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?
- “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.
- “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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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
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!
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.
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.
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."
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”.
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
- “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.
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.
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.
- “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
- “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.
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.
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.
- “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?
- “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.
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......
- “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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- “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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
“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
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.
- “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
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.
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.
- “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"
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.
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.
- “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
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.
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.
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.
- “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?
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.
- “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
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.
- “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
- “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.
- “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.
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.
- “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?
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.
- “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.
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.
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.
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.
- “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
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.
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.
- “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
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.
For those wanting to move to an EU country now the income requirements have almost doubled. This makes it much more difficult . Retiring there is now almost impossible unless you have a very good pension and huge savings , there is no longer reciprocal healthcare so you’d need private health cover .
Whether people would ever use their previous FOM rights isn’t the point , Brits had that right .
This is one of the main reasons why the Brexit wounds will be very hard to heal , in most votes the large scale removal of rights doesn’t happen .
It did however with Brexit .
Leavers often fail to understand this aspect and some almost gleeful , as if it’s only the metropolitan elite who enjoyed FOM and so the attitude has been suck it up you lost . We also heard the same attitude about Erasmus.
For those of us lucky enough to have qualified for an EU passport through parents , the anger is somewhat mollified but there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t that lucky.
- “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?
Under current doxxing rules you can be banned for saying Sean, but not Herd.
1. Boris Johnson 2. Nigel Farage 3. Theresa May 4. David Cameron 5. Jeremy Corbyn 6. Jo Swinson
No wonder it all fucked up.
Well all that says is just how poor the remain supporters were and some still seem to think hurling abuse to those who support leaving the EU will enhance their chance of re-joining
- “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?
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.
Sadly, at least some of that is because British firms are moving development centres to Lisbon.
“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?
She will not do it , will be Macbeth next I reckon unless the skeletons come out of the cupboards.
Which one is macbeth? Next GE certainly more 2017 than 2019 results wise, nat turnout will be the big issue I think More Lab gaining of course than Con but some interesting 3 ways I suspect
For those wanting to move to an EU country now the income requirements have almost doubled. This makes it much more difficult . Retiring there is now almost impossible unless you have a very good pension and huge savings , there is no longer reciprocal healthcare so you’d need private health cover .
Whether people would ever use their previous FOM rights isn’t the point , Brits had that right .
This is one of the main reasons why the Brexit wounds will be very hard to heal , in most votes the large scale removal of rights doesn’t happen .
It did however with Brexit .
Leavers often fail to understand this aspect and some almost gleeful , as if it’s only the metropolitan elite who enjoyed FOM and so the attitude has been suck it up you lost . We also heard the same attitude about Erasmus.
For those of us lucky enough to have qualified for an EU passport through parents , the anger is somewhat mollified but there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t that lucky.
Musk says he would reverse Trumps twitter ban. Trump says he wont go back but I bet he'd post something to explode liberals heads, he wont be able to help himself
For those wanting to move to an EU country now the income requirements have almost doubled. This makes it much more difficult . Retiring there is now almost impossible unless you have a very good pension and huge savings , there is no longer reciprocal healthcare so you’d need private health cover .
Whether people would ever use their previous FOM rights isn’t the point , Brits had that right .
This is one of the main reasons why the Brexit wounds will be very hard to heal , in most votes the large scale removal of rights doesn’t happen .
It did however with Brexit .
Leavers often fail to understand this aspect and some almost gleeful , as if it’s only the metropolitan elite who enjoyed FOM and so the attitude has been suck it up you lost . We also heard the same attitude about Erasmus.
For those of us lucky enough to have qualified for an EU passport through parents , the anger is somewhat mollified but there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t that lucky.
On matters EU, there's nothing to stop a Party putting in its manifesto a plan to commence negotiations with the European Union with a view to Britain re-joining.
This would be caveated with the pledge any future membership package would be fully publicised and explained before being put to the British people in a referendum.
In other words, you do the negotiation, get a membership package and then put it to the people for approval.
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.
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.
On matters EU, there's nothing to stop a Party putting in its manifesto a plan to commence negotiations with the European Union with a view to Britain re-joining.
This would be caveated with the pledge any future membership package would be fully publicised and explained before being put to the British people in a referendum.
In other words, you do the negotiation, get a membership package and then put it to the people for approval.
The EU will not likely enter extensive negotiation unless acceptance is guaranteed given that we have already voted to leave once.
1. Boris Johnson 2. Nigel Farage 3. Theresa May 4. David Cameron 5. Jeremy Corbyn 6. Jo Swinson
No wonder it all fucked up.
Well all that says is just how poor the remain supporters were and some still seem to think hurling abuse to those who support leaving the EU will enhance their chance of re-joining
I'm afraid I consider Rejoining to be very unlikely now. Impossible on the favourable terms we had when we were members as well. I will never forgive the bast***d politicians and right wing press who poisoned the body politic and the Great British people with their lies. That is why I will never make my peace with them.
1. Boris Johnson 2. Nigel Farage 3. Theresa May 4. David Cameron 5. Jeremy Corbyn 6. Jo Swinson
No wonder it all fucked up.
Well all that says is just how poor the remain supporters were and some still seem to think hurling abuse to those who support leaving the EU will enhance their chance of re-joining
It’s not abuse BigG, it’s the truth! Cameron is a fucking idiot.
