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LAB lead down to 1% with YouGov – politicalbetting.com

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  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    edited May 2022
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Macron’s speech the other day was important in that it described a “not quite EU” as not just possible but desirable.

    The UK should grab onto it with both hands.

    The UK will never accept crumbs offered by macron. He hates Brexit and he hates Brexit Britain. In his view the UK must not and cannot succeed ex-EU because if it does that undermines the entire postwar French project of EU unity as a way of projecting French power

    Non. Non non non
    Why not see what is on offer instead of just rejecting it out of hand?
    Better, why not try to influence what is on offer ?
    If this were simply about us, then that might be difficult. Alongside Ukraine, and possibly other easter european countries, there is perhaps some leverage.
    No, fuck all that noise. Any "offer" from the EU that involves any kind of membership should be rejected out of hand. Anything that binds us to them is a loser for us. Imagine being bound by EU foreign policy objectives. Ukraine would now be part of Russia because the UK would have been bound to EU objectives of a quick ending to the war, rather than doing what's right.
    Exactly right, which is why all EU countries have acted in exactly the same w... oh wait
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.

    More realistically, the British public as divided by parliamentary constituencies disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was amended to after the vote had occurred.

    The British public as a whole were broadly evenly divided, and the understanding of Brexit was much narrower in 2019 than 2016.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Macron’s speech the other day was important in that it described a “not quite EU” as not just possible but desirable.

    The UK should grab onto it with both hands.

    The UK will never accept crumbs offered by macron. He hates Brexit and he hates Brexit Britain. In his view the UK must not and cannot succeed ex-EU because if it does that undermines the entire postwar French project of EU unity as a way of projecting French power

    Non. Non non non
    Why not see what is on offer instead of just rejecting it out of hand?
    Better, why not try to influence what is on offer ?
    If this were simply about us, then that might be difficult. Alongside Ukraine, and possibly other easter european countries, there is perhaps some leverage.
    No, fuck all that noise. Any "offer" from the EU that involves any kind of membership should be rejected out of hand. Anything that binds us to them is a loser for us. Imagine being bound by EU foreign policy objectives. Ukraine would now be part of Russia because the UK would have been bound to EU objectives of a quick ending to the war, rather than doing what's right.
    That’s not the offer, though.
    Co-operation is just code for "do what we say".
    Ha, OK.

    I don’t recognise this view of the world.
    I find it barren and futile.

    On a host of issues, including cross-channel migrants, it is right that we co-operate with France.
    Then we can do that in a bilateral treaty with France.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,880

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.

    First, I think that’s a misread of the 2019 election, and second your interpretation doesn’t imply a “Trumpite outrage” anyway.
    I think it was a very large part of the vote. If not that, why do you think Johnson won? Just Corbyn?

    And I agree about Trumpite outrage, BTW. Thats far too strong.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    We haven't for a while, but lets bring it back. I earlier suggested @CorrectHorseBattery might just be Keir Starmer. He has not said he's not, so I'm claiming my £5...
    Nah Battery wouldn't have broken lockdown rules like the Integritron
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MrEd said:

    Andy_JS said:

    This YouGov poll is similar to the Rallings and Thrasher local elections projected national share which was Lab 35%, Con 33%.

    Almost all Governments would kill for those mid-term numbers.

    Has any Government with as good/better splits failed to be re-elected?
    You make a great point which is being ignored on this site, Labour should have won the LE by 10-15 points not by 2.
    I've not ignored it!! I have posted several times that the Lab numbers were terrible considering it is mid term after more than a decade of power with an unpopular leader and economic crisis. It was an appalling result frankly and I don't care how many times people say yeh but look we have to compare it to the number of councillors back when last contested. Balls. The projected overall vote share is dire for Labour at this point.

    Wait until Aspire goes national, which it will off the back of what it did with Tower Hamlets.
    How many non-Muslim voters does Aspire attract? And don't forget that Muslims are only about 5.5% of voters across the UK.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Stocky said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
    Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
    So you need to do a bit of paperwork. Boohoo. So do I for almost anywhere I work in the world. If that is giving you pause for thought then clearly you are not suited for working overseas because take it from me, a bit of paperwork is the least of your problems in most places in the world.
    It's much more than a bit of paperwork. As an example, UK ski instructors and chalet staff who work in EU countries each winter have come unstuck big time. Ski schools and chalet companies must advertise to EU member state citizens for a period of time (not sure how long) and must have unfilled vacancies thereafter before UK citizens can apply for a visa and fill those jobs. This has proved a particular issue for the ski instructors as there is no shortage of local instructors to be hired.
    Tyndall seems to think that his personal frustrations in trying to import miniature lead zulus must be experienced by everyone.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:


    That is honest advice. Freely given.

    worth every penny
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,232
    edited May 2022

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson again boasts that the government "got Brexit done". Which will come as a surprise to the people of Northern Ireland.
    https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1524035698688409600

    And the customs agents in Dover.
    And everybody on earth.
    Really? We have left the EU. We no longer pay money directly to the EU and have no say in what they do.
    We have made a horlicks off it and no mistake, but why do you people persist with Brexit isn't done? It is. We now have post Brexit issues.

    Take WW2 - you lot would dispute VE day as the countries finances were fecked and the consequences ran on for decades (arguably still running on). but WW2 was over on May 8th.
    Ha ha ha. 😂. What a crazy post. Absolute fantasy land. What’s my lot then? Point 1. Lord Frost and his supporters are adamant, we have the power to break now with the EU social model we never had before, we don’t achieve Brexit, it’s not done till we use those powers and break from the European Social Model. So not done from that point of view.

    Point 2. Brexit is never done till “better” is delivered. UK better than before removal itself from worlds biggest trading bloc is a tangible that can certainly be measured. No Brexit till “better” as in doing better, feeling better about things, is delivered, is it fair to say. And at this point of point 2 the point 1 brigade may concur.
    Utter bullshit. Just because one hard brexit warrior defines Brexit as breaking the EU social model blah blah blah...

    Brexit isn't done until better is delivered? WTAF?

    Brexit (as regarded by 99.9% of normal people) is complete. We have left the EU. Do you deny that?
    We do not pay money directly to the EU. Do you deny that?
    We have no say over what the EU does - thats up to them. Do you deny that?

    We are in the post Brexit era. Looks like its not going as well as some hoped. Its certainly not as bad as some of the remainer faction hoped either.
    You are going for a thin definition of “Brexit done” that’s not the definition to be arguing over. Not the definition Boris used today I was commenting on. That’the political slogan version! 😃

    If you still don’t understand I’ll have a go at explaining it to you.

    Is Brexit done in terms of the arguments for it proven?
    Is brexit done in terms of the argument is won?
    Is brexit done in terms of it is history, the country has moved on?

    In terms of the political slogan “brexit is done” the answers are NO, NO, and NO.

    You are wheeling out the thin textbook version to try to disguise the elephant in the room here. You can’t see the elephant in the room because your Ostrich head is in the sand.

    We are exactly where we we’re in 2016 in terms of the arguments the same, nothing proven, the current brexit deal can be quite dramatically altered and still be brexit. And the voting blocs in last weeks local elections in England were still remainer v leavers the country has not moved on and put this in the past.

    Not one of those three questions I asked defining the political slogan version of Brexit is done can be answered yes?

    In this “political slogan” interpretation of “brexit is done” you surely agree with me, brexit isn’t done?
    Was walking the dog. Ask the public, not PB, if Brexit is done. Its not a thin definition.

    The arguments over right/wrong and all the rest will go on for decades. You don't know and I don't know how it will all turn out. Right now, the version we have chosen, looks poor. A future government may change that.

    Your assertions are pointless - people argue about historical events forever.

    And yes, the country has moved on, narrow, geeky, political obsessed wonks like us, have not.
    In a very narrow sense Brexit is 'done'. Although, ironically, by that definition Boris shouldn't claim any credit for it whatsoever as all that was required was invoking Article 50 (which he didn't even do). In reality there are still huge questions to ask and huge problems to solve. And Rees-Mogg's 'It'll all just turn out right in fifty years' doesn't cut it one iota.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited May 2022

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.

    First, I think that’s a misread of the 2019 election, and second your interpretation doesn’t imply a “Trumpite outrage” anyway.
    I think it was a very large part of the vote. If not that, why do you think Johnson won? Just Corbyn?

    And I agree about Trumpite outrage, BTW. Thats far too strong.
    My read is:

    1. Corbyn
    2. To end the “deadlock”
    3. To honour the vote (by getting it done)

    I’m not sure what order I’d put them in, but all three were potently in the mix.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Macron’s speech the other day was important in that it described a “not quite EU” as not just possible but desirable.

    The UK should grab onto it with both hands.

    The UK will never accept crumbs offered by macron. He hates Brexit and he hates Brexit Britain. In his view the UK must not and cannot succeed ex-EU because if it does that undermines the entire postwar French project of EU unity as a way of projecting French power

    Non. Non non non
    Why not see what is on offer instead of just rejecting it out of hand?
    It’s the Brexit psychology.

    Working with EU (or France, or Germany) is a humiliation too far.

    It reveals quite primitive insecurity.
    No, it’s just obvious. Saves time

    Macron is not going to offer a good deal to Brexit Britain

    I’ll happily look at it, but I’ll tell you now it won’t be anything we want. It’s like accepting the first offer in an acrimonious divorce
    Brexit is partly driven by the desire for old men to moan. You are therefore right that any deal we get won't be good enough for the hardcore Brexiteers, if they gave us everything we listed, they would still have done it offensively somehow. But you are wrong that it can't be good for Britain.
    Do you really think this endless sneering at “old men” and the “gammonazi” and so on and so forth, does you any favours?

    Here’s a tiny, subtle hint: THIS IS ONE REASON YOU LOST YOU STUPID HOPELESS F****

    And why you would lose again. And again. And again. Look at the pathetic spectacle of “Roger” below. It’s risibly sad

    Your entire cause is envenomed with snobbery and a weird quasi-racism.

    The Irish fought to be free, and for a while they were poorer, Ditto the USA. I don’t see either of them clamouring to rejoin the UK. Calling the Irish who wanted independence “stupid thick old Paddies” would not have helped anyone hoping to head off Irish secession

    The best bet is for Remoaners to simply pretend Brexit is like some irreversible Biblical event, for a decade or so, and never mention it. Because when they do mention it they look like the most awful arseholes

    That is honest advice. Freely given. You’re welcome

    Gammon is not a term I like or use, let alone gammonazi, but whatever.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Sean thinks other posters are “sneering”. Lordy.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    edited May 2022

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    MaxPB said:

    kle4 said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Macron’s speech the other day was important in that it described a “not quite EU” as not just possible but desirable.

    The UK should grab onto it with both hands.

    The UK will never accept crumbs offered by macron. He hates Brexit and he hates Brexit Britain. In his view the UK must not and cannot succeed ex-EU because if it does that undermines the entire postwar French project of EU unity as a way of projecting French power

    Non. Non non non
    Why not see what is on offer instead of just rejecting it out of hand?
    Better, why not try to influence what is on offer ?
    If this were simply about us, then that might be difficult. Alongside Ukraine, and possibly other easter european countries, there is perhaps some leverage.
    No, fuck all that noise. Any "offer" from the EU that involves any kind of membership should be rejected out of hand. Anything that binds us to them is a loser for us. Imagine being bound by EU foreign policy objectives. Ukraine would now be part of Russia because the UK would have been bound to EU objectives of a quick ending to the war, rather than doing what's right.
    That’s not the offer, though.
    Co-operation is just code for "do what we say".
    Possibly, we shall have to see.

    As it is you are dangerously close to the DUP/Spartan philosophy of 'Anything the EU would agree to is something by definition we cannot agree to', meaning no agreements could ever be reached on anything.
    The spartan philosophy of telling them to get fucked for a few years is the only way forwards. The whole farce of negotiations showed why, until that I was still ok with the idea of staying in the single market but it's clear that the EU fears not having any control over the UK and any steps they make will try and achieve wresting back control of the UK. All of their moves are aimed at that, why else grant equivalence to NZ agriculture which is not aligned to the EU but not to the UK which is?
    Didums.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others
    According to Dan Hodges, they were all murdered in a conspiracy involving the CIA, Cuban refugees, and the Mafia.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others
    According to Dan Hodges, they were all murdered in a conspiracy involving the CIA, Cuban refugees, and the Mafia.
    Them too huh
  • murali_smurali_s Posts: 3,037
    edited May 2022
    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    MaxPB said:

    kle4 said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Macron’s speech the other day was important in that it described a “not quite EU” as not just possible but desirable.

    The UK should grab onto it with both hands.

    The UK will never accept crumbs offered by macron. He hates Brexit and he hates Brexit Britain. In his view the UK must not and cannot succeed ex-EU because if it does that undermines the entire postwar French project of EU unity as a way of projecting French power

    Non. Non non non
    Why not see what is on offer instead of just rejecting it out of hand?
    Better, why not try to influence what is on offer ?
    If this were simply about us, then that might be difficult. Alongside Ukraine, and possibly other easter european countries, there is perhaps some leverage.
    No, fuck all that noise. Any "offer" from the EU that involves any kind of membership should be rejected out of hand. Anything that binds us to them is a loser for us. Imagine being bound by EU foreign policy objectives. Ukraine would now be part of Russia because the UK would have been bound to EU objectives of a quick ending to the war, rather than doing what's right.
    That’s not the offer, though.
    Co-operation is just code for "do what we say".
    Possibly, we shall have to see.

    As it is you are dangerously close to the DUP/Spartan philosophy of 'Anything the EU would agree to is something by definition we cannot agree to', meaning no agreements could ever be reached on anything.
    The spartan philosophy of telling them to get fucked for a few years is the only way forwards. The whole farce of negotiations showed why, until that I was still ok with the idea of staying in the single market but it's clear that the EU fears not having any control over the UK and any steps they make will try and achieve wresting back control of the UK. All of their moves are aimed at that, why else grant equivalence to NZ agriculture which is not aligned to the EU but not to the UK which is?
    Didums.
    Farooq said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Macron’s speech the other day was important in that it described a “not quite EU” as not just possible but desirable.

    The UK should grab onto it with both hands.

