Maggz

We've chosen the UK because we're both digital professionals and wanted to work in the most developed market which also had (until gdpr) the most lax laws around data and privacy, as my industry relies quite heavily on studying human behaviour, habits, and information around devices and your location, shopping patterns, etc. I didn't move to the UK as I was poor looking for work. We had 2 cars, a trike (can am Spyder) a house, a weekend retreat smaller house, and travelled at least 4 times a year. It was not a financial or wellbeing decision. It was purely a knowledge and professional development one. We also worked for one of the biggest regional companies back home. UK was interesting for highly qualified professionals, and to a degree still is. However, now with the situation we're in, this may very well change. For us as well.

Didn't see this last part. It's not exactly that simple. USA congress decided that Yugoslav republics are not to get international loans until individual countries had independence referendums. Public documents, look it up if you want. We had a 1000% inflation, country went bust. No fuel, long queues for bread and each local politicians were blaming central Belgrade government. And fed the nationalist movements that led to the breakup. You're talking out your ass. EU in late 80s and 90s? This was Europe then: Does it sound like a powerful financial beast who influenced country loans to Balkan countries? Tin foil again...

Let me address yout point about Italy. Without explaining financial markets in detail and how much "trust" in a counties ability to control their finances mean for its actual financial stability, let me explain something else, which you probably didn't find on your news sources. I'll try to keep it simple, luckily Italy suffers from the same problems as my old country Slovenia, so I know a bit about it, and as before, anyone please feel free to correct any wrong statements or misrepresentation of data which I may do, as I'm no financial expert, and I'll be simplifying it greatly, as it is quite a complex subject. Italian banks, dealt mostly with simple bank commercial business in Italy, probably 80-90%, as ours did. No real foreign investment, not really an incredible housing bubble, so 2008 crisis wasn't really a big deal as it was in other places. Italy is mostly an agricultural country (apart from the north) and lives off exports and tourism mostly, so other countries suffering slowly impacted them. However, what was unique with Italy was that their banks were the main lenders of money to their government, crazy right? Now less exports, less tourism, less money flowing in, in an already not very rich country is a problem. Government spending like crazy regardless, and borrowing money from its own banks, even worse. So GDP went down, and lending up... some ECB data - to remove opinions: The stock of government bonds in the portfolios of Italian banks moved from 182.9 billion euros at the end of 2007 to a peak of 463.9 billion in May 2015, according to ECB data. They increased again to another peak of 472.1 billion in June 2016 This is obviously Europe's fault! Not Lehman brothers collapsing and pushing half the world markets down the toilet. Anyways ... Italian banks cut lending, big time, to companies and people as it was unsustainable. Spending went down, less money to companies. Less company investments, slowing market... downward spiral. Here's bank of Italia graph oh how much banks cut loans Of course there are other reasons as well...but just explaining actual events and facts. Now Italy being a special place as it is, it also had 8 different prime minister's in 8 years from at least 5 parties. Talk about a stable country which is working on a single strategy how to improve its situation. Again...here are all the names and party colours: Again Europe's fault...how could they?! Italy has been dealing with power grabs and has been having elections at least once of not twice per year in some cases. No laws, no rules, no plan, it's all about elections over and over again. They are an absolute mess, and if they weren't one of the richest counties in the world art and history wise, with some cracking wine and some fashion...(clearly a joke), they'd be bust a long time ago. Also Germans fault, clearly. Now lastly... Credit agencies giving credit ratings like AA, A+ etc. rely on stability, governments which don't collapse before all ministers are appointed, stable lending, low lending Vs gdp rates, etc. This part is my initial point...they need trust... With no trust in a market, they label it accordingly... agencies, not Europe, and with bad labels, the international credits to help local banks are more risking, therefore more expensive, meaning they're making any recovery that much harder. Google Fitch, Moody's, A.M Best ... Europe again...how could they. What Europe did however do, is say it will not bail out 400bn Euros, as long as the Italian government is doing what it's doing. What is it actually doing you may wonder? Threatening with an exit on TV, while begging the ECB, European parliament, and ze awful Germans to bail them out, as otherwise the whole Europe is at risk. You have to love their Exit based 5* party that is leading the current government. My sincere apologies for the lengthy post. And everyone knows the best chocolate is ze German Ritter Sport!

