UK applies to join the CPTPP (Aka the TPP).

Just like the House of Lords, the EU commission doesn't make laws or regulations.
The EU Commission merely makes policy suggestions which then have to be passed or rejected by the democratically elected European Parliament. No different really than a Government committee or think tank in the UK.

 

I think the issue is the extent to which the sheer size of the legislature makes law making a mammoth and colossally expensive undertaking. Law making in the UK is a comparatively simple process compared to the EU. Three branches of legislature need to be in sync along with the sheer load of manpower and paper and money involved in mundane things like pre-legislative consultation, impact assessments, public and stakeholder consultation and feedback...and and and....and after all that the consent of 27 countries. Its too big...its to slow....its too expensive....I mean its an administrators wank mag...it reminds me of Yes Prime Minister where he vists a hospital with no patients...but admin was overrun.... the EU would function much better without the people.

 

Hey look, if we could keep all the advantages of being a part of the worlds largest free trade zone and ditch all the wasteful bureaucracy and creeping federalisation like they told us we could I'd have been right on board with the whole Brexit thing but it was a lie.
Any costs were massively outweighed by the benefits IMO.
Classic case of chucking the baby out with the bath water.

 

double post

 

Oil is the only reason that area is important. Without it, they are just another Afghanistan

 

You do know this is a CPTPP thread and not an EU thread, and only because UK was in the EU and now has fool hardily formally began the process of joining the CPTPP do I recognise a need to compare the EU to the CPTPP, but if you're just going to talk about the EU and not the CPTPP, then why in a CPTPP thread?

I don't believe you've even bothered to mention the CPTPP once in this CPTPP thread @Montegriffo
So let me say this now; this is about the CPTPP, not the EU.

It's like, you're talking about the UK, which is the country in question, and the EU, which is not the trading bloc in question.
This is discussion is about the UK joining the CPTPP.
I'm afraid what you're doing is talking about the right country but the wrong trading bloc since all your posts are about the UK and the EU, for some reason.

I accept a need to compare the CPTPP to the EU given our past in the EU and what our government's done this week in regards to formally start the process to join the CPTPP, but the closest thing you've done to that is to say you don't buy American, which is moot since the US aren't in the CPTPP and there's no guarantee they will be; you talk about the EU in a CPTPP thread?
Why?
It's not like you're comparing the CPTPP to the EU, you're just talking about the EU, for some reason.

 

I was just correcting your erroneous statement about the EU Parliament not being elected. You then went on to talk about the EU commission and the House of Lords.

As for China, we already trade on a massive scale with them. Virtually all the cheap manufactured products available in the UK were made in China.
Kinda makes any Sinophobic rants you want to make about Chinese sweatshops moot if you ask me.

 

you're right.....sorry.....

 

What is your issue with China? I ask this because personally I think that within a decade they will be the world's leading nation making the US look like Mexico....
I do agree with your sentiments that the EU displays staggering naivety and especially Ursula von der Leyen in its/her approach to China. However, EU apart, the world will have to; and indeed is learning how to deal with China. So I guess most entities are feeling (or in the EU's case fumbling) their way through the process of on-boarding China into their "approved" list and like all on-boarding protocals there will be issues. If you accept the premises that modern democracies are not fit for purpose then perhaps the Chinese economic/political model is not so bad? The alternative being the Russian Kleptocracy/ EU Bureacracy.
I'm of the (possibly naive) opinion that taking on-board China my not be such a bad thing.

 

China're are an authoritarian Communist state devoid of human rights.

Love Chinese culture, hate the CCP.

The CCP infected the mainland and the last bastion of real China is Taiwan.
If we could get the CCP out of China, then I'd be okay with China.

• forced organ harvesting
• reeducation camps
• forced labour camps
• no respect for intellectual property
• no respect for human life
• no respect for democracy

for starters.

Then there's my distrust for the CCP with its lies.

Their high GDP is the result of evil working conditions where they use slavery.
They undercut countries who believe in human rights and fair labour laws and licensing by abusing their own and cheating and stealing.

 

You mean 'Communistphobic'.

Nothing wrong with Chinese culture and the CCP oppresses Sino too I'd have you know.
How many Falun Gong have the CCP imprisoned and murdered?
Too many that it amounts to genocide is the answer.

If you want to see real China, look at Taiwan, not the mainland.

They have concentration camps too; I believe PRC is like Nazi Germany and they're systematically murdering and raping to wipe people out.

I do not want to be in another deal with the CCP since The Sino-British Joint Declaration fell through.

 

fair nuff - but is this any different to what we did (as an empire - to them and the rest of our dominions) the context of time is perhaps on their side. They are an emerging empire doing what emerging empires do. We sit in our self-obsessed world where the state guarantees us our right to whatever the state allows us and that includes our introverted view of a world that we think should do us no harm because we have rights...but who guarantees us those rights? It's an illusion of our own making.
Our liberal values are a meaningless ephemeral bubble - in a wider world view we cling on to them in the hope that nobody will burst them and make us have to work for a living instead of sucking on the tits of government.
There is a change going on that we need to understand. That may mean that we have to ditch our pre-concieved views of what we hold as being our socially nice cuddly views of the world and what we think it owes us. Life is grey not black and white.

 

You say that, but without asking us, this government have began the process to join the CPTPP, the same CPTPP China are eyeing up.
UK joining the CPTPP first won't get to veto China from joining the CPTPP.
UK already banned the import of products linked to forced labour from entering the country; if we and China are in the CPTPP, I wonder how we can possibly honour that.
The UK and the CCP agreed on Hong Kong's special identity and brokered a special status of 1 China 2 policies, to expire in 2047; after last summer's National Security Law ended that special status for Hong Kong.
I am livid, I am angry, I am wanting to introduce clauses for Rt Hon Liz Truss to direct how she takes my country into something we never got a vote on!

