London Banter - Wolmar for MP

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On Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:57:50 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 08:15:31 on
Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:
What are you on about? Who is talking about USA? UK consumers should have
choice. Why should we
only be able to buy feeble vacuum cleaners and slow kettles?

The reduce our C02 footprint.

No they don't. A given amount of water requires a certain amount of energy to
boil no matter at what speed you do it. In fact you'll use more energy doing
it slower since you'll have greater heat loss over the longer time period. As
for lower powered vacuum cleaners, all that happens is people will use them for
longer if they're not doing the job properly.

--
Spud

On Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:57:50 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 08:15:31 on
Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:

banning barometers containing mercury but
not lightbulbs,

An easy target at first sight but a progressing matter. Incandescent
lamps involve the greatest production of mercury at the stage of
electricity production. CFLs have some mercury in them but not in the
form of "raw" mercury. CFLs will themselves be overtaken where
suitable by the use of LED lighting and other developments.

Mercury released into environment from disposal of dead CFLs all the time whereas mercury barometers
go on for donkeys' years.

You aren't comparing like with like. The mercury in lightbulbs is a
danger to the environment, that in a barometer is a danger to people in
the same room when it breaks, and for years afterwards as the mercury
lodged in cracks evaporates.

I've never of a case of one breaking. Have you?

limits on power usage of vacuum cleaners and kettles.
Consumers will be better off without many of them.

You think e.g. the USA presented as a glorious example by Brexiteers
always has slacker requirements ?

What are you on about? Who is talking about USA? UK consumers should have choice. Why should we
only be able to buy feeble vacuum cleaners and slow kettles?

The reduce our C02 footprint.

Quite the reverse, bringing water to the boil quickly wastes less heat than slowly warming it up
water. Low-powered domestic vacuum cleaners don't do the job properly so people will have to get
hold of industrial ones.

On Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:54:00 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 12:09:31 on
Sun, 13 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:

What's the ratio for consumer items, in other words exclude the things
sold to industry like aircraft engines.

Why exclude aircraft engines?

Because they are not designed around consumer-protection rules.

So you don't mind if planes fall out of the sky?

They have their own rules, not the B2C rules which get people het up
about Brussels. Having said that, the banana rules are B2B not B2C.

Do you really expect the rest of the world to bring their laws into
line with the EU?

You are missing the point. If your business is mainly domestic, selling
things which pass the UK regs, then at the moment you can expand your
market to the whole EU without a second thought (or any redesign,
re-testing etc).

A red herring - manufacturers in China, Japan, S Korea don't have any
problems in reaching standards in EU, USA etc. already.

They are the multi-billion manufacturers. A lot of trade is from much
smaller companies.

Not true. Much of the goods we but from abroad are from small firms.

Do you have any statistics on that? Overseas sales and distribution is
quite expensive, for even larger companies, and I don't see the shops
filled with mon-and-pop manufactured items, rather than global
multinationals.

EU rules tend not to protect consumers but protect producers from
completion e.g. tariffs on food imports, food supplements having to be
tested like drugs, standards for hoists in care homes which only some
manufacturers can produce,

You don't mind OAPs in care homes being dropped in the floor when the
hoist breaks?

Don't be ridiculous, I have been told the old ones are far easier to use.

banning barometers containing mercury but
not lightbulbs, limits on power usage of vacuum cleaners and kettles.
Consumers will be better off without many of them.

Whether that's true or not (and I detect a significant tinfoil-hat aroma
in your posting) if the rules in question (bee they good or bad) are not
adhered to, you can't export to the EU.

The examples I have given are true. But you miss the point. UK consumers will have the freedom to
buy them from producers in the UK or elsewhere, as we won't have to follow the EU in restricting
choice in order to protect producer cartels.

The only problem is that few people will be making things they can't
also sell to the remaining EU.

You want to narrow choice to protect producer cartels. I put the consumer first.

On Mon, 14 Nov 2016 15:08:48 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 14:18:37 on
Sat, 12 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:
On Sat, 12 Nov 2016 09:34:40 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 09:10:00 on
Sat, 12 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:

The question was more for yourself, to make you think about the
complexities of the situation. I doubt if the Great Repeal Bill will go
into the level of detail above, for the hundreds of Directives which
will need considering.

