11 ms·

> "The free movement of labour is part of the European Union, and we tried very hard to convince the British not to leave the Union," said Olaf Scholz, the Soci

by qzw 5y ago

> "The free movement of labour is part of the European Union, and we tried very hard to convince the British not to leave the Union," said Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrat candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor. "They decided differently. I hope they will manage the problems coming from that," Scholz said. Man, I can smell the schadenfreude from all the way over here.

brightball 5y ago
You definitely get the impression that the other EU members intend to punish the UK for leaving.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Or just treat them as they do any other non-EU country? The special deals and preferential treatment come with being in the EU. When you leave, they stop. Fair’s fair.
  - timellis-smith 5y ago
    Not sure. "A fifth of all EU border checks are now happening in Northern Ireland, the government has said." https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/unsustainable-level-of-eu-checks-happening-in-ni-40404848.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/unsustainable... There is a distinct possibility that the EU is being vindictive
    - dhosek 5y ago
      Or there is the distinct possibility that this was a heavily-traversed border pre-Brexit and with Brexit it now requires a lot of border checks.
      - timellis-smith 5y ago
        I'm not going to argue whether the actual statement is true or not: Many people don't trust the government at the best of times but if it is true, I seriously doubt whether it constitutes 1/5 of all EU trade (assuming that border checks are in proportion to trade).
        Swizec 5y ago
        Or people who live just across the border where there previously was none continue to commute to work daily, now across a border. With time countries usually end up passing treaties to make these regular passings easier. When you are a country newly enforcing the Schengen border it’s a high faff affair and closely scrutinized. I remember when Slovenia first got the border it caused huge problems and long delays.
        rjsw 5y ago
        > Or people who live just across the border where there previously was none continue to commute to work daily, now across a border. The checks are at the ports in NI, the whole point of the agreement between the EU and UK was to avoid any checks at the land border between NI and the Irish Republic.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Brexit did come with a healthy dose of "F-u" to the rest of the EU. Hard to keep back the smile I suppose.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  What would they need to do to convince you they don't intend to punish the UK? Would they try to force migrant workers to work in the UK, even against applicable UK law? Other EU politicians have been quite diplomatic and friendly during the whole thing. A lot unlike a certain Prime Minister from a former EU member I could name.
  - brightball 5y ago
    Just an observation. Ever since the announcement it seems like various groups on Reddit and elsewhere want to celebrate every difficulty that the UK experiences.
    - bayesian_horse 5y ago
      Yes, there was razor-thin margin for the Leave campaign, with massive lies being told, partially financed by Russia, and the younger generation generally opposed. It makes travelling in the EU harder, let alone it risks upsetting the Ireland situation. You can expect an international audience to disapprove.
      - timellis-smith 5y ago
        That's quite a claim. Do you have some strong evidence to back it up? The electoral commission went to great lengths and expense to find any wrong doing and came up with nothing. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/04/electoral-commissions-436000-bill-fighting-brexit-campaigner/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20... Edit: Rant alert: It really irks me that the people who call the Brexit election unfair, don't seem to acknowledge that Britain was never given any kind of referendum when joining the EU "Although the United Kingdom ratified the treaty in Parliament, this was not without some opposition. Broadly the governing Labour party supported the treaty, while the opposition Conservatives did not. The Liberal Democrats supported the treaty, while calling for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU as a whole.[119] Several 'Eurosceptic' MPs called for a referendum on the ratification of the treaty. Daniel Hannan pointed out that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair had twice promised a referendum on the matter, to which Blair replied that he had promised a referendum on the European Constitution rather than the Lisbon Treaty, which unlike the former was not a constitutional treaty.[120] In early October 2007, the Commons' European Scrutiny Committee had found that the treaty was "substantially equivalent" to the rejected constitution.[121]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_Lisbon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  When you cut off your foot with an axe, the bystanders are not punishing you when they observe that you're having trouble putting on your pants afterwards.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  I guess your ex wife not giving you a blowjob after your divorce would probably give you the impression she was 'punishing you for leaving'.
- s_dev 5y ago
  You also get the impression the UK wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Some of the Brexit political promises are pure delusion. I think a few over zealous Brexiteers might be conflating not getting rewarded with punishment.
  - rusk 5y ago
    EU membership conferred privileges which were seen as entitlements, so when inevitably withdrawn it seems like punishment. It has to be said though, that the EU did go to great lengths to try to find some kind of common ground that would leave much of the entitlements in place (as a matter of self-interest of course, as these amounted to business for various EU states) - to which the HMG responded with V-signs and blowing loud Benny-Hill raspberries. To trade across international borders you have to have agreements, and you can't have an agreement with somebody who openly flouts the rules at every given opportunity. I wouldn't be relying on your neighbours' nativist agendas to drive some sort of "free trade" angle either cause nativism typically favours tariffs.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I definitely sense a smug air of "this is all your fault and you deserve every ounce of pain for leaving. Let that be a lesson to you!"