Haha thanks. Probably the kindest thing I've been told on the web Uh, I will try to keep it short. I'm a e-commerce manager for a large UK car parts company But that doesn't have anything to do with my interest in politics, history and economics. It's more the fact I was born in Yugoslavia a long time ago, to a Serbian dad, and Bosnian mom, and had my closest family members on both sides of the Yugoslav war, which was started due to populist politicians talking about "us" and "them" although we were all the same people, and due to foreign countries helping us be "free". So I know too well what patriotism and nationalism does to people unfortunately, and more importantly what propaganda is, as we kept listening to both sides interpreting the same events quite differently. So I'm a strong believer in the European project, and believe it's the only thing that can save us from any new European conflicts, and as mentioned guarantee continuous development. I also love reading and researching on things I know nothing about

Thanks for the breakdown @Adrian@TORQEN Much appreciated So yes... Expensive games were playing for a feeling of greater freedom

This is strongly disagree with. UK was one of the most influential counties in Europe. Trust me, it was even if our politicians keep telling us otherwise. Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Cz, Romania, Bulgaria, .... How much influence do you think they have? UK, Germany and France, everyone else are just votes these three counties were buying or competing for. Best member status by far compared to others and it left, and the whole Europe is scratching its head, trying to understand why. Yes birocracy sucks and eu parliament doesn't always vote or decide the UK way... but the only way you can change that is by staying and fighting for your interests, not leaving and crying while walking away, that the EU isn't fair. And considering the alternative is Hard Brexit, which is economical suicide... I really don't understand why this is a good idea. For some fake independence which will move from European one percenters to British ones. At least Europe kept ours in check, and we have some decent laws for food, workers and environment because of it..... anyway...I digress. Check this for influence https://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-46302931?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From %1%24s

Not sure anyone can afford an exit. Italy is broke, worse than Greece was. Poland, Hungary have a populist leader elected which are blaming the EU and immigration for their failed economy even though they are not net contributors but are actually getting money. Orban is also a full on racist, but that's a whole different story lol. Separatist movements currently in Europe are the best way to gain % in elections, but no one actually offered any solution which would work. The UK was a pilot project, strongest economy, already on its own currency, and with the "easiest" exit. If Italy goes out, takes over the Lira again, they're becoming Albania in 2 years. Check their current national debt. Hungary is the same story. Poland is the only country with a proper upwords projection and growth, but it's mostly due to its cheap labour and being in the middle of Europe geographically. Their tech sector is booming with HP, IBM, SAP Hybris, and many many other foreign companies opened European centres there (Katowice, Krakov, etc). If UK can't make the exit work, no one else can. So UK exiting will funnily make the EU stronger, as no one else will have the resources and guts to leave.

I'll talk out of my ass a bit as I can't take hours Googling individual product groups for numbers. But generally how it works is (someone please correct me where I'm wrong): Hard Brexit means WTO rules, which have imposed tarrifs for a lot of the goods we import freely. In theory anything not produced in the UK could get more expensive. I think the only question is by how many %. From food ,to medicine, to cars, electric appliances, furniture, etc... WTO rules are in effect until the UK sings a trade deal with another country, i.e. Spain. After that WTO rules don't apply for Spain, but does for all other no agreement counties. Now imagine how many we need really badly. Next thing is Pund value. Pound plummeting would increase the hit on prices for imports. Again how much is speculative, but I think 10-15% pound fall is possible, and WTO tarrifs in average would probably be about the same. By salaries not going up, but prices jumping due to those problems, purchasing power of UK residents would go down significantly. Less spend means less money for companies selling things. Less money for companies, less revenue, profits and potentialn job losses. What I'm describing is your average economic crisis, imagine 2008 but for different reasons. Now... Trade deals are important. USA, Australia, Canada, all friends we have, know what will happen if we don't sign them as soon as possible, meaning they have a negotiating advantage over us and can demand things, we'd never accept in a normal situation, like NHS privatisation, chlorinated chickens, workers rights changes, lower food quality standards (those came from US only), and many other things, we at this time, are happy we do not have. This is not fearmongering. This is a hard Brexit scenario. How bad will it be, depends on those percentages and how our government will react to offset the damages by trying to change loan rates, etc. That's why this partial deal with the EU is important, we need some trade until we sign trade deals with others, in order to minimise WTO tariffs and new costs. But publicly, you don't really want to cause a panic, so these things are not really being discussed properly. I think if they did, and people panicked properly, other issues may happen, like mass cash withdrawal on banks, property value fluctuating massively, etc. So I think Mays deal or if extended transition period for further negotiations. Hard Brexit would be so bad for us, that no responsible politician would go for it (on either side). At least I hope...

