BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Iains
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 04:32 PM

Remainiacs speak only of appeasement. No moral fibre or backbone.

Ireland fought for her freedom, we are merely negotiating for ours. Yet they would attempt to hold us to ransom.

Good to see the brexit buster ship Celine still spends most of its time between Immingham and Zeebrugge. Obviously brexit bustin costs more money. Little leo will regret being the EU's useful idiot.

It is anticipated, according to some, that tax harmonization will wipe out 14% of Ireland's GDP. Young leo will not be smirking then.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 03:22 PM

WEll, Nigel, EU countries are free to set their own rates of VAT, and, after all, we cheerfully embraced its precursor. As for the ECJ, give me a list of domestic legal cases that ever had ECJ judgements that trumped our own courts. Take your time now.

With the ECJ, as well as things like the European Commission, you little Englanders want us all to think that these are somehow foreign and alien forces controlling us. They are not. We have an influential say in how these institutions are formulated and run. As a larger EU nation, possibly more say than most other countries. If you really want to make a case for how these things adversely affect us (and good luck with that) you'd better start confronting us with facts instead of your xenophobia.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: peteglasgow
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 03:11 PM

what! do we ever stand up to the USA, the world's biggest bullies by any measure. we are their poodle. ffs

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 02:49 PM

"Only fanatics and lemmings would follow the direction of the EU."
The EU works if you realise you are part of a Confederation of nations
Britain has never been good with anything they couldn't dominate and bully
That last sentence seems to epitomise Germany, not the UK. The UK are the ones who always seem willing (even now) to stand up to the bullies.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Iains
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 02:13 PM

I am confident the teapot has been told to take a hike!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 01:35 PM

" We want no part of it."
Seems like your stuck with it until Ireland says otherwise

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 01:29 PM

"Only fanatics and lemmings would follow the direction of the EU."
The EU works if you realise you are part of a Confederation of nations
Britain has never been good with anything they couldn't dominate and bully
Youhave a few postings up an econamic estimation of wwhat has happened and is likely to happen in the future
That fact that you refuse to even acknowledge, let alone respond to it putsd you were you are in the lemming or what category
Do you really not care beyond reeling out meaningless rhetoric
You respond to less facts than Theresa May did - I really never thought that possible
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Iains
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 01:03 PM

Indeed Stanron. They seem to think the way we voted is exemplified by a game of pin the tail on the donkey. Remainers may be lemmings and fanatics but we valiant brexiteers are not so easily banboozled by the EU flim flam. We can see through the propaganda and can envisage the final destination. We want no part of it.
Have you ever seen a rational reason posted for staying in the EU?

Neither have I - They do not exist.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Stanron
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 12:38 PM

Only fanatics and lemmings would follow the direction of the EU.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 11:28 AM

As I said fanatics and lemmings
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Iains
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 11:02 AM

Little Englanders?
Another one posting and aiming to be as provocative and insulting as possible. This, no doubt, is in order to hide the opinions he is presenting as fact.

The power of veto is going the way of the dodo. Performing an ostrich impersonation does not make this inevitability go away.
unelected bureaucrats frame the legislation, the european parliament votes on it. Majority voting is coming whether you admit it or not.
What happens to your veto when the EU parliament accepts majority voting?
Yesterday they talked about it, tomorrow they implement it and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Next parliament will be disbanded as an anachronism-who needs a second franking machine for legislation formulated and passed elsewhere?
Clearly stated goals:
Common foreign policy
Common taxation
Common defense force
end result federalism.

Time to wake up.
This is no longer a common market- that was merely an early stepping stone. Each successive step signs away more and more sovereignty.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 10:59 AM

This seems to be a fair summin up of THE DAMAGE DONE SO FAR AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
A little conservative maybe but I can't see much there to be seriously challenged by an open-minded person
Can't speak for the fanatics and lemmings, of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 10:49 AM

We are fully masters of our own taxation system and our own justice system
That can be refuted with just six letters: VAT (for the first part) ECJ (for the second).

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 10:38 AM

We democratically elect our own government. We do not provide seats in the Commons or Lords for foreign appointees. We make all our own domestic law. We are fully masters of our own taxation system and our own justice system. Whatever EU regulations we adopt, we fully agree with almost all of them and would have adopted most of them even had we never been members. About one percent of our GDP is tied up with the EU and 99% isn't. We can trade with anyone in the world, and we do so when it's advantageous to do so. If the EU wants to make major changes that we don't like, we can use our veto.

If we leave the EU our trading relationships all over the world will be different but we will still be able to trade with anyone, subject to their mutual consent of course. We will no longer have to adopt EU laws and regulations but will in most cases continue to do so, in most cases voluntarily but in any case if we wish to continue to trade with them. The EU currently outstrips our next biggest trading partner by a factor of almost three, and I've yet to see a queue of nations rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of increasing their trade with us. I suppose there's still something of a market for Swiss cuckoo clocks. That new-found freedom will coincide with losses of freedoms in other trading relationships as we will have to agree to different standards, often lower ones. Our obligations to NATO and the UN will remain unchanged, but obligations they still are. And the EU will be able to make changes that we don't like, such as founding an EU army, that they can't make while we are members.

As members of the EU we enjoy an equal to or greater degree of self-determination than almost any other nation on Earth. As ex-members we will struggle to find trading relationships as fruitful as our current ones. As such, we will have to make many a compromise if our economy isn't to collapse. If self-determination means freedom to sink, then I advise the little Englanders who constantly make this desperately bogus argument to think again.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Iains
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 09:10 AM

Without information, that was meaningless, and, as it turned out, highly dangerous - -t was askig people to vote on their instincts and not on their knowledge or intelligence
The results have become glaringly obvious, Britain's economic and social structure have been badly effected, Parliamentary Democracy - the nearest thing ordinary people have to a say in their own lives, has been undermined to the point of destruction and the United Kingdom is facing break-up, with an outbreak of 'The Troubles' an almost forgone conclusion



The referendum was binary- in or out. I would expect anyone voting to have carried out some form of research to sway their voting preference.
It is deeply insulting to presume that anybody who voted did not know what they were voting for. The percentage of those with an IQ below 70 in the population is about 3%. Perhaps their motivation to vote one way or the other is questionable.

You are simply presenting your opinion on events, with nothing to back it up.
My opinion is that you are writing utter nonsense.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 08:50 AM

"We were consulted about our wishes on remaining in the EU"
Without information, that was meaningless, and, as it turned out, highly dangerous - -t was askig people to vote on their instincts and not on their knowledge or intelligence
The results have become glaringly obvious, Britain's economic and social structure have been badly effected, Parliamentary Democracy - the nearest thing ordinary people have to a say in their own lives, has been undermined to the point of destruction and the United Kingdom is facing break-up, with an outbreak of 'The Troubles' an almost forgone conclusion
None of this can possibly described as 'democratic' by the wildest stretch of the imagination
The Referendum was tantamount to asking a blind man to put a cross on a blank piece of paper - the only decent thing now would be to ask him to do it again armed with the knowledge of hat happened last time
I like to think you care enough to respond to this Nigel, but you or any of those who share your desire to leave have failed to do so far
Your silence says everything that needs to be said about the rights and wrongs of Brexit as far as i am concerned
It is totally beyond my comprehension why anybody should wish all this to happen - to the present generation and to the next - in self-imposed silence
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 06:27 AM

That may be so, Nigel, but I don't think it addresses the example I gave to illustrate why I think "we will have self determination' is not well defined.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 06:11 AM

Now, who are the 'we' with self determination? Not the general population, presumably. They would not be consulted. It is certainly not something they voted for in the fabled referendum.

Whether the general population is consulted or not appears not to matter a damn. We were consulted about our wishes on remaining in the EU and a large proportion of Parliament are doing everything within their power to prevent what was the popular outcome of that vote.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 03:10 AM

Even If we see no benefits from the above (But I believe we will), we will have self determination

 

For my part, I think this is one of the few things that Leave can really claim as a benefit of leaving, so it bears some examination.

 

Let's begin with a quotation from 'Brave New World':



"All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."

There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.



 

There is an intellectually valid case to claim self determination, even if it means you are a great deal worse off. But having mentioned it, I think we can leave it on one side, because few Leave supporters claim that: the claim is that - in the long run anyway - we will be better off.

 

Then there is the question of whether we are concerned by being constrained to do things we were doing anyway, or not to do things we had no intention of doing. If the EU were to pass a rule that every EU country had to have a nominated capital city, is that something that concerns you, since it would have no effect whatsoever in the real world? Maybe yes, maybe no. For me, not in the slightest.

 

But now let's get away from such abstract discussions and look at the proposition itself: we will have self determination. Who is this 'we', I wonder?

