|
Post by mrsonde on Nov 27, 2019 17:05:13 GMT 1
Why do you think it isn't "completed"? I've explained to you why it's better - we'll actually be leaving under Boris' deal, trade deal or not: under May's deal we'd not be allowed to leave. If anyone believes the EU would ever for some reason decide that "alternative arrangements", however technologically miraculous, had finally been found that were unobtrusive enough to satisfy them to permit us to implement them - finally respect the largest democratic vote we've ever had in this country - then they must have been living in a hermetically sealed dark room with a bag over their heads for the past three years.
I'm getting the idea that you're a tad confused here, probably by the unfortunate tendency to call the withdrawal agreement, properly an International Treaty, a "deal" - you're mixing that up with the Free Trade Agreement, which is also commonly called a "deal", but has nowhere near the legal gravamen. The key difference here is that Parliament could rescind any trade agreement, albeit with however much kefuffle and criticism abroad, possibly even a levied fine if we'd agreed to the jurisdiction of a supranational trade dispute procedure, as with the WTO. If May's Treaty had been ratified, Parliament could not have unilaterally withdrawn - we would have legally bound ourselves to a superior legislative body, and to break its ruling would be a breach of International Law.
A Withdrawal Agreement. The negotiations on a Trade Deal have not started, and could not start - by the initial diktat of the EU, which May was foolish enough to bow down to - until such a Treaty had been ratified.
The "leave camp" is a very amorphous entity. I assure you Jimmy Goldsmith and Nigel Farage would generally be counted amongst their number.
Not in any great detail, I'm sure you're right. The "Leave camp" probably missed a trick in not doing so, and prompting the EU and Remain side to respond. I disagree with you that such a discussion would have scared people into voting to remain - on the contrary, it would have made more people even more angry and determined to derail this revolting Gravy Train.
No, I don't consider "this country" to be "the UK". I don't know anyone who does, or has ever done. I've met a few people who refer to themselves as primarily "British", but only English people, and the odd provocative anti-nationalist non-Welsh speaker living in Wales. I have never met anyone who says they are a "UK-er".
On some important issues, yes, unlike the rest of the EU - and as exceptional concessions, granted very reluctantly and with considerable resentment: it is against "the spirit of Europe" they all (quite rightly) say, and is "unfair" to every other member. But I get the impression you consider these exceptions to be good things in some way. How so? Is the European project something you wish to sign up to or not?
Apparently you don't actually, if you really do think the above retentions of our "independence" are a good thing. If you do, why do you not similarly regret the loss of our sovereignty on all the other issues? Why do you think the more than 70% of our laws that the EU has determined (a figure rising with every year) an acceptable loss of independence, whereas the other issues - a consequence principally of our retention of our own currency, something that all major parties were planning to scrap ASAP (and only didn't actually happen because Gordon Brown had a personal Machiavellian animus against Tony Blair at the time) - are something you seem to think commendable, even though the EU itself does not?
Indeed, it happened, in exactly the same way that "Northern Rock" died. The ECB took it over: the only difference is that it was done in camera and under the table and hardly even noticed by the mainstream media and not officially, in name: it was entirely surreptitious, because according to EU law it was illegal. But that doesn't matter, because the whole EU apparatus is completely opaque, and it breaks its own Treaty stipulations whenever it wants, by German diktat, and there's absolutely nothing that anyone - any member state - can do to prevent the Germans doing exactly as they wish, and imposing it on everyone else post hoc. Merkel doesn't even pretend otherwise any more - she'll throw open Europe's borders by announcement, make multi-billion payoffs to Turkey entirely off her own bat, then instruct "Parliament" to make it legal a couple of years later. No one gave the ECB the plenipotentiary powers it now exercises - it simply took them. After the Eurozone crisis it was abundantly clear to every member state that the power - who actually runs the EU - lies entirely with the bankers in Frankfurt. No one, not even the so-called President, or the Council of Ministers, even has the right or power to look at its accounts! The rest - the Parliament, the Commission, the Council, even the Treaties - is packaging. Now you might argue that the same is true of many other countries' Central Bank, and (disgracefully - the fascistic root cause of most of the West's economic troubles) there'd be a lot of truth in such a contention. The crucial difference is that Parliament could if it wished take the BofE back under its control, if that was the democratic will, as Congress could take over the Fed - or legally restrain, or even demand some accounting - if it chose.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Nov 28, 2019 1:51:18 GMT 1
What really impresses me are the people of Hong Kong, not just in the clarity of their respect and desire for democracy, liberty, and justice, but in the awesome courage they display in their willingness to fight for it, against overwhelming and deeply frightening opposition. There's no real difference between the way modern China is governed and the modern EU - if anything, there is more democratic accountability in China, and certainly a more serious effort to combat the corruption of the elite. If Chinese bureaucrats produced the sort of accounts the EU fails to get audited every year, a scandal that has been predictably repeated for decades, they'd be shot.
And what's really heartening is that the "Liberal Democrats" (sorry, "Jo Swinson's Liberal Democrats") -surely now as deeply and sadly ironic as the sort of names Communist bloc countries used to adorn themselves with - the People's Democratic Republics - are falling in the polls, reportedly because even people who voted Remain find their plan to revoke the referendum result an unacceptable affront to democracy, political integrity, honesty, or justice. The latest YouGov megapoll projects that they might get one extra seat. As for Labour - sorry, "Jeremy Corbyn's Labour" - I believe they're going to get such a slap from their once traditional vote that the subsequent "inquest" will have to held by a coroner. No one much cares for the Tories at the moment, after the shambles of the past ten years, but as in Hong Kong when it comes to democracy most people have their values straight: they can't be bought off, or scared witless, or fooled by media-driven sophistry.
|
|
|
Post by fascinating on Nov 28, 2019 23:41:44 GMT 1
If the Conservatives get elected and Parliament passes the Withdrawal Agreement, that means that the UK will effectively remain in the single market until end of 2020, while negotiations to agree on trading arrangements take place. Then, according to Wikipedia "If no such agreement is reached by that date and the transition period is not extended, a no-deal Brexit would remain the default outcome in 2021. ". So there still has to be further negotiation - and the transition period might be extended. Is Johnson not also bowing down to that? I don't believe there was any mention by any public figure about having to pay tens of billions as part of withdrawal. We will have to agree to disagree on that. For the avoidance of doubt, the UN has a list of 193 countries, and the one we live in is called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is the title of the country that is given as one of the parties on the first page of the Withdrawal Agreement. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/840655/Agreement_on_the_withdrawal_of_the_United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Northern_Ireland_from_the_European_Union_and_the_European_Atomic_Energy_Community.pdfMost people, when they have to fill in a form which asks their nationality, will put "British". 18% of Scots regard themselves as "Scottish and British". A considerable number of people from Northern Ireland count themselves as "British Unionist". Britain is simply the major island off NW Europe that we happen to live on, and writing down "British" is short for "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island-er". I voted to leave, but it was a very indecisive vote, based, at that time, purely on the question "What exactly are we getting for this £15 billion a year we pay?". The trashing of our fishing industry, and also the obvious need to have more control of immigration also featured in my thoughts. I wasn't worried that we would lose our own currency and haven't seen any great infringement of our ability to make laws. Being members of the club has still allowed us a lot of wriggle room, and note it is over 25 years since the Maastricht treaty. This matter has taken far too much time and effort, and I am convinced by the business organisations that plead for a good trade deal with the EU. I know you argue that businesses will try to feather their nests, but these organisations represent nearly all ranges of businnesses. When they banned child labour in the coal mines, a mine-owner said that they couldn't afford to pay for that law. When the corn laws were reformed, the large-scale growers of corn, of course, campaigned against the reform. But this is whole sets of competing businnesses looking at the situtation in the round, it's not just individual self-serving businesses. You predicted a bust of DB on a scale greater than Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Both of these financial institutions no longer exist, DB does. What wonderful things do you expect to happen after we leave the EU?
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Nov 29, 2019 17:41:50 GMT 1
Yes - as I suggested, you're confusing the two "deals".
Done and dusted, like the "divorce bill". May and Robbins thoroughly queered his - or anyone else's - pitch.
Why do I have to keep repeating myself? I take the trouble to respond to your assertions - simply repeating them is just rude, madam. Again - this "divorce bill" is supposedly to pay what we owe. We would be paying it anyway, therefore - it is not "part of withdrawal". If there's any argument, it's about exactly how much we do, in fact, owe.
Well, you have not a shred of evidence for your claim that the British public is so feeble-witted and unprincipled, have you? On the other hand, there is no indication at all that people suddenly changed their minds about the way they would have voted as soon as May presented her proposals. You assert that this was a shock surprise to anyone - I can only think that you must have been on holiday on the other side of the world during that year or more.
You're trying to claim England, Wales, or Scotland are not countries, are you? Or "political entities"? You're just doing your usual tiresome trick of endlessly and pointlessly quibbling about ridiculous minutiae.
Not UK, then? Have most people not been informed of the facts by the UN?
18% of who? "Scots", you say? Like the porridge?
No, it isn't. It never was, and it most certainly hasn't become so in the less than a hundred years since your so-called "country" officially existed. You're merely assuming the absurd and frankly offensive English overlordship that you unthinkingly project is shared by anyone else outside of England. The only people who think like this are English people who have moved to Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland, and, being unable to naturally identify with those countries, adopt the primary identification of "British".
Well, you were in a tiny minority. Most leavers voted because they had principled reasons for doing so, not how much money they might get out of it.
Look - it doesn't matter why you voted the way you did, or say you did. It doesn't matter if you don't understand what's going on. You can't project those idiosyncrasies onto other people.
Temporarily - less and less with every new advance towards the avowed objective of "ever-greater political union", and at the cost of having less and less influence. It couldn't have lasted for many more years - until the next Treaty, then we'd have had to accede to the pressure. Or leave.
Note? Why?
As those who wished to Remain fully intended. Note.
Everyone wants "a good trade deal", almost by definition. Like world peace and mother's pie. The question is: at what cost?
More than 80% of businesses do no trade with Europe whatsoever. They might well belong to one of these "organisations", but if they believe they'd do better with No Deal, as I believe most of them would, you can bet you'd never hear about it from these "representatives". Yes - it is a matter of who feathers their nests, actually - who pays for their posts, funds their conferences, etc.
Your history is misinformed, I'm afraid - it would have been the overwhelming majority of factory owners, and the overwhelming majority of aristocratic landowners who raised such objections. This is a question of class - of who has the power, of who has access to and control of the capital and how do they best retain it or receive its rewards. If you doubt this, look at any socio-economic breakdown of the referendum result. There is a reason that the majority of Labour constituencies voted to Leave, and the more deprived the more they did do - the reason Corbyn has been forced to sit of the fence: and the reason he's going to lose this election, when by any precedence it should be a foregone landslide for any Opposition.
No, I did not, that would have been a meaningless redundancy.
It is not the same institution. Or, if it is, Bear Stearns still continues, they just call themselves JP Morgan, and Lehmans still exists too, under the name Barclays.
I expect us to make our own laws and have the legal ability to determine who becomes a citizen of our country - whether you call that England or, for the moment, the UK. Economically, I expect us to undergo a period of bumpy adjustment of a couple of years as we redeploy to the new market conditions, and then produce greater growth and more importantly wider prosperity than the EU. I expect foreign investment to become considerably greater than it was before the referendum. I expect it will be seen that we will have narrowly escaped the economic and political turmoil that the EU is shortly to be battered by - as everyone now acknowledges we narrowly escaped the "catastrophe" that would have occurred if Blair had taken us into the Euro, and even he now admits was the serious error of effectively joining Schengen when we didn't even need to. I expect us to be able to reform our utterly disgusting agricultural practices, to be able to adopt an industrial and probably even a taxation policy that works for the people of this country, not just the fat cats of your "business organisations". I expect, in short, a retrieval of a considerable measure of democratic control of the way this country runs, and a resultant increase in accountability of those that exercise power. Most importantly of all, I expect that people will retain some belief in the value and meaning of democracy, and have more clearly come to recognise those people and ways of thinking that have worked so hard to undermine it.
I could go on, and on. I expect I will.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 5, 2019 16:55:21 GMT 1
I watched Andrew Neil's grilling of Jo Swinson last night, because my missus keeps telling me playing with my model train set is a disgraceful waste of time for an adult human being. At last someone has asked her about what "her" LibDems' policy is or will be on joining the Euro. For at least 20 years it was their flagship policy to join the Euro as their first priority in government. They were as blithely arrogant and dismissive of popular opinion on the inherent rightness of this course as they are now about their unquestionable wisdom in "stopping Brexit." Now she doesn't think it would be "the right thing" to join the Eurozone - as in fact her party hasn't since the crash of 2008, when it became indisputable that we'd very narrowly escaped the "catastrophe" by being "isolated and on our own", as she still likes to characterise our unfortunate distress of being an independent country. Her party - all of them, there were no naysayers back then, as there aren't now, the LibDems being a haven for free and independent thinkers - had campaigned so vigorously for this policy for so long and with such self-assured moral conviction that when Cable announced this complete volte-face it was thought that there would be a mass revolt and Clegg might have to resign at the Conference. But as it happened there was barely a whimper and their collective brain power moved onto more important issues, such as what colour they should adopt to best signify the strength of their moral backbone.
Neil presented her with a long list of policies that she'd voted for as a minister in the coalition that she now pledges to reverse, due she now claims to their moral wrongness. "I've said it before and I'm very happy to say it again, we got those decisions wrong."
And still I was waiting for her to give one reason why she's so convinced that stopping Brexit - she's very proud that they've managed to so far - is not yet another 180-degree flat-out wrong decision. I've asked so many convinced Remainers this simple question over the past few years - none of them are able to give an answer, ever. All they can ever say is it would be better economically for this country's future growth. Or, at best, some vague and fluffy waffle about it's better to "cooperate", it's all "one world" now, why would we want to be "on our own", etcetera.
The European Union is a good thing because...
It makes us richer, basically.
But does it, Ms.Swinson? How do you know? "All the independent forecasts say we'll be porrer if we leave..." But - pointed out a very soft-pedalling Andrew Neil (compared to the torture he put Corbyn through, at least) - what did all these independent forecasts say would immediately happen if Leave won the vote? And isn't this precisely the reason your party used to so vehemently assert that we should join the Euro? And you say you now want a second referendum if you win power, because Revoke hasn't gone down too well on the doorstep has it, yet you also say you don't want Scotland to have a second independence referendum, because of all the chaos and uncertainty that would cause. Why should anyone take you seriously or believe you hold any principles at all, Jo Swinson?
Oh, f*#k off Neil you Sassenach bully, she cried, and stormed out of the studio, never to be seen or heard from again. She would have done if it was my train set, anyway.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 5, 2019 17:21:32 GMT 1
Oh, and in case you missed it, it is now LibDem policy that what gender you are is entirely up to you, or will be when Jo Swinson becomes Prime Minister - decide for yourself, no medical examination required, and certainly not allowed, because that would be discriminatory. So, asked Emily Maitlis, with that perplexed-stroke-aghast I can't believe it's not butter expression she's on the way to trademarking, you're not the sex you are by the facts of biology?
"We assign sex at birth, but there are a lot of people out there who are convinced they were born in the wrong body and they're discriminated against and called names and things and this is wrong."
"So what sex you are is not a matter of biology?"
"Well, what happens is, Emily, I can tell you as a doctor, is we assign what sex a baby is at birth, but the problem with it is that there are a lot of people out there who feel they are trapped in the wrong body and get called names and things, you see."
"Ah, yes, I see. So, say, a man could hang out in the women's at Tooting Bec changing rooms for a good ogle, or a convicted rapist could go along to a rape crisis centre and sort of join the group, as long as he - he/she - says he's - sorry, he/she - a woman? There's nothing anyone would be able to do about it, even challenge them about their self-identification?"
"Can you imagine how humiliating it must be for these people to have to prove what gender they are? Besides, you're talking a tiny percentage of people, that won't happen very often, as independent scientific studies have proven."
"Phew. That's alright then, thankyou doctor. And now for something completely different..."
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 6, 2019 1:00:35 GMT 1
The really interesting question is: what on earth can the connection between these two positions possibly be? Because there's no doubt that there is one - I think you'd have to do a very thorough search before you found someone who believes gender - what sex you are - is entirely a social construct, which can be randomly misassigned at birth so that people really are wandering around "in the wrong body", who is not also a convinced believer in the European Union. I'd go further and also confidently assert my estimation that these same people would also be firm believers that, for example, calling for longer prison sentences for convicted jihadi terrorists is a "message of hate", that we should bring our native ISIS captives home with the primary aim of rehabilitating them, that there's nothing wrong with Islam that isn't just as wrong with every other religion, that Trump is simply unspeakable, that immigrants have been a great boon to this country both economically and culturally and we should therefore welcome anyone who wants to come here with an open border, that the rise in knife crime - crime in general, really - is caused mainly by government not spending enough money to make everyone nice and middle-class, that anyone who works in the public sector deserves an immediate pay rise and far better working conditions, that the climate is in an "emergency" because of unrestrained capitalism and needs immediate drastic remedial action, that feeling a national identity is rather embarrassing and shameful, unless you're not English, or American, whereupon it should be promoted as much as possible, especially if it costs the English a lot of ill-gotten money, that Education is all-round wonderful, a miracle cure for deprivation, unless it's education for how to earn a living, in which case it's class discrimination, that the NHS - sorry, our NHS - is the best thing since, since...oooh, ever, it must be, unless it was the election of Obama - even though everyone I know, even far-lefties, have a long long litany of horror stories about whenever they've ever had to do with the thing. I could go on, and on, but I'm feeling a bit queasy...
All of which goes to clearly show, I'd say, that people who are so ardently for Remain - most of them, anyway, leaving out the fat corporate bosses and "business organisation" wallies - believe what they do not because of any economic arguments, but for deep-rooted ideological reasons. In this respect they're like most Leavers - it's not really about money, but deeper values and principles, which is the main reason it's so difficult for the two sides to engage in a proper conversation. The difference is that the Remainers are not - can not be - open and honest about the genuine springs of their belief, because put into plain speech their values are decidedly flaky and their principles apply only in a fantasy world. So they seize on the economic forecasts they can pluck from the air like snowflakes at a Davos conference because they are quite unable to articulate any deeper principled reasons for their conviction - many don't really understand their own ideological programming, or, to the extent that they do, they know they shouldn't really talk about it, because most people don't agree with them a jot, and for very good reasons.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 21, 2020 12:35:47 GMT 1
Just seen this marvel. Not for the first time, I find myself in complete (nearly - with one minor cavil; the difference between conservative and libertarian, I guess - or maybe gay and straight? Contrarian gay, that is. Errr...Him, not me) and, given the almost vanished calibre of his piercing insight and encompassing intellect, fairly astonished agreement:
|
|