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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
You're not selling out on me are you?

Just a wobble...just a little wobble.

I think it’s more of a worry about crashing out. I don’t believe in cutting off our nose to spite our face. But backing down on that means letting the eu win, again, and that’s hard to stomach.

I would have went with efta has a start, and worked from there, because the EU is so deep into us now. Surgical removal rather than ripping it out and pissing out blood. But we had May in charge...

Do_I_Not_Like_That 724548 wrote:

And yes, the Commons is equally as bad, but it's easier for the British public to eject British MPs than it would be for them to eject German or Danish MEPs.

How do I, a voter in a Glasgow seat, remove Jacob Reese Moggs?

Herzlos wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That 724548 wrote:

And yes, the Commons is equally as bad, but it's easier for the British public to eject British MPs than it would be for them to eject German or Danish MEPs.

How do I, a voter in a Glasgow seat, remove Jacob Reese Moggs?

By backing the campaign for Scottish indy

Having reread the last few pages (as bored out of my skull on hols), and inspired by FWCs absolute determination to get VFM from his DCM, I have resubbed too, in the hope Yakface will be able to complete his plans for world domination and save us all having to argue about who should be in charge.

Sign up now!

Yeah.I know I'm probably on ignore too

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I suppose it’s really Juncker who I’m calling the ratbag. The guy who worked so hard to get his native Luxembourg sweet tax arrangements with big multinationals who now has the cheek, the audacity, to go around telling other countries they have to end theirs. Right or wrong, it’s rank hypocrisy. And that’s the least of my problems with that drunk.

Opposition to one person surely though shouldn't mean opposition to the EU. The EU was around before Juncker and will be around after he has gone (at most I'd say 5 years) because that would take him to his 70's. The principles of the EU stand apart from any individual. We don't condemn the whole of the UK because of Cameron or Blair do we?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
@ whirlwind. It was a long winded way of saying we need to stand on our own two feet and not hide behind the EU's coat tails

But why?

What's wrong with outsourcing negotiations to a team of negotiators that are better than us and we can direct?
That means we can focus on something else. Just like I pay someone to do the stuff I don't have time to master.


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That 724548 wrote:

And yes, the Commons is equally as bad, but it's easier for the British public to eject British MPs than it would be for them to eject German or Danish MEPs.

How do I, a voter in a Glasgow seat, remove Jacob Reese Moggs?

By backing the campaign for Scottish indy

How would that work, then?
I'm all for Scottish Independence as a route back into the EU, but Mogg will still be there screwing everyone over.

 Whirlwind wrote:
We don't condemn the whole of the UK because of Cameron or Blair do we?

I know someone on here who seems to, daily.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
@ whirlwind. It was a long winded way of saying we need to stand on our own two feet and not hide behind the EU's coat tails.

What does that mean though? Before we entered the EU we were one of poorest of the EU nations, the sick person of Europe. Yet by being in Europe we have now moved to being what 5/6th largest economy in the world. That sounds to me that we found a niche and exploited an area in the EU that benefited us. What coat tails were we riding? It's easy to produce soundbites, but what does it actually mean?

I'm selling more stuff abroad, so I'm doing my bit to help Britain's balance of payments.

IIRC you have said you sell second hand miniatures. So then I ask you this. If people outside the UK are benefiting from the low exchange rate, those people can now afford to snap up bargains that your own country can't afford to pay? What is the difference in Brown selling gold or when ARM was sold off? Is this not also asset stripping the country as we never get those items back, you aren't manufacturing anything, simply selling it to the highest bidder who is now foreign and simply gets the benefit of the weak exchange rate. The country is poorer because it no longer has that asset and you've sold it abroad for short term personal gain? How does this then achieve your aim of making the UK stand on its own two feet, once all the assets are sold then what do we do? Are you not in your own small way just being the same type of person that you generally dislike. Where is the difference?

So, how many years until the division heals, if it ever does?

How many times have we debunked the Lisbon treaty bull by now? 5? 6? I'm losing count.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
So, how many years until the division heals, if it ever does?

One the 16/17 year olds of 2016 have died of old age.

If even then.

We’re being dragged out by a bunch of fringe lunatics based on lies and misdirection.

How many people that voted Leave did so for this mess? Because I’m not referring to them as the fringe lunatics, but those that were, and continue to be, the driving forces behind the debacle.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I suppose it’s really Juncker who I’m calling the ratbag. The guy who worked so hard to get his native Luxembourg sweet tax arrangements with big multinationals who now has the cheek, the audacity, to go around telling other countries they have to end theirs. Right or wrong, it’s rank hypocrisy.