1. Boris Johnson 2. Nigel Farage 3. Theresa May 4. David Cameron 5. Jeremy Corbyn 6. Jo Swinson
No wonder it all fucked up.
Well all that says is just how poor the remain supporters were and some still seem to think hurling abuse to those who support leaving the EU will enhance their chance of re-joining
I'm afraid I consider Rejoining to be very unlikely now. Impossible on the favourable terms we had when we were members as well. I will never forgive the bast***d politicians and right wing press who poisoned the body politic and the Great British people with their lies. That is why I will never make my peace with them.
Blame everyone else but your poor campaign with a hand that should have walked it
There is no going back now but blaming others may be a consolation but the blame is nearer to home
For those wanting to move to an EU country now the income requirements have almost doubled. This makes it much more difficult . Retiring there is now almost impossible unless you have a very good pension and huge savings , there is no longer reciprocal healthcare so you’d need private health cover .
Whether people would ever use their previous FOM rights isn’t the point , Brits had that right .
This is one of the main reasons why the Brexit wounds will be very hard to heal , in most votes the large scale removal of rights doesn’t happen .
It did however with Brexit .
Leavers often fail to understand this aspect and some almost gleeful , as if it’s only the metropolitan elite who enjoyed FOM and so the attitude has been suck it up you lost . We also heard the same attitude about Erasmus.
For those of us lucky enough to have qualified for an EU passport through parents , the anger is somewhat mollified but there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t that lucky.
I was thinking about attitudes to Continental Europe earlier on.
Not that early on on life, I discovered that a particular grandparent that I had thought was from a particular part of England, like my grandmother, was in fact from a particular country in Continental Europe. This helped me develop an interest in the place, although I'd already been a few times and liked it, and even develop a certain amount more of a partial identification with it ; even to the extent of using his original name on one of my alternate emails, for instance.
When I see that particular hostility and innate suspicion of Continental Europe which doesn't feel natural or familiar to me at all, I occasionally ask myself if that discovery of that corner of our family is what makes it so unrecognisable for my own particular point of view.
But every time, I come to the same conclusion ; I only discovered that about halfway through life, and had much the same view before. A large part of my family were generations of Liberals, and before that religious Nonconformists who I even found out had enthusiastic ties to a particular Continental protestant community hundreds of years ago.
I think suspicion of Europe is baked into Toryism a very long way back too.
Comments
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.
(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.)
Ignorant Fuckwit.
There’s a German saying for it along the lines of “better dead without waiting than waiting without death”.
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.
Shit I tell a cracking anecdote
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.
“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?
1. Boris Johnson
2. Nigel Farage
3. Theresa May
4. David Cameron
5. Jeremy Corbyn
6. Jo Swinson
No wonder it all fucked up.
Woe betide those who retweeted Iain Martin tweeting a Scottish subsample.
Brexit was macho England’s reaction to the battered wife filing for divorce.
Farage no 1 by a mile. Cummings and Baker were more significant that Johnson I think.
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.
If it's repeated again, a Tory and Reform Party co-operative ticket may win again.
(See this is a claim that was actually made by leading figures, rather than a strawman)
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.
The parochialism of the Remainers is really amusing.
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.
Don’t pass over poor Nick Clegg.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tim would definitely self declare integrity like Keir.
BBC News - Fifa: EA Sports to break away from football body
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61383672
I didn't hear that
WHO WON THE F1 DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP IN 1975?
Whether people would ever use their previous FOM rights isn’t the point , Brits had that right .
This is one of the main reasons why the Brexit wounds will be very hard to heal , in most votes the large scale removal of rights doesn’t happen .
It did however with Brexit .
Leavers often fail to understand this aspect and some almost gleeful , as if it’s only the metropolitan elite who enjoyed FOM and so the attitude has been suck it up you lost . We also heard the same attitude about Erasmus.
For those of us lucky enough to have qualified for an EU passport through parents , the anger is somewhat mollified but there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t that lucky.
And will they be able to maintain SNP supremacy?
Next GE certainly more 2017 than 2019 results wise, nat turnout will be the big issue I think
More Lab gaining of course than Con but some interesting 3 ways I suspect
The problem started when you put a keyboard in front of him.
On matters EU, there's nothing to stop a Party putting in its manifesto a plan to commence negotiations with the European Union with a view to Britain re-joining.
This would be caveated with the pledge any future membership package would be fully publicised and explained before being put to the British people in a referendum.
In other words, you do the negotiation, get a membership package and then put it to the people for approval.
Poison, toxic, xenophobic!
There is no going back now but blaming others may be a consolation but the blame is nearer to home
And I voted remain
Not that early on on life, I discovered that a particular grandparent that I had thought was from a particular part of England, like my grandmother, was in fact from a particular country in Continental Europe. This helped me develop an interest in the place, although I'd already been a few times and liked it, and even develop a certain amount more of a partial identification with it ; even to the extent of using his original name on one of my alternate emails, for instance.
When I see that particular hostility and innate suspicion of Continental Europe which doesn't feel natural or familiar to me at all, I occasionally ask myself if that discovery of that corner of our family is what makes it so unrecognisable for my own particular point of view.
But every time, I come to the same conclusion ; I only discovered that about halfway through life, and had much the same view before. A large part of my family were generations of Liberals, and before that religious Nonconformists who I even found out had enthusiastic ties to a particular Continental protestant community hundreds of years ago.
I think suspicion of Europe is baked into Toryism a very long way back too.