Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[Pickman's model]

Then got all shouty with this crap below.

I will personally hate and despise anybody I know who voted brexit until my dying day (which isn't far off), brexit won, it is your country now and I hold brexit voters in utter contempt.

an admirable summary

 

[stethoscope]

My first post started with a question.
Clearly.
Others have said I was being disingenuous and directly accusing brexit voters of racism and ignorance.
The irony is that those who have taken my clear opening question, and extrapolated from that, are also those who want me to forensically examine the detail of what they themselves say.
I was jumped on within moments of posting here, and when the jumping was in abusive terms I defended myself in kind.
I have not initiated any abuse to any individual here, but stood up for myself when it has come my way.
Although the flood of abuse directed towards me has been hard to keep up with admittedly.
I have been accused of not being prepared to engage, yet I have posted thoughts regarding the border, and that I believe brexiters opened the door to the Tories and worse, I have mentioned reasons as to why in my view the UK version of 'democracy' is worse than the EU one, I have tried to explain why I think a brexit vote was anti Irish for what I believe to be racist reasons.
I have been invited to read this whole thread from the start in order to somehow qualify to engage, but there is too much of it going back nearly two years to do that. However I fully admit to not having read this thread from the start. I came here because (despite me asking elsewhere long before the referendum) the Irish border question is current.
For those who say I am simply a troll, and want to dismiss me with abuse and suggestions that I am a 'paedo' perhaps you would like to think again. My efforts to engage have not matched the frankly pathetic efforts to respond.

A more obvious approach would have been to:
1) Spend some time reading this and other threads first to get a feel for the posters here and their politics;
2) Having discovered a reasonable number of left and far left posters here have voted left leave, try and read and appreciate some of the argument put forward for such - even if you don't agree with them;
3) Engage based on that with a non-prejudiced, non-loaded question, which might be on the lines of...

'I've spent some time reading some of the posts here, especially those that voted brexit but appear to be on the left, but I'm still struggling with the arguments... how that doesn't just end up emboldening the right..., etc.

So, please stop with this disingenuous 'I just asked a question' stuff, because you didn't, and you know you didn't. And its got people's backs up because it smeers them, many of us who have proud anti-capitalist, anti-fascist political histories. Many of us who have been patient for the last two years putting forward sound arguments for leaving the EU from a left perspective.

 

[Wilf]

I accept your complaint regarding my inelegance. You want to discuss years of neo-liberalism which is fair enough, I prefer to now concentrate on the practical realities brought about as a consequence of the vote. Realities that are happening now. What you want to engage with is of course valid, as is what I want to engage with.
If we are not on the same page on this it is nobody's fault.

But to remind you - you were the one who introduced a statement on the causes of the vote.

Am I right is assuming that everybody who voted brexit is an ignorant racist self serving nationalist brainwashed tosser?

I and others disagree with you and have made points such as the one you quoted. Now, you don't seem to want to talk about why the vote came about.

 

[philosophical]

that's a lie. and it contradicts what you've already said.

Where have I initiated abuse, or said that I have initiated abuse?

 

[Pickman's model]

You are entitled to your opinion.
have you tried writing something more interesting?

he often is very interesting, and always worth reading. you, by contrast, fall short on argument and long on boredom.

 

[Pickman's model]

Where have I initiated abuse, or said that I have initiated abuse?

it's back to your big bertie bollocks er bollocks.

now, about that apology...

 

[sealion]

Now, you don't seem to want to talk about why the vote came about.

He never did. He's gone for the lazy assumptions route.

 

[philosophical]

For those inviting me to read recent posts I certainly will. I have been out and am trying to catch up with the chronology.

 

[sealion]

For those inviting me to read recent posts I certainly will. I have been out of my nut and am trying to catch up with the chronology.

Fixed.

 

[Pickman's model]

For those inviting me to read recent posts I certainly will. I have been out and am trying to catch up with the chronology.

oh, i thought you were familiar with the order of posts which had so aroused your ire.

as you now say you're not i'll look forward to your apology forthwith.

 

[philosophical]

reread my post 5416.

This was your post 5416:

If I was suggesting that believe me I'd be suggesting that. It wouldn't be too far for me to travel. But south if the river at this time of night? You're having a laugh.