Er, no.

Directives are instructions from EU to member states to legislate, so
their provisions are already
law.

But rely on ECJ caselaw. Will we airbrush that out on Brexit day, or
will we (can we even) continue to rely upon it?

That depends on the drafting of the legislation.

That's a truism, not an answer.

Ask a lawyer.

Regulations are laws brought in directly by EU bypassing national
parliaments entirely. It is these
laws which will need to formally brought into UK law before we leave,
otherwise laws would disappear
overnight. Afterwards laws can be reviewed in normal way.

Will the Regulations be redrafted in UK-speak (the way transpositions of
Directives are), or what?

I imagine there would be a blanket clause just to state that
regulations in force on dd/mm/yyyy are
brought into UK law. But I'm not a lawyer. Check with the Brexit department.

I hope you took this all into account when you voted.

New trade deals are being discussed now.

And the results may be known in ten years time.

Why ten years? Could be ten weeks or ten months.

It takes that long to work out the detail.

No it doesn't, draft agreements with some countries are already taking
shape. This can happen quite quickly, unless you think that
negotiators have to travel in person by sailing ship to discuss terms.

That's just plain wrong. In terms of 80:20 rules, 98% of the work takes
2% of the time, and the final 2% takes 98%.

We'll see.

No-one is saying we won't able to trade, but the outcome (if we leave
the single market in any sense) will be tariffs and barriers which will
hurt us more than them.

No, quite the reverse. UK is EU's biggest market.

Are you suggesting some kind of apparatus where the UK's import and
export tariffs are revenue neutral? It's hard to make quotas neutral.

Switzerland has signed up trade deals with far more countries than
the EU has, and UK is a bigger
opportunity for business than Switzerland is.

And how long did it take them? Also note that the Swiss GDP is a quarter
of the UK's which makes the stakes lower, and thus easier to negotiate.

They've been doing it for years, about the same time as the EU, but
with much greater success.

Do you have an example of one, with start and finish dates? And were the
same team trying to negotiate a dozen others simultaneously.

Ask them. The fact is they trade deals with far more countries than the EU has.

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.

No-one is saying we get rid of everything the EU introduced - some of
it undoubtedly UK policy. It just means that UK will be responsible in
the future.

It'll be interesting to see how Westminster deals with the workload,
when so much new legislation will have to be fought out locally hand-to-
hand, rather than rubber-stamping something from Brussels.

We managed before 1973.

The world has become far more complicated.

Really?

Yes, take just one area - telecommunications. In that time we've gone
from "Do what PO Telephones tells you, and shut up" to hundreds of
individual rules and regulations covering thousands of suppliers.

Now there are more service providers, more choice, more competition.

Actually trade barriers are far lower today than fory-odd years ago.
Even if we don't get an FTA with the EU, tariffs under MFN/WTO rules
cost us less than the present cost of membership.

Tariffs are only one (of many) financial consequences of leaving.

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.

But Westminster will have more money (see above).

But more difficult to extract money from. EU grants are a bit like
applying for a mortgage, you have to present a financial case and tick
all the boxes. The money then arrive relatively painlessly. In
Westminster they'll also be asking you "why exactly do you need four
bedrooms and what's wrong with your current house".

So put pressure on MPs.

They don't make these decisions. Ministers and their unelected civil
servants do.

If they don't deal with it, chuck them out.

How do you do that?

By voting in elections. You go into a booth and put a cross on a piece
of paper against the name of the candidate of your choice.

And why do you think that a single-issue such as that will dominate an
election campaign?

Stand yourself then and make a difference.

That's democratic accountability.

The man in the street won't have much visibility of the EU grants issue.

See above.

I can't see anything above that leads me to think that the man on the
Clapham Omnibus will be doing an analysis of the economic impact of EU
vs Westminster grants. cf the £350m for the NHS - they didn't even get
the figure right.

Fact is we give far more money to the EU than we get back.

