The Brexit disaster

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Per
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Re: The Brexit disaster

Post by Per »

Topper wrote: Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:17 am https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad ... -a-victory

"A Guardian editorialist got somewhat carried away, as the Guardian almost always does in its lobotomous socialist biases"
Utterly ignorant.
It seemed to be a mistake to communicate to Brussels (the administration of the European Union) that she had to have a deal and did not want to leave with no deal, as this emboldened the Brussels negotiators to be inflexible.
Unless Brussels makes substantial concessions very soon,
to tell Brussels to accommodate her countrymen or lose Europe’s most prestigious nation and second-largest economy,
The European Union severely provoked Britain’s vote to depart by refusing to make the slightest concession to Cameron, who had promised “full-on treaty change” and came back from Brussels (as I wrote at the time in Britain) with less than Chamberlain gained at Munich.
What the author of this article (or opinion piece or whatever it is), and apparently many British politicians, fails to grasp is that Brussels has no concessions to give. The rules are the rules. If you want to be a member, these are the rules you get. If you recant your membership, you still owe the amounts you have run up in the bar, and you lose all your membership privileges There is nothing to negotiate.

If you want to change the rules, each of the other 27 member states has a veto.
You can talk to Brussels, Brussels can listen to your concerns, but they cannot concede anything unless all 27 remaining members agree to it. Not a majority. Not two thirds. All.

What Britain has done is pretty much behaving like a petulant teenager declaring that they no longer want to be part of the family. They plan to stay in the house, demand free meals and wifi access, but will no longer do any chores and no one is allowed to enter the room. These demands are of course ludicrous and will not get accepted.

Either you stay under the same terms as before, or you leave and then you are on your own.

Now, the EU has been willing to offer terms like those Norway or Canada has, but the UL has been completely oblivious of the hard facts and have continued to demand to have all the benefits and none of the obligations. If they really thought the 27 other nations would unanimously agree to that they must be either very stupid or very conceited, or perhaps both.
The quote about most prestigious nation suggests conceit. i mean, wtf? :o

I know the Leave campaign claimed that the UK could still be part of the open market, while negotiating separate trade deals on the side and stopping migration from other parts of the EU, but that was never going to happen.

The voters were promised a unicorn, and now they are getting a pony with an ice cream cone taped to its forehead.
The truth is that there never was a unicorn.

...the authoritarian pettifogging of the encrusted and compulsively meddlesome bureaucracy in Brussels, which is not answerable either to the major constituent governments or to the European Parliament (which has more interpreters than legislators most days).
Yeah, you see comments like that a lot. No of course not. Why should they answer to the respective national governments? And the European parliament is a later addition to the construction that has very little power. They are consulted on various issues, but decisions are made by the Council or the Comission. So the bureaucracy answers to the Commission. The Commission consists of 28 commissionaries, each one apponted by a member state. So the national governments each have a representative in the Commission. They are not directly elected, but neither is the president of the USA or a supreme court judge. There is still a democratic procedure behind it. Yeah, I know, boring. But I get frustrated when people keep complaining about the lack of democracy in the EU. The provisions are clear, all member states must be democracies, and the people in the Commission and the Council are apponted by the governments of these member states. Thus the popular vote in each member state indirectly influences who gets appointed. It's not perfect, but it's a compromise between 28 countries with different political systems (albeit all democracies).

Also, the constant outcry over the Britons having EU legislation forced upon them is a total myth.

A study shows that since they entered the EU, they have been on the winning side of votes 87% of the time. That's pretty good, imho. If you cannot deal with being part of a 28 member organisation where you getyour way 87% of the time, yeah, fine. You probably should leave. :roll:

I think the problem is that national governments like to take credit for everything good that happens and pass blame for everything bad, and they've been so successful in doing this that the voters have grown accustomed to the idea that everything bad comes from Brussels. That's what came back to bite Cameron in the ass.

That combined with an increasing tension between cities and the countryside, where people outside the cities have started using pretty much any vote as a chance to protest, regardless of what the outcome will be. And the Russians have noticed this and started help poking the electorate in ways that benefit the Kremlin. Putin is good at this game.

Don't get me wrong. The frustration and tension was already there, Putin did not create that.
But he has been very good at using the internet to harness this frustration and use it to his advantage.
One third of tweets regarding brexit during the campaign leading up to the referendum originated on Russian servers.
Breaking up the EU. Creating division within the US. Weakening NATO. He's doing great.

The West really needs to step up its cyber game. Right now the Russians are winning. :(
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Here's a pretty good analysis made by an Irishman:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... or-purpose
The project was driven by decades of camped-up mendacity about the tyranny of the EU, and sold in the referendum as a fantasy of national liberation. It simply could not survive contact with reality. It died the moment it became real. You cannot free yourself from imaginary oppression. Even if May were a political genius – and let us concede that she is not – Brexit was always going to come down to a choice between two evils: the heroic but catastrophic failure of crashing out; or the unheroic but less damaging failure of swapping first-class for second-class EU membership. These are the real afterlives of a departed reverie.

If the choice between shooting oneself in the head or in the foot is the answer to Britain’s long-term problems, surely the wrong question is being asked. It is becoming ever clearer that Brexit is not about its ostensible subject: Britain’s relationship with the EU. The very word Brexit contains a literally unspoken truth. It does not include or even allude to Europe. It is British exit that is the point, not what it is exiting from. The tautologous slogan Leave Means Leave is similarly (if unintentionally) honest: the meaning is in the leaving, not in what is being left or how.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Everything will be just fine...
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Try to focus on someday.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Strangelove wrote: Sat Jan 19, 2019 4:42 pm Everything will be just fine...
I certainly hope so, but chances that Brexit is cancelled aren't all that great. :|
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Over the Internet, you can pretend to be anyone or anything.

I'm amazed that so many people choose to be complete twats.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Per wrote: Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:26 am One (of the many) sad thing about Brexit is that it's the old foghats about to die that forced this upon a younger European minded generation...

Image

It may also lead to the breakup of the UK, with majorities voting for the Remain side in Scotland (62%), Northern Ireland (56%) and Gibraltar (96%).

As an overseas colony, the Falkland Islands were not allowed to vote in the referendum, but the local government is concerned they will face severe difficulties if a no deal brexit leaves them without trade agreements.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/10243 ... nds-brexit

It's also rumoured that Argentina sees this as a chance to try to win them back. :shock:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/arg ... 50c2f.html
Not having as many children? The younger adults are not as, umm, oh yeah, traditional. :shock:
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Topper wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 8:37 am Merkel is capitulating.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mer ... ful-brexit
I think you meant negotiating. Obviously she doesn't want to give up $38B.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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All those boatloads of new uk citizens are all young...and all vote for liberal agendas.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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I think it's mainly that the EU offers many opportunities to the young. They can study or work anywhere within the EU.
Older people are less inclined to take advantage of this, and so they don't take that into consideration.
When (if) Britain exits Europe, those doors close.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Uncle dans leg wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 10:26 am All those boatloads of new uk citizens are all young...
So... boatloads? Of citizens?

Only 7.7% of UK residents are born outside of the EU. And that's residents, not citizens. The number of foreign born citizens ought to be quite a bit lower than that.
Uncle dans leg wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 10:26 am ...and all vote for liberal agendas.
If so, how come the libdems have almost disappeared from the scene? :hmmm:

Conservatives and socialists is all I see. And the odd UKIP idjet.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

Post by Cousin Strawberry »

Per wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 11:43 pm Conservatives and socialists is all I see...
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Re: The Brexit disaster

Post by Meds »

Uncle dans leg wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:59 am
Per wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 11:43 pm Conservatives and socialists is all I see...
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Yeah that was kinda my initial reaction too UDL.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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See for yourselves, the liberals only hold 11 seats in a 650 seat parliament.

Seats in the House of Commons:

Conservative 317
Labour 256
Scottish National Party 35
Liberal Democrat 11
Democratic Unionist Party 10
Independent 8
Sinn Féin 7
Plaid Cymru 4
Green Party 1
Speaker 1
Total number of seats 650

317 conservatives, 256 socialists, 11 liberals and 66 others.
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Re: The Brexit disaster

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One of the main problems the UK has it that advocates for a no deal Brexit seem to have no clue to what that really means. :(

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Re: The Brexit disaster

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Insightful farmer from Devon explaining what a hard brexit will do to his business:

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