this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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UK Politics

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Ministers hope this announcement is a reasonable basis for carrying on with negotiations over a trade deal that could lead to them falling or being dropped entirely.

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[–] Fluke@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

No leverage?

Pay your fair share of tax, or lose access to this market you're making millions from. That seems like leverage enough to me, am I missing something?

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 2 points 20 hours ago

Britain is a service economy. We go after foreign tech, they go after our finance, outsourcing, management, legal and creative arts sectors. We can’t compete on cheap manufacturing. Expensive manufacturing doesn’t employ many people.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Leverage would be saying to these companies "pay your fair share of tax or we will use this other provider / service / company that does and you won't make any money". The problem is in a lot of cases we don't have alternatives that work either in the same way or as cheaply or at a large enough scale to be drip on replacements. These companies are also often large employers so you have to think about where and how you're going to transfer the jobs.

[–] Fluke@lemm.ee 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, because we'd be at a great loss here if Amazon suddenly disappeared. What with their poverty wages the government has to top up, and the avoiding paying tax, and their exploitation of, well everything.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Look, I'm not against shifting Amazon. But what is the viable UK alternative? Any alternative needs to be at the same price and convenience otherwise it will simply fail in the market. Like it or not there's a reason why Amazon is Amazon.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Building datacenters is expensive but it is not like it is a misterious endeavour. Why governments are not putting projects out to build these, now critical, infrastuctures evades me.

I have a few datacenters in my country and supposedly more are on the way to being built. One of the first to be built is currently underway to be sold, as the telecom company that originally built and operated it appears to be going through rouh times.

I live in a 10000 people municipality. What would be the cost for the municipality to build a small datacenter and run it, perhaps even having a separare company run it and sell services from it?

The "too big to fail" argument sounds more and more indefensible and unsustainable.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 1 points 12 hours ago

Building datacenters is expensive but it is not like it is a misterious endeavour. Why governments are not putting projects out to build these, now critical, infrastuctures evades me.

Oh 100% agree with this. Short sighted spineless bureaucracy.