Pages: 1 ... 185 186 187 [188] 189 190 191 ... 880   Go Down
Print
Author Topic: Let's Get Political!  (Read 1996093 times)
horlock07

Offline Offline

Posts: 18726


Lives in Northern Bastard Outpost




Ignore
« Reply #2805 on: Friday, December 22, 2017, 17:11:22 »

By gong back on his word to resign Davis has betrayed office wankers throughout the country, I look forward to the Daily Mail cover confirming him as a traitor to wankers everywhere!
Logged
Legends-Lounge

Offline Offline

Posts: 8153

Non PC straight talking tory Brexit voter on this




Ignore
« Reply #2806 on: Saturday, December 23, 2017, 19:36:43 »

 This thread, so entertaining. The gift that keeps giving.
Logged
Reg Smeeton
Walking Encyclopaedia

Offline Offline

Posts: 34913





Ignore
« Reply #2807 on: Thursday, January 4, 2018, 11:48:42 »

 Some interesting thoughts by Herr Gove about farming post Brexit. He spouts stuff which sound radical Green, about tax payer subsidies going to the wealthiest landowners, suggesting they should do more for the environment, trees, birds, meadows etc. in return for their benefits.

 Would be good if true, so more likely it will be used as a way of sidelining EU environmental rules, and allowing more housebuilding on sensitive landscapes.
Logged
horlock07

Offline Offline

Posts: 18726


Lives in Northern Bastard Outpost




Ignore
« Reply #2808 on: Thursday, January 4, 2018, 12:12:09 »

Some interesting thoughts by Herr Gove about farming post Brexit. He spouts stuff which sound radical Green, about tax payer subsidies going to the wealthiest landowners, suggesting they should do more for the environment, trees, birds, meadows etc. in return for their benefits.


Then just basically confirms that the status quo will continue until 2024, making sure that the wealthiest landowners continue to get their cash.
Logged
horlock07

Offline Offline

Posts: 18726


Lives in Northern Bastard Outpost




Ignore
« Reply #2809 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 13:06:05 »

Shamelessly nicked from the Politics.co.uk weekly email as its a decent summary, providing some context to the events of this week...

'Today's skirmishes are the first shots of 2018's internal Tory war on Brexit.

The fighting began yesterday, when Philip Hammond stressed that any changes with Europe after Brexit would take place "very modestly", thereby keeping the two economies "interconnected and aligned".

This provoked a predictable backbench backlash. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who acts more and more like he is in a leadership contest, said "I profoundly disagree with the chancellor" and damned ministers for being "cowed by the EU". Former minister Andrew Percy told the chancellor to "put a sock in it" while his colleague Owen Paterson said "it would be good if all Cabinet ministers stuck to government policy".

Downing Street - petrified, as ever, by anything which spooks the headbangers - started briefing against Hammond, stressing that leaving the single market and customs union "could not be described as very modest changes".

But far from moving away from government policy, Hammond is merely reiterating the first phase agreement the UK signed a month ago, in which it promised to accept "full alignment" with the EU to prevent a border in Ireland. Ministers tried to put a brave face on it, but this doesn't just mean having the same rules as the EU now. It means we have to keep them that way in future. If anything, Hammond overstates the extent to which Britain can move away from the EU system.

The consequences of moving away from Europe are very severe. Britain would close itself off from its largest market and recreate a border in Ireland.

The choice ahead of the UK is simple: full trade and little control, or full control and little trade. Neither are palatable. Once the reality of that choice becomes clear, people will split down the middle. The unspoken, internal divisions in the Tory party between the headbanger Brexiters and pragmatic Brexiters will be harder to suffocate with cake-and-eat-it platitudes.

Meanwhile, a second front was opening up in the Tory psychodrama civil war - this time on transition.

As Hammond battened down the hatches against friendly fire, David Davis was preparing a speech on his plans for what happens in the two years after March 2019. The Brexit secretary had himself experienced a savaging at the hands of Rees-Mogg during a Brexit committee hearing earlier in the week, in which the backbencher told him Britain would be a "vassal state" during transition - taking on all EU rules and yet not having any role in formulating them.

To counter that impression, Davis is emphasising that Britain can negotiate and perhaps even sign its own trade deals during this period - even if it can only implement them later.

