quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
In UK terms, it's "utter rubbish".

You’re not wrong, though most of the folks I worked with over would have said, “a load of bollocks”.

The amount of British slang that's pouring out of all the meltdown tweets is impressive

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Oh, please. The EU has been trying to stop GB from leaving from before the first BREXIT vote.

If it tried that, then not very hard given that the heads of the other member governments gave then-prime minister David Cameron very meagre additional extra opt-outs from EU regulations on top of all the ones the UK already had (special rebate for payments, no member of the Eurozone, Schengen Agreement on open borders, and justice and security cooperation, etc.) to present to the British public before he called the referendum in 2016. Because Cameron's intention was to settle the issue with a vote to remain, based upon the privileged British position in the EU.

They may have hoped that the Brits would still change their minds up to about the middle of this year, to varying degrees; a camp led by Germany would have liked to keep them in, while a French-led camp just wanted to get rid of them. This had partially to do with whether the respective camps saw the UK more as an ally or adversary for their own EU policies. But since about the European elections in May, the overall mood has been to just get it over with. People have had three years now to prepare for the possible impact; the unending extension cycles dragged down normal business; and most critically, the unclear status of British membership threatened the legality of acts by the newly elected European Parliament and EU Commission.

The original exit date was set so the Brits wouldn't have to participate in the May elections anymore, and avoid membership without representation. In the end they still did, and the new date was set before the new Commission would begin work after confirmation by the parliament on 1 November (later postponed to 1 December since several commissioner candidates were rejected in the hearings). Pushing it out to 31 January already meant the UK was still a member while chosing not to fill the commissioner post it has a right to, again opening all sorts of legal problems.

I'm frankly surprised people still buy into "the EU needs the UK more than vice versa, the Brits hold all the cards in negotiations, the EU will give them everything they want and thereafter crumble" three years later, with all evidence to the contrary. If that was true, there would have been no extensions, and the UK would have taken a hard Brexit months ago if necessary. Even Boris Johnson didn't go for that. In fact he struck a deal which Theresa May would have been slapped over the head with for essentially abandoning Northern Ireland, something she said no British prime minister could agree to. That was only possible because Parliament was fractured to the point of deadlock after the 2017 elections, and everybody was tired of it.

So I see no reason to re-assess judgement. If anything, I have overstated the inevitability of Brexit here on SF; last year I said apodictically that the UK would leave at the originally set date, and again early on this thread, because the EU had already planned for the European elections without them. I do believe that Johnson, now with a popular mandate as prime minister and backed up by a comfortable majority in Parliament, will go for a practical solution to future UK-EU relations as dictated by real-world conditions - even if it runs counter to the ideas of "true Brexit" by fringe elements, just as he did with the previous deal.

^^^^
Oh yes, the EU has been SO reasonable and unctuous throughout the whole process as this 2016 NY Times headline suggests:

“E.U. Countries Warn Britain on ‘Brexit’: You’ll Pay if You Leave Us”

The only reason the piece of shit EU is using softer language is because they know they’ve failed in their bullying tactics.

Fuck the EU and their globalist mission. Fuck them.

Yeah, de Nile ain't just a river in Egypt. Banshee thinks these paragraphs he lays down here are a magical incantation which hypnotizes we ignorant Americans. All he has to do is say it is so, and then, it is so. Sorry, no. We're neither blind nor ignorant. and the last thing I would do is trust the opinions of someone who thinks the EU is a positive force in Europe and for the rest of the world. The EU is a blight and should never have existed, and the sooner it dies, the better.

Regardless of their motives, nothing the EU has said or done has prevented the UK from implementing a "hard" Brexit. The problem is that the UK wants their have their cake and eat it too by negotiating better terms on their way out. That's understandable, but may not be achievable.

But on the other hand, even if they do Brexit, I'm not convinced they won't be able to negotiate favorable trading terms even after the fact, because the EU does want and need the UK as a trading partner, much like they need the US.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
^^^^
Oh yes, the EU has been SO reasonable and unctuous throughout the whole process as this 2016 NY Times headline suggests:

“E.U. Countries Warn Britain on ‘Brexit’: You’ll Pay if You Leave Us”.

No. That’s not how it works. If I type a 348 paragraph post in opposition to yours it will make your headline untrue.

Now let me get started typing like a Banshee.

quote:

The EU is a blight and should never have existed, and the sooner it dies, the better.

Yep. The EU represents the surrender of sovereignty of the nation-state to a globalist, supernational organization not accountable to anyone, especially to the will of the people.
It never should have existed.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
No. That’s not how it works. If I type a 348 paragraph post in opposition to yours it will make your headline untrue.

Now let me get started typing like a Banshee.

230 years ago, the same thing could have been said about at of newly independent nation states stuck on one end of a fairly wild continent.

The individual Euro counties were feeling a bit small a ineffective about the larger competition, so they felt the need to get big by hooking up. There's nothing inherently evil about this. However they didn't foresee the problems that would cause, and the implementation wasn't spectacular.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

The EU is a blight and should never have existed, and the sooner it dies, the better.

Yep. The EU represents the surrender of sovereignty of the nation-state to a globalist, supernational organization not accountable to anyone, especially to the will of the people.
It never should have existed.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

The EU is a blight and should never have existed, and the sooner it dies, the better.

Yep. The EU represents the surrender of sovereignty of the nation-state to a globalist, supernational organization not accountable to anyone, especially to the will of the people.
It never should have existed.

I agree, I've never liked the EU, and the more I learn the less I like it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: roberth,

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
The EU is a blight ...

Didn't start out that way, but it was pre-ordained it would have to become one--or fail.

The idea that somehow they were going to create a "United States of Europe" out of disparate cultures and economies was ridiculous on its face. In order to get the various cultures to accept it they promised "If you like your country, you can keep your country." But anybody with any clue whatsoever knew that could not last.

The first big crack appeared when they discovered, via Greece's laissez-faire (read: "irresponsible") economic behaviour, that it really wasn't possible to have a common currency while allowing each state to have complete freedom over its own economic policy. (That problem never was actually fixed. And there are several other EU states in constant threat of economic collapse. All it'll take is just one of them, and it'll all fall over. If for no other reason: The UK is wise to get out for this one.)

The next big crack was, of course, immigration policy. Imagine: Some cultures are opposed to being invaded by another. Who'd have thunk it?

So what has been the EU's response to these inevitable cracks? Why, to do what Big Government always does when threatened: Tighten the screws. They really have little choice, because the original promise was unworkable.

The only real questions are how many nations will escape Brussels' grasp before it manages to exert control so absolute they no longer can, and will enough escape before then to cause it to dissolve?

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Oh, please. The EU has been trying to stop GB from leaving from before the first BREXIT vote.

If it tried that, then not very hard given that the heads of the other member governments gave then-prime minister David Cameron very meagre additional extra opt-outs from EU regulations on top of all the ones the UK already had (special rebate for payments, no member of the Eurozone, Schengen Agreement on open borders, and justice and security cooperation, etc.) to present to the British public before he called the referendum in 2016. Because Cameron's intention was to settle the issue with a vote to remain, based upon the privileged British position in the EU.

They may have hoped that the Brits would still change their minds up to about the middle of this year, to varying degrees; a camp led by Germany would have liked to keep them in, while a French-led camp just wanted to get rid of them. This had partially to do with whether the respective camps saw the UK more as an ally or adversary for their own EU policies. But since about the European elections in May, the overall mood has been to just get it over with. People have had three years now to prepare for the possible impact; the unending extension cycles dragged down normal business; and most critically, the unclear status of British membership threatened the legality of acts by the newly elected European Parliament and EU Commission.

The original exit date was set so the Brits wouldn't have to participate in the May elections anymore, and avoid membership without representation. In the end they still did, and the new date was set before the new Commission would begin work after confirmation by the parliament on 1 November (later postponed to 1 December since several commissioner candidates were rejected in the hearings). Pushing it out to 31 January already meant the UK was still a member while chosing not to fill the commissioner post it has a right to, again opening all sorts of legal problems.

I'm frankly surprised people still buy into "the EU needs the UK more than vice versa, the Brits hold all the cards in negotiations, the EU will give them everything they want and thereafter crumble" three years later, with all evidence to the contrary. If that was true, there would have been no extensions, and the UK would have taken a hard Brexit months ago if necessary. Even Boris Johnson didn't go for that. In fact he struck a deal which Theresa May would have been slapped over the head with for essentially abandoning Northern Ireland, something she said no British prime minister could agree to. That was only possible because Parliament was fractured to the point of deadlock after the 2017 elections, and everybody was tired of it.

So I see no reason to re-assess judgement. If anything, I have overstated the inevitability of Brexit here on SF; last year I said apodictically that the UK would leave at the originally set date, and again early on this thread, because the EU had already planned for the European elections without them. I do believe that Johnson, now with a popular mandate as prime minister and backed up by a comfortable majority in Parliament, will go for a practical solution to future UK-EU relations as dictated by real-world conditions - even if it runs counter to the ideas of "true Brexit" by fringe elements, just as he did with the previous deal.

apodictic[ ap-uh-dik-tik ]SHOW IPA
adjective
incontestable because of having been demonstrated or proved to be demonstrable.
Logic. (of a proposition) necessarily true or logically certain.

I had to look it up...

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
The individual Euro counties were feeling a bit small a ineffective about the larger competition, so they felt the need to get big by hooking up. There's nothing inherently evil about this. However they didn't foresee the problems that would cause, and the implementation wasn't spectacular.

Agreed. One might argue that the more efficient way to describe the difference is one of leadership.

Postrevolutionary American leadership understood that power that lasts has to be more broadly based on local leadership, local initiatives and local checks on national technocracies or their equivalents (think Hamilton). You can piss off backwoodsmen in Pennsylvania, merchants in New York or "the better sort" in South Carolina once every twenty years and get away with it if regular voters in other states support what you're doing.

You can't spend every day on pissing off Britain and Poland for one set of elitist technocratic reasons and Spain, Italy and Greece for another set of elitist, technocratic reasons and still expect to build on a solid foundation that will work well going into the future.

Johnson has 2 main tasks.
1. Deliver Brexit. That should go fairly smoothly, at least compared to the last 3 1/2 years.

2. Prove to the jurisdictions that voted for him, and ESPECIALLY Scotland that he has simultaneously improved their quality of life, their pocketbooks, and that he has heard their voices.

Like Trump has demonstrated that one is effective and popular if you don't govern by the opinions of the coasts and beltway Johnson must go far beyond the typical model of governing within the southeastern bubble. He has to show a new method of governing and partnership for the good of all of the Isle so that they won't feel that there is the need to deliver “significant defeat for the British state and its stranglehold over our economy, society, culture and politics.”. If he can prove throughout the country that there is no reason to devolve into another referendum on Scottish independence then he will be as historically statured at the tier of Churchill and others that have saved the Union in the past.

Biding his time, building successes and good will and then, at gentle opportune moments, reminding Scotland of the percentage of national debt that they will be responsible for in a divorce (a figure they can't manage, and other practical points should cool the blood for another referendum.

Johnson has to pray that those who claim that the Scottish people are not, truly, socialist, but rather are pragmatic, are correct. The growing appeal of the SNP, one hopes, has less to do with the supposed ‘Tory-lite’ policies of Scottish Labour and more to do with widespread detestation of the British political establishment, which invariably has included the Labour Party. The SNP are the UKIP of the Scottish centre-left: they’re shiny, still relatively untainted by power, and represent the perfect vehicle for flipping the bird at the posh boys down in Westminster. link to this effect (old)


Also (LINK)

Boris Johnson stood for party leader as a One Nation Tory, he fought the campaign as a One Nation Tory and this is the agenda that has given him the largest Tory majority since 1987. Much is being made of the collapse of the Labour party’s vote, but something more profound is under way. The Tories are changing, and they have a message that was directed at – and understood by – a new cohort of voters. It has the potential to transform British politics.

