Westminstenders: A photo opportunity

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson likes publicity.

Any attention is good attention. Whilst you are talking about how crazy his idea is, the less you come up with your own.

And there it is. The lack of plan to stop no deal. Just a bunch of idiots who argue over who is more right about politics without offering up a practical solution.

Unable to see their own flaws.

And leading us ever closer to the cliff edge and operation Yellowhammer.

madambee your post makes me feel incredibly sad, but I can completely see your point.

hester I'm sad, too.
But imo, we have reached the point of 'we (uk) don't want to play with you (EU) - it is all your fault - now you make it work for us, cause we can't'
It's a farce .

Sorry if I have missed this, but Dorothy Byrne, head of Channel 4 News, tells Edinburgh TV Festival that we should "call MPs out as liars" as opposed to being euphemistically polite.

What do Westminsterenders people think?

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/entertainment-arts-49432821

@madambee
Fully agree with your post and I think this is a feeling shared across Europe.

I believe that the EU has been very kind to the uk with the WA. The Eu has tried to avoid an unstable neighbourh and wanted to protect Ireland. But now, what else can it do anyway?? The uk doesn’t even know what it wants (did you notice that there is no more discourse on what sort of deal the uk wants or should get etc? Even when BJ goes the Germany and France, he can’t spell out what he wants. Because he has no idea...)

madambee

I am sadly all too familiar with your opinion. I'm an EU/UK citizen and work with other EU countries. I've seen the perception of the UK evolve over the years. It's much more detached. Even attitudes towards those like me who have naturalised British seem to change to 'well, if you're still over there you've made your bed'. This is so different from the genuine concern and sympathy that used to prevail...

Myriade can you give examples how the EU has been kind to the U.K.?

I think fair is a better word personally.

I thought Angela Merkel’s point was that the barrier to reaching a solution wasn’t the time already gone or to come, but the attitude/expectations of those negotiating.

re madambee's view:

A recent poll in Germany by iirc ZDF, had "only" 50% of Germans wanting us to stay

I say only, because ZDF had a similiar poll shortly after the ref and after excluding the Don't Knows, it was just about 100% of Germans wanted us in

However, responsible politicians like Merkel and Rutte put aside the exasperation at BJ - and Raab & DD before him -
to look at what is best for Europe
This is still the WA, but they are signalling quietly to anyone listening that they are prepared to help UK politicians with cosmetic add-ons

They know that it will be much harder, maybe even humiliating, for a desperate Uk to swallow the same WA terms 6 or 12 months after No Deal, but as preconditions for trade talks

@madambee

Please may i ask, you posted a yougov questionnaire, is there somewhere i can see the votes?

yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/773cf520-c4bc-11e9-9b62-5f6fc7e95b11

I would have posted the results here, but they can be broken down into age, sex, region and politics - so you can dig into the detail.

Thanks for sharing your views - as someone who is only half English (as I was pointedly reminded at school, and again recently) I totally support them. I think the UK needs to be out of the EU and tha the EU has been more than patient with the UK these past three years.

Much easier to let go than get fined.

DGR are you employed by a secret Ministry of Despair? Is it your mission to make Remainers so miserable that we can’t fight back? People who have settled status have an email containing a link that they can use to prove their status. I think it would be far easier for an employer to use that link than get rid of a long-standing employee who they have invested heavily in training. Not to mention the claim for unfair dismissal that would ensue. This is common sense.

Also, the fact that a rock that is dropped off a cliff will more than likely hit the ground at the bottom has nothing to do with the chances of a no deal Brexit. They are totally unrelated - one is simple physics, the other is very complex politics. Why do you use this analogy?

@Hester54 the EU has given to the UKmore than it ever gave to a third country. And in record time too.
It has, IMO, also given up in EU citizens in the uk to do so too (as proven in the last few days, the’agreement’ to protect EU citizens with the SS doesn’t actually protect them that much).
And it has done so whilst respecting the UK red lines.

How much more could have the EU done wo compromising its own integrity??

The main example of the EU being kind - or rather professional and non-confrontational -
is not retaliating to the open hostility and disgraceful insults from British politicians: "nazis, huns, Soviet Union, punishment beatings ... "

and even not castigating Uk politicians for advocating starving out an EU member, Ireland, even though one of those politicians is now Foreign Secretary

The main example of the EU bending over backwards in the negotiations is allowing May to turn the original Ni backstop into an all-Uk backstop
and gain almost SM-type privileges for the UK, but without SM membership, FOM etc

Most members really disliked that concession, as they said it was a better deal than they had or would give to any other country, even Norway

I got asked that question in a YouGov survey I completed today.

