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You have to ask?

As for local politics.

Local Council taking the axe to Bus Routes. Something to do with funding.

Local Council award themselves a 15% pay rise....

Herzlos wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Aren't roughly half of the MEPs members of Euroskeptic parties?

Euroskeptics have as much reason to get involved as everyone else - they have ample opportunity to try and resist everything they dislike and make their concerns known.

Being a skeptic.....hypocritical and grossly unfair on the people you are being paid to represent.

So....they should get involved but not be skeptics? Not sure if I follow there.

There's been special arrangements for the Irish border for nearly 100 years in some areas, which obviously pre-dates the EU, so if hotdogs in Belfast have to follow the same food and animal welfare standards as hotdogs in Dublin, and vice versa, then I can live with that.

The question is whether the DUP can live with it, and if not, what the Maybot is prepared to do about it.

Unionists are happy to diverge from the rest of the uk (abortion, gay marriage and in the past, Catholic discrimination) when it suits them. They should have a little wiggle room with regards to the boarder. Or the alternative could be a boarder poll and the end of N.I altogether.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The question is whether the DUP can live with it, and if not, what the Maybot is prepared to do about it.

Probably another 1.5bn snatched from the mouths of babes.

Anything for Maybot to cling on to power.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Unionists are happy to diverge from the rest of the uk (abortion, gay marriage and in the past, Catholic discrimination) when it suits them. They should have a little wiggle room with regards to the boarder. Or the alternative could be a boarder poll and the end of N.I altogether.

Well now London is saying that if NI stays in the customs union they want some of the same please.

@SadiqKhan: https://twitter.com/SadiqKhan/status/937687376167604225?s=09

Edit, predictably Scotland is in, too.

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/937675437764960257


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 welshhoppo wrote:



Aren't roughly half of the MEPs members of Euroskeptic parties?

ADDE (Farage's group) counts 45 MEPs. At a stretch you might add ENL's 37 for 82 MEPs out of 750.

It makes sense to keep NI in the customs union because there is a long physical border which a lot of trade and commuting flows across daily, and which is onerous to patrol, as well as having implications for the peace process, (pause for breath) yet Ireland of course is a separate island to Great Britain, so the customs zone can easily be isolated and contained.

None of this applies to Scotland or London.

It's always been a chicken and egg situation with the Irish border. You can't really decide what the border arrangements will be like in future, until the trade side has been sorted, but you can't get to phase two until sufficient progress has been made, without dealing with the trade side of things.

If today's announcement matches the rumour, then judging by the mood music, this could be the greatest fudge in human history

The difficulty of making such decisions is simply due to the insistence on negotiation within a framework of having already ruled out a lot of the viable options.

As you say, this could be an excellent fudge, and will match the proposals I put forwards months ago.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The difficulty of making such decisions is simply due to the insistence on negotiation within a framework of having already ruled out a lot of the viable options.

As you say, this could be an excellent fudge, and will match the proposals I put forwards months ago.

But caution is always needed here, because the DUP could torpedo it, and of course, some of the Maastricht rebels are still in the commons after 20 odd years.

I have visions of Redwood and Cash, on horseback, galloping through the Shires of England and invoking the spirit of Wat Tyler.

EDIT. Abort! Abort! BBC reporting no deal today. One or two outstanding issues.

Well, at least I won't have to change my avatar to an EU flag. Monty is safe for the time being.

But at least I'm proven right.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It makes sense to keep NI in the customs union because there is a long physical border which a lot of trade and commuting flows across daily, and which is onerous to patrol, as well as having implications for the peace process, (pause for breath) yet Ireland of course is a separate island to Great Britain, so the customs zone can easily be isolated and contained.

None of this applies to Scotland or London.

It doesn't, but the argument is not that it is necessary in other parts of the UK, just that if it goes that way, and can be successful implemented, then there's no legislative barrier to the same being done for another region.

 Ketara wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Aren't roughly half of the MEPs members of Euroskeptic parties?

Euroskeptics have as much reason to get involved as everyone else - they have ample opportunity to try and resist everything they dislike and make their concerns known.

Being a skeptic.....hypocritical and grossly unfair on the people you are being paid to represent.

So....they should get involved but not be skeptics? Not sure if I follow there.

Well presumably skeptics believe the eu exists, because it pays their wages, but are against most of what it does. Thus they should do their job and vote against the things they don't like. Getting paid to so nothing is pointless - they are doing nothing, not getting a sat and not pushing the eu towards where they want it (a trading agreement only, I assume).

