Brexit Day

[Murphy]

So Brexit started on May Day 2004 with EU expansion even though the ERG have been around, loitering with intent, for much longer? Can half see the point

Immigration “threats” came from multiple directions for the atypical pro Brexity types to hiss at, 2004’s political shift didn’t begin to become visible til 06/07, first self-owned shops near here as an example. Counties like Lincolnshire (nextdoor) have had seasonal agricultural workers as the norm for time. Does moving from agriculture to construction or hospitality incur gross national dissatisfaction?

Brits are hypocrites. Yes we love having cheaper fitted kitchens done in a day, as opposed to 2 like those Irish lackeys we used to use, but the Irish did go home a lot too to be fair, ie of their own accord, took the hint with 99’s GFA, yet these Slavs dare to stay position?

From memory, the escalation and rhetoric really dialled up a gear with lining up Turkey joining the EU during a recoiling migration crisis, hence Brexit as confluence as much as process. Britannia wanted to pull up the drawbridge after having its rape and eating it for 400 years and now we’re all hoping Catalog mails home some tomatoes

 

[IdleRich]

"its the cause of brexit one way or the other."

Well it's definitely one of them, a big one. Certainly if you took away all the votes predicated on opposition to East European immigration then it seems very unlikely that Leave would have has enough votes to win the referendum - so in that sense it was a decisive issue.

Of course, if you have a referendum where the winning side got fifty-one percent then every single vote was crucial and so, if you accept the argument above, then pretty much every issue could be considered decisive.

 

[IdleRich]

It's clear that opposition to mass immigration, which isn't inherently racist but often is in practice, has become mixed up with a general anti-Islam prejudice, so you have things like this...

Cheers for neatening that up, at times I do have this unexamined prejudice against racism and nationalism and a number of other -isms that I find distasteful and so, as above, I just lazily lump them all together, not making the effort to untangle their strands, and dismiss them as one ugly whole. But, although they are close relatives and often occur together, they are of course not the same things and I'm glad someone else has bothered to make the effort and applied the precision to discriminate between them.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Cheers for neatening that up, at times I do have this unexamined prejudice against racism and nationalism and a number of other -isms that I find distasteful and so, as above, I just lazily lump them all together, not making the effort to untangle their strands, and dismiss them as one ugly whole. But, although they are close relatives and often occur together, they are of course not the same things and I'm glad someone else has bothered to make the effort and applied the precision to discriminate between them.

Yes, very good, but the point is that "I voted Leave cos there's too many Muslims here" doesn't even make sense, while "I voted Leave cos there's too many Poles" does - regardless of how you feel about with those prejudices.

 

[IdleRich]

Yes, very good, but the point is that "I voted Leave cos there's too many Muslims here" doesn't even make sense, while "I voted Leave cos there's too many Poles" does - regardless of how you feel about with those prejudices.

I actually wasn't being sarcastic then.

 

[IdleRich]

More and more interviews like this happening.... almost ten years too late sadly.

 

[version]

Mind you, a lot of people did say it would make the country poorer and they were dismissed as "Project Fear".

 

[IdleRich]

But since then it seemed there was a kind of freeze on any discussion but which is gradually being relaxed. I guess you can only deny and ignore reality for so long.

 

[version]

Yeah, I'm just responding to Derbyshire's line of questioning. She's presenting it as though nobody could have known that was a likelihood when it was more a case of willful ignorance as plenty of people said that's exactly what would happen and were waved away.

The change of tone is maddening though and shows how uncoupled the coverage and debate are from actual events, much like Hancock's picking and choosing when to break the news of a new COVID variant.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah, I'm just responding to Derbyshire's line of questioning. She's presenting it as though nobody could have known that was a likelihood when it was more a case of willful ignorance as plenty of people said that's exactly what would happen and were waved away.

The change of tone is maddening though and shows how uncoupled the coverage and debate are from actual events, much like Hancock's picking and choosing when to break the news of a new COVID variant.

Stop remoaning about it you remainiac, just fucking deal with it!

 

[IdleRich]

At the moment the UK government are desperately trying to squeeze the last few remaining drops out of the idea of the EU as this massive evil bully that hates us and is responsible for all our problems. For years it's been a knee-jerk response whenever anything goes wrong to just insult the EU, not even necessarily to blame it for the specific problem being discussed as such, but just a handy subject to switch to.

And I think they are finally realising that now we have apparently left the EU, forged our own way and are in a situation where they need us far more than we need them, then that means the EU is no longer useful as a distraction in that way. After insisting so strongly for so long that it is irrelevant to us they do have to at least try to act as though it is.

But, there is the European Court of Human Rights, a body which is distinct from the EU but which is almost perfect as a replacement bogeyman. It's great for Tories to use cos a) It's got European right there in its name and b) sometimes it does actually stop us doing stuff or at least try to.

So in that respect it's really handy for Tories; the sentence "we didn't leave the EU just to be pushed around by the ECHR" is now the most common phrase in Westminster. If Suella Braverman was asleep in a meeting and you elbowed her sharply to wake her up she would just say it automatically knowing it would be the right answer. In fact it would be the same of you woke her up at home in her bed. Apparently her child's first word was "ECHR" and its second fully formed phrase was "we didn't leave the EU just to be pushed around by the ECHR" (the first was "off with their heads").