He's trying to put a brave face on things, but the reality is that Britain is going to roll over on everything. Europe has been clear that only one thing has been on offer. It was the original offer and it is the only one available now. There will be no other offers. Britain is going to keep everything exactly as it is, except that it will lose any power to influence the rules - either via the election of MEPs or through voting rights in EU agencies.

Davis' lame efforts to pretend that Britain will be able to negotiate new trade deals in this time are just an attempt to focus on the positives, even where they have no substance to them. Sources in Brussels have always been perfectly happy to let the UK negotiate trade deals during transition because they know this freedom is largely theoretical.

The UK doesn't have the negotiating capacity to conduct dual track talks - one set with the EU and another with everyone else. Even if it did, two years would not be enough time. And other countries would not want or be able to agree a deal with the UK until they understood what its final relationship with the EU was.

Imagine that during transition Liam Fox tried to talk to the US about a deal. The quid-pro-quo of a UK-US trade deal would be that the US opens itself up to penetration by UK financial services in exchange for the UK opening itself up to US manufacturing and agriculture. Even this is unlikely to be achievable, but lets pretend for a moment it can be done.

Britain can only open itself up to US agriculture if it has disconnected itself formally from the EU, because there are different standards on their products. All that chlorine-soaked chicken and hormone-injected beef is not going to be allowed into the European market. The UK can either detach from the EU and take those goods or stay attached to the EU and not take them. But whichever option it decides, it needs to know what its relationship with the EU is before it can decide anything with the US.

Far from being a potent trading powerhouse, Britain is actually having to go to the the EU cap-in-hand to help it roll over its existing third party trade deals with other countries. These range from full-fat free trade deals with countries like South Korea and Canada to smaller semi-skimmed trade arrangements with countries like the US and China, as well as other agreements on issues like energy, security and data protection.

Once upon a time, Fox bragged he could have all these deals sorted by the time the UK left in March 2019. He was told at the time this was not possible. Now that he has wasted a year flying around the world to no observable purpose, his department has effectively admitted his critics were right. UK negotiators are going to have ask the EU to help it roll-over those deals during transition.

There will be complaints by these third parties, but by presenting a united front - as they have done at the WTO on the vexed issue of tariff quotas - the EU and the UK stand a better chance of staring them down.

Again, we're seeing the brute reality of the Brexit dynamic laid bare: far from sailing across the world winning stunning trade victories, Britain is having to ask the EU to help clean up the mess it has made. Glory has turned to humility.

The same process is clear across the debate - on the terms of transition and on the development of the future relationship. The cake is not being had and eaten, it is being picked up and thrown at the wall.

The real choices entailed by Brexit are finally being recognised: a diminished Britain, choosing between trade and control. And with no delusions to sink into, the Tory party is increasingly free to go to war with itself.'
Logged
donkey
Cheers!

Offline Offline

Posts: 7034


He headed a football.




Ignore
« Reply #2810 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 13:39:24 »

Shamelessly nicked from the Politics.co.uk weekly email as its a decent summary, providing some context to the events of this week...

'Today's skirmishes are the first shots of 2018's internal Tory war on Brexit.

The fighting began yesterday, when Philip Hammond stressed that any changes with Europe after Brexit would take place "very modestly", thereby keeping the two economies "interconnected and aligned".

This provoked a predictable backbench backlash. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who acts more and more like he is in a leadership contest, said "I profoundly disagree with the chancellor" and damned ministers for being "cowed by the EU". Former minister Andrew Percy told the chancellor to "put a sock in it" while his colleague Owen Paterson said "it would be good if all Cabinet ministers stuck to government policy".

Downing Street - petrified, as ever, by anything which spooks the headbangers - started briefing against Hammond, stressing that leaving the single market and customs union "could not be described as very modest changes".

But far from moving away from government policy, Hammond is merely reiterating the first phase agreement the UK signed a month ago, in which it promised to accept "full alignment" with the EU to prevent a border in Ireland. Ministers tried to put a brave face on it, but this doesn't just mean having the same rules as the EU now. It means we have to keep them that way in future. If anything, Hammond overstates the extent to which Britain can move away from the EU system.

The consequences of moving away from Europe are very severe. Britain would close itself off from its largest market and recreate a border in Ireland.

