Westminstenders: Why the Irish Border isn't a Remain/EU Plot

[RedToothBrush]

I hope the events of this week give the ERG the kick up the backside over this that they need.

I doubt it will, but I live in hope. The alternative is too horrid to contemplate.

I'll leave this here instead as a reminder of what choice Brexit was always going to come down to.

Happy Easter everyone.

Farage as PM might indeed produce a fascist state such as Franco's Spain
So not a Nazi one with mass murder

Franco killed plenty of people, not only in the civil war but in the following years too, he rid Spain of its left of centre politicians and support.

Figures suggest from 10s of 1000s to 100s of 1000s of deaths in the so called White Terror.

Yes, I know Franco's regime murdered thousands of opponents during the civil war and the following decade while he was consolidating his rule, in what was basically a continuation of the civil war

I was thinking of his regime post-1950, which was still a dictatorship, but he delegated the running of the country to technocrats and there was limited freedom.
I visited in 1970 and was surprised at the amount of free discussion under a dictatorship

I distinguish between the deliberate mass murder intended to exterminate ethnic groups - like the Nazis did -
and the typical fascism of mass murder of opponents during and after a civil war

Franco is sometimes described as an "authoritarian conservative", not in fact a fascist

and in the unlikely event we ever do end up with a dictatorship in Uk / rUK, that's the kind I would expect:

possibly quite a few murders in the early days of destroying left and centrist opposition,
then full-blown authoritarian conservative regime, no elections,
with internment of opponents - including NI & Scot Nats -
and also interrogations like the infamous "5 techniques" used in NI which were found to breach the ECHR

I can't believe there will be concentration camps or Nazi-type genocide in the UK, for the foreseeable future
Maybe I'm naive, but I regard that as impossible

Me too @BigChocFrenzy . But google internment in NI.

Most of what you listed is not being done by the state or under their direction

Agree with you there (yet), but all the things on that list are happening and most of them are not being dealt with by the government. Teresa May's speech was a good example of ratcheting up the tension, not calming it down.

So we are now discussing the type of facist dictatorship that awaits us

I think we need to make sure we don't head in that direction. I am hoping that reasonable' tories realise what is going on. But then I am hoping reasonable Republicans realise what they have in the Whitehouse.

Our democracies are only as strong as the politicians that uphold them.

We have some very weak politicians at the moment.

PMK

Bellini I don't need to Google it; I can remember the start of the Troubles, then internment & the shock of learning about the 5 techniques used as standard by British forces

..... which btw weren't as bad as waterboarding and other techniques the US employ now - the West is regressing

A democracy imo requires sufficient civil order for residents to exercise their rights

A disfunctional country may not have a dictator,
but if people nevertheless face significant risk of ethnic cleansing, torture, murder

• from powerful terrorists, militias, criminal gangs or just mobs - can it still be classed as a democracy ?

Seriously ill, emaciated man who was denied benefits by DWP dies

One poor man who didn't get his rights until too late:

You may remember the original outcry when his benefits were removed and he was down to 6 stone

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/21/stephen-smith-liverpool-seriously-ill-emaciated-man-denied-benefits-dwp-dies

Stephen Smith’s case sparked outrage after his benefits were cut and he was told to find a job

He was deemed fit to work:

I'm still amazed that the lies on an industrial scale and possible use foreign interference / money to undermine our democratic system have not been investigated.

This is absolutely shocking, BigChoc.

However I was going to come on to post about Farage. The Tories are scared stiff of his 'party' winning a majority of seats in the EU elections. Since in fact the Brexit party is only Farage, as was UKIP, I don't know why the party machine doesn't go full out to discredit him - the man who tried to gain a Parliamentary seat 7 times and failed each time, the man who as an MEP only attended one out of 42 meetings of the fisheries committee he was on; his march from Sunderland which numbered about 100 and didn't gather any extra support en route. There is plenty there to show that he is a windbag who won't deliver anything.

@Peringrina, they should but probably won't. Maybe a job for Led By Donkeys?

Tories planning to vote for NF:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/21/tories-plan-vote-brexit-party-eu-elections-surveys-nigel-farage

@Peregrina re Tories not discrediting Farage - I think they possibly feel if they tried that their own hypocrisy would be called out. If from the start of TM's govt they had admitted what a lead balloon Brexit was they wouldn't have struggled. However everything Nige is saying is similar to their "we want to deliver Brexit but pesky Parliament keeps stopping us..." He is pinpointing that weakness and showing them up by being similar enough but competent. Tories have shown themselves to be anything but with at least a decade of stripping services bare and a divided country. I also think they don't want to believe a lot of their voters are that easily swayed - like Cameron didn't believe people would be thick enough to vote for chaos and destruction of the one lifeline the country had from the Tories going full dictatorship.

Re the future, like BigChoc I can't see death camps but with a divided nation you don't need them. The fear of speaking out, the knowledge that appx 50% of the population voted because they wanted "authoritarian" governance, the sorry state of the state broadcaster which is too reliant on govt funding to be truly impartial - I don't think whoever is in charge needs to kill. Just let society keep those with 'libtard' views in the apparent minority.

When I worked abroad my boss was very surprised at how hard I worked - he actually said because I was British he hadn't been expecting it at all! That was 2005, so I think our productivity was low before that, or at least globally recognised as not up to scratch. I think we have spoken on here before about the kids who don't want to learn, for whom education is a dirty word? That is part of the problem. I remember feeling putting obvious effort in was seen as 'uncool'. Girls apparently also have a sense that you should be innately good at subject (maths in particular) rather than thinking you can build your knowledge. Boys apparently are generally more confident of this innate ability and don't have the same learning fears holding them back. You can see how the male warmongering voice sprouts up.

Jeez BigChocFrenzy you're going way off on a tangent that's, imo, frankly just not going to happen.
These threads have gone a bit weird now.

This could make all the difference (Storemont) with Brexit!

@Whisky I think the issue is we are changing from a liberal democracy into a more authoritarian one - it's not actually as difficult to see when you note how far right the Tories have lurched and see austerity as purging the poor. Authoritarianism is the one key trait of leavers. It is (or was in 2016) what around 52% of the population thinks the UK needs.

Lonely Why? i can't see how Stormont being restarted alters Brexit.

PMK. With no hope of catching up

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Why? i can't see how Stormont being restarted alters Brexit.

Restoration of Stormont might not alter Brexit but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

If you are in NI do you feel that a properly functioning Stormont would give you more of a voice re your life, the border and the risks ?

From here I think it looks that morally more effort to restore Stormont would be the correct consensual and transparent thing to do.

As I've mentioned before.. if you think about reading a history essay about events 300 years ago. (Imagine Stormont and Westminster were constituently the same back then.) If you read that:

1. Stormont collapsed for unrelated reasons; then
2. within months Westminster decided to make a decision which hugely affected NI whilst Stormont was suspended.

Reading those facts in history would make a reader think it was suspicious wouldn't it ?

If you add in that NI politicians gave the Westminster gov their majority in return for cash?

I'm not saying it is opportunism but do think it looks like opportunism from an historical perspective.

Happy Easter peeps.

So, where are we now with the ongoing Brexit stuff in Parliament? Amazing how a few days away from it and I've lost the plot already. . Are we having indicative votes or not? Or are we still at the stage of 'discussions' behind the scenes and waiting for Godot?