| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15] > | Off topic: How do you think UK leaving EU would affect our profession? Thread poster: Balasubramaniam L.
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| The world's fifth largest economy is not "small fry" | Jun 17, 2016 |
Sheila Wilson wrote:
Obama has already said that the US would favour deals with the EU over dealing with "little ol' England". The UK would be small fry and simply not worth the bother in many cases.
But what Obama thinks is irrelevant, as he won't be president when such things are negotiated. Besides, Trump has said the opposite, and whatever we think about him, he may well be the next president.
The world's fifth largest economy is not "small fry". Why belittle your own country? Most of the world's nations are not part of the EU, and many of them are doing just fine, trading all over the world.
You don't need a trade agreement to trade. Besides, the EU is preventing its Member States from making individual trade agreements. Many smaller nations than the UK have made trade agreements, so why shouldn't the UK be able to? Why so negative?
If the EU should try to sabotage continued access to the Single Market, they'll not only harm the UK but also shoot themselves in the foot, as it would cost them exports. Why on earth would they do that?
I simply don't believe all the scaremongering. It has been the same every time before important decisions about the EU were made. There was no end to the devastation the UK as well as Denmark were promised before they declined the euro. But the non-euro Member States are generally doing better than the Eurozone. Switzerland and Norway are prospering outside the EU. It is the EU that is holding the economy back in many Member States. If it's so great, then why does the EU have the lowest growth of all industrialised nations of importance, as well as mass unemployment?
| | | | | Totally agree... | Jun 17, 2016 |
Tom in London wrote:
The UK is having a referendum on remain/leave the EU for one reason: David Cameron promised it a year ago before the last General Election, in an attempt to outflank the anti-EU party UKIP and to prevent his own Conservative Party from splitting (about 30% of Conservative MPs are anti-EU).
There is no other reason.
This is Cameron's referendum and he has called it for narrow party-political reasons. I consider this to have been a grossly irresponsible act that has embroiled the whole country, indeed the whole EU, in a completely unnecessary upheaval.
Totally irresponsible and for personal gain...
| | | | Sheila Wilson 
Spain
Local time: 14:57
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| We aren't really 5th at the moment; we're a very close second to the US | Jun 17, 2016 |
Thomas T. Frost wrote:
The world's fifth largest economy is not "small fry". Why belittle your own country?
I'm simply stating facts. The EU is the market we're in at the moment, even if it isn't classified as a country so doesn't get attributed the second spot, just behind the US. They are both massive, China isn't far behind, then there's Japan. The UK at the moment has a GDP of about one sixth the EU's. But many people who know far more about the economy than I do (the IMF, the World Bank...) say that an independent UK will lose trade, not get more, and that Brexit will be disastrous.
I simply don't believe all the scaremongering.
Nor do I. I don't believe that the EU is wrecking the UK; that immigration is bad for the UK, or caused mainly by the EU; that immigrants take more from the system than they put in; that the UK is forced by the EU to give benefits to anyone who sets foot in the country... and all those other horror stories that the Daily Mail etc are feeding the masses. OK, the EU isn't perfect and there's too much corruption and self-interest in Brussels and Strasbourg. But that's true of every governing body it seems - heck, it's human nature, unfortunately!
But what Obama thinks is irrelevant, as he won't be president when such things are negotiated. Besides, Trump has said the opposite, and whatever we think about him, he may well be the next president.
I'm fervently hoping that won't happen. I remember fearing that Le Pen would win the 2002 French presidential election. He was a very close second in the first round, but the second round was quite clear: just 18% voted for the Front National. When it came down to the line, only his staunch supporters voted for him, and the rest voted for the good of their country and its place in the world. Hopefully voters in the UK will do the same thing next Thursday.
| | | | | IMF and other 'experts' | Jun 17, 2016 |
Whether the UK is the second or the fifth is quite irrelevant. It is a major economy. It just makes no sense that anyone should not want to trade with the UK simply because it is no longer an EU Member State.
What is important, I think, is to note that it is outside the EU you find growth today.
Sheila Wilson wrote:
But many people who know far more about the economy than I do (the IMF, the World Bank...) say that an independent UK will lose trade, not get more, and that Brexit will be disastrous.
They are much the same people who threatened us with the bubonic plague and other disasters if we stayed out of the euro, and the same people who imposed so much austerity on Greece that their GDP plummeted and made everything much worse. The IMF is also heavily influenced by the EU, and they have in fact violated their own rules to save the euro. We were also promised the EU would become one of the most prosperous regions in the world. Instead, its economy is ravaged and dead in the water, and unemployment is out of control. The EU may not harm the UK as much as it is claimed, but the UK may well – in the long term – prosper more by ridding itself of the EU's constraints.
Why should we listen to advice from people who have already been proven wrong in the past? What worries them is that they might lose their gravy train in Brussels with fat pensions, fringe benefits, tax-free shops and cars and no-questions-asked expense accounts.
There is a risk leaving, but there is also a risk staying: common army, a United States of Europe, more centralised power to Brussels, less democracy, direct EU taxation, more stifling regulation, more economic crisis, more unemployment. It's impossible to predict the future in both cases.
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| It isn't about the economy | Jun 17, 2016 |
Actually the UK economy is very dangerously unbalanced with far too much dependency on fake money exchanged by gambling (the Stock Exchange and the banks), otherwise politely known as "financial services" and with the country's industrial base severely weakened.
But it isn't really about the economy. It's a cultural thing. The whole of Europe has been getting together peacefully after centuries of potentates and dictators trying to put it together by force. Now we've done it. Who w... See more Actually the UK economy is very dangerously unbalanced with far too much dependency on fake money exchanged by gambling (the Stock Exchange and the banks), otherwise politely known as "financial services" and with the country's industrial base severely weakened.
But it isn't really about the economy. It's a cultural thing. The whole of Europe has been getting together peacefully after centuries of potentates and dictators trying to put it together by force. Now we've done it. Who would want to destroy that? ▲ Collapse
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 14:57
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| You see a common army as a risk? | Jun 17, 2016 |
Thomas T. Frost wrote:
There is a risk leaving, but there is also a risk staying: common army, a United States of Europe, more centralised power to Brussels, less democracy, direct EU taxation, more stifling regulation, more economic crisis, more unemployment. It's impossible to predict the future in both cases.
I would have thought a common army was something we should all be wanting. But then I grew up in a London only recently freed from rationing and still pockmarked with bomb sites. I really don't want to contemplate European fighting European again. There was a time when I thought the whole world could learn to discuss its problems and differences but I fear the human race isn't ready for that yet.
But I don't have a vote in this referendum; I just have to live with its consequences. So I'm going to try to clear the decks now for a free weekend. Who knows what next weekend will bring?
Just seen your last post, Tom. A big AGREE to that sentiment.
| | | | | Depends how you view it | Jun 17, 2016 |
Tom in London wrote:
It's a cultural thing. The whole of Europe has been getting together peacefully after centuries of potentates and dictators trying to put it together by force. Now we've done it. Who would want to destroy that?
That's one of the Remain camp's classic arguments. But others claim it is Nato that has kept the peace, not the EU.
As for dictators trying to put it together by force, that's what they are trying to do today, in my personal opinion. Just not by military force but by 'soft' force. By doing things without getting voters' approval, and even against voters' rejection. Which voters approved the Lisbon Treaty? Who voted for Jean-Claude Juncker? I'm absolutely not confident in the way the EU is run. The elite keep pushing through what they want, regardless of what the voters want. Some of us expats can't even vote.
A single market is all I want, not the political dimension, and I think by advancing too fast, they're risking that treasured peace. The increased poverty in large parts of the EU, and the euro are destabilising the whole thing.
I don't trust them. They're not interested in how ordinary people are doing, only in their gigantic, monstrous, political project and their own careers.
But as I said, I respect others' views.
| | | | | Yes, absolutely | Jun 17, 2016 |
Sheila Wilson wrote:
I would have thought a common army was something we should all be wanting.
We have one in Nato already. An EU army could undermine Nato, and there would never be agreement about what to do with that army anyway. The EU is churning out one fiasco after another. Do you really want to trust these incompetent eurocrats with our armies too?
Sheila Wilson wrote:
But then I grew up in a London only recently freed from rationing and still pockmarked with bomb sites. I really don't want to contemplate European fighting European again.
Unfortunately, I fear the way the EU is evolving actually increases the risk of civil unrest and war. Just look at today's state of France to get an idea.
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Imagine if the British voted to leave ProZ?
We'd never get any work again, and without our civilising influence the whole thing would fall apart.
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 19:27
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER SITE LOCALIZER | That is the natural evolutionary path that capitalism takes | Jun 17, 2016 |
Tom in London wrote:
Actually the UK economy is very dangerously unbalanced with far too much dependency on fake money exchanged by gambling (the Stock Exchange and the banks), otherwise politely known as "financial services" and with the country's industrial base severely weakened.
That is the normal evolutionary path that capitalism takes. It starts with mercantile capitalism where merchants use captial to buy goods cheap and sell them at higher rates through trade (pre-colonial Britain). When sufficient captial has accumulated in this way and technology has sufficiently developed, they employ capital to set up industries, exploit labour, colonize and follow the imperial path (most of West European countries, the victims being the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa). This also led to the two European wars as the imperial powers fought for colonies and markets, which concluded with the nuking of two Japanese cities. The third phase is when capital itself starts generating capital, and is no longer dependent on labour or industries, but in financing these in less developed countries and reaping the profit. This is why much of the developed world is getting shorn of the old industries which used to generate millions of jobs, which have all now shifted to developing countries. But they are still owned by the capital belonging to the developed countries. This is the stage of capitalism that we now have in the US and the richer countries of Western Europe, particularly UK. This phase does not generate jobs and people cease to matter, as they become peripheral to the business of earning money. Which is why Europe could tolerate the suffering of Greece without batting an eye and inflict endless austerism on them, or turn xenophobic when faced with the Syrian migration crisis more recently.
