Brexit.

[Kara Spengler]

I don't get it. There is a more or less 'take it or leave it'-agreement on the table (the EU has stretched far to much towards the UK already as it is IMHO) and most of the parliamentarians are acting like the negotiations are just in the early stages and everything can be changed if they want to.
With what kind of special glasses are they looking at the world?

There are, what, 16 weeks (minus holidays too) ..... plenty of time to come to a new agreement and work out the details.

 

[Sid]

[sarcastic]
Before signing anything there should be another agreement in place first IMHO:
"Once the UK is out, they can't apply for a new membership before March 3999 and if they decide to stay in the EU afterall, they can't withdraw again until the same date minus 5 years. And if they ever return after 3999, they can be booted within 3 working days though by a majority decision."

[/sarcastic]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

sure it is always the EU to blame...
I guess Verheugen refers to the remark of Sabine Weyand (acting as second to EU negotiator Michel Barnier (Wikipedia)) who said something like, "the EU exercises control over every expect with this draft of the treaty.." Maybe not very diplomatic but compared with the humilations and insults members of the british government and other leading Tories made about europe and the EU it is realy harmless imho.

Well, it's an opinion, nothing more, nothing less. But the opinion of somebody, namely Günter Verheugen, who worked for over five years as European Commissioner. So he's someone who got great insight and experience in the ways how the EU works, so by far means no Brexiteer, but an elder statesman, who has a different perspective than most and makes it interesting to read.

It's always good to read many arguments as a mental exercise. You can agree, disagree, or somewhat in between, but it is always good to not listen to one opinion only.

 

[Luisa Land]

Thread by @BBCkatyaadler: "1) Again and again I’m struck by the chasm in thinking between leading MP’s on and the viewpoint of EU leaders - and remember, if yo […]" #Brexit

Michal Katya Adler (born 1972)[1][2] is a British journalist, who, having worked for the BBC since 1998, is now its Europe Editor. (Wikipedia)

 

[Luisa Land]

Well, it's an opinion, nothing more, nothing less. But the opinion of somebody, namely Günter Verheugen, who worked for over five years as European Commissioner. So he's someone who got great insight and experience in the ways how the EU works, so by far means no Brexiteer, but an elder statesman, who has a different perspective than most and makes it interesting to read.

It's always good to read many arguments as a mental exercise. You can agree, disagree, or somewhat in between, but it is always good to not listen to one opinion only.

ok I agree: it is an opinion and as such it is ok to quote it.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Longish article here on the mythology behind the English right's hostility to the EU: The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit | Fintan O'Toole

 

[Tigger]

To expand on that, try this:

European Commission in the UK - European Commission

Eurpopean commission list of lies told about the EU by british papers.

 

[Tigger]

Firefox wouldn't open this as they regard it as a 'Deceptive Site'.

Odd as I use firefox and it wasnt flagged in that way when I posted the link but it is now. Newsthump has been doing satirical stuff on UK news for quite a while, I dont expect it to be a dangerous site although it is possible that they have ads that could be malicious, that's caught a few sites before.

 

[Tigger]

There are, what, 16 weeks (minus holidays too) ..... plenty of time to come to a new agreement and work out the details.

No there isnt plenty of time at all. The negotiations are due to stop this month in order that what is agreed can be implemented and passed into law by the various people who need to do that in time for the exit day. That takes time.

Pretty much the last chance for a deal to be agreed will be around December 14th or so, which will be the last meeting of the EU council this year.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Part of the problem, it seems to me, with Brexit and the referendum is that it all exposes, rather cruelly, some of the myths about democracy and the role of government.

On paper, it sounds simple enough -- the people express a choice and, since we're a democracy, the government should deliver us our choice, rather as we choose our order on Amazon and they should deliver it. Though, of course, Amazon give us the option to cancel the order or return it for a full refund, which isn't on offer here.

However, people are already complaining (not that they ever really stopped, of course) that they won't be getting "what I voted for." Strictly speaking, that's completely wrong, of course -- people voted to leave the European Union and, as a matter of both UK and EU law, that's exactly what will happen on March 29 unless someone pulls the plug on the process first.