  - toofy 5y ago
    Considering how smug the pro-leave people were and how they were repeatedly and loudly insulting towards those who wanted to remain, surely we’re not surprised. Particularly when people were screaming at the tops of their lungs, “There’s a lot of absolutely fundamental societal wide issues that should be considered…” There is nothing shocking here.
  - evgen 5y ago
    'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      >" 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party." Yep! This is exactly the kind of sentiment I was talking about.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > Yep! This is exactly the kind of sentiment I was talking about. No, you were talking about "smug" EU remainers / still-in-the-EU citizens, weren't you? The people who "voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party" are the Brexiteers.
      - jen20 5y ago
        And in what conceivable way is it not justified? "Project Fear" was always "Project Reality". It's just that reality is now biting for the people who voted for the leopards to eat their faces.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Yeah, so? It is all their fault and they deserve every ounce of pain for leaving. Nobody to blame but themselves, the nitwits.
- snarf21 5y ago
  Not helping them solve their problems is different than actively punishing them.
  - rusk 5y ago
    But they did try to help! They spent years trying to negotiate some kind of trade deal, as many European economies stood to lose out ... but it's clear that the unilateral no deal approach was the plan from the outset.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
teorema 5y ago
... except there's also news reports everywhere of an energy crisis in Europe too? Also maybe Asia as well. I've been trying to read into the causes and dont feel like I've come to understand it any better. I'm tempted to see it as part of the broader supply chain crisis but I get the impression its a little different. Then again I'm not sure I understand why the broader supply chain disruption is as pervasive as it is at this point in time.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Apparently, petrol (gas for Americans) is plentiful at the refineries, but there aren't truck drivers who can drive it to the petrol station. For some weeks now, supermarkets have been somewhat sparsely stacked (no shortage of food in general, but definitely limited ranges etc.). There is no direct link to the spikes in energy prices.
  - mnw21cam 5y ago
    It should be noted that the photographs that the news outlets use in the articles about supermarket shortages are mostly from last year. It's deceptive.
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      Still, there are shortages. For example, my local supermarket has for a month or so had signs explaining that "Supply difficulties" may mean some items aren't in stock, e.g. most of the Italian ready meals section (I like Italian and I'm lazy) is replaced by an incongruous display of Italian wine, even though the wine section is actually on the far side of the store. They are clearly struggling. And even if Brexit is only 10% of the problem, they run into the fact that it's key to central government policy to portray Brexit as successful, and so you mustn't mention that element.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      True. That said, my local large Tesco had a small few aisles completely empty - yoghurts I think, and some fruit and veg. Clearly not an apocalyptic situation, and much better than the Great Toilet Tissue Shortage, but unsettling nonetheless.
photochemsyn 5y ago
The issue with free movement of labor is that it only works out well across a region with standardized pay rates. Otherwise corporations will import labor from the low-cost zones and fire their high-cost local workers. This causes a lot of anger, see Brexit.
- notatoad 5y ago
  Yeah, that's what people keep saying. But if it were true, the staff shortages post-brexit would be easily resolved by simply paying a bit more. The continued staff shortages would seem to mean that it's not simply an issue of pay, and there aren't enough Brits willing to do those jobs.
  - djhworld 5y ago
    > that it's not simply an issue of pay, and there aren't enough Brits willing to do those jobs. From what I've read (and take this with a pinch of salt) there are a lot of licensed HGV drivers in the UK who don't drive anymore, with common reasons being long, unsociable working hours, management that treat you like dirt, shitty rules around where they can park to take rest stops with substandard (typical everywhere in the UK...) facilities, and pay that hasn't risen in decades. This, combined with not enough younger folk taking up the job, along with Brexit, has led to a shortage
    - sockpuppet_12 5y ago
      This seems like a case of trying to cram the ruinous practices back into pandora's box, which has been leaking for a very long time. Transport companies have had a long time to optimise their extraction of value from cheap, easily exploitable employees from overseas. The easily exploitable workers aren't available anymore, so the companies who exploited them will have to change their exploitation habits if they want to fill their positions from the remaining labour pool. Of course a landed citizen isn't going to sign up to be treated unfairly if they don't have to, they're not as desperate and therefore not as exploitable. I imagine they're reading the terms of employment on these positions with disgust, and so they should.
hogFeast 5y ago
Not really. The ones who are angry about this are lobbyists representing haulers. Most people in the UK are very supportive of HGV drivers finally being paid a fair wage. It is unfortunate that political leaders side so quickly with large corporations (although not surprising in Germany, it isn't usual in the UK, the public won't take it).

by qzw 5y ago

brightball 5y ago

You definitely get the impression that the other EU members intend to punish the UK for leaving.

