Are you and "in" or an "out"?

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  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    edited July 2018
    The government have started emergency contingency planning in case of no deal Brexit (or real Brexit, for those unable to formulate a single practical detail on what Brexit should be). The best things always have crisis plans. I'm looking forward to a useful pamphlet arriving on how to filter and reuse my own urine.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    This WTO thing, it's been sold as something that just happens if we find ourselves with no trade partnership. I didn't realise we'd still have to negotiate terms and get agreement from the WTO and its member countries. I'll be honest the complexities are lost on me. My rough understanding is countries we want future trade agreements with would get to influence the terms of our WTO membership under which these theoretical trade agreements could take place. So they would define how weak or strong our starting position is. Like playing poker against an opponent who gets to pick what cards you hold.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    Another thing, as the post Brexit landscape appears less luxuriant, there's a weird zeal breaking out amongst some grassroots Brexiters that the hardship might do us some good. Britain as some austerity boot camp to toughen up the liberals. A post war theme park. Or a post-Soviet Poland, but without the Poles.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2018
    I got berated today for believing the "Brexit hype" from a friend who voted leave. She went on to tell me that leaving the EU would likely be bad for her daughter, but good for Grimsby fisherman (she's not from Grimsby and has no ties to the fishing industry) and then linked the EU into rail fares being so much more expensive than 20yrs ago. I really didn't understand this last bit. She's not an idiot, just frustrated with various disparate stuff, has a gut feeling for the simple and direct bits of leave rhetoric she hears but isn't interested wasting any time wading through the genuinely interminable complexities and factual analysis. We don't actually disagree about the stuff that frustrates and she wants rectified, it's just her "fuck it, that'll do" acquiescence to those claiming that leaving the EU is the universal solution where we part company. I'm pretty convinced now it's going to be a painful generational decline chosen without really knowing and without really caring.
  • Aren't we just hamstrung by our colonial past? Thinking we're a bigger player than we actually are? Seems that way, might explain the gung ho 'oh it will be fine' attitude of the Tory Brexiteers...
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2018
    Could play a part. There's some loud proponents of Brexit full of confidence and hubris that have an idiosyncratic touch of the British Raj about them. Albeit I can't help feeling these people are cynical strategists or attention hungry know nothings more interested in looting the corpses on the battlefield. Brexit is quite insular though, not imposing "Britishness" but protecting "Britishness" by dealing, at least in theory, with the world at arms length.

    I just don't get why some feel so strongly about Brexit, the most Brexity of Brexits, even accept they could experience some detrimental effects, yet have absolutely no interest, even an active aversion, to what any of it is or means. How can you be so attached to something yet so incurious about it? I wish some of the optimism would rub off on me.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2018
    JT141 said:
    I just don't get why some feel so strongly about Brexit, the most Brexity of Brexits, even accept they could experience some detrimental effects, yet have absolutely no interest, even an active aversion, to what any of it is or means. How can you be so attached to something yet so incurious about it?
    Actually I do know but keep forgetting. Brexit isn't about politics, economics, trade or legal frameworks, it's nationalistic cultural identity movement. That's why the actual economics and impacts of leaving are inconsequential, in the same way the costs of WW2 were irrelevant compared to the threat of being subsumed by an alien identity and set of values. And Remoaners are as the British appeasers were to the Nazis in the 1930s. A true Brexiter would endorse hacking off the limbs to save the body. If you believe that narrative it all makes some sense. If you don't it's hysterical self harming.
  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭
    Or maybe the Brexiters either had no limbs to start with, or had so many, they didn't mind losing one or two for the sheer thrill of it.


    🙂

  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    I think the financially bulletproof Brexiter is a thing - I can't help thinking of Jacob Reese-Mogg's partnership in SCM who set up a new fund in Ireland to insulate investments. For hedge funders like him a weakened and volatile UK is an opportunity, so long as you're securing capital outside of the maelstrom. Many are trading off the strong symbolism of some misty eyed English national identity whilst looking to open up to asset stripping markets the actual substantive things of value on which identity is built - and I'm particularly thinking about the NHS vulnerability to the American healthcare market in some shitty trade deal. It's 21st century bread and circuses, except sweetener saturated import US bread and the circus is all clowns. But there is no such benefit for the "nothing to lose" Brexiter, just the surprise that decline can be more persistent and more ingrained.

    I could be being wilfully pessimistic. Johnson and Davis have stated that there is a productive and positive way through EU negotiations with a beneficial outcome for the UK. It's just a shame they're choosing to keep their plan to achieve that a fucking secret.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    Crap, I got distracted doing that when I was supposed to be doing something else.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    With relatively so few people on these forums now, and even fewer reading these kinds of threads, it's oddly comforting to pontificate knowing it leaves barely a mark in the snow. There's a lot to be said for speaking where no one's listening. And the added benefit of not saying it on mass social media outlets and getting ripped to shreds and trolled up the arse for 48hrs.
  • JT141 said:

    I could be being wilfully pessimistic. Johnson and Davis have stated that there is a productive and positive way through EU negotiations with a beneficial outcome for the UK. It's just a shame they're choosing to keep their plan to achieve that a fucking secret.
    I think they can see a positive outcome because they honestly believe the EU should simply give them exactly what they want, ie a free trade deal without accepting any of the four freedoms.  Same as they had before without paying money to the EU and without accepting freedom of movement. I can't think why the EU wouldn't accept such a generous proposal. 
  • JT141 said:
    With relatively so few people on these forums now, and even fewer reading these kinds of threads, it's oddly comforting to pontificate knowing it leaves barely a mark in the snow. There's a lot to be said for speaking where no one's listening. And the added benefit of not saying it on mass social media outlets and getting ripped to shreds and trolled up the arse for 48hrs.
    I think there's an element of 'Brexit weariness' around this. Although it seems uppermost in the minds of the media I get the impression the general public are now avoiding the subject and it's a case of "it's happened, just get on with it". I had my financial adviser say much the same to me last week, he voted to remain, but now wants it done and dusted.

    I am still convinced it you asked 10 different people why they voted out you would get 10 different reason. But strangely I've not heard much from those who did vote out recently.    
  • WTF? Our chief negotiator Dominic Raab said,

    "I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

    No fucking shit Sherlock. It's the main route on and off this Island of course it's gonna be important you dozy moron.

  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    Every lunchtime someone has to explain to Raab about the mouth as he tries to shove another pasty up his arse.

    These ministers really do struggle in areas where there isn't an established civil service body of expertise to guide them through. That said if your remit is to build a magic bridge the best civil engineers aren't going to be much help. Minister for Brexit probably isn't a job you can actually do if you had some understanding of it. Like if there was a Minister for Ghosts you'd be better off with Derek Acorah than a physicist.
  • NessieNessie ✭✭✭
    Something about the phrase "magic bridge" in the context of Brexit seems quite fitting.  Might be a solution to the Irish border.
  • Shit, we really are fucked.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    What a fucking mess.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    Jacob Rees-Mogg (just a backbencher) given licence to talk unchallenged over and over again on the TV today. As with Farage (not even a backbencher). Because they're characters. They run to these trivial cunts every time rather than risk alienating the audience with fact bound complexities or bothering with any depth of analysis. No wonder we're in a mess when these wankers get to give the message every time. The TV and press cannot fucking help themselves.
  • 15West15West ✭✭✭
    HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa........................................
    what a shambles. Good job everyone.
  • The shit is hitting the fan. It's just a question of who gets less shit on them!
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    I mean we could always stop throwing shit into the fan.
  • YnnecYnnec ✭✭✭
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-final-say-theresa-may-cabinet-draft-agreement-deal-european-union-a8634381.html

    "Eurosceptics are likely to be further enraged by a clause in the 585-page draft deal allowing an unspecified extension to the Brexit transition – with the text simply saying it could run until “20XX”."

    Just sayin'.
  • YnnecYnnec ✭✭✭
    2308 said:

    Personally, I hope we just drop out of the EU on 29 March 2019, come what may. We are presently on course to do that, when the 2 years in Article 50 expires.


    I'm hoping for a second referendum - a recent Yougov poll says 59% want one (that jumps to 64% if May is turfed out) - or a 2099 negotiation extension.
  • JT141JT141 ✭✭✭
    2308 said:

    What baffles me is, by what process we are supposed to have arrived at "an agreement" with the EU?

    Don't worry Colin, the last two Brexit ministers didn't understand the concept of negotiation either.
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