 

In my post of 3 October 19 at 05:04PM, I mentioned that Martin Callanan (one of the people who is now on the committee for exiting the EU) thought we should scrap maternity leave because it was a cost to business that restricted employment. You may agree with him, but for the purposes of this post I will assume you do not. If you do, I am fairly confident you can find some worker's right that you are in favour of which could be substitued - sick pay, maybe.

 

Let me also assume that he able to persuade the cabinet to drop maternity leave as a right.

 

Now, who are the 'we' with self determination? Not the general population, presumably. They would not be consulted. It is certainly not something they voted for in the fabled referendum.

 

You may say - as I am sure the government would - you have the choice to vote them out at the next election and bring in someone who will restore maternity leave. In theory, yes. In practice, that is not likely to be the Conservative who would just have dropped it, and while Labour would certainly say they would restore it, you may feel they would want to do many other things you did not agree with. So a committed Tory who was opposed to dropping maternity benefit would in practice have no choice to support the party proposing it. Where is their 'sef determination' on this matter?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Mossback
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 08:16 PM

Seems this Nigel chap has a great deal in common with Trump, Steve. They are both obsessed with some sort of paranoid "deep state" fantasy.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 08:07 PM

Yes but you see, Nigel, your ideology causes you to fail to attend to the actual nuts and bolts of the thing. As I tried to tell you, the Commission is appointed by all the member states. Member states, all fiercely nationalist, are hardly going to appoint a body that has undemocratic ambitions to override their established procedures and they are not going to appoint a body that they think will assume powers beyond their statutory limitations. You might as well say that the UK is an undemocratic superstate because civil servants draw up and suggest legislation (which they do: the average politico wouldn't have a clue. Like to comment on Cummings, for example..? Embarrassing bit of democratic deficit there, n'est-ce pas? Haven't heard you moaning...). But the obstinate fact remains that neither our civil service nor the European Commission, both appointed bodies, has even the slightest executive powers. We are not the USA. Not by a long chalk. Churchill may have mouthed that ambition, but we are no nearer to it even after seventy-five years. That's a comforting thought to those of us who are reasonably accomplished (it doesn't take much) when it comes to cutting through the lies of the leave brigade. Go on, tell us again about that European army that's about to be forced on us. Or that Turkey's about to join the EU...

What was that again about a European superstate...?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 07:14 PM

By the way, there is no "unelected superstate." The Commission can suggest and promote policy but cannot enact it. Each nation appoints its representative on the Commission. The European Council consists of the ELECTED heads of each of the 28 states.
As has been pointed out before, and you either ignore, or cannot understand.
Although the elected members are the only ones who can vote on whether any proposition becomes EU law, the only ones who can put forward possible new laws are the unelected bureaucrats.
From the EU's own website: Here
Legislative powers

How does the legislative process work?
A Member of the European Parliament, working in one of the parliamentary committees, draws up a report on a proposal for a ‘legislative text’ presented by the European Commission, the only institution empowered to initiate legislation. The parliamentary committee votes on this report and, possibly, amends it. When the text has been revised and adopted in plenary, Parliament has adopted its position. This process is repeated one or more times, depending on the type of procedure and whether or not agreement is reached with the Council.

If the (unelected) Commission are the only body that can put forward legislation then it matters not a lot whether the elected parliament can enact it. The commission can decide exactly what options are put in front of the parliament.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 06:51 PM

By the way, there is no "unelected superstate." The Commission can suggest and promote policy but cannot enact it. Each nation appoints its representative on the Commission. The European Council consists of the ELECTED heads of each of the 28 states. The Council provides political direction but (please listen...) has no legislative powers. The European Parliament is entirely elected by the electorates of the nation states and is the only EU body that can execute legislation. Generally, policy direction and new legislation, including regulations, are routinely arrived at by general consensus. You can't make a superstate out of 28 fiercely independent nations. I advise you in this regard to apprise yourself of the tiny proportions of both nation-state GDPs and nation-state legislation that has anything at all to do with the EU. You'll be disappointed to find that all the nations enjoy an overwhelming amount of independence when that is put alongside the influence of the EU. You've been taken in by talk of bent bananas and duck eggs, like all your rabid brexiteer compatriots. Perhaps you've also been taken in by the denial that out GDP will plummet by between five and seven percent shortly after brexit. Poor you. Poor us.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 06:41 PM

Raggytash.
Several of us have responded on many occasions. But you, or those who share your views have ignored our responses.

