Brexit

[Muddy Retriever]

And it appears that there were plenty of people around who are really low in intelligence. And the leaders of the Leave campaign weren't going to disillusion them: £350million per week, anyone?

500,000 to 800,000 jobs lost and immediate recession just be merely voting to leave anyone? How did that work out? I wonder how many people were inclined to vote Leave but did the opposite because they were scared they would immediately lose their jobs. This idea that somehow Leave won by lying and cheating while Remain played by the Queensberry rules is laughable. As CL has pointed out, the Remain side had all the advantages and used the machinery of the state to try and win e.g. spending £9 million of taxpayer's money for propaganda leaflets, enlisting an American president to tell us we would be at the "back of the queue" for any trade deal with the US etc.

People also seemed to believe the lies about it being really easy to make a good trade deal with the EU within two years, "because they would want to keep selling us their BMWs", even though this flew in the face of all the evidence: it took 7 years to seal the Canada/EU deal, and the attempt to make a deal between the EU and USA collapsed completely.

With both sides employing economic common-sense it should have been the easiest deal in history. We start from regulatory equivalence, which is not the case in any other trade deal that has ever been negotiated. The fact that it hasn't been is because of the desire of the EU to punish the UK for having the temerity to leave.

After the referendum, Witton Park of this parish was arguing that we should simply announce that we will be trading on WTO terms. Although I wanted to remain, I thought that if we had to leave, then WP's argument made a lot of sense: there would be a nasty shock to the economy (or at least many sectors of it), but at least we would all know what the shock was going to be, and we could try to prepare for it. [Of course this wouldn't solve the Irish border question.]

I agreed with a lot of what Witton said on Brexit but I differed a little on this point. I think a trade deal is preferable to WTO rules but that we should have begun planning for a no-deal scenario and falling back on WTO rules at the outset. This has two advantages. Firstly it means the disruption is reduced should a deal not be agreed and secondly it would make the likelihood of it happening much less. The Government has criminally failed to plan and as a result we have ended up with an appalling deal. Teresa May's statement that no-deal was better than a bad deal had no credibility at all with the EU.

As for the Irish border question, as I said earlier in the thread, that is just a fictitious problem created by Brussels to throw a spanner in the works with Dublin's collusion. There was an interesting article by Dominic Raab in yesterday's Sunday Times. He said that British diplomats had fed back to him that top EU officials had decided that the loss of Northern Ireland would be the price the UK would pay for leaving.

[DrPatrickBarry]

Interesting interview this mornign in Radio 4, with the woman who is head of the CBI in NI. They are very happy with the deal, as it gives them access to the UK, Eire and the rest of the common market.
Business interests (that keeps the NI economy afloat), do not matter to the DUP, thir bigotry and desire to protect their "Britishness" is much more important.

She was saying they have spend the last two-plus years trying to get the DUP to see sense, but to no avail.
They seem to want to ignore facts:

"Seamus Leheny, the director of policy for the Freight Transport Association, said Northern Ireland was “disproportionately disadvantaged” by Brexit but pointed out that while there were 800,000 freight trips between Northern Ireland and Britain, there were 4.6m between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland every year"

Just saying something is a "made up" issue does not make it true. Monitoring trucks crossing a sea border would be so much easire than millions of micro business transactions crossing the land border. And apparently 80ish larger companies are responsible for the vast majority of the trade across the Irish sea.

Another thing to note is that the majority of trade between NI and the GB is via Dublin because Stranraer is such an isolated part of west Scotland.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...qSP8yFZj6MMaY0

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/b...-37034957.html

[Muddy Retriever]

Interesting interview this mornign in Radio 4, with the woman who is head of the CBI in NI. They are very happy with the deal, as it gives them access to the UK, Eire and the rest of the common market.
Business interests (that keeps the NI economy afloat), do not matter to the DUP, thir bigotry and desire to protect their "Britishness" is much more important.

She was saying they have spend the last two-plus years trying to get the DUP to see sense, but to no avail.
They seem to want to ignore facts:

"Seamus Leheny, the director of policy for the Freight Transport Association, said Northern Ireland was “disproportionately disadvantaged” by Brexit but pointed out that while there were 800,000 freight trips between Northern Ireland and Britain, there were 4.6m between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland every year"

Just saying something is a "made up" issue does not make it true. Monitoring trucks crossing a sea border would be so much easire than millions of micro business transactions crossing the land border.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...qSP8yFZj6MMaY0

There is a puzzling view held by some people that those who are in favour of Brexit or Northern Ireland staying within the UK are bigots but people who want a United Ireland or Scottish independence are fine. The first two are bad, nasty types of nationalism, the second two are friendly cuddly forms of nationalism. I've always struggled with this view myself.

As for trade, Northern Ireland exports £2.7 billion to the EU but nearly four times as much - £10.5 billion to the rest of the UK.

https://fullfact.org/europe/irish-border-trade-checks/

[Wheeze]

I think you need to check the terms of your contract before rushing to any assumptions. It’s very unlikely the contract will back up the scenario you describe.

As it’s a very complex situation and impossible to give a simple answer to please address any further questions on contract law to your solicitor as it very much appears you need some “expert” advice.

HTH

😜

Quite so. When we signed up to the Maastrict treaty we were tied up in a Gordion knot which will take a very long time to unravel. Thats why I believe the public vote should have been then. Up till then, we had been living in sin with Europe. Now we are married and the divorce lawyers are having a field day!

[DrPatrickBarry]

Up till then, we had been living in sin with Europe.

Is it a sin if it was a win-win for all concerned?

[shaunaneto]

There is a puzzling view held by some people that those who are in favour of Brexit or Northern Ireland staying within the UK are bigots but people who want a United Ireland or Scottish independence are fine. The first two are bad, nasty types of nationalism, the second two are friendly cuddly forms of nationalism. I've always struggled with this view myself.

Well, I can’t comment about on NI.

But with Scotland one of the most prominent groups of Unionists (that prominence might not be justified) is the Orange Order. So...errr......y’know!

There are ****nuggets on both sides of Scottish independence. But the Yes side in my experience has far fewer ****nuggets. This doesn’t always get a fair representation in the media either. The post referendum violence by Unionists in George Square was heavily downplayed by police at the time. However there was actually a live feed of George square which clearly contradicted this and the reporting of it.

Many on the Yes side consider the movement to be extremely inclusive and progressive. You might disagree but that is a commonly held view. And I agree with them (just for you CL)

Brexit on the other hand has led me to experience a much broader range of ****nuggets. In person, and online. There’s has in fact been a far more frequent and widespread occurrence of ****nuggetry than I experienced in the Scottish Referendum. I’ve genuinely only seen racism and bigotry come from the one side. Is that a fair representation of Leave, **** no, but it’s easy to develop a distorted view from such stand out experiences.

[Wheeze]

Thats sadly true. When you make a vote on a bipolar question, you are always aligning yourself with others who may hold views you find personally abhorrent. But you have all been coralled together by nature of the question. I suspect most labour voters are queasy about the well publicised antics of the far left and most tory voters feel the same way about the far right. But for the majority of the moderate voters in the middle of the bell curve its an inescapable truth that they will have to vote the same way as those 2 standard deviations from the mean.

Racists and bigots were naturally drawn on to the leave side of the bell curve but it does not mean that the vast majority of leave voters are racists and bigots.

[Muddy Retriever]

Many on the Yes side consider the movement to be extremely inclusive and progressive. You might disagree but that is a commonly held view. And I agree with them (just for you CL)

Hmm, I think JK Rowling and other victims of Cybernat online trolling might disagree with you there. It seems to me that the Scottish independence referendum was every bit of divisive as the one on the EU, with friends and families on opposite sides of the argument.

Despite this I think both were valid to hold as they related to issues that needed to be addressed. I see the principle of both as being exactly the same - self determination. I just don't see how one can be more enlightened than the other.

[DrPatrickBarry]

Good to see the ERG has finally come on side and accepted their fantasy Brexit is just that.

[Muddy Retriever]

Good to see the ERG has finally come on side and accepted their fantasy Brexit is just that.

Really? How have they done that then?