In message , at 10:38:40 on
Thu, 10 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:

I'll pick out a few of the worst howlers:

Legislation to remove EU competence (i.e. power) over UK affairs but adopting current EU laws into
UK law so we can change, repeal or leave unchanged as required AFTER we leave.

(1) Is that for EU Laws brought into force up to the day of exit, or
some other milestone. This isn't hypothetical, there's a huge Data
Protection shake-up due to be in force by May 2018. Which is just after
current predictions of Brexit. Assuming we do exit my April 2018, what
will the Data Protection law in the UK be in June 2018, given that if
it's the old law we won't be a "safe harbour" and many EU companies will
be in difficulty working through UK datacentres. Further to that, if we
brought the new law into force by March 2018 [there's no prohibition on
being early] what if there's a European Court ruling in 2020
'clarifying' what the law means, as has happened recently with the old
law and the so-called "Domestic Exemption"? Will we adopt the revised
law.

(2) What of the laws which provide for regulatory decisions to be made
by the EU equivalent of OFCOM[1], whatever the Monopolies Commission is
called this week, and so on? What if the laws have other pan-European
aspects, like the ones on Copyright and Patents.

[1] eg Will UK mobile phone companies have to abide by EU decisions on
roaming costs.

Start discussions on tying up loose ends (staff costs, pensions etc.).

Who pays those wages and pensions for the duration of the discussions?

Inform the EU we are leaving on a particular date and say we intend to carry on trading with the EU
tariff-free as long as the other countries reciprocate.

You can inform until you are blue in the teeth. They can ignore us.

EU governments are unlikely to refuse as adopting WTO/MFN rules would damage their businesses far
more than ours

That strategy's not working so well with UK & India.

(German businesses in particular are lobbying to maintain tariff-free access to their
biggest market). We will no longer obliged to pay into the EU budget, so that will save us about
£10 billion a year net,

Chicken feed compared to the financial benefits of the single market.

and FTAs with non-EU countries will give us access to cheaper imports.

After a decade of negotiations.

I do admit that many did vote divorce to become self-governing again.

I am old enough to remember politics before we went into the EC. Contrary to the alarmist reports
of some, we had human rights, equal pay, maternity pay etc. We had a health service (the NHS came
into existence when I was a few months old).

Yes, but a great deal of today's consumer/employee protection has been
added on top of that rather low base by the EU.

We had a thriving fishing industry which the EU ruined
(compare it to Norway & Iceland which sensibly kept out),

They limited our fishing to avoid extinction in the North Sea.

our own regional policy (no need for regions to lobby in Brussels
against each other for a small slice of the money we pay into the EU)

It's far easier to get that sort of money from the EU than from
Westminster.

transport policy, immigration policy - everything. And when we went to the polls, we knew that the
process could sack one party from government and put in another.

--
Roland Perry