It would only be hypocrisy if he did not do the same with his native Luxembourg and it's just not the case.

Juncker has led the charge against his own country at the same time as every other. He's something of a tainted figure in financial circles on his own country because of that. He was the Lux PM who lifted the long standing tradition of bank secrecy, not anyone else.

There's plenty to dislike from Juncker, but credit where credit's due.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
So, how many years until the division heals, if it ever does?

It will depend on how badly Brexit goes. The scale of damage from Brexit ranges from bad to utterly disastrous.

Assuming the best result, it will be years before there are any benefits. Alternatively things could be so disastrous that within 5 years we are begging to be let back in, even some of the keen Leavers.

Personally I think things will be roughly in the middle. I think we will have10 very bad years, leaving the bulk of the population worse off than they are now, which is worse off than they were in 2008.

Then things will start to improve, but it will probably be another 10 to 20 years for us to get back to where we could have been now without Tory austerity. I think most of us are going to have to wait as long as Rees-Mogg's 50 years to see the benefits. (If there are any. There's no reason to suppose they will ever arrive.) I will be dead by then, so I'm not going to be healing any wounds.

We already know there is a big difference of opinion between the oldies like my parents (mostly anti-EU) and youngsters like my daughter (mostly pro-EU.) My daughter isn't going to bother blaming her grandparents 20 years after their death, but she surely isn't going to feel grateful to them either, or especially to young Brexiteers.

Another point is that a bad Brexit is almost certain to lead to Scottish independence and Irish re-unification within 10 to 20 years. That's great news for some people.

Perhaps this could all turn out to be bollocks. Maybe the UK could achieve the wonderful Brexit dream of a massively boosted economy which makes us all rich. It's just that there aren't any indicators at all of this happening, and loads of indicators to the opposite.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

I’m sure Ketara could explain this better, if the soul destroying monotony of this thread hasn’t destroyed his will to live.

I've more or less accepted now that this is me:-




When we've left the EU and the immediate disruption has died down in a few years, I'll take another crack at discussing other stuff. Till then, I'll stop pissing in everyone's tea and leave them to enjoy themselves. After all, if there's one thing an Englishman hates; it's somebody trying to take away his favourite gripe.

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I value democracy over GDP. Others put economic prosperity first. That's their prerogative.

By being out of the EU, you don't get to vote MEP's and what not, at it's most basic, that's a loss of democracy. Why are you taking away my ability to vote?

Or to put it another way - the UK is so close to the EU that many EU regulations will remain and many new ones will be adopted just to be able to continue dealing with the EU. The only difference (if Brexit happens) is that UK voters can no longer vote in their own MEPs to influence those EU regulations.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Out of EU even with better politicians is still going to be worse than current situation was so...

Well enjoy wrecked UK. You got your goal.

I value democracy over GDP. Others put economic prosperity first. That's their prerogative.

You value democracy by being super anti-democracy? Lol. Anybody valuing democracy would have no problem with second vote about brexit now that truth is out. Only those that hate democracy would be against that.

You have shown your true colours long time ago so why not stop pretending?

He values the democracy that produced the answer he wants. It's a pretty common trait of the right.

 Ketara wrote:


When we've left the EU and the immediate disruption has died down in a few years,

So that’s the best pro leave argument you have “it will be painful for a few years then everyone will move on”? I thought the argument for leaving the EU was clear. Leave supporters not standing by it and unable to defend leaving the EU just makes it clear that it is wrong to leave. There is three main Leave posters and 6 or 7 remain posters with a selection of people who come in and snipe from the sides on either side. There is not some huge mass of bullying remain posters making it impossible for anyone leave to get their point in. The problem is that leave are unable to make a rational argument to leave and defend the wave after wave of bad news and KKs brexi bonuses so are choosing not to debade. Even DINLT has gone back to an EEA leave for subjective reasons.

No leave poster has shown objectively how things will be better if we leave the EU. Where is all of this economic benefit and money that we were promised? Or even clearly how we will be politically so much better off. Economically it’s clear. Politically it’s minor tit for tat over little gripes and imagined boggy men at best.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Where is all of this economic benefit and money that we were promised?

Where they always were. In the lies of wrexiteers.

I think the "everyone will move on " part is wishful thinking on the brexiteers part; that once they drag us out and rough the storm of complaints, that everyone will just move on and let us stay on the outside.

I thought I did explain what the benefits could be. Move back to EFTA to avoid immediate shock, staying in the single market but with greater control over immigration whilst stepping out of the customs union to make foreign trade more accessible, and then go from there because it’s a long process. There are issues with the Irish boarder but that’s what the negotiations over the past two years should have been about. Incompetent politicians and civil servants have completely bungled what could, no, should, have been a relatively straight forward process.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I thought I did explain what the benefits could be. Move back to EFTA to avoid immediate shock, staying in the single market but with greater control over immigration whilst stepping out of the customs union to make foreign trade more accessible, and then go from there because it’s a long process. There are issues with the Irish boarder but that’s what the negotiations over the past two years should have been about. Incompetent politicians and civil servants have completely bungled what could, no, should, have been a relatively straight forward process.

To me the main promised benefit is that outside the EU the UK will be able to rapidly forge much better trade deals than it would have accessed by remaining within the EU.

This doesn't seem to make sense, though. There's no way the UK acting alone will swing the clout against India, the USA and China, that the EU does when combined.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I thought I did explain what the benefits could be. Move back to EFTA to avoid immediate shock, staying in the single market but with greater control over immigration

Appart from the fact that EFTA membership still requires us to uphold the four freedoms, i.e. the free movement of goods, capital, services and persons, and will give us even less control as a requirment of moving to that will almost certainly be becoming part of the Schengen area.

whilst stepping out of the customs union to make foreign trade more accessible, and then go from there because it’s a long process.

Will it, given that every single major cournty has said that the UK will be back of the queue, a queue the EU is already in?

There are issues with the Irish boarder but that’s what the negotiations over the past two years should have been about. Incompetent politicians and civil servants have completely bungled what could, no, should, have been a relatively straight forward process.

No, it's because it was unworkable and the Good Friday Agreement was basicly founded on the basis that both sides could feel they had what they wanted with no visable boarders. The govenment have not been the best negotiators, but the Irish boarder was never going to be simple. That statement completly ignores how complicated getting peace in NI was and how complex the situation was. If it is so simple what is the solution? What agreement should we be be seeing? What form of boarder, between two countries without a free movement agreement, would satisfy both the nationalists and unionists?

Given that the first and third are demonstrably untrue and the second is very debatable, can you show me how either I am wrong about the above, or provide some other benefits? Or other countries that have done better, or as good, trade deals with any of the 50 larges countries by GDP significantly faster than the EU?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/22/jacob-rees-mogg-tells-leaveeu-dont-join-tories-on-my-account

JRM it seems has been temporarily possessed by someone reasonable. No probs, I'm sure his family will know a good exorcist or two.

Ket, whilst we're all waiting a few years for your decision to bear fruit (though you're now too bored of the whole thing to explain how) the poorer people of this country are going to suffer disproportionately. I honestly don't understand how you can be so blithe about that.

Brexit: Every demographic in UK now thinks no deal more likely than not, survey reveals

I don't know what I think.

Of course, if we had voted Remain, I'm sure Britain's poor would be entering the dawn of a golden age with a triumphant Cameron and Osborne at the wheel.

A Remain victory would have been a God send for Cameron. The Tory Euro-Sceptics would have been swept away. His approval ratings would have shot through the roof, and the man who 'saved' Britain and kept it in the EU, would have been master of all he surveyed.

So when Cameron stood up and said we need more austerity, more universal credit, who would have stopped him?

Absolutely fething nobody.

That's what a Remain victory looked like. The cosy concensus drifts on: the corrupt politics, shills pretending to be journalists, the Westminster bubble, the managed decline of Britain, 0.5% growth being celebrated like we had won world war 2.

Brexit has awoken the British people and revealed to them how useless our political class is. The political landscape is shifting. We will have to sink or swim now.

As an old and mature democracy, change is slow on this unique island. But every 100-200 years or so, something big happens:

The peasents revolt, the reformation, the civil war, the industrial revolution, the great reform acts, the suffragettes, and so on...

Brexit is a much needed and welcome national democratic correction that we get in Britain every so often...


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Herzlos wrote:
He values the democracy that produced the answer he wants. It's a pretty common trait of the right.

I'm not on the right.


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
So, how many years until the division heals, if it ever does?

How much of a division is there though? There seems to be this media bubble, and then the real world.

Not having a go at you, and I say this to everybody, but

I still talk to Remain supporting friends. When I was in England on holiday some weeks back, everything seemed as it normally did. Buses ran, shops were open, the sun rose, the sun set...

If you read the Guardian, you'd be forgiven for thinking we were in a state of civil war with armoured divisions battling to control the Thames Valley or something.

Granted, this is my limited experience and it's all anecdotal, but IMO, talk of deep division is way over the top.

We're a very old and mature democracy. We know how to handle victory or defeat.

Really? Is that your argument? If we had not voted for Brexit it would still not have been perfect?

