The EU hasn't had it's own concessions agreed for 22 years and counting with the WTO.
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The EU hasn't had it's own concessions agreed for 22 years and counting with the WTO.
http://theworldforgotten.com/showthr...l=1#post179889Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
This one is for Littlefuzzy; maybe you can understand a little bit better how the Brits built up such a deficit in sympathy with other Europeans. Michael Hesseltine, a supposed pro-EU Tory, yesterday said :
And that one is supposed to be our friend in the UK.Quote:
“Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war. This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We’ve just handed them the opportunity to win the peace. I find that quite unacceptable.”
Hesseltine is an octogenarian nutjob extremist on this matter that was recently sacked from being an advisor to the government. If you're going to count every statement by an extremist partisan hack then you're going to find a lot of comments to get upset at.
Only weeks ago he had an advisory role to your government and he's supposedly a europarlement. That is as a matter of fact the reason why he was sacked.
Do you mean a Europhile? Yes he was an advisor, and yes he is a Europhile extremist. His comments were part and parcel of that.
Bye bye.
Laters.
Exciting:
https://www.google.se/amp/s/amp.ft.c...7-502f7ee26895
One good outcome of Brexit :o hopefully it won't be quite as dramatic as CETA.
Can't read the article without subscription, how is this an outcome of Brexit?
https://www.ft.com/content/20248b48-...7-502f7ee26895
May work better :o
I believe Brexit spurred the EU to conclude the deal just as much as Trump's promises of economic protectionism may have encouraged Japan to do the same.
Sounds good then and sets a good precedent for us to be able to get a free trade deal. Why would you set no tariffs on Japanese cars but put them on British ones? Or want to sell tariff-free to Japan but not to the UK which imports far more European agricultural produce than Japan does.
I'm not seeing any requirements for the ECJ to oversee Japanese laws or for the Japanese to agree to free movement of labour which some in the Brexit debate seem to maintain are both requirements to sign up to in order to get trade deals with Europe. Funny that.
It's not particularly strange. Full access requires greater compliance. Also, the UK is not Japan, and its relationship with the EU is far more toxic.
Yes we're not Japan, we import far more European goods than Japan does. There is no need or purpose in a toxic relationship.
Particularly if you yourselves poisoned the well.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
So, what do you think about poisoning the relationship by grandstanding over the ratification of a convention you yourselves instigated and which has questionable value and validity?Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Same as before.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
Not sure why you think something being of questionable value makes it more valuable to keep rather than less.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Symbolic act.
I think we've already established Rand sees no value in international law or treaties and believes there are no consequences to dismantling either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
Absolutely. Not if they come with exit clauses especially, that's why they're built in there.
Yeah, but he funnily enough believes in equal sovereign partners in the international arena :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
I mean, believing in two mutually exclusive principles the way he does makes me wonder what the hell goes on in their educational system.
Since when did I believe that?
Virtually all treaties come with exit clauses.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
And if they don't there's international law providing for exiting regulations for ending ratification.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
@Randblade, you don't believe in international law as a bridle on the sovereignty of nations, yet you refuse to accept that that leaves you with an international arena in which raw power counts and where your country is not a big player.
On the first day of negotiations your negotiator folded on the principles of the talks. How you talk is of imminent importance for what you talk about and what your end result will be. That is what power politics looks like Randy. You have been denying that it would be like that for over a decade but here you have it; raw power politics running roughshot over your country because you thought your sovereignty counted for very much outside of the protection that the EU gave it.
Like I said, you folded on the first day of the negotiations and you will fold on the last day of the negotiations, praying that we'll in the end give you what we appear to deem you worthy of getting from us. Because Randy, not only do we hold the whip, also no deal is at the same time the very worst deal you could get.
Indeed which makes it entirely valid to activate them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Treaties that don't come with exit clauses tend to be either time-limited [eg UK-Sino Hong Kong treaty lasts 50 years] or are permanent and irrevocable unilaterally [eg one nation ceding territory to another]. Some treaties combine different types - eg NATO from memory came with an exit clause that couldn't be activated until at least 40 years had passed.
I accept raw power matters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
I refuse to accept a nuclear-armed G7 nation, a permanent UN Security Council member with the world's fifth largest economy, fifth largest defence budget etc is not a big player. We have raw power. Besides the USA we have the biggest defence budget in the western world.
