obvious problem there.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
That was nationalised haulage though so not really the same as the modern Pickfords. Nationalised grannies' nighties and old men's slacks seems perverse.
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Sure, I was kinda making a joke. Bizarre things seemed to get nationalised and weren't necessarily a great success.
 
The Don said:
I people like myself OTOH consider the EU to be a bulwark against our baser instincts
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Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Except where a bunch of foreigners (who are closer to my views than those of my countrymen) can over rule democracy when they ("i") feel its needed.


(Democratic deficit: viewed the right way, it's a feature not a bug. )
 
Giz said:
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Except where a bunch of foreigners (who are closer to my views than those of my countrymen) can over rule democracy when they ("i") feel its needed.


(Democratic deficit: viewed the right way, it's a feature not a bug. )
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Yep, in much the same way as international agreements curtail our ability to torture, plant mines or poison the air.
 
McHrozni said:
To be fair this is because the UK retired its light carriers before the two new carriers were finished. They're as much amphibious assault ships as carriers and will only be able to operate STOVL fighters and helicopters, but each of the two will be as large as the single French carrier.

McHrozni
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Another marvelous Cameron money saving plan that backfired.
Scrap the Carriers and their Sea Harriers, Scrap the RAF Harriers as well.
Right after you decide to scrap them decide to start Air Strikes against Libya and instead of putting a hold on the disposal go ahead with it and spend more money than was saved by leasing an Italian base to operate from.
Leave the fleet with no aircraft for years as the plan was to scrap the old carriers when the new ones were launched and use the Sea Harriers until the F35s were operational.

So the Navy end up with a bigger bill and no air cover because the PM and the Chancellor wanted to look like they were meeting their austerity targets.
 
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Airfix said:
Well I'm sorry for believing in state owned passenger rail services.

I would temporarily nationalise BHS to save jobs.

In 2000 I would have renationalised Rover group instead of letting John Towers get his hands on it.
.
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Rail Services were state owned, Maggie shredded the railways it wasn't the EU. We already went through this.

As for BHS. How would that work? I don’t know anyone that ever bought anything from BHS. How would state ownership work?

As for Rover, they were the unwanted rump of British Layland selling re-badged Honda cars.
Their own designs were ****, no one but a rump of 'buy British even if it's crap' types was buying them. Their own last good car was the P6 from the 60s and Leyland kept that in production till 77, then there was the shabby SD1 until the rebadging deal with Honda kicked in. BMW purchased the group but saw the writing on the wall and sensibly split the company retaining the Mini brand and selling Land Rover to Ford. They paid the Phoenix Consortium £450 million to take Austin Rover off their hands, that must say something about the size of the Lemon.
 
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