That, though, might be dismissed as a legalistic argument that ignores the fact people thought they were voting for something very different from what will actually be delivered -- a problem which is easily remedied if the goods we ordered on Amazon don't live up to our expectations but is far more intractable in the present circumstances. People mean, of course, that they thought they were voting for all the things Vote Leave promised them, or that they thought that Vote Leave had promised, or for whatever they associated with slogans like "Take Back Control."

In the normal course of democratic events, if we think our Members of Parliament or local Councils aren't delivering what they promised, or what we want, or if we've changed our minds about what we want, we can seek to remedy that come the next elections. However, that doesn't apply here, and the disappointed supporters of Brexit are complaining that, while Theresa May wants to deliver what they ordered (the UK no longer a member of the EU) it's most certainly not what they wanted or what they thought they were ordering (Britain to retain all the advantages of EU membership but with none of the disadvantages).

The fact of the matter is, of course, that politics isn't like ordering something from Amazon. It's more a matter of assenting to a set of policies and a plan of action that we hope will achieve a particular set of outcomes. We can't generally tell our MPs to "make this happen," when "this" is something like "reduce unemployment" or "reduce hospital waiting times" or "make housing more affordable" or whatever. They can tell us that, if elected, they'll do something that they claim will have the outcomes we desire, and they can then go ahead and try to implement the measures they propose, and we can then see what the outcome looks like, but that's as far as it goes.

The fact of the matter, or it seems to me, is that the powers of government to make things happen are massively constrained by reality, and much of government is a matter of trying to respond to events over which you have little or no control in ways you hope will turn out well but have no real way of knowing what they'll do.

Much of the point of economic forecasting is, to my mind, not that you use it to predict the future, as you might consult a spirit medium or cast the I Ching, but that you try to learn more about the way things actually do work from the ways in which the forecast turns out to be wrong, and I think the same is true of government -- the world is a massively chaotic system, full of actors not under government's control, and much of the time the best government can do is make limited changes, while hoping for the best, and refrain from doing anything massively harmful (invading Russia, getting into a land war in Asia, leaving the EU....).

So, to cut a long story short, the referendum was as much about giving the people the opportunity to decide Britain's future as is children's writing letters to Santa about persuading him to give them what they want for Christmas. It works fine so long as the kids ask for something that's available and within their parents' budget for Christmas gifts but if they ask for a real live unicorn, they're in for a big disappointment.

What we're starting to hear now are the yells of protest about the unicorn's failure to arrive as ordered, along with desperate attempts by politicians who profited by promoting "unicorns for all" to blame this non-arrival on mutinous elves or the wrong sort of snow or anything other than the fact they've been promising things that are, in their very nature, undeliverable.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Longish article here on the mythology behind the English right's hostility to the EU: The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit | Fintan O'Toole

One answer to the question raised in the article, why there was no foto ever of Thatcher holding hands with Kohl: because there never, ever was a friendship treaty between Germany and the UK. That Mitterand was able to do this with Kohl was the result of the Elyseé treaty, which was signed back then by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer 21 years before.

This treaty had a big influence on the German-French relationships, and still has it until today. With the UK nothing similar ever came alive, maybe because the UK and Germany don't share a border, and the Brits always were not so inclined with what was happening on the continent, or Adenauer didn't bother, we'll never really know.

@Innula: the sane solution would be a second referendum, now that the British people do know exactly how ugly a Brexit might turn out in the end.

@Kara: this compromise is the result of over two years frustrating and hard work. So this means it is almost certainly the final offer from the EU to the UK, so expect minor details to change, but not the big picture.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

@Innula: the sane solution would be a second referendum, now that the British people do know exactly how ugly a Brexit might turn out in the end.

I really am in two minds about a second referendum. It might be the only available solution that's politically acceptable but it's by no means problem-free.

The first problem is simply arranging a second referendum. The first one took about a year to get the legislation through Parliament, and that legislation was reasonably non-controversial.

Think, though, of the quite genuine questions that need to be decided before arranging a second referendum. What should the options be? Leave on the proposed terms vs Remain? Leave on the proposed terms vs crash out with no agreement? Leave on the proposed terms vs ask the EU to offer better terms or else ... what? Or maybe there should be 4 options, which voters rank in order of preference -- Remain, Accept EU proposals, Leave w/out an agreement, Ask the EU for a different agreement (which they won't give us)?

Then, of course, you've got plenty of subsidiary questions to solve -- who votes in the second referendum? What about 16-year-olds? EU citizens resident in the UK? UK citizens resident elsewhere in the EU? What rules shall we have for the campaign and -- very relevant after what we've learned over the last two years -- how are they to be policed?

These are all perfectly genuine questions, and need to be properly solved before another referendum.

Meanwhile, as a matter of both EU and UK law, the UK will cease to be a member of the EU on March 29 next year, unless something happens to stop the process, so either the UK withdraws the A50 notification (assuming it lawfully can) or the EU agree to give us time for this second referendum, which is going to take at least a year to organise.

This is all academic, though, since there's no possibility of getting the necessary referendum legislation through the current Parliament.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

In the meantime...
UK austerity has inflicted 'great misery' on citizens, UN says

The UK government has inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity, the United Nations poverty envoy has found.

Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact-finding mission to the UK with a stinging declaration that levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”, even though the UK is the world’s fifth largest economy,

About 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty and 1.5 million are destitute, being unable to afford basic essentials, he said, citing figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. He highlighted predictions that child poverty could rise by 7% between 2015 and 2022, possibly up to a rate of 40%.

[...]

The government said it “completely disagreed” with Alston’s analysis. A spokesperson said household incomes were at a record high, income inequality had fallen and that universal credit, which Alston attacked as “Orwellian” and “fast falling into universal discredit”, was supporting people into work faster.

“We are absolutely committed to helping people improve their lives while providing the right support for those who need it,” the spokesperson said.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

And one of the many infuriating things about the UK today is that the rapporteur's report on extreme poverty, which should be the lead news story and foremost in the minds of both government and opposition, is going to be completely overshadowed by ersatz drama from the extreme Brexiteers.

 

[Luisa Land]

And one of the many infuriating things about the UK today is that the rapporteur's report on extreme poverty, which should be the lead news story and foremost in the minds of both government and opposition, is going to be completely overshadowed by ersatz drama from the extreme Brexiteers.

yes I think one can call it "Ersatz-drama"

It is not only in Britain a politcal entity, that the real problems are not discussed in a broad public, they are often covered by elements of superficial mythes , conspiracy theory, not recognizing or knowing well known reasons or facts, simple explainings who is responsible for misery and bad developments : EU, refugess, immigrants ...
Its much easier to blame a social group (which doesnt belong to the society (in their mind)) - EU, strangers, refugees- instead of discussing more complex interrelations.
Maybe I have a blurred perception, but for the UK this phenomenon appears very strong to me.

and what I noticed:
May said, when defending her plan, " no-one came forward with another proposal, which could be implemented in reality (besides No-Brexit at all)"
and she is right.
Lots of many different demands, lots of Unicorns and this from ppl like Johnson or DD who 's duty it has been for a long time as responsible ministers to negotiate and develop such solutions... but nothing , no proposal for solutions from them, they completly failed.. and now this patter...an agitated crackle..

but seems these praters are still popular in parts of the uk, instead of having lost all credit

 

[Innula Zenovka]

To expand on that, try this:

European Commission in the UK - European Commission

Eurpopean commission list of lies told about the EU by british papers.

Examples include EU law bans church bells, Euro notes responsible for impotency and EU orders swings to be pulled down.

 

[Kara Spengler]

No there isnt plenty of time at all. The negotiations are due to stop this month in order that what is agreed can be implemented and passed into law by the various people who need to do that in time for the exit day. That takes time.

Pretty much the last chance for a deal to be agreed will be around December 14th or so, which will be the last meeting of the EU council this year.

Might want to check the tuning of your sarcasm detector there.

 

[Ashiri]

Examples include EU law bans church bells, Euro notes responsible for impotency and EU orders swings to be pulled down.

Daily Fail I guess.

The more I see of Brexit, the gladder I am that my Parents decided to emigrate when my sister and I were young.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]