Brexit

#Muted!

Brexit will or won’t happen. But either way I don’t want to waste any more minutes reading about it. I’ve stopped watching the story tellers…sorry news boys and girls :joy: and I’m going to live a brexit free life as much as possibly possible :blush:

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The undemocratic part is we were given a choice and no matter how slim the majority (given some elections 4% is not a slim majority) they should have been working towards leaving.

Then as has happened the unelected eurocrats sensing that the majority of politicians didn’t like the result put forward their plan / deal (Theresa May’s so called deal) which they knew full well wouldn’t be acceptable and chaos has ensued. There was no negotiation just this is how it is and we’re not changing anything, regardless. The sneaky sods created the Irish Border problem, which should be treated like the Swiss border, but wouldn’t have created any problems.

For me what this highlights is that our politicians and civil service have been little more than by-standers since 1973 in terms of negotiating anything with the rest of world. Now the idea of leaving the eu fills them with dread as they will have to do these things and be fully accountable if it goes wrong and or needs changing. Also they lose the default answer of “the eu made us do it” when it comes to taxes etc. We had to introduce VAT on things to stay aligned with the eu.

I liken remain politicians to the appeasers 80 years ago who wanted to cut a deal with the Germans. Thankfully it never happened.

This is a helpful opinion to have…

The EU is DEFINITELY comparable to Nazi Germany, no need to think that one over.

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Of course, with our best deal of any member and most concessions…
The needs and desires of us against the needs and desires of 27. How did anyone ever think that was a negotiation with much room and in which we had any power?

This whole debacle has been a deluded fantasy from the start and has poisoned the entirety of UK politics and political discourse for at least a generation.

“we’re sick of experts”
“it’s undemocratic to hold a vote”
“it’s democracy to shut down parliament”.
“I voted for no Deal even though everyone telling me to leave said there would be a deal”

The mental gymnastics is astounding. We’re a mess. As an electorate, we’ve been lied to, conned, cheated, and lapped up spin… But the day people genuinely and unironically believe and expound that it’s undemocratic to vote and democracy in action to prevent our democratic machinations from working…

Well, we’ve gone from SNAFU to FUBAR.

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You could all try using the actual Brexit Thread rather than the Laugh Thread?

Oh yeah, just spotted.

In fairness though, if I don’t laugh I’ll cry…

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In the reported words of Mikail Sergeyvitch, ‘the eastern european countries gained freedom from the USSR, wh do they want to join the EU’.

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And, after the Miller womans case over A50, the MPs voted 2:1 to trigger A50.

Not to forget, 40 yrs ago this week - Mountbatten was murdered & Warren Point the same day. :frowning_face: One of my best mates in the ATC survived Warren Point, but was later killed by a booby-trap bomb. His father was our Sqn WO.

May your friend rest in peace

Oh I have enjoyed the irony of John Major, he who prorogued parliament in 1997 to avoid debate on the cash-for-questions affair, but apparently Boris Johnson doing it isn’t right.

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The UK is unable to charge 5% VAT on solar battery storage.

Umm ok?

You asked for an example :slight_smile:

Even if they could I doubt any of the stealth taxes like VAT on fuel, insurance etc would be rescinded.

Actually, I have another - quite a bit of Corbyns’ domestic economic program would be, if not illegal under EU law, then sufficiently close to the wind to make the legal challenges last far longer than any Corbyn lead government.

If you speak to serious lefties (and I don’t count Corbyn as a serious lefty, he’s a sixth former who never grew up), their problem with the EU is the neo-liberal/entrenched capitalist nature of it.

And before anyone talks about Corbynism being Communism, most of what he proposes would have existed under any Tory Government from 1950 to the 1980’s, and indeed to some extent - bar the language - it’s not dissimilar to TM’s attitudes within one nation conservatism.

Some will point out that many countries in the EU have existing systems that aren’t a million miles from Corbynism - and they are right. The EU hasn’t been particularly good at forcing some change to those, but it has been effective at legislating against changing from a private sector model to a public sector model.

(This isn’t a post in support of either, it’s just pointing out that membership of the EU does restrict what domestic economic policies a democratically elected government can enact).

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There will never be a Corbyn led government .If Labour win the next election he ll be pushed off a cliff and Mcdonnell will take over. Corbyn as has been pointed out is a flim flam artist .Ive had to sit through his speeches at my TU congress and I thought id entered a time warp. Brexit has damaged Labour just as much as the Conservatives in my view.Certainly from a TU angle Corbyn has lost me more members from my branch than any other thing over his approach to Brexit and the parties apparent contempt for its core vote.
I voted leave as my union basically ordered the membership to vote to remain.The final straw union wise for me came a few weeks ago when all union leaders backed a second referendum without any recourse to the membership.Now if they had of held a ballot and won it fair enough but this was just a diktat (and stuff the membership).
I just hope after the last three plus years that this comes out alright as politicians on all sides have screwed this up big style.

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Those who bring up John Major proroguing Parliament (for admittedly questionable reasons) for 19 days in 1997 seem to conveniently forget the UK wasn’t facing the significant change of potentially leaving the EU less than two weeks from the date of Parliament reopening.

Also, John Major and the Conservatives then went on to lose the 1997 general election less than two months later. Although Labour was rather more on the ascendancy than it is now.

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I am actually thinking we should dissolve parliament and then have the Queen step in and take the reigns along with selected advisors from a broad range of backgrounds and see where we go from there…
Our so called elected representatives are to busy feathering their own nests to care about the country.

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