Brexit Effects

@jeancolby Tzar Nicholas II. Britain was pretty close when its armies were on French soil.

@Gumba1000 Yes they were. Britain has always been a logger heads with France.

@jeancolby With good reason. They sank their entire armada rather than give it to the UK when Germany occupied them. That could have shortened the war.

@Gumba1000 That is very true. France has never considered Britain as being part of Europe, and has always thought them 'uncouth'.

@jeancolby When the EEC was founded, France blocked our entry for years. Six I think. No other reason than, they don't like Brits.

@Gumba1000 Yes, not sure about how many years.

@jeancolby The French fishermen have also attacked ours recently by throwing stones at them. It's called The English Channel for a reason.

@Gumba1000 No worries if stones are the best they can do.

@jeancolby We threw muscles back

@Gumba1000 Come on mate, it is called the "English Channel" because we called it that, the French call it something else. The thing is, it belongs to nobody, so whatever it is called is not of any importance. The UK is supposed to have an exclusion zone of so many miles, and I guess the French have similar, international law upholds that right.

@Uncfred The French call it "The Sleeve". Twenty miles off a country's shore is the extent of its waters I believe. The Channel Islands are only a couple of miles off French shores I believe. Surely that puts our waters'edge closer to France than England.

@Gumba1000 They thought the UK would just cause problems. Looks like they've been proven right. :(

@NortiusMaximus We can't have caused problems, we couldn't get anything done or changed from within. The problems came when we decided to leave. We probably wouldn't have left if Germany hadn't insisted that all European nations open their doors and wallets to illegal immigrants.

@Gumba1000 On the contrary, we were always complaining and demanding special treatment. We demanded a rebate on our contributions; we refused to join the Euro; we refused to join Schengen. Neither Germany nor any other EU country has demanded we allow illegal immigrants into the country. In fact, under EU rules we can deny entry even to citizens of EU member states if they can't support themselves. The UK government decided not to make used of that right, preferring to blame the EU for uncontrolled immigration instead.

Now we're facing higher prices, food and medicine shortages, job losses and fewer opportunities for young people. There will still be immigration but from Asia rather than Europe. What real benefits have we gained by leaving?

@NortiusMaximus We were part of the Schengen area. Yes we didn't join the Euro but it took nearly twenty years for it to become strong, it wasn't worth joining back then. We demanded a rebate because France were getting subsidies for inefficient and old fashioned farming whilst we were being penalised for being efficient. We could send back Europeans that couldn't support themselves upon arrival, however not after they had settled then become unable. The EU did demand that the immigrants from Africa etc were shared out between all EU nations, we had to negotiate to get them down to a few child immigrants. Of which we still didn't want.

The benefit of leaving? Being able to blame our governments directly and them being unable to deflect. The governments in the last six years have had to work harder than any others in decades. Not that it has been hard work, but getting them to think for themselves is a start. Another benefit is being able to implement an immigration points system like Australia. If done properly, this should stop the thousands of unskilled labourers from outside the EU as well as inside, from coming here. We don't need any more takeaways or corner shops.

Those are immediate benefits. Others are a wait and see.

@Gumba1000 Sorry, you're wrong. There was no passport control between the UK and (the Republic of) Ireland but there was between the UK and every other EU member state.

That's true. The EU has been a very handy scapegoat for whenever the UK government wanted to implement anything that was likely to be unpopular.

You're not comparing like with like. Australia is a federation of 7(?) states with complete freedom of movement between states. The USA is similar, with 50 states. It would be more accurate to compare them with the EU as a whole rather than with individual member states.

One of the goals of Schengen is to remove internal border while strengthening external ones, making the EU more like Australia and the USA. We've just put ourselves outside that stronger border.

In that case, any that try to start will quickly go out of business.

@NortiusMaximus We were in the Schergen Acquis.

My comparison with Australia was accurate and you've obviously forgot that the UK is a union of nation states.

We didn't and don't need continental Europe's strengthened outer borders, we have an entire sea between us and other countries except ROI.

@Gumba1000 The UK and (the Republic of) Ireland both opted out of the Schengen Agreement. I traveled around Europe a lot over the last 20 year. I only went through passport control when entering the Schengen Area or coming back to the UK. There is no passport control within that area - that's other EU countries, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.

That's likely to change before too long. Scotland will, almost certainly, claim independence from England and Northern Ireland is already more closely aligned with (the Republic of) Ireland than with Great Britain. The UK is history.

@NortiusMaximus We were in the Schergen Acquis. Look it up, I did. Also our union will stay a union until the British government says otherwise.

@Gumba1000 I did. The point is, we opted out of the Schengen Agreement before it was signed so were never part of the Schengen Area.

It will be a very strange "United" Kingdom, when there is a customs border between different parts of it (namely between Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Even stranger that there will be no border between one part of the UK and the EU. The UK is fractured and I doubt it will be long before Great Britain is too.

@NortiusMaximus That remains to be seen and at the rate the SNP is going, Holyrood will be disbanded.