The much more reassuring treatment of current Uk expats is maybe an example of kindness to fellow human beings,
rather than to the Uk as a country

@QueenOfThorns, I’m not as optimistic.
There has been so many comments from doany politicians, some ufbwhich stayed as facts already implemented when they hadn’t even been proposed that many people have no clue of what is or isn’t happening.
Big companies will have the ressources to go and fish out the information. The SM businesses, that are the main source of employment, don’t.
It will be easier and safer fur them to avoid EU citizens.
Same with landlords etc...,

Learning a language apparently develops your brainpower, and although it’s hard, it get easier the more you learn. You hear of these polyglots who can speak seven languages; well it seems the sixth was easy and the seventh a doddle. Maybe something to do with enhanced neural pathways or something scientific which I don’t understand.

Just simple expansion of space needed for concepts, I'd say. If you bother to keep your ears (and eyes) open - especially in a cosmopolitan setting - you can end up learning all sorts of words that express something slightly differently, or with a shift in emphasis that can transform a simple sentence from (for example) seemingly fulsome praise, to a scathing excoriation.

Piling on the irony, it's curious that as a language English is probably more full of foreign words than any other. But as a people the English appear to be the most resistant to actually learning a foreign language.

I love encountering foreign words that have no English equivalent - as well as enjoying watching foreigners (especially Americans struggle with some English words).

Does anyone agree with my memory that until a TV advert in the 80s, "Schadenfreude" was unknown in English, and that it's now an English word (or, to put it another way, my "EN-GB" spellchecker knows about it) ?

Backpfeifengesicht

Also, loanwords sound better in their original tongue - who wants a pale imitation ?

Allowing us extensions, is not being kind to us, it’s in their benefit as well,
There has been a few nasty words back as well, hell etc,
It was very kind to offer a WA knowing fair well it would be rejected. Still saying it’s the only one that is on offer knowing it has been rejected 3 times,
The EU have their red lines as well,
SM type privileges would only have been for the transition period,

Merkel has clarified.
Disclaimer: I presume this is also a translation...I can't find the original German. The pronoun "one" is probably a translation of "man", though.

I said that what one can achieve in three or two years can also be achieved in 30 days. Better said, one must say that one can also achieve it by October 31.

It is not about 30 days. The 30 days were meant as an example to highlight the fact that we need to achieve it in a short time because Britain had said they want to leave the European Union on October 31.

DGR are you employed by a secret Ministry of Despair?

Think and say what you like. I'm merely working within a framework that started off with "the easiest deal in history" and is currently running at "not too many people will die". If you think that my extrapolation of that direction of travel is wrong that is your prerogative. I'd be curious to know where you get the "uplift" function to move it away from there, but then again I can't read everything that's written, so may have missed something.

In the meantime, stop looking forwards and look back for a second. I urge everyone to. Because you will be horrified at how far the footprints in the sand have led you from safety.

I also prefaced my previous comments - as indeed I am happy for all my comments to be taken - with a caveat that I may have misunderstood something, or simply be ignorant of something. In which case I am happy to take a correction in any forum. Something no Brexiteer has - or ever will - dream of doing. (Because if they did, they wouldn't be a Brexiteer ).

However, just to irritate you further, I would be wary of relying on anything that has gone before. The Windrush generation and their descendants did, and it has hardly been plain sailing for them.

myriade I think, the uk not knowing what they want and being very divided, is the issue. But blaming EU for this, and saying it is their fault, well that just creates resentment. The 'ordinary' people of EU would love for you to stay, I think, but you have just taken it too far.

songsof i totally get this. I started out feeling sorry you didn't want a 'united' community. Now I cannot wait for some peace and quiet from British 'politics'

bigchoc i think that EU has been willing to give cosmetic icing for some time, but apparently either it hasn't been enough or Noone had the good sense to take it and spin it as a positive. Probably due to the interparliament 'fights'.

dgrossetti Thank you. And I'm afraid the patience has worn thin by now.

Myriade So they haven’t been kind just business like, The U.K. have said time and again EU rights will be protected in a no deal situation, have the EU said that?