It's the equivalent of not voting in a GE because you don't like the government.

The U in DUP must stand for U-Boat, because according to the BBC's political correspondents, it's the DUP that has torpedoed HMS Britannia.

Naturally, of course, May and Davis didn't even contact the DUP before hand to gauge their reaction, before May met Juncker.

May is utterly out of her depth, but we already knew that.

nfe wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It makes sense to keep NI in the customs union because there is a long physical border which a lot of trade and commuting flows across daily, and which is onerous to patrol, as well as having implications for the peace process, (pause for breath) yet Ireland of course is a separate island to Great Britain, so the customs zone can easily be isolated and contained.

None of this applies to Scotland or London.

It doesn't, but the argument is not that it is necessary in other parts of the UK, just that if it goes that way, and can be successful implemented, then there's no legislative barrier to the same being done for another region.

You can go from Scotland to mainland Europe without touching England, and if NI gets a deal that doesn't stuff it's trade there's no reason Scotland can't.

London on the other hand, would rely on a customs corridor of counties with an opt out.

But to be fair; if anyone manages to stay in the customs union everyone else will want the same and why not?

nfe wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Yeah, but he has worked in the EU for nearly 20 years and we were contributing all that time into the pension fund. I don’t know why his pension is worth £73k a year though, no wonder the EU guzzles so much money if there’s an army of people on those sorts of pensions.

Worked is a relative term.

You really want to open that can of worms? Like the expenses scandal, gak hits people of all parties and everyone gets embarrassed which is why no one brings the matter up.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Yeah, but he has worked in the EU for nearly 20 years and we were contributing all that time into the pension fund. I don’t know why his pension is worth £73k a year though, no wonder the EU guzzles so much money if there’s an army of people on those sorts of pensions.

Worked is a relative term.

You really want to open that can of worms? Like the expenses scandal, gak hits people of all parties and everyone gets embarrassed which is why no one brings the matter up.

Everyone should be embarrassed if they are taking taxpayer money and not doing their job in return

Herzlos wrote:

Everyone should be embarrassed if they are taking taxpayer money and not doing their job in return

Best get on the line to the Sinn Fein MP's over their allowances then....

Herzlos wrote:


You can go from Scotland to mainland Europe without touching England, and if NI gets a deal that doesn't stuff it's trade there's no reason Scotland can't.

Having a separate agreement for NI would also play right into SNP hands. Scotland voted in greater numbers to remain than NI did.

London on the other hand, would rely on a customs corridor of counties with an opt out.

You could have a SE border thought. Maybe a better way would be have a border on each electorate area then everyone is happy. Even more reasonably, we could split the UK. You could have two new countries "INUK" and "OUTUK" each working towards their own respective futures.

Of course May is now likely completely stuffed. Who would have thought that joining forces with a group of hard line right wing politicians would not then play a hard line?

It doesn't appear she had much room to manoeuvre. Either

a) Accepts different conditions for NI, the Tory/DUP agreement collapses forcing a new election. Given current polls Tories will be out
b) Holds to the DUP position which means no deal with the EU, hard Brexit and wrecked economy (and Tories will probably be out by 2022 but will continue to have a support of the hard right voters)
c) Agrees to Open borders and open trade, the proportion of the population that are anti-immigration would then swing back to UKIP or whoever is the hard right anyone not British party (and Tories will probably be out at the next election)

So it really depends on whether she actually cares about the Country or cares about the party...bets please.....

It's pretty much between a rock and a hard place.



Or we just cut off Northern Ireland.


To be fair, this does highlight my biggest grind with the EU, that you can't deal with a single country and you have to deal with all 27. It would make it so much easier if we dealt with just the Irish. And made the "hard border" the Irish Sea.

It's a fething shambles, and the tragedy for this Brexit supporter is that it's a self-inflicted shambles from a PM who is completely and utterly out of her depth.

Had May not called a snap GE, she'd be able to tell the DUP to go whistle.

Months ago, Ketara reckoned that Bojo's appointment as FS was a smart move...

No offence, Ketara, but in hindsight, it's turned out to be as useful as buying a return ticket for the Titanic!

A competent FS, and not a complete buffoon, might have been able to prise open and exploit some cracks in the EU 27's position, or at the very least, smoothed some ruffled feathers and got us something, anything.

Feth me with a fishfork!

We may have to go crawling back to EFTA/EEA cap in hand, do a salvage job for a couple of years, and regroup from a position of strength i.e when anybody but May is PM.

This is the conclusion I'm slowly coming round to.

Not to say we told you so.

But....

 welshhoppo wrote:


To be fair, this does highlight my biggest grind with the EU, that you can't deal with a single country and you have to deal with all 27. It would make it so much easier if we dealt with just the Irish. And made the "hard border" the Irish Sea.

Erh, that's the point of the EU. They act together as one whole and hence they get a better deal for everyone which includes trade deals, environmental issues and...er...agreements with countries that think they are bigger than they really are.

You are probably right, Ireland outside the EU would have had to capitulate and probably feel like they had been dragged through a bush backwards. The difference now is that we are on the other end, not within the EU benefiting from that strength in position.

I actually think May is playing a very difficult hand pretty well, in terms of Brexit, anyway -- she's made a number of mistakes in other areas but to a great degree these are being forced by the Brexit debacle. (e.g. Trump's state visit.)

May's fundamental problem is that the promise of a smooth hard Brexit is a massive mountain of magical muck, and the Conservative Party will achieve critical mass and detonate itself almost whatever she does.

This problem will not go away as long as we have a Conservative government.


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nfe wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It makes sense to keep NI in the customs union because there is a long physical border which a lot of trade and commuting flows across daily, and which is onerous to patrol, as well as having implications for the peace process, (pause for breath) yet Ireland of course is a separate island to Great Britain, so the customs zone can easily be isolated and contained.

None of this applies to Scotland or London.

It doesn't, but the argument is not that it is necessary in other parts of the UK, just that if it goes that way, and can be successful implemented, then there's no legislative barrier to the same being done for another region.

It's not about legislation, it's about practicality. It clearly would be insane to put a hard border around London, with its millions of movements per day, in order to preserve a soft border in Ireland. with its 100,000 movements per day. Equally insane to put a hard border between Scotland and England for the same purpose and same reason.

Ireland, though, is a completely separate island. Its connections with Great Britain obviously are much more restricted.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


We may have to go crawling back to EFTA/EEA cap in hand, do a salvage job for a couple of years, and regroup from a position of strength i.e when anybody but May is PM.

This is the conclusion I'm slowly coming round to.

Wait DINLT wants to stay in the EU for even just a short period of extra time....(needs sound on)

We've finally found his red line.

So what actually changed? You've only told us stuff we've been telling you for months.


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I'd be all for a hard border between England and Scotland to get priority access to Europe. We'd be able to steal so much to of their economy.

And the EU would be willing to let the UK stay for a few years until you get your gak together (somehow, without listening to EXPERTS ) out of sheer generosity and goodwill?

Herzlos wrote:
We've finally found his red line.

So what actually changed? You've only told us stuff we've been telling you for months.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'd be all for a hard border between England and Scotland to get priority access to Europe. We'd be able to steal so much to of their economy.

I retract my earlier comments. I've lurched back to wild optimism again. A week is a long time in politics, anything can happen etc etc

On a serious note, I know I'm not perfect, and yeah, I've been shot down in flames before, but I've always seen myself as a man of principal, even if people disagree with my viewpoints.

I've been anti-EU years, and for better or for worse, I've hitched my wagon to Brexit. I shall support my position come what may. To do otherewise would be hypocrisy of the highest order.

If the ship goes down, then so be it. I'll take the slings and arrows from Remain supporters on these threads.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I shall support my position come what may. To do otherewise would be hypocrisy of the highest order.

Another word for what you're doing is "fanaticism", or "zealotry". You just admitted yourself that nothing can make you change your mind.

Changing your mind over new evidence is not hypocrisy, it's what reasonable people do all the time.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I've been anti-EU years, and for better or for worse, I've hitched my wagon to Brexit. I shall support my position come what may. To do otherewise would be hypocrisy of the highest order.

That's what I expected - no matter what happens you'll stick to Brexit. I'd respect you a whole lot more if you were still backing Brexit because you believe it to be the correct thing, and were willing to consider that you may have been wrong, even if you decide you aren't.

There's nothing righteous about stubbornly sticking to something you think is a bad idea purely so someone on the internet doesn't think you're a hypocrite. if you can't see the other side, is it even worth trying to engage in debate?

I'd like to think that I admit to being wrong where it's been pointed out, and I'm sure I've apologised for it on this very thread.

For better or worse, we're all hitched to the wagon of Brexit. I just hope someone can find a way to make it work; because in all honesty I really don't want to have to move to Germany.