Of course, the court was created entirely to protect human rights and the UK was one of the original signatories to it so it's a bit weird to claim that we are victims of the court, but you could have said something pretty similar about the EU and even so about half the country still never understood or believed that the UK had any influence over it at all so there is no reason to think those tactics won't work.

 

[IdleRich]

Stating the obvious here I'm sure, but the thing is, the ECHR is there to protect human rights. Just the really basic, obvious things that absolutely every single person in the world who isn't some kind of sadistic monster agrees everyone should have. If the court is trying to stop something happening, then that thing it's trying to stop is probably a bad thing.

These rights were agreed on when everyone got together and said; these things are so fundamental, so basic that every single living person must be allowed them - it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, whatever you've done, however rich or poor you are, noone can take them away from you under any circumstances. To be human guarantees you these rights. The UK agreed with this, in fact was right at the forefront of agreeing there should be a court to enforce this.

 

[Leo]

@IdleRich do you consider yourself part of the EU or UK? you often use “we” and “us” when writing about the impact of brexit on the UK. I get that your family is there, but wonder how you see yourself?

 

[IdleRich]

Except now, the UK, or the UK's leaders, people who represent a large proportion of the people on this board have said "Yeah I know what we said, but we've changed our mind - those rights can be taken away if you're poor and you come from the wrong place".

And now this is the battle the UK is choosing to fight - really, I think, with the aim of resurrecting the EU or something like it as our enemy - notice they always represent it as the UK vs the ECHR or even - dishonestly - as the UK vs the EU, this faceless block pushing us around and stopping us passing our own laws in our own country.

It would be more truthful to say The UK vs Human Rights, or perhaps simply The UK vs Humanity... it's one of the rare occasions in this complicated and messy world we live in where you have a clearly defined battle between right and wrong, or good and evil if you prefer.

Just the idea that a court we created, trying to hold us to a promise we made to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, is bullying, is something I find offensively ludicrous.

 

[IdleRich]

Rich, do you consider yourself part of the EU or UK? you often use “we” and “us” when writing about the impact of brexit on the UK. I get that your family is there, but wonder how you see yourself?

I wouldn't necessarily read anything into my use of "we" - that's really just habit I expect, and if occasionally it does convey the correct meaning then it's more by luck than anything else. To be honest I tend to be sloppy and imprecise.

That said, although I have residency in Portugal (and thus the EU) I am not a citizen. I have a UK passport, I pay UK taxes and vote in UK elections (and can't vote in Portuguese ones) - it seems to me that legally and in every other tangible way - except for the fact that I wake up in Portugal every afternoon - I'm still pretty much English.

Though when you ask how I see myself that's a different question. I don't really like identifying with any country as such. For me the main purpose of having a country is that it makes international sport (by which I mean football) more fun if you have someone to shout for, and that's about it.

 

[version]

'Ministers have begun a full-scale retreat over post-Brexit plans to ditch thousands of EU laws by the end of this year, after Tory peers warned they would join a mass cross-party revolt in the House of Lords.'

 

[Leo]

in before @WashYourHands

 

[Mr. Tea]

in before @WashYourHands

He's no Biden, is he?

 

[Murphy]

in before @WashYourHands

tastes just like wet nurse nanny’s left tit

 

[Murphy]

What a fuckin mare. Love to get past 2016, put it all in the collective rear-view mirror and move on but it’s impossible on various human levels. For now. I thought we had the scope and wherewithal to target, I dunno, the equivalent of ‘NHS 2.0‘ as a tangible attempt to upgrade failing structural flaws? Take a bow, Covid, for showing us exactly how short-sighted every cunt was

Talk of fee ports? Brazen Tory fantasising from the sandpit of shit ideas in full public view, to be gazed on by Brexit voting populaces who still complain this isn’t the Brexit they voted for. Like it was ever about need gratification to anyone below boardroom level. Is a policy worth shitcanning the national interest over? Apparently, gift-wrapped self-sabotage at staggering levels of naivety. Naïve is naïve too in our pockmarked, post-Brexit catastrophe

Pvt residential care homes for the elderly have started to access visas for ltd numbers of care staff expedited on the quiet somehow. Eh? Why not the NHfuckinS? No-one wants to address the expanding British habit of piling up its elderly in cupboards, a rather American pastime for the terminally ill. Numbers are hidden in budgets, not many want to do draining poorly paid work as it is but we sure as fuck don’t envisage this level of care for ourselves in our fantastical future. Why the insipid lack of appropriate action? Because Cock Island came really hard right in our eyes

Rotten stump land. Social housing to embarrass Dickens. Barren. I hope all the cunts planting vines in east anglia fail with 45 degree summers in a few years, drying us to dust (and not just because it has anglia in its name). Ffs, we can’t even coordinate a working medium-term water resource policy/strategy. Our rivers and coasts are toilets and our gods got bleached out by hedgerow removal and landfill lifetimes ago. Don’t pray for divine help - any/all beneficial deities worth sacrificing to are long dead

Family Exit Strategy uptick initiated in the last few months - Ireland or Portugal. Ireland for schools and family networks, Portugal for drug work and wife’s focus. Fuck this, what a dump of a crag of shit ideas, crumbling bricks and alcohol