BREXIT? Am I just plain stupid?

ddraig, that's a very long post full of rubbish.
The EU are doing what they are supposed to do; the UK are not.
Considering that the Brexiteers are in charge in the UK camp, they are not doing very well, are they?
They lie, they obfuscate, they bully, they have no figures, are unprepared, not willing to compromise.
David Davis had no new offer tonight. He's just hoping that the EU will do his work for him.
They don't want us to leave, they never wanted us to leave, 48% of the UK didn't want us to leave. Why should it be made easy for the Brexiteers?

ddraig123, are you maybe the Russian troll? Can you really imagine any organisation offering better terms to non-members than to members? You seem to think the EU should do that, otherwise it is "punishing" us.

We are not making a payment in exchange for a trade deal. We are expected to pay up on the commitments we have been making while members of the EU. If we're reneging on them, how can we expect to do a deal on trade?

Estimates of the liabilities do take into account assets, you are mistaken to suppose otherwise.

We will not get a beneficial trade deal with the USA - how would we when the USA is far larger and more powerful than we are? Trump wants more jobs for Americans, he is only interested in a deal that gives the USA the biggest benefit. Look at the Bombardier affair for proof of just how serious are the risks for us.

It's hard to see any basis for the rest of your claims.

Why do people who support Brexit not take on board FACTS they are told -and can easily check for themselves - but still keep spouting absolute tosh?

ddraig has demonstrated an degree of brexitextreemism that we have not heard before on GN, but is sadly prevelant in other quarters.

ddraig needs to come to terms with the fact that the UK cannot simply refuse to make a payment to the EU, even if we were to attempt to walk away from all negotiations. It has been suggested that the issue could be resolved by the International Court of Justice in the Hague. But informed estimates of the net UK liability (after accounting for assets etc) is somewhere between 25 and 65 billion euros. If the UK were to refuse to accept a ruling by the court, that would place us outside the international legal structures that are accepted by most countries. It isn't too clear how easy it would then be to do deals with anyone, except perhaps the US (which sees us as plunder).

Found this article about the EU still helping UK's with trade

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/brexit-us-bombardier-trade-dispute-tarrif-eu-uk-leave-northern-ireland-c-series-jet-wings-wilbur-a8058386.html

Good link, Welshwife. With EU backing we have some chance of resisting the US's punitive actions. Neither the UK nor Canada can do that alone. It's a hostile world out there.

If you go into a butchers shop presumably you will look at what's on offer, decide what you would like, whether it's fresh and whether it's economical. You rarely go into a shop waving a £20 note and wearing a blindfold and allow the butcher to decide what bit of offal he is prepared to give you. But the EU are asking us to do exactly that. We MUST, it seems, come up with some astronomical figure to give to them and they will graciously then decide what crumbs they will let us have. This is exactly what "buying a pig in a poke" means - buying something unseen. Who does that? This is not a negotiation, this is a mugging and must not be allowed. We are supposed to be equals at the table, we are not supplicants. To leave is GREAT. We need to be free. There is a brave new world out there, ours for the taking, and it is waiting for us.

But we've already bought it. We agreed to pay for it years ago. They are just asking us for what we owe.

I've never thought of the EU as a butcher's shop, probably because I am vegan.

We are equals at the table. But there are 27 other equals at the same table, not just one.

Bloody hell, you sound like a pioneer. There's nothing left for us to conquer - unless you count unknown tribes in deepest wherever.
A brave new world out there! We took it all centuries ago.

Poor little Brexit Bulldog; he seems to be loosing the plot in a bigger way than ever. He is now telling the EU not to politics ahead of profit. What the heck does he think Brexit itself does?

Hollycat, I agree with Jen but I would say further that your post does not make sense to me.

You are not buying anything with your "£20 note". What you would be doing is going into the butchers and saying, "I believe I owe you £20 for things I have had I the past and not completed paying for. As I know longer want to go on with the same arrangements to pay that we agreed when I started shopping here I will clear this debt now so we can discuss a new arrangement" The butcher may look at his accounts - ones you don't seem to have bothered to keep - and tell you that you have missed out the fact that he has already had to pay for some things you have previously said you would want in the future. To cover his costs on this you actually need to pay a total of £25.

Of course, you could choose to only hand over £20. If you did such a thing I am sure that he would only sell anything to you in the future if your money was on the table before the transaction and he would probably overcharge you to get his £5 plus more back as he no longer has a relationship of trust with you - you destroyed it as far as he is concerned so even though it had been built up over 40 years he feels now he owes you nothing.