It’s wrong to say – as many do – that the phrase ‘One Nation Tory’ is senseless. Its meaning comes from Disraeli’s dictum, in Sybil, that Britain was divided into two nations: the rich and the poor. The point of One Nation Toryism is to render this distinction null and void: to create a Conservative party that has a classless appeal and a situation where a typical Tory voter is as likely to be on the minimum wage as they are to be a millionaire. It looks like this has been achieved in this election, with the Tories winning both Crewe and Kensington, Buckingham and Bolsover.

In his address to Tory activists, the Prime Minister was right to say that the voters in the northern seats would not have given the Conservatives a mandate on this scale if they did not also think that the Tories had a broader agenda. That is: to promise to introduce one of the highest minimum wages in the world, to embark on a huge borrow-and-spend agenda and to reduce regional inequalities. Those who think that the Conservatives were bluffing in a bid to win over northerners will be surprised. The Prime Minister is more Heseltine than Thatcher, and will govern as such.

Those who get their news from social media could easily be persuaded that the last nine years of Tory government have made poverty worse. In fact, the wages of the lowest-paid have been rising the fastest since 2010. This fact was not lost on the new type of voters who are voting Tory for the first time in their lives.

The mission of uniting the country – one of Johnson’s core stated aims – will be difficult to pull off. Just as the gap between politicians and the people has widened, so too has the political gulf between voters. Allegiances have become less tribal in some ways, in that Labour and Conservative supporters are no longer so closely defined in terms of social class. But politics has fractured along new fault lines, in which age and education are the main defining features. Brexit has created a sense of sectarianism not previously encountered on the British mainland. There are now people on either side of the Brexit divide who are, as Disraeli wrote, ‘as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets’. The dividing line previously separating rich and poor has now been drawn between Leave and Remain. The task of a One Nation Tory party will be to unite these factions.

We heard plenty from candidates over the past few weeks about how they are going ‘to bring the country together’, but rather less in the way of explanation as to how they hope to achieve this. The general impression is that various factions have been awaiting victory in the great battle of Brexit, and that they hope that thereafter, the losing side will come quickly round to accept their point of view. To judge from the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, this is a bold hope.

Democracy only works, of course, when people are prepared to accept the result of elections and referendums, however much they regret them. The country can only start to come together if, this time around, all refrain from trying to dispute the legitimacy of the result. The scale of Labour’s implosion should make this easier. This was a rout, a clear rejection of Corbynism, an abandonment of Labour by its supposedly core voters. There will be no more talk of a second Brexit referendum. The era of such wrangling has been brought to an end by an exasperated electorate keen to move on.

This election campaign was Remain’s last stand. The cause is now lost, but the Tories should not rejoice. A great many people are concerned that Britain will turn in on itself, and is about to follow a nativist and populist path. Their concerns need to be addressed. There is much that Johnson can do to show that he is serious about Britain being the EU’s greatest single ally, about a globally-minded Brexit and about compassionate Conservatism.

One of the first acts of the new parliament will be to pass the Brexit deal. This will now happen without drama: a majority of this size means that parliamentary votes will no longer be as fraught as they have been recently. The Prime Minister will be free to cut his own path: neither buffeted by the Liberal Democrats as David Cameron was nor boxed in by Tory factions, as was Theresa May’s fate. This was his agenda, his manifesto – and is, now, his victory.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ChuckFinley,

PJW having a ball with the salty ocean of leftist tears

"Posh, plummy, condescending, jumped-up, self-entitled, latte-sipping, London bubble brats!"

quote:

BansheeOne

Just found this from the great Pat Condell. He hasn't posted in months. I'm glad to see that he's still at it.

From December 4th:

Gloating, glee and righteous indignation from Sargon.

Banshee, this is for you, babe: