Brexit discussion thread V - No Pic/GIF dumps please

lawred2 wrote: »

What's the deal?

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Rumours of all UK customs union with backstop as agreed in December

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1040100/brexit-eu-uk-theresa-may-second-referendum-parliament-vote

WTF ?

The House of Commons is GOD. They can, and have, voted to kill a king.

UK and Ireland signal Irish border Brexit deal could be agreed soon

The British and Irish governments have signalled that a Brexit deal is very close after a flurry of official talks and visits on both sides of the Irish border, and a positive statement from the Democratic Unionist party after a separate meeting with the Brexit secretary.

Spook_ie wrote: »

They won't need to block trucks, the trucks themselves will do that, unless some one is saying UK trucks queue on Mway left lane and EU trucks queue in middle lane, and I don't see any reason they'd do that and rusk a truckers rebellion.

The problem is not one of infrastructure.

Turkey has invested hundreds of millions of dollars trying to speed up things on its end. It built a massive truck terminus an hour from the Bulgarian border, where customs agents carry out inspections and stamp forms that are then fed into a computerised system shared with the EU. The border gates themselves were revamped to create more lanes and parking lots with modern waiting areas.

Water John wrote: »

The mood music looks good. Long way to go over the next few weeks.
Great that Barnier was given his riding instructions and then given a free hand. Great to be able to lead a negotiating team without having to look behind you all the time.

Spook_ie wrote: »

They won't need to block trucks, the trucks themselves will do that, unless some one is saying UK trucks queue on Mway left lane and EU trucks queue in middle lane, and I don't see any reason they'd do that and rusk a truckers rebellion.

Peregrinus wrote: »

And, yes, a fast-track for EU-to-EU goods transiting through Britain would be politically awkward, but it makes good practical sense. Taking out of the queue trucks that don't need to be in the queue in the first place makes the queue shorter and the processing of the queue quicker. Even the truckers who have to remain in the queue will see the benefit of that.

ilovesmybrick wrote: »

Max Hastings had a pretty good article in this weeks Times about the current jingoistic attitude being displayed towards Europe by the Tories. I'm on my phone but I'll put the full text later for those that don't have access.

Our rudeness to European allies is shameful

Edit: It's actually quite long and don't want to spam the thread with text, but the second to last paragraph sums up his opinion of those attacking Europeans over the Second World War

First Up wrote: »

How do you see that working in Holyhead?

Spook_ie wrote: »

Don't see that my self, the one thing most people would agree on is the Brits are a nation of queuers, and they won't look favourably on any form of queue jumping.

Lemming wrote: »

I can't speak for anyone else, but I wouldn't mind reading the full text please.

Half a century ago, when that military circus the Royal Tournament was a national institution, there was a contretemps after a visiting Italian officer discovered that his Bersaglieri must perform in a sand arena. He expostulated: “My men cannot run on sand!”. The chortling response of the tournament director delighted countless owners of regimental ties. “They ran pretty damn fast on sand in 1941!”

Amid the pervasive war legacy, many of a generation of British people spoke without embarrassment of jerries, wops and frogs. One of the best things that has happened to this country in the intervening decades is that most people with half a brain, and especially the young, have forsworn expressions of contempt for foreigners, seeing so much to admire in their economic, social and cultural achievements. If many EU nations now face serious political difficulties so too, heaven knows, do we.

Despite my authorship of books about the Second World War, neither I nor most of my readers suppose that the fact we finished up on the winning side in 1945 entitles Britain to the undying gratitude of old allies, any more than we expect the losers to go on paying moral or political reparations for defeat, provided that — like the Germans though unlike, alas, the Japanese — they renounce their forefathers’ dreadful deeds.

Yet one of the ugliest aspects of Brexit is that it has generated a resurgence of casual abuse of foreigners, and of Europeans in particular. In 1990 Nicholas Ridley was obliged to resign from the Thatcher government after giving an interview in which he denounced the EU as “a German racket”.

Today, Tory politicians and their supporters express with impunity incomparably ruder sentiments. Jacob Rees-Mogg cleverly dismissed Jean-Claude Juncker as “a pound-shop Bismarck”. The language of some other Tory backbenchers, according to their colleague Claire Perry, evokes that of jihadists, saying “Begone you evil Europeans”. The vulgar abuse directed at the red EU passport and triumphalism about restoration of the old blue British one would have embarrassed a 19th-century jingo.

Jeremy Hunt’s comparison of the EU with the old Soviet Union gained special notoriety because he had been considered sensible. He said what he did because aspirants to the Conservative leadership feel obliged to express such views to secure the support of the Colosseum mob conspicuous at the party conference.

In such circles xenophobia has once more become respectable and even admirable. Boris Johnson is by no means the only figure who seeks to rouse the spirit of 1940, of plucky little Britain and a bulldog prime minister broadcasting scorn and defiance from the white cliffs of Dover towards repugnant or cowed continentals. A barrage of mud pies is directed against European leaders who decline to concede what many Brexiteers seek: continuing access to the benefits of EU membership without its burdens and frustrations.

To sustain all human traffic, whether personal, commercial or international, there is a requirement for respect. Relationships are overwhelmingly influenced by who makes whom feel good. It is almost impossible to sustain a successful friendship, marriage, workplace association or negotiation without some show of appreciation of each other’s status and circumstances, whether sincere or not.

Unless we suppose, as perhaps some Brexiteers do, that we can shell other EU nations into yielding to our demands, we must hold out to them the prospect of a courteous and fruitful relationship with Britain, if compromises can be reached. To this end civility is indispensable, heedless of whether we reject their integrationist aspirations.

We might go a step farther, and occasionally display sympathy for what continental Europe suffered in both world wars, incomparably worse than our own tribulations, rather than indulge a feast of nationalistic triumphalism fed by movies about Churchill and 1940. Consider the grace and statesmanship displayed by Anthony Eden when he was interviewed back in 1968 for that great French documentary Le Chagrin et La Pitié. Marcel Ophüls’s film addressed with searing frankness his country’s experience of Nazi occupation and collaboration. Invited to comment, Britain’s wartime foreign secretary responded in impeccable French that it was not for him, a citizen of a nation lucky enough not to have been occupied, to offer any judgment upon others less fortunate.

We can imagine the sniggering spirit in which a modern Brexiteer and/or aspirant for the Conservative leadership would today reprise such a discussion. To sustain the confidence of Moggians, Johnsonites and Faragists in the wisdom of shaking the dust of the continent from our shoes, he or she deems it essential to assert that Britain fares better in war or peace without importunate partners; that the modern continentals are making such an unholy mess of their affairs that we should mop our brows in gratitude that we can leave them to it. We are back where King George VI left off in 1940, asserting Pooterish relief that Britain was no longer encumbered by allies.

Yet those of us who travel frequently in Europe never tire of paying homage to so much that we see and hear there. Watching the new French film Les Gardiennes, about the experiences of a farming family during the First World War, one feels a glow of pleasure that we are neighbours of the nation that produces such cinema. Italy is a political shambles but every visit there provides new reasons to love and admire its people. The Dutch give an ongoing masterclass in how to be civilised internationalists.

What kind of Englishman in 2018 can offer rational justification for condescending to foreigners in general, Europeans in particular? Yet that is what Tory politicians and newspapers do almost daily, before expressing outraged surprise that EU leaders at the negotiating table display no inclination towards generosity — or, more frankly, mercy. We should hang our heads in shame about the number of Europeans long resident in Britain who have either already gone home or are preparing to do so, because they no longer feel welcome here.

Ten years ago at a Anglo-German Königswinter conference, I heard the boss of Mercedes-Benz warn his British listeners, with exemplary politeness, that if we quit the EU we might find it cold outside. Whether or not he was right, it is certain that our future will prove permafrosted unless we can restore common courtesy to the language we use towards and about foreigners. In the future that we appear to have chosen, we shall stand in desperate need of goodwill from neighbouring nations which today a dismaying number of people deem it acceptable, or even brave and clever, to insult.

Tell me how wrote: »

That reminded me of a comment to the BBC by Michael Heseltine immediately after the Brexit vote.

He's final comment was prescient. "It is as dark a moment as I have lived through." And that was 2 years ago!

Amongst other things, it shows how the younger generations always want to make their mark and will often ignore the experienced voices which they have at their disposal.