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Should we stop bullying the United Kingdom?

Kermit.de.frog

A British friend of mine told me today he felt Ireland was bullying the UK (I know!)over Brexit.

We can only do it with the help of our gallant allies of course now the UK is leaving and they despise them.

I do feel we may regret it down the road and that the Irish are somewhat awestruck with the sudden power they seem to have over the old foe, the tables turned etc.

It's a mirage - they'll fight on the beaches etc.

But aside from self interest maybe we should be supporting them? Sometimes I feel we are more British than Finchley.

They are our friends.

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OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

Skedaddle

Bear in mind that British 19th century success was also largely local resource based pot luck too. They sat on a huge coal and iron ore reserve which is largely what kicked off and sustained the industrial revolution. It's the same with the German, Benelux and Northeastern France industrial hubs of the past.

The British Empire was just an add on plundering operation that provided a captive source for cheap inputs in the form of raw materials, easily convertible liquid assets like gold and so on and a lot of cheap overseas labour to extract things.

They didn't trade fairly with it, nor did they ever develop it as an export market. Goods from British manufacturers went to wealthy European and North American consumers, not to India or Africa. At the time, Australia, NZ and Canada were basically remote outposts of little economic significance as export markets.

Recreating the 19th century UK is completely impossible. They'll have to sink or swim outside the EU and they really don't have a hell of a lot of industries to rely upon and are heavily integrated into European supply chains. So, it'll be a very bumpy road ahead of them, assuming Brexit even happens.

Skedaddle

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

At that rate you should take large chunks of British based FDI companies out of their economy too. There are loads of corporate HQs, foreign owned banks, pharma and so on over there too. Big scale FDI is just the reality of globalisation. You can't exclude everything based on where the companies are ultimately owned.

lawred2

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

A British friend of mine told me today he felt Ireland was bullying the UK (I know!)over Brexit.

We can only do it with the help of our gallant allies of course now the UK is leaving and they despise them.

I do feel we may regret it down the road and that the Irish are somewhat awestruck with the sudden power they seem to have over the old foe, the tables turned etc.

It's a mirage - they'll fight on the beaches etc.

But aside from self interest maybe we should be supporting them? Sometimes I feel we are more British than Finchley.

They are our friends.

Looking after self interests is not bullying.

Brexit could cause untold economic and geopolitical strife for all the inhabitants of this island... Hardly something to be trivial about.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

VinLieger

Boo fvcking hooo, ops friend is obviously an average troglodytic daily mail reader who cant pull their head out of their ass to stop smelling their own self congratulating farts to understand if you behave so selfishly to others not expecting the same back is childlike in its reasoning.

Also yeah the ignorant irony of an english person saying that about ireland is quite delicious,

Peregrinus

Well, at no point has Kermit given us any clue as to why his friend think Ireland is bullying the UK. What, exactly, are we doing that is considered to be bullying behaviour. Kermit indicates, I think, that he himself does not share his friend's perception, but presumably he has at least asked his friend what in God's name he is talking about.

What, exactly, are we doing that Kermit's friend would have us stop doing? Or is that we are failing or refusing to do something he thinks we ought to do?

ancapailldorcha

noodler wrote: »

Take pharma out of it.

They are our most important trade partner.

You're advocating deliberately skewing the figures because it proves your point? Why?

Peregrinus

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

You're advocating deliberately skewing the figures because it proves your point? Why?

Because it proves* his point.

[* Statutory health warning: point may not actually be proved.]

VinLieger

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, at no point has Kermit given us any clue as to why his friend think Ireland is bullying the UK. What, exactly, are we doing that is considered to be bullying behaviour. Kermit indicates, I think, that he himself does not share his friend's perception, but presumably he has at least asked his friend what in God's name he is talking about.

What, exactly, are we doing that Kermit's friend would have us stop doing? Or is that we are failing or refusing to do something he thinks we ought to do?

My money is on they consider bullying to be us not just jumping on board the brexit train 100%

lawred2

Ajsoprano wrote: »

Anybody read the d Irish story the worm has turned.
I can’t remember the translation.

Casa an phiast

[Deleted User]

The Irish "bullying" Britain? Ah, the poor British "victim" of those damned foreigners. Some things never change.

What's happening the British/English is long overdue. Unlike every other defeated former imperial power in Europe, they've never, ever, ever had to face up to their past. In fact, as the poppy stuff repeatedly demonstrates they glorify their Empire ad nauseam. In terms of British power, for all these people it might as well be 1886 or 1918. Because they've never faced up to its decline, they live on a delusion of world importance, of uniqueness, and, yes, of exceptionalism. Because they've never faced up to the crimes of their Empire, they compound this delusion with a stunningly ahistorical moral superiority. Even when they glorify "the past" they massively distort their role - most obviously claiming most of the credit for defeating Nazism when more people died in a single Russian battle than all British casualties combined in WWII.

When they do get a sense of decline, however, it is always outsiders to blame, and the EU as the embodiment of France, Germany and every other great foreign adversary is it. This scapegoating is the key point. The scapegoating of the EU for British decline is really objectionable - particularly as the enormous British financial services industry rocketed as a result of being in the EU.

Their rightwing is massive, and in control of the vast majority of the British media. It spouts the most Europhobic drivel as a societal norm. Europhobia is not fringe politics in Britain: it's mainstream. Even the supposed opposition party, Labour, is led by a Europhobic leader. The contrast between how the Germans deal with their fascist past and the British deal with their imperialist past is astounding.

Make no mistake: this is only going to get much worse as with increasing British awareness of what a fúck-up they are making, they will lash out at every other people and country in the EU. Their elite will scapegoat everybody but themselves. And the majority of British people will jump on the "poor us" bandwagon. And all because that society lacks the leadership to accept responsibility for the rightwing economic policies which have alienated so much of the working class, and instead continues to shift blame on the EU/Johnny Foreigner for everything. Spineless dishonesty using jingoism to appeal to the masses and keep them ignorant.

Skedaddle

Not only that, but they’ve a completely distorted memory of the relatively recent past.

If you look at Britain since WWII, the economic and social history hasn’t been all that wonderful. It went through an immediate post war boom, which ran into the 1960s and then the economy effectively started to deindustrialise as the world changed. By the 1970s you’d really serious poverty in a lot of areas, rolling strikes, power cuts, and the IMF having to bail them out.

A lot of British reality in the 20th century was not a hell of a lot better than Irish reality. There were pretty bad living conditions, slums, tenements and all of those things in cities like Liverpool, Glasgow and various other places.

They claim that North Sea Oil saved them. It helped, but when you look at it the opening up of the EEC to them in the 1970s gave them a huge economic boost by putting a big market on their door step and they integrated into an economic system that has served them extremely well since then.

What I notice is that when you talk to people in England is they’ve a sort of bizarre ‘memory’ of a past that is either viewed through some kind of nostalgia about lives they didn’t have - e.g. looking back at it through say the window of looking only at upper middle class life.

Or, and this is something that really shocked me, they’re actually remembering American history. I had someone tell me all about the 1950s and it was most definitely the US 1950s as viewed via Happy Days or something.

The reality of Britain was far more Corination Street and Eastenders than it was Dallas.

Ireland and Britain both had massive emigration, serious problems with poverty and so on. Ireland tends to wallow in it and almost glorifies poverty somehow while the UK tends to pretend it never happened, never existed and focuses heavily only on the positive sides of its history, while seeing massive emigration as ‘colonisation’.

The reality is that millions of Brits moved to Canada, Australia, NZ and the US and elsewhere over the 20th century and they did so to get a better life and for economic opportunities, not because they were colonising the empire.

I’m not saying that the UK isn’t a successful country nowadays, but it has a patchy 20th century history and it has had a lot of very inglorious history over the centuries that they simply don’t acknowledge in the mainstream.

I’ve lived in both England and France and it’s quite shocking to see the difference in how they see their imperial past. In England it’s kind of glorified whereas I found in France, because it’s grossly incompatible with their ideas of republicanism and liberté, égalité et fraternité .. they’ve sort of almost shed their imperial past into another entity that they’re a bit disgusted with and have disowned.

I find it odd though that an element of England has just basically revised the whole history of the empire down to it being a lovely golf club with lots of garden parties and actually I find Hollywood and British film and TV and so on tends to feed into that with endless fawning over British royalty and aristocracy. There’s a lot of imagination about the old days : Downton Abbey, various films about glorious Victorian society and so on ... Most of it is a total distortion.

Reality was Dickens for the majority of British people’s ancesators. They had it pretty much as bad as we did under the same oppressive masters. The only difference is for us .. those masters in Ireland are are classed very much as “them”. For the British they’re “us” and that’s where it gets confusing and that’s also where there’s an absolute divide between the British (more so English) left and right.

Ireland has a huge amount of common ground with the English left and centre left, and basically nothing at all in common with the people who are driving this madness at the moment - a cabal of right wing, elitist Tories who’d bring the UK back to the 19th century if they could.

I think there’s a HUGE problem brewing in England and it’s more about an internal conflict between a deluded right wing conservative element and a mainstream left.

Looking at it from that perspective, Brexit is just an unfortunate symptom of the age old English class divide. They’ve lashed out at a straman enemy created effectively by spin and propaganda.

When reality dawns and the economy is in the toilet, that’s when things are going to get nasty in England and I think we’re looking at a rerun of the 1970s social tensions.

Where I saw this brewing was back in 2011 when the ‘London Riots’ kicked off and then spread to cities all over England. There was clearly a general malaise in society where people were getting fed up with a whole load of issues. However, it was very quickly written off with almost no analysis by the mainstream of British media and politics, even though it was HUGE display of upset.

Then add to that things like the shooting of Jo Cox. Again, that seems to have been swept under the carpet to a large degree. There was a little bit up upset and then the whole thing was forgotten about.
Can you imagine the level of analysis that would go on here if a TD were shot like that?! It would have been an absolute national trauma and you’d have years of discussion about it.

It’s like in England nobody wants to analyse these things and they’re just thinking Brexit will solve all their ills. It won’t. It’ll make them 10X worse.

They’re all focused on what is largely irrelevant anti-EU jingoism, while their modern society is being dismantled by a weird element of the Tories that isn’t even representative of the mainstream of the Tories. They’re prepared to privatise the NHS, sell off everything, unravel the NI peace process that everyone from John Major to Tony Blair to Mo Mowlam and countless other UK political figures put large chunks of their lives into bringing about.

It’s a complex place with a very complex and conflicted history and identity. I’ve a lot of English friends and family and I really worry about what’s going to happen over there. England can be a really vibrant, outward looking, progressive place and at the same time it can become lost in nostalgia, class systems and imperialism. I would be very slow to refer to “the English” as there are many faces of England.

What’s happening at the moment is utterly mad though. I really think you’re looking at some kind of national mental breakdown.

Sin City

What o old chum

We seem to have gotten into a spot of bother with the Gerrys again and their mates. Frightfully sorry to interupt your muck savagry but if you could follow us to a new Empire we will give you some more potatoes for your trouble

God save the Queen

Toddliey pips

Blighty

topper75

RobertKK wrote: »

48% are our friends, the others caused much unneeded problems for everyone, and if we are bullying them over Brexit, tough, I heard a Brexit supporter on TV say how the British empire was a good thing and I think there is a section of Brexit with that mentality.
Down through the centuries our allies have been on the continent, not Britain.
I don't think Brexit was the actions of a friend, they forgot we existed when they were debating about a bus slogan.
They jumped off a cliff and if we have to bully them to avoid them dragging us down with them, so be it.
They have the most idiotic government on this continent.

I have thought about this 5 or 6 times in both directions and still not sure if serious.

lawred2

topper75 wrote: »

I have thought about this 5 or 6 times in both directions and still not sure if serious.

both directions?

[Deleted User]

To be honest I'd rather they claim we are bullying them than having to listen to their delusional bull**** when they say we should leave with them

The J Stands for Jay

force eleven wrote: »

I wish we had the same backbone and voted out. Well, we voted twice on treaties from Brussels and they didn't like that one bit. Little Ireland wasn't going to stop the Eurocrats dream of a federal Europe, one state, one currency, one bank, one tax rate. All gradually coming to fruition. If you like all the rules being made from a group of unelected career politicians that nobody heard of before they got their portfolios, that's fine. Good luck, and the majority of people in Ireland are good with that or simply don't care, or trust Leo (ha ha). Britain voted out for those reasons plus they have immigration concerns. Many here disagree, again, fine. It's happening though, and Ireland needs to think for itself as to how to handle it, and take a firm stance with Brussels, as well as London.

Please use your vote in the next European elections.

wes

Brits crying about being bullied

. They had an empire that spanned the entire planet and now they have reduced themselves to the pitiable entity that they are today, engaged in a needless destruction of there own economy. It'd be funny if wasn't so deadly serious.

We are looking after our own interests. The Brexiters are not and never will be our friends. They torpedoed there countries economy and that is on them.

We should be nothing short of ruthless, in minimizing the damage that the feckless Brexiteers will cause to our economy.

Also, I think we should into account that fact that Brexiters have and continue to show a complete and utter disdain for the Good Friday agreement.

Anyone who agrees with the Brexiters or has any sympathy is a fool, as I can guarantee, they do not care about us or anyone else for that matter.

Beanntraigheach

Seems to me that some Paddies have become so accustomed to being on their knees before the English that they're comfortable only in that position.
Standing up and looking them in the eye at the same level leaves them feeling decidedly uneasy.

Try_harder

Beanntraigheach wrote: »

Seems to me that some Paddies have become so accustomed to being on their knees before the English that they're comfortable only in that position.
Standing up and looking them in the eye at the same level leaves them feeling decidedly uneasy.

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees

diomed

If they want to rejoin the EU in a few years I don't think it will be Prodigal Son II.
It will be "turn off the lights and pretend we are not at home".

buried

Purple Lean got them f**ked up

Herb Powell

They're literally occupying over a fifth of the country, so the "bullying" claim is completely laughable.

I haven't been a big fan of Varadkar for various reasons, but to be quite honest I'm happy with how he has been handling Brexit. A no bullshhit approach.

[Deleted User]

Could Hungary and Poland please join the British?

Albeit without the imperial delusions, what equally backward populist cúnts leading both those failed economies and states. What astoundingly primitive, crooked crony political cultures in both countries enriching themselves and their associates under the guise of supporting "traditional values".

It isn't fascism in the Mussolini sense, but it's an authoritarianism mixed with populism, anti-democratic tendencies, respect for strong institutions like the RCC and xenophobia all in one - with, like the Brits, the EU scapegoated. When the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, for instance, states that he wants to 'build an illiberal state based on national foundations', citing Russia and China as examples, be afraid. That's before even glancing at both countries less than stellar roles in WWII - something the Poles really don't like to be mentioned.

Today: Poles told to report 'anti-Polish slander' to diplomats

Why is Poland's government worrying the EU?

Democracy is on the brink in Hungary, so why is no one talking about it?

Europe’s illiberal states: why Hungary and Poland are turning away from constitutional democracy

...A number of ex-communist states, particularly Hungary and Poland, have rejected an ideology founded on individualism, human rights, economic transparency and multiculturalism. They are turning instead towards an alternative social, political and economic model in which the cultivation of “traditional values” and distinct national identities is of paramount ideological importance. The new model is also frequently characterised by widespread, often systematic corruption and an increasingly authoritarian political culture.

[Deleted User]

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Youngpensioner

Bullying the UK? What are you smoking? Total delusions.

Capt'n Midnight

If the UK goes "full retard" with a Hard Brexit to WTO terms it will impact our economy by 7%, so we should make it very clear to the UK that if they are stupid enough to expect us to roll over for them we'll use our veto the first chance we get to cause maximum damage.

They have to understand there is no Get Out Of Jail card if they threaten us.

There's the whole thing about Brexit undermining the Good Friday Agreement that had 94% down here. 3000 dead and paramilitary organisations involved in billion a year smuggling ?

Also we are due a census in 2021.
The population of this island will almost certainly be still below what it was in 1821, especially if you exclude immigrants.

Countries don't have friends, they have interests.

Oldtree

No!

Peregrinus

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If the UK goes "full retard" with a Hard Brexit to WTO terms it will impact our economy by 7%, so we should make it very clear to the UK that if they are stupid enough to expect us to roll over for them we'll use our veto the first chance we get to cause maximum damage.

This would be stupidity countering stupidity. If we were to use our veto to veto a Brexit deal we didn't like, the result would be a no-deal Brexit, and the hardest of hard borders - the very result that we say would injure and offend us.

The only deal we would even consider vetoing is a Brexit deal which included an agreed hard border. We would never agree to that. But neither will the EU, so we won't have to deploy our veto to avoid it; no such deal will ever be put to us. Plus, the UK government is also committed to avoiding a hard border; they have said this consistently. So saying that we would veto a deal that provided for a hard border is not offensive, threatening or bullying to the UK; all we are saying is that we would veto a deal which the UK itself does not want.

It might be offensive to ultra-Brexiters, who actively want a no-deal Brexit and a hard border and believe that the UK government should be targetting it. But they are a small minority and, despite their Mussolini-like delusions, do not embody or represent the United Kingdom. If they take offence at our defence of our own interests, well, I can live with that. But I will deride anyone who says that, by offending them, we are "bullying the United Kingdom".