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Post by mrsonde on Nov 18, 2018 7:24:46 GMT 1
Well - there you are. I see Raab declares this morning that he was "hoodwinked", and has called for an inquiry into the whole Brexit negotiating process. This very closely echoes Davis complaints when he resigned as the so-called "Brexit minister". Neither one of them saw the Chequers proposals or this disgraceful withdrawal "deal" until the last minute - both were astonished by what May and Robbins had agreed behind their backs.
This is unprecedented - Chamberlain and Eden's arrogant and duplicitous undemocratic usurpation of authority are the only parallels. I can think of and, frankly, I really don't think those two examples were as bad - as dishonourable, and I think offensively sackable - as this.
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 18, 2018 7:38:26 GMT 1
But what do you propose? What what you do if you were PM? I've given my proposals at least three times on this board. I wouldn't have started as she did at all, and so we wouldn't now be in this mess, with the clock ticking down to such a precipitous "cliff-edge" (and if she'd been honest from the start what she really believed and intended, she wouldn't be either - because she'd have been replaced long ago.) In some sense that's true - but nowhere near to the extent of necessity some of them always make out. No one "knows what is going to happen", ever - any good business understands that the economy is unpredictable, and hostage to externalities beyond their control or ability to plan. Good businesses see this as an open field of rich possibilities, not something to cower from. If we had gone into these negotiations two years ago with a stated position that we welcomed a relationship under WTO trading rules - as we should, if we're interested in the nation's economic health and its ability to prosper - and we were immediately preparing for such a regime, then "business" would have known what to expect from the start, even if they were idle and complacent enough to fear it. But the people who would have really feared it would have been European businesses - and the EU itself. From the start they'd have been trying to placate us. They'd have had to say, okay, that's an appalling prospect for us, given our huge multi-billion trading surplus with you; and we can clearly see how once you're free you'll be able to be far more competitive than us, and a much more attractive magnet for investment. Let's try and come to a less painful agreement - we don't really want these tariffs for cars and manufactured goods, do we, my cherished British friends? Or food? You like our cheese and wine and salads, don't you, really? Fuck em, the greedy grasping exploitative bastards.
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Post by fascinating on Nov 18, 2018 8:03:47 GMT 1
A opposition-politician-like answer.
Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?
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Post by Progenitor A on Nov 18, 2018 9:46:25 GMT 1
Well - there you are. I see Raab declares this morning that he was "hoodwinked", and has called for an inquiry into the whole Brexit negotiating process. This very closely echoes Davis complaints when he resigned as the so-called "Brexit minister". Neither one of them saw the Chequers proposals or this disgraceful withdrawal "deal" until the last minute - both were astonished by what May and Robbins had agreed behind their backs. This is unprecedented - Chamberlain and Eden's arrogant and duplicitous undemocratic usurpation of authority are the only parallels. I can think of and, frankly, I really don't think those two examples were as bad - as dishonourable, and I think offensively sackable - as this. I agree entirely - she has treated her Cabinet abominably - not a single Minister knew what was in the offing when the assembled in Chequers - the taxi-firm cards on the table simply rubbed in her contempt for constitutional procedures Last Wednesday was even worse - they were presented with a 595-page legally binding document which they were told to approve. Why they unanimously did not tell her there and then that she must go shows just how cowed they have become Now Raab has told us that he was deliberately misled over the contents of her agreement - he had no prior sight of it - indeed he was working from a document produced in October that was half the size of the EU -produced document She has either lied to us or she did not know the ramifications of what she previously said - she has lied to her Cabinet Ministers - the Mushroom Cabinet. She has laid down red lines and hurriedly erased them when Barnier frowned - the 'negotiations' will surely become a Universities case-study in incompetence. The document is a humiliation as if we have just been defeated in War The parallel with Suez is apt - the Cabinet then was kept in the dark, we were lied to about the operation, and we ended up being humiliated Surely ambitious Conservatives, and especially those remaining in this Cabinet, are aware of the effect this Agreement, if it goes through, will have on their careers? One irony for me is that I was pissed off with the Commons pushing through the 'meaningful vote' on any agreement reached. I saw that (rightly) as the overwhelmingly Remain Commons being given the authority to stop Brexit. Now I rely upon the Commons to throw out this botched Agreement
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 18, 2018 17:04:44 GMT 1
