pompeiisneaks wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:00 pm
One of the things I was confused about, and maybe you can confirm Marcus, was that the population felt the EU regulations were too prohibitive and restrictive thus why the UK wanted to separate
Yes, that has been a decades long, almost completely baseless fallacy constantly put out by Murdoch. But a lie that gets repeated often enough tends to stick.
But my perception was that the main issues people had was the cost of membership / perception of a wasteful, corrupt bureaucracy (again a decades long Murdoch media narrative, which was what won by brother over) and immigration. In 2004 10 new member states from the old communist bloc central and eastern Europe joined the EU. This was supported by most of the UK's centre / left politicians, most notably the then Labour prime minister Tony Blair. The UK's economy was (apparently!) booming at the time and more workers coming in was seen to be beneficial. Unfortunately, the big mainland European states' economies weren't doing well, so to avoid an influx, they brought in years long transitional arrangements to prevent immigration from the new member states and hence an oversupply in their labour markets, burden on their social security etc. So there was massive immigration into the UK, typically >100k/year, from these somewhat economically backward countries, especially Poland. This caused a significant societal upheaval and consequent backlash against the parties and politicians seen to be responsible for / in support of the change, and against the EU.
The immigration was economically beneficial at the time, but following the global economic crisis, by 2010 jobs became hard to find, and in the low wage sector, Polish were perceived as being hard workers, and so tended to be preferred. As capacity hadn't been increased to keep pace in the good years, schools, healthcare, transport and other social structures were being stretched past breaking point by the increased populations, and even up here in the north midlands, it became unusual to hear English being spoken in town centres, and people felt alienated in their own areas.
Hence the demographics that used to support the centre/left began to despise the elites that instigated the changes, old party allegiances crumbled, and the new anti EU populist party began to win votes. That led to the anti EU wing of the now governing Conservative party becoming ever more powerful, and forcing the brexit referendum.
...The problem is that, a very large portion of the UK's profit generation comes form exports TO the EU that will still have the exact same regulations required to be sold in the EU... Is that correct? If so, doesn't the whole 'purpose' of the brexit defeat itself?
Pretty much, hence my description of the current government as craven liars. OK, that's always been the case to some degree with political leaders, but the shameless of this lot when caught out in lies and mischief takes it a whole new level. They just don't care about even trying to hold themselves accountable or acknowledge what is factual. Their approach is to control the narrative and carry on regardless.
The UK is screwed; within the next 10 years, Scotland will break away, Northern Ireland will finally unify with Eire, England and Wales will become a backwater theme park
he is indeed isn't he 
we weren't really thinking about getting another dog then my daughter send us a picture of him saying he needed rehoming, it was a friend of a friend and they'd been miss sold him as a puppy by some travellers who'd told her he has a collie/poodle cross!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
you can hand them back though 
Getting back to the topic in reverse, all the places I used to buy things from in the UK won't sell to the USA at any price anymore. Is that brexit or...?