In message , at 16:41:10 on
Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:
You aren't comparing like with like. The mercury in lightbulbs is a
danger to the environment, that in a barometer is a danger to people in
the same room when it breaks, and for years afterwards as the mercury
lodged in cracks evaporates.

I've never of a case of one breaking. Have you?

There's a few here.

https://www.health.ny.gov/environmen...ercury/mercury
_spill_incidents.htm
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 16:54:42 on
Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:
The only problem is that few people will be making things they can't
also sell to the remaining EU.

You want to narrow choice to protect producer cartels. I put the consumer first.

So do I - hence my support for product safety legislation.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 16:54:42 on
Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:
But rely on ECJ caselaw. Will we airbrush that out on Brexit day, or
will we (can we even) continue to rely upon it?

That depends on the drafting of the legislation.

That's a truism, not an answer.

Ask a lawyer.

Ask them what- the meaning of "truism"?

Why ten years? Could be ten weeks or ten months.

It takes that long to work out the detail.

No it doesn't, draft agreements with some countries are already taking
shape. This can happen quite quickly, unless you think that
negotiators have to travel in person by sailing ship to discuss terms.

That's just plain wrong. In terms of 80:20 rules, 98% of the work takes
2% of the time, and the final 2% takes 98%.

We'll see.

So you don't know.

Also note that the Swiss GDP is a quarter
of the UK's which makes the stakes lower, and thus easier to negotiate.

They've been doing it for years, about the same time as the EU, but
with much greater success.

Do you have an example of one, with start and finish dates? And were the
same team trying to negotiate a dozen others simultaneously.

Ask them. The fact is they trade deals with far more countries than the EU has.

So you don't know.

We managed before 1973.

The world has become far more complicated.

Really?

Yes, take just one area - telecommunications. In that time we've gone
from "Do what PO Telephones tells you, and shut up" to hundreds of
individual rules and regulations covering thousands of suppliers.

Now there are more service providers, more choice, more competition.

Even when the rules come from the EU. That rather contradicts your
position on mercury.

And why do you think that a single-issue such as [grant funding
famine] will dominate an election campaign?

Stand yourself then and make a difference.

That doesn't answer the question (a definite trend as this thread
continues).

Fact is we give far more money to the EU than we get back.

We get a lot more than "money" back.
--
Roland Perry

On Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:41:10 +0000, Optimist
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:57:50 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 08:15:31 on
Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Optimist remarked:

banning barometers containing mercury but
not lightbulbs,

An easy target at first sight but a progressing matter. Incandescent
lamps involve the greatest production of mercury at the stage of
electricity production. CFLs have some mercury in them but not in the
form of "raw" mercury. CFLs will themselves be overtaken where
suitable by the use of LED lighting and other developments.

Mercury released into environment from disposal of dead CFLs all the time whereas mercury barometers
go on for donkeys' years.

You aren't comparing like with like. The mercury in lightbulbs is a
danger to the environment, that in a barometer is a danger to people in
the same room when it breaks, and for years afterwards as the mercury
lodged in cracks evaporates.

I've never of a case of one breaking. Have you?

There was more potential hazard from medical thermometers and
sphygmomanometers being broken when dropped but sales of those to the
general public have been banned since 2009 and non-domestic usual
practice is now to use other devices. The trouble with a barometer is
the quantity of mercury available (presuming it is not just in an
attached thermometer) and the likely persistence if there is a
breakage which is unlikely to be cleaned up with as much efficiency as
in non-domestic premises; much of the current risk assessment works on
the basis of such barometers being fixed on the wall rather than
mobile.

limits on power usage of vacuum cleaners and kettles.
Consumers will be better off without many of them.

You think e.g. the USA presented as a glorious example by Brexiteers
always has slacker requirements ?

What are you on about? Who is talking about USA? UK consumers should have choice. Why should we
only be able to buy feeble vacuum cleaners and slow kettles?

The reduce our C02 footprint.

Quite the reverse, bringing water to the boil quickly wastes less heat than slowly warming it up
water. Low-powered domestic vacuum cleaners don't do the job properly so people will have to get
hold of industrial ones.