Microsoft May Halt the Expansion of a UK Datacenter Due To Brexit (onmsft.com)

On Monday, Microsoft hosted an online event to discuss the impact of the UK's departure from the European Union on the tech industry. The company currently has two large datacentres in the UK, and it is expanding those in response to vigorous demand for cloud services. But Brexit could throw a spanner in the works. From a report: Microsoft's UK Government Affairs Manager Owen Larter said, "We're really keen to avoid import tariffs on any hardware. Going back to the datacenter example, we're looking to build out our datacenters at a pretty strong lick in the UK, because the market is doing very well. If all of a sudden there are huge import [tariffs] on server racks from China or from eastern Europe, where a lot of them are actually assembled, that might change our investment decisions and perhaps we build out our datacenters across other European countries." Simply put, if they cannot build in Britain, then they will build surrounding it. Currently, the data is shared freely between the EU countries without any issues. This is because they all have similar security between them. However, if the UK leaves the EU, then this could cause even more issues for Microsoft.

Comments

I call BS

[acoustix]

If the demand is there then MS will build there. UK didn't simply close up shop just because they left the EU. Stupid reporting is stupid.

Re:I call BS

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

^ ^ ^ This.

More likely, Amazon's eating Microsoft's lunch (remember "Azure"? anyone?) in the UK and the local Microsoft goofs want something to blame for softening demand other than "the other company's product is better".

Re:I call BS

[Harold Halloway]

The UK hasn't left the EU yet. Thus your point is... pointless.

Re: I call BS

[Luthair]

Not really, it may have been meant to service Western Europe and once you aren't part of the EU some businesses may not be able to store data there. Typical head in the sand brexiter, it's ok to think the UK will be better off outside the EU but you shouldn't pretend there won't be negative aspects.

Re:I call BS

[Big Hairy Ian]

It's roughly 17.5% more expensive to import from outside the UK now. I don't think MS is sourcing any of the hardware from within the UK so go figure.

Re:I call BS

[TheSunborn]

Yes but demand from where? Right now the MS datacenters in UK also serve data to EU users outside UK. Do you think they will build the next datacenter to server EU users in UK, if it will be more expensive

When that is said: No I don't think that importing computer hardware will be more expensive after Brexit. The British goverment can't be that stupid.

Re:I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

The British goverment can't be that stupid.

Erm, have you ever seen the British government?

Re:I call BS

[Big Hairy Ian]

Erm, have you ever seen the British government?

You are aware Bozo the Clown is our Foreign Secretary

Re:I call BS

[acoustix]

The UK hasn't left the EU yet. Thus your point is... pointless.

Which then makes the article pointless.

Re:I call BS

[ledow]

But the UK is under EU law, which means you can fulfill EU data protection regulations (necessary for ANYTHING holding personal data in the UK, which is literally every online service you use).

Under Brexit, the UK won't be sufficient, even if the data protection laws NEVER change. It's literally no longer an EU-DP compliant country. Thus all that investment that could have serviced the entire EU is wasted, you need to be an EU datacenter anyway, and the UK one sits and hold UK data only.

As such, it's not stupid reporting. Microsoft are doing what EVER OTHER DATA PROCESSOR in the country is doing. I work for a school. We use an EU off-site location for backups. When Brexit strikes, that will likely have to stop.

For the same reason we cannot use iCloud as they refuse to give any guarantees that UK data will only ever stay within the EU (unlike Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Dropbox, etc. who ALL guarantee that).

UK and EU data protection laws are much stricter than you might think. Literally, cloud-based services will now have to have an EU datacenter and a UK one, whereas before Brexit just a UK one could have done both jobs.

They may change the laws, but that would require EU co-operation to allow EU data to be sent to a non-EU country, and those kinds of things generate lawsuits (it's why the EU-US aircraft travel data sharing regulations were revoked, for instance)

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware Bozo the Clown is our Foreign Secretary

The UK foreign Secretary AND the President of the US? Amazing that one man can handle all of that...

Re:I call BS

[GeekWithAKnife]

If the UK chooses what seems to be an inevitable hard Brexit AND repels all EU laws that means that a lot of the standard business practices Microsoft streamlines across Europe will now have to have special considerations.

Depending on how idiotic Brexit becomes all multinational business will be forced to rethink their UK strategy.

The UK is not simply closing shop but it may, via Brexit, stop conducting business in the same way it previously had and in some cases that will be worse than closing shop for all the planning ,consultation, time and headaches that will cause.

Here's just one simplistic hypothetical; if the UK decides for instance that your company must now employ at least 60% British people (or limit net migration from EU countries to force you into such a position because you cannot find the workforce locally) you might go out of business or have to lower your profit margin expectations which in turn will make you wish to close down.

The Brexit the UK seems to be heading towards is not the Brexit everyone wanted. It's now almost certainly going out of the single European market and ending free movement.

Like so many you did not think far enough along the path before you called BS and used words like "stupid".

Brexit is an unknown. Some people hope for the best believing it will be for the best but they do not know. 52% have put the other 48% in it for an unknown. -not even knowing the odds.

You wanna know what's stupid? -that 13 people can force 12 others into this mess. That's stupid.
(13 to 12 is the ratio people that wanted to leave against the ones wanted to remain)

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

One of them is bozos sidekick, cookie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Brown_(clown)#/media/File:Bob_bell_bozo_roy_brown_cooky_1976.JPG

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

But the scaremongering has to go on. We have to convince the MPs to ignore the will of the people and vote to give up sovereignty.

Re: I call BS

[Freischutz]

Not really, it may have been meant to service Western Europe and once you aren't part of the EU some businesses may not be able to store data there. Typical head in the sand brexiter, it's ok to think the UK will be better off outside the EU but you shouldn't pretend there won't be negative aspects.

If you had spent any time engaging with Brexiteers you would know that the way to think of this is pretty simple: Brexit always right, EU always wrong. If the UK does what it thinks is best for the UK and crawls out from under the iron boot heel of EU tyranny that's laudable. If however the EU decides that it is going to do what is best for the EU and does not give the UK everything the UK wants that's the EU unfairly punishing the UK. If a company leaves the UK for the EU that's tantamount to treason even if said company is not a UK business and set up shop in the UK in the first place because the UK was part of the EU common market. However, now that the UK will be leaving the EU said company either has to move operations into the EU common market or stay in the UK and have a hard time competing with competitors that are inside the common market and do not have to wade through red tape and pay import tariffs after hard Brexit where the UK looks set to revert to WTO rules.

Re:I call BS

[Freischutz]

Yes but demand from where? Right now the MS datacenters in UK also serve data to EU users outside UK. Do you think they will build the next datacenter to server EU users in UK, if it will be more expensive

When that is said: No I don't think that importing computer hardware will be more expensive after Brexit. The British government can't be that stupid.

The minute the UK leaves the EU that datacenter is outside of EU jurisdiction. There are certain advantages to storing your stuff on a datacenter inside EU jurisdiction, for some customers that may even be a requirement.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

They wanted democracy, they got democracy. Somehow I don't think you'd feel the same if it were reversed and 13 people were forcing the mess of the EU on the other 12.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why 17.5%? If you think that's VAT, you're even more clueless than the "leavers" because (a) UK VAT has increased to 20%, and (b) most businesses (those whose goods and services are subject to VAT) can reclaim VAT on supplies as input tax.

Re: I call BS

[oh_my_080980980]

Ok Zippy. If you read the article it had to do with IMPORT TARIFFS WILL RISE. So they are claiming their costs to build data centers in the UK MIGHT increase.

Try reading sometime moron.

Re:I call BS

[oh_my_080980980]

Ooo more hypothetical arguments. How about dealing in facts. Right now nothing is know. All you have is mental masturbate. Until we have facts we don't know how things will work out.

Re:I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

With the announcement by May that she wants a hard Brexit, companies have started to announce that they are either leaving or starting to plan for that eventuality. HSBC has already announced 1000 jobs moving to France.

It's highly relevant because now is the time that we really need to fight to set the goals of the negotiation. Today's High Court ruling is only a partial victory for the ignored majority who don't want hard Brexit. We need to lobby our representatives now, by the time we leave in a couple of years it will be way too late.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bollox.

We're talking about the other side of the pond you cretin, FTFY.

Re: I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

If the UK does what it thinks is best for the UK

It's actually worse than that. It's more like "if England does what it thinks is best for the UK", because you have to ignore the wishes of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar if you want a hard Brexit with an intact United Kingdom.

I'm really hoping the EU's plan to offer associate membership for individual citizens comes through. The government will naturally oppose it, but it might be a way for Soctland and Northern Ireland and Gibraltar to remain inside the EU and/or single market, while also providing an escape route for the people who don't want the UK deal.

Re:I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

The Brexit the UK seems to be heading towards is not the Brexit everyone wanted

Statistically, about 26% of the population voted to leave. The rest either voted to remain, were unable to vote or didn't bother. Of the slim majority who did vote to leave, it seems that less than half favour a really hard Brexit. Once you start asking them how much they are willing to pay to get a hard Brexit, that number falls even further.

Re: I call BS

[Freischutz]

Ok Zippy. If you read the article it had to do with IMPORT TARIFFS WILL RISE. So they are claiming their costs to build data centers in the UK MIGHT increase. Try reading sometime moron.

Woosh! Ok Nimrod, I was trying to explain how Brexiteers think, not necessarily why Microsoft is scrapping it's plans to build that datacenter. If it makes you feel better that probably has more to do with a combination of red tape, legal issues such as data protection and a whole host of intangible issues than it has to do with tariffs. Either way the result is the same, the UK leaving the EU is causing businesses to at least contemplate leaving the UK and that apparently includes Microsoft and it's datacenter. What lies ahead of the UK is two (probably more) years of negotiating how to leave the EU. If the UK is lucky those negotiations will also settle what access the UK has to the EU common market which not looking good at the moment given the declarations of UK politicians who seem to be nursing a boner for hard-Brexit and reverting to WTO rules. Even then the UK still has to re-negotiate the whole portfolio of free trade agreements it currently has had access to through the EU with countries all over the world. That is a process that can easily take a decade to complete assuming the UK has completed common market negotiations by the time it starts tackling this stack of negotiations. All of this translates into risk and if I was Microsoft and I still could move that datacenter into the common market I would do that without delay. Staying in the UK represents risk, moving into the EU common market represents less risk, it's a no-brainer.

Re:I call BS

[thegarbz]

UK didn't simply close up shop

As far as being an engineering and product producing capital serving some 500million people, ... yes they most definitely did. You don't just threaten companies with tariffs on the vast majority of their products, supplies, reduce their labour access, and generally horrendously fuck with the political stability of your manufacturing only to call the companies who investigate leaving "stupid".

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had spent any time engaging with Remainers you would know that the way to think of this is pretty simple: Brexit always wrong, EU always right.

What is your point?

Re:I call BS

[thegarbz]

Not at all. The article is talking about "may". The article is talking about a company now facing uncertainty which means a previously confirmed idea is now again in flux. The article is about the only thing that makes any sense in this thread so far.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you get to 26%? 72% voted and of them a majority voted to leave. So shouldn't it be at least 36% of the populace?

Everyone who voted leave voted for a "hard" brexit. The run up to the referendum was pretty explicit: Leaving the EU means leaving the single market, leaving EU courts jurisdiction and abandoning freedom of movement.

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

So HSBC employees in London, who were serving mainland European as opposed to English customers, would now have to move to France? Yeah, sounds like what bankers do, since banks ain't much more than glorified call centers, right?

Was there anything in that Brexit referendum that drew such a nuanced line b/w a 'hard' Brexit vs a 'soft' Brexit? And if it was so unpopular, why does it look like French voters too would pass something similar this year and elect Marine Le Pen?

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually worse than that. It's more like "if most of England does what it thinks is best for the UK", because you have to ignore the wishes of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and London if you want a hard Brexit with an intact United Kingdom.

FTFY

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meantime I am abandoning the UK. I am an immigrant from Australia that is highly skilled. I'm done.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Stench of denial is strong here.

Accept the result and move on, or just move.

Re: I call BS

[unixisc]

If you are gonna drill deeper, why not then make it a county by county decision, if not a man to man one? Let Somerset or Warwickshire or Nottinghamshire vote to leave, and Dunedin or Surrey or Belfast vote to stay. Why stop at only the 'country' levels of Scotland and Northern Ireland? Fact is that it's the entire UK that's a part of the EU, and the majority of UKians have voted to leave the EU.

Or when you have your elections, do you then say that May is the Prime Minister of all areas of the nation that she's won, while Jeremy Corbin is the Prime Minister of London, Scotland and wherever else he won?

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

He's comparing the value of the Pound to other currencies since the vote, obviously.
VAT is never a "roughly" figure.

Your foaming at the mouth to shout racist, xenophobic, old, stupid, though, aren't you? Can see your boiling over with bile from here. Little wonder your "lot" lost, we could smell the hatred from a mile away.

Re:I call BS

[GeekWithAKnife]

No. Unequivocally and absolutely not. You have no idea how I voted.

If I had 25 kids and 13 wanted to go live in France and 12 did not then we'd not go anywhere.

Most democracies would give need a large majority to force a minority. Say 60% of the votes, sometimes more. A clear and reasonably wide enough majority.

For such a critical decision I think, in fairness, two thirds of voters would need to decided to go one way or another. I could not in good conscious force practically the other half of people my choice or way of life.

But you see the idea of taking 12 unwilling kids to France is FAR BETTER. Why? because France is a known quantity. Leaving the EU is not.

Thank fuck parliament gets to vote if article 50 is triggered AND the final deal once decided. At lease we'll know if "France" is really some dictatorship banana republic.

Re:I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

Was there anything in that Brexit referendum that drew such a nuanced line b/w a 'hard' Brexit vs a 'soft' Brexit?

Yes. Depending on which Leave campaigner you asked (there was an official campaign, an unofficial campaign, a lots of random people weighing in) they were either demanding an extremely hard Brexit or trying to reassure people that it would be a soft Brexit and little would really change.

There is no mandate for a hard Brexit. The Leave side only won by 52% to 48%, and it's doubtful that everyone who voted to leave also wanted a hard Brexit. At best, the question wasn't even asked.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

> I call BS

Since this story is on the other side of the pond, you call bollox.
FTFY ;)

Re:I call BS

[GeekWithAKnife]

Then why did majority leave towns then ask if they will still get EU funding? -if it was SO CLEAR.

I jest. It was clear but some leavers had no clue. They still think 350 million is on its way as soon as Westminster slices the pie...you know, because historically they invested SO MUCH into those rural areas but I digress.

Re: I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

It's actually worse than that. It's more like "if England does what it thinks is best for the UK", because you have to ignore the wishes of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar if you want a hard Brexit with an intact United Kingdom

There's "best for" and there's "wishes", too. I mean Wales wished for Brexit. I cannot imagine how Brexit, especially with this Tory bunch could possibly be best for Wales.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistically, about 24% of the population voted to remain. The rest either voted to leave, were unable to vote or didn't bother. Why should we remain in the the EU when less than a quarter of the population voted for that?

Re:I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

They still think 350 million is on its way as soon as Westminster slices the pie...you know, because historically they invested SO MUCH into those rural areas but I digress.

And as far as Westminster go, it's a bunch of the further right Tories in power: those are even less in favour of regional investment than your average Westminster lot.

Re: I call BS

[monkeyxpress]

I get your sentiment, but I think that is unfair. A lot of brexiters I have met when I used to travel around up North for work, were quite well meaning people who had simply been fed the lie that the EU causes all their problems for the last twenty years. Anytime their politicians stuffed up, went back on a promise or just flat out neglected them, along would come UKIP or a tabloid to start blaming the EU for the problem, and successive Labour and Tory governments quietly stepped aside to let it happen.

Many parts of England have never recovered from being decimated by Thatcher (I think many of the reforms were required, but they simply left towns to rot, rather than help with any sort of transition), and the convenient scape-goat for politicians doing nothing about this has been the EU. It has been the ultimate case of getting caught in a lie, and it amazes me that rather than anyone admitting that areas outside London have been neglected and need more focus, they are just going through with the foot shooting operation.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, exports from the UK enjoy a 17,5 % lower price to the outside world, which makes goods flow out of the UK and money flow in...

Re:I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

Was there anything in that Brexit referendum that drew such a nuanced line b/w a 'hard' Brexit vs a 'soft' Brexit?

No. One of the many stupid things was that it was simply on whether to "leave" without any definition of what that meant.

And if it was so unpopular, why does it look like French voters too would pass something similar this year and elect Marine Le Pen?

Because stupidity abounds?

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

Why not just abolish democracies, and just ask the EU bureaucrats to appoint kings/queens to every member country, who would be a Merkel/Hollande clone, and just rule by fiat (not the car). So that those stupid $MEMBER_exiter voters can't vote to leave that glorious utopian entity that they run

Re:I call BS

[hughbar]

As they are clowns, they have a clown car, there are probably about 20 of them in the car, total IQ of about 1/2 a person.

Actually that's a lie, Boris is quite bright and, in my opinion, sociopathic: https://www.theguardian.com/co... see last few paragraphs, an evil clown therefore. Trump, don't know, but I fear the worst.

Re:I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

Why not just abolish democracies,

Sure, why not simply adopt the most extreme straw man version of every possible argument. That's a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Re:I call BS

[ITRambo]

I appreciate your cynicism. Many people don't consider the negative effects of consolidating countries into a larger entity. The countries lose control. Look at how many "Syrian migrants" have been pushed into the EU, where there is no work available, leading to ghettos and crime. The EU seems to have put the most extreme laws of it's various countries into widespread effect, instead of asking its citizens what they want. The EU is less of a democracy then it used to be.

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are gonna drill deeper, why not then make it a county by county decision, if not a man to man one? Let Somerset or Warwickshire or Nottinghamshire vote to leave, and Dunedin or Surrey or Belfast vote to stay. Why stop at only the 'country' levels of Scotland and Northern Ireland? Fact is that it's the entire UK that's a part of the EU, and the majority of UKians have voted to leave the EU.

You mean a majority of those who voted?

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The Leave voters wanted the immigrants to leave so they:

1. Would get their jobs back
2. Would stop terrorism
3. Would not have to deal with others culture

Of course it didn't work that way, but that's why Brexit happened.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

If the demand is there then MS will build there. UK didn't simply close up shop just because they left the EU. Stupid reporting is stupid.

Wow; you didn’t even bother to finish reading the fucking summary of the article, which described what they might do instead. Stupid commenter is stupid.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they need a UK one? Is there some UK law preventing use of EU data storage?

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is one of the most frustrating things about Brexit. Business is full of uncertainties, but now we have this convenient scapegoat to blame for everything. It's hard to determine whether businesses are actually suffering as a result of either changes due to the Brexit issue or genuine uncertainty around them, or whether those businesses are just trying to find a politically acceptable place to assign blame for other problems/failures. Likewise, it's hard to determine whether Brexit plans are really causing a lot of problems, or whether businesses are just blowing smoke and hoping to get more favourable treatment from the UK government in some way by threatening to leave/downsize/whatever.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there this current political climate that European protectionism to keep governments and organizations from leaving the EU is good, yet US protections to do the same is bad?

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Every other western nation, and many others, have strong protectionist policies such as this in place, and people perceive that as a good thing, yet the same people, like ledow here, think that US protectionist policies will usher in a new great depression.

Re: I call BS

[luis_a_espinal]

It's actually worse than that. It's more like "if England does what it thinks is best for the UK", because you have to ignore the wishes of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar if you want a hard Brexit with an intact United Kingdom

There's "best for" and there's "wishes", too. I mean Wales wished for Brexit. I cannot imagine how Brexit, especially with this Tory bunch could possibly be best for Wales.

Well, that's the problem with lunatics, idiots and otherwise uninformed rubes: they can't tell the difference between "wishes" and "best for". In fact, they can't tell the difference between "thinking" and "feeling."

Re:I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

As they are clowns, they have a clown car,

Here's a picture of the clown car in question:

https://static.independent.co....

Re: I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

In that case, why not argue the opposite? Extend the vote to the entire EU. If other EU country's citizens don't bother to vote, that's their problem, but the result is democratic and binding on all of them.

In any case, there was no question about hard or soft Brexit, staying in or leaving the single market.

Re: I call BS

[dunkelfalke]

Doesn't work that way because remaining would be the default situation.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The trouble with this argument is that a "soft Brexit" by triggering Article 50 but somehow remaining within the single market and customs union is actually the opposite extremist point of view.

Under any plausible arrangement that meets those three criteria, the UK would inevitably remain subject to a large part of EU law and regulations and under the jurisdiction of the ECJ, it would remain unable to limit immigration from other EU member states (and might actually wind up with less control than it had before depending on the deal), it would continue making substantial financial contributions to the EU, and it would remain unable to make its own independent trade deals with non-EU partners and continue to be required to impose tariffs on non-EU imports according to EU rules.

It's easy to understand why someone who didn't want to leave the EU in the first place would be willing to accept those things in order to retain the benefits of EU membership, but what exactly do those people think any leave voters were voting for if it wasn't any of legislative independence, immigration control, reduced financial contributions, or autonomy in international relations with non-EU nations? What is left that makes Brexit anything but a name at that point?

I'm surprised to find myself agreeing with a government minister on much of anything these days, but I do agree with the suggestion that "soft Brexit" and "hard Brexit" are just propaganda terms at this point. They are mostly being used to describe, respectively, no real Brexit at all and a complete cut-off with no real ties left. They present a false dichotomy that is entirely unhelpful to reaching a reasonable agreement that might be mutually beneficial for both the UK and the EU at the end of the process.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

As they are clowns, they have a clown car, there are probably about 20 of them in the car, total IQ of about 1/2 a person. Actually that's a lie, Boris is quite bright and, in my opinion, sociopathic: https://www.theguardian.com/co... see last few paragraphs, an evil clown therefore. Trump, don't know, but I fear the worst.

Having read biographies on both, I would say Boris might be slightly sociopathic, but Trump is outright crazy.
Boris wants to give the public appearance of a clown, but Trump wants to appear so serious.
On the other hand, they're both New Yorkers, and have hair issues.

Re:I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

The referendum was the worst possible way to settle this issue.

- The question was too vague. Remain in or leave the EU, but what about the single market? Freedom of movement? What kind of deal should we try to get? Norway model, fall back to WTO rules?

- The "debates" in the run up were awful, a complete shambles.

- The whole thing went post-truth almost immediately.

- Most voters were extremely ill informed, by design. They wanted to know things like what the economic consequences would be, what sort of deal we would try to get, and the leave campaign was careful to avoid offering a plan that could then provide answers to those questions.

- The while EU issue was conflated with immigration, which we could control today without leaving if we wanted to.

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, why not argue the opposite?

The why not is simple: you're the minority.

The sexists, racists, homophobes, Islamaphobes, etc far outnumber you. The ignorant, the stupid, the gullible who fall for fake news, etc out number you. The MRAs, the GamerGaters, the white nationalists, etc outnumber you.

The Christians out number you. The Muslims out number you. The gun nuts out number AND out gun you.

You're not raising your chances by expanding the vote. You're lowering it.

Re:I call BS

[lgw]

Do say more! My lunch is rather bland today - could use a bit more salt.

The north wanted to stop immigration, the south wanted sovereignty. The combination doesn't leave much room, but May hard stance has already caused the EU to cave on "if you want our markets you have to take our immigrants". Negotiations continue. You start with an extreme stance when negotiating, then move from there - you don't start by compromising. Trade will end up little-changed between Britain and the EU, because everyone wants money, but posturing is important at the start.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is a valid concern, but I think you're overstating the case here.

The issues with exporting data outside the EEA are already widely addressed in business terms and conditions by explicitly disclosing that it will happen. For better or worse, that is all it takes to escape the data protection regulations in most cases. Schemes like the old US Safe Harbor and its successor mostly just reduce the need for prior consent, and they're on similarly shaky ground when it comes to government monitoring, and still no-one is going to do anything about it because no-one wants to seriously undermine diplomatic relations between the EU and US. If all of this were not the case, EU businesses would not be able to use services based in places like the US, and the EU's tech industry would be dead.

It seems highly likely that a similar arrangement would be made between the UK and rEU as part of a Brexit deal or soon afterwards. There is little if any advantage to either side in not doing so, and a lot of potential damage to businesses on both sides if they don't. But in any case, there is probably still enough demand in the UK alone for a dedicated data centre even if certain rEU-based organisations would not be able to use it to store some information and consequently there was demand for a data centre in the rEU as well.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In fairness, remaining in the EU is hardly a known quantity either. It's not as if the EU today is what people were voting on several decades ago, and it's not as if most of the EU has no interest in ever closer union in the future. So while I might agree with your general constitutional point about not changing the status quo for a less well understood alternative without some form of supermajority, in this case I also don't think remaining in the EU deserved that sort of special protection. I think the worst mistake was in hastily and crudely assembling a referendum on a single question that didn't actually give anyone much of a clear mandate for anything useful afterwards, not in accepting a simple majority decision.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm not saying there aren't real concerns there, but let's keep this in perspective. The UK economy is heavily service-based. A large majority of the products made and services supplied in the UK are not exported to customers in the EU; most stay within the UK, and while trade with EU partners is obviously very important, the majority of the UK's international trade is with non-EU partners. And even if trade with the EU and partners with existing trade deals via the EU falls back on WTO rules, the economists being interviewed by the serious news organisations seem to be saying it's highly sector-specific but overall you would expect tariffs to have roughly a 2% effect. That's significant, but it's far less than the damage caused by say the credit crunch, and it's far less than the fluctuations due to exchange rates in recent months.

Obviously it's sensible for international businesses to look at their situation as their environment changes and to adapt accordingly. I don't see how anyone could reasonably criticise them for that. But at the same time there's definitely a bit of opportunist smoke blowing going on, and there are definitely big businesses angling for some sort of sweetheart deal with the UK government here. I don't think it makes much sense to argue the UK has closed up shop when we literally haven't even started the real Brexit process yet and there's still considerable political negotiation to come both at home and with the remaining EU members.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/microsoft_brexit_fakenews/

We're not quitting the UK: Microsoft quashes Brexit fake news
Did I say that? Bullish MS man finds quotes ripped out of context

Re: I call BS

[MrSteveSD]

If the vote was about not taking any kind of economic risk whatsoever, then yes, Brexiter's have been stupid. However, the issues went far beyond economics. You mention the "Iron boot heel of EU tyranny", and while you may feel that comically exaggerating people's concerns may make then look stupid, sovereignty has long been an issue. It was the issue of sovereignty that largely factored into Labour's policy of leaving the EEC (Precursor to the EU) in the early 80s. They were concerned that the EU might impose corporatist policies on the UK amongst other things. Jacques Delors managed to convince them that the EU would only impose socialist policies on the UK and they were soundly fooled by this and dropped their EEC objections. Some prominent Labour MP's like Tony Benn never believed him and never dropped their objections.

I personally have objections to the EU over it's neo-liberal policies (they approved CETA for one!), it's destructive austerity-pushing and anti-democratic activities. Many people in the UK feel we should never have had a referendum, although that is mainly because they lost. Referendums are an important part of any democracy and are in fact an act of true democracy, rather than the representative democracy we are usually lumbered with. The EU has a history of bullying countries into refraining from holding referendums, ignoring the results (e.g. the EU constitution becomes the Lisbon Treaty) and even harassing countries into holding them again when the "wrong" result occurs (Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty).

The other issue with the EU is that it is not content to simply remain a loose coalition of countries engaging in economic cooperation. There is an inexorable march towards something much more like a superstate, and the UK is far from the only member to have concerns about it. This process has only accelerated under Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. For example, there are moves toward having an EU army and countries like Sweden have strong objections to this. In 1975 the people of the UK voted to approve membership of the ECC, a fairly loose nine member organisation. They did not vote for a 28 member EU with far tighter integration. Whether you like the EU or not, this clearly demonstrates that it is an organisation than can change quite dramatically over time, and it's not always for the better. Many people are unhappy with that level of change and the associated unpredictability. Furthermore, you cannot rely on national democratic forces to bring a halt to superstate ambitions. The EU has demonstrated time and time again that it is willing to ignore, subvert and do end runs around national objections to its future plans. We've seen this most clearly over the EU Constitution and Lisbon treaties.

Before the referendum, I talked at length with other socialist friends about the EU, and they agreed there were serious issues over democracy, neo-liberalism, austerity etc . Yet as soon as the result came out, they became completely polarized. Suddenly the EU never did anything wrong, everyone was racist (because of course, that is the only possible reason anyone would want to leave the EU) and they even seemed to want Britain to fail as a result, presumably to teach Brexiters some kind of lesson. Both sides have acted reprehensibly since the referendum with childish attempts at marginalizing each other, name calling etc. We've had older people calling the younger generation "snowflakes" and the younger generation even calling for the disenfranchisement of the elderly because they are old and won't have to live with their decision (presumably this would also have to apply to young people who are terminally ill or have chronic life-threatening conditions).

People need to take a step back, calm down and accept that there were both good and bad sides to the EU and move on. There will certainly be economic challenges ahead, but outside of the EU we will be able to make international deals more quickly, so there certainly is a chance of success. Regardless of the way people voted, they should be hoping that we make a success of it.

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

Consolidating countries into a larger entity just ends up in the concentration of power w/ the power centers of that entity - be it EU bureaucrats, or in the US, the DC establishment - the musical chairs of government, Wall Street, the media - both news and entertainment, academia and lobbyists. Which probably explains why the Left side of the political spectrum tends to strive towards this, while the Right side tends to strive towards the opposite goal - devolving power from such entities and towards centers of power as local as possible - be it individuals, cities, counties, states, et al. That's a legitimate debate to have, and I daresay had the model of single centralized entities worked in assuring full employment, security, prosperity and so on, there wouldn't even be a debate.

But my underlying point is that if we are committed to democracies, that implies accepting the will of the people as it comes out. If, after a victory, the winners are told that what they want will not happen, then one of two things will happen after they've completely lost faith in democracy. Either they will join fringe racist groups and make things ugly for the elite, or they will join foreign terrorist entities like ISIS and try to overthrow the government. People on the Left on either side of the pond need to realize this and absorb Barak Obama's cliche: "Elections have consequences". Regardless of who the winners are

Re:I call BS

[thegarbz]

but let's keep this in perspective.

I did keep it in perspective, my post was about engineering and product producers doing business with the 500million. As far as they are concerned the UK is a shitty place to be.

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

Yeah, like the partially pregnant state that people on the Left seem to think is possible

The whole idea of democracies, which even the EU hasn't abandoned, implies that people get to decide the direction in which they want to go. If that's not going to be respected, then why engage in that charade in the first place? Just have those geniuses in Brussels who can design everything from commode specs to the number of years of work that one can take off after having a child and yet be fully paid to nominate the perfect government of every member country from Kyiv to Lisbon, and avoid the whole rigmarole of elections, referandums and the like.

Re: I call BS

[unixisc]

Those who didn't vote don't deserve any say, whatsoever. They've pretty much implicitly stated that they are fine whichever way it goes

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You think manufacturing exporters who just got a 10-20% windfall through the exchange rate changes are going to be scared about the risk of WTO tariffs that will be an order of magnitude smaller in most sectors? It still seems like you're overstating the case here.

Re: I call BS

[unixisc]

That model would enable the annexation of any country by another country w/ a larger population. It was why, during the Vietnam War, South Vietnam refused to accept a referandum in both the Vietnams that would have enabled citizens in each country to decide whether they wanted to be a part of a union. North Vietnam had a larger population, so had such a vote happened, they'd have won. Of course, South Vietnam ultimately got conquered anyway, but the reason the Saigon government refused was that it would not reflect the views of a majority of South Vietnamese. Same thing - if the US and Canada had to vote on whether Canada should be annexed to the US, and on the US side, the vote was yes w/ a margin that exceeded Canada's population, then the views of Canadians would be rendered worthless. Which is why Canada would never agree to it.

In the EU case, the only rights that people have would be whether their own countries would be a part of the EU, not whether countries like Britain or Ukraine or Turkey or Russia can be a part of it.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that "those geniuses in Brussels" are actually not from Brussels but sent their by their respective member country due to the outcome of each 4 year election right? The EU is governed by the member countries by consensus and by some unknown bureaucrats from Brussels.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The Syrian migrants are pushed into the EU not due to EU but due to the fact there is a fricking conflict going on in Syria. You can thank the US for destabilizing the whole region due their stupid war in Iraq while sending another thank you note to Russia for drawing out the conflict in Syria.

Re:I call BS

[GeekWithAKnife]

This is exactly the problem. No facts.

Businesses that build data centres (such as MS, Amazon, Equinix, Century link, IBM to name a few) have to plan 10-15 years ahead. At least. They cannot plan anything beyond contingencies #BecauseBrexit -accountants, lawyers and compliance specialists have been running around in fucking circles tripping over themselves in case there's a hard Brexit. -FACT.

It's because we do not and did not have facts to begin with that this was a stupid decision.

This is Brexit:

Step 1 - Leave the EU by any and all means (To secure borders, stop unwanted migration, get 350 million a week, develop rural communities, let the little person have his or her last remnants "we're British and better alone" empire hurrah)

Step 2 - ??? (Is it gonna work? can we afford it? IS THERE OR HAVE THERE EVER BEEN A GENUINE FUCKING PLAN??)

Step 3 - SUCCESS!!!

Ooo there's a fact in three easy to understand steps.

Re:I call BS

[F.Ultra]

There is just so much Marmite the world can endure.

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Utter pish. Many leave voters voted leave because they do not see the benefit in being a member of a club from which you get less out than you put in. Period. The other 4 net contributors are naturally outraged because they'll now have to fork out even more, and the 23 net beneficiaries are outraged because their gravy train will have a little less gravy on it. The fact that there are an admittedly significant number of morons who thought they were voting for a xenophobic approach to immigration helped swing the vote, sure, but I would like to believe that the majority voted for more considered reasons.

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

Yeah, I do realize that - I'm not talking about Belgians here. I'm talking about the EU plutocrats who work in one of the member capitals that also doubles as the headquarters of the EU as well as NATO. Yeah, I could have mentioned Strasbourg, but on checking, I found that Brussels has the sole role.

My larger point is that bureaucrats in any city that was the headquarters would have been far removed from the disparate problems in member states, and shouldn't be designing 'one-size-fits-all' regulations for all its members. Particularly the ones about allowing in 'refugees' from the Middle East or North Africa

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

Leaving aside US 'responsibility' (which is another topic altogether), there is no reason any European country, other than Turkey, should have to take in any Syrian refugees. Those people are Arab Muslims, and if they have to flee Syria, they should flee to countries in the neighborhood that are not totally alien to them - Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, maybe even Turkey or Iran. They would find them more culturally compatible, and in Arab countries, there wouldn't even be a linguistic issue. Just like all Arab countries have taken in Pali people for over 50 years w/o giving them citizenship, they can do the same here for Syrian refugees - give them temporary asylum, and send them back if and when the civil war in Syria ends and final borders in that country are drawn

Instead, ONE EU member country - Germany - decides to take in everyone, and in the process, sours everybody against the open borders within the EU that are so sacrosanct. That openness was fine when it was just Europeans moving b/w places like Frankfurt to Barcelona to Birmingham, but once it also started meaning the free flow of Jihadists b/w European countries, it created a situation where the only people talking sense are the neo-Nazi parties in various member states. And one can thank the EU for enabling, if not creating, such a situation

Re: I call BS

[Ash-Fox]

That's not why I voted, you lying scum.

Re:I call BS

[Ed_1024]

I agree. Jamie Oliver (celebrity chef) was whining the other day about how Brexit was affecting his business badly, yet others were finding that sales had gone up. In the name of science, I went to one of his Italian restaurants and it was shite. No need to look any further, Jamie!

Re:I call BS

[serviscope_minor]

I like how when I rebut your incredibly silly argument you pretend that you made a different argument entirely and rebut my rebuttal to an argument you just invented. Smooth.

Re: I call BS

[Hognoxious]

4. They wanted to stick it to the elites. And is there any way better than by voting for former banker who went to a posh school?

Re:I call BS

[Hognoxious]

He's a yank. He couldn't point to Europe on a map, but he's still an expert on it.

Re:I call BS

[Hognoxious]

Only if they don't import anythin (e.g. raw materials) to make the things they sell.

This is why devaluation isn't a viable strategy beyond the very short term.

Re:I call BS

[MoaDweeb]

Jamie has had to close some of his restaurants citing the high cost of produce etc. The weakening pound has pushed up the cost of imported goods driven (in large part) over Brexit concerns.
He is still a tosser though.

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

We have bricks in the U.K you know.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with your argument is that it is essentially saying "what the voters actually wanted doesn't make sense, but let's do something".
The right response logically (but extremely against popular opinion, so what can you do...) would be to say: we messed that referendum completely up, let's ignore it and come up with a proper one we can actually implement and put that to a vote.

> reasonable agreement that might be mutually beneficial for both the UK and the EU at the end of the process.

Problem is, "mutually beneficial" means there must be some benefit to the EU, something that the UK gives up in favour of the EU. Something that was NEVER discussed, and thus you could say it is something for which ABSOLUTELY NO mandate exists. And it seems that some banks feel it will be them (at least the passporting part) that will be thrown under the bus (among other things, probably).
Of course everything comes down to the negotiation strategy being based on not showing their cards. On the surface that seems like the obvious thing to do, but I am not at all sure that this strategy won't cost the UK more than they gain - the cost being both in uncertainty, impossibility of public discussions (so those who voted "against the elite": congrats, now the "elite" will decide your future without you even getting to hear about it beforehand), and potentially antagonizing the people you have to reach an agreement with (being unwilling to guarantee residency for people who have been living in the UK since a long time beforehand might result in some grudges being held for a long time).

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

> Referendums are an important part of any democracy and are in fact an act of true democracy

Only if the right questions is asked. Otherwise it is to "true democracy" as "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is to a honest question.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The trouble with your argument is that it is essentially saying "what the voters actually wanted doesn't make sense, but let's do something".

The thing is, I have yet to meet a voter (as far as I'm aware) who wanted any of the usual stereotype positions ascribed to entire groups of voters by the media and/or strident believers in some other point of view.

The vast majority of people I've spoken to about Brexit basically wanted to maintain some degree of ties with the EU, but didn't want to follow the "ever closer union" direction it's going in. Some ultimately came down on the side of Remain, hoping that the situation can be fixed from within and trusting that the UK's various exemptions would protect us in the meantime, or feeling that the short term damage and/or general uncertainty about leaving wasn't worth the risk. Some ultimately came down on the side of Leave, hoping that some alternative arrangement would suit all parties, but feeling that the limitations on being able to forge our own path if we remained in were too great and/or that it wasn't realistic to remain a member while claiming ever more special rules just for us. In some cases, views on the likely future of the EU itself also played a part, either seeing it as a positive influence for say preventing wars, or as a risk say because the underlying European economic situation still doesn't look good.

I don't see anything nonsensical about any of those positions. They're just weighing up various factors, all of which would probably be true to some extent, but reaching different conclusions about how they balance.

However, none of those people were hardcore Europhiles who thought there were no potential benefits to leaving, xenophobic nationalists who thought all immigrants were evil and EU membership had no benefits, or that weird in-the-middle group who apparently think we should have Brexit but then somehow stay in all the parts of the EU that actually affect us anyway. To me, those three positions are all logically inconsistent with the evidence and/or themselves, but the way a lot of the reporting (and, frankly, a lot of the comments in online forums) have been going, you'd think they were the only options.

Re:I call BS

[Jason1729]

Until Queen Merkel puts a 25% tariff on all UK goods entering the EU.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The referendum was the worst possible way to settle this issue.

No, it was the best, so best it's completely final and utterly unquestionable. Brexit. Brexit. Brexit.

- The question was too vague. Remain in or leave the EU, but what about the single market? Freedom of movement? What kind of deal should we try to get? Norway model, fall back to WTO rules?

Brexit. Brexit. Brexit. That's all. Stop asking questions.

- The "debates" in the run up were awful, a complete shambles.

Stop being a hater.

- The whole thing went post-truth almost immediately.

There is only one truth, and that truth is Brexit. Brexit. Brexit.

- Most voters were extremely ill informed, by design. They wanted to know things like what the economic consequences would be, what sort of deal we would try to get, and the leave campaign was careful to avoid offering a plan that could then provide answers to those questions.

The plan is Brexit. Brexit. Brexit.

- The while EU issue was conflated with immigration, which we could control today without leaving if we wanted to.

No, we need Brexit. Brexit. Brexit.

Stop thinking you can change the final decision of the people. That's why we have elections, to make decisions for ALL ETERNITY.

Brexit. Brexit. Brexit.

Re:I call BS

[Bert64]

Well that is the whole point, mass migration has become a serious problem which is negative impacting millions of people but the only political groups offering any kind of solution are the extreme ones.
Most people would never vote for these parties if any of the more moderate parties was offering a solution, and most people would happily accept a moderate solution in preference to an extreme one.

Re:I call BS

[Bert64]

MS is primarily an American company, and a majority of their financial calculations will be performed in USD... Their income from the UK may have decreased due to the lower exchange rate (although they are now putting prices up anyway), but also their costs within the uk will have decreased relative to the company as a whole.

The price to purchase hardware isn't affected by the GBP exchange rate as virtually none of it comes from the UK anyway.
The price to build and operate data centers in the UK will be cheaper because of the reduced cost of anything sourced in the uk (ie the labour to build and operate the dc, the power to run it, many of the building materials sourced locally, applicable taxes and other fees etc).

Re:I call BS

[Bert64]

The EU already had an agreement with the US, a similar one with the UK is not impossible especially seeing as the UK is starting from a point with already-compatible data protection laws.
Some EU members already have rules that certain data must be retained within the same country, and cannot be stored anywhere else including other EU members.

Re:I call BS

[Big Hairy Ian]

Currency exchange rate! Dipshit don't get me going about VAT

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually extends far beyond that, even some key leave figures who have been Eurosceptics their entire lives such as Daniel Hannan who's been writing in the Telegraph for probably about a decade about how we should leave the EU have been quite vocal about the fact they didn't want Brexit for the purposes of migration reduction.

The idea that with a 51.9% to 48.1% vote to leave that there is a majority on any one form of Brexit is farcical, the vote to Leave is neither a majority vote to cut migration, nor a majority vote to increase sovereignty - it is merely a majority vote to leave and nothing more.

That is of course before you factor in the millions of people who simply didn't vote, because they had no idea if they wanted Brexit or not because they had no idea who to believe, but most certainly do at least know that they don't want to be less wealthy, even for a short period.

The idea therefore that there is a democratic mandate for any form of Brexit is farcical, more so when you take into context that the current government has no democratic mandate in itself due to the fact that Theresa May has completely altered the direction of the government from that it was elected upon - she didn't even go through an electoral process in her party winning it by default after other candidates were pushed out (not that I think others would have been any better).

As such the only way to declare that tackling immigration, or increasing sovereignty at the cost of reduced wealth has some kind of democratic mandate is to either have all of our representatives involved, with no whipping and a free vote on everything, or to go for a second referendum. Anyone saying otherwise is truly undemocratic and effectively saying that democracy is something that's fixed in time, that's obviously nonsense because otherwise we'd still have things like slavery, and women wouldn't have the vote.

At this point I'm past caring what happens - I'm comfortable enough in terms of wealth to weather it regardless, and it is those least well off who will suffer, but they were also a demography that largely voted for it, so it's really their problem that they'll have to suffer the consequences of their vote. I would of course rather not have to weather it, and I would rather not see people suffer, but that option is apparently now off the table, so I will have to weather it, and they will have to suffer it.

What does annoy me however is these constant claims of democratic legitimacy for this, that or the other - the idea that because of a simple Yes/No vote on leaving the EU we can now claim legitimacy for everything else we've ever wanted to push through - it's become a catch all for everyone's political agenda. The idea that we should all come together now that the Eurosceptics have gotten their way - what complete drivel, they didn't come together when we joined the EU, they spent the next 40 years whining and moaning, spreading lies, and trying to sabotage the effort, so quite why they expect anyone on the opposite end of the spectrum to now not do the same I don't know. There's an authoritarian bent to the Brexiters, and it's clear that's already shining through so contrary to being more individually empowered by Brexit, people now have less of a say than ever. They have a government making decisions they have no mandate for, they have the hard-liners telling them they have to shut up and should just agree with them, we even have near complete silence from the government on Brexit and other issues - up until Theresa May's speech a week ago basically no one could even tell you what her government stands for until it's too late and things like the snoopers charter and grammar schools are already through the vote in parliament.

Brexiters are going to have to get used to the fact that contrary to their belief, the Brexit vote gave them a mandate for nothing more than triggering article 50, everything else beyond that is still up for grabs democratically. They also need to shut the fuck up and stop whining about p

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's kind of the point. If the question was "Do you want to leave the EU and our trade will be fucked or stay and probably preserve the status quo with some small chance of changing things", the vote may have turned out differently. It is pure fantasy to assume that the other 20-odd countries will let us cherrypick the agreement we want; we *are* going to hit the ground hard, but the last question is how much it'll hurt. That stupid referendum was to try to regain the voters the Tories lost to UKIP and to silence the more extreme right wing of the Tory part. If the former works, I'll be very surprised and the latter will *never* work, even if May manages to make the UK resemble early-1940s Italy.
Businesses blaming Brexit for everything is probably going to be the case for many years yet. I got an e-mail from a UK software company saying they were putting up their prices because "Apple changed their pricing structures due to Brexit". This is utter horseshit - Apple might well have changed their pricing structures but they have no say in how much you charge for your work!

Re:I call BS

[dave420]

The Syrian migrants entered the EU as they were fleeing a warzone. They were taken up by the local governments, and redistributed according to the rules all the countries agreed to. There is lots of work available in the EU. There are no ghettos, and the migrants commit less crime than natives, per capita. So apart from your entire argument being false, it's a great argument! It certainly sounds like a real argument, anyway...

Re:I call BS

[dave420]

You sound scared and hateful. It must be a horrible life. If your points had any merit I'd debate them, but you are proffering fantasy, not fact. It's common behaviour of those defending nazis.

Re:I call BS

[mjwx]

With the announcement by May that she wants a hard Brexit, companies have started to announce that they are either leaving or starting to plan for that eventuality. HSBC has already announced 1000 jobs moving to France.

If you listened to May's speech she didn't say she wanted a hard Brexit. It was the media that reported it that way.

And companies like HSBC said before the referendum that if there was a brexit, jobs would go to Europe.

The news yesterday is that the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that parliament has to vote on Brexit before talks can even begin. This is Microsoft saying to MP's that there will be consequences if there is a Brexit. Most of us expected this, without access to Europe a lot of industries are simply going to shut up shop here in the UK.

Re: I call BS

[mjwx]

That's not why I voted, you lying scum.

Yes it is you lying xenophobe.

The leave campaing was centred entirely around the issue of immigration. They wouldn't even talk about jobs because they knew that if they did they'd have to discuss the fact there would be fewer jobs in the UK post Brexit.

Re:I call BS

[mjwx]

If the demand is there then MS will build there. UK didn't simply close up shop just because they left the EU. Stupid reporting is stupid.

Erm, Microsoft as well as several other businesses set up shop in the UK because the demand from Europe is there, not demand from the UK.

They chose the UK because it has free access to Europe and lower taxes for a highly developed nation. Get rid of the access to Europe and there's no point in expanding, for many companies they will be contracting or shutting up shop completely because there are now barriers between them and 80% or more of their market.

Reporting was fine, stupid comment was stupid.

Re:I call BS

[AmiMoJo]

May said that she wanted out of the single market. That's a hard Brexit.

Re:I call BS

[Gonoff]

Those people are Arab Muslims, and if they have to flee Syria, they should flee to countries in the neighbourhood that are not totally alien to them - Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, maybe even Turkey or Iran. They would find them more culturally compatible, and in Arab countries.

Not all brown people living in hot places are Arab or Muslim. Even if a particular refugee is both, there are types of Arab and types of Muslim.

Iran has always been keen to point out that it not an Arab country. They are not the same sort of Muslim as most of their neighbours to the north or west. Look up the words "Sunni" and "Shia" and think about 16th century European Catholics & Protestants but without always the same level of tolerance.

Instead, ONE EU member country - Germany - decides to take in everyone, and in the process, sours everybody

That depends on what you mean by "everybody". If you mean the right-wing press, which we have so much of, then certainly. If however you mean all the people, or even the vast majority numerically, not so. I have talked to some Germans who were very angry about the lies published as "news" saying what was going on in their country. Basically, it wasn't. We wouldn't know though because of the garbage we hear from our papers. I saw photographs of a male only train unloading but when did we see any of the women and children train another day? I suspect that there will be some on snopes.com but not in the Sun or the Daily Wail.

What Germany did was excellent and an example to us all. They have a little more money that we do at present, but perhaps about the same amount of free space. No we are not "full up" and we weren't broke either. The UK offer to resettle perhaps 8 per week was just silly and embarrassing/shaming.

but once it also started meaning the free flow of Jihadists b/w European countries,

These are people running away from jihadists. We seem to be able to grow our own anyway. I am more worried about those and you should be too.

Re: I call BS

[Ash-Fox]

Yes it is you lying xenophobe.

Nope, it wasn't. My partner isn't even British. After many issues to consider, I decided to ignore all the political, sovereignty and human rights issues and base my vote on the remain campaign's focus of economics. I decided to look at the trends for GDP growth (just updated that for you with last year's data too) and base my decision of that. The European Union verses other continents and such show consistent negative growth trends while others are growing. Meanwhile, the only thing I could find was short term issues regarding the UK post what people describe as a 'hard brexit' now and uncertainty. But at least, not the consistent certainty of the EU as shown in the graph I have provided.

Nothing else influenced in my decision here, even though I am very opinioned on a wide spectrum of EU, UK, RoI, PL politics and industires.

The leave campaing was centred entirely around the issue of immigration.

To be fair, I didn't really absorb or look at the leave campaign's stuff. I was already intimately familiar with the adverse affects issues like the common fisheries policy, the common agricultural policy and various green initiatives. Particularly since I had voted for specific MEPs in the past to correct some of the problems that have been on going for the last 70 years, some of them that caused Iceland to leave the EU over.

They wouldn't even talk about jobs because they knew that if they did they'd have to discuss the fact there would be fewer jobs in the UK post Brexit.

You're probably right, I have no idea what they said.

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

I don't live in Europe, so there is nothing for me to be scared about. But when all mainstream politicians out there are busy living in denial about Muslims while events like in Paris, Nice, Berlin and other places go on, you see neo-Nazis gaining ground. People can be forgiven for putting their own lives ahead of the well being of Muslims in their countries

Re:I call BS

[unixisc]

Not all brown people living in hot places are Arab or Muslim. Even if a particular refugee is both, there are types of Arab and types of Muslim.

Iran has always been keen to point out that it not an Arab country. They are not the same sort of Muslim as most of their neighbours to the north or west. Look up the words "Sunni" and "Shia" and think about 16th century European Catholics & Protestants but without always the same level of tolerance.

Okay, a bit about Iranian history. Iran only became Shia in the 16th century: prior to that, it was Sunni. Culturally, they may have separated themselves from Arabs, but they practiced and practice the same fanaticism as any other group of Muslims anywhere - Turks, Arabs, East Indies, Indian subcontinental Muslims, North Africans, et al. While there may be nuanced differences b/w them in terms of certain practices, one thing they all have in common is the hatred and persecution of non-Muslims among them. If Saudi Arabia is notorious for its treatment of non-Wahabis, Iran has a reputation of persecuting and bullying Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Bahais. Iraq - under its new 'democrat' regime, has caused its Christians to flee first to Syria, from where they fled to Lebanon when ISIS took over Eastern Syria. Egypt routinely sees Copts at the receiving end of pogroms. In Pakistan, it's common for underaged Christian and Hindu girls to disappear, and later be discovered to have been kidnapped, converted to Islam and married to Muslims. Essentially, Muslims are about religious genocide of non-Muslims.

That depends on what you mean by "everybody". If you mean the right-wing press, which we have so much of, then certainly. If however you mean all the people, or even the vast majority numerically, not so. I have talked to some Germans who were very angry about the lies published as "news" saying what was going on in their country. Basically, it wasn't. We wouldn't know though because of the garbage we hear from our papers. I saw photographs of a male only train unloading but when did we see any of the women and children train another day? I suspect that there will be some on snopes.com but not in the Sun or the Daily Wail.

What Germany did was excellent and an example to us all. They have a little more money that we do at present, but perhaps about the same amount of free space. No we are not "full up" and we weren't broke either. The UK offer to resettle perhaps 8 per week was just silly and embarrassing/shaming.

Germans or Austrians being raped by 'migrants' is not 'right wing news' - it's news. There is a reason you see parties that were previously the object of opprobrium becoming popular today. Several few years ago, the name 'Le Pen' would have repulsed everybody, but France's policy of accepting Muslims from North Africa even though they let go of their colonies in the 60s was what led to events like Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan massacre and the Nice massacre, resulting in Marine Le Pen being projected to become the next leader. And if Germany and Austria elect the next Hitler, they can't be blamed either.

These are people running away from jihadists. We seem to be able to grow our own anyway. I am more worried about those and you should be too.

No, the bulk of Syrian refugees are Sunnis running away not from ISIS, but from a quasi-secular Alawite regime in Syria, which is not Jihadist. The rapists in Germany have been largely Sunnis, some, but not all, of who are ISIS affiliated. What underlies this trend is that Islam endorses them to wage war against infidels and these rapists take that as a license to rape the women of the host countries.

The more sensible solution for the Syrian refugee issue would be to have them move to similar countries in their neighborhood, which are more like them - Arab Muslim. Jordan has taken some, and the others can go to places lik

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The north of the UK is Scotland, which voted to remain in the EU

Re:I call BS

[david_thornley]

My country set up a branch in the UK because it was in the EU and they spoke English there. We now don't know whether this is going to continue to work, since we don't know what trade arrangements between the UK and the EU will be.

Re: I call BS

[david_thornley]

And I keep wondering about second Brexit, involving at least Scotland.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is the real problem today, IMHO. No-one really knows yet what the trade arrangements between the UK and the EU will be. That uncertainty is damaging: everyone has to keep their options open and plan for a variety of possible outcomes, which typically isn't free. It's also the reason that the endless doomsaying from certain quarters is not just unhelpful but potentially dangerous: it's far too early to know whether any specific prediction will actually happen, but if enough people repeating claims about terrible consequences anyway, it will eventually damage sentiment and potentially turn some of those consequences into self-fulfilling prophecies.

if...could...might...maybe

[tomhath]

Nothing but posturing by Microsoft. Not news.

liars touts & shills oh my

[Anonymous Coward]

spiritual bankruptcy proceedings are under way... as for the missing monkey hymens... we owe ourselves an explanation?.. cease fire stand down.. that's the spirit..

Luxembourg or Ireland

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ok, Luxembourg or Ireland will happily build and host new, from-scratch, Tier-4 DCs for Microsoft ;-)

Brexit will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

For it to happen all 27 countries have to agree to a deal. After that May said it will be put to parliament so it will have to pass the commons and lords again. The chances of that happening are virtually nill. They will probably call for another referendum when the concrete proposals are known, and because people voted "out" for different reasons and know more about the consequences it will overwhelmingly be for remain

Re:Brexit will never happen

[Big Hairy Ian]

No only the UK has to agree for Brexit to happen. A subsequent trade deal with the EU will require all 26 (See what I did there) members to agree & sign otherwise trading would take place under existing WTO rules.

Re:Brexit will never happen

[ledow]

First part (27 countries) isn't true.
Second part (commons / lords) is.
Third (chances = nil). Wrong. Only a handful of even opposition are saying they wouldn't follow. Lords would give more problems. Expect literal riots if something blocks it.
Fourth. Another referendum is a complete humiliation. They'd rather take a year longer and change the laws involved so it's not necessary (almost nothing stopping them doing that).
Fifth. The people were stupid enough the first time round, they're stupid enough for a second time too.

And I'm not pro-Brexit in any way, shape or form. But it's going to happen. Badly, maybe, but it's going to happen. At absolute best you'll have four years of stalemate followed by a new PM and then maybe something will change, but that's a lot of hurt first.

Re:Brexit will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Only one country needs to "agree" on anything, and what that means is that Britain declares it wants out and then it will be out no later than 24 months after that declaration. Whether the EU countries and Britain agree on a "deal" is irrelevant to Brexit itself. That deal is just about the way Britain and the EU will do business after Brexit. And you're right, an agreement on that will be very difficult to achieve, so a "hard" Brexit is most likely, if Britain actually declares its exit from the EU.

Re:Brexit will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea the whole hysteria around Brexit is bullshit. Politicians and corporations have way too much riding on the EU to let it happen.

Re:Brexit will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

WTO tariffs are at historic lows. Whether the tariff is 2% or 0% is in practical terms irrelevant. A 0% tariff maybe slightly more stimulating to GDP but a 2% tariff is basically going to have no impact on trade volumes. If it shaves anything at all off GDP its a fraction of a percent.

Re:Brexit will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still some tariffs that are above 15%. However tariffs are not necessarily the worst thing.
To my surprise, people campaigning for leave have described the issue much better than I could, at length, and almost 1 year ago: http://leavehq.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=128

Gives us a tax break!

[monkeyxpress]

This is silly. The UK is not proposing putting tariffs on anything - part of the argument for Brexit (which I voted against) is that the UK could have more free trade deals with everyone else and avoid EU tariffs. They want to do a free trade deal with China for example. Further, if the UK was even considering tariffs to protect its industries, why would it propose putting tariffs on industries (making server racks) that don't even exist? It would make slightly more 'sense' to put tariffs on food or gas turbines - you know, stuff it actually makes.

However, the one thing the UK has strongly hinted at is that it will throw around tax breaks like candy to prevent its economy from imploding. I imagine that Microsoft UK just wants to make sure it is first in line.

Re:Gives us a tax break!

[Chrisq]

This is silly. The UK is not proposing putting tariffs on anything - part of the argument for Brexit (which I voted against) is that the UK could have more free trade deals with everyone else and avoid EU tariffs.

Agree, the chances on the tariffs for goods coming from China being higher are very low. However the data sharing issue is real, currently a data-centre in the UK can store data for EU companies without any issue. I hope that the EU will allow this to continue, as in many cases it will benefit them, but they could decide to be difficult.

Re: Gives us a tax break!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we disadvantage our own? These date centres will have to move to the EU to service EU customers. MAy can sign a deal with the US, and can host your stuff in the U.K.

Total BS

[Going_Digital]

Microsoft are not buying Hardware made in Europe, it is made in China, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. As a result they are already paying tariffs if any exist, that won't change outside of the EU.

Re:Total BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft are not buying Hardware made in Europe, it is made in China, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. As a result they are already paying tariffs if any exist, that won't change outside of the EU.

Wikipedia lists a free trade agreement between the EU and South Korea.

Unless the UK negotiates its own free trade agreement with Korea, then it will change.

Re:Total BS

[EvilSS]

Actually there is quite a bit of assembly happening in eastern European countries these days. The labor is cheap and being inside the EU makes it advantageous for customers. They bulk import finished parts (boards, drives, etc) and build the systems there. I have several customers in manufacturing that have or are planning facilities over there.

Re:Total BS

[oh_my_080980980]

You already answered your point with your last comment.

Re:Total BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wages in much of Eastern Europe are now lower than in China thanks to EU mismanagement of the economy and 15 years of basic stagnation continent wide. It's not just Russia and Ukraine stuck in the mire. Most the new EU member are stagnant too. Many of the coastal Chinese cities are at $900 a month median wages now. Even Poland, the biggest EU success story, is only at like $1000 per month right now. You can still find hundred of million of Chinese in the interior willing to take $300 a month but the infrastructure isn't there and where the infrastructure is the wages are at Eastern European levels of higher so a lot of manufacturing is moving out of China and into Eastern Europe.

Re:Total BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You already answered your point with your last comment.

