Brexit: Parliament Tethers Britain to a Failing Experiment
Europe is crumbling, & Britain’s elite desperately want to be part of the wreckage
Kit Knightly
REUTERS/Peter Nicholls TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC165ADC9380
Brexit isn’t going to happen. Left or Right – Lexit or Rexit – it’s over. It’s time to make peace with that idea.
Penned in by the absurd Benn Act, No Deal is off the table, which means Britain will be forced to either remain or accept a deal that’s Remain by another name.
The Letwin Ammendment and Johnson’s unsigned extension request are just morbid theatre. Unneccasary nails in a well-sealed coffin.
It’s all very Weekend at Bernies’ – A lame cast of characters, puppeteering Brexit’s corpse to keep up a tired joke that was never funny to begin with.
Parliament has become an absurd pantomime, where a clown Prime Minister – his majority willfully destroyed – sets up straw men that the “opposition” bayonet with increasingly maniacal glee. No thought is given to policy or consequences, only increasing the tally of Boris Johnson’s parliamentary defeats.
Labour, and the bedraggled, hysterical remainers in the Lib Dems/TIG/Green Party, have become nothing but contrarians – automatically gain-saying anything tabled by the government for the simple joy of humiliating the nation’s Court Jester in Chief.
Corbyn has been so successfully gaslighted by his remain-heavy PLP he doesn’t even realise he’s betraying his life-long principles, his mentor Tony Benn, and entire swaths of the Labour’s Northern heartlands, who all voted to leave.
When a general election does come, it will mean nothing.
Labour will likely be destroyed as working-class voters either flock to the Brexit Party or simply collapse into the apathy of the voiceless, and stay home.
If Labour scrapes together enough voters from Remain country in Scotland and London to claw their way to a small majority, well their socialist manifesto will be crippled by the EU’s austerity policy and restrictions on nationalisation.
In either event, Corbyn will be replaced by a New Labour non-entity of little renown and less worth. The papers will declare socialism dead (again), and maybe clap Corbyn on the shoulder for doing “well, considering” and “changing the conversation”.
We’ll be invited to celebrate the new (inevitably) female leader as a sign of “progress”, while society continues to slip backwards.
Whether the hardcore Remainers get their “People’s Vote” or not, and whichever of the carousel of undesirables happens to be Prime Minister when it all eventually wraps up, Brexit is dead. Parliament killed it.
This on-going, slow-burn sabotage is hard to watch – but it’s not what this article is about.
What it’s about is a question. An important question. One that should weigh heavily on the shoulders of Remainers on the eve of their – for want of a better word – victory:
Do we really want this? Does the EU, right now, really look like something we want to be a part of?
Let’s run down the situation on The Continent.
PARIS, FRANCE – DECEMBER 2018 (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
France is miserable, sick of austerity. Sick of spending cuts and falling standards and neo-liberal economics promising a trickle-down that never seems to come.
In Paris – and many other French cities – the Yellow Vests are nearing their fiftieth straight week of protests, and don’t seem to be slowing down (Hopefully they plan something nice for their first birthday).
People have lost eyes, hands, even lives. The Hong Kong protests – so long front-page news in the UK – have been a picnic in comparison.
In Hungary, an elected President is held hostage by the bureaucracy of the EU. Whatever you think of Orban, he was democratically elected to enact the political promises he made during his campaign. That Brussels can sanction him, and threaten to remove Hungary’s voting rights, is perverse. Anti-democracy in the name of democracy.
They say it’s about “protecting European values”, but is it?
That’s pretty hard to believe, considering the situation elsewhere in Europe…
Spain will join France in the flames soon. They already sent thirteen politicians to prison for sedition.
Take a moment to consider that – actual “sedition”.
This comes after sending in riot police to break up a peaceful referendum. Spanish police beat voters, arrested protesters and destroyed ballot boxes.
Spanish riot police teaching an old woman about European Values.
Madrid has faced no punishment, or even criticism, for this. They – unlike Orban – have escaped any sanction or censure. Police attack Catalonian independence protests on the streets of Barcelona…and Brussels’ silence is deafening.
(Imagine Russia had just jailed 13 opposition politicians for sedition. Imagine Maduro was blinding protestors with rubber bullets. The difference in coverage and attitude would be breathtaking.)
What is the difference between Budapest and Paris? Or Moscow and Madrid?
Well, Orban is anti-EU (as are the Gilets Jaunes). The governments of France and Spain are Pro EU, with a ferocity that fully justifies the capital P.
Follow a pro-EU agenda of austerity, uncontrolled immigration and globalisation and you can blind as many protesters as you want.
The harder you look, the more it seems “European values” is slang for “European power”.
The talk of the EU Army bubbles away on the back-burner, whilst the European Parliament merrily votes through massive funding for “StratCom” programmes to “counter misinformation”.
We hear about peace, but we don’t see it. We hear about prosperity, but we don’t feel it.
Austerity is choking the birthplace of democracy to death, and its – again, for want of a better word – “leaders” are spending tax revenues on propaganda and the military.
Is that going to help a single ordinary citizen out of poverty? Are these moves designed to make life fair, equal or easy for ordinary citizens? Or consolidate and enforce authority?
Look at Europe. Really look at it. It’s burning. And yet Remainers sit amongst the flames and say everything’s fine.
We are lectured on “European Values”, but that phrase has been meaningless for years, and every day edges closer and closer to full-on parody.
Europe is a sinking ship the rats in Parliament refuse to leave.
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I see more and more single viewpoints at the Guardian.com in goose step with the ATLine. Less visibly censored comments too. More EU, (Islamic) immigrants, wind and solar best for the 99% voters. Apart from predictable also boring and an insult to intelligence.
Total “control” will have to include vote count fraud too in the UK/US in the Internet age to succeed.
I Must admit i am kind of sick of all these woe tales about poor Britain being unable to escape the tethers of the monster that the UK itself introduced us all to (along with the US of course).
I still remember Thatcher at her podium some time in the later mid 70s rattling on about freedoms and how she would free people fom whatever it was her targetted lemming audience perceived it to be that was holding them back from realising their true potential. Sadly what she was actually rattling on about was the freedom of capital to move unhindered across the globe but the lemmings thought it was about them, their own personal freedoms. IDIOTS !!
And now here we are again, the EU, now beholden to the neoliberal forces that the UK/US gifted us all, is apparently holding the UK back from realising its full potential. Quite what that full potential might be is not actually elaborated on but it gives enough fuel to the usual gung ho 1940s union jack dickheads to enable algorithmic capital to actually hope it might well get its hands on the NHS, fracking fields and to plant some well deserved GMOs on the fields of the ignorant shithole that is the modern UK.
By the way thanks for invading Iraq and starting the avalanche that now sees europe flooded with refugees. You apathetic useless ignorant arseholes !!
Laurel and Hardy’s take on Brexiting.
I trust the actions of the hard-brexit game-theory playing wonkers in Parliament this week has landed like the thud of a shoe dropping, around here ?
I also want an explanation from poster ‘tony’ now that the site is reactivated, re the absolute fiction about Galloway.
I’m waiting Tony, and will be asking until you respond.
You told me yourself. I can’t remember whether it was on here or Craig’s blog. You were using your personal anecdote about GG initially accepting your input, then rejecting it, as a put-down of George, questioning his commitment to ‘the cause’. But it was hilariously obvious that he had fucked you off because he had quickly identified your predilection for trying to dominate and bully discussions with your ill-thought-out arguments. As we regularly see on here and Craig Murray.org (and probably numerous other websites).
LIAR LIAR.
I have NEVER been in contact with Galloway. And NEVER claimed to.
You haven’t proved your false accusations or apologised.
ADMIN – I WANT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS POSTER TROLLING ME AND LYING.
Brexit or Nexit, Britain is committed to the same failed experiment as the EU: Anglo Zio Capitalism. The EU has failed the way Britain failed before the EU was even formed: the EU has been taken over by the AZC. The only way out is Red Blooded Socialism. First of a 10 part series by an Iranian Islamic Communist reporting from Failed France to a White Russian Christian website based in Failed Florida, Dead End U$A:
https://thesaker.is/western-central-bankers-theyre-god-they-trust-a-10-part-series-on-the-qe-economy/
“China and Iran have central banks owned, literally, by the People. Former European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet often talked about how the ECB was a “bank of the people”, but it was classic EU hypocrisy – the Maastricht treaty, in the neoliberal & anti-socialist model in which the EU and Eurozone were created, explicitly made the ECB independent of any government. Does anyone possibly persist in believing, 10 years into (not after) the [continuing 2008 QE] crisis, that the ECB has chosen policies which benefit the 99% and not the 1%?
There is widespread agreement in Iran that Islamic Socialism tolerates capitalism – there are plenty of private banks – but Iran has agreed with socialism that the only solution is to have the biggest banks owned by the state. That is the only way “strings” can ever be applied to Bank Loans created from citizens’ money in order to create a virtuous – not exploitative – monetary cycle between government and business.
The Islamic Socialist or Chinese Communist solution is not proposed by a capitalist like Prins [a Wall Street whistleblower]. She even tries to intimate that China’s Central Bank is almost equally duplicitous, which is pure nihilism and easily disproved (though she could never get away with implying that China’s central bank was as exploitative [as Western central banks).
The reality in capitalist countries is that governments issue paper money and private bankers must act as [interest-skimming] middleman to get this money to citizens. In socialist countries government bankers serve as middleman, and that is why socialist countries are succeeding in the 21st century. China and Vietnam are the two biggest boomers since 1980, while Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and a handful of others would be booming if they were not so terribly sanctioned.”
Your usually on point Kit.
My feeling has been that the current PM’s agenda is to force a second referendum without appearing to want one …. so its been all this up to now and its actually been quite predictable.
I actually think the EU will sort its mess out and the sooner it dumps the UK the better. The EU should have thrown Britain out already, forced their card on Scotland and Ireland and called it a day.
What are they waiting for ? Enough already.
Admin,
I posted late last night here and replied to other comments – they have all disappeared!
Is it a glitch or have you started censoring me?
You’re not being censored.
There’s a bunch of comments from you posted 11-13 hours ago. Are these the ones you think are missing or are there others?
It looks like there are some caching issues ATM. Cloudflare caches the entire website and refreshes at regular intervals. It ought not to seriously affect visibility of new comments, but it looks as though it has started doing so.
We’re looking into it. Meanwhile if you hard refresh your browser that will at least call the most up to date version of the page available.
Thanks for the good work, Admin, it can’t be easy to keep track of every post under such an electronic onslaught. I must confess that I was rather hoping you had censored something of mine recently, but alas!
Thanks Vex – that’s much appreciated. 💖
🙂 May I add: yer’ still the BEST Moderation Team, online & anywhere …
(IMO 💖) … purple hearts 4all.
C’mon my good men and women and trans people. Do not suck up to power. We should use this platform as a safety valve to release all the rage that hasn’t been properly addressed to in the real world. Maybe it’s because our headpiece is filled with straw. Follow me to the world of good manners and facts ( of YouTube comments ). Stick it to the man. And woman. And LGBTXYZ. Well, not the last one. They’re endangered spicies.
“Europe is crumbling, & Britain’s elite desperately want to be part of the wreckage”
Perspective.