Swizec 5y ago
Or just treat them as they do any other non-EU country? The special deals and preferential treatment come with being in the EU. When you leave, they stop. Fair’s fair.
- timellis-smith 5y ago
  Not sure. "A fifth of all EU border checks are now happening in Northern Ireland, the government has said." https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/unsustainable-level-of-eu-checks-happening-in-ni-40404848.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/unsustainable... There is a distinct possibility that the EU is being vindictive
  - dhosek 5y ago
    Or there is the distinct possibility that this was a heavily-traversed border pre-Brexit and with Brexit it now requires a lot of border checks.
    - timellis-smith 5y ago
      I'm not going to argue whether the actual statement is true or not: Many people don't trust the government at the best of times but if it is true, I seriously doubt whether it constitutes 1/5 of all EU trade (assuming that border checks are in proportion to trade).
      - Swizec 5y ago
        Or people who live just across the border where there previously was none continue to commute to work daily, now across a border. With time countries usually end up passing treaties to make these regular passings easier. When you are a country newly enforcing the Schengen border it’s a high faff affair and closely scrutinized. I remember when Slovenia first got the border it caused huge problems and long delays.
        rjsw 5y ago
        > Or people who live just across the border where there previously was none continue to commute to work daily, now across a border. The checks are at the ports in NI, the whole point of the agreement between the EU and UK was to avoid any checks at the land border between NI and the Irish Republic.
rich_sasha 5y ago
Brexit did come with a healthy dose of "F-u" to the rest of the EU. Hard to keep back the smile I suppose.
bayesian_horse 5y ago
What would they need to do to convince you they don't intend to punish the UK? Would they try to force migrant workers to work in the UK, even against applicable UK law? Other EU politicians have been quite diplomatic and friendly during the whole thing. A lot unlike a certain Prime Minister from a former EU member I could name.
- brightball 5y ago
  Just an observation. Ever since the announcement it seems like various groups on Reddit and elsewhere want to celebrate every difficulty that the UK experiences.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    Yes, there was razor-thin margin for the Leave campaign, with massive lies being told, partially financed by Russia, and the younger generation generally opposed. It makes travelling in the EU harder, let alone it risks upsetting the Ireland situation. You can expect an international audience to disapprove.
    - timellis-smith 5y ago
      That's quite a claim. Do you have some strong evidence to back it up? The electoral commission went to great lengths and expense to find any wrong doing and came up with nothing. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/04/electoral-commissions-436000-bill-fighting-brexit-campaigner/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20... Edit: Rant alert: It really irks me that the people who call the Brexit election unfair, don't seem to acknowledge that Britain was never given any kind of referendum when joining the EU "Although the United Kingdom ratified the treaty in Parliament, this was not without some opposition. Broadly the governing Labour party supported the treaty, while the opposition Conservatives did not. The Liberal Democrats supported the treaty, while calling for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU as a whole.[119] Several 'Eurosceptic' MPs called for a referendum on the ratification of the treaty. Daniel Hannan pointed out that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair had twice promised a referendum on the matter, to which Blair replied that he had promised a referendum on the European Constitution rather than the Lisbon Treaty, which unlike the former was not a constitutional treaty.[120] In early October 2007, the Commons' European Scrutiny Committee had found that the treaty was "substantially equivalent" to the rejected constitution.[121]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_Lisbon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...
NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
When you cut off your foot with an axe, the bystanders are not punishing you when they observe that you're having trouble putting on your pants afterwards.
shapefrog 5y ago
I guess your ex wife not giving you a blowjob after your divorce would probably give you the impression she was 'punishing you for leaving'.
s_dev 5y ago
You also get the impression the UK wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Some of the Brexit political promises are pure delusion. I think a few over zealous Brexiteers might be conflating not getting rewarded with punishment.
- rusk 5y ago
  EU membership conferred privileges which were seen as entitlements, so when inevitably withdrawn it seems like punishment. It has to be said though, that the EU did go to great lengths to try to find some kind of common ground that would leave much of the entitlements in place (as a matter of self-interest of course, as these amounted to business for various EU states) - to which the HMG responded with V-signs and blowing loud Benny-Hill raspberries. To trade across international borders you have to have agreements, and you can't have an agreement with somebody who openly flouts the rules at every given opportunity. I wouldn't be relying on your neighbours' nativist agendas to drive some sort of "free trade" angle either cause nativism typically favours tariffs.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I definitely sense a smug air of "this is all your fault and you deserve every ounce of pain for leaving. Let that be a lesson to you!"
- toofy 5y ago
  Considering how smug the pro-leave people were and how they were repeatedly and loudly insulting towards those who wanted to remain, surely we’re not surprised. Particularly when people were screaming at the tops of their lungs, “There’s a lot of absolutely fundamental societal wide issues that should be considered…” There is nothing shocking here.
- evgen 5y ago
  'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    >" 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party." Yep! This is exactly the kind of sentiment I was talking about.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Yep! This is exactly the kind of sentiment I was talking about. No, you were talking about "smug" EU remainers / still-in-the-EU citizens, weren't you? The people who "voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party" are the Brexiteers.
    - jen20 5y ago
      And in what conceivable way is it not justified? "Project Fear" was always "Project Reality". It's just that reality is now biting for the people who voted for the leopards to eat their faces.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Yeah, so? It is all their fault and they deserve every ounce of pain for leaving. Nobody to blame but themselves, the nitwits.
snarf21 5y ago
Not helping them solve their problems is different than actively punishing them.
- rusk 5y ago
  But they did try to help! They spent years trying to negotiate some kind of trade deal, as many European economies stood to lose out ... but it's clear that the unilateral no deal approach was the plan from the outset.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

