Westminsterenders: The Ersatz ImitationThread

[OlennasWimple]

I am no RedToothBrush, so I'm not going to try to emulate her exception OP style.

Here, though, in the interests of carrying on our conversations about WTF is going on with Brexit and the weird political world we find ourselves in right now, is a sort of continuation thread

(Hurry back Red, we need you!)

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/michael-moore-brexit-comments-uk-enjoy-miserable-life-island-a7878106.html?amp
Michael Moore tells UK after Brexit to 'enjoy miserable life on your island'

Michael Moore believes reasons for voting for Brexit are understandable, with many angry people 'struggling from pay cheque to pay cheque'

Ian Paisley Mp @ Ian Paisley ( 27 July )

1 of 2 things will now happen 1. A very hard border 2. Ireland will wise up and leave the EU

How is it possible to negotiate and find a workable solution from this position ? Answers on a postcard please to Iveagh House or the European Commission

The NI issue will be the catalyst here I think. NI is far from "mainland" concerns and always was. The DUP is only speaking for its constituency, the ultra Protestants. The enclave that is Loyalist and British, fair enough, but British on the mainland think they are Irish! (mostly). How ironic.

Varadkar the Irish PM (Taoiseach) is upping the ante, and just a little while ago just before the NI Pride parade said that it's only a matter of time before SSM is law in NI, the only part of the UK where it is banned. Putting it up to the DUP who were instrumental in having it banned in the first place, being Christian and all that.

There is a bit of a swagger going on with DUP, but I just dread anything kicking off as a result of their intransigence and arrogance, I really do.

The RoI can block / veto any Brexit trade deal, if they are not satisfied on the border issue.

Barnier has said talks will not start on trade until sufficient progress has been made on the 3 main "housekeeping" issues: NI, expats, exit bill

I doubt if he would consider that telling the RoI they should Irexit - or else - is sufficient progress

(Spain could also veto if dissatisfied with situation for Gibraltar.
Germany, France & others might veto if angered at DD's attempts to divide the E27 and stir up trouble ...
the EU parliament could block the trade deal)

The problem about chaos & delay on the UK side is that the Uk economy will suffer far more proportionately from a no-deal Brexit than the E27

An assessment of the economic impact of Brexit on the E27

Very detailed study for the EU parliament with many refs, graphs & charts in appendices.

I wish the Westminster Parliament had a study of similar depth I know, "fed up with experts and their inconvenient facts"

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/595374/IPOLSTU(2017)595374EN.pdf#page388_

Abstract
"For the E27 the losses are found to be virtually insignificant and hardly noticed
in the aggregate.

By contrast, for the UK, the losses could be highly significant, over ten times greater as a share of GDP.

Impacts on various member states - in particular Ireland - and sectors in the E27 could be more pronounced
< I would expect they can be supported by other EU countries not economically much affected >

Conclusions
Our main finding is that available studies largely agree that Brexit will inflict losses on both sides.

All studies agree that the losses will be considerably larger for the Uk than for the E27.

Only in very pessimistic scenarios would the losses for the E27 reach a significant size
....
The available evidence suggests that the additional losses that would result from a bad or uncooperative outcome would be born mostly by the UK

In the US - if Leavers don't want to read EU articles - the Brookings Institute commissioned a study
"Brexit's long-run effects on the UK economy"
which did not see sunny uplands:

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/brexits-long-run-effects-john-van-reenen.pdff_

Opinion polls during the Troubles used to find mainland Britain overwhelmingly thought that Ireland should be united.

I haven't seen more recent polls, however.
Attitudes in peace may have changed, particularly with the increased patriotic fervour (used to divert the public's attention from being shafted)

A while ago, some Mumsnetters on another thread were surprised to find that the UK contained NI.
We are all forgetful sometimes, but mislaying one of only 4 countries ......

Even though DH is Northern Irish, I'm ashamed to say that I have very limited understanding of Irish history/politics. Can anyone suggest any reading that gives a summary of the situation?

When you have to launch your own Glastonbury to get to the stage somehow! 🙄 I have no idea which side of their body the Tories are thinking right now. Doesn't feel like brain side to me.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-glastonbury-jeremy-corbyn-george-freeman-conservatives-theresa-may-a7878181.html

Opinion polls during the Troubles used to find mainland Britain overwhelmingly thought that Ireland should be united.

Speaking as a mainland dwelling, (half) English person, my view is that whatever the majority want is fine by me.

Both in Ireland, and Scotland (and Wales ...)

More negative nellies for Brexiteers to grumble about ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40836488

The UK needs a "credible fallback" in case no EU trade deal is reached during Brexit negotiations, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King has said.
Lord King said British negotiators needed to show Brussels the country has an alternative over a bad trade deal post-Brexit.
The former governor, who served between 2003 and 2013, said no deal was "not the first preference of anybody".
He said the government "probably wasted a year" on its contingency plans.

(contd)

Opinion polls during the Troubles used to find mainland Britain overwhelmingly thought that Ireland should be united.

It's not surprising. The media did, and to some extend still do, a very good job of referring to NI as British only when good things happen and Irish at bad times.

A lot of mainlanders know if the IRA and their actions but little know if the role played by unionist forces and the British government at the time. The Irish are just trouble init? The concept of peace and the gfa is consequently alien.

*Speaking as a mainland dwelling, (half) English person, my view is that whatever the majority want is fine by me.

Both in Ireland, and Scotland (and Wales ...)*

The only depressing thing about that sentiment, is that those of us stuck in England can't vote to leave ourselves. Unless... anyone up for reinstating the old system of separate Saxon kingdoms? lets draw a line under this failed experiment they called 'England'...

I did think at one point during the Trouble - when Ian Paisley Snr was giving a particularly strident NO even to "good morning" - that one solution could be for England to leave the UK

www.thecanary.co/2017/08/05/inquiry-just-revealed-far-british-state-go-secret-war-citizens-videos/

Inquiry documents and secret intelligence reports reveal just how far the state went to undermine opposition to injustices. And understanding the response to that overreach is crucial to understanding what’s happening now.

Internment was introduced in Northern Ireland and the Bloody Sunday massacre of civil-rights marchers in January 1972 happened while the Angry Brigade suspects were awaiting trial. One document found in the raids across London that weekend brought the three causes together in a mini-manifesto: ‘Put the boot in – Bogside, Clydeside – Support the Angry side

Interesting to see that there was a time when the causes of Irish independence and the Clydeside ship builders had links in common.

This was happening at a time too, when in Greece, student and left wing protest was building up power to unseat Greek military junta ( which may have been enabled by the USA, fearing a communist government at such a strategically located country). Hmm Venezuela.

According to whistleblower Annie Machon, MI5 considered many public figures of the day worthy of surveillance, including John Lennon, Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Thomas, Tony Blair and Harold Wilson

Hopefully Tony Blair's street creed might be slightly repaired.

cred not creed.

I could live with that BigChoc

Mark Thomas

(Who the Lurking household will be seeing soon - 4th time)

I believe Mark Thomas took (successful) legal action against the Met Police about the information they held on him.

Graduates who have paid off their student loans say they are continuing to have as much as £300 a month taken from their pay packets by the Student Loans Company, with some talking of two-year battles to obtain refunds:

www.theguardian.com/money/2017/aug/05/student-loan-company-finance-complaints-debt

Obviously not the most obvious of political commentators but...
@richardosman
Feels like we're suddenly living in a volumocracy, where the loudest people are in charge. #sssshhhhh

I'm not sure this is actually that new, just the voices are a little more mean possibly.

twitter.com/hashtag/NameTheToryGlasto?src=tren

@JonScoff 3h3 hours ago
'Laughingstock'

Wheatfields

‏ @AlexSinclair

Austeri-T in the Park

Twatitude

Camp Fucktherestival

Too Posh to Mosh

‏ @hterrie53
DUP step

@BanterBernie 3h3 hours ago
Platitude.

The Isle of Blight Festival.

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/05/brexit-uk-food-industry-eu-fruit-veg-pickers
They say after Brexit there’ll be food rotting in the fields. It’s already started

Something's rotten in the state of britain and it ain't just the food, red. Did you notice the archers has done a daft story line about food waste to prepare the plebs for empty shelves?

The Student loan agency gives me the creeps, bigchoc. Schoolchildren are being induced to sign up for vast loans on what are legally very dubious and retrospectively varied terms. Kids who leave college early are still saddled with huge debt and no degree. For parents who are not financial lawyers or experts, it feels like we're pimping them to corporate thieves. It's plain wrong.

Kafkaesque was what came to mind reading about that US doctor and family. Again about the Tories looking for anti May elements in the party. Kinda Mao is May.

That food article was so well written Red, thank you for the link. It's just so illogical for food imports (and everything else too). Prioritising trade with countries further away, in priority to those on your doorstep has never made logical sense.

Meanwhile, the most zealous Brexiteers look forward to a supremely unlikely future in which we spurn the huge amount of food we import from Europe and somehow either produce our own, or fly in stuff from around the globe. Beyond the prospect of stupidly increased food miles and basic fruit and veg suddenly refrigerated to within an inch of its life and transported across time zones, such half-baked visions may well bump up against one big problem: the effects of Brexit (including the loss of farming subsidies, which is a whole other mess) meaning we may not have much of a British food industry left – a strange thing to be embraced by self-styled patriots, but there we are.

Also this succinct summary.....

" Besides, seeing Brexit as any kind of dependable cure for low-wage work is surely a political category error. The project that Britain is embroiled in is not a great progressive drive to right social wrongs: it is an emotion-driven revolution led by people on the political right who evidently have no idea what they are doing. "

So I'm gong on those September protest marches in September. I will not give up and don't know what else to do, other than badgering MPs etc.

Sorry about the September x 2 !