A few years ago, Peter Thiel (of –amongst others–PayPal, Palantir and Facebook fortunes, and big time shoulder-rubber at Bilderberg, etc) bought a large swathe of extremely desirable farmland and residence in New Zealand’s exclusive, South Island lakes region after announcing that he had no plans either to visit or to live in the country in the foreseeable future. By all accounts, many New Zealanders were outraged by the NZ Government’s (a South Seas organisation consisting mainly of middle-management functionaries designated as ‘Parliamentarians’) decision to allow the sale and a whole lot of argy-bargy went on based on that perceived iniquity. Apparently, almost no-one questioned what was behind Peter Thiel’s decision, naturally assuming that New Zealand was the second best place in the world to be a fuckwit from the neck up.
Anyone who is unaware of the fact that the ratiocination behind eXcuseMeToo’s Rebellion is at least forty years behind that of exclusive, over-endowed think tanks like the Rand Corporation and other, similar advisors to the world’s senior executive class should stop reading now: there’s a particularly exciting Shove Ha’penny game in progress at the local Amusement Pub.
In the first, few, each-in-themselves potentially terminal vectors of the expression of the Ecogeddon now obviously approaching at a clearly exponential rate of acceleration, the South Island of New Zealand is slated, model-wise, to avoid the worst of the predicted ravages (except, possibly, those of geo-politics).
For those interested in the optics of perspective, Senior World Order Executive Peter Thiel’s decision to buy up some lebensraum in the South Pacific might serve well to illuminate the curious attachment of Westminster’s middle-management functionaries, a.k.a. ‘jobsworths’ a.k.a ‘buttkissers’ a.k.a. ‘Parliamentarians’, to Project Europa.
P.S. Representative Parliamentary Democracy is and always has been a total sham, a put-up job, a wool-pull of national proportions, not least because of its innate tendency to decay into another degenerate form of rule, Oligarchy (and thence Tyranny), as Aristotle–writing of Democracy even in its purest, most Direct form–noted near the beginning of this wild ride.
Here we go again – I thought that the whole subject was thrashed to death here with multiple articles only some weeks ago?
I’m sorry that many, inc the author can’t see clearly that the Brexit referendum was set up over a long period of time.
Or that Starmer has been doing the job he was appointed to do by the Labour leadership – that’s ‘Corbyn’ for these who believe that we have a presidential system (we really DON’T). It was them that got a ‘Meaningful Vote’ that actually required May to construct a WA to then vote on and reject, instead of letting the clock run out on A50 on 29th March, which was the PLAN A.
Feel free to stop reading. But here is some explanation if anyone is bothered.
1. There was only one plan, a ‘hard’ Brexit – the only means of letting the City escape legally – if the EU refused their demands for special treatment (the UK veto becoming ineffective).
To enable this:
2. The referendum was not a fair plebiscite.
It was daylight ROBBERY by these biggest and oldest thieves in history.
The slim margin was calculated, so that people wouldn’t look too closely at the un-anticipated outcome. The polls days before had 55-45 remain!
It was massive vote stuffing. It was built on methods used in the Scottish referendum and the 2015 election.
Proof? Here is a clue.
Turnout – 73% average is high, but the average hides area by area turnout. Quite a few areas were well in excess of 73% – some in the 80’s! Levels not seen in an advanced democracy with free elections.
Only in dictatorships where vote stuffing is used.
3. The hard brexiteers really believe their great game player king Dom and his merry men and women of all parties – Letwin and co (and DUP & LibDems & soft tories & PLooPers) and all their media muppets really believe they have hoodwinked the country and this WA will get through AND deliver their No Deal by the 31st without being rolled over like May was! Or that their EU insiders will veto an extension and achieve the same … they think they are on win, win, win scenario.
But Bercow ain’t quite finished for another week yet. Neither is Starmer, Cherry, Barnier and the EU’s true defenders who are smarter. Macron & the other traitorous moles are sidelined.
The country is begining to seeing through all the gaslighting. Including by the ‘spiked’ alt media.
Oh and if the tories really want a election before the hard brexit gets kicked into the new year all they have to do is have a parliamentary Act to dump the ftpa – i’m sure they could do it in a couple of days with JRM’s mastery. Then they can stop whinging and so can brexiteers.
Lols.
The usual pile of complete and utter fantasist remainer bullshit from Dungroanin. Previously he tried the Carole Codswallop argument that leavers were won over en-masse by spam facebook adverts by Russian stooges. Now he is making the evidence-free claim that ballot boxes were stuffed!!! What an utterly idiotic claim to make, in view of the fact that most of the establishment and almost the entire civil service (which controls the ballot boxes) is pro remain! No wonder the astute George Galloway fucked Dunroanin off so quickly after Dungroanin offered George his “help”.
.”..Carole Codswallop…”
Typo? I think you’ll find her surname is actually ‘Coswalloper‘.
Oops – Co d
Double oops – Codswalloper.
The relevant question now is, was she worth all that pfaffing erratuming?
😆
Well well well… something very strange going on here. My comment above posted last noght waa not visible to me until a few moments ago unril i clicked on the email from Tony which had appeared in my inbox last night but had disappeared this morning! Lucky i kept a copy last night of the said email and my comment suddenly reappeared after clucking on the link in my copy of the email!
Very glitchy?? Or summat not right in O-G???
Tony, that is complete lies about my previous posts.
1. I may have voted remain but I accepted the result 3 years ago – which you don’t mention. Why not Tony?
I just don’t accept why it had to be a ‘hard’ brexit rather than one of the exotic versions we were promised.
2. It wasn’t the Integrity Initiative’ Codwalldr who claimed FB had a major effect on Leave votes that i quoted, I never once cited her flim-flam and ‘limited hang-out’ bs.
It was a direct admission by DOM ‘young Dr Strangelove’ CUMMINGS now the chief strategist and controller of BoBo, IMBEDDED in Downing Street who CLAIMED so!
3. I have not yet stated exactly how the ballot boxes were stuffed – and you certainly didn’t ask. Why not Tony?
You instead ignored my suspicion of the turnout figures. Don’t you think despotic levels of turnout are suspicious?
It took me a while to figure it out and I now have the circumstantial evidence amd scenario of how the SCL/CA Deep State daylight robbery of the referendum was carried out – but I have not the resource to dig faster but I am progressing.
My clues are there for anyone to follow up themselves and i will happily expound further, if asked,
Which you haven’t, Tony.
In fact your insta-response poo-pooing last night and how my posts seemed to disappear and reappear this morning and the mysterious email behaviour (which I first came across from the Groans mods system couple of years ago, before being banished) , has confirmed my suspicion, Thanks.
4. Finally WTF are you on about with your closing statement?
“No wonder the astute George Galloway fucked Dunroanin off so quickly after Dungroanin offered George his “help”.”
??????!!!!!!!!!!!
I have never been in contact with Gorgeous George.
This is the second time a poster has posted such statement (was it you previously too?)
You have fabricated a complete LIE with that stayent, explain it NOW, WITHDRAW and APOLOGISE or I will registet a complaint.
Dungroanin, are you a pathological liar? You are on record, both on here and on Craig’s blog, repeatedly making every substantive point that you are now denying. It’s as daft as the child caught red-handed holding a bar of chocolate in the sweet shop “What bar of chocolate? I’m not holding a bar of chocolate!” How bizarre! No wonder George Galloway didn’t want anything to do with you.
LIAR.
Prove it.
Last chance Tony.
Cat got your tongue Tony?
Why are you bringing Galloway into the debate, is this the same Galloway , the cheerleader of free speech who thinks there should be an international law forbidding people to question the holocaust.
Most Guardian readers have managed to convince themselves that remaining in the EU is still viable.
In truth it means the following:
The Brexit Party overtake The Labour Party to become the biggest political party in Europe overnight, with 25 quid subs and a huge warchest.
Slippery Brussels shoe-shine MP’s are voted out of office and replaced with more Brexity types of left and right looking to the future outside the protectionist bubble.
Eurosceptic MP’s flood the EU parliament with even more obstructionist hordes of people desperate to leave. (Check out the cheery looks on the faces of top-level technocrats last week when they hoped they were getting rid of us once and for all with a deal – er treaty – that handed them the best cards).
While the EU is looking to buttress the single currency it becomes ever more clear that their agenda is not compatible with our interests.
Britain’s trade with the 85% of the world outside the EU continues to grow as our trade with the EU flatlines. (It’s the economy stupid!)
The EU becomes ever more expensive, intrusive, and unpopular.
The thickos who think Brexit represents eternal Tory rule start to realise that just because we leave the EU we will still hold elections and vote how we wish. (It’s astonishing how many idiots believe we are incapable of voting without Brussels over our shoulders).
The list goes on…………..
And yet 90% of CIFers still believe that if only The Evil Brexit Monster can be thwarted, we will be instantly returned to the happy days prior to June 22nd 2016.
The delusion is astounding!
yawn -pathetic “toys out of the pram” rant
grow up
It’s not a rant. Just about everything that Kit says here is quite correct.
I’m not the only one who is sick to the back teeth of post-truth a-holes telling us how they ‘feel’.
I don’t give a toss how you feel. I do give a toss about the direction that society is going in. Go look up the term ‘neoliberalism’, and then, if you can, come back to us with some kind of rational arguement.
For those not up to speed with ‘neoliberalism’ (and there’s a surprising number of them)…
Someone once said: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Well, you have the pessimism part to a tee, but the optimism part needs some work.
Antonio Gramsci
Hi Kit,
Good piece, though thoroughly depressing.
I am also banned from the Guardian- I didn’t break any of their rules or guidelines. I just questioned their narrative too often and too persistently, I guess.
I think there are a lot of us.
A no deal Brexit, was put to the British people in the 2017 general election in the form of UKIP and was backed by precisely 1.8% of the voters, 594,068 votes in total. Over 82% of voters representing 26,514,602 votes supported the two main political parties both of which promised to negotiate an orderly exit and to come to a deal with the European Union.
Yet, mysteriously we are now being told by a media owned by the 1%, featuring journalists who are all members of the 1% that a no deal Brexit is what everyone voted for in the 2016 referendum and that Parliament is stealing the people’s Brexit.
Parliament and the courts have supposedly betrayed the people as represented such men of people as Boris Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Jacob Rees Mogg (Eton and Oxford) and the rest of a Tory cabinet where two thirds of the ministers were privately educated and 45% went to either Oxford or Cambridge.
So now we have all the talk of “just let’s get it done”, stated by the people in “random” interviews on various British television and radio programmes where not a single journalist ever challenges a Conservative Brexiteer about the fact that they have been the biggest obstacle to ensuring that Brexit is completed.
The reason we do not have Brexit is because Theresa May, once she knew the results of the 2017 election, refused to deal with the issue on a cross-party basis and because the rabid Brexiteers in her own party voted down the deal she negotiated three separate times.
If it had not been for the courts, Parliament would not have had the right to a meaningful vote and Theresa May’s deal would have already been imposed upon the country. Try getting the Jacob Rees Mogg of this world to admit that.
So why is the media owned by the 1% featuring the 1% pushing so hard for Boris Johnson’s deal?
The answer is that it offers the possibility of a no deal without any meaningful vote in 2020 when the trade deal with the EU fails to materialise.
Why is no deal so important? Because a no deal Brexit is the only way the US will gain, even if it means Britain and the EU lose. This was laid out almost 20 years ago by a US International Trade Commission in Investigation No. 332-409.
Plus, if a no deal Brexit is a disaster for Britain and for Europe, there is always the possibility of TTIP riding to the rescue so that that the regulatory border in the Irish Sea is meaningless.
Labour’s position as repeatedly explained by Corbyn and MacDonald, despite the fact that it has been repeatedly misrepresented by the media owned by the 1% and featuring the 1%, is still the only plan that makes any sense. Negotiate a Brexit that does not destroy British jobs and then give the people the choice in a second referendum between that job-saving Brexit and remaining in the EU.
Letting the people decide seems democratic to me, even if the Tory press considers it stealing the people’s Brexit.
Excellent post.
Nice one Doc.
Though the number of hard brexiteer voters is actually 5.2 million- the same as the high point of kippers based on them ALL turning out for the Euros for their pound shop Enoch!
Also the Groan is part of the same gas lighting msm with a couple of fig leaves.
You are woefully misinformed. Prior to the 2016 referendum, it was made quite clear by Cameron’s government that, if we voted to leave, we would be voting to leave the customs union and the single market. And that’s what we voted for. Remain’s disgustingly dishonest post-referendum campaign has managed, through it’s overwhelming establishment backing and msm support, to water that down to a semi-leave deal that will almost certainly be kyboshed, with us ‘thicko, racist plebs’ being told that brexit just wasn’t doable. And the globalist project marches on, ably assisted by all it’s useful idiots.
It was madw clear by the brexiteers that we would have something like Norway witha ‘plus’ – not a ‘hard’ brexit with no customs union.
Why do you ignore that, Tony?
So Jeremy Corbyn former official in the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers Union and John McDonnell former official with the National Union of Mineworkers and Trades Union Congress are members of the establishment while Eton and Oxford graduate and former Times and Telegraph journalist Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a man of the people – on whose planet.
Glad to see that the The Daily Torygraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday, The Sunday Express, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times are not part of the mainstream media in your eyes.
The point I am trying to make is that Brexit is the very essence of a globalist project cooked up in Washington and neo-liberalism is an anglo-american project that was imposed on the EU not the other way round.
As to what was made clear – where is that £350 million a week for the NHS? Off with the unicorns in the sunlit uplands waiting for the Hospital Corporation of America to claim it.
Jeremy Corbyn has long been anti-EU. He has been railroaded into a semi-pro-remain position by the blairite gravytrain scum who make up the vast majority of his parliamentarians. Hell! He’s even had to sacrifice the outstanding Chris Williamson to these revolting excuses for human beings.
“As to what was made clear – where is that £350 million a week for the NHS? Off with the unicorns in the sunlit uplands waiting for the Hospital Corporation of America to claim it.”
I’m going to use the remainer excuse as to why they have nothing more than speculation so support their hysterical claims about what will happen post-brexit.
“We haven’t left yet.”
The money isn’t available yet.
Hey amidst the gloom you need a break – how’s this …
https://twitter.com/Greg0wen/status/1185545024093741056
enjoy
Is it just me or is the site not working properly. 13 below the line responses seems, given Knightly’s excellent article seems a rather paltry response.
The btl count is a bit glitchy . I refresh the page occasionally and it seems to come good.
A small price to pay for quality articles such as this one from Kit.
The page cache seems to be being a bit glitchy. There are over 100 comments actually!
EDITOR: SECURITY ALERT !
‘Glitchy’ is the smallest of your problems, when my reply form is pre-loading Name & Email address from an unknown person to me, directly from your servers !
No need to go into to full details here, because, something ‘clicked’ on Saturday night and shone some light in terms of Direct connectivity to my actions, comments and your servers responses, which I have just highlighted and explained to Milosevic, on Rostam’s Book Review, article >>> if for any reason you doubt that I have Karin’s email address FROM OFFG, DIRECT ! I’ll be happy to confirm her email address by email.
Point: I suggest that you urgently investigate my comments to Milosevic, & read them very carefully & considerately, on aforementioned article, immediately. Because, if you are not interested, then I see no harm in writing to Karin and explaining why, respectfully . . . I’m so glad that you have your own servers now and am sure that you will understand that I say this all for the collective best interests of
all @OffG.
Yours Faithfully,
Tim
This site is badly configured, but OffG were not interested when I informed them. That’s aside from DDoS issues and probably hacks.
“my reply form is pre-loading Name & Email address from an unknown person to me, directly from your servers !”
It is?
No response. OK, I’ll go a step further. Go to any Off-Guardian page and type
“javascript:document.write(document.cookie)”
into your browser address bar (without the quotes).
What do you see (ignoring the ‘hex‘ mumbo jumbo)?
@robbo – what are you trying to achieve with this piece of code? There are better ways of checking what cookies are being used.
No. I was giving him about the only relatively straightforward way to access raw cookie text in most propriety versions Android with a bundled Chrome browser. That out of the way, then there are usually other, direct but often different, browser-dependent, dedicated buttons to push. “Go look” for one of them would have been the next step, had the above failed.
It did: on Saturday evening, immediately after having opened ‘The Veto’ – Wag the Dog video link, from Milo. on the Kentucky in Syria article. (Sorry, for the delay in responding Robbo). I moved onto the Iranian book review article (from Rostam), no other actions in between. And there she was, with email, ready to Post, from my IP & ISP, in her name & mail.
Aha, see your other comment, now. Sending this, gonna’ do a fresh start up: bit chaotic my end, because of local elections on Sunday, all being rigged around me, quite funny really, but distracting (and the result is now a forgone conclusion, after bus loads of dual nationality Turks all present & correct) >>>
Will try what you suggest, shortly …
Could you please a) screen cap anything weird that develops b) email us rather than posting it here.
Whatever is “not posted here” re increasing multitudes of distressed sites is generally freely available in extensive online discussions in bug track and CERT-style sites. It’s not like stamping on cockroaches. If the bug/gers are intentful humans then they don’t usually disappear the moment you turn on a light to see what’s wrong. If it’s a genuinely dangerous disclosure then responsible disclosure can apply, but looking at cookies is hack 101. Tim seems intelligent enough to reply with “my name/address” (or someone else’s) rather than giving out the @ctual details.
Good article and I completely agree: British democracy is dead.
It was never alive, and never will be
It was never alive
The rather innocuous comment I posted here yesterday has disappeared.
Can admin shed any light on this?
“…..the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country to the economy of the world as a whole.”
Professor Carrol Quigley (Tradgedy & Hope)
Brexit in or out, Politics, Parliaments and Governments etc….tis an artful machination- those manipulations for the machine nation, crack goes the whip and steered into surrender , the trade of lives for fabricated promises, fated to a future of drudgery, begot by power sucking profiteers of avarice….So, be it for ‘or’ against, just keep on squabbling for IT, as then Them, have you just where they want You – to be.
“…..the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country to the economy of the world as a whole.” – this quote inspired me to look up a few other pearls from this thinker.
Quiggers also said “The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”
How true – take the last presidential election when the ‘choice’ was between a sociopath and a sociopath.
Now, can anyone explain to me, naval gazing aside, how mean income families will know the difference if Britain remains in, or leaves the EU – I mean will they have less personal debt, will there be fewer wars, can they expect a more honest generation of politicians?
Put another way – when will more people grasp that our political institutions, be they national or supra-national have no intention of biting the hand that feeds them?
If they have a hard brexit with a bonfire of regulations and rights – the poor people will know when they start living in hovels, with no quality health care, shittier education or mega debts for a lifetime. Throw in lower quality of life and lowering life expectancy and curtailed chances – their kids and grandkids will be sent back to the future upstairs downstairs downton servile existence as chefs and housekeepers.
You need to read the histories of the leading countries in the EU. Their empires weren’t as successful as ours, but they were far, far worse than our own abysmal behaviour (Belgian Congo is particularly fascinating: such a small occupying country managing to genocide so many millions in such a small occupied country). If you think that workers’ rights (driven strongly by UK input btw) flags the EU as market leaders in human rights, you are the most naive poster on this site.
I know the history well.
Including the Opium wars of the Sassoons and The East India lot, and Rhodes and the Chatham House mobsters – we were the absolute worst Empire – the Yanks and theit banana republics are nearly as bad.
Lols
“If they have a hard brexit with a bonfire of regulations and rights – the poor people will know when they start living in hovels, with no quality health care, shittier education or mega debts for a lifetime.”
You mean just like the Greeks?
Lol poor gaslighting attempt Robbo, do you mean this Greece?
‘Greece 10Y Bond Yield was 1.30 percent on Tuesday October 22, according to over-the-counter interbank yield quotes for this government bond maturity. Historically, the Greece Government Bond 10Y reached an all time high of 41.77 in March of 2012 and a record low of 1.30 in October of 2019.’
It seems Greece is on the mend and has survived the Goldman Sachs stitch up, thanks to its EU partners.
Rejoice!
“…do you mean this Greece?
‘Greece 10Y Bond Yield was 1.30 percent on Tuesday October 22, according to over-the-counter interbank yield quotes for this government bond maturity. Historically…”
No, I mean this Greece, the one shorn of large amounts of its natural assets for historicallys to come and a hopeless mire for most of the 99%ers who still have to live there for most of the rest of their lives:
So why don’t you shove your EU banker’s wet dream right up the bullshithole you got it out of and take your lols to the FT and The Economist where they’ll fit right in with the general 1%ers rentier-rejoicement plans?
Missed some of the CNBC extract, so here’s a repeat of it all:
Lovely article, Kit!
I’m from Germany and I wholeheartedly support your analysis. Thank You!
Kit, you’ve absolutely nailed this right on the head.
For once I will keep my big mouth shut.
So do you honestly believe the ultra right wing rabble now occupying the government want us to leave the EU because it will be good for its citizens in general? you must be joking.
Let me make another point abundantly clear. Of the collapsing global economy: the UK is the exact epicentre. There are other financial centers: but the Eurobond and derivative markets – underpinned by LIBOR – are centred in London …or ‘offshore’ in the City of London Corporation [Shaxson].
Not entirely transacted through the Cities trading desks – but that is currently a fantasy market some 73.5 times the ‘real’ economy. One where nearly all fantasy growth has occured since 2008-9. One that looks to be addicted to ‘easy money policies’ and Central Bank Interventions. Due entirely to this: one that looks to be incredibly fragile and susceptible to collapse at this very moment. The City’s function is NEVER allowed to be part of any debate – let alone the paucity of starved information exchanges that passed for the ‘Brexit Debate’.
There has been virtually no recovery since 2007. All there has been is Central Bank interventionism and corporate buybacks and M&As. The only growth has been in the CB balance sheets and asset owning classes net worth. The real economy has been underdeveloped and will never recover now. NEVER.
The real economy is an exergy economy. See Dr Tim Morgan’s latest for an outline. Which will decline over time due to something called physics. Morgan estimates outstanding liabilities at $320 trillion. I think that is very conservative: derivatives alone are probably north of $350 tn …and they are not the only class of debt. So let’s go with Tim: that we are sitting underneath four times the weight of debt we were in 2007. The CB solution to which is to add more debt: to prop up derivative trade (banks cannot make money with low interest rates – they have to seek profits in higher risk trading).
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
The CB’s have pumped excess liquidity into the global markets since 2010. First the Fed: then the ECB took over. The BoJ have been intervening for 30 years. The PBoC were far from immune. Every CB pumped liquidity in at some point – as a coordinated strategy …see: Nomi Prins – Collu$ion.
Now they have started: they can never stop. More liquidity: more financial risk: more liquidity. Draghi hit ‘print’ a while back. The Fed has intervened in the repo market short term …till January. Underlying all of this is entropy and exergy.
All talk of take this into consideration – take that into consideration – is meaningless unless we take the underlying brute facts of the Earth System into consideration. Exponentially debt deflation (eventually rendering fiat worthless) and exponentially rising entropy (a brute fact of the Second Law) and exponentially decreasing exergy (dwindling surplus net energy) mean only one thing for the economy.
Then there is the energy-state nexus. The state gets first call on surplus energy as profit. Enforcing private property rights for the corporations and high net-worth individuals. That spells PERMANENT AUSTERITY – with no reprieve. In an increasingly fascising state corporate nexus. The world of eternal growth never existed. We managed to fake it with a Petroleum Interval burning fossil fuels. One that is gone and can NEVER come back.
We have a massive debt mountain centred on London – one we are not allowed to talk about. One that is being added to exponentially – otherwise it will collapse. Opposed to contracting and biophysically constrained real economy. Corporations and high earners that have their net worth guaranteed by the state. An increasingly toxic and depleting Earth System. And some fantasy distraction we are calling Brexit.
Deal, no-deal, leave, remain: what may be we are in for a near term collapse in our economic system. Plus other systems: no one knows …and no one is talking about it. All farming and all distribution networks depend on the naptha distillate. It will never run out. Which is not to say that it will not – and has not – become an inhibitory factor (see below). The national debate is a perception management and participatory hallucination debate. One that is currently driving the dreambus off the edge of the cliff. We do not have to follow where we are being led.
Precisely.
You source – Tim Morgan – believes in CAGW caused by anthropogenic CO2: quite debatable.
Next he believes peak oil is near or passed: debatable. Than he is mum on nuclear power completely : weird.
He is an economic crisis monger, where others are terror, environment, population or resource crisis mongers. I have had it with most of these.
Yes the present world financial system is strangely different but too many badly want to keep it going, so I am optimistic. The small guys as usual will suffer and have not taken many precautions – what is new?
As an engineer I get entropy and exergy, but I can’t see why economists get so worked up about debt. Any exchange leads to exactly equal amounts of debt and credit: those amounts can never be assymmetric no matter what the contract worked up was. So why the incessant hand wringing and doom mongering about debt? The lopsided discussion is always about crushing personal debt, depressing corporate debt, unrepayable national debt. Sheer nonsense.
There is as much credit in the world as debt. If there’s a serious problem on the debt side of the scales then how come no effort is expended to discover who owns the excessive credit ? It may be no more than a couple of dozen people – and they’d probably all fit on a double decker bus. We could even invite them all to step on board a Number 17 at the same time for a tar and feathers tour of the City of London.
So, having followed the money IN BOTH DIRECTIONS, we’re ready to launch a 30-day campaign of naming and shaming those individuals who could be persuaded to agree to a 90% debt jubilee for all. Then we could stop pretending that debt is insoluble, and start focussing on some of the more difficult physical and philosophical issues facing humanity.
You know it’s true… at the very latest when you read the Sunday Times rich list and realise that it must be missing several hundred people at the top.
I think you mean that in this Parliament that Brexit is dead.
Voters could vote in a GE for a party vowing to abolish the Benn act and then leave the EU with or with the EU even being invited to negotiate.
That of course means abandoning the Labour Party and quite possibly the Conservative party too.
The EU have shown that they have absolute contempt for democratic mandates over twenty years and now the UK Parliament has done the same.
There is in my book no basis for voting for either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party.
erm, or the LibDems either.
The Benn act is only valid until we have the withdrawal agreed.
It probably goes without saying by now, but I’ll say it anyway:
The “European values”, which Kit rightly states as meaning “European power”, serve Washington’s agenda, and this paragraph:
is what the long, drawn-out Brexit fiasco might have been designed to do in the first place.
This was a magnificent, thoroughly depressing article.
And now we need some solutions.
European values to me are social democracy, community, cooperation, culture, free education, free healthcare, human rights.
The EU supports none of these things.
Yes, you are 100% correct. Well done.
When was the last time you were in France/ Belgium ? in fact Belgium has agreed to keep the EHIC card irrespective of what this shithole agrees to. It’s no wonder people think the way they do when you have 85% of the press supporting leave,since when has any of the press ever reported truthfully on any industrial struggle, you have the owners of the Telegraph, the cheerleader for working people ,also owners of the Ritz where Farage celebrated his birthday recently, why would anybody seriously think a group of far right rabid idiots occupying the seats in the government would want to leave the EU because it’s good for the average person, they wont even put the employment laws into the withdrawal agreement, bu tin the political decoration were it is not legally binding, and the dopes answer to it (Raab) we can improve it more than the EU requires us to do so, one wonder why they haven’t already done this, I think you’re all being taken for mugs, sadly you’re falling for it.
There is an interesting little phenomenon, called, “White coat syndrome”.
Somebody in a white coat makes a declaration, and, because of the white coat, almost everybody believes it.
Almost…
Others look more closely, and find out that the white coat was just a cleaner’s uniform, stolen by somebody on the run from a mental hospital.
Completely irrelevant.
… to those who don’t get the message …
Again: echoes of Crank below;
In our haste to make ourselves economically, ecologically, and evolutionarily redundant …and make the post-human reality really real …we have forgotten that the land – the lithosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere-atmosphere living nexus – is the only surplus value creating asset we have.
Crank: “There have been several dozen attempts to broaden discussion of (in this instance) Brexit to consider the drivers of global change in these times- those being primarily economic stagnation and contraction brought on by dwindling returns from extraction industries.”
The entire prosperity and progress of Modernity – modern macroeconomic civilisational globalisation – is entirely – ENTIRELY – due to the fact that we have learned to harness the power of stored solar – fossil fuels (FF) – and stored cosmic energy – nuclear energy (NE) …as well as capturing ‘free’ energy (solar) [Keen: 2016; 2019]. That is, we are entirely addicted to pre-existing energy sources – ones that we have to extract and refine [Ayres: 1969].
The cost of this extraction rises over time: following the simple logic that we used the easy to access stuff long age. Of the energy available – total reserves (energy at the point of extraction) – the main economic driver is not quantity – it is decreasing quality. The Laws of Thermodynamics state that energy will be lost at every stage of conversion from energy – to useful exergy (net surplus energy – energy delivered to the factory or household – where it can produce economic and non-economic work). It is not energy that produces an economic surplus. Useful exergy is the key driver of economic growth [Warr & Ayres: 2012; Brockway et al: 2018; Keen, Ayres, et al: 2019].
The global economy is an exergy economy. No political, fiscal, or monetary analysis is meaningful outside of this context. As Steve Keen explained in his lectures: Neo-Clacssical economics was developed before the Laws of Thermodynamics (LoT) were discovered: and is this ignorant of them. 150 years later: macro-politicical and macro-economic theory is still ignorant of them. Thus: all current political theory is useless and self-negating – ignorant of the biophysical nature of the Earth System. Totally ignorant.
Ted ‘Tad’ Patzek has said: “GDPs scale with net mass inflows into the economy to the power of one”. This agrees with the recent literature on ‘decoupling’: which shows that it is a relative and sometimes time limited economic factor. Absolute decoupling: of the type required by everything from the GND to SDGs and Bastani’s ‘ecomodernism’ or ‘ecofuturism’ – of the “fully automated luxury communism” variety – is a fantasy. But so is EVERY political theory currently on offer. Decoupling is a scientific impossibility [For instance, Alexander, Rutherford and Floyd, 2018, Krausmann, et al. 2009, Schandl, et al., 2016, Ward et al., 2016, Giljum et al., 2014, Dittrich, et al., 2011 and Trainer 2016.] The most detailed and impressive meta-analyses have been from Hickel and Kallis [2019], and especially from the European Environmental Bureau [Parrique, et al: 2019] (List courtesy of Ted Trainer).
https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
The sustainability literature is extensive, detailed and unequivocal. Transition away from FF and NE as soon as possible. Which has been resolutely ignored since the 1970s. Replaced by imaginary inexhaustible resources and perpetual motion, frictionless, biophysical source to sink throughputs, waste producing, and depleting and polluting denialist econometrics based on the Cobb-Douglass function – not the LoT. But capital and labour cannot produce energy or exergy – only utilise pre-existing ‘free’ energy …which due to the ‘energy cost of energy’ – is far from free. In fact: it is becoming a hidden economic drag.
This is what Ted ‘Tad’ Patzek – Professor of Petroleum – said back in December. He is not implying ‘Peak Oil’ – which people needlessly get their knickers in a twist about. There is a lot to unpack here: because neither is he implying ‘Peak Diesel’. He is merely stating that cheap easy to produce hydrocarbons are in short supply. We can make more naptha – by breaking long hydrocarbon chains – but it is an extra expense driving up the energy cost of energy and driving down the net exergy – available to do economic work. He is saying tat the EU based its transport strategy – domestic and industrial – on ‘cheap’ abundant diesel …which is no longer cheal or abundant. This, with an awful lot more detail: is the gist of exergy dynamics and how real economies work.
http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-requiem-for-beautiful-earth.html
As regards Brexit: I have already showed the the ‘Final Say: Final Stay’ vote or referendum is TOTALLY irrelevant to the UKs economic future. Politics without exergy economics is pure Spectacular pantomime. The situation is global and underpins every geopolitical and geoeconomic decision – based on pure fantasy. To be clear: that means Russia and China too …everyone is invested in eternal growth which is DEFINITELY not eternal. There can be no turn toward sanity without exergy compliance and LoT anchored – that is educated and intelligent – opinion and polity. If the politicians won’t do this: we will have to …because our actual lives and economic wellbeing are tied to the fantasy decision making process.
What is the alternative: acceptance of the brute physical facts of the Earth System. At the very minimum: that requires the economy be embedded in the biosphere – as a subset of ecology. And that ecological biophysical exergy economy be modeled on mass biophysical source to sink flows – that the current macro-political-economic theory is totally ignorant of. With such a model – which Keen, Ayres, et al have recently developed [2019] – we can take stock and make informed decisions about where we want to go. Based on biophysical reality: not a political fantasy of eternal growth. That road leads to Fascism and the full and rapid collapse of society as we know it. Capital and labour cannot make energy. Capital cannot decouple from labour and make capital from capital with no exterior real world constraints. These are just imaginary – and increasingly deadly – fantasies. “Actual fantasies” – as Dr Tim Morgan titled his latest – that I second Crank is questioning why they are not central to all thought and analysis? Because no one can make sense of the economic and political debate without it.
As Keen sums up:
Labour without energy is a corpse.
Capital without energy is a statue.
On C P Snow’s ‘joke version of LoT:
You cannot win.
You cannot break even.
You cannot quit the game.
To paraphase Arthur Eddington (as quoted by Keen):
If out theories, opinions, and polity continue to defy the LoT – “there is nothing for it but to collapse in deep humiliation”. Or just collapse.
Feeling like ‘quitting the game’ of political comment BigB.
This is the truth of it.
So why are we here discussing all this stuff? Increasingly it seems to serve a purpose that for me is analogous to the daily bowel movement. (Often I feel it could even be in reverse ! ) When so few make even an attempt to respond to the arguments here made, I tend to think about the other things I have got to invest in with what’s left of my life.
For what it’s worth I think that (when you choose to) you make some of the clearest and most readable explication of the situation that I have read anywhere. However, after reading about the 9/11 stuff some fifteen years ago, I realised that most humans believe what they want to in spite of reality. That conviction has only increased year on year since.
See you on the other side,
mog/ crank
That is basically the question I ask myself after getting up and before going to sleep. Not only about discussing “alll this stuff”, but life in general. The simple answers is “Cats”. My Cats keep me alive. Give me reason to keep going.
Pepe Mujica – the previous President of Uruguay – gave a speech years ago in which he stated that the biggest threat to the continuation of mankind is Planned Obsolescence.
While I have always shared his point and did my best to regurgitate it as often as possible, I have now come to the conclusion that Don Quijote made much more sense riding against windmills, than anybody pointing to the raging Gorilla in the house called Planned Obsolescence. I wonder if someone would be up to the task calculating how many precious resources were destroyed by manufacturing cheap shit that does not last longer than six month. If at all.
Corporations were advised in the 50’s by Edward Bernays et al to increase profits by reducing the longevity of products. One of the biggest crimes against humanity, achieved via ‘Public Relations’/advertising.
50 million tons of planned obsolete electronic waste are ‘recycled’ in Ghana every year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mleQVO1Vd1I
That’s why I not convinced of any rebellion/movement that does not emphasize this insanity and demand it to be stopped. Along with militarism and GMO. Frustrating to the point of causing pain in the brain.
NTO1:- Gawd, don’t start me on ‘Planned Obsolescence’ on a Monday morning:-
Suffice to say,
Would you like me to send you a Turkish bucket & mop ?
I should add: Cleaning up from my cats the other day, with a brand new mop,
not purchased by me, (he adds hastily), >>> ‘SNAP’ 🙂
Need I amplify ? 😉
Globally Warmest
Greetings,
Tim
Planned Obsolescence – and the fantasy of 100% recyclable circular economies – are indeed problems.
FWIW: I would rate the collapsing economy and the hidden naptha/diesel crisis as far more cogent. How do all those obsolescent goods get to us – if even only for the last few miles? The entire Green Revolution of industrial agriculture and the entire global logistics and distribution networks are utterly reliant on the naptha distillate. It does not have to run out. Merely by becoming more expensive makes ‘just-in-time’ logistics economically fragile.
What happens when food; hospital supplies; or waste management when deliveries or pick ups are not quite ‘just-in-time’? The obsolescent goods are stuck in the warehouse and production collapses. For good: because the electrified or hydrogen distribution network is a fantasy too.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/alice-friedemann-when-the-trucks-stop-running/
My 30 year old Volvo 740 tank/shed is solid steel and running beautifuly.
It has another 30 years in it!
Yet the authorities want me to scrap it and get something newfangled, plastic, electric with all the attendant carbon, energy and obsolescence or they will charge me thousands a year for keeping it.
Wankers.
I chuffin’ love David Gray! It’s twenty years since ‘White Ladder’ …which would definitely be in my all time top ten. I hope you got your tickets!
I must admit: I know exactly how you feel. I felt exactly the same recently. I won’t give details: but I had a rather nasty fall the other week. No lasting damage: just some stitches and a day in casualty. When I started my recovery at home: I went back online. I read through the comments BTL on several sites – my immediate reaction was to want to go back to the same building and throw myself off again!
I actually detect a change in the general attitude though. It is not just Parliament that has tethered Britain to a failing experiment …the entire world is tethered to a failing experiment. For which: the logic of ignorance is beginning to unravel. The only antidote to ignorance is education. If only self-education!
See you on the other side – or perhaps at David’s reunion tour!
That is what being gaslighted makes you feel.
You are fine its the clever tossers that you/me/we are attracted to like moths to a flame in the ‘media’.
Chin upqnd keep swinging – they are wobbling.
Unfortunately, Kit fails to mention the reality on the ground for ordinary people whose livelihoods depend on remaining in the EU. For example, the motor industry who employ either directly or indirectly over a 250,000 people in the West Midlands alone. Moreover, Sunderland would be an economic wilderness without Nissan. The Aero space industry employs hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have highly technically advanced skills and so on. Let’s not forget all the people from Europe who reside in the U.K. and the millions of Britons who live in Europe. Furthermore, if Kit studies the history of Germany and France between approximately 1870 and 1945, he will notice that there 3 major wars between them which engulfed the U.K. in 2 of them. Does Kit really believe that Blighty can resist the trading blocks of either the USA or China by itself? Does Kit not see that the EU is the UK’ s biggest trading partner. How many trade deals has Liam Fox secured ? To disconnect the economy of the U.K. from the EU would be like trying to sever someone’s arm and then tell them all we well. The EU has many faults but so does every nation on Earth including the USA, China and Russia. Like or not the U.K’s future is inextricably tied to Europe unless of course we want to believe a proven liars promises!
An understandable view from a personal perspective, but I think the concept of “the greater good” is missing here.
In my opinion, the greater good does not depend exclusively upon business, market and money, all of which need to learn their place.
It’s much more than a personal perspective. The notion of society, contrary to Thatchers ideology, does exist. Moreover, the view that mammon in this discussion is not a very important component of society and individuals doesn’t chime with what is happening on the ground. The greater good, in terms of the environment, human liberty and self determination, does indeed play an important part of the discussion. There are many examples which come to mind where the EU has played an important part in enforcing these points. For example, the cleanliness of our beaches etc.
Sorry to rain on your parade John, but I think you’ll find the de-industrialisation of the UK played a greater role in our beeches being a little cleaner today than 40 years ago, however, much of that industrial polllution now washes up on my shores courtesy of China’s Pearl River – dare I even mention glyphosate!
John: Sorry to rain on your parade, too, but respectfully, I’m 100% sure that I know many boat loads more about the REALITY of EUROPE</strong>, Weiwei & Way way better than you could ever hope to comprehend, from my first hand direct experience & witnessing Europe in Law, since 1990 … almost 30 years working on the continent in European Transport Management;
and over 10 years before that in the UK.
I & both my brothers have especially good experience of China, Hong Kong & Wuhan, as well, and therefore we back what Chris Rogers has said to you, all the Weiwei …
The reason i’ll use the word ‘Rubbish’, to rubbish what you state, should quickly become logical & apparent, after you’ve read this link below, from ‘Bivol’, who work with Wikileaks. Do you not recall how the Italian Mafia held the city of Naples to ransom on rubbish collection ? Back in the 90’s I recall visiting the region of Naples/Napoli, both for business and pleasure holidays >>> Positano great, but I’d steer clear of Napoli, if I were you, coz’ there was and still is big money for the official EU mafia guys, from collection of said rubbish, down to delivering BOAT LOADS to BULGARIA now, where we run energy plants with Italian sh8t and now pollute Bulgarian air quality, (which was absolutely perfect in 2004), but since joining the EU in 2007 the pollution from European methods & legislation, has become distinctly visible, without the slightest scientific control methodology >>> the EU and its’ institutions are more than bent & corrupted to the highest levels : –
they are sick … in the head ! Stop deluding yourself !
I came here deliberately in advance of NATO and the EU to watch & record, what I knew in advance would happen, especially to report back to & inform, people like you.
Greetings from Bulgaria,
Eyewitness sincerely,
Tim
https://bivol.bg/en/italian-smugglers-deliver-waste-for-bulgarian-energy-mogul.html
Having lived in Germany for many years studying both British plus German business , which included business law, and working there and other European countries, unfortunately, I don’t agree with your analysis. Both the German speaking countries plus many of the Scandinavian countries have had eco friendly policies decades before the U.K. For example, recycling of household rubbish, eco friendly energy policies, strict environmental laws and so on. Moreover, if you recall in the eighties, when Thatcher was still in power, she refused to adopt more environmental friendly policies, stating it would add additional costs to industry, until forced to do so by the EU. If you have proof that the EU environmental law is corrupt, I suggest you present your evidence to either the British courts or the European courts. To help you decide which environmental laws were broken, here is the “ Environmental law l Environment for Europeans” http://ec.europe.eu > eve >enviro…Moreover, it would appear you have failed to mention the foot and mouth scandals which caused humans to contract Jacobs creutzfeldt disease causing death in many instances because of contaminated meat. I might add the Tory Government at the time refused to acknowledge the meat was contaminated, however, UK meat was banned for a number of years in European countries. So much for the Tories upholding food standards. Lastly, I didn’t know China was in the EU. When did they join?
Would Britain have any more freedom or be any more tuely democratic outside the EU? If “no” then there is only the economic angle to consider.
Yes John, the UK would have a great deal of movement to enhance democracy & freedom within our nation, starting with exiting from both the EU & NATO and pursuing domestic and overseas policies that enhance the condition of of population – of course, we’d also need to have massive constitutional change at home and acknowledge the global ecological disaster we are complicit in creating.
Well Chris by exiting the EU many of the millions of UK citizens who live and work in the EU and are entitled to reciprocal medical treatment plus receiving their UK state pensions, were applicable, would take issue with your notion of enhancing the population. Moreover, the tens of thousands of Erasmus students would also take issue with enhancing their chances. Furthermore, the notion of working under WTO rules or following in the Orange clowns footsteps would not be appealing to all the workers who work for European or Japanese companies. Besides of course both the NHS patients and workers. On the points of the lack of a written constitution and the environment I agree. If you think that the UK could pull out of NATO and there wouldn’t be repercussions, watch or read Mullins ” A Very British Coup”
UK state pensions have all been stolen (these creatures are now saying that we are all going to have to work until the age of 75).
Likewise with healthcare…
https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/health-and-social-care-act-b
We are all being totally, completely and utterly stitched-up.
Most people don’t seem to realise this.
The pensions were stolen by Thatcher when she moved the state pension from the annual wage rise to a price index which was supported by not only the Tories but also the Tory lite and Liberal Party. Moreover, the reduction of and eventual abolition of a government pension top has contributed to the miserable level of U.K. state pensions. Pensions in the majority of Western EU countries are much higher and the the age entry limit for them is much lower. Likewise the NHS has been incrementally dismantled since the introduction of the market knows best dogma from 1979. I agree entirely. The blind mantra of “ let’s get on with it “ by the people who fail to realise that the EU didn’t: sell off the council housing, reduce UK manufacturing from about 30% to less than 10% of GDP, close the mines, shipyards and steelworks. Furthermore, they cannot seem to accept than many of the woes of the U.K. can be laid at the very party which is determined to remove the U.K. from the largest trading block in the world with far higher worker rights, in for example Germany, than the U.K. Like sheep being led to the slaughter.
Nice try John, however, being someone who’s trapped abroad in Hong Kong, given I’m a legal resident, I’m covered by HK’s NHS system, that is, I only pay what the local pays if in employment, and pay zero if on welfare or pension – I trust the same applies in the EU, namely if a person is ‘resident’ with a EU member state they should have access, as with locals, to that particular nations health care system – of course these vary, as they do in Asia.
Now, if you are talking about holiday makers, well funny thing is, each time I travel back to the folks house in Wales I actually require travel insurance, which, strangely, is packaged with medical coverage – oh, and as I spend 52 days in Wales per annum, and contribute a minimum £2.5K in VAT and Airport Taxes to the UK exchequer each year, I bloody well ensure I maintain my NHS coverage in Wales.
Now, do please explain clearly, what’s the difference between me living in Japan, Hong Kong or Germany legally, that is I have either residency rights, or employment contract rights as I’m in different nations legally, rather than being a health tourist, which is another matter.
Now, as I’m no Tory, as I’m no Brexit Party fan and as I believe in decency, its rather simple to negotiate reciprocal medical arrangements with nations with NHS-style health services, the exception obviously being the USA.
Again, please get real, Brit’s work all over the globe, as do German’s and as do French, and this I know as fact as many of the persons I reside with are European’s and all are treated the same in Hong Kong as long as all paper work is in order.
You’re living in a dream world
“Only the economic angle”…………sighs. I refer you to Francis Lee’s comment below:
Is that democracy?
There is never only the economic angle to consider.
A computer could do that, and the rest of us would be unemployed.
EU corruption is at appalling levels, and distancing ourselves from that gives us at least a chance at scrutinizing what our own so-called “representatives” are getting up to.
Understandably, they wouldn’t like that.
The fight is against ‘austerity’ but how to fight austerity?
Just declaring a left wing UK an austerity free zone won’t cut it.
Globalisation has led to three great trading blocs.
This is a fact – there is no getting round it.
