Microsoft May Halt the Expansion of a UK Datacenter Due To Brexit (onmsft.com) 167
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.
Gives us a tax break! (Score:2)
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 tur
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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.
Total BS (Score:2)
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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
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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.
double standards (Score:2)
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)
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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.
Globalist retribution. (Score:2)
Another entity that wants to keep them in the EU than having to deal with an independent Britain.
Microsoft slowing its expansion in the UK (Score:2)
Perhaps this Brexit caper isn't so bad after all!
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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".
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The UK hasn't left the EU yet. Thus your point is... pointless.
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The UK hasn't left the EU yet. Thus your point is... pointless.
Which then makes the article pointless.
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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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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He is still a tosser though.
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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?
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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 wa
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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?
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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.
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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 bef
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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
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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
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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.
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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' regulation
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He's a yank. He couldn't point to Europe on a map, but he's still an expert on it.
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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 cen
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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...
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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
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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.
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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.
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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 th
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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 sim
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May said that she wanted out of the single market. That's a hard Brexit.
Re: I call BS (Score:5, Informative)
Re: I call BS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 provid
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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> 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 m
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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.
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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 an
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Try reading sometime moron.
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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 che
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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.
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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 (Score:4, Insightful)
The British goverment can't be that stupid.
Erm, have you ever seen the British government?
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Erm, have you ever seen the British government?
You are aware Bozo the Clown is our Foreign Secretary
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Actually that's a lie, Boris is quite bright and, in my opinion, sociopathic: https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com] see last few paragraphs, an evil clown therefore. Trump, don't know, but I fear the worst.
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As they are clowns, they have a clown car,
Here's a picture of the clown car in question:
https://static.independent.co.... [independent.co.uk]
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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 (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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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
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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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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)
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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:
St
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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.
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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.
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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 (Score:3)
Doesn't work that way because remaining would be the default situation.
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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
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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 wo
Re:I call BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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".
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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 economist
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 f
If there's no deal, the UK leaves without a deal (Score:2)
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
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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 t
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sorry, didn't mean to mod you redundant
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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 wr
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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 y
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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...
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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 fa
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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.
...doesn't mean its a fake issue (Score:2)
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 woul