Breaking Europe will hardly solve this problem brought about by advanced capitalism. In fact, the break up could even be surreptiously engineered by the banks and investors and other vested interests as that would weaken institutions like the European state which could play a redistributive role for capital and could safeguard the welfare state. The next thing we would see in Europe, the US and the rest of the world would be unravelling of the welfare state as that does not contribute in any way to capital generation, and is a waste of money when seen from the point of view of banks and financial institutions.
But it isn't really about the economy. It's a cultural thing. The whole of Europe has been getting together peacefully after centuries of potentates and dictators trying to put it together by force. Now we've done it. Who would want to destroy that?
As I said above, advanced capitalism does not like strong state institutions and would prefer pliable ones which it could bent to its needs, hence the attempt to break up half a century's efforts at unifying a warring and violent Europe.
Should UK indeed leave Europe, it could once again resume its Machievellian interferences in the affairs of Europe and try to weaken the EU so that it could dominate European politics as it did in the 19th century. This could take Europe to the violent days of yore as it would give an opportunity to other world powers, mainly Russia, and perhaps China and even the US to fish in troubled waters. Europe would want to side with Nato, but if the US places its bet on its old ally and its defacto 52nd state the UK, Europe might have to go for its own armies.
How will all this impact translation? May be we could find plenty of employment in the espionage and counter-espionage activities and military operations that would boom in Europe as EU unravels into the old nation-states and old enimities are revived. All this militarisation might even revive the sagging European economies!
Let us hope none of this would come to pass and the storm of Brexit would blow over without much harm done.
[Edited at 2016-06-18 12:28 GMT]
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 09:57
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
| Stratfor analysis | Jun 17, 2016 |
The global intelligence firm Stratfor has just released a short video analysing the effects of Brexit. From the sound of their opinion, with the rewriting of treaties and all the contracts and business relationships that flow out of them, it would generate quite a bit of documentary work, which would include translations, for years to come.
The Consequences of a Brexit is republished wi... See more The global intelligence firm Stratfor has just released a short video analysing the effects of Brexit. From the sound of their opinion, with the rewriting of treaties and all the contracts and business relationships that flow out of them, it would generate quite a bit of documentary work, which would include translations, for years to come.
The Consequences of a Brexit is republished with permission of Stratfor.
[Edited at 2016-06-17 19:39 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Huw Watkins
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Member (2005)
Italian to English
+ ...
| Precisely what I said | Jun 18, 2016 |
John Fossey wrote: The global intelligence firm Stratfor has just released a short video analysing the effects of Brexit. From the sound of their opinion, with the rewriting of treaties and all the contracts and business relationships that flow out of them, it would generate quite a bit of documentary work, which would include translations, for years to come. The Consequences of a Brexit is republished with permission of Stratfor. [Edited at 2016-06-17 19:39 GMT]
It's nice to be vindicated!
And, let's take this a step further - 10 years rehashing all the documentation, THEN we decide to rejoin - another 10 years for us lovely translators!
[Edited at 2016-06-18 06:51 GMT]
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Huw Watkins wrote:
....THEN we decide to rejoin
No chance. All of the EU Member States would decide whether they want you back in.
In the meantime of course, in your absence and without your contribution, the EU would have solved its problems and would have become a dynamic economic powerhouse with global power.
Presumably that would be why you would be trying to get back again now that the EU had made a success of things without you. Your re-application would not be likely to be welcome.
Moreover it would be almost impossible for practical reasons. First, you would need to negotiate new conditions for entry. All the things you had changed would have to be changed back and brought into line with whatever had changed in the EU in the meantime.
If, for instance, your Brexit government (now under increased pressure from the US and no longer protected by the EU) had permitted the introduction of GM crops whilst the EU continued to ban them, it would be decades before you could clean up the soil and get back to natural crop cycles.
And so on.
Then you would have to harmonise your economy with the EU economy as a whole.
And after you had done all that you would need: yes- another referendum.
Doesn't that sound like déjà vu? I suggest it might be better to just stay in the EU and starting from where we are now, work to reform it, improve it, and make it the success it is destined to be over the long term.
[Edited at 2016-06-18 10:56 GMT]
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Learning from history | Jun 18, 2016 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
....this could take Europe to the violent days of yore ...
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." George Santayana (I think)
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 19:27
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER SITE LOCALIZER | In that scenario | Jun 18, 2016 |
Tom in London wrote:
In the meantime of course, in your absence and without your contribution, the EU would have solved its problems and would have become a dynamic economic powerhouse with global power.
The UK, now out of EU, would fight tooth and nail to see that this does not happen. It will try to create a rift between Germany and France to weaken EU, or egg on Russia or other powers to foment internal dissent in the EU.
That is what it did in the years prior to WWI and again before WWII. and UK might again take a leaf out of the old colonial manuals of divide-and-rule to ensure that EU does not become an economic power-house and a rival to the UK economy.
No, it is much safer to have the UK within the EU, being counter-balanced by Germany and France, and in turn counter-balancing them.
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