to ask if anyone else is a bit puzzled about what's going on with Brexit

[ElfinStardust]

because I bloody well am!

Have I got the following right:
We're told the Withdrawal Agreement is 95% agreed.

but
Northern Ireland is the sticking point.
The EU don't like Theresa May's proposed solution. (Is that Chequers?)
Most of the Tories don't like TM's proposed solution, nor do Labour, SNP, the DUP. Good to see our esteemed representatives united on something
but
They don't seem to like the EU's proposal either. Everyone is going to vote against everything which will lead to No Deal = catastrophe.

Jeremy Corbyn says Brexit can't be stopped. Keir Starmer says it can Good to see HM Opposition united

I'm no catastrophiser but time really is running out if we want a Withdrawal Agreement in place before 29th March.

So WTAF is going on and how is it going to be resolved?

What I don't understand is why so many people voted leave when there was no clear plan to vote on.

Or if it was a vote to allow a deal to leave to be negotiated, then surely there should be a "this is the deal, accept it or reject it and stay in EU" vote? (Either national again or parliamentary, as elected representatives of the people)

The benefits of leave vote? Hmm, infinitesimally small but it seems to have made Michael Gove disappear .....

Putin is in charge of all this. Trump a little late to the table, but is catching up fast.

We are total idiots to support this severing of the EU. But anyway, sigh.... Our Government is doing a great job. ha fkn ha.

And he was so keen! Where can he be with his cornucopia of benefits?

Michael Gove is distancing himself from the crap so he can launch a leadership bid when it's over.

If I were Theresa May I would resign tomorrow. Let the ERG and others sort it out.

There are no kudos for failure Theresa.

I am currently in Ireland.
Before supper, just because I could and never had, I drove into Northern Ireland.
My waiter was an ex Gardai and he joked that anybody who thinks that the border can be secured has never visited it.

It was the most invisible border I've ever crossed - more so than Belgium to the Netherlands which was the first to open.

There is NO external EU border that operates without watertight customs controls.
The NI border cannot be made watertight
therefore there cannot be a border on Ireland

@Talkinpeece

Everyone with a bit of a brain knows this. And thank you for the update.

Pity that Westminster forgot that NI was actually in the uk, until the DUP were needed. Honestly WTAF.

Its my first trip to Ireland and its an INCREDIBLE eye opener.

But the whole Brexit omnishambles is also clear to me with the coming cataclysm in clearance at Dover

Rainbow Unicorns will not take us back to the days of empire.
the 0.1% who fund and campaign for Brexit will be fine.
The rest of us will not.

Ahh but we were never supposed to have voted to leave
David Cameron only called the referendum to shut certain people up in his own party - seems he was certain the remain vote would win - so sure it seems no one bothered with the minor detail of an actual plan
Then he was to be the big hero with boris Johnson swooping in to be the next pm when he resigned
Do you remember the look on bojo face the morning after the referendum?
A picture tells a thousand words

What are the benefits of leaving again?

Down my way apparently it's all about getting rid of the perceived surfeit of Eastern Europeans. And Indians

In 20 years another generation will take us back in, and 52% of the current generation will have cost us untold £billions of financial damage, for what will become effectively nothing.

Its my first trip to Ireland and its an INCREDIBLE eye opener. Which is forgivable for Jo Bloggs but when you get the minister for NI saying almost the same thing you realise why this shit storm has happened.

There is a total lack of leadership here.

TM could have said, look folks, we will leave eventually (never ha ha), but it will really take a lot longer than we thought. We hope we have you on our side and will do the best we can for the UK.

But no.

The minute May invoked A50 with no plan, I said to myself, that is optics for the Tories, not for the populace.

She could have postponed invoking A50 for a long time. But she didn't. And here we are.

May is not a good leader. Technical manager, maybe.
Controlling, detailed, process driven, task not people ...

When we needed, vision, ideas and someone who could do relationships

What are the benefits of leaving again?

I think it was to take back control of our borders. In Ireland we will be doing this with VAT receipts and chip and pin readers apparently. Or maybe the people of Ireland will be chipped so they can be scanned as they go to and fro.

Actually, maybe we should offer that up as a solution. Its not any more stupid and unworkable than anything suggested so far.

I am from an area that voted leave and everyone is just bleating abut project fear. They really do believe that it will all be ok.

I live in Switzerland, and have done since before the bilateral agreements were put in place to allow free movement. There are no electronic borders, but we do have 'flying guards' who can stop you anywhere within a 20 kilometer distance from a border and search you for customs purposes.

This is also an interesting article on when the Swiss voted to curb immigration a few years ago, and the government decided not to enforce it because it was detrimental to the Swiss economy. (And the Swiss have a direct democracy, so nothing was advisory. They just recognized that it wasn't in their best interests).

Will attach link this time

blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/15/switzerland-wanted-more-immigration-controls-but-economic-self-interest-will-probably-prevail/

well, looking at my decision matrix, it can only be because they are :A bunch of incompetent, self serving thick career politicians

Not much help now. But worth tucking into the old memory banks for when it's needed in future ....

I know I shouldn't, but that was brilliant 😂😂

I live in a leave area. We have a few idiots who spout loudly and a lot of shifty looking people who are uncomfortable with their decision.
My Swiss neighbour voted leave because they wanted It to be like Switzerland, having not lived there for 30 plus years.

I bet they will spring a deal at the eleventh hour (apologies for the analogy with Remembrance Day)

My feeling is there is a deal there, and it will happen. The DUP will be scuppered and another election may happen, but you never know who might support the Tories in a Doomsday situation (that was not needed, but anyway)

The DUP may turn out the be the catalysts for a United Ireland vote in the end of all this shyte.

From ROI paper.

What do you think?

www.independent.ie/business/brexit/i-wont-agree-a-brexit-deal-that-compromises-referendum-result-says-theresa-may-37521822.html

The benefits of Brexit?

According to my FIL, it's that Britain "will become great again." He is unable to articulate which period in history he wants to reenact - perhaps the time of the First World War? The Second World War? The Black Death? ...

From reading talkinpeece post on visiting Northern Ireland I decided to stick this small video up.

I'm Irish and live in Ireland, still don't think people realise how the border works in Ireland.
I do remember going through the military border as a child and to be honest it was terrifying.

www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-northern-ireland-40104333/crossing

I went over the border more times than I remember - it wasn’t particularly terrifying for us because it wasn’t any different to the military checkpoints we encountered every single time we travelled around while I lived in NI. The whole bloody country was a mess - and it is still not what I would call completely resolved - the threat of violence is always there - waiting, just waiting for a justification to kick off again and from what I recall - the bombing campaigns in NI were nowhere near as effective as the bombing campaigns in England - this issue will not stop at the Irish Sea.