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by tosseraccount 3624 days ago
Private, endowment and British funds can make up for the EU. Getting out from under EU regulations and negotiating as a free agent is a better deal for most Brits.

[ edit: must have touched a nerve. +1 to -4 in an instant. ]

4 comments

If private endowment wanted to fund those researchers - they would have already done so, since they respond to market forces and not on charity towards North Wales.

The reason why the EU was providing funding was because market forces were unwilling to.

> Private, endowment […] funds can make up for the EU

Ah, yes. Private charities providing public services, the driving force behind the rise of communism in the 19th century.

> Getting out from under EU regulations and negotiating as a free agent is a better deal for most Brits.

People keep saying that, but why? Britain is now in a much worse negotiation position than before.

I don't doubt there are funds in the UK, but so far it's been far more common to rely on the EU for projects that require a longer or more nebulous time horizon, with little or no payback.

You only need to look at startup funding:

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/06/24/2167618/the-risk-to-uk...

And you realize there will be repercussions for funding and endowments too.

Could you specify some of the "EU regulations" that we should be getting out from under?
Oh, just workers rights, human rights, safety regulations, that sort of thing...
Not sure if sarcasm, but:

- Human rights are governed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which is a separate organization and treaty than the EU. It's unlikely the UK will leave the Council of Europe too.

- Safety regulations on products are part of the single market treaties, just as free movement of people is. If the UK wants to remain in the EEA (e.g. through membership of the EFTA), it will still have to accept those.

Actually, the incoming prime minister wants to get out of the ECHR: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/25/uk-must-leav...
And this coming from a politician that, for most of the Brexit campaign, kept on the sidelines because she was undecided about which side to choose? From a minister that introduced the Snooper's Charter, massively expanding the scope of their intelligence services? Yeah, those pesky human rights could well interfere with her method of governing.

But her statement really shows her (willful) ignorance:

"The ECHR can bind the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals – and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights"

As the home office minister, she should know damn well that the ECHR has no teeth except for EU regulation. Leave the EU, and there is no enforcement mechanism left for ECHR rulings. Not to mention the inconsistency of her own statement: how come the ECHR binds the hands of the UK government, but not Russia's? (The answer is above: it's EU regulation, not ECHR that bound her hands).

Well, for example all the bad stuff TTIP will bring the rest of Europe? Everybody here is pissed about TTIP. Now the Brits vote to get into a position to do something about such undemocratic bs and suddenly they are the bad guys? I see the pro-EU marketing campaign in which all the smart, rich and famous people that you should want to be like, say pro EU things, is working well. Even among the intellectual HN crowd.

All this anti UK sentiment is caused by fear mongering from the pro-EU lobby. The Brits are our friends, but just like the Russians, they don't dance to the tune of the power hungry EU bureaucrats and the propaganda machine is suddenly aimed in their direction.

People keep talking about how the UK will be able to negotiate its own market access deals after brexit. What that means in practice is that if TTIP goes ahead it will be the only route to US trade deals.

Also TTIP is the kind of think I can see a Conservative government signing up to immediately. The UK is far more "free market" than the rest of Europe.

> if TTIP goes ahead it will be the only route to US trade deals.

That's just not true [0] [1].

There's been a lot of movement relating to countries being open to global free trade [2].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/29/...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/11/brexit-is-a...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/business-min...

> Well, for example all the bad stuff TTIP will bring the rest of Europe? Everybody here is pissed about TTIP. Now the Brits vote to get into a position to do something about such undemocratic bs and suddenly they are the bad guys?

As far as I understand it the UK was a very strong driving force behind TTIP.. Getting us into this mess and then leaving before the consequences start to affect you, isn't very nice to say the least.

All this anti UK sentiment is caused by fear mongering from the pro-EU lobby.

And the xenophobic posturing of the Leave side is not to blame?