Brexit.

[danielravennest]

I wish our House and Senate worked this way as well. We have two parties that typically stalemate or spend their time undoing the other's implementations. I'm really hoping the Trump debacle will at least prompt people to support other parties so that our government has to function by coalition.

With our "first past the post" winner-take-all elections, two parties is the stable situation. We would have to change over to "proportional representation" for third parties to be viable.

 

[Lianne Marten]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Brilliant explainer of what "No Deal" or "WTO Deal" actually means, with flamethrowers and pornhub, oh my! A World Trade Deal, It Ain't.

So, what’s the ‘No Deal = World Deal’ argument?

It runs like this: “In the absence of a negotiated Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union, UK-EU trade won’t become lawless. The rules of the World Trade Organization will continue to apply, a deal so good 164 countries are signed up to it!”

Referring to falling from the heights of the Single Market to the paltry safety net offered by baseline WTO commitments as a “World Trade Deal” is a brilliant piece of branding. It’s like if your mother threw you out and you re-branded ‘being homeless in Greater London’ as ‘living on a 1,583 square kilometer property with plenty of natural light.’

Unfortunately, it’s also largely (as you Brits say) bollocks.

 

[eighthdwarf Checchinato]

Who were these lobbyists who's will brought the EU into existence?

That, I don't know. But if you want to know the names of their marionettes among the politicians, look who signed the various treaties that finally resulted in the creation of the EU.
Maybe you don't know it but the EU's predecessors were nothing but economic treaties in favor of Big Business: No matter if it was the ECSC or Euratom, or the EEC - all happened in favor of the big companies. There was nothing really democratic about them.

 

[Free]

We demand our share for educating you on this subject.

/me shreds bill into tiny pieces and starts slipping the bits into envelopes...

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I had always thought that the EU originated from the European Coal and Steel Community, designed as a supranational organisation to prevent France and Germany ever again going to war over the resources of the Saar Basin.

 

[eighthdwarf Checchinato]

I had always thought that the EU originated from the European Coal and Steel Community, designed as a supranational organisation to prevent France and Germany ever again going to war over the resources of the Saar Basin.

That was the excuse they sold to the public.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

That was the excuse they sold to the public.

But you know the inside story of what really happened, which I'm sure you'll share with the rest of us.

 

[Free]

DUN DUN DUN...

 

[Beebo Brink]

The Brexiteers have failed — so they blame Theresa May

Any Brexit deal involves bad choices. Either Britain pays an economic price for losing access to markets, or — if Britain stays inside European customs arrangements without helping to set the rules — there is a price to be paid in influence. With an eye on voters’ wallets, May chose the latter. And now — now! — after months of debate and thousands of hours of broadcast news and millions of words — most of the Brexiteers still will not accept their own responsibility for this outcome, the least bad of the bad outcomes on offer.

 

[Tigger]

But you know the inside story of what really happened, which I'm sure you'll share with the rest of us.

Over the last two years I've spent a lot, and I do mean a hell of a lot of my time, talking to anti-EU types. One remarkable thing I have noted is that their many reasons for hating the EU pretty much all boil down to conspiracy theories and fantasies. The EU is a puppet of our corporate overlords is a fairly common one.

 

[Tigger]

The Brexiteers have failed — so they blame Theresa May

That quote is a little inaccurate; The deal she's made is the least bad of the bad outcomes which are possible as a result of the red lines that she unilaterally chose.

If she had not set those red lines there are, or rather there were many better potential outcomes. Her deal still will not get approved and May will have to select between no deal and no brexit.

 

[Luisa Land]

Over the last two years I've spent a lot, and I do mean a hell of a lot of my time, talking to anti-EU types. One remarkable thing I have noted is that their many reasons for hating the EU pretty much all boil down to conspiracy theories and fantasies. The EU is a puppet of our corporate overlords is a fairly common one.

well reality is often somewhat complex.....conspiration theories can make it so simple,
conspiration theories have also the advantage that the view of the world which is prevailing at the far right and often to find at the far left has not to be changed.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I wish our House and Senate worked this way as well. We have two parties that typically stalemate or spend their time undoing the other's implementations. I'm really hoping the Trump debacle will at least prompt people to support other parties so that our government has to function by coalition.

The underlying problem is that the USA are using design wise compared to most other countries a very old system, which was good for the time when it was created, but today the flaws are visible and it contains elements, which back then were necessary - e.g. the electoral college - but nowadays due to modern communication systems and short travel times by air crafts are just an anachronistic tradition kept alive. There's a big difference between what a party in the USA is compared to the UK or France.

Some systems do prefer by design stable majorities, so oppressing the impact of small parties while others do embrace the idea of many small parties in the parliament and do exactly nurture that.

So since many countries in Europe compared to the USA are either younger as democracy, or have adapted their type of democracy from time to time, there are big differences.

And then there's the UK, where the first speaker of the House of Commons goes back to 1258, and they've been a constitutional monarchy since the 13. century. So the UK has a very long, democratic tradition they do honour and maintain.

 

[Daniel Voyager]

No vote on Brexit deal before Christmas

 

[Sid]

Thankfully March 29 is late in the season in 2019.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I wish our House and Senate worked this way as well. We have two parties that typically stalemate or spend their time undoing the other's implementations. I'm really hoping the Trump debacle will at least prompt people to support other parties so that our government has to function by coalition.

Unfortunately the way our system is set up is not like the uk. Except for a couple of indies (who are mostly with a major party) almost everyone in congress is a D or an R. I would LOVE to see a congress where no one party had a complete majority so had to work with at least one other party to get things done.

 

[Kara Spengler]

That, I don't know. But if you want to know the names of their marionettes among the politicians, look who signed the various treaties that finally resulted in the creation of the EU.
Maybe you don't know it but the EU's predecessors were nothing but economic treaties in favor of Big Business: No matter if it was the ECSC or Euratom, or the EEC - all happened in favor of the big companies. There was nothing really democratic about them.

That may be what it was in the past but it does not have a lot to do with what it is now. At a meta-government level it is interesting though: it is somewhere between mutual beneficial treaties and a government.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Thankfully March 29 is late in the season in 2019.

Oh, plenty of time, why my entire office is moving before then! [Forget that we have put more time into planning this move then an entire country has been planning to exit the EU.]

 

[Plurabelle Laszlo]

That was the excuse they sold to the public.

But you know the inside story of what really happened, which I'm sure you'll share with the rest of us.

Over the last two years I've spent a lot, and I do mean a hell of a lot of my time, talking to anti-EU types. One remarkable thing I have noted is that their many reasons for hating the EU pretty much all boil down to conspiracy theories and fantasies. The EU is a puppet of our corporate overlords is a fairly common one.

It's a common simplification to believe that, just because something seems designed to favor big companies and their economic interests, it would have to be the result of a conspiracy.

That is not how capitalism works. You don't need sinister overlords weaving their webs. The founding states of the European community were capitalist states. The concept of a United Europe is based on the concept of capitalist growth in a free market. So, yes, the EU is designed to stabilize the capitalist system and not to put the big players of the European or global industries at a disadvantage. They didn't have to conspire. The EU simply was not the attempt to revolutionize the economic system or to redistribute wealth or the means of production.

One of the main motivation in the aftermath of WWII WAS to prevent wars between the member states. I have a lot of critique regarding the EU, it's democratic legitimization processes, it's migration policies, it's bureaucracies etc. But the EU was pretty successful with keeping the internal peace, and that is one hell of an historical achievement we shouldn't just throw away.

There are valid concerns regarding the democratic deficits of the EU institutions (and there are also valid attempts to work on these issues). Two decades back or so, I might have entertained ideas to disband and reorganize the EU, too. Nowadays - we don't have time for that. We are facing global crises of unknown dimensions. We desperately need international cooperation to fight climate change and to prepare for it's consequences. We need cooperation to fight the rise of populism and fascist movements. We need international cooperation to deal with the inevitable mass migration to come. We need European cooperation to counter the shift in the global power balance. All these things can not be answered on a national level (and btw, the majority of nation states weren't founded by basis-democratic people's votes, either). Calling for disintegration and re-nationalization -now- is terribly short-sighted and dangerous. We need to work with what we have, even though it's anything but perfect. Just like with the UN, there is no practicable alternative right now. And we don't have the time to build one.