I am particularly taken with the 'believe me I'd be suggesting that'.
You then reveal that you have thought about the practicalities 'It wouldn't be too far for me to travel'.
Yet you suggest your posts about whacking around the head, the 'you'd know about it if it happened' type of stuff, your pondering on the journey is a million miles away from constituting a threat?
You have also initiated and peppered your responses to me with a lot of rather predictable sweary stuff.
You refuse to see your behaviour, or ought I to say your posts, as belligerent towards me, and then you constantly complain when I point it out.

 

[philosophical]

Please just stop with this, you've not got him on the ropes it just looks like a transparent, cringeworthy attempt to stick one on an opponent. No-one here is reading your posts thinking "goodness that PM is a thug," he has no history of making threats on this forum and has repeatedly explained to you that he is not and was not threatening violence.

I responded to the post above before reading this one.

 

[philosophical]

do you recognise this post?

Yes, your point being?

 

[Pickman's model]

This was your post 5416:

If I was suggesting that believe me I'd be suggesting that. It wouldn't be too far for me to travel. But south if the river at this time of night? You're having a laugh.

I am particularly taken with the 'believe me I'd be suggesting that'.
You then reveal that you have thought about the practicalities 'It wouldn't be too far for me to travel'.
Yet you suggest your posts about whacking around the head, the 'you'd know about it if it happened' type of stuff, your pondering on the journey is a million miles away from constituting a threat?
You have also initiated and peppered your responses to me with a lot of rather predictable sweary stuff.
You refuse to see your behaviour, or ought I to say your posts, as belligerent towards me, and then you constantly complain when I point it out.

throughout this exchange you've taken the blinkered point of view that i have threatened you with violence.

i haven't.

i may have responded flippantly, in the post you quote, because the notion anyone could think i was threatening you seemed to me utterly outlandish - it still does.

but don't have the gall to complain about my use of anglo-saxon vernacular when the first one of us to introduce insults into the exchange was you.

now, you claimed boris johnson was my mate and i await an apology.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes, your point being?

it's riddled with lies

 

[philosophical]

This might be the right time and place to re-post this:

The ex-IRA men: ‘United Ireland? It’s all guff’


But these four veterans of the Provisional IRA’s armed campaign, who are all now critics of Sinn Féin policy, do not think that Brexit will derail the peace process. They see that threat as little more than a scare tactic to force the future of the 499km Border to the centre of the two-year Brexit negotiations.

“I think a lot of the concerns are exaggerated,” says Tommy McKearney, an IRA volunteer originally from Moy, in Co Tyrone, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment soldier in 1976.

“Certainly, I think we can rule out the idea of a hard Border with British troops on the Border. That was not to do with economics. That was a security situation. I don’t think we are going to see that again.”

...

Lynagh adds, “There is a vested interest in hyping up the political impact and the scare tactics that it is going to open a hornet’s nest of dissident activity against British rule. I don’t see that.”
This is an interesting nationalist perspective. The individuals quoted here don't speak for all nationalists in a formal sense. However I have trouble with the whole divisive nature of nationalism
...

He believes that Brexit will instead encourage various shades of dissenting republicans to engage politically and that there is a chance of a postsectarian debate among unionists, republicans and nationalists, north and south, about what is in the best economic and sovereign interests for both parts of the island.

...

“The European Union is as much of an imperial power as – if not more than – Britain at the moment,” Lynagh says. “We are faced with the possibility of two foreign powers implementing the partition of Ireland, and where is the demand in Ireland to say, ‘What gives you the power to do this?’ ”

This is an interesting nationalist perspective. The individuals quoted here don't speak for all nationalists in a formal sense. However I have trouble with the whole divisive nature of nationalism, certainly expressed as I see it in the winning brexit vote.
I am a fan believe it or not of cooperation and collaboration, and that the nationalists quoted use the term 'foreign powers' suggests to me their desire for parochial power and control, not any particular desire to cooperate.
I said in a post yesterday that I don't detect many degrees of separation between nationalism of either an Irish kind or a brexit kind, and the very unfortunate manifestations of nationalism in History.

 

[stethoscope]

Do you not think the Irish should have complete autonomy and rule over themselves? I thought you said were against the British establishment?

OK for the EU to have some control over them though?

Do we need a neoliberal trading bloc ala the EU to co-operate? I'd rather we demolish the EU and build a new European socialist bloc.

