Brexit, for once some facts.

[Woosh]

MPs voted to approve TM's A50 extension by 420 votes to 110.
the number of hardline brexiteers has come down quite a bit.

 

[Zlatan]

Exactly what is an extension going to achieve? For either party. (EU or UK)
I think we, d be better off if Macron and co refused extension and we had to make decision. No deal or remain.
We wont know anymore in 5 years let alone 12 months.
EU should call our bluff, for all our sakes. I think they might be showing first signs they desire no deal about same as us. (some of us).
Given choice now between No Deal and revoke Art50 the set of spineless overpaid numpties we call MPs would revoke art 50 anyway.EU would have to be pretty dumb not to realise that.
Its all over bar the shouting.
We gave in when the idiots removed no deal. They are utterly useless.
They are just fudging and wasting money to try and show we left, when we wont have. We were never going to. Its a disgrace.
They are simply offering an extension to lower chance of no deal even lower. Its down to 1 in 10 now and still too risky for EU. An extension will bring it down less each week but prolong the arguments, uncertainty and nastiness.

 

[oldgroaner]

Look at what McDonell is involved with at moment. We, ve got government bordering on inoperational, wrong side at that. We, ve got whole world watching our mess up, and he chooses to mobilise Momentum against Barclays Bank for investing in fossil fuel companies( which BTW just happen to be leaders in renewable energy). First action of its kind. He, s demonstrating just how caring of environment he is. BS. He, s scoring points to leftish students with FA else to worry about. Its a joke. Worse than Unicorn.
And the quote from Guardian by a Momentum leader in Redcar outside a bank..
View attachment 29825
Adding "she is our comrade"
They, ll send her an apology when Barclays go bust.
This is our labour opposition showing how unqualified they are to run country. And its in the Guardian... Shooting themselves in foot or what. Every time. Every one a winner....for the tories.
Apparently depression in Hull supports our Labour party demonstrating its incapability. Not sure why but there you go. Oh, yes, its because I posted it.
Perhaps if they get in power Momentum will roll up to help against knife crime, or join in Surfers Against Sewage. Labour party, or any party, should not be taking action like this. It should be outlawed.
Suppose they take a dislike to Greggs, or Mike Ashley. Are they going to send Momentum around.
Its a dangerous political development we should all be wary of and its slipped in with little media coverage. Are they going to start wearing Brown Shirts perhaps...??
If McDonnel thinks Barclays are behaving underhand or against environment or illegally we have proper channels to take action, he should be thinking of laws to change behaviour for when/if he gets in power not sending students and easily led on demonstrations, especially at moment.

Or perhaps some on here think Tories could start a counter group. Kinetic Energy would be a good name.
The whole premise is wrong but most on here wont care. Momentun are anti Brexit this week. I think. We,ll ask JC.

We seem to have a character who is intent on preaching whatever random irrelevent thoughts pass between his ears with no connection whatever with the thread, Brexit, or normal human debate.
Times are indeed dire among the former Brexit enthusiasts.

 

[Woosh]

Exactly what is an extension going to achieve? For either party. (EU or UK)

the time for voters to think things over and for parliament to come to a consensus.

 

[oyster]

I have posted several times about medicines supplies and brexit:

Brexit already causing medicine shortages at pharmacies in England
Concession-priced medicine list is longest it has been since system was introduced
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/09/brexit-medicine-shortages-pharmacies-england

 

[Fingers]

Exactly what is an extension going to achieve? For either party. (EU or UK)
I think we, d be better off if Macron and co refused extension and we had to make decision. No deal or remain.
We wont know anymore in 5 years let alone 12 months.
EU should call our bluff, for all our sakes. I think they might be showing first signs they desire no deal about same as us. (some of us).
Given choice now between No Deal and revoke Art50 the set of spineless overpaid numpties we call MPs would revoke art 50 anyway.EU would have to be pretty dumb not to realise that.
Its all over bar the shouting.
We gave in when the idiots removed no deal. They are utterly useless.
They are just fudging and wasting money to try and show we left, when we wont have. We were never going to. Its a disgrace.
They are simply offering an extension to lower chance of no deal even lower. Its down to 1 in 10 now and still too risky for EU. An extension will bring it down less each week but prolong the arguments, uncertainty and nastiness.

It's time to end the charade now.

We knew we wouldn't be allowed to leave we just wanted to see how they would stop us.

I'm a bit disappointed it was our MPs if I'm honest. Let's hope they take a battering at the next election. Can't wait to see twinkle toes soubrey on strictly and Cooper eating testicles on I'm a celebrity

 

[oldgroaner]

It's time to end the charade now.

We knew we wouldn't be allowed to leave we just wanted to see how they would stop us.

I'm a bit disappointed it was our MPs if I'm honest. Let's hope they take a battering at the next election. Can't wait to see twinkle toes soubrey on strictly and Cooper eating testicles on I'm a celebrity

Fascinating that some leave voters still stick to the same old worn out tropes

 

[oldgroaner]

Exactly what is an extension going to achieve? For either party. (EU or UK)
I think we, d be better off if Macron and co refused extension and we had to make decision. No deal or remain.
We wont know anymore in 5 years let alone 12 months.
EU should call our bluff, for all our sakes. I think they might be showing first signs they desire no deal about same as us. (some of us).
Given choice now between No Deal and revoke Art50 the set of spineless overpaid numpties we call MPs would revoke art 50 anyway.EU would have to be pretty dumb not to realise that.
Its all over bar the shouting.
We gave in when the idiots removed no deal. They are utterly useless.
They are just fudging and wasting money to try and show we left, when we wont have. We were never going to. Its a disgrace.
They are simply offering an extension to lower chance of no deal even lower. Its down to 1 in 10 now and still too risky for EU. An extension will bring it down less each week but prolong the arguments, uncertainty and nastiness.

Behold the monster you've created....

 

[anotherkiwi]

It's time to end the charade now.

We knew we wouldn't be allowed to leave we just wanted to see how they would stop us.

I'm a bit disappointed it was our MPs if I'm honest. Let's hope they take a battering at the next election. Can't wait to see twinkle toes soubrey on strictly and Cooper eating testicles on I'm a celebrity

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/884759556001345536

Get your photo off to Hugh fingers, he'll be thrilled to have a second example!

Did you major in codswallop at uni?

 

[Wicky]

MPs voted to approve TM's A50 extension by 420 votes to 110.
the number of hardline brexiteers has come down quite a bit.

Daniel Kawczynski MP today jumped the ERG ship...

 

[Wicky]

Behold the monster you've created....

What did the late A.A. Gill think about Brexit?

“It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”
When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’
You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.
No time for walls: the best of Europe, from its music and food to IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, depends on an easy collision of cultures

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.”

........................................

A.A Gill. The Times. 2016[/QUOTE

 

[Danidl]

Exactly what is an extension going to achieve? For either party. (EU or UK)
I think we, d be better off if Macron and co refused extension and we had to make decision. No deal or remain.
We wont know anymore in 5 years let alone 12 months.
EU should call our bluff, for all our sakes. I think they might be showing first signs they desire no deal about same as us. (some of us).
Given choice now between No Deal and revoke Art50 the set of spineless overpaid numpties we call MPs would revoke art 50 anyway.EU would have to be pretty dumb not to realise that.
Its all over bar the shouting.
We gave in when the idiots removed no deal. They are utterly useless.
They are just fudging and wasting money to try and show we left, when we wont have. We were never going to. Its a disgrace.
They are simply offering an extension to lower chance of no deal even lower. Its down to 1 in 10 now and still too risky for EU. An extension will bring it down less each week.

I think you have got it in one .. And France knows that. In fact it is now logical to give no concession of time or space, as the PM is then required by LAW to revoke Article 50.

 

[Zlatan]

What did the late A.A. Gill think about Brexit?

What a waste of forum space. The woman hasnt got her wish as she. Come on Wicki, keep up. Have you been sleeping last few days.

 

[Danidl]

It's time to end the charade now.

We knew we wouldn't be allowed to leave we just wanted to see how they would stop us.

I'm a bit disappointed it was our MPs if I'm honest. Let's hope they take a battering at the next election. Can't wait to see twinkle toes soubrey on strictly and Cooper eating testicles on I'm a celebrity

"We would not be allowed to leave".. em it is your own sovereign parliament which has made the decision. UK was of course allowed to leave. No one is holding them against their will. Of course this is the classical victimhood trope again. .". Mammy wont let me out to play "

 

[Zlatan]

I think you have got it in one .. And France knows that. In fact it is now logical to give no concession of time or space, as the PM is then required by LAW to revoke Article 50.

Yes, agreed. Macron knows score. Dont like the man but he is competent. It would save time, heartache, money and argument. And force Parliament into a decision, which would be a first.

 

[Zlatan]

"We would not be allowed to leave".. em it is your own sovereign parliament which has made the decision. UK was of course allowed to leave. No one is holding them against their will. Of course this is the classical victimhood trope again. .". Mammy wont let me out to play "

To be fair Fingers didnt say who prevented our leaving. I think you, ll find he sees it like me, our establishment, weak MPs and remainers prevented our leaving. (If he doesnt, my apologies Fingers)
Remainers have won, fair means or foul is debateable. We arent leaving. Never were.
The electorate have been lied to, manifestoes ignored and our faith in the system seriously damaged. The whole episode has been a complete waste of money, time, energy and argument.
Problem is as its worked out, we will never know a definitive answer. We will be left for generations with not really knowing.
What we do know is the UK has lost more of its sovereignty and identity. We are just that Island off mainland Europe. Its been proven, remainers are right. We cant cope without EU.
Our MPs have proven incapable of actually making any decisions. We even need EU to tell us when or if we are leaving. Its a disgrace.

 

[gray198]

the time for voters to think things over and for parliament to come to a consensus.

as long as the consensus is that we don't leave

 

[Danidl]

Yes, agreed. Macron knows score. Dont like the man but he is competent. It would save time, heartache, money and argument. And force Parliament into a decision, which would be a first.

The difference is I do like him. His address to the US House of Congress was an excercise in measured diplomacy, saying exactly what needed saying. It was a masterclass.

 

[Kudoscycles]

Exactly what is an extension going to achieve? For either party. (EU or UK)
I think we, d be better off if Macron and co refused extension and we had to make decision. No deal or remain.
We wont know anymore in 5 years let alone 12 months.
EU should call our bluff, for all our sakes. I think they might be showing first signs they desire no deal about same as us. (some of us).
Given choice now between No Deal and revoke Art50 the set of spineless overpaid numpties we call MPs would revoke art 50 anyway.EU would have to be pretty dumb not to realise that.
Its all over bar the shouting.
We gave in when the idiots removed no deal. They are utterly useless.
They are just fudging and wasting money to try and show we left, when we wont have. We were never going to. Its a disgrace.
They are simply offering an extension to lower chance of no deal even lower. Its down to 1 in 10 now and still too risky for EU. An extension will bring it down less each week but prolong the arguments, uncertainty and nastiness.

Zlatan....you are quite right,we should develop some spline and revoke Art 50.
KudosDave

 

[Kudoscycles]

50 year extension,then the ERG unicorns can go back to Somerset and die.
KudosDave