May failed to deliver a majestic herd of unicorns as she didn't have enough people with the expertise in unicorn-breeding. I'm no fan but she was destined to fail anyway as expectations were unrealistic. After she fails and leaves, everyone will also use her as the scapegoat why Brexit failed, and no one will mention that the idea of a negotiated Brexit which gives UK any real benefits goes against all logic, as EU wants to make sure no one else leaves. So the UK had to be worse off unfortunately. The more the better for their cause.

Isolation and protectionism doesn't work in today's world. No country is fully self-sufficient anymore. Cooperation and close trade relations is the best if not only way to ensure continuous growth.

What war with Germany? Why would there be one? They'd need to leave the EU, get an army, be very upset with something the UK had done, and only then try to do something. Dunno, seems like a lot of work compared to staying in the EU and working with the other 26 to improve the life of its residents and develop socially, technologically and economically.

Err no. European Union with a parliament where votes matter, and people get voted in and out sounds a lot better than what Europe was for the last 2000 odd years.

Wow... tinfoil. So the EU project is a covert ops nazi project aimed at scamming 27 countries into giving up all resources and land freely, while ze Germans make an EU army in order to conquer the world? How did I never see this until now... Or anyone else out of the 400M EU residents? Eyes opened. Thanks @Bullet!

You're not getting the whole EU project. It's going towards the USA (different structures bit same logic), EU will eventually become one entity. And any country that wants to have their own anything, will probably have to leave as the UK did. So the EU army is one of the many things required. Also the USA wasn't keen on helping anyone in WWII. They conveniently stayed out of it as long as they could, while the Reich took over the whole Europe, part of Africa and was trying to occupy Russia. And that was during good relations. Imagine having Trump in power and not Roosevelt.

Why stopping at the WWII when insinuating specific counties are not to be trusted? Here's a list of countries we should cut ties with immediately as we've been involved in conflicts there, and start preparing our defence against them. Who cares about the situation we live in today! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_British_Army_1900–1999 I really thought I was out of this thread...

I'm not searching pro-brexit articles which would contest my own points, don't be silly. What I did do, is try and prove a point on the differences between reputable and not reputable news sources, as this thread had several appalling ones - in my opinion

I linked an article talking about what sources are reputable. Don't be lazy, I won't search pro-brexit articles for you, to contest my own points

Nice try. RT, Ruptly, Global news, random voiceovers,... And you think I'm dismissing it because it's not in line with my position? No, I'm dismissing it as it's managed by a guy (Putin for anyone that needs help) who's main goal is to divide and conquer Europe. I think that's quite a low bar when it comes to expectations. Don't feed me BS from a regime that wants to cause havoc in Europe and is using its state television to support their agenda and feed propaganda. There's plenty pro-brexit articles from reputable news outlets. And before you ask me what those are, I googled it, again to remove opinions, and I present you with one example (there are many more if you care to Google for 30 seconds yourself): https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2017/02/01/10-journalism-brands-where-you-will-find-real-facts-rather-than-alternative-facts/

I've been doing this for 2 days now.

Another reputable source from which you're getting your information. I lasted all 3 mins. I really am sorry, but I can't really take your arguments seriously if you're getting your information from the videos you've posted in this topic.

https://www.businessinsider.com/top-countries-exporting-weapons-arms-sales-2018-3?r=UK&IR=T#4-germany-7 Now combine all EU countries and you'll be able to compare the US Vs EU Vs Rus etc

Exactly. And the biggest ally and country we relied on (US), isn't a reliable partner anymore, and asking them for anything in the future just gives them more leverage over the EU for whatever that orange **** wants. They care only about themselves - which is normal for any country and Union. And that's precisely why the EU needs a joint force, joint decision making, and have to start acting like one entity, and not +20 kids on a sugar rush. That's also why giving up some sovereignty for the common union goal will be required (which was what Verhofstad was talking about).

It doesn't. It enables is, as all the objections and vetos were from the UK. So now they're pressing for it, while they have the support

Agreed. Brexit or no Brexit, anything we think can work down the middle, really won't. As both sides want exactly the opposite. But shouldn't we ask people, after we actually realise what hard Brexit is, if they really want it? The reason I'm asking is because just today Mr. Mogg and his supporters said the following: After we establish if those are really myths, or if we're stabbing ourselves in the back (as it's clearly not yet confirmed, or if it is, they're flat out lying), people will finally know what Brexit actually means. Is this so unreasonable? 2 years ago no one knew, it was all fearmongering according to both sides...