Having broken the original arrangement which gave you hard won advantages you may not be able to get such a good one in the future but, You may even have to go to other butchers whose produce it not as good and is more expensive.

It appears, you are choosing to do that so you can feel big and clever even if you are out of pocket because of it.

As I knowno longer

Brexiteers refuse to see we are being led by a bunch of incompetent buffoons. Instead, they blame the EU for all our ills. As for a “brave new world is ours for the taking” . Where exactly is this “new world”we are going to be “taking”? Do these countries know we are going to “take” them?

Bluegal don’t be concerned if you don’t know what’s going on.I don’t Think anyone does at the moment. I have decided that as I can’t change anything, I will wait until the talks are over before even listening about brexit,as things change daily. My feelings for me are if I can’t change/have my say then I will wait and see what the result are. This will keep me happy.

Getting out of the bureaucratic mess that is the eu was never going to be easy. And that is one reason why we should do it before we are caught forever in the spiders web and have lost our democratic rights forever.
We battle on.

So often we hear comments like yours Loopy, from Brexiteers. You talk as if all this was done to us by an outside force to our determent. It wasn't.

Our governments, voted in by us, and our MEPs, voted in by us have an equal - and some would say stronger voice in the decisions made by 28 countries. No one forced us to do anything the other 27 even gave us concessions.

It was not to our detriment. We have thrived while in the EU; before that we were 'the sick man of Europe".

No one dragged us in. We chose to join and our government; our representative, voted in by us, has had a democratic vote in all changes to the EU.

We haven't lost our democratic rights, and the EU is no more of a bureaucratic mess than Whitehall, which is frequently unresponsive to the problems of the regions. Rather more so than the EU, which at least has policies to aid poorer regions across the whole of the EU including the UK.

Things are not helped by politicians forever putting forward silly arguments. Happened again on QT last night. The idea that you cannot negotiate unless you are prepared to walk away with no deal is nonsense in the situation we are in. Certainly, if you are going to a car showroom, of which there are many, you would take the view that if you didn't like the deal you would just walk out.

But we're not in that situation, and to suggest that threatening no deal is a useful bargaining position is ludicrous. The situation we are in is that we would be mad not to trade with the sizeable bunch of countries that are on our doorstep. And both sides have an interest in that trade, although both sides have reservations too. It is simply inconceivable that the best arrangement that can be achieved is the "no deal" scenario. It isn't even clear what it means. Talk of no deal is just peevish posturing.

That we have to compromise with our trading partners is simply a fact of life. Wherever we go in the world, nobody of any significance is going to roll over and do what we want. And whatever deals we do will be subject to international oversight. But we shouldn't ignore the fact that we can already trade with 60% of the world through EU deals, and the hostile USA accounts for another 20%. The remainder is mostly on the other side of the world and tied up in existing trading arrangements.

The only way we could have absolute "control" would be to have no external trade. That would be a very unpalatable situation.

As I see it, we signed up to a trading block but increasingly power has been centralised in Brussels. Yes I know our government took us in and now our government is taking us out.

Thanks for the Brighton info dj. I have a particularly nasty virus at the moment so posting is a bit hit and miss?

It is interesting how we get extreme views popping up for a while after which they disappear. I am beginning to wonder about the Russian connection. I can remember so many come on and cause chaos, then either get banned or disappear. It is odd isn’t it?

Piece about Mark Carney but also says how TM thinks we will get an OK deal because we already have the same standards as the EU - which of course is right BUT that immediately stops us doing a deal with USA as they want lesser standards!

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/brexit-us-bombardier-trade-dispute-tarrif-eu-uk-leave-northern-ireland-c-series-jet-wings-wilbur-a8058386.html

Snap, whitewave.

I wondered about the Russian connection, but they don't need to any more. In fact they are better lying low at the moment.
Ukippers, on the other hand, have nothing else to do.

loopyloo, we didn't sign up to a trading bloc, we signed up to the European Economic Community, which had goals of European integration built in since the founding Treaty of Rome. That was long before we joined.

What power is it that we have lost? The vast majority (well over 90%) are supported by the UK; many are proposed by the UK and agreed by the rest of the EU.

Sorry, the vast majority of regulations.

Stop Press! An interstellar spaceship has just landed and wants to trade with us. It's all going to be fine! Prosperity for all! A Brave New World indeed!

I’m just going to totter downstairs and watch the Trump programme I recorded last night.

I do think that the US and U.K. went through a particularly mad period the end result being what we are experiencing now.