Well - there you are. I see Raab declares this morning that he was "hoodwinked", and has called for an inquiry into the whole Brexit negotiating process. This very closely echoes Davis complaints when he resigned as the so-called "Brexit minister". Neither one of them saw the Chequers proposals or this disgraceful withdrawal "deal" until the last minute - both were astonished by what May and Robbins had agreed behind their backs. This is unprecedented - Chamberlain and Eden's arrogant and duplicitous undemocratic usurpation of authority are the only parallels. I can think of and, frankly, I really don't think those two examples were as bad - as dishonourable, and I think offensively sackable - as this. I agree entirely - she has treated her Cabinet abominably - not a single Minister knew what was in the offing when the assembled in Chequers - the taxi-firm cards on the table simply rubbed in her contempt for constitutional procedures Yes. I can think of no other occasion like it in the past fifty years. Eden and Macmillan, granted - but even they knew that if their lies were caugtht out they'd be disgraced and have to go (Macmillan got away with it, being the slyest of sly old Steerpike-like foxes that he was.) Oh, there's no room for doubt left in my mind - she lied to us from the start. From what she would insist were noble motives, like Fuchs and Blunt and Philby and Maclean and Halifax and Mosley and Lord Haw-Haw, no doubt. She believed she knew better; she believed the leave voters were mistaken, or stupid, or bigotted - to be worked around and deceived, in the nation's interests. She knew she couldn;t do so without deceiving the Brexiteers in her Party, and the media, so she fielded Davis and then Raab as decoys, as camouflage, a charade while Robbins followed out her real directives. Lancaster House and Florence and even Salzburg - all theatrical performances. It's really quite astonishing. I think the remaining Brexiteers in the cabinet are too shell-shocked to have grasped what's been done to them, as yet. A couple of them have more important priorities in any case. Fox has always struck me as rather blatantly dim-witted, and is in any case quite clearly far more enamoured of the lubrications of office, and foreign travel, to give much weight to anything as flimsy as principle. Leadsom - I've no idea what's going on in her head - she strikes me like a startled rabbit in the headlights at the moment. Mordaunt - I don't know what she's about: she should have gone with Raab, no question. Gove is beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned - he stinks of the corruption of over-ambition, or at best the putrid weakness of a marionette being played by a Lady Macbeth. I agree. Thank God for our long matured constitutional arrangements, however bodged and quaint and creaky. Tradition saves us from tyranny once again - the best argument for conservatism, first asserted by Lord Melbourne I think, there probably is or ever could be.
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 18, 2018 17:27:36 GMT 1
A opposition-politician-like answer. Huh? Not at all. I've presented my arguments several times, long ago, and most of you would say far too lengthily. I'll repeat them if you insist. Fing, you made a joke! I think. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, anyway. In case not - no. There is not a great deal of difference between the nomenclatura and the multi-national corporate fat-cats I'm referring to - people like that Jurgen character from Siemens who was on Any Questions the other night, or the Zaibatsu and German indutrialists (we all know how pricipled they are) who run "our" car industry - the CBI and IOD wallahs. I've been very clear for many years, on this board and others, of how these corporations are a deeply serious threat, not just to this country but the whole Western world: they're the ones inexoirably leading us to the abyss I mentioned to Alan the other day. Real businesses, the type of hard-working entrepreneurial capable doers and makers like Jonjel - these are the sort of people who are being strangled by the EU, and who will be liberated by our retrieval - if we can just find the courage and self-belief once again to defeat the Mays and Clarks and Heseltines - of sovereign freedom. Oh, for a Thatcher when her country needs her!
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 18, 2018 17:28:49 GMT 1
But please don't censor me so prissily ever again. It'll only make me more blunt. If I mean fuck I say so.
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Post by fascinating on Nov 18, 2018 21:23:36 GMT 1
The Federation of Small Businesses does not want a "No Deal" Brexit and is asking for a transition period to at least the end of 2020. "A ‘No Deal’ Brexit would disproportionately hit small businesses in the UK, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). The warning comes alongside new research that reveals the consequences for small businesses if they are faced with any form of customs declarations post Brexit. FSB National Policy Chairman, Martin McTague,isurging the Government to use the summer as an opportunity to intensify negotiations with the European Union to deliver a pro-business business Brexit based on easy trade, access to talent and a transition period. A transition period is vital for small businesses to ensure that they are only facing one set of changes that means business owners can continue to operate broadly as they do now until 31 December 2020." www.fsb.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/small-businesses-say-no-to-a-disorderly-no-deal-brexit
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Post by aquacultured on Nov 19, 2018 2:23:53 GMT 1
Mrsonde and Nay:
There’s no need to impute conspiracy and worse to May. She inherited a mess from the effete Cameron and has doggedly sought to clear it up, even tho more got thrown at her by her ‘friends’ along the way.
