Britain outside the EU

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

That's literally an arbitrary deadline.

I, literally, just asked in another thread if you had recently learnt what arbitrary meant.......obviously not.

You can't in some thread seriously argue that businesses should be given every chance to survive by easing lockdown and then on the other that they should, at short notice, be given additional burdens after numerous, contradictory, positions by Government policies in the preceding four years.

You missed out then entrepreneurial and agile bits, that you laughed at. Also not short notice, which is the point.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

You're letting yourself down there, jfman. Apart from the intial oxymoron, the dates were hard and fast.

Your final paragraph describes disconnected matters. Indeed the quiet period would have been the time for businesses to get into gear.

Everything from starting the A50 process and every extension, decision to not extend, simply created deadlines that weren't in our interest. They only existed because that's how the process was designed when it was only a hypothetical idea that anyone would ever leave the EU.

---------- Post added at 21:46 ---------- Previous post was at 21:42 ----------

Originally Posted by Pierre

I, literally, just asked in another thread if you had recently learnt what arbitrary meant.......obviously not.

You missed out then entrepreneurial and agile bits, that you laughed at. Also not short notice, which is the point.

It was short notice to implement the deal. You are arguing that business should have prepared for every possible outcome which no business would find credible.

If Government wants business to make a success of Brexit it's not unreasonable to expect them to assist in doing so.

We all want Brexit to be a success, do we not?

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

It was short notice to implement the deal. You are arguing that business should have prepared for every possible outcome which no business would find credible.

Everyone knew they had “at least” 2 years to prepare for the worst case scenario. They had 3, they then had another year after that.

Originally Posted by jfman

We all want Brexit to be a success, do we not?

To answer that question truthfully, no, the misery gutted brothers, Mr K and 1andrew1, don't, hell, they said it would fail before we even had the vote, then we had 4.5 years of their vitriol and they're still, even today, still trying to add chapters.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Everyone knew they had “at least” 2 years to prepare for the worst case scenario. They had 3, they then had another year after that.

Yet the worst case scenario was never Government policy. Two different deals were.

---------- Post added at 22:01 ---------- Previous post was at 21:56 ----------

Originally Posted by Mick

To answer that question truthfully, no, the misery gutted brothers, Mr K and 1andrew1, don't, hell, they said it would fail before we even had the vote, then we had 4.5 years of their vitriol and they're still, even today, still trying to add chapters.

Well I'm not on that list.

I didn't vote for it and I did think "the Establishment" would overturn it and they did certainly try.

However it's done. Making it work is more important than raking over old disagreements (in my view) but I don't find it credible to argue as some have that all businesses should have prepared for all outcomes.

There's a responsibility on Government here to support businesses - if it's to succeed it's on the backs of these businesses simultaneously retaining as much trade with the EU (the importance of tariff free trade after all) and grow trade with the rest of the world. If non-tariff barriers hit business that hits the chances of success of Brexit. That hits us all.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by Mick

To answer that question truthfully, no, the misery gutted brothers, Mr K and 1andrew1, don't, hell, they said it would fail before we even had the vote, then we had 4.5 years of their vitriol and they're still, even today, still trying to add chapters.

Hey a brother I didn't know about, that's nice !

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

Yet the worst case scenario was never Government policy. Two different deals were..

Any responsible business owner or person, always plans for the “ worst cast scenario”. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

I didn’t make that up, it been around for a long time.

[jfman]

Any responsible business owner or person, always plans for the “ worst cast scenario”. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

I didn’t make that up, it been around for a long time.

And a responsible Government?

Certainly global pandemic seems to have got missed off the list for many despite "preparing for the worst" otherwise they'd have cash reserves to see them through.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

And a responsible Government?

Certainly global pandemic seems to have got missed off the list for many despite "preparing for the worst" otherwise they'd have cash reserves to see them through.

Well done, a reply totally irrelevant to the post it’s replying to.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Mick

To answer that question truthfully, no, the misery gutted brothers, Mr K and 1andrew1, don't, hell, they said it would fail before we even had the vote, then we had 4.5 years of their vitriol and they're still, even today, still trying to add chapters.

Appreciated, Mick. I reminded Mr K he was my brother when I asked him to lend me a monkey the other day but he denied it and called it an anti-fact!

Mr K, can we now discuss that loan again, the money will be staying in the family and once Brexit is working properly and we've reached the sunny uplands, I'll pay it all back.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Pierre

It’s been four and a half years, nobody should have been caught off guard.

It wasn't four and a half years at all, companies were phoning for advice only to be told to phone back once we knew if there was a deal or not, to try and blame businesses is completely unfair and lets those responsible of the hook imo, they should have called no deal earlier or got an extension, getting a deal so close to deadline caused these problems not businesses

[1andrew1]

The Brexit dividends continue.

Mastercard will increase fees more than fivefold when a British shopper uses a debit or credit card to buy from an EU-based company, sparking alarm among companies that rely on online payments and concern among MPs over higher consumer prices.

Mastercard and Visa levy an “interchange” fee on behalf of banks for every debit or credit card payment that uses their networks. The EU introduced a cap in 2015 after concerns the hidden fees were leading to hundreds of millions of euros in costs for companies and higher prices for consumers.

But Mastercard has told merchants that the cap no longer applies to some transactions post-Brexit, because payments between the UK and European Economic Area are now deemed “inter-regional”.

From October 15, Mastercard will charge 1.5 per cent of the transaction value for every online credit card payment from the UK to the EU, up from 0.3 per cent at the moment. For debit card payments, the fee will jump from 0.2 per cent to 1.15 per cent. The increase will benefit British banks and other card issuers, rather than Mastercard itself.

https://www.ft.com/content/39f553a0-...e-0b9fd75554b0

So a £100 transaction attracts £1.50 in fees where previously it was 30p. Sorry but the financial system does actually cost money to operate, inconvenient as that might be, and international transactions cost more. The EU has had a good go at making laws trying to paper over the fact that these were international transactions but in this case those laws are only 5 years old. I’m not going to lose sleep over £1.20. I’d spend more time thinking about whether to spend the £100 in the first place.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

So a £100 transaction attracts £1.50 in fees where previously it was 30p. Sorry but the financial system does actually cost money to operate, inconvenient as that might be, and international transactions cost more. The EU has had a good go at making laws trying to paper over the fact that these were international transactions but in this case those laws are only 5 years old. I’m not going to lose sleep over £1.20. I’d spend more time thinking about whether to spend the £100 in the first place.

Not every person or business is as fortunate as you as to not worry about covering increased costs.

Originally Posted by Pierre

Come on Hugh, you’re smarter than this.

After the referendum result, everybody should have been planning for a no deal Brexit and taking advice on what they would have to do to continue trading in that scenario.

Any deal or arrangement post would be great.

From what I’ve picked up from you and your career, you’ve worked at big companies and managed big projects. Would the companies you have worked for sat with their thumbs up their bottoms for 4.5 years? And suddenly plead ignorance on Jan 1st?

No one ever plans for "worst case scenarios" - we planned for the loss of one site out of three geographically diverse sites, we never planned for losing two or three, because the implication was that the country had been nuked or bio/chem attacks had crippled the country, so no one would really be that fussed about education or financial lending in that scenario.

We are talking about small to medium businesses here - after the Brexit Referendum, everyone (inc. businesses) were told that a deal would be reached; it’s only in the last year or so that things "heated up" and the likelihood of "no deal" became apparent; this is at the same time as COVID hit, so no, most of the people I know who run small businesses (employing under a hundred people) had contingency plans in place for a No Deal Brexit, because they didn’t know what the impact of that would be.