We will benefit by having control of our own fishing grounds (under international rules)
We will benefit by being free to make our own trade treaties with other (non EU) countries
We will benefit by not being required to have import tariffs which are designed to protect the produce of other EU member states.


Even if we see no benefits from the above (But I believe we will), we will have self-determination.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 06:27 PM

Nigel,

Over the past three and a half years (give or take, I don't want to give you the opportunity for nit-picking) I and many others have consistently stated our opinions and our reasons for holding them.

Not once has anyone on your side of the discussion been able to explain why they held their views. Not once.

There may be good reasons for voting to leave the EU but even after this time I still do not know what they are.

So please tell me how I, and millions of others like me, will benefit.

IF you can do so I may well join you.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 05:41 PM

From: Backwoodsman - PM
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 10:42 AM

From The Independent.

When will the Brexit-voters wake up to the fact that this haddock-faced POS and his bunch of liars fucked them over royally?

Never, in the field of human history, were so many shafted straight up the arse by so few.

Similarly, When will the 'remainers' (the losers of the vote) realise that the 'Brexit voters' are just looking to escape from the control of an unelected (by us) European "super-state"?

And when will the 'remainers' start giving us their own views, rather than just quoting their favoured 'news'paper?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 11:27 AM

"Never, in the field of human history, were so many shafted straight up the arse by so few."
Fascinating take on Britain's efforts to "stand on our own two feet"
Britain leaves Europe in order to crawl into Russia's and America's pockets
First, a betrayal of Climate Change measures to please Trump, now laying British democracy open to Russian interference to suck up to Putin - the leader who facilitated the attempted Salisbury assassinations
I hope the UK is looking forward to enjoying its new-found freedom!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 11:01 AM

While mysterious, the answer to all things Brexit is alternative arrangements. There will be no unified physics discovered here.
It will all be piecemeal arrangements as each problem is identified and slowly arrangened. It will become a particle zoo of exceptions and special cases.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 10:42 AM

From The Independent.

When will the Brexit-voters wake up to the fact that this haddock-faced POS and his bunch of liars fucked them over royally?

Never, in the field of human history, were so many shafted straight up the arse by so few.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 06:15 AM

" start whingeing about"
"stop whingeing" of course
Must stop posting before breakfast
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 05:20 AM

The Ulster Unionists have issued a warning of what is likely to happen if Johnson "Shafts Northern Ireland" over Brexit
They say they will not accept an 'economic union' with the South of Ireland in any way, shape or form
One prominent Unionist has been quoted as saying "We'll see how hard the Border is when the bombs start going off in Limerick"
I really think it's time Brits start whingeing about "The intransigent Irish refusing to compromise" and get their heads around what's at stake for all of us in all this
What happened in Glasgow a couple of months should have been warning enough that these nutters mean business
Time for Little England to wake up and smell the coffee, I think
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 03:51 AM

I agree, DMcG. It smacks of ‘begging’.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 03:17 AM

Johnson will offer the three leaders the option to either help him deliver a new deal this week or agree on a 'friendly version'

I was also struck by the linguistic structure of that. Compare it with "Johnson will seek agreement on delivering a new deal this week or …"

As expressed, Johnson has all the power. He makes an offer and the implicitly subordinate three leaders have to go along with his choices. That is not the reality of the situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 03:00 AM

”Sounds like another cake-and-eat-it rephrasing of leaving but getting some of the advantages of staying to me.”

Sounds like desperation to me...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 02:54 AM

According to the Sunday Times "Johnson will offer the three leaders the option to either help him deliver a new deal this week or agree on a 'friendly version' of a no-deal Brexit by 31 October, the newspaper said, citing a source familiar with the conversations."


A friendly version, eh? Sounds like another cake-and-eat-it rephrasing of leaving but getting some of the advantages of staying to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Oct 19 - 05:52 AM

"I wonder how many think the rumoured arrangement if NI staying in the customs union without being explicitly asked"
According to this morning's report the DUP want nothing to do with remaining in The Custom's Union despite yet another enormous bung by Johnson
Northern Ireland voted against leaving, Northern Irish business and farming aer set fair to be hit extremely hard by leaving and it now obvious the people are even more against leaving yet the DUP is (a party which no longer holds an overall majority) is making demands that will bankrupt many Irish businesses
About as democratic as the vote to leave in the first plave, I would say
Madness
THE PUPPET WHO PULLS BRITAIN'S STRINGS
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 12 Oct 19 - 04:21 AM

