Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
It's like being trapped in a farcical version of real life instead of Real Life itself. I keep wanting to look straight to camera and roll my eyes.
Current Affairs EU In or Out
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It's like being trapped in a farcical version of real life instead of Real Life itself. I keep wanting to look straight to camera and roll my eyes.
Old Blue 2
Player Valuation: £40m
What on earth are you talking about, Bruce?
The point I made is that Cameron made no plans whatsoever for the eventuality that 'Leave' would win. It's called forward/succession planning...
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Which tells its own story, of course.
It is very easy to apportion blame in this situation but IMO it is one that having decided to exit the EU no one could easily do an excellent job.
The healthiest sort of personal relationship is one between two people who are emotionally self sufficient such that if the relationship breaks down both parties find their feet reasonably easily.
The worst sort is one where the two peoples emotional (and sometimes practical) needs are so enmeshed together that the relationship breaking up becomes more difficult than it needed to.
IMO the EU enmeshes its countries together to such an extent that the leaving or break up, rather than being quite a straightforward thing actually becomes a near impossibility to unravel oneself from it.
The ex Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is very anti EU but was also anti Brexit because of the above, referring to the difficulties of removing oneself from the EU as being "like Hotel California: You can check out but you can never leave".
Following the will of the people (yes I know not all the people - just 52% of those who voted - but still a valid democratic vote) the Tory government are IMO doing about as well as can be expected in trying to extracate us from what I see as our highly disfunctional relationship with the disfunctional organisation - the EU
The healthiest sort of personal relationship is one between two people who are emotionally self sufficient such that if the relationship breaks down both parties find their feet reasonably easily.
The worst sort is one where the two peoples emotional (and sometimes practical) needs are so enmeshed together that the relationship breaking up becomes more difficult than it needed to.
IMO the EU enmeshes its countries together to such an extent that the leaving or break up, rather than being quite a straightforward thing actually becomes a near impossibility to unravel oneself from it.
The ex Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is very anti EU but was also anti Brexit because of the above, referring to the difficulties of removing oneself from the EU as being "like Hotel California: You can check out but you can never leave".
Following the will of the people (yes I know not all the people - just 52% of those who voted - but still a valid democratic vote) the Tory government are IMO doing about as well as can be expected in trying to extracate us from what I see as our highly disfunctional relationship with the disfunctional organisation - the EU
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Having at least the semblance of a clue would have been nice, like.
Let it be known that we who were pee-ed off about being forced to leave on a wave of lies and racism are now angry beyond belief about the lack of vision amongst those who - ha! - "took back control."
We will not forget your ineptitude, nor your lack of apologies....
If you were in charge of the Brexit process though (yes, even though you didn't vote for it) what practically would you do differently? If the people now in charge don't have a clue, what would having a clue look like?
It really isn't so easy to say as it is new ground and needs a whole lot of unraveling from the enmeshment that I mentioned.
I'll have a quick stab at one or two things:
I'd ask the EU for a quick initial agreement that those EU citizens already in Britain (and those Brits in the EU) could stay in their respective countries. But oh wait! Theresa May has already suggested to the EU that this be agreed and they have refused to consider it at this stage (so whose fault is that?)
To save time I would enshrine all aspects of EU law that currently affect us into UK law. Parliament can then choose to repeal or amend such law itself at its leisure as it wishes and as we vote for.
On trade it's is very difficult to have Things totally mapped out prior to negotiation. I'm not sure that our government doesn't have a clue though. I think it is pretty clear that Theresa May has decided that she wants Britain to be able to control its own Borders and immigration. I also suspect if she can have a free trade agreement or single market Without giving up this control of immigration she would choose this. And if she cannot get agreement on this from the EU then it will be a so called harder Brexit as she will not give way on the immigration issue as she perceives that that would be acting against the public will.
So that's a mixture of what I would do and what I think the government has in mind to do.
Pretty good and logical I think and as I say all too easy to apportion blame or assume incompetence in our leaders .
regarding your assertions about leaving in a wave of lies and racism I have described several times in the thread how I consider lies were told equally on both sides (not unusual among politicians) and how wanting to curtail immigration as a view is not inherently racist (though I admit that some people who want to curtail immigration might want to do so for racist reasons).
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
You can assert it all you like - it's obvious to everyone that the Leave side told some massive whoppers and dog-whistled to all and sundry about refugees "swamping" the country.
Feel free to keep trotting out your tired, unconvincing excuses but please don't hope that you've helped create some new Utopian Albion - you really haven't. In fact, you've helped create a cesspit of racism and small-mindedness in a time when we should have been beyond that. Brexitistas still have this idea that they're saving us from something and that everything will be all right in the end and yet, when it comes down to it, nobody really believes them because their case is built on prejudice, lies and wishful thinking. Well done.
I am admitting the leave side lied about the money to the NHS. You are not admitting the remain side used fear and economic lies to shore up their case.
I think I've said a lot in this thread about practical positive reasons for or effects of Brexit (and often from a left wing point of view). You have never countered my points about the bias in immigration to EU as opposed to non EU citizens or trade with fellow EU countries and tarrifs to non EU ones.
I don't think my vote is creating a utopian Britain because I don't agree with the whole political/economic system that is dominant at the moment but I believe that out rather than in has a better chance of creating one.
I really object to you stating that I am trotting out excuses when I have given a whole lot of reasoning over many posts on here. That of course doesn't make me right - we all have opinions but at least I am doing more than just trotting out "blah blah racism, blah blah lies" while not recognising that ones own side lied at least as much and that the EUs trade and immigration policies could easily be seen as self serving and harmful to other countries in an even more practically serious way to racism. Frankly after writing all this I have been in two minds whether to wipe it and not post this reply as I don't feel much point in spending time on a poor quality of debate though to be fair you did reply in a bit more detail to one of my posts on the last page so I can't say you haven't put any effort in.
Anyway Ive decided to hit post reply on this but can't guarantee I will do so much more (you may we'll breathe a sigh of relief at that
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Old Blue 2
Player Valuation: £40m
You appear to be confusing 'campaigns' (i.e. Leave or Remain, which campaigns ceased to exist at midnight on 22nd June last year) with the political requirement to follow whichever course was required once the Referendum decision was decided.
'Campaign' is totally different to 'Implementation'...
With respect though, I'm sure we can both agree that policy making is done best when it's driven by evidence. Suffice to say, it's difficult to analyze life outside of the EU in this way as we have no evidence to go on, but in that case you would hope that the protagonists for it would have given the matter a lot of thought, and through this thought they've arrived at their decision that it would be the best for this country.
That seems rational to me, but that doesn't appear to have happened, as all available evidence suggests that those who campaigned to leave have started post-referendum with no real idea, and have had to figure things out from scratch. It's worrying. Whilst you can perhaps forgive a relative outsider like Farage, we're talking senior members of the Conservative government here. They had access to all of the data and insights available to government. Since the election was won in 2015 and the referendum being run a year later, it would surely have made sense for those campaigning to leave to wonder what might actually happen if they did.
It's fine, and right, to criticise Cameron for having no idea what to do in the event of a leave vote, as he undoubtedly never thought one would materialise, but it seems the same was the case for Johnson, Gove et al. It leaves the impression of a bunch of people causing mischief to raise their own profile who have now been left to do something they never imagined for a minute they'd ever have to do. It hardly seems a great basis to undertake perhaps the biggest political and economic challenge of our generation.
Old Blue 2
Player Valuation: £40m
Have to say, Bruce, you also do not understand the difference between 'campaign' and 'implementation'. It is not incumbent upon those who campaigned for the UK to leave the EU to come up with the minutiae of how it was to be/would be implemented. They can come up with the reasons why they believe the UK should leave, but it is not, and never was, within their ambit to say/dictate how the leaving process should be carried out. The one (campaign) is quite separate from the other (implementation), and so it should be.
I'm glad to see David Davis 'still hasn't looked into' the economic impact of Brexit
Giving evidence to MPs, Davis admitted that there has been no assessment of the impact of Brexit, and answered questions about healthcare, produce tariffs and the Irish border in bafflingly vague terms
You can understand how the Brexit Secterary was caught on the hop, because the campaign for Britain to leave the EU has only been going on for around 40 years
Some people are concerned we aren’t prepared for this Brexit situation, so it was heartening to hear Minister David Davis explain what happens if we don’t manage a deal with the EU, by saying he “hadn’t looked into it yet.”
