the thing here is that no one leavers or remainers actually know what would happen after say 5 years of leaving. for one that remembers life pre common market i actually saw no change in my lifestyle since joining europe and doubt there would be much after a few initial problems. all a person has no matter where they live is the occasional vote you get to change anything and even then you find yourself on the wrong side of it. no matter which party ever wins can anyone say their own life has been affected directly by any results they have seen.

This yellowhammer nonsense is a complete red herring. It's a report on what would happen if we did nothing to mitigate the negative effects of leaving and didn't action any of the positives.

At a more basic level;

If I lost my job, didn't claim any benefits and kept on spending as before, what would the outcome be? Yet the media is treating it as a prediction of reality. Laughable.

What an amazing statement to make Mr Avenger

A really astonishing statement.

A politician tells lies.

Astonishing.

Really astonishing.

What is really more astonishing is a grown adult is astonished that a politician resorts to lying.

Even more astonishing is that a left wing marxist even recognises that we have a queen.

I'm astonished.

Really and truly astonished.

I'm going for a LIE down

You've got me at it now.

All very astonishing.

You are wasting your time with that explanation, Young John.
There are none so blind as those who don't want to see.

I partially agree; it is all about contingency planning. I've a good friend who works for the police in exactly this area, and is the go between for the emergency services and the Cabinet Office. They've been working on this for years. Yet still, at this late stage, they're not ready. Why not, is the obvious question. The answer seems equally as obvious; the imposition of a hard EU UK border, and all the checks that need to be made, cannot be mitigated overnight, as the infrastructure just isn't there to make it happen immediately. We've been used to seamless trade for decades; to suddenly make that not seamless, and work with JIT delivery systems is a huge task. There will be problems, that's for certain, despite the ongoing contingency planning.

One final thing, and this isn't scaremongering. All police leave was cancelled for the last scheduled Brexit day. All of it. They're expecting difficulties in a range of their area of operations.

Is it worth mentioning that the Yellow Hammer document has "reasonable worst case scenario" at the top? They aren't saying this is the worst that could possibly happen, they're saying this is a pessimistic but reasonably likely outcome. I take that to mean that even if some of it proved to be wrong it's quite likely that other bits would happen.

Given the government's track record I wouldn't take their word for how well mitigation arrangements are going either.

Why is this country hell bent on committing economic suicide?

Answers on a postage stamp to........

I agree how has Uk plc allowed his to happen

The UK had an overall trade deficit of -£64 billion with the EU in 2018. A surplus of £29 billion on trade in services was outweighed by a deficit of -£93 billion on trade in goods. The UK had a trade surplus of £44 billion with non-EU countries.24 Jul 2019

And we even pay them for the pleasure...........

What's your point?

If you dont understand the point please look up the word Deficit

Mr Poolie are you suggesting that we should stop importing high quality German cars in order to stimulate demand for our domestic car industry?

I don't need to; I know exactly what it means. But as we're in the realms of one line responses that say nothing, go and look up the phrase, 'theory of competitive advantage'. When you have, come back and answer my question, please. Ta.

I agree the theory of competitive advantage is working well for the EU in its trade balance with the UK providing a lot of jobs and wealth for those with the Trade surplus.

You still need to make your point clearer. Simply pointing out the trade imbalance isn't enough. As you note, we benefit from a services surplus; I presume you think this doesn't matter? The issue with a trade deficit is what this means for capital flows. But capital flows for a number of different reasons, not just trade. And as any economist will tell you, to judge the performance of any economy on one simple measure is a false judgment. Economies can, and do, thrive on a trade imbalance. No economy operates with all the major indices in the black; the aim, from a macro-economic perspective, is to find some balance that leads to a healthy economy. Focusing upon one measure is just daft.

On the trade deficit, you're making it sound like we're developing country who needs to take a protectionist stance to protect our vital industries. If you know anything about macro-economics, you'd know fine well the converse to the theory of competitive advantage; it leads to the most efficient allocation of resources. To put that in simple terms, stuff costs less and/or is of a better quality. As Bluestreak jokes above, we may not have an indigenous car industry like we had, but that could well be simply because others do it better. As consumers, we get a better product. From an economic perspective, the theory of competitive advantage suggests that we focus upon what we're good at, facilitate cross border trade (you know, that free market in goods, services, and free movement of capital stuff) and deal with the problem of capital loss in other ways in a global economy.

And there's the other side to your stats on the EU trading pattern; what's going to happen to the prices of those good we import post brexit? If we crash out on WTO terms, who ends up paying the increase in prices due to tariffs? Please don't just say we'll buy them from elsewhere, as the same WTO tariffs will apply. And more importantly, we have huge supply chains that focus upon our current trading arrangements. They can't be replaced overnight. And what about the goods and services we export; will they remain competitive in the EU market when tariffs have been added to them?

I think we can agree that I don't need to look up what deficit means.

All based on the UK doing nothing at all to change outcomes. That is not the case.

I know it isn't. But see my post above; there's a limit to what can be done. And importantly, there's nowt they can do about the price rises in food and medicine, as this will be the result of WTO rules and associated tariffs.

Am I the only one who finds the irony of the"Yellowhammer" name a rather a pisstake from the rich Tories.

Let's rub the "little bit of bread and no cheese" into the Hoi Polloy's noses, shall we ...

Three years ago we were told this thing would be the easiest thing ever, now we are having to put plans in place, you know, just in case

Now a cabinet full of leavers, led by a leaver won’t release the papers, why is that, if it’s going to be so good, just tell us and the yellowhammer will just fade into memory

I’ve been told by my consultant, an expert, you know them, pffft, who needs em when you’ve got JRM putting them in their place, my medicine is at severe risk should there be any small break in the supply chain, it’s never been at risk but it is now, through actions of our government, My best mate is in the same boat, but even worse, if he doesn’t get the stuff, he’ll be brown bread, what has me and my mates consultant got to gain from that?

As it stands, there isn’t a single fucking benefit of a no deal brexit

I don’t get this medicine shortage at all. In this country we have Astra Zeneca and GSK who provide a lot of drugs to the world we import a lot of drugs from Novartis and Bayer etc. What I am saying is if we have delays and backlogs so do people having our exports. This won’t happen hopefully and trarrifs on drugs should be exempt.

The company I work for currently has banks full of cell culture media stored in the uk for a no deal scenario which are the precursor for all of these drugs so I would expect that the drug companies are doing the same. What is to look out for next year is the shortage and therefore price increase in bovine serum albumin BSA which is basically the media which all these require. That’s not down to Brexit but the meat industry.