However, she should’ve left it to those who made the mess, as acts of restorative justice or community service.
So we essentially agree, if you remember what you said earlier (I don’t).
But half-competent Brexiteers didn’t fail to shoot themselves in the foot after the referendum, so May came in and proved almost completely competent, if you’re a Tory, and even they’ve turned on her.
It will end in tears, as I've often said, and they’re already flowing.
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Post by fascinating on Nov 19, 2018 9:44:40 GMT 1
I have up to now quite admired May, Aqua, but what has happened seems very strange. She seems to have landed a 550 page agreement on her cabinet like a thrown brick, not taking the trouble to ensure that they were given time to appraise and discuss it. I am finding it very hard to understand how even the minister for negotiating the exit from the EU didn't know the contents of the agreement - or at least that is what he seems to be claiming. How could she fail to at least get him on her side before this agreement was presented?
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 19, 2018 18:24:00 GMT 1
The Federation of Small Businesses does not want a "No Deal" Brexit and is asking for a transition period to at least the end of 2020. I know. They've been frightened by Project Fear. Small businesses have every reason to fervently hope for a No Deal - it'll be a bonanza for virtually every one of them. The vast majority of small businesses don't export at all, and neither do they import. A minority buy from importers, but any declarations aren't their problem. By a serendipitous coincidence, the ASEAN trading bloc are having very contentious meetings in Singapore at the moment, where proposals on the table to effectively create an Asian EU - mainly put forward by China, the equivalent of the EU's Germany - are being fiercely and adamantly resisted by India. What's the issue? India doesn;t want to give up her WTO tariff schedule - on the wholly correct grounds that if it does so her whole economy will become prey to the larger and more efficient China, her businesses will be taken over as they fail to compete, and its workforce will become nothing more than cheap labour for an ever-growing Chinese colonial class.
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 19, 2018 18:35:47 GMT 1
Mrsonde and Nay: There’s no need to impute conspiracy and worse to May. It's not a question of "need". It's a question of fact. Either Davis and Raab - and their deputies, who also resigned with the same complaint - are lying, or May has been conducting a parallel negotiation track behind their backs. This is more than a "conspiracy", and it's worse than lying to the country and House. It would be fraud, and the Public Accounts Committee would want to know what this whole new Government Department, at no doubt a cost of hundreds of millions of public money, was supposed to be doing for the past two years. No idea what you're talking about. She inherited nothing - she stood for the leadership when Cameron quit. No one forced her to. What "more" got "thrown at her"? She should indeed, though there was no "mess". What there was a Referendum, in which the British public voted to leave the EU. I said I have no wish to live under the sort of undemocratic fascist superstate that you desire to bequeath to your grandchildren. The only people who claim they believe May has been "competent" in the least are those who wish to remain in the EU, as is immediately obvious if you look who is saying she's cobbled a good deal. You're clueless. What will end in tears is the EU, and you're damn right they're already flowing. Not that you seem to care - you want your own grandchildren to share in the misery, it would seem: a country where half of them won't ever have a job!
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 19, 2018 18:40:29 GMT 1
I have up to now quite admired May, Aqua, but what has happened seems very strange. She seems to have landed a 550 page agreement on her cabinet like a thrown brick, not taking the trouble to ensure that they were given time to appraise and discuss it. Not just her cabinet - but the ministers who were supposed to have been negotiating it! Who affirm they'd never seen it before, or had a thing to do with it! So where did it come from? From Ollie Robbins and the EU team, behind closed doors, in complete secrecy, betraying everything that May has previously promised, over and over, she would "never accept". What is there to admire about that?
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Post by fascinating on Nov 19, 2018 20:27:50 GMT 1
The pundits predicted last year that she would be gone that September, but the Maybot has continued. I am wondering how Raab could not know the content of the document - or if he didn't, why didn't he resign on the day of the cabinet meeting (I assume he had to be present there?) when the document was presented. Maybe HE is playing some kind of self-serving game. I can't make sense of it.
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Post by aquacultured on Nov 20, 2018 0:56:05 GMT 1
Yes, fascinating, they're all playing a game, until such time as the BoJot swoops. (But he seems to be a busted flush.)
Like Davis, Raab realised this was an impossible task, so resigned, and blamed it on others.
Yes, the EU stitched us up, not wilfully, far from it; but because of institutional antipathy to treachery and duplicity.
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