teorema 5y ago

... except there's also news reports everywhere of an energy crisis in Europe too? Also maybe Asia as well. I've been trying to read into the causes and dont feel like I've come to understand it any better. I'm tempted to see it as part of the broader supply chain crisis but I get the impression its a little different. Then again I'm not sure I understand why the broader supply chain disruption is as pervasive as it is at this point in time.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Apparently, petrol (gas for Americans) is plentiful at the refineries, but there aren't truck drivers who can drive it to the petrol station. For some weeks now, supermarkets have been somewhat sparsely stacked (no shortage of food in general, but definitely limited ranges etc.). There is no direct link to the spikes in energy prices.
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  It should be noted that the photographs that the news outlets use in the articles about supermarket shortages are mostly from last year. It's deceptive.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    Still, there are shortages. For example, my local supermarket has for a month or so had signs explaining that "Supply difficulties" may mean some items aren't in stock, e.g. most of the Italian ready meals section (I like Italian and I'm lazy) is replaced by an incongruous display of Italian wine, even though the wine section is actually on the far side of the store. They are clearly struggling. And even if Brexit is only 10% of the problem, they run into the fact that it's key to central government policy to portray Brexit as successful, and so you mustn't mention that element.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    True. That said, my local large Tesco had a small few aisles completely empty - yoghurts I think, and some fruit and veg. Clearly not an apocalyptic situation, and much better than the Great Toilet Tissue Shortage, but unsettling nonetheless.

photochemsyn 5y ago

The issue with free movement of labor is that it only works out well across a region with standardized pay rates. Otherwise corporations will import labor from the low-cost zones and fire their high-cost local workers. This causes a lot of anger, see Brexit.

notatoad 5y ago
Yeah, that's what people keep saying. But if it were true, the staff shortages post-brexit would be easily resolved by simply paying a bit more. The continued staff shortages would seem to mean that it's not simply an issue of pay, and there aren't enough Brits willing to do those jobs.
- djhworld 5y ago
  > that it's not simply an issue of pay, and there aren't enough Brits willing to do those jobs. From what I've read (and take this with a pinch of salt) there are a lot of licensed HGV drivers in the UK who don't drive anymore, with common reasons being long, unsociable working hours, management that treat you like dirt, shitty rules around where they can park to take rest stops with substandard (typical everywhere in the UK...) facilities, and pay that hasn't risen in decades. This, combined with not enough younger folk taking up the job, along with Brexit, has led to a shortage
  - sockpuppet_12 5y ago
    This seems like a case of trying to cram the ruinous practices back into pandora's box, which has been leaking for a very long time. Transport companies have had a long time to optimise their extraction of value from cheap, easily exploitable employees from overseas. The easily exploitable workers aren't available anymore, so the companies who exploited them will have to change their exploitation habits if they want to fill their positions from the remaining labour pool. Of course a landed citizen isn't going to sign up to be treated unfairly if they don't have to, they're not as desperate and therefore not as exploitable. I imagine they're reading the terms of employment on these positions with disgust, and so they should.

hogFeast 5y ago

Not really. The ones who are angry about this are lobbyists representing haulers. Most people in the UK are very supportive of HGV drivers finally being paid a fair wage. It is unfortunate that political leaders side so quickly with large corporations (although not surprising in Germany, it isn't usual in the UK, the public won't take it).