The choice ahead of the UK is simple: full trade and little control, or full control and little trade. Neither are palatable. Once the reality of that choice becomes clear, people will split down the middle. The unspoken, internal divisions in the Tory party between the headbanger Brexiters and pragmatic Brexiters will be harder to suffocate with cake-and-eat-it platitudes.

Meanwhile, a second front was opening up in the Tory psychodrama civil war - this time on transition.

As Hammond battened down the hatches against friendly fire, David Davis was preparing a speech on his plans for what happens in the two years after March 2019. The Brexit secretary had himself experienced a savaging at the hands of Rees-Mogg during a Brexit committee hearing earlier in the week, in which the backbencher told him Britain would be a "vassal state" during transition - taking on all EU rules and yet not having any role in formulating them.

To counter that impression, Davis is emphasising that Britain can negotiate and perhaps even sign its own trade deals during this period - even if it can only implement them later.

He's trying to put a brave face on things, but the reality is that Britain is going to roll over on everything. Europe has been clear that only one thing has been on offer. It was the original offer and it is the only one available now. There will be no other offers. Britain is going to keep everything exactly as it is, except that it will lose any power to influence the rules - either via the election of MEPs or through voting rights in EU agencies.

Davis' lame efforts to pretend that Britain will be able to negotiate new trade deals in this time are just an attempt to focus on the positives, even where they have no substance to them. Sources in Brussels have always been perfectly happy to let the UK negotiate trade deals during transition because they know this freedom is largely theoretical.

The UK doesn't have the negotiating capacity to conduct dual track talks - one set with the EU and another with everyone else. Even if it did, two years would not be enough time. And other countries would not want or be able to agree a deal with the UK until they understood what its final relationship with the EU was.

Imagine that during transition Liam Fox tried to talk to the US about a deal. The quid-pro-quo of a UK-US trade deal would be that the US opens itself up to penetration by UK financial services in exchange for the UK opening itself up to US manufacturing and agriculture. Even this is unlikely to be achievable, but lets pretend for a moment it can be done.

Britain can only open itself up to US agriculture if it has disconnected itself formally from the EU, because there are different standards on their products. All that chlorine-soaked chicken and hormone-injected beef is not going to be allowed into the European market. The UK can either detach from the EU and take those goods or stay attached to the EU and not take them. But whichever option it decides, it needs to know what its relationship with the EU is before it can decide anything with the US.

Far from being a potent trading powerhouse, Britain is actually having to go to the the EU cap-in-hand to help it roll over its existing third party trade deals with other countries. These range from full-fat free trade deals with countries like South Korea and Canada to smaller semi-skimmed trade arrangements with countries like the US and China, as well as other agreements on issues like energy, security and data protection.

Once upon a time, Fox bragged he could have all these deals sorted by the time the UK left in March 2019. He was told at the time this was not possible. Now that he has wasted a year flying around the world to no observable purpose, his department has effectively admitted his critics were right. UK negotiators are going to have ask the EU to help it roll-over those deals during transition.

There will be complaints by these third parties, but by presenting a united front - as they have done at the WTO on the vexed issue of tariff quotas - the EU and the UK stand a better chance of staring them down.

Again, we're seeing the brute reality of the Brexit dynamic laid bare: far from sailing across the world winning stunning trade victories, Britain is having to ask the EU to help clean up the mess it has made. Glory has turned to humility.

The same process is clear across the debate - on the terms of transition and on the development of the future relationship. The cake is not being had and eaten, it is being picked up and thrown at the wall.

The real choices entailed by Brexit are finally being recognised: a diminished Britain, choosing between trade and control. And with no delusions to sink into, the Tory party is increasingly free to go to war with itself.'



What a farce. So predictable and so avoidable.
Logged

donkey tells the truth

I headed the ball.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaaawwwwwww
RobertT

Offline Offline

Posts: 11646




Ignore
« Reply #2811 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 14:23:13 »

To be fair, while I agree with nearly every point on the impact of Brexit raised in that article (opinion piece more like), the voters knew what they were voting for - In or Out.  They went, marginally, with Out because they had some dream that all the Johnny Foreigners would stop coming in (ignoring that the ones they want to stop are not impacted by the EU anyway).  They knew the trade off was getting out of a huge trade block, but a fair chunk did not care - they were already earning around minumum wage so felt what did they have to lose personally, so what if some banks make less money.  Having been shafted, in their eyes, for so long by big corporations and a Political "eilte", this was their chance to stick two fingers up at that.

