Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Akrasia

54and56 wrote: »

Define "Independent"? What type of ownership is "Independent"? A trust like the Irish Times?

For a newspaper to be truly independent would it not have to cease publishing opinion pieces and just report the factual news without any form of commentary whatsoever? As far as I can see as soon as someone expresses an opinion they cease to be independent unless of course there is some sort of arbitrary rule followed where any expression of opinion must be counter balanced by an opposite opinion being given equal coverage / column inches etc which sounds reasonable until you see some of the loopers who have to be given air time in order to provide "balance"!!

Independence does not mean completely impartial. It means that the journalists and editors who work there, are allowed to report the news as they see fit and are not interfered with by political or commercial actors who can prevent them from publishing an otherwise newsworthy article because it goes against the interest of an owner/politician

Now, any news outlet that is funded or part funded by advertising, is always going to be under some pressure to not p1ss off the advertisers, but this is different to having an owner like Murdoch who recruits only the editors and journalists who he trusts to protect his own commercial interests and promote his own world view

The Guardian does not have owners, and it is a not for profit organisation and the editorial/journalistic staff are much more independent than journalists who work for commercial media or state media that is heavily under the control of the current governing party

Akrasia

130k EU citizens living in the UK receiving benefits have yet to apply for settled status with the deadline in 8 days

This is on top of the 300k EU residents who have applied for settled status but still have not been granted their status by the UK home office

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/21/130000-eu-citizens-on-uk-benefits-yet-to-apply-for-settled-status-leak-suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/06/fears-for-rights-of-eu-citizens-still-waiting-for-uk-settled-status-post-brexit
The UK Immigration minister Kevin Foster has said that they will preserve rights for everyone who has applied for settled status but has not yet been granted it, but this does nothing to protect those who have not applied by 30th of June

This could get very messy on 1st of July unless the UK extend the deadline if 10s of thousands of people suddenly lose access to healthcare, housing or benefits, 70% of these people would be in the vulnerable category with tens of thousands of them on Universal Credits

As 1st of July, it will be a crime for landlords to rent property to people who do not have the correct documentation proving their right to live and/or work in the UK, and given the hostile environment policy of the Home Office could we see tens of thousands of EU citizens facing serious crises

Tyrone212

Brexit shrank UK services exports by more than £110bn over a four-year period, new research shows, highlighting the far-reaching trade implications of Britain’s decision to break away from the EU.

Experts at Aston University in Birmingham found that UK services exports from 2016 to 2019 were cumulatively £113bn lower than they would have been had the UK not voted to quit the EU in June 2016.

The researchers calculated the figure by projecting how industries from IT and finance to business services would have grown if they had continued on their previous paths, and compared that with how they had actually progressed since the vote for Brexit. The gap was £113bn. Data for 2020 wasn't included because of the pandemic.

Full story: https://www.ft.com/content/20a626ab-d221-43e6-9990-bfd1e1ff132d

Nody

Remember how the CPTPP deal was going to be the deal to make Brexit worth it (now that a deal with China and USA is out)? Well the numbers are in...

Official figures have shown that the potential benefit to the UK economy from a proposed partnership with Asian countries is less than one-fortieth the expected losses from Brexit.

And Labour warned that the projected 0.08 per cent (£1.8bn) boost to GDP over the long term will shrink to just 0.017 per cent (£400m) if Malaysia continues to resist ratification of the deal, as it has for the past three years.

To put that in perspective; and that's the long term boon:

food and drink producers warned they had lost £2bn worth of exports to Europe in just the first three months of Brexit.

So what was lost in food exports in 3 months is the same value as the optimistic gain in 15 years time assuming Malaysia actually agree to the terms; not even talking about all the other areas of the economy...

CelticRambler

Another bit of face-spiting rhinectomy on the part of the British government:

School trips to UK from EU could halve as Brexit hits cultural exchanges

The British government has rejected requests from organisers to exempt children taking part in short organised educational trips from new passport and visa measures due to come into effect on 1 October, saying they are needed to strengthen Britain’s borders.

“We’ve already seen a big fall-off in interest,” said Edward Hisbergues, the sales manager of a leading French operator, PG Trips. “My business was 90% UK, 10% Ireland; now it’s all about Ireland.

I can confirm from personal experience, being the token anglophone in several French circles, that Britain is indeed "gone" off the cultural map for many French families. So far this year, I think I've had about a dozen requests to let me know if I hear of any opportunities in Ireland for au pairs, student exchanges, etc, all with foot note "we had thought of sending her to England, but not now ..."

And as a former resident of Canterbury, I know how much activity the invading hordes of French students brought to the city streets (and coach carparks). It that's cut in half, the place will revert to being a sleepy village on the road the Channel ports.

Enzokk

So it seems like the UK has told the DUP the NIP will change. Hope they have told the EU this,

Reasonable to expect changes to NI Protocol - Lewis

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has said it is reasonable to take the view that changes will be made to the Northern Ireland Protocol as it is "not sustainable" in its current form.

The comments came after outgoing DUP leader Edwin Poots said he had received a personal assurance from the British government that significant changes will be made to the protocol.

I have no problem if changes are made, as long as it doesn't threaten our place in the EU, but to me this reads as more fantasy BS from the charlatans in charge of the UK. They are realising what a crap deal they negotiated and signed and are now trying to break the agreement they themselves agreed. Lovely bunch.

cameramonkey

Enzokk wrote: »

So it seems like the UK has told the DUP the NIP will change. Hope they have told the EU this,

Reasonable to expect changes to NI Protocol - Lewis



I have no problem if changes are made, as long as it doesn't threaten our place in the EU, but to me this reads as more fantasy BS from the charlatans in charge of the UK. They are realising what a crap deal they negotiated and signed and are now trying to break the agreement they themselves agreed. Lovely bunch.

The UK have told the DUP many things most seem to have been fairy-tales.
The fact that they are saying that the protocol will change is a climb down from saying that it must go. This is just more maneuvering to get Jeff Donaldson set up as leader and bedded in, the Brits have Jeff in their pocket, they will have all the dirt on him, if there is any.

Seth Brundle

So five years on and look back at the changes internally within the UK coupled with the reputational damage to the UK.
Does anyone really think the UK is in a better place?
Can anyone list off any tangible Brexit benefit?

Former political editor of the Sunday Times, Isabel Oakeshott tries to list off some benefits, none of which are Brexit related. It's really sad.
https://twitter.com/bmay/status/1407622269132808192

ancapailldorcha

Post with insults (and response) removed. Again. There are multiple warnings on this thread including in the OP.

roosterman71

The UK is getting more and more weird. They are suggesting that school kids sing this now (it also ignores NI completely!)

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jun/22/education-department-challenged-over-support-for-one-britain-one-nation-day

Tyrone212

Jesus Christ. What's next. Boris Youth.

The UK asked quietly for an extension last week.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57518980
The EU will presumably concede and that will be sold as a big win.

dogbert27

Tyrone212 wrote: »

Jesus Christ. What's next. Boris Youth.

Don't feed the gondolas

Christy42

What in the world is going on there that someone thought that song was a good look for them? Like there are no words for how stupid that is.

Strazdas

roosterman71 wrote: »

The UK is getting more and more weird. They are suggesting that school kids sing this now (it also ignores NI completely!)

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jun/22/education-department-challenged-over-support-for-one-britain-one-nation-day

They're obsessed with wars btw. Even this song for children manages to get a mention in.

Sam Russell

Strazdas wrote: »

They're obsessed with wars btw. Even this song for children manages to get a mention in.

The thing about wars, is there is always a winning side - and if you happen to be on the winning side, you can then claim for evermore that you won the war - even if your contribution to that winning was far from decisive.

You could even do that for more than one war. If you do not win, then you do not mention the various wars that did not work out so well - like Korea, Suez, etc.

murphaph

I saw someone trying to get Britler Youth trending on twitter. It's not far off how all that stuff began. It's funny in one way but somehow sinister and disturbing in another.

CelticRambler

Deleted User wrote: »

The UK asked quietly for an extension last week.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57518980
The EU will presumably concede and that will be sold as a big win.

Nothing quiet about it - you're just a bit late to the party. Yes, it's being sold as a "win" - but only because it's the UK asking for it - and only asking, not getting. Various top-level EU people have already responded publicly saying "what for? We already gave you six months because you were too incompetent to get yourselves organised for the oven-ready Brexit you so desperately wanted for Christmas."

dogbert27

CelticRambler wrote: »

Nothing quiet about it - you're just a bit late to the party. Yes, it's being sold as a "win" - but only because it's the UK asking for it - and only asking, not getting. Various top-level EU people have already responded publicly saying "what for? We already gave you six months because you were too incompetent to get yourselves organised for the oven-ready Brexit you so desperately wanted for Christmas."

Exactly. If they couldn't get it sorted in 6 months they won't get it sorted in the next 3 months when they will be breaking up for the summer and then come back in September saying the EU did nothing to help therefore we will need another 3 months.

The EU has to be firm on this or it's going to be another 2 years of extensions.

Sam Russell

dogbert27 wrote: »

Exactly. If they couldn't get it sorted in 6 months they won't get it sorted in the next 3 months when they will be breaking up for the summer and then come back in September saying the EU did nothing to help therefore we will need another 3 months.

The EU has to be firm on this or it's going to be another 2 years of extensions.

The EU could ask for an extension on the Settled Status scheme for EU citizens trapped in the UK.

The UK Gov have said that they will not give an extension because the EU citizens have had plenty of time to apply. Now that is a very strange attitude given there is a backlog of decisions on those who have applied. (I think the backlog is about 400,000 applications.)

jm08

dogbert27 wrote: »

Exactly. If they couldn't get it sorted in 6 months they won't get it sorted in the next 3 months when they will be breaking up for the summer and then come back in September saying the EU did nothing to help therefore we will need another 3 months.

The EU has to be firm on this or it's going to be another 2 years of extensions.

Or perhaps they want an extension until after the marching season so that the British Gov can ignore NI loyalists and DUP and leave the Protocol stand.

Strazdas

Sam Russell wrote: »

The thing about wars, is there is always a winning side - and if you happen to be on the winning side, you can then claim for evermore that you won the war - even if your contribution to that winning was far from decisive.

You could even do that for more than one war. If you do not win, then you do not mention the various wars that did not work out so well - like Korea, Suez, etc.

It's a bit of an odd thing to reference in a song about patriotism. Lots of countries reference their fight for independence in their national anthems (Ireland, USA etc) but few if any mention past wars for the sake of mentioning them.

I suppose for the Brexit brigade, past wars with a variety of enemies are their equivalent of a 'fight for independence' and a part of the national identity.

dogbert27

jm08 wrote: »

Or perhaps they want an extension until after the marching season so that the British Gov can ignore NI loyalists and DUP and leave the Protocol stand.

If all that's happened to the NIP before July 12th is that an extension period has been given I think the loyalists and DUP will be causing trouble regardless.

The Raging Bile Duct

The 5th anniversary of Brexit is a good time to take a look back at Daniel Hannan's predictions about how well Britain would do after leaving the EU:

It’s 24 June, 2025, and Britain is marking its annual Independence Day celebration. As the fireworks stream through the summer sky, still not quite dark, we wonder why it took us so long to leave. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours.

The United Kingdom is now the region’s foremost knowledge-based economy. We lead the world in biotech, law, education, the audio-visual sector, financial services and software. New industries, from 3D printing to driverless cars, have sprung up around the country. Older industries, too, have revived as energy prices have fallen back to global levels: steel, cement, paper, plastics and ceramics producers have become competitive again.

The EU, meanwhile, continues to turn inwards, clinging to its dream of political amalgamation as the euro and migration crises worsen. Its population is ageing, its share of world GDP shrinking and its peoples protesting. “We have the most comprehensive workers’ rights in the world”, complains Jean-Claude Juncker, who has recently begun in his second term as President of the European Federation, “but we have fewer and fewer workers”...

Unsurprisingly, several other European countries have opted to copy Britain’s deal with the EU, based as it is upon a common market rather than a common government. Some of these countries were drawn from EFTA (Norway, Switzerland and Iceland are all bringing their arrangements into line with ours). Some came from further afield (Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine). Some followed us out of the EU (Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands).

The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain...

Perhaps the greatest benefit, though, is not easy to quantify. Britain has recovered its self-belief. As we left the EU, we straightened our backs, looked about us, and realised that we were still a nation to be reckoned with: the world’s fifth economy and fourth military power, one of five members on the UN Security Council and a leading member of the G7 and the Commonwealth. We recalled, too, that we were the world’s leading exporter of soft power; that our language was the most widely studied on Earth; that we were linked by kinship and migration to every continent and archipelago. We saw that there were great opportunities across the oceans, beyond the enervated eurozone. We knew that our song had not yet been sung.

Pure gold.

https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

Strazdas

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

I said it before I don’t think looking to Germany is correct when thinking of where brexit is heading (tho the obvious slide to fascism is there and is disturbing as we are next to them)

I think comparisons to Russia post USSR are more apt, they seem to be 20 years behind on their slide into an oligarchic dystopia with a sprinkling of nationalism and fascism and nostalgia for past empire

I guess the one strong glimmer of hope is that Britain has a history of democracy and a free press. Yes, the Brexiteers and a swathe of Tory voters want to turn GB into a version of Putin's Russia, but it could still go completely pear shaped on them.

pixelburp

The Raging Bile Duct wrote: »

The 5th anniversary of Brexit is a good time to take a look back at Daniel Hannan's predictions about how well Britain would do after leaving the EU:

Pure gold.

https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

If someone posted that flight of fancy, they'd be (rightly) reported as Soapboxing, or just trolling. You'd love to know, if in the deep quiet of the night, would Hannan have admitted what he typed up was pure hyperactive drivel?

Strazdas

pixelburp wrote: »

If someone posted that flight of fancy, they'd be (rightly) reported as Soapboxing, or just trolling. You'd love to know, if in the deep quiet of the night, would Hannan have admitted what he typed up was pure hyperactive drivel?

It's possible that he believed a lot of it, but that would tell us that Vote Leave were deluded fantasists selling a pipedream.

It's the type of political manifesto you'd see being pushed by a tiny crackpot party on the fringes. How these guys ever came into the mainstream is anyone's guess.

pixelburp

Strazdas wrote: »

It's possible that he believed a lot of it, but that would tell us that Vote Leave were deluded fantasists selling a pipedream.

It's the type of political manifesto you'd see being pushed by a tiny crackpot party on the fringes. How these guys ever came into the mainstream is anyone's guess.

It's the pot-shots that get me: I don't begrudge any Briton who wanted to believe in the potential of Brexit. We may have seen things from a different perspective but it WAS a seductive, reductive proposition all the same. Leave the EU and all will be well in the world. Fine. Caveat Emptor.

But Hannan then goes into detail about how Brexit UK leads the charge of some beautiful new geopolitical creature legally distinct from the EU, while also causing the fragmentation of the actual EU. Nations joining the UK on its glorious crusade (of course Ireland is one of them) while what remains is an embittered husk, federalised and moribund. It's such ... spectacular nonsense. "Gilding the lily" doesn't really suffice, reading this embittered declaration that the EU will spin out of control without Perfidi...Glorious Albion in the hot seat.

Then I pivot back to these clips of Good Morning Britain, shared earlier, with its guests pulling the friendly "whoopsie! I can't name a benefit, totes embarrassing, chortle!" routine, and I remember that when the dust settles and the fantasists move on, the rest of the UK will be the ones having to live in the mess created by these scheisters. The EU's formerly poorest regions will no doubt only get poorer. Gig economy jobs for all I guess, miniature union flags for others.

View

dogbert27 wrote: »

Exactly. If they couldn't get it sorted in 6 months they won't get it sorted in the next 3 months when they will be breaking up for the summer and then come back in September saying the EU did nothing to help therefore we will need another 3 months.

The EU has to be firm on this or it's going to be another 2 years of extensions.

The EU can only be firm on this if all member states are ready, willing and able to impose retaliatory sanctions on all British exports entering the EU.

The problem is that is not the case because Ireland is “the weakest link”. We are unable to do this (as we don’t have the physical infrastructure at the border to enforce it), we aren’t willing to do so (because we want to maintain a fantasy that NI really isn’t part of the U.K.) and we aren’t ready to do so (since we’d have to address both of those points before we could be ready).

As such, the Brexiters have no incentive to resolve this. They can happily breach the protocol secure in the knowledge that we will veto any attempt to introduce sanctions against them for breaching their agreement with the EU.

Strazdas

pixelburp wrote: »

It's the pot-shots that get me: I don't begrudge any Briton who wanted to believe in the potential of Brexit. We may have seen things from a different perspective but it WAS a seductive, reductive proposition all the same. Leave the EU and all will be well in the world. Fine. Caveat Emptor.

But Hannan then goes into detail about how Brexit UK leads the charge of some beautiful new geopolitical creature legally distinct from the EU, while also causing the fragmentation of the actual EU. Nations joining the UK on its glorious crusade (of course Ireland is one of them) while what remains is an embittered husk, federalised and moribund. It's such ... spectacular nonsense. "Gilding the lily" doesn't really suffice, reading this embittered declaration that the EU will spin out of control without Perfidi...Glorious Albion in the hot seat.

Then I pivot back to these clips of Good Morning Britain, shared earlier, with its guests pulling the friendly "whoopsie! I can't name a benefit, totes embarrassing, chortle!" routine, and I remember that when the dust settles and the fantasists move on, the rest of the UK will be the ones having to live in the mess created by these scheisters. The EU's formerly poorest regions will no doubt only get poorer. Gig economy jobs for all I guess, miniature union flags for others.

A key point here is that he thought Brexit would do serious damage to the EU and this is something he actively wanted to happen. There was a fair bit of nastiness and vindictiveness in the vote to Leave ; not just wanting to leave, but hoping it would damage the EU in the process.

Perhaps though the Brexiteers secretly thought the only way the UK could do well outside the union is if the EU suffered in the process (or even collapsed) i.e. it was as much about as trying to destroy the union.