How do we resolve the Brexit mess?

Daily Mail resurrecting the ‘don’t talk Britain down’ line so loved by Johnson and Truss. Now, it is Hunt that is to call for ‘optimism’.
 
Car production at its lowest since car ownership was a minority interest.

Blaming it on shortage of superconductors.

Reliance on foreign suppliers (Taiwan) is obviously not wise.

USA and EU are planning for producing their own, but as we can't be involved in either, we'd have to do it ourselves - more billions...
 
Brexit benefit

We can put poisonous pesticides on crops that we couldn't do in the EU. Vote Leave to kill bees!

MSN

www.msn.com

Ironic really - it's to protect sugar beet crops, but the biggest company supporter of Brexit was Tate and Lyle because it would make imports of their sugar cane easier. That and the labour shortage have led to farmers looking to plant things other than beet anyway!
 
Last edited:
The ECHR argument makes no sense.

If meaning European Convention of Human Rights, that's nothing to do with the EU, and is a convention that the UK has signed up to.
If meaning the European Court of Human Rights, that's also nothing to do with the EU. It's the court that adjudicates the European Convention of Human Rights. It's run by the Council of Europe - 48 countries, so far bigger than the EU - and does not make law.

Pulling out would be a staggering move, despite bleating from ministers about how awful it is. Pulling out of something because it's temporarily inconvenient is awful politics, and heads down the path to broken countries.

The point of the court/convention is not party political, but what it says - it acts as a brake to restrict what governments can do to screw sections of their people.
I'm fairly certain that the Good Friday Agreement relies on the ECHR being enforceable in Northern Ireland.

Most people who talk of it don't care about the consequences or don't understand what the consequences would be. I have no confidence in any 'replacement' Bill of Rights that Raab comes up with would be competently written, or continue to provide the same rights people have now.
 
Palerider said:
Not sure I'll get to 10 benefits without using minor benefits or copying from the Web, but here goes.
1: Independence. This is obviously the crux of the whole debate and you either understand the need or not. The SNP understand!
2: Self reliance. I detest sweat shops and slave labour and I hated that freedom of movement was basically the rich EU countries using the poorer countries for cheap labour to do the worse jobs.
3: No European Court of Human Rights. I think we should decide ourselves what is right and wrong.
4: The status quo gets broken. Much political debate in this country is the middle class, University educated types arguing amongst themselves on who should be the Messiah. The working class are treated as sheep to be led, brainless, racist and xenophobic.
Click to expand...
Independence? As a Scot I understand the word. English brexiteers, I don't really think they do. You had independence as a member of the EU or as much as anyone has in this world of trade agreements and international dependencies and commitments. As for the Scots, they want to swap a broken union for a far healthier one. So much for independence.

Self reliance and sweat shops? Our imports from China and India have increased.

As long as we have a right wing media touting the Governments latest propaganda we will have a large section of the populace that follow like sheep. Some react like that when they have poison constantly dripped in their ear 24 x 7 x 365.

The problems of this country lie very deep and now the EU can no longer be held accountable for them. Our only hope is that KS gets in at the next GE and immediately turns into a radical reformer rather than the tory light coward he appears at present. If that doesn't happen the NHS will not exist in the next decade, social care will depend entirely on your wealth and the current political and financial system will continue to reward a small category of elite at the expense of 90% of us.
 
Oh dear, what did I start?? All I asked for was 10 benefits! Alot of struggling to justify any at all but until people like Palerider stop clambering around and admit they were duped we, as a nation can't move on.

As a labour supporter, does he not realise with hindsight, that all he helped to do was cement the position of the Tories in 2019, and consequently the shithsow that we have now.

There's no shame in having been taken in by all the lies that were pedalled in 2016, but lots of shame in still believing it was a positive for the country as a whole.

It's also blase to say "if it costs me a few £" then so be it. But the fact is it's presently costing the UK around 4% of GDP and that's an ongoing cost for the forseeable future. It's a far cry from the 50p per day per adult it was costing us to be a member.
 
Palerider said:
Possibly. FFS how many courts are there? Just to be clear it's any court EU related iI'd want to leave. A world court that can prosecute rogue states is welcomed even if they are toothless.
Click to expand...

The thing is, I specifically asked you which human rights you objected to, because I wanted to be sure your beef was actually with the ECHR and not with the ECJ (as I suspected). You answered "My point is not on particular human rights it's on the need for a court outside the UK to decide what is right or wrong. We can do that ourselves."

So you were clearly saying you had a beef with the ECHR even though it is nothing to do with the EU. Now you are saying you object to any EU related court - the ECJ - as well.

To be clear, is your problem that you just don't like any foreign judges telling the UK what to do?
 
The bottom line is the whole policy is totally impracticable.

If you are the USA you can afford to be 'independent' if you so choose. Because you are actually a continent with huge resources. Moreover, you can bully and dominate your weaker neighbours, and impose fascist regimes on them if they cut up awkward. (This is why the USA hates Cuba, the one that got away.)

We were similar, when we had an Empire, when were the most powerful nation on earth and had barrels of gold literally stacked up in the Bank of England. 1914-18 destroyed that status forever. We had instead a thing called the Commonwealth that we used to trade with. Unfortunately, for complex reasons (read Corelli Barnett for details) what we produced was mostly shit and overpriced, so as soon as our former colonies achieved genuine independence they started buying cheaper and better stuff from elsewhere. So the Commonwealth model failed, and that is why we joined the EEC (as it was).

We are a trading nation, with a speciality in services, and when we left the EU we fucked even that. Paris, for example, has (incredibly) eclipsed London as the top stock market in Europe. The very few trade deals we have achieved are either piss poor (the one with Australia is actually disadvantageous) or merely carryovers from what we had before. The trading relationship with Europe is now far more bureaucratic and such a burden for exporters that many have given up or gone out of business. 'Independence' is an illusion in an interdependent world. It's not even as if we are rich in natural resources or raw materials. In fact, we can't even feed ourselves.

We are royally fucked as a nation, and what you are looking at is long-term economic decline. This is very bad news for virtually everyone in the country. (The very rich will be OK; if it gets nasty they can always piss off to Monaco like the well-named Jim Ratcliffe.) Sadly, the world is what it is, not what you want it to be, and you have to deal with it accordingly. The UK is like a kid with no mates who won't join in the football because he thinks the rules are silly. So he sits in a corner of the playground and fantasises about being king.
 
Last edited:
Chris in London said:
The thing is, I specifically asked you which human rights you objected to, because I wanted to be sure your beef was actually with the ECHR and not with the ECJ (as I suspected). You answered "My point is not on particular human rights it's on the need for a court outside the UK to decide what is right or wrong. We can do that ourselves."

So you were clearly saying you had a beef with the ECHR even though it is nothing to do with the EU. Now you are saying you object to any EU related court - the ECJ - as well.

To be clear, is your problem that you just don't like any foreign judges telling the UK what to do?
Click to expand...

There is also the fairly important issue of who has jurisdiction in a dispute between e.g. the UK and Denmark.
If the EU say it's the ECJ and the UK say it's the UK courts, then there is a stand-off which will only damage interaction as people don't take the risk.
 
Palerider said:
In fairness we are not negotiating on detailed points. We are discussing whether membership of the EU is useful or not and whether the UK will be better in or out. Personally I think it was pretty clear that I was discussing any EU related court rather than some non EU court but maybe I overrated my audience. I'm used to being insulted by smug, condescending remainers. So no harm done.
Click to expand...
Or maybe you overrated yourself? If it's been right to leave, why would "remainers" be smug and condescending. Surely they would be hiding under a rock somewhere? It's just a shame a few more who voted to leave don't come out to support your views, and then we may just get another few benefits that the whole country can look at and say, yep, there's a benefit to us all. And we haven't seen the half of it yet in terms of movement because upto now the EU has not been able to monitor the adherence of time we have been spending in the EU. The introduction of the electronic visas( of which the UK were one of the main proponents when we were a member) will change all of that later this year.

The bottom line is we are all going to be losers.
 
Last edited:
The ECHR is there to encourage the others. If we leave it's an encouragement to those (Poland and Hungary currently) who want to water down rights (like an independent judiciary), and ultimately it's a bulwark against those who would water down our own rights (which is the obvious reason why the Tories want to leave the ECHR).
 
A lot of people like the idea of arbitrary government, unrestrained by courts, 'strong government' as some call it, because they get a hard-on thinking how they would enjoy persecuting their perceived enemies - dinghy people, the unemployed, immigrants, whoever. It never occurs to them for a milli-second that they might find themselves on the end of arbitrary government. Imagine what a left-wing government might do - I mean a proper left-wing government, not Corbyn idealists with their dewey-eyed social worker attitudes - if free to impose arbitrary power without any restraint. Hang the aristocracy and confiscate their brass would just be the start of it.

My wife's grandfather was thrown into a concentration camp because he told his neighbour he thought Hitler was an idiot, or words to that effect. Luckily for him, it was near the end of the war, and it was a 'nice' concentration camp, more like a prison than an extermination centre. But note - he was not a political activist. He was not seeking to overthrow the regime. He merely said something you were not allowed to say.

That's where arbitrary government leads. No, I do not trust my fellow Brits. I don't trust the Tory Party one single yard with my rights and liberties. I don't trust the Labour Party either. In fact, there's not one single MP in Parliament that I trust that much. They would all oppress us, given half a chance. Just in different ways. But here's the clincher. I would not trust myself. Because I am a human being. If you made me Lord Protector and gave me absolute, arbitrary power, I would certainly start with every good intention. But at some point, I would abuse it. Some child molester would be taking a one-way trip to a wooded clearing. No one is fit to have unrestrained power, and the more rights and liberties, the more checks and balances we have, the better.
 
MillionMilesAway said:
The ECHR argument makes no sense.

If meaning European Convention of Human Rights, that's nothing to do with the EU, and is a convention that the UK has signed up to.
If meaning the European Court of Human Rights, that's also nothing to do with the EU. It's the court that adjudicates the European Convention of Human Rights. It's run by the Council of Europe - 48 countries, so far bigger than the EU - and does not make law.

Pulling out would be a staggering move, despite bleating from ministers about how awful it is. Pulling out of something because it's temporarily inconvenient is awful politics, and heads down the path to broken countries.

The point of the court/convention is not party political, but what it says - it acts as a brake to restrict what governments can do to screw sections of their people.
I'm fairly certain that the Good Friday Agreement relies on the ECHR being enforceable in Northern Ireland.

Most people who talk of it don't care about the consequences or don't understand what the consequences would be. I have no confidence in any 'replacement' Bill of Rights that Raab comes up with would be competently written, or continue to provide the same rights people have now.
Click to expand...
The ECHR argument makes perfect sense if you swallowed the bullshit and voted leave, and are now looking for excuses rather than admitting you were conned.
It also saves you the shame of saying you believed the likes of Johnson, Farage, Rees-Mogg, Redwood, Baker and the rest of the rabid clowns.
 
Brexit‘s a catalyst now doncha know!
More than 6 years on from the vote to cut our legs off with a blunt axe so that we could be ‘nimbler‘ -whatever that means- the politician who proves the existence of rhyming slang, is telling us we’re simply not believing enough.
Even he looked like he didn’t believe.
The irony is that our lack of belief is rooted in the evidence before our very eyes, of something which relied on simple-minded naive belief to even exist.
 
Marlo said:
I'm sorry point 4 I cannot agree with. The political debate is set by a concentrated small cadre of people who went to specific Schools (Eton), studied at specific universities (Oxford) and who's motivation for been in politics is at best suspect. The status quo will not get broken by brexit, Labour or Conservative will always be in power until a serious reform of the British electoral system is undertaken. The only slight shift that brxit has caused is within the parties, as MP do childish stunts against the EU to seem more "british"

I am the first in my family to go to university, I worked hard to build a life that would be considered middle class. I fail to see how any member of the middle class is the problem in this country. By contrast an entitled upper class elite who have little talent, integrity, work ethic or the sketch of a plan to run a country have in the last 6-8 years done incalculable damage to economics and world standing of the UK.

Your point 2, regarding sweat shops and exploitation of poorer countries did not require brexit. In fact you are adding a noble cause onto brexit that was never there 6 years ago and will not in any way feature in this government's plan.

Brexit, whether you wanted it or not, is a huge undertaking. It required, long term vision, planning, discipline and focus. Has any part of the last 6 years looked like they knew what they wanted to do after brexit??
Click to expand...
I'll concentrate on answering point 4 for now.
My belief is that the EU is basically a middle class con job where the working class are treated as movable labour. The referendum has certainly shook up the status quo and changed that paid slaves attitude but more than that it has shook up those Remainers who thought they were the good guys. I'm not interested in helping people on above average earnings but have all the time in the world for the low paid. I had hoped that with more working class kids going to I university that they would break up that status quo themselves instead they have just joined the rich at the trough. Many working class children are not gifted academically and therefore will struggle in the rather rigged game of best jobs for best education. That, however, does not mean that they should be called stupid or thought to be pawns easily manipulated, as so often happens on the Guardian and Telegraph sites, with no one objecting I might add. Would PR be a better system, probably but much, much more important than that is that we are represented by a Parliament that matches the population which means 50% of our MPs should not have gone to university but have life experience instead. So have things changed for the better? If you were at the bottom it does not matter, the pot has been stirred thoroughly and something new will emerge. Nothing to lose.
 
Gingers Dad said:
The last three idiots wouldn't have got near it if Cameron hadn't pulled that pulled that stupid stunt. Brexit wasn't even a mainstream issue to the British public just something the Tory party had to deal with.
Click to expand...
An awful lot of people voted for something they weren’t interested in.
 
King Richard II got it right in 1381: ‘Serfs you have been and serfs you shall remain in bondage, not such as you have hitherto been subjected to, but incomparably viler.'

There has always been a working class in society and always will be. People who do the shitty jobs for fuck all. This has been a constant in all capitalist societies and in communist ones too. It will always be like that.

The ways out of it:

1. Education and self-improvement. You get out and become one of the bourgeoises.

2. Social programmes. Sick pay. Compulsory paid holidays. Limits to working hours. Employment protection. Conditions of service. Pensions. (Germany had all this in place by the early 1900s by the way, and the Kaiser's government were no socialists. Quite the contrary.)

The EU did not prevent any of that. It bolstered it. Education had the Erasmus Scheme. The EU had minimum standards for employment and all manner of social protections much of which the UK chose to opt out of.

All Brexit does is enable the Tory scum to cut those benefits. Because they are 'unaffordable'. Workers' rights have to be slashed so we can be 'competitive'. (Even though Germany manages to be competitive with all these benefits and more.) That's what they want to do with our 'freedom'. That's why they want to do away with 'EU red tape.'

This revolution was not for your benefit. It was for theirs. The 1% greedy plutocratic criminal boss class.

So well done. Serfs you have been and serfs you shall remain.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top