Of those three only nuclear weapons set you apart. Your UNSC seat is not an expression of what you are but of what you were, and you are not even in the same league as some big powers that are not in the UNSC.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Such as? The only economies bigger than the UK that are not in the UNSC are Japan and Germany but they have a much smaller military. The only nation to regularly spend more on their miliary than us that is not in the UNSC is Saudi Arabia and they have a much smaller economy.
There are five UNSC permanent members and we are both in the top 5 economies and top 5 militaries in the world so by either metric our position is still justified.
Haha, such a convenient metric :) You make up about 1% of the world's population, Your place in the UNSC is just a holdover from when you had an empire.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Since when did percentage of population matter in raw power? Are you suggesting that Nigeria and Bangladesh have raw power? Military is normally how power is normally measured.
Since you don't think we should be there and since no nation in Europe has spends more on their military than we do than we do you're suggesting there should be no European nations on the UNSC.
There has been a surge in references to Godot in the past few months.
Ever heard of this country called India Randy? Or didn't you know how to move the goal posts far enough with them in the picture?Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
What are you on about? The militaries of Germany and Japan are larger than ours by any given measure, with the exception of the Deutsche Marine because, you know, just look at a map.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
The only thing they lack is our expeditionary capability, and the quality of our submarine force. And probably there's an argument to be made in terms of quality because of all combat experience earned in Afghanistan and Iraq, but what you said is blatantly false.
And to what extent that lacking expeditionary capability is the result of British refusal to let the EU have a military role independent of NATO?Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
What measures are you using?Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
Defence budget: UK $45.7bn > Japan $43.8bn > Germany $39.2bn
And that's after years of austerity. The UK has consistently outspent both Japan and Germany. Neither of them have nukes.
Uh-huh. The only reason there is no significant expeditionary capacity in the 26 EU countries is because of UK intransigence. Can't have anything to do with their own people having little interest in the sort of effort it requires to create and maintain the ability to project military power.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
None. France is also potent in this regard. The reason Germany isn't is because German doesn't want to be, for historical reasons, and because defensively speaking it has other priorities. Again, look at a map.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
Well, since we were comparing the size of countries armed forces, I thought I'd go crazy and use size as the my metric. I know, I know, it sounds bizarre but it just might work.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Specifically, I used: number of military personnel, number of tanks and armoured vehicles, number of planes (especially fighters and attack planes) and number of warships. By each of these metrics, both Germany and Japan have a larger military than we do, except Germany has fewer and less capable ships.
Nukes are worthless in this comparison, because they're unusable. No one's going to go "uh oh, better do what they UK says, they've got nukes". If you take the 5 billion a year we spend to keep Trident, and only take into account what we spend on the military we can actually use we're already spending less than Japan.Quote:
Defence budget: UK $45.7bn > Japan $43.8bn > Germany $39.2bn
And that's after years of austerity. The UK has consistently outspent both Japan and Germany. Neither of them have nukes.
As for the question of to what extent money spent equals actual potency, I can't really be bothered to get into it. I'll just make the following points:
1) The UK spends a lot of money on home grown programs like Type 45, Queen Elizabeth and Astute (which invariably end up cancelled, or cut back in numbers) where Japan just buys the US export version of [thing], which is a lot cheaper and doesn't necessarily offer much less in terms of capability. Germany doesn't buy US, but isn't constantly setting up super-ambitious programs for cutting edge equipment, then cancelling them, either.
2) Each country in that list has a military that is better than the other two at what they were designed to do. Japan's SDF is there to fight off a potential Chinese attack, Germany's exists to oppose some hypothetical Russian invasion of Eastern Europe and the UK's exists to project power to other parts of the world and tie in with the US military.
3) I am not convinced defence procurement isn't an elaborate scheme for channelling public money into the aerospace industry first and a way obtaining the equipment to defend the country a distant second.
Why are we even discussing GDP and military expenditure? The UK's rank on both measures has varied greatly since it became a permanent member of the UNSC, and its membership status has never changed in spite of that. These measures are irrelevant to the UK's membership status and it should be fair to say that the UK's permanent seat does indeed stem from historical political reasons.