I wonder how many think the rumoured arrangement if NI staying in the customs union without being explicitly asked. If your response involves the fact NI voted remain, consider how Scotland is likely to react.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 09:40 PM

Farages disgusting poster was racist in nature and designed to take root in WELL PREPARED GROUND
Since Brexit, the rise in racism has now reached 58*%
That rise has been directly identified as being LINKED TO BREXIT
TRY YOUR OWN PARTY

Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 06:08 PM

My post of 11.58 was moved here by a kind mod, though only half of it actually belongs here. The other half should be in the climate thread (it is now!). Sorry for the confusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 05:09 PM

Nice one, John. The allusion is not lost on me. Nor would it have been lost on arch-capitalist Theo Paphitis last night...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Iains
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 03:25 PM

From: Backwoodsman - PM
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 02:56 PM

What on earth are you on about?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 02:56 PM

Electric Cars means Electric Cars! Dyson made a promise in 2016 to build electric cars, and he must deliver on that promise! We don’t care whether it’s ‘economically viable’, we were promised electric cars. Electric cars must be delivered...!!

Subject: RE: climate - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 11:58 AM

Rupert Read of Extinction Rebellion was excellent on Question Time last night, measured, reasonable and articulate, in complete contrast with the dreadful and disreputable Julia Hartley-Brewer, who appears to be a climate-change denier of the I'm-proud-of-my-pig-ignorance school of non-thought, and the waffly archetypally-smug Toryboy Grant Crapps...oops, Schapps...

(Off-topic but same programme, I must say that Theo Paphitis, who I can't stand, was amazingly honest and balanced on brexit, saying that he wanted the public to have another say in the light of what we've learned in the last three years and saying it in a most forceful and lucid manner. And he was a leaver!)

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 05:31 AM

Looks like Dyson's electric car might have become
ANOTHER BREXIT CASUALTY
A case of another Brexiteer biting his own bum
Florence Nightingale would have had her hands full with all these walking wounded
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 04:37 AM

It will be interesting to se which way Varadkar jumps - I hope his efforts are no more than an effort to be fair - but he IS a POLITICIAN and cannot be entirely trusted
Ireland cannot accept anything less than a guarantee there can never be a border - for economic and for peace reasons
Ha cannot accept the promises of a serial liar like Johnson (he has the examples of many other British politicians, past and present for him to know that)
Ireland has been hit just as Britain has, economically and socially, by this death-wish vote - throwing a return of violence into the mix would be a total betrayal of the Irish people - and the Brits who stand to have a repeat of what happened in Glasgow if the Troubles flare up again
We have an National election coming up in the the near future - I hope Leo the Lion doesn't become a 'Leo the Lyin' and forget that
I've noticed that the Irish people tend to give a little more thought to where they put their crosses than their counterparts back home do
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 02:30 AM

To put it another way, Johnson's side got him to present a proposal to the EU they could not possibly accept. I suspect the EU have got him to present a proposal to Parliament they cannot accept.

But if Labour can be cast as the ones refusing to accept it, that suits the PM very nicely, even if a substantial proportion of Conservatives can't accept it either.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: DMcG
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 02:24 AM

Much talk of the 'pathway'in the papers. Well, I have been wrong before and no doubt will be in the future, but I don't see it. The FT talks of NI staying in the EU, which is indeed a pathway, but how he gets that through Parliament is hard to see. Then there is the fact that Johnson's team have dropped all the agreements about protecting the environment and workers rights, so Labour and the Greens (and others) won't support that.

I suspect it is more blame management than progress.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Oct 19 - 09:20 PM

That's exactly right. And it's exactly why leavers can't stomach the thought of a confirmatory vote. It's nothing to do with the fictitious "will of the people" or the sham democracy of that referendum in 2016. It's because they know they'd lose. If they thought they'd win, they'd be pushing for it like mad. Brexiteers are either racist, ignorant or feeble-minded. And they are terribly shallow, and they have no idea what democracy actually means. I'm not taking prisoners on this.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Raggytash
Date: 10 Oct 19 - 02:55 PM

I've been considering the report of yesterday that most polls in the past three years indicate that there has been a switch in the population which would now favour remaining in the EU.

If this is correct it would lead me to believe that a minority favour the option of leaving.

Thus in a democratic society we will be allowing a minority to take us to a disasterous future.

If democracy and the will of the people is so important surely we should remain in the EU.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit #3: A futile gesture?
From: Raggytash
Date: 10 Oct 19 - 12:58 PM

Thank you Nigel.