Dear xxxxxxxx,

You’re not done yet!

Forward the email below to your potential supporters.

5 people need to click the link and confirm their support for us to check your petition.

Once you’ve gained the required number of supporters, we’ll check your petition to make sure it meets the petition standards. If it does, we’ll publish it. Because of Coronavirus we have a very large number of petitions to check at the moment so it may take a few weeks. Thank you for your patience.

Once your petition has 21 signatures it won’t be able to add more until it’s been checked by the petitions team. So, please wait until it’s been checked and published before sharing it more widely.

Thanks,
The Petitions team
UK Government and Parliament

I’ve made a petition – will you sign it?

Click this link to sign the petition:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/573683/sponsors/new?token=afEOxmYMu86DzHcYHlvC

My petition:

Negotiate UK joining the CPTPP with CPTPP members give all the power of veto.

We voted to join the EEC We voted to leave the EU We did not vote to join the CPTPP, but we've formally began the process. So at least safe us the potential of being in another deal with the CCP. To date China, South Korea Taiwan and Thailand express interest in joining the CPTPP too.

Because since December 31st 2020 We banned the import of products linked to slavery into the UK from China. The Sino-British Joint Deceleration is as good as null and void. UK and China being in the CPTPP will undermine this unless we as a CPTPP member give all CPTPP countries the same right to veto as needed by the UK to do upon successful entry into the CPTPP, so can the Rt Hon Liz Truss please consider including a power of veto in UK's entering the CPTPP for UK and all future members too.

 

Do you think it will do any good...I mean in a wider context.
Do you think that such; and I hesitate to say this, but such meaningless actions will save the world? Perhaps run a quilting bee and make tapestries for the down trodden...sorry that's perhaps a tad flippant but I don't think that purporting to act in a saintly fashion is going to have any meaningful outcome. The UK in my lifetime has turned on and off its pious view of the world in order to serve its own stinking desires - look at Blair and his manipulation of facts in order to wage war in the middle east and the festering mess that that contributed to the world - how many dead civilians...millions...and its still going on!!
Please don't claim a moral high ground when it comes to dealing with countries that we think are politically or economically unflavoursome! I mean virtue signalling is a dying concept - you're right there are some things in this world that are abhorent but we as a "liberally moral" country turn our virtue off and on to serve our own needs - we have no qualms about dealing with Saudi Arabia for their oil we have nothing to say about the state of Sudan other than send tents and money. Our moral crusades only entice us into self-righteous indignity when we can do it from the comfort of our living rooms and then only if it doesn't cause us too much effort.
We are happy to consume the labours of children and the oppressed as long as we can stand up at parties and complain about the large corporations that exploit them; people that rail against "fat cats" without understanding how the world works.
You're angry about China....well...you're tilting at windmills.
Whether you like it or not one way or another you're going to have to get used to them because they ain't going nowhere fast.
Western liberalism made a Faustian pact with a totally phucked up misguided economic theory called Globalism. It sucked us in with wonderous concepts of wealth and happiness and prosperity....well...China played to the parts of it that would serve them whereas the western politicians went all in and guess what? We lost and they won....suck it up.

 

Giving UK the power to veto China will give UK the power to stand up to China on Hong Kong; giving all CPTPP members the power to veto could attract the US to the CPTPP to also stand up to China if US enter the CPTPP before China do.

 

China will do what it wants with or without a veto. A veto is a button pressed at the end of a process, your assumption is that there has been no precursor to the disputed event.

 

I just want another Brexit if China joins.

Also, we didn't get to vote on joining the CPTPP neither.

 

Isolation?

 

Well...

UK's done more in the past month than I've seen it do in a while.

and if America are happy not being EU and not being CPTPP, I can see why, if January 2021 was anything to go by.

I don't think it's isolation since we have bilateral deals to fall back on.

 

Probably still hold a grudge over that little opium wars misunderstanding.

 

......

 

America was in the forefront of the TPP discussions before that wanker Trump came in and knarlsed it all up. If it wasn't for that tosser there would have been the TPP and we would now be sucking everyone off to get in.

 

People tend to conveniently forget that the whole globalism thing was kicked off in a big way by Maggie and Ronnie and it was the scumbag lefties with their unions and fair representation of the workers who railed against it at the time. It was cheap Chinese coal putting our miners out of work, same with steel, same with shipbuilding and manufacturing of all kinds. ''There is no alternative'' as the lactose larcenist used to say about international trade, or globalism as we call it nowadays.
All this phoney Nationalism isn't going anywhere so long as capitalism and the bottom line rules, and lets face it, there isn't any other workable system.
Like you say, the world is grey and only fools see the world in black and white.

 

Agreed but the point still stands. I fail to see your reasoning behind your view on trade agreements as moral crusades based on vetoes that in themselves mean nothing. Don't forget that a veto is just a means to an end; it does not in itself mean a termination of discussions or events. The use of a veto is a diplomatic bargaining tool which is usually negotiated behind the scenes as basis for continued discussion or negotiation.
You have to be in it to win it in other words - its about the application of soft power.

 

LOL.
The pedant in me can't resist pointing out that India didn't even exist before the British Empire created it. It was just a bunch of waring Mogul Princedoms fighting against each other until we united them with a common enemy and taught them how to make a decent curry..