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Satellite Magnate Argues Post-Brexit Britain Will Be 'Lost In Space' (bbc.com)
PolygamousRanchKid quotes the BBC: Will Marshall's "Planet" company operates the world's largest satellite imaging network, with 150 spacecraft able to fully picture Earth on a daily basis. He warns EU withdrawal will do immense harm to Britain's space industry. The UK will be "lost in space", he says.
The UK Space Agency responded by saying home businesses had a positive outlook. The most recent survey of confidence across the sector found that three-quarters of organisations expected growth over the next three years, it added.
Dr Marshall holds particular scorn for the UK government's actions on Galileo, the EU version of the Global Positioning System (GPS). Ministers have decided to walk away from the project because Brussels says a future Britain, as a "third country" outside the EU, cannot be involved in the system's most secure elements — this despite the UK having already invested £1.5bn in Galileo. London says it will build its own sat-nav system instead, but Dr Marshall calls this a "pie in the sky" plan that has significant economic and security implications.
The UK Space Agency responded by saying home businesses had a positive outlook. The most recent survey of confidence across the sector found that three-quarters of organisations expected growth over the next three years, it added.
Dr Marshall holds particular scorn for the UK government's actions on Galileo, the EU version of the Global Positioning System (GPS). Ministers have decided to walk away from the project because Brussels says a future Britain, as a "third country" outside the EU, cannot be involved in the system's most secure elements — this despite the UK having already invested £1.5bn in Galileo. London says it will build its own sat-nav system instead, but Dr Marshall calls this a "pie in the sky" plan that has significant economic and security implications.
That's kind of what conservative movements are.
If the nation is a body, conservative movements like this are like sleep - closing off from the outside world, consuming internal resources, remembering the past, and quite often living virtual nightmares.
Only in this case, every time the nation as went to sleep for extended periods like this, it lost enormous portions of its body against its will.
That makes nations like this closer to bacteria in dynamic intelligence than people.
Ryan Fenton
Again, you would think Britain hadn't existed just fine on its own for hundreds of years before 1973.
That's probably because it didn't. Its success was due to imperialism, which became less profitable for them in recent times, so they abandoned it and moved towards free trade instead. Brexit will interfere with free trade, and they can't realistically go back to imperialism...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Satellite Magnate Argues
I heard the same thing from the head of GE about Britain's production of appliances.
He is, of course, a Refrigerator Magnate.
I'm sorry, but remind me again how the U.S. is doing just fine without being a member of the EU?
The US is not doing just fine. Unemployment is vastly higher than claimed, and most American citizens don't have $400 in the bank in case an emergency comes up. Homelessness is skyrocketing.
With that said, the US is not Britain. We have orders of magnitude more natural resources to exploit. Try really hard not to ask such stupid questions.
The prosperity of the USA is based in part on our natural resources, and in part based on our behavior during WWII. We knowingly permitted war profiteering in the form of American companies selling war supplies like fuel and metals to the Axis powers, then selectively seized some of those companies and their profits after the conflict. We sat back while other nations bombed one another, then stepped in to bomb Japan since nobody else had done it, and we wanted a place to test our nukes. Nuclear dominance, a proliferation of American military bases, and the fact that everyone but us had been bombed to shit created America's dominant economic position that produced the wealth that the baby boomers enjoyed.
I have it on good authority that there are over 160 countries in the world that aren't part of the EU either. And yet somehow most of them have also found a way to get food, medicine, etc. and survive just fine without the EU telling them what to do.
Many of those other nations are highly dependent on foreign aid. Lots of them are not doing very well at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're painting too black a picture. Still, cutting off foreign trade is a recipe for disaster for any small country, and wars stopped being profitable in the 1800's. They're too expensive, and the valuable stuff is so fragile that it gets destroyed during the conquest. It's been estimated that the US spent more wealth during the invasion of Iraq than all the remaining oil underground in the Middle East is worth. (Of course, that might have been hyperbole, and in any case the estimate is quite uncertain. But it gives an idea of how expensive modern wars are.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
wars stopped being profitable in the 1800's.
They're no longer profitable for nations, but they are quite profitable for certain people/groups within nations, which is why they continue today. The rising cost of conventional warfare is also why drone strikes have become so popular; In the USA they began under Bush the second, expanded under Obama, and have expanded still more under Trump.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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Putting up barriers hardly helps, it is in fact going to be quite damaging, but to claim that companies just wouldn't do business in UK anymore is nonsense. If you have engineering intensive work to do you go where ever you can find competent engineers to do the job. Limitations of a location can be worked around, at a cost. Lack of engineers in your preferred location is not so easily solved.
Again, you would think Britain hadn't existed just fine on its own for hundreds of years before 1973
Those where the days, weren't they? When every European nation stood as a force of its own, to be reckoned with, and each one ruled over it's own swath of the world?
Well, wake up fuckhead, because those days are over. Now we are dealing with an increasingly irrational US (330 million people), an autocratic China (1.4 billion), an upstart India (1.3 billion), an increasingly hostile and aggressive Russia (144 million), a mostly theocratic and authoritarian Arab League (420 million)...
The EU (510 million) is a bastion of democracy, freedom and liberty in this world, able to stand up and look eye to eye with the other great powers that dominate world affairs in 2019.
But proud little Britain (66 million) wants to go it alone? Good luck with that. Welcome to the 21st century and watch out for the cliff ahead.
Yeah, those new trade deals with the Faroe islands and the Palestinian autonomy are truly bespoke.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap