Cont: Brexit: Now What? The Perfect 10.

[Vixen]

,

I've had the dubious privilege of meeting Corbyn and interacting with his followers.
I assume you're deliberately ignoring the rampant anti-Semitism in the Labour party?

I have chatted to Tony Benn and Paul Foot and I can assure you they are genuinely posh, not bursary-winning noveau riche oiks like Boris Johnson or Michael Gove. I have never met Jeremy Corbyn but I knew his brother Piers way back when I lived in Notting Hill and he was an 'alternative society' guru. At least these people's views are sincerely held, not changing every day, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

You might despise Jeremy Corbyn and I agree being 'woke' is very VERY annoying but is hardly in the same category as being a liar, dishonest, pretentious, sleazy, lazy ne'er-do-well, who'd stab his own granny in the back to get into power.

 

[Vixen]

What am I expecting or what am I asking to happen?

I expect that things will continue pretty much as is with a cabal of right-wing media outlets continuing to spread their poison to a largely uninterested and uneducated electorate and for people to continue to vote Tory at every election as they have done pretty much in perpetuity.

The BBC and other media will continue to promote 'useful idiots' in the interests of a distorted idea of balance and because they illicit responses from audiences that sensible, reasoned discussion doesn't. Question Time will continue to be Question Time and platform right-wing idiots without question.

And a few token lefty outlets with minimal audiences will continue to exist.

In other words business as usual.

Absolutely.

 

[Vixen]

The Daily Mail is dreadful. At everything.

Well it does...um...er...hmmm...<fx scratches head>...ah...let me get back to you...

 

[Vixen]

It's usefully absorbent for dealing with spillages, but their cheap ink tends to stain surfaces.

...ah...yes...it could line a cat litter tray.

 

[Vixen]

I really like the Britex supporter here who says he supported leave because it would make it easier for the UK to go pretty far to the left and become a pure "Socialist" country Instead of a LIberal Socislist one.. Did not work out that way, did it?
I understand this may have been why Corbyn was so cryptic on the vote.
You gotta love ideologues.

Corbyn was pro-leave under the claim he was for protecting workers rights and that the EU was just a capitalist cartel.

 

[Vixen]

And what relevance has a member of this council at EU level when they've lost the relevant EU election coming second or even worse, third?

None.

This situation could have been averted by John Major if only he'd recognised the seriousness of the Maastricht rebellion and held a referendum on ratification of the treaty.

It began in the 1990's and snowballed. The Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties were all ratified against the public's wishes and that put us on course for departure.

People hate change. This is why you need government leadership that has vision and the knowhow of how to bring about change for the citizens of its country for the better.

 

[Vixen]

There has always been a faction within the Labour party in the UK that was suspicious of the CM/EEC/EC/EU. considering it a "capitalist plot" that would prevent the otherwise inevitable socialist/communist transformation of the UK. The Corbynistas were of this ilk, though (somewhat ironically) their supporters in the TUC were (and are) vehemently pro-EU.

The reality is that the EU has been immensely beneficial for the UK, driving economic growth and forcing the country to improve human rights. Though of course the Britons opposed to having to cooperate with "a lot of frogs and huns" are still there and prominent within the Brexiteers.

It's notable that our resident Brexiteers frequently whine about "loss of sovereignty" when this was known about even before the UK joined (i.e. FCO 30/1048 of 1970-72) which stated that certain areas of policy would have reduced parliamentary freedom to legislate, these included:
customs duties
agriculture policy
free movement of labour, services and capital
transport
social security for migrant workers

Only in theory. All of the establishment figures - who were supposed to administer all of this - had no time for EU edicts on workers or human rights. It was standard to get new employees to 'opt out' of the 48-hour week, not that anyone in the office ever worked more than 30 hours.

As for Employment Law...you are kidding aren't you? 'We will carry on giving the best jobs to our own kind'.

No human rights for bankrupt families with disabled children: they can jolly well be thrown out onto the streets!

 

[Vixen]

Sir David Amess MP tweeted

@amessd_southend
Whilst Margaret didn’t live long enough to see this day, I am sure that she is rejoicing in heaven.
At last we ‘got Brexit done’!


(Sir David the MP for Southend West has his twitter account set so that readers cannot reply to any of his posts)

Someone should tell him that Thatcher believed a referendum to be 'the tool of a dictator'.

 

[Vixen]

So will Churchill.

Churchill will be rolling in Maggie's grave...?

 

[Vixen]

We've faced prejudice and insult over and over again, the possibility of intelligent reasons for leaving the EU are always ignored by people who unfortunately are fanatically wed to the idea that the only way countries can work together is in a political union.

I'm an internationalist, but I want my country to be self governing in it's laws.
Yes, the democratic means to rejoin one day, have to be on the table, I wouldn't be a democrat if I didn't support democracy.
But we had a vote, Parliament decided to honour it, we had two General Elections in which those opposed to that vote lost badly.

Labour has now lost it's Red Wall. Even Dennis Skinner's seat of Bolsover turned blue - Bolsover!!

I never saw that coming, the most left wing seat in the entire country, held their noses and voted Tory because of Labour's policy on Brexit.

I see the victory of the Tories in 2019 as a tragedy.
They support fox hunting, they now have a majority and the means to make it legal again.

Despite Brexit I couldn't vote for them but I understand why others did.

Here's the real reason Bolsover 'turned blue' and voted leave:

In the 13 years since Sports Direct moved in, thousands of eastern European people followed, taking up insecure agency jobs. Old miners moved out, their homes snapped up and then carved up by landlords sensing a quick buck. Bedrooms were divided in two by sheets of cardboard, sellotape on windows marking which half of the window belonged to which tenant. Living rooms became sleeping quarters, forcing new residents out into local parks to do their socialising, drinking cans of Tyskie and Żubr that had ousted stout and bitter from the corner shop.

GUARDIAN

The East Europeans! Forgetting that Polish people have been in the UK for decades, thanks to their heroic efforts in WWII. A whole area of roads and streets were awarded to Polish refuges in Willesden Green and Kilburn/Maida Vale as a 'thank you'. Several of my classmates were second generation Polish (some fairer than the average Brit). Yet here in the 2000's they are despised by the right wing press and the British populate. Leave voters are definitely largely racist not because they 'disagreed with Labour policies'. Remember: Labour was leave as well.

 

[Vixen]

Iain Duncan Smith MP tweets
@MPIainDS
It’s been @BorisJohnson’s personal pledge to get #Brexit done, and he has delivered, under intense pressure, what many thought impossible, a deal between sovereign equals. The UK has finally won back sovereignty.

I just wish I was 21 again, frankly, because my goodness what prospects lie ahead of us for young people now: to be out there buccaneering, trading, dominating the world again.

He's really giving away his age here.

 

[Vixen]

Well, I ran into my first brexit complications.
When I lived and worked in the UK I set up an amazon.co.uk account to order some stuff.
When I moved back to the Netherlands I kept the account and when they set up prime I used that because there was no dutch amazon at the time and due to EU rules I could watch it in any country.
As of today I had to cancel it and get a version that still works in the EU.

I hope there weren't expats hoping to be able to watch things with their UK accounts because now they can't
A great step forward of course.

I binged on Netflix pre-New Year's Day, as the subscription is from a UK account. Thankfully, the programmes are still available to view (which is good or I would have missed the last episode of Equinox).

Maybe I am speaking too soon...

 

[Vixen]

Oh please do tell which dangerous EU military projects you are talking about.

Perhaps he's talking about a future Battle of Britain. <sfx theme from Dambusters>

 

[Vixen]

And due to EU rules you can't use Amazon from a non member country ?

The French version of Amazon works with my account although trying to use Prime video redirects me to the UK site.

Although you can buy things from a non-dom Amazon site, if you want to download kindle books or MP3's, you can't. A customer service advisor at Amazon.com (USA) suggested I use a friend's address in the USA to be able to download stuff from their site.

 

[Vixen]

"It was all quiet on the Dover front in the hours after the UK left the EU, as lorries continued to avoid the port.

But just minutes away, beyond the famous white cliffs, the sense of fury over Brexit was palpable as local residents came to terms with a government letter they received on New Year’s Eve telling them that from summer, their rural idyll of farmland and ancient Roman ways would be transformed into a customs clearance lorry park for 1,200 trucks.

Locals say they feel “betrayed” and “trapped” by the “lies” of the government over Brexit."

Full article

Airfix, if you think leaving the EU will improve the UK's natural environment you are simply kidding yourself.

The other resident Brexiteer claimed we'd have more sustainable fishing as a result of the shortfall in fishing yields were the EU boats not allowed to fish (which 'hail!' to Boris' deal, they still can).

Suddenly the Brexiteers have gone all green.

 

[Vixen]

Not quite. I was one of the UK negotiators on the CAP, though I confess my memory isn’t what it used to be!

In order to be eligible for the basic payment scheme, I think you had to leave 7% of your land in ecological focus areas. IIRC some of the things you describe could be used for EFAs, provided your country had good enough land mapping. Ponds, I think not, because why would you be eligible for a farming subsidy on a pond?

The move to land based subsidy instead of production based subsidy was UK policy. That was to get rid of butter mountains, wine lakes etc, which artificially kept prices high for consumers while still favouring large producers over small.



Again, this was UK policy. The subsidy involved for very small farms could be more than the administrative cost of issuing the subsidy. It was actually up to member states to set the cutoff point. Malta chose 0.3 hectares, paying out 30 euros as a minimum payment, Austria chose 1.5 ha, Sweden 4 ha...

My comment, not UK policy, for thought - If you only have 5 hectares, are you really a farmer? If that was covered in wheat, you’d have grown on average about 40 tonnes of wheat a year (probably less, because that average is brought up by big farms, but for ease of figures...). That would have brought income - not profit - of £6000 a year assuming a very generous price of £150 per tonne. Tough to live on even with an extra grand in subsidy.

Yeah, that’s not good. While in, the UK managed to get changes to CAP to make it more environmentally friendly. Now it will be Sweden leading the charge, with 27 fewer votes in Council to rely on.



This was the sort of thing the UK was trying to do in the EU - moving payments from Pillar 1 (direct payments) to Pillar 2 (environmental payments), as well as reducing the overall percentage of EU money going to the CAP. We had some success, but progress was slow.

You might be interested to know the Agriculture Bill you referred to fell in 2019 due to the election, but a similar one passed 2 months ago, the Agriculture Act 2020. I haven’t read it, as I don’t do agriculture any more.

Five hectares equates to 12.56 acres - quite large. An acre was considered to be the standard size for a field in the days of yore. What is salient is how fertile is that land, what is grown there and what is the yield.

Derived from Middle English aker (from Old English aecer) and akin to Latin ager (“field”), the acre had one origin in the typical area that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden plow. ... The Anglo-Saxon acre was defined as a strip of land 1 × 1/10 furlong, or 40 × 4 rods (660 × 66 feet).

Britannica

 

[Andy_Ross]

Again, this was UK policy.

Funny how much stuff blamed on the EU is actually UK policy and not and EU rule at all.

 

[Arcade22]

If they copied Article 1 into their own policies, that would alleviate my concern on the matter.

I'd question why you have concerns about pretentious paper military commands whose only real function is to serve as glorified multilateral training exercises. If you consider that "dangerous" I think you need a reality check.

 

[catsmate]

So not being part of a supranational union is an Imperial delusion is it ?

Sigh, the usual Brexiteer nonsense. Assuming that Britain alone can negotiate deals better than the EU (with or without the UK) is a delusion, part of the common Brexiteer imperial delusion.

Maybe if your side hadn't assumed it could just insult people, and started listening, we'd never have reached a point of needing a membership referendum in the first place.

Pointing out unfortunate, and unpalatable, facts isn't insulting people.
Pointing out the lies that Brexiteers told, and lapped up, isn't insulting people/
Pointing out the racism and xenophobia endemic among Brexiteers isn't insulting them.

But your side had to call anyone who wouldn't go along with the policies, ignorant or racist or Imperialistic.

Have you listened to the Brexit exponents? The lies they told?

Don't you understand why you keep losing ?

I haven't lost; thankfully I'm not a Brit. It's the poor idiots dragged along by the greedy, racist, stupid and delusional that are losing.

Don't you understand why the ERG are now in charge of the Tory party ?

Because they've successfully built on the Dumb, the Deluded, the Desperate and the Deplorable.

Bullying does not win people over to your cause.

Pointing out reality isn't "bullying". That would be the harassment of those opposed to Brexit, those who stood up to the rule of law and those who told the truth.

 

[catsmate]

All you've shown is that you're ideologically wed to the idea of being part of a large political union.

Smaller democracies are healthier.
Power is closer to the voter, policy changes are easier for voters to achieve.

I'm all for free trade and friendship with other countries and migrants are welcome but we don't need political union with other countries in order to achieve free trade, friendship and have immigration.

Even the Brexit proponents have admitted Brexit will be hugely damaging to Britain, time to accept reality and stop the lie spewing.