**This group new what it meant but, as per your hero DD, didn't understand that we possessed it all along*
The argument is that we had sovereignty could leave all along? Doesn't sound very useful...
Quite, it is a ridiculous argument:
A: "EU now controls X, I don't like it" B: "No, we still have control because we retain the right to leave the EU" A: "Can we leave the EU then?" B: "NO!" A: "So the EU does have control over X?" B: "No, we still have control because we retain...." (repeat ad infinitum)
Like any club. I'm not sure you could walk into the pavilion as an MCC member wearing nothing but a big smile.
Modern international relations are all about pooling sovereignty to some degree.
That said North Korea's is pretty sovereign.
So you finally accept that the line "we were always sovereign" is more spin than substance?
Not at all. We as a sovereign nation decided to join the club and as it turned out we as a sovereign nation decided to leave it.
We maintained our sovereignty throughout because we had signed up to a commonly-agreed set of rules which the club established for all members.
This is not tricky stuff, really. Could we zero-rate VAT on domestic energy supplies? No. Because we had decided to join a club wherein that was not allowed. Did that mean we were any less sovereign? Of course not. Can Barclays avoid MiFID's pre-trade transparency without using an official waiver? No. Does that make us any less sovereign? Well you tell me.
My reductio ad absurdum with North Korea was to illustrate what a country which doesn't want to join any club looks like.
Sigh. And Topping wins the dunce hat for the day once again. I would explain it to you again in words of one syllable but you are genuinely too dumb to understand.
I bet you could not explain it in words of one syllable.
I have tried to explain it in every other way and Topping is still too dumb to understand it.
Anyway as a joke to try your challenge
'We make our own law' 'No one else can tell us what to do'
Not exact but close enough for Topping's feeble mind.
I believe David Davis has had a very good week. It is interesting that from the European side there is a lot of anger at our audacity of saying there is no legal Brexit bill due rather than saying that Davis is wrong and this is why.
A fervent pro-European I argue with on another site that would make Verhofstadt blush in his Europhileness has switched from arguing that we owe a large sum and they'll see us in court if need be to arguing it doesn't matter what the legalities are we simply need to agree because they said so.
As a wealthy nation our chequebook and historic munificence is one of our strongest points in the forthcoming negotiations. No doubt at the end of the negotiations we will sign up to a payment of some sort but that was always likely. Now it looks more like whatever payment will be a quid pro quo for a good deal, which means getting a good deal, rather than signing up to a big payment that was due and then looking for a deal afterwards.
I believe David Davis has had a very good week. It is interesting that from the European side there is a lot of anger at our audacity of saying there is no legal Brexit bill due rather than saying that Davis is wrong and this is why.
A fervent pro-European I argue with on another site that would make Verhofstadt blush in his Europhileness has switched from arguing that we owe a large sum and they'll see us in court if need be to arguing it doesn't matter what the legalities are we simply need to agree because they said so.
As a wealthy nation our chequebook and historic munificence is one of our strongest points in the forthcoming negotiations. No doubt at the end of the negotiations we will sign up to a payment of some sort but that was always likely. Now it looks more like whatever payment will be a quid pro quo for a good deal, which means getting a good deal, rather than signing up to a big payment that was due and then looking for a deal afterwards.
It's kind of ironic that our 2021 trade agreement with the EU will be a mirror image of our 1921 trade agreement with Russia re: paying back contested debts.
You are angrier than ever at the people who warned you instead of the liars.
Nope. There were no 'warnings' just lies from people like you. I am very content with how the Brexit process seems to be developing. Whilst it will not be exactly my sort of Brexit it will at least mean we are out of the EU and that is good enough for me by a long way.
Meanwhile O'Brien is still a dishonest piece of shit.
The weaker exchange rate should have encouraged UK Clubs to buy from other UK Clubs in pounds sterling rather than from Eurozone countries. Should help reduce the trade deficit.
Even better if Clubs were to develop their own youth players like Southampton have done in the past.
We're not going to sort out the rights and wrongs of the intervention in Kosovo here, but surely we should be past the propagandistic nonsense of 'if you opposed x war, you're on the the side of the government of x'. It's obviously a far more complicated topic (see: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm)
I'm interested in your specific claim: 'Corbyn himself has denied that genocide - of the Muslims of Kosovo - ever happened.' You now say 'I have not said that Corbyn has denied the Srebenica massacre', but that's what that sounds like to me. If not what else are you referring to?
If you'd read my post you might have seen that's exact motion I posted, and it's been misquoted. It specifically refers to claims which were used to bolster the case for war and which were in fact untrue.
Srebenica is in Bosnia. The slaughter of the men hiding there by Mladic was quite separate to the attacks on Albanian Muslims in Kosovo. Two different events.
I did read the motion. It refers to the Pilger article and its reference to "a 'genocide' that never really existed in Kosovo;" and expresses congratulations for this article in the paragraph preceding the one you quoted.
Whether what was done to the Albanians was genocide as a matter of law or crimes against humanity or bog standard barbarism, it is indisputable that the Serbians drove Kosovan Albanians from their home, attacked and killed them and would have continued doing so were it not for the West's intervention. Corbyn has been specifically asked which interventions post-WW2 he supported and this one was not on the list.
And this year he chooses to go to dinner with someone who denies what the Serbs did in another infamous massacre. Maybe he didn't know who that person was. I find this a curious explanation. For someone who takes such an interest in unpopular groups and causes - out of principle - we are told, he is conveniently incurious when it comes to people whose views would revolt any decent human being. It's a very convenient blind eye he has.
I believe David Davis has had a very good week. It is interesting that from the European side there is a lot of anger at our audacity of saying there is no legal Brexit bill due rather than saying that Davis is wrong and this is why.
A fervent pro-European I argue with on another site that would make Verhofstadt blush in his Europhileness has switched from arguing that we owe a large sum and they'll see us in court if need be to arguing it doesn't matter what the legalities are we simply need to agree because they said so.
As a wealthy nation our chequebook and historic munificence is one of our strongest points in the forthcoming negotiations. No doubt at the end of the negotiations we will sign up to a payment of some sort but that was always likely. Now it looks more like whatever payment will be a quid pro quo for a good deal, which means getting a good deal, rather than signing up to a big payment that was due and then looking for a deal afterwards.
There is posturing on both sides. The question is whether things are moving forward. I agree with Prof Portes in Kieran's podcast yesterday. Things aren't going badly but they are not moving much at all, and that could be bad. I agree with you that the UK could have a degree of influence over the EU, compared with Switzerland and Norway who have no influence at all. This would be because of our ability to throw serious amounts of money at the EU and deploy our diplomatic clout to support EU initiatives. We haven't yet reconciled ourselves to doing so. There is nothing stopping David Davis making a proposal on money that is tied to other Article 50 outcomes. His fear of the Brexit press and hardline party members is preventing him talking money, rather than any inflexibility from Barnier about discussing trade
We're not going to sort out the rights and wrongs of the intervention ... were in fact untrue.
Srebenica is in Bosnia. The slaughter of the men hiding there by Mladic was quite separate to the attacks on Albanian Muslims in Kosovo. Two different events.
[snip for space] he is conveniently incurious when it comes to people whose views would revolt any decent human being. It's a very convenient blind eye he has.
Apologies for thinking you had said Corbyn had denied Srebrenica, it seemed like you had conflated the two in the first post going on about the guy who did deny Srebrenica and shifting straight into 'Corbyn denied that genocide'.
It's clear you haven't read any of the links I posted. The guy Corbyn was photographed with was apparently there as a member of the Labour Friends of Cyprus group, and requested to have a photo with Corbyn. He's the editor of some magazine called 'Politics First' which has had Tories on its board, and through which he's had interviews and photos with Tories, Greens, SNP members, figures on the Labour Right, Liberal Democrats. Every name you can think of in modern politics seems to have had more involvement with him than Corbyn, who may not have known who he was until already sat in the chair having his dinner for all we know.
Both the motion signed by Corbyn and the Pilger article refer explicitly to claims that 100,000 or 225,000 had been killed as false, and we know now they were indeed false claims used to boost support for the intervention. That's the genocide Corbyn has 'denied'. Or do you think lying to the country, inflating the number of deaths by 40 or 90 times in order to call it a 'genocide' is an acceptable way to promote an intervention outside of the law? And that Corbyn and the other signatories were wrong to applaud Pilger highlighting that fact?
It's not a settled issue whether it was right or wrong, or whether the way the interventionw as conducted just made things worse. Plenty of experts on the war have argued that the intervention enflamed ethnic tensions further, radicalised the violence, and that NATO failed to prepare for adequate rebuilding efforts afterwards. It was a war justified with lies, in which the majority of civilian deaths occurred after the bombing started. There may well have been better routes to go down, there were certainly more lawful ones.