Right, but those frequently take 5-10 years to negotiate. That's 5-10 years of higher costs assuming that the first agreement to be signed is with the nation exporting the hardware, which MS have no guarantee of.

Re:Total BS

[guruevi]

Tariffs are usually levied on imports, and then usually only for items that are available locally as well and that aren't a necessity.

You would be an idiot to tariff your primary exports as a country unless you are trying to keep the resources local (eg. if you don't produce enough grain within your own, you should tariff grain exports).

One of Korea's main exports is semiconductors and computers, they'd be idiots to levy a tax on exporting it. The UK on the other hand should probably tariff fully assembled server racks/containers because there are plenty of local jobs that could do that. And yes, companies then will think twice about (ab)using UK resources and tax breaks (how many jobs did they promise to get free/cheap land?), if they want customers in the UK, they should pay their fair share in taxes and create local jobs.

Re:Total BS

[Phelan]

That's nice... but you are ignoring the part where living in coastal China is ridiculously expensive?
I mean Shenzhen at this point is on par with mid-tier US cities on cost of living.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK prefers Linux anyway.

BREXIT is about free flow of people not goods

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK wants to control its borders and keep out migrants. We are fully content with trade in goods in services being as free an open as ever but we are tired of being invaded and calling a human invasion "free trade." Thankfully we have enough economic weight that these empty threats will stay empty. They can go bully some Polynesian island into taking a million migrants a year instead if they like.

Re:BREXIT is about free flow of people not goods

[Anonymous Coward]

'The UK wants to control its borders and keep out migrants.'

It's more about controlling immigration rather than stopping it. We (the UK) need more skilled migrants and fewer unskilled migrants.

If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a deal

[itsdapead]

No. The Lisbon Treaty on the procedure for leaving the EU can be summarised as: "the state wishing to leave shall bend over and pick up the soap." - now, technically, it was a bit silly to sign up to that, but at the time nobody thought that the UK PM would be stupid enough to call a Brexit referendum and, even if they did, no PM would be gormless enough to lose such a referendum, and even if they lost the referendum no PM would be stupid enough to pretend that they were obliged to pay more than lip service to the result of an advisory referendum.

More specifically, the procedure under the treaty is:

(1) UK invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty saying it wants to leave. The PM has said she'll do that in March.
(2) Then the UK gets to negotiate a deal for leaving that, yes, has to be passed by the European Parliament "or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period."
(3) At that point, the UK parliament may be given the option to approve the deal or reject it.

So, once Article 50 is invoked, the only way Brexit doesn't happen in March 2019 is if the European Council unanimously decides to extend the deadline. If that doesn't happen, and (predictably) the deal negotiations go to the wire then the only choice that the UK parliament will have in step (3) is "take the deal on offer or crash out of the EU with no agreement causing maximum chaos and confusion".

Oh, and note that the "deal" isn't necessarily this mythical trade deal that gives us access to the single market - according to some EU politicians we can't start talking about that until after we've actually left (and, in any case, negotiating such a deal in 2 years would be a new world record). No, this will just be things like who gets the cat, who gets the record collection and what happens to all the EU citizens living in the UK and all the UK citizens living in the EU (probably they'll get to go home on alternate Saturdays).

Tell me more why being independent is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

So MS will not enlarge its datacentere? Who bloody cares?

Re:Tell me more why being independent is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

So MS will not enlarge its datacentere? Who bloody cares?

People who would stand to benefit from the additional local revenue to made from such an expansion, dumbshit.

Basically, people who matter far more than you do.

Re:Where Do I Go For Technology News?

[unixisc]

I fully agree w/ this. There has been a deluge of this of late, let alone the trolls who post 'Trump, Trump, Trump' in every thread regardless of subject, much like the 'First post' apes. Or is the standard of what qualifies as 'technology news' so low now that a company deciding whether to build a datacenter anywhere now qualifies as 'technology' news?

Too bad this post was modded down, as probably mine will be, but as Lincoln once noted, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Can we halt them completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we halt Microsoft entirely, preferably dismantle them and burn the pieces and salt the earth they're buried in so it never comes back from the dead?

Re:If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a dea

[serviscope_minor]

No. The Lisbon Treaty on the procedure for leaving the EU can be summarised as: "the state wishing to leave shall bend over and pick up the soap." -

That's crap. And of course, there's nothing stopping us simply leaving the pre-Lisbon way. That is, stop attending the meetings, stop paying the fees, stop letting in filty immgrunts and repeal the EC act. As one of the laywers said before the Lisbon treaty: if you stop paying membership fees and stop turning up, eventually your friends will notice you've left the club.

Of course, if you act like a total dickhead to your trading partners by not honouring prior agreements, they're unlikely to want to do much negotiating with you since you've proven untrustworthy.

That's not called "bend over and pick the soap", that's called "normal human interaction".

(1) UK invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty saying it wants to leave. The PM has said she'll do that in March.

That sounds reaonable.

(2) Then the UK gets to negotiate a deal for leaving that, yes, has to be passed by the European Parliament "or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period."

I don't see what's wrong with that. If we tell them we're leaving, we can't piss around and not actually leave properly making life hard for everyone. Exit means exit after all.

And then... the current rules on pretty much all agreements of this sort (e.g. trade deals) have to be unanimously agreed. Why, if we're leaving, do you think we're owed some sort of special treatment? If we're getting treated differently for being in the EU, then we're in the EU and haven't left.

It's nonsensical to assume we can leave but be treated as if we haven't. If you think that's OK, then can you give me a grand because I think that would be nice too.

(3) At that point, the UK parliament may be given the option to approve the deal or reject it.

Yes?

So, once Article 50 is invoked, the only way Brexit doesn't happen in March 2019 is if the European Council unanimously decides to extend the deadline. If that doesn't happen, and (predictably) the deal negotiations go to the wire then the only choice that the UK parliament will have in step (3) is "take the deal on offer or crash out of the EU with no agreement causing maximum chaos and confusion".

Yes. This was a well known and understood consequence of leaving. That's the problem really. If you've negotiated a trade deal with someone, then completely abandon it, you don't know what the new deal, if any, will look like. Big, fat fucking DUHhhhh.

As far as I can tel;l a bunch of brexiters voted for brexit even though the procedures were somewhat clear in this regard and are now claiming the EU is somehow evil for not bending over backwards and giving us lots of free stuff and letting us dick around making a mess of things. Yeahno.

Standard Progrssive Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

> rather than anyone admitting that areas outside London have been neglected and need more focus

One of the most fundamental tenants of Progressive politics, worldwide, is that rural cultures are bad and must be destroyed. Ignoring areas outside of London isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Re:Standard Progrssive Perspective

[luis_a_espinal]

> rather than anyone admitting that areas outside London have been neglected and need more focus

One of the most fundamental tenants of Progressive politics, worldwide, is that rural cultures are bad and must be destroyed. Ignoring areas outside of London isn't a bug, it's a feature.

No, it is natural. When you move past a post-industrial base, it becomes harder and harder to sustain small communities. Whether you are in the US, the UK, Japan, Mexico, or Russia, the farther you are from a sufficiently large urban center, the harder it is to have or find a diverse job market.

And I'm not talking "diverse job market" as "market with good jobs." I'm talking about "market that has any jobs". You can work multiple part-times in an urban area if you have to (not ideal, but you do what you must.) In a poor rural town, you don't even get that choice.

It's not a matter that urban people are smart and rural people dumb or any shit like that. It's just how the means of production and services operate nowadays. And in a world where automation and serviceable products are become more and more prevalent, there is no stopping it.

Capitalism dictates that workers move where jobs are. There is no right or wrong in this. It just is. And to presume that a government must "do something" to prevent rural towns from becoming ghost towns is pretty much a tax on urban centers to subsidize a rural life that is no longer feasible.

The question here is how countries and people can grapple with this effectively to the country's benefit (or how it ameliorates the inevitable pains in the transition).

Re:Standard Progrssive Perspective

[Bert64]

Indeed, so build out better infrastructure for telecommuting and those of us who work remotely will go and live in small quiet communities where housing is a fraction of the cost.

Re:Standard Progrssive Perspective

[luis_a_espinal]

Indeed, so build out better infrastructure for telecommuting and those of us who work remotely will go and live in small quiet communities where housing is a fraction of the cost.

That's a self-service, myopic argument. That only works for professions that can work remotely. The bulk of the service industry (trade, hospitality, health care, building, physical systems repairs, etc) is not like that.

Besides, that kind of telecommuting ability already exist in many affordable places (and no, it will never cover picturesque Tumbleweedtown in Montanabraska, the country is too damned big and sparsely populated to justify such an infrastructure investment). You just have to plan ahead and do your research.

Confirmed by The Register as fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/microsoft_brexit_fakenews/

Re:If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a dea

[Tranzistors]

sorry, didn't mean to mod you redundant

Re:If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a dea

[itsdapead]

That is, stop attending the meetings, stop paying the fees, stop letting in filty immgrunts and repeal the EC act.

Seriously? While we're at it, perhaps if we hooked enough rowing boats to the UK and paddled really, really hard we could move the entire country away from Europe and next door to some other international pariah with a reputation for behaving like a moody teenager and being impossible to do business with - North Korea maybe? Or, give our New Best Friend Trump a few more months. As someone who's opinion you, presumably, respect said:

Of course, if you act like a total dickhead to your trading partners by not honouring prior agreements, they're unlikely to want to do much negotiating with you since you've proven untrustworthy.

That's called a reason why we can't just take our ball and go home.

I don't see what's wrong with that.

What's wrong with that is that the EU Council & Parliament just need to filibuster for a couple of years and they can give us a "take it or leave it" deal that only has to be better than the default...

Why, if we're leaving, do you think we're owed some sort of special treatment?

Its not "special treatment" because no other state has seceded from the EU, so there's no "usual treatment" to compare it with. None of the non-EU states with existing agreements (Norway, Switzerland) were in the EU to start with. The EU is a lot more complicated than a trade deal (and those take a decade to negotiate). What about EU citizens living in the UK? What about UK citizens living in the EU - do they get shipped back? Arrested as illegal immigrants? Oh, and those immigrants you are so worried about - many of them currently get stopped by border controls in the EU. EU companies with offices and assets in the UK? UK companies with offices in the EU? Tourists currently in the EU (who have no right to be there the second we leave the EU)? Students? What happens to the lorries full of imports and exports passing between UK and EU docks if nobody knows on what terms they are allowed in or out?. Even if we don't actually get concessions, long-term, at the very least we need some sort of orderly plan and timetable for making the transition without overnight chaos - unless we want to re-enact the Berlin air lift?

You know all those stupid, stupid horror stories and ridiculous threats of economic cataclysm that Camoron and Osbourne built their pathetic "remain" campaign around? The reason that everybody thought they were stupid and ridiculous was that people assumed that there's be some sort of civilised negotiation about the terms of departure that would anticipate and mitigate - or at least plan for - those problems. You start saying "well, we could just tell the EU to fuck off" and suddenly all that FUD starts sounding plausible.

This was a well known and understood consequence of leaving.

Not according to the "Leave" campaign who told everybody that the Europeans would be so desperate to trade with us that they'd let us stay in the single market and custom union at the same time as "taking back control", and that anybody who suggested that there might be any downside was "running down Britain".

I have no quarrel with the minority of Brexit voters who weighed up the arguments, did the research and decided it was all worth the risk. However, if you think such people swung the Brexit vote then I have this brilliant scheme for using our EU contributions to fund the NHS that you may like...

Still trying to work out how handing a huge victory to the hard right, richest minority of the Conservative party struck a blow for the little guy against elitism...

double standards

[OrangeTide]

US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and India are not in the EU, but they aren't being punished.

(PS - I don't think MS has any data centers in New Zealand, else I would I have listed them with Australia)

Re:double standards

[itsdapead]

US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and India are not in the EU, but they aren't being punished.

Yeah... if only you could build a factory in the US and get unfettered access to a single market of 300 million consumers... or a data-centre in India and hire well-trained workers at near-third-world wages...

Plus, those countries haven't been building their economic infrastructure around the EU single market & customs union for the last 40 years.

Re:If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a dea

[serviscope_minor]

Seriously?

Yes, of course we can. We're a sovereign country and no one would actually stop us. In fact prior to the Lisbon treaty that was pretty much the only option, so what we have now is better than what we had before. That's somewhat not what the GP was claiming.

While we're at it, perhaps if we hooked enough rowing boats to the UK and paddled really, really hard we could move the entire country away from Europe

You know I think given the chance some Brexiteers would like that.

As someone who's opinion you, presumably, respect said:

That guy's an idiot, don't listen to him.

That's called a reason why we can't just take our ball and go home.

It's not a reason why we can't, it's a reason why it would be a terrible idea.

Its not "special treatment" because no other state has seceded from the EU, so there's no "usual treatment" to compare it with.

It is: the EU generally decides on major things with a unanimous agreement. Brexiters seem to be claiming that this is somehow being mean to us because they will apply the same rules---rules we agreed to as a better choice than just buggering off---to us as a leaver as they do to more or less everything else.

You start saying "well, we could just tell the EU to fuck off" and suddenly all that FUD starts sounding plausible.

Er, huh?

Not according to the "Leave" campaign

Choosing to ignore something doesn't mean they didn't know it. They knew the 350 million a weak was a complete lie, but ran with it anyway.

, and that anybody who suggested that there might be any downside was "running down Britain".

Well, yes, those people were lying scum, and those that believed them were fools. The media is also culpable because they seem to interpret "fair and balanced" as "give equal credence to both sides even if one is lying much more than the other".

However, if you think such people swung the Brexit vote then I have this brilliant scheme for using our EU contributions to fund the NHS that you may like... :(

Still trying to work out how handing a huge victory to the hard right, richest minority of the Conservative party struck a blow for the little guy against elitism...

Not only handing them a big victory, but by leaving the EU, we'll be giving them much more power too. Nothing quite kicks an Eton toff in the teeth like giving him everything he wants and more. Right?

More reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

More reasons why Brexit is a good idea. Now, if only they stopped making it mandatory for British laptop sellers to bundle windows, we could get rid of yet another tax.

Globalist retribution.

[sethstorm]

Another entity that wants to keep them in the EU than having to deal with an independent Britain.

Re:Where Do I Go For Technology News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The root of this problem is media that is driven by page-view based advertising revenue. It has nothing to do with politics or GP's cultural paranoia, it is simply a matter of driving up revenue by pushing people's buttons.

The media is the ultimate troll that you should not feed.

Microsoft slowing its expansion in the UK

[Trogre]

Perhaps this Brexit caper isn't so bad after all!

Re:If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a dea

[itsdapead]

It's not a reason why we can't, it's a reason why it would be a terrible idea.

I think you and I only differ on the pragmatic meaning of "can" and "can't".

Meanwhile, could someone please explain to the Lib Dems and others proposing a referendum on the final agreement as a condition for supporting Art. 50 that if Art, 50 is invoked we are leaving and the only choice at the end of the process will be "take the deal and leave" or "just leave".

Nothing quite kicks an Eton toff in the teeth like giving him everything he wants and more.

Its the only language they understand...

...doesn't mean its a fake issue

[itsdapead]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/microsoft_brexit_fakenews/

Fake news, maybe. If any large company "leaks" its post-Brexit investment plans before the terms of Brexit have been agreed, then somebody probably misspoke or was misquoted.

We'll find out the in a few years' time if it is a fake issue, when Brexit has actually happened, the trading terms with the EU are known and Random Big Corp decides if its going to invest in the UK or Poland. However, the UK not going to be in the single market or customs union then - the PM has said that much, and anything else would be tantamount to Brussels voting to disband the EU. To pretend that isn't going to be a factor in corporate investment is just plain fantasy.

PS: if the Tories' solution is to become a tax haven thats going to be good news for the owners of the flat over the fish & chip shop in London where BigCorp declares its profits, but doesn't guarantee that the actual work (and employment) won't still be sited in Poland - unless there's some fantastic new international accord on tax avoidance (oh, my aching sides!)

Re:If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a dea

[serviscope_minor]

I think you and I only differ on the pragmatic meaning of "can" and "can't".

I think it's an important point in this case. One of the many lies of the Brexit campaign was that we would regain our sovereignty. We always had the choice to simply up and leave literally because we are a sovereign country. Being a sovereign country is whether anyone will use force to try and stop you doing something like that. If something you want is merely a really terrible idea, that doesn't make you not sovereign.

I'm not a fan of mindless pedantry, but in this case the distinction is crucial. but like I said, and what my first post in this thread was all about, it means the GGP's point was bull.

Meanwhile, could someone please explain to the Lib Dems and others proposing a referendum on the final agreement as a condition for supporting Art. 50 that if Art, 50 is invoked we are leaving and the only choice at the end of the process will be "take the deal and leave" or "just leave".

Well... there's a lot of things that are somewhat unclear to be honest. Art 50 specifies that the decision to leave must be made in a valid manner for the country in question. If the decision to leave is preicated on a future action, it makes things a little bit peculiar. It's also not really clear whether one can uninvoke Art. 50, and opinion seems to be divided.

It's not very well written, probably because no one thought it would be used, and besideds, it's not like the EU could stop a country leaving without it.

Its the only language they understand...

Well they understand they can do more or less what the hell they want right now.

Re:I call BS Define 'Democracy"

[eionmac]

If 35 million vote in UK, one side (say with 2 parties only) gets 1 more member of parliament by a single vote in a single constituency, but that single member gives it a majority of one member in house of commons , that becomes the government. That defines democracy. You either accept such results or you do not want a democracy. Democracy means rule by majority however slender. It's like a board of directors split with only one more on winning side, but it is effective in law and custom.
Plurality of a consensus of opinions is not a democracy, refer to Belgium with its convoluted rules for the two language sides which gives a somewhat ineffective government , police force etc.

  Whether I was one side or another of 'Brexit'; I as a person and I as a company director must plan as I see fit for Brexit reality, However as my trade is mostly UK and Asia (little Continental Europe involvement) it only affects my company slightly but all foreign employees will come under the same rules in future , without 'EU' preference AND the information exchange rules will probably tighten to be more that EU rules thus EU 'safe haven rules' will be the minimum, whether or not the residual EU recognises that fact.

Re:I call BS Define 'Democracy"

[GeekWithAKnife]

I disagree that this defines democracy. A difference of a single vote from millions would insufficient to make groups as large as tens of millions make a complete u-turn on their convictions.

Such a scenario is likely to lead to civil war or more realistically a recount of votes. Assuming the margin is not a clerical error or fraud it would simply be too weak a majority for anything meaningful.

The creation of new laws and generally actions of fundamental impact on the populace would typically require a large majority win.

A voting system for a democratic rule clearly has flaws but democracy in general strives for equality. What sort of equality is there in such a single vote win regarding a strongly held belief or conviction?

Are you suggesting that if 13 people voted to ban religion and 12 voted to keep freedom of belief that this would be acceptable? -my idea of democracy is not the dictatorship of the many.

Voting systems are flawed, democracy is not perfect but we cant make it better. I will never be in favour of altering another person's future in a profound manner based on such a slim margin.

Yes, in certain positions we must plan for eventualities that may be less desirable because of votes, market forces, natural disasters etc all I can hope for is that "things will work out" somehow.

You may however agree that if I presented a business plan to an investor based on hope I'd be laughed out of the room. So as this Brexit white paper did not exist at the time (and will be shallow as it lacked the necessary time to deepen) it's surprising we're all changing, reluctantly or not, based on wishful thinking.

The irony is that if the UK adopts an EU model very similar to Norway (despite vehement denial) it would have made the entire exercise pointless.

Re:I call BS Define 'Democracy"

[eionmac]

I was not arguing the 'correct' mingling of person's opinions. I was defining the system. If you accept that a majority is democracy then if in the 'minor camp' you can only change it by later action or leave the system and go elsewhere. Yes, I understand that 'rule by majority' is 'unfair' on the lesser. The major political implication of majority in recent times was the Bolshevic (majority) Menshevic (minority) division and the later development therefrom. I completely agree with your analysis of a Norway solution, however that seems ruled out, as they accepted free movement of people, the real red line for present government.
Ultimate injustice, a majority of one (8 to 7) in a Scottish court could hang a person. Majority verdicts in Scots odd numbered jury system.