This shows a steady hand, rather than someone who rushes into things by looking into stuff within the first nine months of a job specifically created to look into exactly that stuff. What’s achieved by panicking like that? Because Davis is only Minister for Brexit. How is he supposed to find out anything about Brexit, on top of all the other things in his title? What’s achieved by panicking like that? Because Davis is only Minister for Brexit. How is he supposed to find out anything about Brexit, on top of all the other things in his title?
The government should create other specific posts to try and match Davis. They could create a Minister for Desiccated Coconut, so that after nine months they can say: “I won’t lie, I haven’t given a passing thought to desiccated coconut.” At least campaigners fo leaving the EU were honest. Before the referendum, supporters of the Leave campaign like Davis always explained that if we left, they didn’t have the slightest idea what would happen, and even came up with the slogan “nine months after the result we’ll confirm we haven’t looked into it”, which as I recall they put on the side of a bus.
Theresa May has insisted that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, which introduced a philosophical edge to Brexit. Because how can anyone know whether it will be better or worse if we haven’t yet looked into it? It’s like saying you have no idea what’s on the other side of the universe, but whatever it is, it’s better than a donkey.
But Davis went even further, explaining: “You don’t need pieces of paper with a number on it to make an economic assessment.” Of course not, an economic assessment isn’t about numbers. When you apply for a mortgage, the bank asks how much you earn, and you say “a bit”, then the bank manager has a think and says: “In that case you’re allowed to borrow a yellowish amount, that reminds you of the sea.” So you ask: “How much will I have to pay back every month?” and they say: “Come back in nine months, by which time I won’t have looked into it yet.”
Asked whether British citizens will continue, after Brexit, to get free healthcare in the EU, Davis said they probably wouldn’t, but added reassuringly: “I have not looked at that one.”
There’s a man on top of his brief. Anyone can be clueless on the general direction of Brexit, but it takes dedication to be even more vague on each specific detail.
Hopefully the foreign health authorities will adopt the same attitude, and when a British citizen arrives at a Spanish hospital with appendicitis, they’re met by an appendicitis doctor who tells them to wait nine months, then they’ll be given a letter saying: “Do you know, I haven’t got the slightest clue about appendixes.”
Davis agreed that UK producers of dairy and meat will face tariffs of up to 40 per cent, conceding: “The numbers in agriculture are high.” It’s a shame he let his side down there, because acknowledging “high” is a bit too specific. Ideally he’d have answered the question by saying: “How long’s a piece of string, mate? I tell you what I do know about meat, I’ve got a lovely recipe for a liver casserole. The ingredients are a chunk of liver, an unspecified volume of stock and in indeterminate degree of vegetables. I won’t give you a piece of paper with exact numbers as that spoils a recipe.”
Asked how Brexit is likely to affect the border between Northern Ireland and the South, he explained it will be “light, not hard”. That was as much detail as he gave, so I expect he means the customs officers will always wear gloves before they put their fingers up your bottom.
This shows the problem Hammond made with his Budget, he gave out exact numbers. He should have said: “The borrowing requirements for the coming year as predicted by the Office of Budget Responsibility are a bit salty and not as soggy as you might think. To this end, National Insurance contributions for the self-employed will be curlier than they have been, and taste of cucumber.” Then he wouldn’t have had to change his mind and look an idiot.
My WORD, he looks awful!!!
This process is sapping his very life force
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
Davis has been in the role of Brexit Minister for 9 months, so the debacle that was the campaign is irrelevant.
He's saying that 'no deal is better than a bad deal' as if it's a fact, and yet he's got no analysis of the economic forecast should WTO terms and a cliff edge end to the Customs Union be where we end up. It's complete incompetence on his part. What they mean by that soundbite is that it'd be a better political outcome for them - as they'd have not put their name to a poor deal.
The whole thing is developing into a political farce.
Old Blue 2
Player Valuation: £40m
See it for what it is, FLHD. It's political brinkmanship. Flagging up to the EU that we'll not be steamrollered by them. There are a crowd of knobheads in charge at the EU who are miffed by our decision and are trying to look 'dead 'ard' to maintain their clout. It's the kind of political shenanigans that has always gone on... The same as Sturgeon's sabre-rattling up in Scotland!
As for economic forecasts! Don't make me laugh!!! Not worth the scrap of paper they are scribbled on! This topic has been covered ad nauseam in this thread...
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