    The UK will never accept crumbs offered by macron. He hates Brexit and he hates Brexit Britain. In his view the UK must not and cannot succeed ex-EU because if it does that undermines the entire postwar French project of EU unity as a way of projecting French power

    Non. Non non non
    Why not see what is on offer instead of just rejecting it out of hand?
    Better, why not try to influence what is on offer ?
    If this were simply about us, then that might be difficult. Alongside Ukraine, and possibly other easter european countries, there is perhaps some leverage.
    No, fuck all that noise. Any "offer" from the EU that involves any kind of membership should be rejected out of hand. Anything that binds us to them is a loser for us. Imagine being bound by EU foreign policy objectives. Ukraine would now be part of Russia because the UK would have been bound to EU objectives of a quick ending to the war, rather than doing what's right.
    Exactly right, which is why all EU countries have acted in exactly the same w... oh wait
    Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you. Tis the Tory way.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,087

    He appears to be having a mental breakdown.
    To be fair to Dan, the last couple of weeks were meant to be when he broke the big stories that showed he was a real journalist. The scandals that brought down a party leader.

    And it's all going pearshaped.
    I feel like he pushed the story against his better judgement. One feels like he is trying - with increasing looniness - to demonstrate his loyalty.

    Does the Mail have a new editor?
    I think it does. Geordie Greig has moved on.

    (And that might be why The Mail is a bit bonkers at the moment. Paul Dacre may have been awful, but he brilliantly walked the line of how much outrage to create. It's a subtle judgement.

    I'm reminded of when The Star decided to firm up their flagging organ by a tieup with the Sunday Sport. It was a disaster. Even if you don't like Kelvin McKenzie, he nearly always knew exactly where to stop.)
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,880

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.

    First, I think that’s a misread of the 2019 election, and second your interpretation doesn’t imply a “Trumpite outrage” anyway.
    I think it was a very large part of the vote. If not that, why do you think Johnson won? Just Corbyn?

    And I agree about Trumpite outrage, BTW. Thats far too strong.
    My read is:

    1. Corbyn
    2. To end the “deadlock”
    3. To honour the vote (by getting it done)

    I’m not sure what order I’d put them in, but all three were potently in the mix.
    I don't disagree, but note 2 and 3 are essentially the same thing
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,788

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    I'm intrigued by this Martin/banned word business. What's all that about?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.

    First, I think that’s a misread of the 2019 election, and second your interpretation doesn’t imply a “Trumpite outrage” anyway.
    I think it was a very large part of the vote. If not that, why do you think Johnson won? Just Corbyn?

    And I agree about Trumpite outrage, BTW. Thats far too strong.
    My read is:

    1. Corbyn
    2. To end the “deadlock”
    3. To honour the vote (by getting it done)

    I’m not sure what order I’d put them in, but all three were potently in the mix.
    I don't disagree, but note 2 and 3 are essentially the same thing
    I don’t think so.
    There’s a German saying for it along the lines of “better dead without waiting than waiting without death”.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    Nice work if you can get it...

    https://twitter.com/AndrewMarchand/status/1524064619685425152

    Andrew Marchand
    @AndrewMarchand
    🚨NEWS: Tom Brady's contract to call games for Fox Sports is for 10 years and $375 million, The Post has learned.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    edited May 2022
    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Yeah but we kept the Luxemborgoise out, which was the point. No short Passport queues for Van Der Twatfeatures
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.

    First, I think that’s a misread of the 2019 election, and second your interpretation doesn’t imply a “Trumpite outrage” anyway.
    I think it was a very large part of the vote. If not that, why do you think Johnson won? Just Corbyn?

    And I agree about Trumpite outrage, BTW. Thats far too strong.
    My read is:

    1. Corbyn
    2. To end the “deadlock”
    3. To honour the vote (by getting it done)

    I’m not sure what order I’d put them in, but all three were potently in the mix.
    I don't disagree, but note 2 and 3 are essentially the same thing
    Well, revoke would've been 2 and not 3
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Back when the PB Tories were still in the, er Tory party.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Stocky said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
    Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
    So you need to do a bit of paperwork. Boohoo. So do I for almost anywhere I work in the world. If that is giving you pause for thought then clearly you are not suited for working overseas because take it from me, a bit of paperwork is the least of your problems in most places in the world.
    It's much more than a bit of paperwork. As an example, UK ski instructors and chalet staff who work in EU countries each winter have come unstuck big time. Ski schools and chalet companies must advertise to EU member state citizens for a period of time (not sure how long) and must have unfilled vacancies thereafter before UK citizens can apply for a visa and fill those jobs. This has proved a particular issue for the ski instructors as there is no shortage of local instructors to be hired.
    Tyndall seems to think that his personal frustrations in trying to import miniature lead zulus must be experienced by everyone.
    I export, not import. Even more than I did before Brexit as it happens.
    Good old exchange rate depreciation.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    edited May 2022
    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    I'm intrigued by this Martin/banned word business. What's all that about?
    I recall a time when the word Martin was autobanned on the site.
    Shit I tell a cracking anecdote
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,249
    edited May 2022
    Looks like a direct SNP-Lab switch

    “Now released from @PanebaseMD poll of 26-29.4 (ch since 9-12.11)

    Holyrood constituency vote
    Con 19 (-1)
    Lab 24 (+5)
    LD 7 (-1)
    SNP 42 (-5)
    Oth 8 (+2)

    Regional
    Con 20 (-1)
    Lab 22 (+4)
    LD 7 (n/c)
    SNP 36 (-5)
    Green 10 (n/c)
    Oth 5 (+2)”


    Interesting

    Is Kir Royale winning over the Nats?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.
    I think a Ref2 before Leave was implemented would only have been democratic if it had been mandated in a GE. That's why I was never taken with the Peoples Vote arguments that Ref2 was a superior way to unlock the Brexit impasse than a GE. No - a GE was the way to go. I didn't want one because I knew the Cons would win and Labour would get slaughtered but it was in fairness the way to go. The outcome, sadly, was a very bad Brexit deal and (worse) us getting saddled with a landslide majority for the (by a country mile) worst PM of all time (inc Lord North). Dreadful, but I can't in good faith argue against its validity. Fact is, the country had the chance in that GE to cancel Brexit, and they chose not to. GE19 stamped the Referendum. We voted Leave on 23rd June 2016 and we voted Leave again on 12th Dec 2019. For all the talk about "no, it was Corbyn", that imo is the essence of it.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    I'm intrigued by this Martin/banned word business. What's all that about?
    Martin had… issues.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    Stocky said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
    Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
    So you need to do a bit of paperwork. Boohoo. So do I for almost anywhere I work in the world. If that is giving you pause for thought then clearly you are not suited for working overseas because take it from me, a bit of paperwork is the least of your problems in most places in the world.
    It's much more than a bit of paperwork. As an example, UK ski instructors and chalet staff who work in EU countries each winter have come unstuck big time. Ski schools and chalet companies must advertise to EU member state citizens for a period of time (not sure how long) and must have unfilled vacancies thereafter before UK citizens can apply for a visa and fill those jobs. This has proved a particular issue for the ski instructors as there is no shortage of local instructors to be hired.

    Edit: it's also meant that UK school ski trips have stopped because the operators the schools use and travel with (and accompanying teachers) count as working bods and therefore require visas now.
    Good luck getting sympathy for skiers on pb! Lucky they are not still being blamed for covid......
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    I'm intrigued by this Martin/banned word business. What's all that about?
    Them woz the daze.

    Woe betide those who retweeted Iain Martin tweeting a Scottish subsample.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.

    Don’t forget Alex Salmond. No IndyRef1 = No Brexit

    Brexit was macho England’s reaction to the battered wife filing for divorce.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.

    That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.

    Indeed correct. Meaning it is much harder to settle in an EU country armed with just a UK passport. Before, it was a right. Now you need to apply for it.
    And yet more British Nationals are managing to get residency in EU countries than ever before. In 2021 Portugal had its highest ever increase in British Nationals taking up residency - up 8% on the previous year and the 6th year in a row it had increased. Now one might reasonably ask why all these people want to leave the UK and settle elsewhere but that is not the argument. It puts a lie to the idea it is now significantly harder than it was previously.
    Did people have to acquire residency pre Brexit or could they spend some time there without all the faff?
    Well given they are quoting an increase 6 years in a row and we only left the EU 2 years ago then clearly yes they are measuring the number of people taking up residency - whether they have to apply or not.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480

    Stocky said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
    Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
    So you need to do a bit of paperwork. Boohoo. So do I for almost anywhere I work in the world. If that is giving you pause for thought then clearly you are not suited for working overseas because take it from me, a bit of paperwork is the least of your problems in most places in the world.
    It's much more than a bit of paperwork. As an example, UK ski instructors and chalet staff who work in EU countries each winter have come unstuck big time. Ski schools and chalet companies must advertise to EU member state citizens for a period of time (not sure how long) and must have unfilled vacancies thereafter before UK citizens can apply for a visa and fill those jobs. This has proved a particular issue for the ski instructors as there is no shortage of local instructors to be hired.
    Tyndall seems to think that his personal frustrations in trying to import miniature lead zulus must be experienced by everyone.
    For some reason I momentarily confused this with Leon's export business of boutique flint dildos, or whatever it was.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    Stocky said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
    Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
    So you need to do a bit of paperwork. Boohoo. So do I for almost anywhere I work in the world. If that is giving you pause for thought then clearly you are not suited for working overseas because take it from me, a bit of paperwork is the least of your problems in most places in the world.
    It's much more than a bit of paperwork. As an example, UK ski instructors and chalet staff who work in EU countries each winter have come unstuck big time. Ski schools and chalet companies must advertise to EU member state citizens for a period of time (not sure how long) and must have unfilled vacancies thereafter before UK citizens can apply for a visa and fill those jobs. This has proved a particular issue for the ski instructors as there is no shortage of local instructors to be hired.
    Tyndall seems to think that his personal frustrations in trying to import miniature lead zulus must be experienced by everyone.
    I export, not import. Even more than I did before Brexit as it happens.
    Good old exchange rate depreciation.
    Nope. Just good business.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Stocky said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
    Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
    So you need to do a bit of paperwork. Boohoo. So do I for almost anywhere I work in the world. If that is giving you pause for thought then clearly you are not suited for working overseas because take it from me, a bit of paperwork is the least of your problems in most places in the world.
    It's much more than a bit of paperwork. As an example, UK ski instructors and chalet staff who work in EU countries each winter have come unstuck big time. Ski schools and chalet companies must advertise to EU member state citizens for a period of time (not sure how long) and must have unfilled vacancies thereafter before UK citizens can apply for a visa and fill those jobs. This has proved a particular issue for the ski instructors as there is no shortage of local instructors to be hired.
    Tyndall seems to think that his personal frustrations in trying to import miniature lead zulus must be experienced by everyone.
    For some reason I momentarily confused this with Leon's export business of boutique flint dildos, or whatever it was.
    An excuse often heard by customs agents.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.

    I don't buy the view that Johnson was particularly significant in achieving Brexit.

    Farage no 1 by a mile. Cummings and Baker were more significant that Johnson I think.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    EPG said:

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Back when the PB Tories were still in the, er Tory party.
    Ah, the good ole Herd! I miss those guys.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.

    That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.

    Indeed correct. Meaning it is much harder to settle in an EU country armed with just a UK passport. Before, it was a right. Now you need to apply for it.
    And yet more British Nationals are managing to get residency in EU countries than ever before. In 2021 Portugal had its highest ever increase in British Nationals taking up residency - up 8% on the previous year and the 6th year in a row it had increased. Now one might reasonably ask why all these people want to leave the UK and settle elsewhere but that is not the argument. It puts a lie to the idea it is now significantly harder than it was previously.
    Did people have to acquire residency pre Brexit or could they spend some time there without all the faff?
    Well given they are quoting an increase 6 years in a row and we only left the EU 2 years ago then clearly yes they are measuring the number of people taking up residency - whether they have to apply or not.
    Err, Brits who were already living there will have been taking up residency in the years since the vote, plus new people also have to do this now. It is hardly surprising that numbers are increasing!

    And Portugal, as one of the easier countries to move to, is probably getting some who would otherwise have moved to other EU countries instead.

    I fail to see why it should be controversial that moving to and working in the EU is harder than it was before.

    Fair enough if people think that is minor or a price worth paying for something else, but producing meaningless stats to try and pretend it is not harder is a bit weird.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
    They want to ban fish and chips!
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited May 2022
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.
    I think a Ref2 before Leave was implemented would only have been democratic if it had been mandated in a GE. That's why I was never taken with the Peoples Vote arguments that Ref2 was a superior way to unlock the Brexit impasse than a GE. No - a GE was the way to go. I didn't want one because I knew the Cons would win and Labour would get slaughtered but it was in fairness the way to go. The outcome, sadly, was a very bad Brexit deal and (worse) us getting saddled with a landslide majority for the (by a country mile) worst PM of all time (inc Lord North). Dreadful, but I can't in good faith argue against its validity. Fact is, the country had the chance in that GE to cancel Brexit, and they chose not to. GE19 stamped the Referendum. We voted Leave on 23rd June 2016 and we voted Leave again on 12th Dec 2019. For all the talk about "no, it was Corbyn", that imo is the essence of it.
    In fact the majority of voters voted for pro-second referendum parties, so another key moment of lack of democracy was there. It was really a victory for cross-party co-operation, between Farage's party and Johnson, and that should be a main lesson that the left and centre should draw. The idiocy of Corbyn and Swinson's position was plain for all to see from the beginning.

    If it's repeated again, a Tory and Reform Party co-operative ticket may win again.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.
    I think a Ref2 before Leave was implemented would only have been democratic if it had been mandated in a GE. That's why I was never taken with the Peoples Vote arguments that Ref2 was a superior way to unlock the Brexit impasse than a GE. No - a GE was the way to go. I didn't want one because I knew the Cons would win and Labour would get slaughtered but it was in fairness the way to go. The outcome, sadly, was a very bad Brexit deal and (worse) us getting saddled with a landslide majority for the (by a country mile) worst PM of all time (inc Lord North). Dreadful, but I can't in good faith argue against its validity. Fact is, the country had the chance in that GE to cancel Brexit, and they chose not to. GE19 stamped the Referendum. We voted Leave on 23rd June 2016 and we voted Leave again on 12th Dec 2019. For all the talk about "no, it was Corbyn", that imo is the essence of it.
    Strangely, for all that I think you are right and obviously I was and am a staunch Brexit supporter, that still wasn't sufficient reason to persuade me to vote for Johnson.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    edited May 2022

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.
    I think a Ref2 before Leave was implemented would only have been democratic if it had been mandated in a GE. That's why I was never taken with the Peoples Vote arguments that Ref2 was a superior way to unlock the Brexit impasse than a GE. No - a GE was the way to go. I didn't want one because I knew the Cons would win and Labour would get slaughtered but it was in fairness the way to go. The outcome, sadly, was a very bad Brexit deal and (worse) us getting saddled with a landslide majority for the (by a country mile) worst PM of all time (inc Lord North). Dreadful, but I can't in good faith argue against its validity. Fact is, the country had the chance in that GE to cancel Brexit, and they chose not to. GE19 stamped the Referendum. We voted Leave on 23rd June 2016 and we voted Leave again on 12th Dec 2019. For all the talk about "no, it was Corbyn", that imo is the essence of it.
    In fact the majoritt of voters voted for pro-second referendum parties, so another key lack of democracy was there. It was really a victory for cross-party co-operation, between the Farage's party and Johnson, and that should be a main lesson that the left and centre should draw. The idiocy of Corbyn and Swinson's position was plain for all to see.

    If it's repeated again, a Tory and Reform Party co-operative ticket may win again.
    Tory led Patel and a death penalty tough on crime coalition would be tricky to beat.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    Farooq said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
    They want to ban fish and chips!
    There will be an immediate year long recession!

    (See this is a claim that was actually made by leading figures, rather than a strawman)
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,056
    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like

    The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory

    It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?

    It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah

    I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
    Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013

    I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe

    Hardly.

    Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.

    Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
    “Wrecked travel”

    Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there

    For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel

    Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.

    No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.

    Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.

    If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.

    Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.

    That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.

    Indeed correct. Meaning it is much harder to settle in an EU country armed with just a UK passport. Before, it was a right. Now you need to apply for it.
    And yet more British Nationals are managing to get residency in EU countries than ever before. In 2021 Portugal had its highest ever increase in British Nationals taking up residency - up 8% on the previous year and the 6th year in a row it had increased. Now one might reasonably ask why all these people want to leave the UK and settle elsewhere but that is not the argument. It puts a lie to the idea it is now significantly harder than it was previously.
    Did people have to acquire residency pre Brexit or could they spend some time there without all the faff?
    Well given they are quoting an increase 6 years in a row and we only left the EU 2 years ago then clearly yes they are measuring the number of people taking up residency - whether they have to apply or not.
    Err, Brits who were already living there will have been taking up residency in the years since the vote, plus new people also have to do this now. It is hardly surprising that numbers are increasing!

    And Portugal, as one of the easier countries to move to, is probably getting some who would otherwise have moved to other EU countries instead.

    I fail to see why it should be controversial that moving to and working in the EU is harder than it was before.

    Fair enough if people think that is minor or a price worth paying for something else, but producing meaningless stats to try and pretend it is not harder is a bit weird.
    No, I was agreeing with you. It is such a minor increase in difficulty that it is not even worth discussing. It is still miles easier than almost anywhere else in the world.

    The parochialism of the Remainers is really amusing.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.
    I think a Ref2 before Leave was implemented would only have been democratic if it had been mandated in a GE. That's why I was never taken with the Peoples Vote arguments that Ref2 was a superior way to unlock the Brexit impasse than a GE. No - a GE was the way to go. I didn't want one because I knew the Cons would win and Labour would get slaughtered but it was in fairness the way to go. The outcome, sadly, was a very bad Brexit deal and (worse) us getting saddled with a landslide majority for the (by a country mile) worst PM of all time (inc Lord North). Dreadful, but I can't in good faith argue against its validity. Fact is, the country had the chance in that GE to cancel Brexit, and they chose not to. GE19 stamped the Referendum. We voted Leave on 23rd June 2016 and we voted Leave again on 12th Dec 2019. For all the talk about "no, it was Corbyn", that imo is the essence of it.
    In fact the majority of voters voted for pro-second referendum parties, so another key moment of lack of democracy was there. It was really a victory for cross-party co-operation, between Farage's party and Johnson, and that should be a main lesson that the left and centre should draw. The idiocy of Corbyn and Swinson's position was plain for all to see from the beginning.

    If it's repeated again, a Tory and Reform Party co-operative ticket may win again.
    Yes, very important to distinguish the seats and the votes, because they give two quite different pictures.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Thankyou for that erudite and thoughtful contribution.

    Ignorant Fuckwit.
    I believe your explanation of Brexit is truthful. You explained the future economic pain was worth what you understood to be a return of sovereignty. I might not agree, but I respect that.

    The Brexiteers who get my goat are those who sell the bullshit line that Brexit had no downsides and was in our, short, medium and long term economic interests, which is I am afraid an absolute crock. Boris Johnson was the cheerleading salesman for this fiction.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    Leon said:

    Looks like a direct SNP-Lab switch

    “Now released from @PanebaseMD poll of 26-29.4 (ch since 9-12.11)

    Holyrood constituency vote
    Con 19 (-1)
    Lab 24 (+5)
    LD 7 (-1)
    SNP 42 (-5)
    Oth 8 (+2)

    Regional
    Con 20 (-1)
    Lab 22 (+4)
    LD 7 (n/c)
    SNP 36 (-5)
    Green 10 (n/c)
    Oth 5 (+2)”


    Interesting

    Is Kir Royale winning over the Nats?

    The SLab recovery is getting a foothold. The Tories have slipped a little but actually would gain Banff and Ayr at Holyrood on the constituency figures with Lab just gaining East Lothian but leapfrog with top up seats easily, they need another 3 point swing to start making constituency inroads (all on UNS). Ironically the Tories get to 10 constituencies polling 19 well before Labour get to 4 or 5 which requires ca 27% to SNP 40
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,056

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.



    Don’t pass over poor Nick Clegg.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other interesting thing about the Welsh proposal is that it perma-locks PC into government.

    And, presuming that PC would rather suicide than coalesce with the Tories, it does the same to Labour.

    This is a gerrymander.

    It's changing the electoral system without consulting the people to favour the ruling parties, it's the kind of thing we'd condemn were it to happen in Africa or South America.
    It somewhat staggers me that we ever have the audacity to criticise other people's systems. We should be rightly proud of our freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law (except if your name is Boris), but our system of democracy is quasi-democracy at best. FPTP and the arbitrary nature of constituencies is ludicrous, and the HoL anachronistic. Then there is asymmetric devolution and some mayors in some places and not in others. It is a dogs dinner of a system. It needs wholesale reform, but both major parties make excuses and very little happens.
    FPTP has been endorsed by voters, so whatever one thinks of it the voting system has popular support. Whatever they are doing in Wales hasn't been put to the people, they are quietly ramming it through and hoping that no one notices it locks the two parties proposing it in power in perpetuity.

    Labour tried to do this in Scotland and look at how badly it's fucked up, it emboldened nationalists to become a "safe haven" for dissenters until suddenly nationalism in Scotland became a serious threat. This will produce the same idiotic result in Wales.

    As for everything else in the UK, ultimately when we had big decisions to make the government put those decisions to the people. Changing the voting system and leaving the EU were both put to the people, not done on a whim. Few governments has that record of trusting the people and then following through with the decision, you might not agree with Brexit, but the fact that the people voted for it and we actually left the EU is a very powerful statement of democracy in the UK. There's not a lot of countries that would accept such a controversial vote and would try and undo it or have second, third, fourth votes until they got the "right" answer.
    Perhaps you think that because it was "the right answer" for you. No doubt if it had been the "wrong answer" you might have been clamouring for another vote like the SNP. Democracy is a fickle and complex thing. People tend to claim the primacy of the democratic vote rather like those who claim God is on their side in time of war. My own view is that the 2016 vote had to be enacted. Was it "democratic"? Almost certainly very flakey. "The people" did not get to vote on anything real, only blandishments and guesses. Cameron et al should have had a two phase vote that enabled people to endorse the final deal. That would have been genuinely democratic, but of course Brexiteers didn't want that, they wanted the hardest Brexit possible. No-one, including people on this site knew what the final deal would look like. Most would have probably settled for an EEA type compromise. It was never on offer. Not very democratic.
    Subtler than that, I reckon.

    Every leaver wanted a decisive break with the EU in some way or other (freedom of movement, control of fish, no foreign judges, stepping off ever closer union, strengthening UK-NI links by weakening NI-Eire links et cetera). My hunch is that a lot of people assumed that, apart from their personal bonnet bee, things would bumble along much as before.

    What everyone missed was that the only way to fulfil all the spoken wishes of everyone was an adamantine hard Brexit (the alternative being that the rest of the continent would wake themselves from their reverie, facepalm themselves and say "Of course, all this careful work on the single market was unnecessary! What chumps we all were"). And in doing that, what was sacrificed was the mostly unspoken bumbling along bit. Which is what EEA Brexit would be, relatively harmless, not much point and not Taking Back Control.

    This choice has the consequences we continue to see around us.
    That’s fair

    I benignly assumed Brexit would end up as 10 years in EFTA then a rethink. And if Remainers had accepted that, that’s where we’d be now

    The attempt to overthrow the primal vote (peoples referendum!) was a Trumpite outrage and that polarised everyone and that has led us to this ultimate Brexit. Perhaps that was inevitable, who can say

    In the end I still believe we are happier governing ourselves and we will prosper eventually thereby. But I totally understand Remainers who point and say Look it’s a shit-show

    If only they hadn’t tried to subvert the democratic process before, they’d get more of a hearing

    🤷‍♂️
    Chief amongst those cheering on a Trumpite outrage was the Leader of the Opposition. One of several reasons he is not fit to be PM, none of them curry related.
    There was no Trumpite outrage.

    Only retarded people think that. And Leon, who is not retarded but likes to shit-stir.
    Did you miss 2019's general election? Johnson has an 80 seat majority because the British publics sense of fair play was offended.
    Of course democracy means a second vote would have been democratic. But the public, on the whole, disagreed and wanted the vote honoured as it was set out.
    I think a Ref2 before Leave was implemented would only have been democratic if it had been mandated in a GE. That's why I was never taken with the Peoples Vote arguments that Ref2 was a superior way to unlock the Brexit impasse than a GE. No - a GE was the way to go. I didn't want one because I knew the Cons would win and Labour would get slaughtered but it was in fairness the way to go. The outcome, sadly, was a very bad Brexit deal and (worse) us getting saddled with a landslide majority for the (by a country mile) worst PM of all time (inc Lord North). Dreadful, but I can't in good faith argue against its validity. Fact is, the country had the chance in that GE to cancel Brexit, and they chose not to. GE19 stamped the Referendum. We voted Leave on 23rd June 2016 and we voted Leave again on 12th Dec 2019. For all the talk about "no, it was Corbyn", that imo is the essence of it.
    In GE 2019 a majority voted for parties supporting a further referendum. It was only FPTP that made a landslide. It partly explains why so many still think Brexit was a bad mistake.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Aslan said:

    Farooq said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
    They want to ban fish and chips!
    There will be an immediate year long recession!

    (See this is a claim that was actually made by leading figures, rather than a strawman)
    Ah, you don't get to talk about strawmen when you were saying that the goal was the excision of British culture. That's the silliness I was responding to. And it was silliness.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Thankyou for that erudite and thoughtful contribution.

    Ignorant Fuckwit.
    I believe your explanation of Brexit is truthful. You explained the future economic pain was worth what you understood to be a return of sovereignty. I might not agree, but I respect that.

    The Brexiteers who get my goat are those who sell the bullshit line that Brexit had no downsides and was in our, short, medium and long term economic interests, which is I am afraid an absolute crock. Boris Johnson was the cheerleading salesman for this fiction.
    Agreed. But as you probably gathered, I am not hear to defend Johnson in any way.

    I also agree with many that we ended up with the wrong Brexit. I argued long and hard both before and after the vote for us to take the EEA route or some equivalent. But I have accepted that I lost that argument and I am still of the opinion that what we have now is better than Remaining.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415
    edited May 2022

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    ah yeas Tim and his favourite withering put- down "the Herd"
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Farooq said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
    They want to ban fish and chips!
    carnforth said:

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.



    Don’t pass over poor Nick Clegg.
    I think I’m the only PBer to hold the opinion that a referendum on Europe was right and overdue - but that the manner of the referendum was a constitutional abortion.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    He flogged boxes of liebfraumilch out of the back of an old Allegro if I recall correctly
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    Are you suggesting now that Remainers are “soft” on Ukraine? What drivel you come up with.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,056

    Farooq said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
    They want to ban fish and chips!
    carnforth said:

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.



    Don’t pass over poor Nick Clegg.
    I think I’m the only PBer to hold the opinion that a referendum on Europe was right and overdue - but that the manner of the referendum was a constitutional abortion.
    I am being a little unfair on Clegg. If i remember correctly, the plan was for a referendum the next time treaty changes happened, not a referendum out of the blue.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,921

    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    I'm intrigued by this Martin/banned word business. What's all that about?
    Martin had… issues.
    So too did Rod Crosby
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    The fact that we're still framing Brexit as a culture war is why it can never be achieved / slain. All of the very real disasters it has brought can be ignored because it upsets remoaners. Every single benefit it could bring it cannot bring because different leavers support diametrically opposed visions of what happens now. And arch-remainers won't stop until the racist morons who voted leave admit they are racist morons.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    He flogged boxes of liebfraumilch out of the back of an old Allegro if I recall correctly
    I thought he also claimed to be a farmer
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Farooq said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who currently resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Post of the week.
    "Tell people you despise them, and then wonder why they are a bit wary of you."
    This is of course the sentiment behind these people and why they dislike self-rule in the first place. They despise the British electorate and therefore want the country to be governed by a bureaucratic elite. Preferably a foreign bureaucratic elite to ensure there isn't some lingering affiliation with British culture.
    They want to ban fish and chips!
    carnforth said:

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.



    Don’t pass over poor Nick Clegg.
    I think I’m the only PBer to hold the opinion that a referendum on Europe was right and overdue - but that the manner of the referendum was a constitutional abortion.
    The opposite of an abortion. A summer frolic that gave us stretchmarks and sleepless nights.
    And at some point we let Semen Santa move in and he changes the wallpaper and farts on the couch and all our friends are asking us why we stay with him.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited May 2022
    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    The core Brexiter vote loves Nigerian nurses more than London remainers do, ofcourse.

    The emphasis from the earlier post is actually, looking again at the surveys from the year of 2016, a kind of back-to-front fantasy ; because many Brexiters were in fact voting in large numbers against middle-eastern immigration, on the back of the migration crisis of the same year, and Farage's posters taken from it. Before that crisis, the EU was still near the bottom of the list of voters' concerns.

  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    He flogged boxes of liebfraumilch out of the back of an old Allegro if I recall correctly
    I thought he also claimed to be a farmer
    Not sure i was here for that iteration. My recollection is the wine merchant version
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    ah yeas Tim and his favourite withering put- down "the Herd"
    To be honest, I’m pretty sure “The Herd” terminology long pre-dated tim’s arrival. I may even have coined it myself. I was certainly an early adopter. At one point OGH announced that the next person to type Herd would be immediately banished. He was great at being Mr Angry.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    ah yeas Tim and his favourite withering put- down "the Herd"
    To be honest, I’m pretty sure “The Herd” terminology long pre-dated tim’s arrival. I may even have coined it myself. I was certainly an early adopter. At one point OGH announced that the next person to type Herd would be immediately banished. He was great at being Mr Angry.
    Twisted knickers are a peebee staple
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    Are you suggesting now that Remainers are “soft” on Ukraine? What drivel you come up with.
    I was practically a lone voice on here in saying we should have boots on the ground to deter Russia from crossing over from Belarus, and I'm a remainer. I can remember several people on the Brexit side arguing that Putin's not all that bad or that it's not our problem.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Farooq said:

    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    Are you suggesting now that Remainers are “soft” on Ukraine? What drivel you come up with.
    I was practically a lone voice on here in saying we should have boots on the ground to deter Russia from crossing over from Belarus, and I'm a remainer. I can remember several people on the Brexit side arguing that Putin's not all that bad or that it's not our problem.
    @Aslan spouting bollocks then.
    Even more bollocks than usual.

    He should stick to being a vague metaphor for Jesus in a series of children’s books, and fuck right off from here.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    ah yeas Tim and his favourite withering put- down "the Herd"
    To be honest, I’m pretty sure “The Herd” terminology long pre-dated tim’s arrival. I may even have coined it myself. I was certainly an early adopter. At one point OGH announced that the next person to type Herd would be immediately banished. He was great at being Mr Angry.
    i know Tim was banned a number of times but surely not for using the word Herd?
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    Stocky said:

    Those Brexit culprits in full:

    1. Boris Johnson
    2. Nigel Farage
    3. Theresa May
    4. David Cameron
    5. Jeremy Corbyn
    6. Jo Swinson

    No wonder it all fucked up.

    I don't buy the view that Johnson was particularly significant in achieving Brexit.

    Farage no 1 by a mile. Cummings and Baker were more significant that Johnson I think.
    Johnson was dominant, along with May, in deciding the type of Brexit by blocking Mays deal.

    So he was very significant in choosing a very damaging form of Brexit as opposed to other forms that would have been broadly fine. Brexit only meant current interpretation of "Brexit" after first May and then Johnson narrowed it down.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    ah yeas Tim and his favourite withering put- down "the Herd"
    To be honest, I’m pretty sure “The Herd” terminology long pre-dated tim’s arrival. I may even have coined it myself. I was certainly an early adopter. At one point OGH announced that the next person to type Herd would be immediately banished. He was great at being Mr Angry.
    i know Tim was banned a number of times but surely not for using the word Herd?
    I'm sure it was for being too mega awesome.
    Tim would definitely self declare integrity like Keir.
  • murali_smurali_s Posts: 3,037
    edited May 2022

    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    The core Brexiter vote loves Nigerian nurses more than London remainers do, ofcourse.

    The emphasis from the earlier post is actually, looking again at the surveys from the year of 2016, a kind of back-to-front fantasy ; because many Brexiters were in fact voting in large numbers against middle-eastern immigration, on the back of the migration crisis of the same year, and Farage's posters taken from it. Before that crisis, the EU was still near the bottom of the list of voters' concerns.

    Whatever the Brexiteers will try and trumpet, the Brexit referendum was all about immigration. That’s why Leave played a blinder with their dog whistle campaign.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Looks like FIFA asked for too much money

    BBC News - Fifa: EA Sports to break away from football body
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61383672
  • Penddu2Penddu2 Posts: 583
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Thus confirming the absurd level of influence of the Mail - yet again.

    The Mail's campaign against Johnson lasted from Paterson, through sleaze and Partygate, up to the Ukraine War, and took in two separate editors. During that period the Labour lead was strong most of the time.

    The Mail only turned on Starmer two weeks ago, properly for the first time. Now look what happens.

    But in the last thread you told us that this was all great for Labour and the Tories were running scared?

    Confused now
    Not me. I've only put in a couple of comments on Beergate, and have been off the site for a few weeks.
    Apologies, it was @Wulfrun_Phil

    The capital W confused me. I probably need to go sit by the pool and drink Raki
    Are you in Greece ?
    Turkish Aegean, but heading for Greece next
    Aha - whereabouts to ?
    Samos, then up to the north: Epirus (one of my favourite bits)
    Ah Epirus - beautiful gorges. Samos - beautiful greenery.
    Vikos! Zagoriou! Ioannina!

    Byron loved it. For good reason
    Vikos is brilliant - Europes last wilderness. Ali Pasha's castle in Ionnina is nice. If you are in those parts I strongly reccomend Parga.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    Beeb cause national security headache by breaking embargo that the cabinet are meeting in Staffs Thursday
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415
    edited May 2022

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    He flogged boxes of liebfraumilch out of the back of an old Allegro if I recall correctly
    I thought he also claimed to be a farmer
    Not sure i was here for that iteration. My recollection is the wine merchant version
    Maybe it was somebody who accused Tim of pretending to be a farmer at some point
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    murali_s said:

    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    The core Brexiter vote loves Nigerian nurses more than London remainers do, ofcourse.

    The emphasis from the earlier post is actually, looking again at the surveys from the year of 2016, a kind of back-to-front fantasy ; because many Brexiters were in fact voting in large numbers against middle-eastern immigration, on the back of the migration crisis of the same year, and Farage's posters taken from it. Before that crisis, the EU was still near the bottom of the list of voters' concerns.

    Whatever the Brexiteers will try and trumpet, the Brexit referendum was all about immigration. That’s why Leave played a blinder with their dog whistles campaign.
    Dog whistle campaign?
    I didn't hear that
    Who won the F1 drivers championship in 1975?

    WHO WON THE F1 DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP IN 1975?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    DavidL said:

    malcolmg said:

    algarkirk said:

    malcolmg said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    Three words for republicans:

    President Boris Johnson.

    And? He could be removed the coterie of wastrels can't.
    I'm so glad you have that much faith in the quality of our politicians that you think having more of them is a good idea.
    Some of our politicians are brilliant. I've got a lot of time Hunt, Starmer, Sturgeon, Davis.
    Just because we get twats like Boris, Corbyn, Salmond, Patel, doesn't mean they're all bad.
    Oh fer fucks sake. Starmer. Not even starmer’s mum would call Starmer “a brilliant politician”

    Salmond on the other hand WAS quite brilliant. Nearly single handedly broke up one of the grandest old nations in the world, pretty much by sheer force of personality

    He is now a corpulent sleaze bag but all political careers end thusly
    Previous post highlights why UK is so F***ed up, not one of the supposed good ones has ever done anything other than line their own pockets , lie , cheat or be incompetent.
    Yes. A pretty desperate list

    Vanishingly few politicians are “brilliant”. In the last 40 years of British political life I’d suggest salmond and thatcher. With the possibility of early Blair. That’s it
    Hate to say it, but when you start to look back wistfully on how things were better back in the day, it's a sign ;)
    Yes , 70's were happy days , 8 pints for a pound, pay rises every month, sunny uplands indeed.
    Get real, when I started pub drinking in 1972 (about) 8 pints cost as much as £1.12p. Which then was nearly half a crown more than a pound. Big money. Happy days.

    You must have been a city boy, I was out in the country in the wilds of Ayrshire.
    A couple of turnips a pint?
    Beer was probably made from turnips David.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Roger said:

    - “How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from the European Union?” (net)

    Scotland -63
    London -38
    North -26
    Midlands & Wales -20
    Rest of South -18

    GB -26

    (YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)

    Yesterday SKS was given a golden opportunity to show he's a leader and he took it This is his second. The EU can be a big vote winner. He needs to grab it with both hands. Do a Blair. Don't be scared off because the so called Red Wall don't like foreigners. Sell it to them and get the best talent available to help you do it.
    You're Andrew Adonis and I claim my £5
    Do we still do that?
    You’re harking back to the days when folk like… oh, I dunno, Antifrank, Plato, Martin Day, Andrea and… er… SeanT were the core of the daily threads. I wonder what happened to them all?
    Plato passed away. Dont know about the others.
    Martin used to be a banned word, it took me ages to work out why a pithy post (it wasnt) about Martine maccutcheon wasn't allowed
    😆 I remember that. A poster so undesirable that even his name is registered in the filter. Poor old @Stuartinromford when Robert finally pulls my plug.

    In the early days of this obscure blog, it was impossible to write the word ‘socialist’ due to some email scam involving part of that word. Made talking about Tommy Sheridan’s political party slightly problematic.
    What about Tim - anyone remember him?
    Tim was a mighty colossus upon the PB stage, slaying the Herd with apparent ease. My favourite Labourite PBer of all time (Roger is a national treasure, but he just doesn’t have the scything grace of Tim).

    I’ve seen Tim single-handedly destroy a 40-strong Herd. The Clint Eastwood of PB. It was terrifying to witness.

    Other favourites include (by no means exhaustive)
    James Kelly
    OldNat
    Antifrank
    Richard Nabavi
    Easterross
    Mark Senior (the clever bastard)
    Andrea
    and one or two who are still about so I won’t embarrass
    He flogged boxes of liebfraumilch out of the back of an old Allegro if I recall correctly
    I thought he also claimed to be a farmer
    Not sure i was here for that iteration. My recollection is the wine merchant version
    Maybe it was somebody who accused Tim of pretending to be a farmer at some point
    Maybe he had a vineyard.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    Leon said:

    Looks like a direct SNP-Lab switch

    “Now released from @PanebaseMD poll of 26-29.4 (ch since 9-12.11)

    Holyrood constituency vote
    Con 19 (-1)
    Lab 24 (+5)
    LD 7 (-1)
    SNP 42 (-5)
    Oth 8 (+2)

    Regional
    Con 20 (-1)
    Lab 22 (+4)
    LD 7 (n/c)
    SNP 36 (-5)
    Green 10 (n/c)
    Oth 5 (+2)”


    Interesting

    Is Kir Royale winning over the Nats?

    Sturgeon sickening them and nowhere else to go but Labour @Leon
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    IshmaelZ said:

    murali_s said:

    Aslan said:

    carnforth said:

    Aslan said:

    murali_s said:

    Brexit is a calamity and Brexiteers are morons. That hasn’t changed since 2016.

    What the fuck was Cameron thinking in yielding to a referendum? Really? For that alone, he goes down as the worst PM this country has ever has beating the disingenuous fat fornicator who cure toy resides in Number 10.

    Leave played it perfectly pandering to the worst in people with their dog whistle campaign. It will finally dawn on the xenophobic thickos that voted leave that foreigners and darkies are still coming into this country.

    Actually, they are more foreign (geographically speaking) and more darkie than ever!
    The level of mental back flipping Remainers do. Reducing unskilled white European immigrants to get more semi-skilled African and Asian immigrants is apparently because the Tories don't like "darkies". There are some reasonable Remainers, but the arch-Remainers really are thick as pig shit.
    This is the generous interpretation. The ungenerous one is that, knowingly or unknowingly, they liked freedom of movement exactly because it ensured most immigrants were culturally european.

    Having a portuguese nurse treat you? Terribly sophisticated, darling! Tell everyone at the dinner party! A nigerian nurse would go unremarked upon. Not actual racism, but a mental dividing of foreigners into two camps nonetheless.
    Yes, there's probably some element of this. Of course the culture they most admire is the central European upper class... those that spend time in Provence and Tuscany. They understand the finer things in life, unlike the plebbier types from Britain and even Eastern Europe. I think that's the reason why a lot of them were ambivalent about Ukrainian resistance for a long time. They were uncomfortable with a patriotic movement focused on military resistance. Far better things to be thrashed out by bureaucratic elites in Brussels and Moscow.
    The core Brexiter vote loves Nigerian nurses more than London remainers do, ofcourse.

    The emphasis from the earlier post is actually, looking again at the surveys from the year of 2016, a kind of back-to-front fantasy ; because many Brexiters were in fact voting in large numbers against middle-eastern immigration, on the back of the migration crisis of the same year, and Farage's posters taken from it. Before that crisis, the EU was still near the bottom of the list of voters' concerns.

    Whatever the Brexiteers will try and trumpet, the Brexit referendum was all about immigration. That’s why Leave played a blinder with their dog whistles campaign.
    Dog whistle campaign?
    I didn't hear that
    Who won the F1 drivers championship in 1975?

    WHO WON THE F1 DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP IN 1975?
    Guffaw
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Looks like a direct SNP-Lab switch

    “Now released from @PanebaseMD poll of 26-29.4 (ch since 9-12.11)

    Holyrood constituency vote
    Con 19 (-1)
    Lab 24 (+5)
    LD 7 (-1)
    SNP 42 (-5)
    Oth 8 (+2)

    Regional
    Con 20 (-1)
    Lab 22 (+4)
    LD 7 (n/c)
    SNP 36 (-5)
    Green 10 (n/c)
    Oth 5 (+2)”


    Interesting

    Is Kir Royale winning over the Nats?

    Sturgeon sickening them and nowhere else to go but Labour @Leon
    Indie ref try her last throw of the dice? I'm guessing Angus is next in line or does the lovely Kate fancy it?
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