Westministenders: Groundhog Day

[RedToothBrush]

Groundhog day is 2nd Feb.

Its also today. And yesterday. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before.

We have all turned into Bill Murray.

That's Brexit in the UK.

The only progress seems to be linguistic gymnastics not policy.

No action has been implemented, we are still on words going nowhere.

Tick tock, tick tock.

I wonder if that is the same one that phoned me a few months ago, mrsr? Be warned, they get someone less splutter-y to ring you in a couple of days to try and enter into a dialogue with you about why you really should get over yourself and set up a dd immediately your concerns .

Fintan O'Toole on why Irexit will not have leverage in Ireland. Even less attraction when chappies like Farage and all he represents carpetbag over.

"Usefully, Brexit has reminded us of that stratum of English political life in which it is still perfectly okay – indeed compulsory – to treat Ireland with an arrogance undiminished by absolute ignorance"

and

But there is an enormous difference in this regard between England and Ireland. England has thrown off an imaginary oppressor – we’ve had a real one. England has no idea what actual dependency feels like. It imagines that it is a vague feeling of irritation, a cranky seething at “red tape” and “interference”.

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-irexit-would-be-the-end-of-irish-nationalism-1.3389695#.WoLAyYCa3hk.twitter

Oh...they won't be phoning me back lala
I was quite...um...forthright
😁

Daniel Hannan @ DanielJHannan
If your response when @BorisJohnson proposes reconciliation is to howl and screech and call him names, fine, that’s your right. But don’t then turn around and claim that you’re the one being reasonable.
^For 18 months, I have been having variants of this conversation:
"It was a narrow vote. We need to find compromises that both sides can..."^
"Shut the f**k up you Brexshit liar!"

Which compromise exactly was this that leavers offered?

Anyone?

I thought the point was they keep refusing to do so, which is why rebellions have to keep being threatened.

My suspicion from the get-go was that this speech was a set-up so that BJ could say: I really tried to reach out to Remainers but they just wouldn't listen. I suppose the only thing to do is to push on with Brexit and hope that they change their minds when they see what a fantastic job we've made of it" . Going on about how Brits would still be able to vomit freely and sex pester in Prague and Tallinn was just trolling us .

Kate Hoey @ KateHoeyMP
How can @owensmith talk seriously about caring about Northern Ireland when Labour Party will not allow people there to vote for the official Labour Party and also he should remember it was Sinn Fein who collapsed the Executive over a year ago @Channel4News

Kate Hoey couldn't even get the right twitter handle @OwenSmith_MP.

This is kate hoey in November.
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-northern-ireland-42137597
Brexit: Kate Hoey says Ireland would have to pay for physical border

She was born in NI and is openly pro unionist. She sits on the NI affairs select committee.

Its fine for her to criticise Owen Smith on his NI views but shes spouts this crap and is also on an influential panel. How can she pretend she genuinely gives a shit about NI people when guilty of sectarianism.

Whatever Hoey.

Why are you in Labour?

Darren McCaffery @ DMcCafferySky
No power sharing at Stormont.
Good political move for DUP?
➡️Retain great political leverage over direct control Westminster
➡️While claiming decisions aren't theirs
➡️Distant if Brexit goes wrong
➡️Denies SF claim it can be in govt north/south in possible RoI elex

Yes really what compromise? I was hoping for a compromise along the lines of staying in the customs union rather than the ability to get drunk cheaply in Prague.

Which compromise exactly was this that leavers offered?

If the compromise had been stay in the EEA, with SM and the Customs Union, most, I think, would have said, OK, not ideal but decent enough for both sides. We would have to stick with FoM but since we are constantly told by Leavers that they are not racist xenophobes, I can't see why that should be a problem.

Indeed Peregrina. It seems to me that many remainers have said they would take the compromise you have outlined. They might not be happy with it, but they would suck it up. Leavers have offered no compromise at all. Instead they are just getting more and more extreme. Calling a shit covered stick an olive branch does not make it so.

Frankly, I think Boris's speech talking up British sex tourism shows just how much contempt he actually holds for the people of this country.

The fact that those kind of people are lapping up what he says really shows how far this country has fallen...

In 1960, 75 per cent of Irish exports went to the UK. In 1972, the last year before we joined the EEC, the proportion was still 61 per cent. Now, just 18 per cent of Irish service exports and 14 per cent of Irish goods exports are to the UK. Conversely, Ireland’s economic links to continental Europe were astonishingly weak. In 1971, our total exports to the EEC’s six member states amounted to just £23 million. Just 10 years later, Irish exports to EEC countries other than the UK stood at £968 million.

In one sense, of course, these figures mean nothing. They belong to a rational discourse of economic self-interest and Brexit has reminded us that self-interest may be neither here nor there in nationalist revolutions. The areas of England that will suffer the greatest economic hardship as a result of Brexit are also the areas most in favour of it. The pain of self-harm can be assuaged by the pleasures of self-righteousness.

From Cailleach's IT article ^

While there are still considerable economic ties to the UK, Ireland knows what side its bread is buttered on, and Ireland has the EEC and the EU to thank for a huge dollop of social progress over the decades since 1973 too.

Plus Ireland has had enough of nationalist revolutions and nationalist discourse, has seen how empty both can be without economic progress.

Ireland's most relevant revolution occurred in the 60s - in the work of TK Whitaker (unusual among senior civil servants in a department of FInance anywhere, I suspect, in being considered a national hero) and Donogh O'Malley (unusual among ministers for Education anywhere in being considered a political giant - he was given a state funeral after his untimely death) and Sean Lemass, who presided over it all.

Where is the compromise, though? Non-EU Turkey is in CU, but not SM. Non-EU Norway in SM, but not CU.

It was a very simple referendum question. In or EU or out of EU. Both SM and CU compatible with being out of the EU. As is being a member of the EEA and EFTA as shown by non-EU Norway.

.

( Just been on a brief break in Italy.) I met a lovely Italian man on the plane who had been visiting his daughter. He had already paid a fortune for her to study a business and EU studies degree at Uni in London before this debacle.

He was so articulate and well informed. Apart from everything else, this mess is so so so embarrassing.

Hello all. Still angry about Bloody Boris being shoved back to the forefront of my consciousness today.

Thanks for the thread. [flowers}

The Foreign Secretary doesn't mention Ireland or Gibraltar in a speech about Brexit solutions.

What. Is. The. Point. Of. Him?

Northern Ireland. What he said today: Absolutely nothing. What he means: He has nothing to say about why he is campaigning in Cabinet to take the UK out of the Customs Union when this will jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement settlement. He promised during the referendum there would be “no change” in Northern Ireland, but now has nothing to say about how that can be achieved while leaving the Customs Union. “I think the situation would be absolutely unchanged.” Boris Johnson, 29 February 2016. “The whole thing about the customs union and the technical difficulties is all being turned by great superstition into the equivalent of the millennium bug.” (July 28 2017)

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/boris-johnson-brexit-speech-1-5394853

Placemarking with these:

And poor Nazanin.

He's a disgrace.

“The whole thing about the customs union and the technical difficulties is all being turned by great superstition into the equivalent of the millennium bug.” (July 28 2017)

And with this statement he shows what complete rubbish he talks. I was heavily involved in working on Y2K IT projects in the late 90s preparing for exactly this problem. We didn't have the problems because of the £thousands spent and thousands of staff hours. In a way it was a blessing in disguise because it forced us to overhaul systems which we would have soldiered on with; systems which were slowly becoming less and less efficient, so a few years down the line we did reap the benefits.

Boris’s speech transcript is here:

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretary-speech-uniting-for-a-great-brexit

You might want to practice some relaxation exercises before reading it though to protect your blood pressure.

Got to admire how he slips the Boris Channel Bridge in as well

Thanks for the new thread Red.

Have any of you seen this Twitter account? Humorous and depressing in equal measure.
The Irish Border (@BorderIrish)
twitter.com/BorderIrish?s=03
I am the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. I’m seamless & frictionless already, thanks. Bit scared of physical infrastructure. Don’t like the sea.

Thanks Red

Boris Johnson's speech: leadership ambitions without leadership qualitiess_

http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.de

… it is a profound misunderstanding of how politics and economics inter-relate,
a misunderstanding that has permeated British Conservatism since its embrace of Friedman and Hayek in the 1970s.

The misunderstanding is that markets exist ‘naturally’ and prior to regulation, with regulation coming second and distorting what would otherwise naturally occur.
In fact, regulation is a prior condition for markets, certainly for effectively functioning markets.

"It seems to have been a continual surprise to Conservative Eurosceptics ever since the Thatcher government pushed so hard to create the European single market that such a market entails as its prior condition a trans-national legal and regulatory framework, up to and^ including the ECJ.^

That is the only reason why the single market, unlike free trade agreements and areas, is able extensively to dismantle Non-Tariff Barriers and, as a consequence, liberalise trade in services as well as goods."

Chris Grey also has an excellent description of May-Ultra Relationship

http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.de/2018/02/may-and-erg-ultras-are-manacled-together.html*
*
… Brexit Britain limps along with a terrified, mauled zoo keeper chained to a snarling, feral beast;
each reliant on the other, but each loathing the other.

At one moment the keeper lashes the beast spitefully with her whip;
the next moment the beast lacerates the keeper savagely with its claws.

Each time, a little blood is drawn but they remain manacled together because they have manacled themselves to each other.

Meanwhile the rest of us, and the rest of the world, look on in horror, dismay and disgust at this revolting spectacle.