Nothing of the type would have happened. After a week the vote would have been forgotten and we would have gone back to where we were. Some anti EU back benchers would have been shut up for a while and then found something else. A remain vote would have changed nothing, and would have changed nothing about the likelihood of austerity or other government spending cuts. Those are still going on, except where the government have been forced to admit they have to stop, where people are dieing. The leave vote has nothing at all to do with that. If anything it has emboldened the hard right. The same people that are for reductions in the welfare state are the strongest anti EU. Gove, BoJo & Rees-Mogg.

 Steve steveson wrote:

So that’s the best pro leave argument you have “it will be painful for a few years then everyone will move on”?

Errr...no? It was me saying I'd come back to talk politics when events have moved on and people will discuss other things for more than a brief five posts between Brexit? I get that you're desperate for someone to argue with now mostly everyone bar DINLT has buggered off and stopped engaging, but come on guv.

If you really want to see my views on the whole thing, you're welcome to hit the 'Filter Posts' button, and go back six months to read them.

 Darkjim wrote:

Ket, whilst we're all waiting a few years for your decision to bear fruit (though you're now too bored of the whole thing to explain how) the poorer people of this country are going to suffer disproportionately. I honestly don't understand how you can be so blithe about that.

Probably the effect of having actually lived through the 97-02 collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. I've done hyperinflation, petrol queues, bare shelves, civil unrest and the works. So I've seen economic collapse to the extent that nobody not living in Venezuela right now has. I've also been unemployed here in the recession a few years after the crash of 08. It's not so much about being 'blithe' as it is understanding that economies go up and down all the time, and that people are permanently suffering somewhere all the time, no matter how good or bad the economy is doing.

Before anyone jumps down my throat (I'm looking at you, Steve Steveson), I'm not saying that this means that economics are not tremendously important or that I don't understand how the money moves around (although 'trickle-down economics' - that was a laugh, right?) I'm not referring to Brexit specifically there, I'm making a general observation.

Namely that there's a real obsession in the West these days of judging national priorities completely according to GDP and how easy you can make it for businesses to make a profit. And anything that goes against that is hit with a storm of criticism, and disapproval from the media, government, and big business. See for example, the reaction to Corbyn's proposal to renationalise the railways. You'd think that we were all going to be left in a Battle Royale style dystopian future by the reactions. Cameron's WW3 comment about Brexit was in the same vein.

Again (still staring at you, Steve Steveson), I'm not making reference specifically to Brexit above (because I am bored of discussing that one ad infinitum), but a more general observation about national priorities and presumptions with regards to economics in this country.

When I did place my vote to leave, I did it for other reasons fully in the knowledge that we would take a minor economic hit on several levels, and that we'd have a year or two of adjustment untangling things when we left. I still voted the way I did, many things have unfolded the way I expected them to, and my opinion remains unchanged. That's about really all I have left to say on Brexit until things change materially.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

So when Cameron stood up and said we need more austerity, more universal credit, who would have stopped him?

And once we're out, and May stands up and says we need more austerity (because Brexit shrunk our economy by 10-20%), who would stop her? Who'd prevent the Tories doing even more things that violate the ECHR?
You're using the same soundbite and somehow implying that because something is bad now, it's perfectly reasonable to make it worse in the hopes that somehow by handing power to the people causing the problems and sacking our economy, somehow things will get better.

Brexit has awoken the British people and revealed to them how useless our political class is. The political landscape is shifting. We will have to sink or swim now.

Except absolutely nothing will have changed. Corrupt politicians will still use fearmongering to retain power and give good deals to their mates. Only now they don't need to adhere to the ECHR or ECJ.

I don't see any signs of any correction, or any politics actually changing. In fact it's gotten worse because everything is dominated to Brexit.
Sure, we can see how bent and incompetent the Tories are, but we knew that before, too.

I'm not on the right.

Are you sure? You spend a lot of time ranting about the country going to the dogs, need to be stronger on crime, pushing for a right wing government to have unlimited power, championing a nationalist agenda, etc.

Though I should add I didn't mean to say you were on the right. My bad.

How much of a division is there though? There seems to be this media bubble, and then the real world.

You're sort of right here; people are getting on with things, some people have fallen out with friends/family but the world still continues as is for most.
However, the brexit spectrum seems to be quite polarized and pretty aggressive, there's clearly a lot of tension/resentment out there, no one is changing their mind. Hate crime has almost been validated and enjoyed a significant spike.

I don't expect any real fall-out until things start actually going wrong. Kids who now can't afford to go to university, parent's who can no longer afford to feed themselves and their kids, people who see family members lose access to medical treatments, people who are losing jobs, and so on, are all going to breed resentment.

How do you think the thousands of staff will react when Nissan closes it's UK factories?