Is Brexit actually going to happen?
- Thread starter Kaka Tim
- Start date
Baronage-Phase
Well-Known Member
And without asking those in Eire either. Such a move would come at a high financial cost.
A united Ireland would be worse off than the Republic
I think May's suggestion was pretty off the cuff...but maybe it's something to think about. I was reading the other day about NI Unionists who are rather moderate, and have been learning Irish and debating what it might be like for NI to join the Republic.
Interesting times ...
Some unionists are thinking the unthinkable about living in a united Ireland
As for Foster giving out about anything...she has some nerve. She hasn't worked for the NIA in ages. And is still getting paid.
She objects to everything. It's her only position on all matters. She has set back NI and is a rubbish arrogant politician.
Who said anything about doing it without asking the people who live there?
If Brexit is the priority, a question for the people of NI could be, for example:
a) Do you want to be part of a united Ireland?
OR
b) Do you want to be part of the UK, recognising that this will involve a hard ported between NO and RoI?
pocketscience
Well-Known Member
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
It would certainly be interesting to ask the question.
krtek a houby
Sail hatin'
Economic downturn in Ireland post-reunification? Possibly, but sure, there might well be the same in the remainder of the UK, post-Brexit.
As for the former scenario, I imagine the 32 county ROI will receive some benefits from the dastardly EU if reunification goes ahead.
As for the former scenario, I imagine the 32 county ROI will receive some benefits from the dastardly EU if reunification goes ahead.
The Fornicator
Active Member
Who would ask the question on behalf of the Crown, the Conservative and Unionist Party?
Baronage-Phase
Well-Known Member
For everyone on the island of Ireland it does. And for all those living in NI it certainly does.
For those who lived through the troubles it does.
The BIGGEST and only positive thing to happen in our combined history has been the GFA. It's way bigger than Brexit...believe it or not.
Do you seriously think you can pull a huge group of people out of the EU and throw back in a hard border where its not wanted and expect no backlash?
They already voted by a majority to stay in the EU. And for everyone in NI the GFA is far more important that Brexit.
As for the Hard Border
...you forgot that there is a country at the other side who also doesnt want it.
Nobody wants a fucking border.
Do you get that? Not those in NI and definitely not those in Eire. Why should people not living there have any fucking say in that? Who the fuck do you think you are suggesting that anyone here has to vote for a border? We voted to accept the GFA an masse. We voted for peace and cross border free movement. Why the fuck should Brexit fuck that up?
Typical.. attitude of superiority ... the "we know best" attitude.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yep. A preexisting treaty that the UK has committed to takes priority. Anything less than that renders that initial commitment a deceit.
Baronage-Phase
Well-Known Member
The only way out of this if Brexit is to happen is to let each part of the UK decide for themselves.
And as Scotland and NI have clearly voted no to Brexit and they have their own governing bodies then leave them stay in the EU.
Sure....the UK won't exist anymore. But hey...That's ok isn't it?
Wales and England can combine as the EW or WE.
And as Scotland and NI have clearly voted no to Brexit and they have their own governing bodies then leave them stay in the EU.
Sure....the UK won't exist anymore. But hey...That's ok isn't it?
Wales and England can combine as the EW or WE.
The Fornicator
Active Member
don't mind me
pocketscience
Well-Known Member
united ireland it is then. fine with me.
The Fornicator
Active Member
You've got more chance of the Republic joining the UK.
pocketscience
Well-Known Member
so you'd be completely against any treaty that united the island of ireland?
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
If they're so upset about it all why don't they pull their finger out and bring the govt down? FFS.
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
Sometimes you forget just how supine politicians are. They've just wasted several days gassing, only to find she's pressed the reset button. She probably knew a week ago there was no movement towards the deal from the Tories and pretty much knew she would call it off around then. Just about the ultimate contempt for parliament. I've got contempt for parliament, but that's a different matter...
Leaders avoiding votes for procedural reasons? Ring any bells SpackleFrog ?
Ey up, bit of de ja vu here!
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
"Oi, Theresa, turn the sound system off, that'll shut the fuckers up!"Ey up, bit of de ja vu here!
flypanam
Eat crisps
There are enough rich fuckers in the south that can pay for unification, I wouldn't worry about the cost so much. The Dublin establishment will be fearful as they will no longer be able to provide the old meagre excuses for their politics or justification for their position.
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The Fornicator
Active Member
Can't renegotiate because you can't renegotiate, says the Empire of Virtue. Perfectly reasonable, it's us being awkward. Terribly sorry to bother you, Mr Junkers. Excuse me while you throw me under a bus. What's the Empire's preferred outcome from here :
1. General Election (Corbyn wins)
2. Second ref (risky)
3. ?
1. General Election (Corbyn wins)
2. Second ref (risky)
3. ?
Sasaferrato
We've been together now for twenty years...
Brexit summed up by Ireland's leading columnist.
Fintan O’Toole:
Historians will not believe sheer ignorance of Brexit supporters
Future chroniclers will in fact have to distinguish between three kinds of ignorance
When future historians try to understand how Britain ended up with a choice between chaos and becoming a satellite of the European Union, one question will stump them. Were these people telling deliberate lies or were they merely staggeringly ignorant? Where does mendacity stop and idiocy begin? Historians generally have to assume that people in power have a basic grasp of what they are doing, that their actions are intentional. They may use deception as a tactic and they may be deluded in what they think they can achieve. But they must, at least at the beginning, have some grasp on reality – otherwise they would not have achieved power. Yet, for the poor historians trying to make sense of Brexit, this assumption will be mistaken.
There is, of course, plenty of straightforward mendacity for them to identify. Boris Johnson’s whole journalistic and political career has been driven by his talent for taking minor regulations and distorting them into wildly exaggerated claims of oppression by the Eurocrats. This can’t be done by mistake. For example, you cannot by accident take, as Johnson did, a Council of Europe (not EU) convention on the repatriation of corpses and turn it into a repeated claim that “There really is European legislation on the weight, dimensions and composition of a coffin”. There isn’t. This is not ignorance – it is a knowing falsification of the truth. So let’s leave that aside. Historians will know it when they see it.
A spotter’s guide
Their problem will be, rather, with the shades of obliviousness. Here our future scholars will have to try to distinguish between three kinds of ignorance: deliberate unknowing, crass self-delusion and what we can only call pig ignorance. So, for their benefit, here is a brief spotter’s guide.
Deliberate unknowing is when you are fully aware of something but then choose to suppress that consciousness. A good example is Theresa May speaking about the Irish border on June 21st 2016, just two days before the referendum: “Just think about it. If we are out of the European Union with tariffs on exporting goods into the EU, there’d have to be something to recognise that, between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And if you pulled out of the EU and came out of free movement, then how could you have a situation where there was an open border with a country that was in the EU and has access to free movement?” So she knew full well that a Brexit that involved leaving the customs union would create a hard border. And then, as prime minister, she insisted on the opposite: that a hard Brexit was perfectly compatible with no return of a hard border. She unknew what she had known.
And then there’s pig ignorance – the genuine hallmarked, unadulterated, slack-jawed, open-mouthed, village idiot variety
Crass self-delusion is when you start with an ideological premise that you believe to be true even though it isn’t and then draw apparently reasonable conclusions from it.
Thus, for example, David Davis sincerely believed the EU is just a front for German domination of Europe. Hence he also believed quite genuinely that the Brexit negotiations would be conducted not with Brussels but over a convivial weissbräu and schnitzel in Berlin and that frictionless trade would be decreed immediately because the German car manufacturers wished it so: sincerely fatuous self-delusion.
Village idiot
And then there’s pig ignorance – the genuine hallmarked, unadulterated, slack-jawed, open-mouthed, village idiot variety in which the people who are in charge of the British state don’t know stuff that anyone off Gogglebox could tell them. The Brexiteer MP Nadine Dorries admitted in effect that she didn’t know what a customs union is. Her comrade Andrew Bridgen said last month: “As an English person, I do have the right to go over to Ireland and I believe that I can ask for a passport. Can’t I?”
Karen Bradley, the actual secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said:“I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland. I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.”
And last week the actual Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab: “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.”
Crass self-delusion
What’s charming about this is that Bradley and Raab’s ignorance is publicly self-proclaimed. It’s not just that they didn’t know basic stuff, it’s that they didn’t think there was anything shameful in not knowing. This is the purest form of ignorance: it’s not just that you don’t know, but that you don’t even know that you’re meant to know.
Historians will in time get to the bottom of the deliberate unknowing and the crass self-delusion. They can be charted. But this pure pig ignorance, innocent and unalloyed, is unfathomable. It will be impossible not to conclude that it was all part of some great strategic plan, that, if only we could plumb its depths, we could reveal the hidden truth of Brexit. How will they ever believe that the hidden truth is so asinine?
Fintan O’Toole:
Historians will not believe sheer ignorance of Brexit supporters
Future chroniclers will in fact have to distinguish between three kinds of ignorance
When future historians try to understand how Britain ended up with a choice between chaos and becoming a satellite of the European Union, one question will stump them. Were these people telling deliberate lies or were they merely staggeringly ignorant? Where does mendacity stop and idiocy begin? Historians generally have to assume that people in power have a basic grasp of what they are doing, that their actions are intentional. They may use deception as a tactic and they may be deluded in what they think they can achieve. But they must, at least at the beginning, have some grasp on reality – otherwise they would not have achieved power. Yet, for the poor historians trying to make sense of Brexit, this assumption will be mistaken.
There is, of course, plenty of straightforward mendacity for them to identify. Boris Johnson’s whole journalistic and political career has been driven by his talent for taking minor regulations and distorting them into wildly exaggerated claims of oppression by the Eurocrats. This can’t be done by mistake. For example, you cannot by accident take, as Johnson did, a Council of Europe (not EU) convention on the repatriation of corpses and turn it into a repeated claim that “There really is European legislation on the weight, dimensions and composition of a coffin”. There isn’t. This is not ignorance – it is a knowing falsification of the truth. So let’s leave that aside. Historians will know it when they see it.
A spotter’s guide
Their problem will be, rather, with the shades of obliviousness. Here our future scholars will have to try to distinguish between three kinds of ignorance: deliberate unknowing, crass self-delusion and what we can only call pig ignorance. So, for their benefit, here is a brief spotter’s guide.
Deliberate unknowing is when you are fully aware of something but then choose to suppress that consciousness. A good example is Theresa May speaking about the Irish border on June 21st 2016, just two days before the referendum: “Just think about it. If we are out of the European Union with tariffs on exporting goods into the EU, there’d have to be something to recognise that, between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And if you pulled out of the EU and came out of free movement, then how could you have a situation where there was an open border with a country that was in the EU and has access to free movement?” So she knew full well that a Brexit that involved leaving the customs union would create a hard border. And then, as prime minister, she insisted on the opposite: that a hard Brexit was perfectly compatible with no return of a hard border. She unknew what she had known.
And then there’s pig ignorance – the genuine hallmarked, unadulterated, slack-jawed, open-mouthed, village idiot variety
Crass self-delusion is when you start with an ideological premise that you believe to be true even though it isn’t and then draw apparently reasonable conclusions from it.
Thus, for example, David Davis sincerely believed the EU is just a front for German domination of Europe. Hence he also believed quite genuinely that the Brexit negotiations would be conducted not with Brussels but over a convivial weissbräu and schnitzel in Berlin and that frictionless trade would be decreed immediately because the German car manufacturers wished it so: sincerely fatuous self-delusion.
Village idiot
And then there’s pig ignorance – the genuine hallmarked, unadulterated, slack-jawed, open-mouthed, village idiot variety in which the people who are in charge of the British state don’t know stuff that anyone off Gogglebox could tell them. The Brexiteer MP Nadine Dorries admitted in effect that she didn’t know what a customs union is. Her comrade Andrew Bridgen said last month: “As an English person, I do have the right to go over to Ireland and I believe that I can ask for a passport. Can’t I?”
Karen Bradley, the actual secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said:“I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland. I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.”
And last week the actual Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab: “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.”
Crass self-delusion
What’s charming about this is that Bradley and Raab’s ignorance is publicly self-proclaimed. It’s not just that they didn’t know basic stuff, it’s that they didn’t think there was anything shameful in not knowing. This is the purest form of ignorance: it’s not just that you don’t know, but that you don’t even know that you’re meant to know.
Historians will in time get to the bottom of the deliberate unknowing and the crass self-delusion. They can be charted. But this pure pig ignorance, innocent and unalloyed, is unfathomable. It will be impossible not to conclude that it was all part of some great strategic plan, that, if only we could plumb its depths, we could reveal the hidden truth of Brexit. How will they ever believe that the hidden truth is so asinine?
The Fornicator
Active Member
No substance. Just playing to the gallery, like dozens of others in the Brexit Industry. It's certainly boosting a lot of PEPS.
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
Yeah, I keep thinking this. It seems a bit conspiraloon but... if you're Tory PM and you want to stop Brexit...
It's not like she hasn't consistently sowed the rhetoric - all that stuff about the Lords blocking it, telling Parliament it's this or maybe no deal or maybe no Brexit... She's trying to do what she says is the only thing she can but it's the damn democratic system blocking everything...
It's a very populist line. Right wing populism kind of thrives off the EU across Europe. Its almost as if they have an interest in the maintenance of the project in order to rail against it. I assume some Tories are uncomfortable about the extent to which Parliamentary procedure is being undermined.
The people of NI can be given the absolute right to join the ROI forever. What’s wrong with that? There’s no “we know best” attitude in that. And if they don’t want to do it, if they want to remain part of the UK, they then have to accept what this means — being a full part of the UK subject to the same rules and procedures as the rest of the UK. Nothing wrong with the rest of the UK saying either is fine but you have to choose.
And if ROI doesn’t want NI they should make that clear too so that the people of NI can be clear where they stand.
As it is, the people of ROI seem to think they have the right to dictate to the people of UK whether or not they are allowed to leave the EU. Talk about “knowing best”!
The Fornicator
Active Member
It's like some people on here have never conducted a tough negotiation in their lives. This has to go to the cliff edge. The UK may even have to actually leave on WTO terms before the Empire finally reins back. But it will, in the end.
I think May's weakness has been so baked in since last summer that lots of people forget her direction of travel before the snap election, and the expected result of that election when it was called. I don't think she was bluffing with all that stuff - everything just changed when she lost her majority.
flypanam
Eat crisps
Re the people can you not just say the Dublin establishment, I know for a fact that not all 4.7 million of them are actively trying to stop the people of the UK from leaving the EU anymore than the people of the UK can be blamed for Britain's troubled relationship with Ireland.
Winot
I wholeheartedley agree with your viewpoint
The Fornicator
Active Member
"A total of 3,882 people took part in the non-scientific survey"
Fantastic. You know it's click bait?
I like 'total respondents 4431. Sample including non-response 3882'
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