 

[kabbes]

I said in a post yesterday that I don't detect many degrees of separation between nationalism of either an Irish kind or a brexit kind, and the very unfortunate manifestations of nationalism in History.

No, you said nationalism was akin to fascism. Here it is:

Irish republicans have proposed united Ireland, a victory for nationalism. I see nationalism as akin to fascism and would prefer no borders anywhere.

You've still not explained, however, how nationalism -- either that as espoused by Brexit or that by those who seek a united Ireland -- is necessarily radical (i.e. it rejects tradition and seeks to rebuild society based on the development of new ideas) or authoritarian (i.e. it seeks the centralisation of control with no state accountability) in its style, which are both necessary components of fascism. Nor have you explained how it fits in with this necessary component of fascism:

Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.[12] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[12] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[13][14][15][16] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.

Irish nationalists want a totalitarian one-party state? Brexit voters believe that armed conflict is the appropriate response to economic difficulty? This is just nonsense.

You're doing the classic thing of thinking your small amount of knowledge privileges you to use concepts you think you understand but, in practice, have not actually made any actual study of. So you're throwing around these concepts in the belief they somehow bolster your position, whereas they are actually just making you look like an idiot.

 

[philosophical]

This, if you pretend the fields endorsement at the top doesn't exist, is very good - and it has the E.P Thompson anti-EEC line that i was groping for during the campaign and just couldn't find:

“For when an altruistic glint gets into the bourgeois eye one can be sure that someone is about to catch it"

The Lexit ‘mythbuster’ that never was

‘Busting the Lexit myths’, the new paper from Open Britain (OB), contains some pertinent and accurate analysis, but sadly a fair few straw men and sleights of hand. Overall, it doesn’t do what it says on the tin - those ‘myths’ are still standing.

Busting the ‘Lexit myths’ entails demonstrating the following: EU democracy is in fine health, the EU’s treatment of Greece was fair and reasonable, TTIP was a great idea, the single currency is a sound economic project which has not devastated the lives of millions across southern Europe, the EU has not enforced austerity across the periphery, we don’t actually make much contribution at all to EU budgets, and the EU in no way imposes privatisation and market liberalisation. For all its gloss, research and considerable resources, the OB paper doesn’t achieve this, nor does it come close.

The OB paper is broken down into sections, ‘myths’, so we’ll respond in kind.

I have been reading this since you provided a link.
The point about democracy I have covered before. The EU in my view has a better and stronger history and current practice of their form of 'democracy' than the UK. Many Scandinavian countries for example had votes for women long before the UK, the system of proportional representation in my view is better than the first past the post one, the UK has historic constraints wrapped up in places like the House of Lords and general seemingly never ending rule by the same class, and money driven right wing media which influences the close up 'democracy' than the EU one.
The EU form of democracy might have felt remote and unwieldy to many voters, but the Tories and others kept saying that the EU was actually 'undemocratic' which it isn't. It is such a shame that this myth was one of many shovelled out there to persuade people to vote brexit.
On immigration the paper starts by recognising the value of immigration, even referencing food, but then goes on about the impact on jobs and wages and access to services and then comes out with the drawbridge manoeuvre 'no society has a boundless ability to absorb new people'.
Oh yeah?
Who is making claim to the boundaries of that society, who is a new or old person in this context, who are to be the masters of entitlement?
In purely geographic and mathematical terms the UK can take many more people physically, and it is frequently reported how much immigrants are net contributors to public services. Yet the shame of encouraging voters to vote brexit by pointing at immigrants is allowed to continue, and continue it does in this paper.
We live in a world, on a planet, what next 'independence' for Islington or something?
I do agree about the danger of the creep of corporate forces in the EU, but would see that as something that could be resisted. The appetite for many in the UK is not to use the opportunities offered by EU 'democracy' to influence change, but to bail out.
I am going for lunch now, but the paper linked is flawed in my view for some of the reasons I have outlined, and I don't have the time right now to respond to it all.

 

[philosophical]

If a border with customs checks isn't something that most people in Ireland (either side of the border) would have a problem with, and if the necessary changes to the GFA are ones that most people in Ireland would agree to, then I'd change my view and say that it's not a big issue, and not one that should be used to stall Brexit.

The border is 310 miles long with 200 road crossing points, and many others unmarked, with properties that straddle the border.
How do you think those practicalities would be managed if a border with checks were in place?

 

[philosophical]

philosophical , any thoughts?

see below

 

[philosophical]

it means that had i threatened you the threat would have been explicit. in the exchange you persist in discussing there was no threat.

Explicit?
It seems very explicit to me. Why post it at all if it was in some weird universe less than explicit?

 

[kabbes]

I The EU in my view has a better and stronger history and current practice of their form of 'democracy' than the UK.

What does "in my view" mean, beyond your uneducated reckons? What is your metric for democracy? Let's read on and find out...

Many Scandinavian countries for example had votes for women long before the UK

So what? Is this supposed to represent the current practice of the EU institution? Not to mention that Norway is not even part of the EU.

the system of proportional representation in my view is better than the first past the post one,

We're back to "in my view", I see. Are you aware that there is no "best" electoral system? Mathematically, all systems have flaws that mean that they can't be objectively ranked. So your preference for proportional representation is ideological, not objective. Personally, I feel better represented by an individual who I know is personally accountable to a local community first and foremost, rather than a list that produces a candidate based on party politics.

the UK has historic constraints wrapped up in places like the House of Lords and general seemingly never ending rule by the same class, and money driven right wing media which influences the close up 'democracy' than the EU one.

This is getting ridiculous now. Are you really arguing that the ultimate exponent of Pork Barrel Politics that is the EU is somehow less prone to money-driven influence and oligarchical decision making than the nation state of the UK? Good grief.

The EU form of democracy might have felt remote and unwieldy to many voters, but the Tories and others kept saying that the EU was actually 'undemocratic' which it isn't. It is such a shame that this myth was one of many shovelled out there to persuade people to vote brexit.

Are you aware that in all of the above, you haven't actually referenced any evidence at all for your vaunted democracy in the EU? You've talked about who got to female franchise first 100 years ago, you've made a reckon about electoral systems and you've made a quite astonishing claim about who is the worst when it comes to corruptible influences. But there's nothing there to demonstrate how EU democracy is actually put into practice.

On immigration the paper starts by recognising the value of immigration, even referencing food, but then goes on about the impact on jobs and wages and access to services and then comes out with the drawbridge manoeuvre 'no society has a boundless ability to absorb new people'.
Oh yeah?
Who is making claim to the boundaries of that society, who is a new or old person in this context, who are to be the masters of entitlement?
In purely geographic and mathematical terms the UK can take many more people physically, and it is frequently reported how much immigrants are net contributors to public services. Yet the shame of encouraging voters to vote brexit by pointing at immigrants is allowed to continue, and continue it does in this paper.
We live in a world, on a planet, what next 'independence' for Islington or something?
I do agree about the danger of the creep of corporate forces in the EU, but would see that as something that could be resisted. The appetite for many in the UK is not to use the opportunities offered by EU 'democracy' to influence change, but to bail out.
I am going for lunch now, but the paper linked is flawed in my view for some of the reasons I have outlined, and I don't have the time right now to respond to it all.

And this all misses the point entirely, which is that the EU only promotes migration within its own borders, and is happy to let the rest of the world go to hell.

 

[philosophical]

moving on to your claim never to lie, perhaps you could apologise for lying about me.

I have not lied about you.

 

[philosophical]

nonetheless i did not introduce the suggestion of blunt force trauma.

No, you expanded on it.

 

[Pickman's model]

Explicit?
It seems very explicit to me. Why post it at all if it was in some weird universe less than explicit?

that was a quick lunch. go on, take another 50 minutes.

 

[Pickman's model]

I have not lied about you.

another lie.

 

[philosophical]

Then got all shouty with this crap below.

I will personally hate and despise anybody I know who voted brexit until my dying day (which isn't far off), brexit won, it is your country now and I hold brexit voters in utter contempt.

You can interpret that as shouty crap, I say it is an honest personal response.

 

[Badgers]

UK-US Open Skies talks hit Brexit turbulence

 

[teuchter]

OK for the EU to have some control over them though?

Ireland is part of the EU. The EU is not a separate thing. Ireland can choose not to be part of the EU, if it wants, like we have.

Also, NI can choose not be part of the UK, can it not? Isn't that part of the GFA?