David Davis is an idiot. It's the only explanation for what's a going on.
If that is the case, how come the Remainers couldn't beat him then?
a) opportunity to stick it to the man b) don't like foreigners c) reclaim sovereignty I* d) reclaim sovereignty II**
*This group hadn't a clue what sovereignty meant **This group new what it meant but, as per your hero DD, didn't understand that we possessed it all along*
*just that it didn't always seem like it, a bit like the world can seem flat if you are unaware of the reality of the situation.
I'm going to keep refuting 'we had sovereignty all along'.
Because of EU membership we have laws that not only have to be obeyed, but were also made against our wishes and imposed upon us by those who we would never be able to vote out. That is not sovereignty.
We chose to join the EU and participated in its way of doing things. We were always free to leave if we didn't like it. That sounds exactly like sovereignty to me.
Comments
Anyway as a joke to try your challenge
'We make our own law'
'No one else can tell us what to do'
Not exact but close enough for Topping's feeble mind.
A fervent pro-European I argue with on another site that would make Verhofstadt blush in his Europhileness has switched from arguing that we owe a large sum and they'll see us in court if need be to arguing it doesn't matter what the legalities are we simply need to agree because they said so.
As a wealthy nation our chequebook and historic munificence is one of our strongest points in the forthcoming negotiations. No doubt at the end of the negotiations we will sign up to a payment of some sort but that was always likely. Now it looks more like whatever payment will be a quid pro quo for a good deal, which means getting a good deal, rather than signing up to a big payment that was due and then looking for a deal afterwards.
Meanwhile O'Brien is still a dishonest piece of shit.
The weaker exchange rate should have encouraged UK Clubs to buy from other UK Clubs in pounds sterling rather than from Eurozone countries. Should help reduce the trade deficit.
Even better if Clubs were to develop their own youth players like Southampton have done in the past.
I did read the motion. It refers to the Pilger article and its reference to "a 'genocide' that never really existed in Kosovo;" and expresses congratulations for this article in the paragraph preceding the one you quoted.
Whether what was done to the Albanians was genocide as a matter of law or crimes against humanity or bog standard barbarism, it is indisputable that the Serbians drove Kosovan Albanians from their home, attacked and killed them and would have continued doing so were it not for the West's intervention. Corbyn has been specifically asked which interventions post-WW2 he supported and this one was not on the list.
And this year he chooses to go to dinner with someone who denies what the Serbs did in another infamous massacre. Maybe he didn't know who that person was. I find this a curious explanation. For someone who takes such an interest in unpopular groups and causes - out of principle - we are told, he is conveniently incurious when it comes to people whose views would revolt any decent human being. It's a very convenient blind eye he has.
It's clear you haven't read any of the links I posted. The guy Corbyn was photographed with was apparently there as a member of the Labour Friends of Cyprus group, and requested to have a photo with Corbyn. He's the editor of some magazine called 'Politics First' which has had Tories on its board, and through which he's had interviews and photos with Tories, Greens, SNP members, figures on the Labour Right, Liberal Democrats. Every name you can think of in modern politics seems to have had more involvement with him than Corbyn, who may not have known who he was until already sat in the chair having his dinner for all we know.
I quoted exactly the same paragraph, and the original Pilger article shows I was correct about which falsities he was referring to: http://johnpilger.com/articles/reminders-of-kosovo
Both the motion signed by Corbyn and the Pilger article refer explicitly to claims that 100,000 or 225,000 had been killed as false, and we know now they were indeed false claims used to boost support for the intervention. That's the genocide Corbyn has 'denied'. Or do you think lying to the country, inflating the number of deaths by 40 or 90 times in order to call it a 'genocide' is an acceptable way to promote an intervention outside of the law? And that Corbyn and the other signatories were wrong to applaud Pilger highlighting that fact?
It's not a settled issue whether it was right or wrong, or whether the way the interventionw as conducted just made things worse. Plenty of experts on the war have argued that the intervention enflamed ethnic tensions further, radicalised the violence, and that NATO failed to prepare for adequate rebuilding efforts afterwards. It was a war justified with lies, in which the majority of civilian deaths occurred after the bombing started. There may well have been better routes to go down, there were certainly more lawful ones.