In any event, if we continue to just frame the EU as a trade partnership with membership dues, we will never truly appreciate what it is there for.

Better to just rip the plaster off right now.

I live knowing I am in a very small minority who would gladly give up UK sovereignty - namely because it means jack shit to me, personally.  That's what being the EU is about - breaking down barriers, borders, politics etc.  Allowing people to choose where they want to be, free competition etc.  The biggest issue with that vision still is that people are too scared to really push to the inevitable conclusion - single social and economic policy.
Logged
chalkies_shorts

« Reply #2812 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 14:43:01 »

The bottom line for me was did I want to be in a United States of Europe. I didn't. As you say RobertT single social and economic policy is the dream. As you say, rip the plaster off now.
I just wish we had said from the start we will remove ourselves from everything EU and take the short term pain. That would have provided clarity and we could have got cracking.
We've elected to leave now, I can see others do so along the journey. It will be interesting when they try to put Muslim migrants into ex Eastern block countries against the wishes of the respective Governments. There are many other potential flashpoints along the way.
Logged
Reg Smeeton
Walking Encyclopaedia

Offline Offline

Posts: 34913





Ignore
« Reply #2813 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 14:51:22 »

Quote
The real choices entailed by Brexit are finally being recognised: a diminished Britain, choosing between trade and control. And with no delusions to sink into, the Tory party is increasingly free to go to war with itself.'

The Tory internecine war is hotting up.... according to an ex minister, a poor showing in the local elections particularly in London, but Swindon gets a mention, and the plotters will move against May.

In Swindon the Tories have 30 councillors, and Lib and Lab opposition 27. Here's hoping...
Logged
BambooToTheFuture

Offline Offline

Posts: 10080


I'll Tell Ya Now - McGurk Is The New Graham


WWW

Ignore
« Reply #2814 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 14:51:43 »

To be fair, while I agree with nearly every point on the impact of Brexit raised in that article (opinion piece more like), the voters knew what they were voting for - In or Out.  They went, marginally, with Out because they had some dream that all the Johnny Foreigners would stop coming in (ignoring that the ones they want to stop are not impacted by the EU anyway).  They knew the trade off was getting out of a huge trade block, but a fair chunk did not care - they were already earning around minumum wage so felt what did they have to lose personally, so what if some banks make less money.  Having been shafted, in their eyes, for so long by big corporations and a Political "eilte", this was their chance to stick two fingers up at that.

I live knowing I am in a very small minority who would gladly give up UK sovereignty - namely because it means jack shit to me, personally.  That's what being the EU is about - breaking down barriers, borders, politics etc.  Allowing people to choose where they want to be, free competition etc.  The biggest issue with that vision still is that people are too scared to really push to the inevitable conclusion - single social and economic policy.

Totally agree Robert. A lot of what people are "afraid" of, is integrating with people from different cultures, countries and society. Why that bothers them, I will never truly know.
Logged


'Incessant Nonsense'

______________________________________________________________

'I'm gonna tell you the secret.
There's a threat, you end it and you don't feel ashamed about enjoying it.
You smell the gunpowder and you see the blood, you know what that means?
It means you're alive. You've won.
You take the heads so that you don't ever forget.'
Arriba

Offline Offline

Posts: 21289





Ignore
« Reply #2815 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 14:55:29 »

I think Brexit has been a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Logged
Sir red ken

« Reply #2816 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 17:23:24 »

I think Brexit has been a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Its an exercise in freedom from communism. No nose of face involved, unless your a commie sympathizer.
Logged
Reg Smeeton
Walking Encyclopaedia

Offline Offline

Posts: 34913





Ignore
« Reply #2817 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 18:17:49 »

Its an exercise in freedom from communism. No nose of face involved, unless your a commie sympathizer.

Logged
Flashheart

« Reply #2818 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 18:22:25 »

OK, I'll bite.

What in the flying fuck does the EU have to do with communism?
Logged
Sir red ken

« Reply #2819 on: Friday, January 26, 2018, 18:25:54 »

OK, I'll bite.

What in the flying fuck does the EU have to do with communism?


Its another commie block, as Gorbachev said "its strange that as the east tears down communist oppression the west moves towards it".
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 185 186 187 [188] 189 190 191 ... 880   Go Up
Print
Jump to: