Brexit

[bune]

[dimejinky99]

That’s a great piece. Nails it.

[LetMeSleep]

Theresa May gives us a glimpse of what it'd be like to be a tofu salesperson.

[dimejinky99]

There's a great article in the Guardian today by Fintan O'Toole who argues that Brexit is about the continuing fragmentation of the United Kingdom which has manifested itself in Brexit:

[Quoute]For all of this is the afterlife of dead things. One of them is Brexit itself. When did Brextinction occur? On 24 June 2016. The project was driven by decades of camped-up mendacity about the tyranny of the EU, and sold in the referendum as a fantasy of national liberation. It simply could not survive contact with reality. It died the moment it became real. You cannot free yourself from imaginary oppression. Even if May were a political genius – and let us concede that she is not – Brexit was always going to come down to a choice between two evils: the heroic but catastrophic failure of crashing out; or the unheroic but less damaging failure of swapping first-class for second-class EU membership. These are the real afterlives of a departed reverie.

If the choice between shooting oneself in the head or in the foot is the answer to Britain’s long-term problems, surely the wrong question is being asked. It is becoming ever clearer that Brexit is not about its ostensible subject: Britain’s relationship with the EU. The very word Brexit contains a literally unspoken truth. It does not include or even allude to Europe. It is British exit that is the point, not what it is exiting from. The tautologous slogan Leave Means Leave is similarly (if unintentionally) honest: the meaning is in the leaving, not in what is being left or how.....

It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these interrelated developments do seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling a referendum and asking people to endorse the status quo.[/Quote]


I think he's bang on with his assessment here. In the short term, Brexit needs to be cancelled but the underlying causes must also be dealt with. And that will never happen in face it’ll come to a violent head unless this whole shambles is called off somehow.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... or-purpose

[dimejinky99]

Yeah I’m not sure May cares, Mary Lou, but waving Irish unity at her isn’t helping either.

[surfndestroy]

"Brexit was always going to come down to a choice between two evils: the heroic but catastrophic failure of crashing out; or the unheroic but less damaging failure of swapping first-class for second-class EU membership."

The Brexit process has been an unmitigated disaster but I so don't agree with this assessment. Canada, part of the Commonwealth but not EU in no way thinks their trade agreements with EU or any other country or group makes Canada second-class anything.
It's like telling a person who wants a divorce but also to maintain a good relationship with their ex for child raising reasons, that they will only be a second-class person. Pfft.

[dimejinky99]

The commonwealth is just a ragged threadbare label for former glories and countries under their dominion. There’s no social or economic interaction or process among the commonwealth in fact the name is utterly misleading.

Being from a commonwealth country doesn’t give you access or a free green card into England.

*im wrong on the social aspect. Its celebrated as a sports event every four years. The commonwealth games. But that’s it.

[96583UP]

the queen occasionally visits canada

she is their head of state

constitutional monarchy

canadians can work in the UK

[Birds in Hell]

constitutional monarchy

[dimejinky99]

One of the richest people in the world who lives off and costs tens of millions in benefits provided by the British tax payer each year. Yeah she’s a real treasure

[doone]

One of the richest people in the world who lives off and costs tens of millions in benefits provided by the British tax payer each year. Yeah she’s a real treasure

Media reports have estimated the Queen's personal fortune is worth up to £360 million ($470 million). That's a nice chunk of change, but over 320 Brits are richer, according to the Sunday Times.

Lol, she's not even one of the richest people in her country.

[96583UP]

One of the richest people in the world who lives off and costs tens of millions in benefits provided by the British tax payer each year. Yeah she’s a real treasure

Media reports have estimated the Queen's personal fortune is worth up to £360 million ($470 million). That's a nice chunk of change, but over 320 Brits are richer, according to the Sunday Times.

Lol, she's not even one of the richest people in her country.

the other 320 are just Russia and Chinese money-launderers with British passports

[Anders]

Still, she lives for free, woth a huge income every year. And:

The Crown Estate has 263,000 farmed acres; billions of dollars in industrial, office, and retail properties; about half of the U.K.’s shoreline, and almost all the seabed to the 12-mile territorial limit. The total value is about $16.5 billion. Queen Elizabeth and family receive 15% of all the money — $363 million annually — made from the rents, lumber, agricultural products, minerals, renewable energy production, licensing of rights to run undersea cables, and more.

[dimejinky99]

One of the richest people in the world who lives off and costs tens of millions in benefits provided by the British tax payer each year. Yeah she’s a real treasure

Media reports have estimated the Queen's personal fortune is worth up to £360 million ($470 million). That's a nice chunk of change, but over 320 Brits are richer, according to the Sunday Times.

Lol, she's not even one of the richest people in her country.

Vast and truly vast amounts of money involved in all sorts of other things and off shore for the most part as Anders pointed out. None of it officially declared.

[bada]

Brexit needs to be cancelled

Didn't the EU say they wouldn't allow Britain to back out right after the vote passed or is that not enforceable?

[Norah]

Brexit needs to be cancelled

Didn't the EU say they wouldn't allow Britain to back out right after the vote passed or is that not enforceable?

i might be wrong but i think the original rules said britain couldn't back out unless the rest of the eu ok'd it, but later they waved that rule and now britain can decide on their own to cancel

[dimejinky99]

Any sensible leader would cancel it. May is barrelling ahead and only last night called all EU leaders and it seems they’re all flummoxed as she seems to have hardened to go ahead with it no matter what. She knows the EU won’t budge. She therefore can’t appease the endless demands and complaints from within her own party and the others.

It’s looking like a hard brexit right now.
No time left for a second referendum. A deal within Britain impossible.
She could possibly cancel A50 but looks like she’s charging ahead. Simply to keep her party together. Which is pointless given there’s going to be huge splits and upheavel across all parties and strands after it happens.

No clear idea what she thinks she’s doing.

[dimejinky99]

Car bomb went off in Derry last night..

[bada]

Brexit needs to be cancelled

Didn't the EU say they wouldn't allow Britain to back out right after the vote passed or is that not enforceable?

i might be wrong but i think the original rules said britain couldn't back out unless the rest of the eu ok'd it, but later they waved that rule and now britain can decide on their own to cancel

[dimejinky99]

Wow. So Mays plan b is to try negotiate a separate deal with Ireland on customs and the border. EU member states can’t negotiate on these and why would they?
She’s away with the fairies completely.