Why, if you live in France, did you vote for Brexit?

"Every single one of us is important and our views equally valid

No. Just no. I cannot agree with you re the bit I have made bold.
We live in a civilised society with rules, so while Delia is allowed to express her views - however abhorrent and just plain wrong (and I am allowed to call them abhorrent and wrong), they are not equally valid, they really aren’t, any more than someone’s view that 2+2=5 or that the sun goes around the earth.
Don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out.

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Hi vero - hope you’re well. I just popped by to say - what a fabulous post, couldn’t agree more and I particularly like the last line - can’t wait to use it myself. Enjoy the holidays / Simon :slight_smile:

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You too Simon.

Hello Simon, I hope you’re staying.

Thanks Jane , thanks Mandy - I’ve kept an eye on SFN over the past few months but possibly best things remain as they are :wink: . I just loved Vero’s post and simply had to ‘say’ something (just for a change lol!) - so I dug out and old email address to register with! I would have PM’d you both but I’ve forgotten how to do it! Take care / Simon :slight_smile:

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Lovely to hear from you. Take care of yourself too. All the best xx

You have been missed, not the same without you.:wink:

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Thank you Simon! It’s lovely to hear from you, I can’t wait for the holidays, I hope yours are wonderful!

Totally agree with you,
I would vote out , yes it makes life harder here but I feel the EUropean Union only thinks about the northern countries and also not about the planet and it’s future. Voting against cancer causing pesticides, voting against a total ban on ivory, doing very little about the plastic waste problem, just banning a few single use plastics in a few years time is too little too late. Putting sanctions on Russia after invading Crimea and shooting down a passenger plane, but then buying 60 % of oil and gas off them.
It’s all ridiculous and the Euro has only made the southern countries poorer as they cannot lower the value of their currencies to compete.
It’s run by the few for the few.

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Ok - quite a few ‘issues’ highlighted there Barrie! Any solutions with funding ideas / alternative sources?

I’d always presumed that Britain was one of the northern EU members, one of the ones Barrie claims gain most from membership. Surely that alone is good reason to remain.

To be fair this would have been readily apparent to the southern European states when they joined the Euro.

There were too many fudges allowed as the EU took up the ERM and subsequently the Euro and some of those fudges are coming home to roost - I think someone wryly observed that you could get a closer set of economies simply by choosing countries randomly - say a set who’s names all began with the same letter than the nations which made up the Eurozone.

You assume the southern countries accepted the terms but did they know that Germany insisted the value of the Deutschmark was lowered to give them a advantage from day one. Plus some countries didn’t qualify but lied to get accepted .

No, the countries in the Euro not the EUropean Union.

I think with the Energy issues you could get other supply’s but at a lot greater cost, I know Marocco is close to building a pipeline to supply oil and also planning to supply electricity into Spain, as they have one if the largest solar power plans in the world.

But as Britain does not use Euros how does your theory work?

Well, of course they accepted the terms…

I don’t think Germany was innocent back in the days of the ERM - I’d have to check whether Germany went into the ERM with the DM undervalued but interest rate changes by the Germans did play a part in “Black Wednesday”. In fact the UK really went in with the £ overvalued which is why we could not sustain the value of the £ high enough against the DM at that time.

Of course, that sealed our fate in not joining the Euro - some might argue it was a lucky escape :slight_smile:

What,!! The Uk uses the pound sterling if you didn’t know.

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Paul flinders- A very lucky escape, to have your own currency allows you to raise and lower interest rates depending on what the economy is doing. That is why many professionals in the city have always stated the Euro can’t work in the EU as too many differences in each countries economies.
The problem now is countries like Italy and Greece would be better off out of the Euro but virtually impossible to do so.

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We might have done OK in the Euro, we’ll probably never know now.

However, you are right - the problem that economies like Greece have is that they no longer have access to these economic controls but, because they remain separate countries, the EU has limited ways to provide revenues to prop up the weaker parts of the system.

The Guardian ran an article on this back in 2015.

The Dollar does much better at this despite individual states having economies that are even more disparate than EU member nations because the US does have a common fiscal policy.

Unfortunately the Germans are fixated on “not bankrolling the EU” - ultimately they need to acceptthat places like Greece will always need financial support and there probably does need to be an EU wide fiscal policy. there probably needs to be an EU wide social policy as well.