Corbyn’s initial pitch was to ” Remain and reform the EU ”
A tall order indeed.
What is required is an international response – not Nationalist one.
What has happened in Catalonia is not a great advert for the benefits of staying in the EU and the treatment of Greece was terrible too.
But it’s no use the left taking its ball home and retreating into some kind of Bennite ( or even lefter paradise ) if you are isolated from the globalised world.
Nations need to trade and co-operate with each other – ask the Chinese.
Corbyn is correct about the EU.
The truth is is that for Corbyn is that this is all about just preserving what the working classes and poor have got left – they have lost a lot at not at the hands of the EU.
Thatcher and her following PMs closed the pits bailed out the banks etc etc.
There was no EU Directive to half council spending or give tax cuts to the already wealthy.
This is all made at home.
The current Brexit crisis was made at home and began within the Tory party ( no Bennites they) attempting to end once and for all ( don’t laugh ) the antipathy to the EU
Unfortunately the other parties including Labour decided to join in an essentially Tory party scrap.
And here we are.
Yep – this is reformism in action (slow ,slow action as usual ) but I don’t see the Revolution heading our way some time soon so it’s all we’ve got at the moment.
Corbyn arrived at a particular juncture in history and he looks like an absolute radical rabid leftie to those who have only known the results of Thatcherism ( step forward Laura and Co )
so that’s how hard this is going to be to reverse all that 40 year long Neo liberal claptrap accepted as the truth – a sort of crap version of the American Dream.
It is the same in the US as it is in the UK.
The only way out of a nightmare is to wake up from your sleep.
In the US they are getting there and in the UK the same.
But this is slow slow Reformism not instant revolution.
We need to be patient with Corbyn et al.
Otherwise the Labour Party will have no Corbyn.
No Corbyn means no left policies.
No left policies – no win.
Even a piecemeal one which could stand as an example in the EU to other left parties.
Man does not live by bread alone. However, for the majority of ordinary people it’s foremost in their minds whether in the UK, USA or Timbuktu. Their priorities are to have enough income in order to have a reasonable life. The notions of revolution only come about when they are squeezed into a corner otherwise the good burghers of Kensington and Chelsea would be at the barricades. Brexit has its origins in the adoption of an ideology from an obscure sect from an economics department in the University of Chicago which was adopted by the billionaires and trillionaires who control the world in order to suppress the gains the proles had made since the Second World War and to advance their interests.The globalisation and division of the world into trading blocks is one of the results. Corbyn understands this very well as does a number of politicians both in the US, the UK and elsewhere in the world. Naturally, it would be impossible to state the obvious, which many in the critical thinking part of humanity know, and remain an important part of political change on the main political stage. Patience is a virtue. Never more so when dealing with the elites which try to maintain their status quo.
Greetings from the most poverty stricken region, of the most poverty stricken nation, where we are presently scything down the last ‘Urwald’ Ancient Old Oak Forest of Orpheus, the last corridor of migration to Europe for Nature …
Done daily by exploited Roma, under Turkish National Concession for the Forests !
There is a pattern to NATO & EU strategy, to which you rest until today,
piously wholly oblivious. I could emphasise and highlight sooo much more, John,
but, you don’t have the time to read that much fact, while others burn and
I have to now live under the thunder of NATZO rolling bombing barrages,
training exercises@Krivo Pole, to boot, every time Trump & NATO wish to pressure
Erdogan into not being a fool: stop fooling yourself & get informed.
My advise to you is to root out the corruption @Home, first …
Change your constitution: starting with the Media, because logically,
we have Murdoch all over Bulgaria & Bulgarians, even in Education.
But I’ll save the Nat. Geo Gem of the Carlyle Group and how they brainwash the kids,
for another day of recounting first hand experience from my wife, in Education here.
Corbyn understands NOTHING ! Change your constitution & Media Laws !
Well put!
No mention here of the goals of our Britannia Unchained government and their hedge fund donors. Why’s that?
‘No mention here of the goals of our Britannia Unchained government and their hedge fund donors. Why’s that?’ – I think the simple answer is because ‘freedoms’ that would ensue from leaving the EU are largely theoretical, akin to ‘freedoms’ enjoyed by consumers in the US health care market.
Put another way in a country that has a pathological hatred of the left can we count on Corbyn (because there is no similar figure in the Labour party) to overcome near insurmountable odds to establish the kind of political culture that is no longer beholding to the banks, corporation and military.
Every time I think the answer might be yes there is yet another disappointment most recently with John McDonnell fawning all over Alaister Campbell suggesting he would welcome Campbell back into the party, and that war crimes in Iraq (and elsewhere) should be swept under the carpet.
And lets not forget with the honourable exception of Chris McDonnell Labour MPs such as Creasy and Phillips have been bending over backwards to support the bogus sex charges against Julian Assange knowing full well this is no more than a spurious mechanism to deliver him to US intelligence services.
The institutionalisation of neoliberalism on both a national and transnational scale is the thing we should be fighting against rather than worrying too much about an electoral system corrupted by power and thus offering few real alternatives, in or out of the EU.
The focus right now needs to be on preventing slippage into the even darker neoliberal dystopia of a Britannia Unchained-Trump Brexit.
In any case, I’m not even clear what it is you’re proposing. If you genuinely believe Britain “has a pathological hatred of the left” and that even a leader of one of the major political parties faces “near insurmountable odds” in changing the political culture, then how do you propose to overcome the “institionalisation of neoliberalism”?
‘how do you propose to overcome the “institionalisation of neoliberalism”?’ – well that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US have been colonised by neoliberals provoking internal wars against the likes of Corbyn and Sanders.
The nature of these struggles tells you that neoliberalism is rather like knotweed, something that is very difficult to eradicate once it has gained root.
I’m going to backtrack a bit on the pathological hatred of the left comment – what I meant was that right across the media and within the most influential power structures (banks, corporations, military, etc) there is a perpetual war against any political entity that threatens the status quo.
On an international level we can see this most clearly each time the US employs full spectrum dominance to crush any nascent political movement that tries to serve the interest of its supporters rather than traditional heirarchies who control wealth, such as Venezuela or any number of Middle Eastern states.
Brexit is a demonstration of the British mastery of messing up with the political maps of other nations. Their expertise spans many centuries.
Europe is extremely lucky to have concluded (or seemingly concluded?) the negotiations, for UK exit from the union, in a couple of years, as the British are capable of dragging this affairs for perhaps 40 years. It is in their DNA: ‘messing up with other nations!’
(
As exmaple of British mastery in dragging feet on critical issues, we can see their art in Chilcot and Bloody Sunday Inquiries. They took years and decades with multiple starts, years and years to conclude. Even after they conclude, a final report would take years and years and years to be published.
Here is a refresher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
)
Sorry Kit, but with all this disconnected commentary you are sadly and completely barking up the wrong tree.
Brexit is a neoliberal takeover of Britain. No ifs, no buts.
Once delivered, they will get their “bonfire of regulations”, casting away workers rights, working hours directives, environmental rights, a public owned health service, and so much more.
Corporation taxes will be slashed. “Brown” immigrants will be imported from the far-flung corners of the Empire, because in their desperation they are happy to accept much lower wages and rights than the local and EU workers.
And don’t forget Trump’s “best trade deal ever” that will swamp Britain with American garbage.
Marxists are deluded if they think they can prevent this and stop the neoliberals after Brexit. They simply cannot. Pompeo has already publicly stated that Corbyn will not be allowed to become PM. Their Israeli friends will not allow it either.
Get real Kit. You raise good points, but they are a distraction to the real issue and you have come to the wrong conclusion. Despite the real problems with the EU, Brexit will end up being the worst thing to impact the average British person since World War 2.
“Brexit is a neoliberal takeover of Britain. No ifs, no buts.”
Are you joking Frank Speaker with that comment, for had you been paying attention in the past 40 years Neo Liberalism has leeched its way into all avenues of life within the UK, including our NHS. And, lest we forget, all this has happened whilst inside the Brussel’s cage, not outside it. Indeed, hate to break it to you, but the EU is now a neoliberal bastion, courtesy of its two most important Treaty revisions, the last being the Lisbon Treaty, which is a neoliberals wet dream of a document.
Of course this war has been going on for decades. Brexit is the final battle. If we lose, that’s it, game over.
Staying in the EU we can fight with our friends the Jillet Jaunes and others across 28 nations for a better EU. The neoliberals want us divided from them, so that we are conquered, divided we are weak. It’s patently obvious what’s going on.
Forgive my ignorance Frank Speaker, but Brussel’s ain’t the flavour of the day with much of Jillet Jaunes, and for that matter, with not with much of the French electorate either, I mean, France did reject the EU Constitution, only to have most of it foisted upon them courtesy of the Lisbon Treaty, which funnily enough, is a neoliberal’s wet dream. And, lets be honest, Macron’s just following instructions, courtesy of said Lisbon Treaty and EMU via our beloved ECB.
The EU is a neo-liberal project and a front for Washington’s rule. Without it you will have direct rule from Washington. This will mean faster asset stripping, de-regulation and reduction in welfare rights (NHS) since the EU has the legacy of the post war welfare state in Europe to slowly eradicate.
I live in France. Whatever fantasies you’re harbouring about the French public wanting out of the EU – forget it. The huge majority of French people think us Brits are nuts to have voted Leave. That is the reality. Probably because they, like us Brits, are spoonfed our ‘news’, and question nothing.
So it is always being said. But the last time that the French had an opportunity to vote on the subject, they rejected the projected European Constitution with such clarity that the National Assembly was forced to change its name before it imposed it.
Our friends, the Gilets Jaunes, are friends because of their politics, not their nationality.
Neither they, nor we, need the EU in order to remain friends.
In fact, if it should turn out that the US’s dreams of eternal world domination fail simply because they are centred in Washington, a much more natural world order could easily take their place because that could be centred in the individual souls of people of all nationalities, and based on nothing more complicated than our mutual humanity.
Congress? Senate? “Supreme” Court??? All infiltrated and corrupt.
Decent Humanity? Well, that is to be found everywhere, even if we do have to dig a bit and insist upon a few basic qualifications…
Maybe you should go and talk to the people of Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Latvia about neoliberalism, to name but a few.
Better to stay in and fight together with them. Divided we fall, we are toast.
We don’t need to travel half way around the globe to witness neoliberalism we have it here, and you ain’t seen nothing yet, wait till the fools vote for these fascists and then you’ll realise
what a great country we live in , rabid Raab right wing fool who doesn’t even know the importance of Dover, ugly Patel who claims British workers are the idlers of the world who work the shortest hours, Lord Snooty, Redwood,Duncan doughnut we how kind he is to the less advantage don’t we, soft shite Johnson a proven liar over and over again and you want us to look at Greece which was saved by the EU, Italy run by the mafia ,Spain and it jailing of the people who wanted independence what has all that to do with the EU, I don’t remember them interfering in this country when they chose to fight an illegal war in Iraq
I’m sure all the Greeks are jolly grateful for being “saved” by the EU.
Quite a puerile response from someone who seems to think you have the answer to everything
I’m sure they were jolly grateful when Brussels parachuted in its bureaucrat colonial governor to rule their country for them. Big round of applause all round.
Maybe the applause was on the same level when Goldman Sachs fiddled the books and made billions out of it along with its leader Papandrious ? in order for them to join the EU
”Brexit is a neoliberal takeover of Britain. No ifs, no buts. Once delivered, they will get their “bonfire of regulations”, casting away workers rights, working hours directives, environmental rights, a public owned health service, and so much more.”
Hmmm, how do you have a neoliberal takeover of something which is already neoliberal?
Here is some workers’ rights from Portugal.
”For Portugal the IMF/EU decided there would be a reduction of 4 public holidays, three days fewer minimal annual paid holidays per year, a 50% reduction in overtime rates, and the end of collective bargaining arrangements. There would be more work-time management, a removal on restrictions on the power to fire workers, the lowering of severance payments on losing ones job, and forced arbitration of labour disputes. In short, Portugese workers must work longer and harder for less money and fewer rights and a higher risk of being sacked. Southern Europe must become” has become ”a cheap labour centre for investment by the northern core economies.” (The Long Depression – Michael Roberts – pp.172/173)
I think we need to coin a new term, how about EU, or Remainer denialism.
Staying in the EU we can fight with our friends the Jillet Jaunes and others across 28 nations for a better EU. The neoliberals want us divided, so that we are easily conquered. Divided we are weak.
Look! Over there!! A flying pig!!!
Yes and I bet you’d be in the front line eh?
One really ought to spell one’s friends’ names correctly…
Speaking from personal experience, it’s the names of people to whom I am completely indifferent that I tend to misspell…
Well, we currently are in the EU. So how’s the “fighting with our friends” going so far? What did we do for the Greeks when they got trashed? Or indeed for the Portuguese, Italians or Irish when they, if to a lesser extent, got trashed?
If we haven’t all started fighting together by now, I don’t think we ever will.
Especially as most of Westminster apparently thinks the EU is wonderful.
There is no such thing as a better EU. Scrap it, and maybe start again, but it certainly cannot be reformed.
Thank you Francis for reminding us of some of the realities of EU rule, as opposed to wishful thinking which prefers to believe the EU’s spin rather than analyse what it actually DOES.
Yes, but how do we know that it would be better outside the EU?
How do we know the weather will be better tomorrow than today?
We don’t. We venture outside, and adapt accordingly.
”Yes, but how do we know that it would be better outside the EU?”
So now we are in the world of conjecture. What if? Maybe? Possibly? Perhaps? As a way of wasting time speculation sure takes some beating. A bit like considerations of eternal life or the existence of God.
However the fact of the matter is not whether or not things would be better or worse in the EU – which in any case is pure speculation – but more to do with sovereignty and honesty.
What is indisputable is the fact that the outcome of the 2016 Referendum ought to have been sacrosanct given that everything was fair and above board; the matter should have been settled there and then. But it wasn’t. Instead there has been a massive and spurious campaign to reverse this outcome based upon essentially nothing. I cannot think of any valid reason why this outcome was ever disputed, other than some people didn’t like the result. Oh, you didn’t like the result? But since when has this been a reason for the annulment of the principle of electoral outcomes. Oh, but the politicians lied to us. Really? When didn’t they lie and make promises that they knew they were not going to keep. That’s what happens in elections. Oh, they – the great unwashed – didn’t know what they were voting for. That’s also what happens in elections and referendums. And btw how come you think that you know what you’re voting for?
So now we have a new type of enfranchisement. This new, trendy, post-modern construction is based not so much on universal suffrage but on conditional suffrage. To wit. The desired outcome will become the actual outcome regardless of the number of votes cast. That is to say, if the desired outcome got the majority of votes, fine, no problem. If the desired outcome did not achieve a majority, also fine, no problem. This in effect this means that voting – i.e., universal suffrage – is no longer a sufficient criterion for the allocation of power and the formulation and implementation of policy which has already been decided elsewhere.
So why bother with elections other than their symbolic value? I wonder what the Remainers think they have done, and what they have really done. This ranks as one of the most unprecedented, reactionary and authoritarian episodes since King Charles I closed down the Short Parlaiment on 4 May 1640. This of course the prelude to the ten year civil war.
“What is indisputable is the fact that the outcome of the 2016 Referendum ought to have been sacrosanct given that everything was fair and above board”
It was NOT FAIR OR ABOVE BOARD.
And the EU told Eire to privatise water, the Italians to tear up their budget, the Spaniards to tear up their cabinet appointments.
I’m not so certain as to whether your aware or not, but Eire is actually in the EU, it’s not Eire v the EU
Yes, if it wasn’t Brussels wouldn’t be throwing its weight around Eire so much.
Water has always been provided as a public utility.
There has been no separate charge for it.
It is provided as part of local services, paid for out of the rates/ poll tax.
Brussels demanded that this be privatised to provide a bonanza for global corporate interests, as it has in countries from Britain to Bolivia, with monopoly pricing, rocketing charges and plummeting investment, another rent seeking gold mine for its chums.
Needless to say, there was zero support for this in Eire.
Britain had environmental legislation (The Clean Air Act), the NHS, gay rights, abolition of the death penalty, and probably equal pay for the sexes long before it joined the EEC (later the EU). Some of its workplace rights exceed EU minimums and were won by decades of struggle led by trade unions. None of these things were conferred by a kindly EU.
….a kindly EU which is not particularly kindly to trade unions or trade unionists.
If we already had them well how can the EU have given them to you, what about the working time directive, maternity payments,Every EU worker has certain minimum rights relating to:
health and safety at work: general rights and obligations, workplaces, work equipment, specific risks and vulnerable workers
equal opportunities for women and men: equal treatment at work, pregnancy, maternity leave, parental leave
protection against discrimination based on sex, race, religion, age, disability and sexual orientation
labour law: part-time work, fixed-term contracts, working hours, employment of young people, informing and consulting employees
Yes, before we joined the EU there had never been any social welfare legislation in the UK. 95% of the population were living in workhouses and most small boys were employed as chimney sweeps. Most women were working down the mines because they were cheaper than pit ponies.
“Marxists are deluded if they think they can prevent neo-liberism and stop the neo-liberals after Brexit”
That’s not what they want… the evident idea is that, yes, Brexit will trigger a brutal and pityless neoliberist hell but conditions would be so dire the slaves will finally revolt. A welcome – to them – byproduct would be the extermination of the the middle class, a sort of Cambodian dynamic, if you wish… only it’s a dream (or nightmare, depend where you sit ) there will not be any revolt and it will only end up in a dystopian two-classes hunger game scenario nevertheless…
Indeed, they are playing a bigger game, as always, where the working people are just pawns on their chess board. They as callous and sociopathic as the neoliberals.
I can’t for the life of me understand why they can’t see it, I keep telling those that voted leave, you don’t understand what you’ve done, just look at all the right wing rabid fascists waiting to get their hand son the working classes.
Sadly this whole farrago has led us to this – the collapse of oligarchic tautologies. They robbed us of of everything – even our ideas of internationalism. The Brexit experience has shown us very clearly that as capitalism is tipping into the abyss we are still not sure what exists beyond the event horizon.
I am quite optimistic.
Farage does not represent a political ideology, he is and always has been a single issue cause “out of Europe” – offering only a protest vote – resonant but largely meaningless. Johnson represents the worst of conservatism – conservative opportunism. MONEY and anything goes to make it.
Unfortunately Corbyn, as principled as he is, is caught in the age old dilemma of the Labour Party – it doesn’t represent the workers and never really has. In the age of infinite value we need a new way to think.
None of the world’s political systems offers a way to address this except perhaps China. I have to say this, their form of socially managed capital production is driving the world’s economy. While the US and the British echo of imperial Empire [represented by Johnson and Trump] represent nothing. Neither too does the capital cronyism of the EU. They all represent the worst of human nature – the gravy train of greed.
Your reference to ‘European Values’ echoes Boris appeal to ‘Great British Values’ in his psyoperative address to the UN (that openly acknowledges terrible outcomes for an unaccountable corporate bio-tech takeover in order to then dismiss them ALL for trust in Britain to ‘Lead the Way’.
I dislike the term brexit – as it smells of psyoperative packaging in terms of a real issue never allowed a voice – much less to happen.
Appeals to identify AGAINST were framed largely in terms of directed mass migrations and a few token targets but never allowed to address in any clarity or depth the managed nature of systems of corporate law that transfer power from human relationships to systemic dictate behind a face of correctnesses to ‘values’ that are crafted to usurp shared value with a targeted tickbox in which the ‘rules or algorithms can be changed by faceless bureaucracy without any process of informed communication and consent.
Top down ‘organisations’ fronting in the packaging of righteous concern set against targeted ‘evils’ make the science to then ‘incentivise’ conformity and compliance under assertions taken out of the realm of right to dispute or dissent.
Increasingly the formerly political sphere of influence on decisions is rendered as a means of influence and indeed control of narrative identity set in polarised and largely paralysed voicelessness.
Regardless Britain or rather its fragmented parts, is run under EU or direct US/IS terms and conditions – or indeed the reconfiguring of both towards a global system of controls – no other perspective is allowed a voice.
An IoT programmed to run energy and behavioural surveillance and control – in a frame of guilted human self-hatred zealously justifying the enforcement of a top down austerity as population control.
The ‘failure’ of much that is being run – including EU – is in fact its success – to the mind of possession and control.
I generally write to illuminate the mindset out of which we are generally unaware – having identified in its structure as our security or protection from feared evils that our surface consciousness sets us against.
There is another view that comes to me as I pause – and that is not to sacrifice life and joy in life in attempt to maintain or sustain lifeless illusions that are in a sense set up to bait exactly such a self-denial. As long as we attend to political circus as if it has any intention or capacity to give answers it is designed to hide – then we are not uncovering the problem where it is – and the answer right there alongside it.
Putting problems ‘out there’ as a way of buying time for sustainability of illusions becomes a way of ‘doing time’ in a prison of our own making – but from the very outset – made unconsciously and protected against exposure.
Be careful what you wish for – because the wish for magical escape from our own relational issues is the wish to make illusions real – and reality disappear. True willingness is a ‘mystery’ or grace in that it rises as life within and through us – to receive, align or open in a new perspective. This is very very simple – but the mind is very very complex in its ability to misdirect and short-circuit the living will with mind-rules.
Love can be given to fear and control but is a false possession and thus a dispossession – because there is no real extension, sharing or increase. Where we give energy of attention is where we determine value – by act – regardless the masking of its packaging.
Relationship and communication are the very basis of life and of our potential human fulfilment.
Possession that begets control is an expression of the fear of its loss – MADE REAL by reaction as if already true. It is a mind-capture that has run its course as we lose our heart-connected mind to fear given power. Globally.
The true nature that fear would usurp is a willing participation that uncovers and arrives at decision in a way that honours the whole and everyone’s part or place in the whole. This means owning our fear instead of seeking to push it out onto others – and attacking it there. But it does not mean taking on the guilts or hates of others as our personal responsibility.
A willingness to learn cannot really fail. It can forget however, forget willingness in a misinterpretation of results. Misidentification is a most profound oversight from which all else may seem logically determined and necessary.
Not one of your more insightful articles.
Tony Benn did indeed oppose membership of the EEC/EU as in general does his acolyte Jeremy Corbyn but you are forgetting that they were/are both democrats and so are bound by their party’s majority position particularly when it is not divided.
Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing. he is not on the fence but his realises the division in the party, across other parties and in the country on the issue of EU membership. Corbyn is steering a course in constantly changing seas to try and reach the best compromise attainable.
The problems of the EU are problems of Neoliberalism. Leaving or staying in the EU does not address these problems but just changes their flavour.
There is no good prospect in the Brexit position but more and different phases of Neoliberalism particularly of the Ameropathic variety.
We were always only half-in the EEC/EU and when all this withdrawal malarkey is over (it will never actually be over) or at least reduced from a haemorrhage a to a festering wound we will be half-out.
It is nevertheless convincingly arguable that Corbyn should not be aiming at “the best compromise attainable”, but at the uncompromisingly best solution attainable.
As Kit rightly states, a lot of Corbyn’s support comes from grass-rooters who no longer have the slightest interest in compromise, so if Corbyn does, indeed, know exactly what he is doing, then he also realizes that the malarkey of which you speak has reached such farcical levels that compromise with it would be a betrayal of human evolution itself.
Wasn’t compromise what the Syriza supporters wanted in Greece – only to find out that they were playing against utterly ruthless thugs who were just going to take it all anyway? The problem in the class war is that the ruled class look for compromise while the ruling class are always playing to win.
Exactly.
Our corrupt establishment enemies are not interested in compromise, so it would be very naive of us to oppose them with compromise.
Bingo.
Psy. Yes but i’ll add:
I’m sorry that most can’t see clearly that the Brexit referendum was set up over a long period of time.
Or that Starmer has been doing the job he was appointed to do by the leadership – that’s Corbyn (for these who believe that we have a presidential system!).
They are a team. Get over it. Keir will one day be leader if he wants it and is chosen by the members. Or until he is ready to be vilified and certainly not until the hard brexit is killed.
It was them that got a ‘Meaningful Vote’ that actually required May to construct a WA to then vote on and reject, instead of letting the clock run out on A50 on 29th March which was the PLAN.
Its all about imperialism!
Just as Lenin outlined in his little pamphlet, imperialism, now over a hundred years old
In terms of imperialism we’ve actually as far as the west is concerned moved towards ultra imperialism
The G7, WTO,EU,IMF, World Bank,OECD, all vectors for the division of the global economy driving profit and control to the traditional centres of imperial power
Leaving the EU is a big nothing burger as British imperialism is simply going through a transformative phase to the next chapter of its journey as one of the for most and most successful imperial powers
is it not true the EU gives some employment rights we would not have had, the working time directive, which this country opposed for years giving everyone covered by it 28 days holiday a year, that will certainly go if we leave, nationalised utilities in most EU countries, zero hour contracts very rare in EU countries, shorter working week . better pensions, better consumer protection ,rented accommodation better protected by law, I dread to think of whats ahead of us in this shithole if Johnson, ugly Patel , the hard right idiot Raab , Redwood, Duncan Doughnut , etc get re-elected, it will be a fascist paradise, next to warmongering yanky land we have one of the lowest employment laws in modern western society, the shops must be open 24/7 here how come the manage without that in most European countries, HGV’s not allowed to run over the weekend apart from motorways or A roads, we can’t have that, again everything has to be 24/7, The EU may not be perfect, but until I see a government that’s going to be fair to its population, I’ll stick with the EU.
Completely agree, wouldn’t trust the blood thirsty Tories with my children’s future or my children’s mental health. Wouldn’t trust the Tories not to turn the U.K. into a place not fit for human habitation.
In a word they are liars, criminals financial and otherwise, they are ruthless sociopaths and if a mental health check was done on potential politicians in positions for high office they would almost without exception be banned from assuming high office. On this I have absolutely no doubt.
Absolutely correct.
Something they share 100% with Labour and the Liberals, who kept Cameron in power for 5 years.
So if we have been in the EU, why don’t we have all these lovely EU conditions?
Thatcher scuppered my country, and Major and Blair finished the job.
All inside the EU. Now the EU is an overblown, inefficient expense on all European taxpayers. It’s like a corporation that has acquired too many subsidiary companies, and needs to be stripped of some or broken up completely.
British voters put Thatcher in with her policies; we have no way of changing EU policies when we are 1 of 28.
I suggest you go and talk to France’s SMIC population about the wondrous rights they enjoy in the EU.
Or the 90% of Greek doctors who are currently unemployed and working as unpaid volunteers, asking for the odd donation of a bag of spuds so they can scratch a living.
Or the 50% of unemployed 16-24 year olds in Italy, Greece, Spain, ferreting around in dustbins for something to eat.
Yep, they sure are grateful for all those wondrous EU rights.
It is in plain sight that to be anti-democratic is ‘really’ being democratic. The country voted to leave the eu and in the 3 and half years since all we have had is remain shennanigans to stay put. There is no democracy if the losers do not accept the result of a legitimate result. The Supreme Court is anti- democratic. Parliament is anti-democratic. Remainers are anti-democratic. The EU is anti-democratic.
Well said Kit
It wasn’t a legitimate result though was it ? it wasn’t legally binding, otherwise there would have been prosecutions of certain individuals as the judge said, but as it was only advisory, there was nothing he could do, as the government could have ignored the result had it wished.
No it couldn’t. The government and opposition agreed to honour the result beforehand and fought an election still promising to honour the result. They lied.
The government under soft asre May and this Oaf swore no Tory government or Prime Minister would ever put the border down the Irish sea , it didn’t stop them doing it.
Perhaps General Election results are “only advisory” and can be casually ignored from now on.
I think you may be confused, General election is entirety different from are referendum, a referendum is only advisory, if you believe politicians will do what they say they will do, then it#s no surprise to me we find ourselves where we are .
The referendum was specifically NOT advisory. The ballot stated plainly that the govt would implement the majority decision.
No the referendum was advisory , unless you wish to ignore the ruling of the courts.
No, I expect them to lie through their teeth.
That’s why they need to be held to their commitments.
Like the commitment of all parties to accept the referendum result.
Spoken like a true Eurocrat!
I wonder if writers like Kit read any of the comments under these articles (?)
There have been several dozen attempts to broaden discussion of (in this instance) Brexit to consider the drivers of global change in these times- those being primarily economic stagnation and contraction brought on by dwindling returns from extraction industries. It is really meaningless to write about competing visions of political structure and international organisation without – as a starting point – an understanding of why the economy has stopped growing, why stock markets are being rigged and why central banks are printing money with abandon. Kit (for lack of alternative clarification) seems to continue with the false narrative that austerity is straight forwardly a response to the financial collapse – which itself was the result of financial corruption run riot. Several on here have gone to some lengths to point out how that argument is, at best, partial. It is as if those comments were never made though.
The EU is what it says on the tin : a supranational group of gangster capitalist states out for their own advantage. But what is the point of joining in with the Remainer bashing if you have no alternative vision that you lay on the table? Remainers are (many of them) concerned about the same things as Leavers: falling living standards, social breakdown, political extremism, war and violence, a rising fascism. There is nothing the convinces me that either the idealistic nationalist separatists or the hopium smoking ‘socialists’ have any more re-assuring ideas than the EU club weilding technocrats of Brussels.
The drivers of the problems currently emerging lie beyond ‘Brexit’ or Catalan independence and if those drivers are ignored then anyone writing about these more local issues by taking sides is only adding fuel to a fire of social antagonism.
Have a platform ? Be a light bearer.
I read on with interest crank,but no alternative did I find,not even in the barest outline!
@Crank: “economic stagnation and contraction brought on by dwindling returns from extraction industries.”
That’s a good starting point. After WW2 Europe saw a great activity and expansion brought about by increasing resources from the rebuilding industries (no longer diverted to war effort).
In this respect I expect to see good developments in postwar Syria: they have 200 Billion worth of rebuilding opportunities ahead of them — and are in a strong position to fight off aid from the EU$A.
Syria – and no other country can be isolated or breach compliance with the Laws of Thermodynamics. The situation is one of global contraction: and any rebuilding will have to be set within the self-organised global economic nexus. That is particularly true for trade and export policies.
Even if Russia, China, Iran, and heaven forbid Turkey – who stripped the country of industry – are the major players …there is still a dollar interface to consider. It does not have to be in a primary transaction. There is pretty much no way for a value chain to be totally dollar free. A dollar, if you recall that is currently collapsing in value.
Notwithstanding this: when the dollar next collapses – that is NOW – the entire world economy will collapse. Not necessarily totally: but that simply cannot be ruled out by hope either. It is within this framework: Syria will be looking to rebuild. Its own oil sources are relatively poor – the ones that they still have access too. Notwithstanding that there may be gas hydrocarbons in the Levant Basin – that Israel will have its eye on – who is going to be buying?
The entire underlying cause of the current slump is not monetary – that is correlated; but not causal – is biophysical. Not just of energy supplies: but across the board of renewable and non-renewable resources. A trap Syria cannot break out of by selling hydrocarbons and manufacturing in a biophysically depressed global market.
This is Crank’s point: when you look at the Earth System as a biophysical system – you have to draw a totally different set of conclusions. There is no Business As Usual scenario where Syria can just rebuild. That world is gone. That world never existed.
So my statements will be refuted when Syria rebuilds – as it will. Am I contradicting myself? No: not at all. Debts will be raised; loans will be made; materials will be purchased; Syria will be rebuilt …on a wholly imaginary paradigm divorced from reality. Debts will be owed on a fantasy future of imaginary exponential increase. Debts that will become an increasing economic burden. Just as hydrocarbons and biophysical mass flows will become an economic burden to a cancer economy: binging on false hypotheses of eternal growth.
Collapse will be deferred to a point in the future. Which will be correlated to the total collapse of society. Joe Tainter calls this the “energy complexity spiral”. We can no longer seek simple solutions: due to the complexity of the problems of a self-organised networked global economy. With more and more technologically complex solutions – the knock on effect is more problems that require more complex solutions – and more and more energy embodied and invested. Which leads to ‘normal accidents’ – like Deepwater Horizon.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-10-03/drilling-down-tainter-and-patzek-tell-energy-complexity-story/
We are stuck with a ‘viscous circle assumptiveness’ that we cannot break until we have an open honest and factual adult conversation about energy. Which is what Tainter, Patzek, Crank and I are calling for – among many, many others. It’s not like our lives depend on it or anything, is it?
Two things the Remainers can never do again. They can never call themselves democrats, even if their attempts to thwart Brexit fail; and they can never complain if a future vote overturned is their own.
They’ve overthrown democracy and the establishment won’t just hand it back. Stealing our vote won’t end here, it’s just beginning.
Not much to add really, other than this is a bizarre, reverse example of rats jumping onto a sinking ship. No doubt we will now get the usual Labour party suspects posting and telling us ‘what is your alternative’ as though that definitively settles the argument. My reply would be ‘what is your alternative’? It looks like yet another Labour sell out along with Ramsay MacDonald, the ineffable Tony Blair, and the gutless Jeremy Corbyn.
As for the broader picture, the UK and Europe is an occupied zone, politically, economically, and ideologically, ruled over by vasssal leaderships and under the the American’s thumb. Not difficult to understand I would have thought.
Stop calling it EU army which government can deny. It is EU Defefence Union which is very much going ahead and complete silence about it from our MPs and media.
Brexit or any version or non-version of it is way beyond my fathoming. I just speak within my very limited range. Re Gilets Jaunes:
Don’t believe anything in the media unless clear evidence is shown.
Par exemple, je crois pas cette image. Marche des mutilés? Yeah, right.
https://actu.orange.fr/france/gilets-jaunes-une-marche-des-mutiles-contre-les-lbd-magic-CNT000001ga0FW.html
Here’s moulage of a black eye
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/177962622749941101/?nic=1
The fact injuries can be faked is – obviously – not evidence that any given injury has been faked. Additional evidence for that is required.
For example, there are images from certain highly convenient US ‘terrorist’ events that strongly imply fakery of some injuries (unconvincing blood, victims running on allegedly ‘dislocated’ ankles, tourniquets on obviously intact limbs etc). And additionally there is the clear motive for such fakery in that the events advance the imperial fear/war agenda.
None of this applies here.
1. Given that the western media virtually ignores the Gilets Jaunes protests b/c they entirely undermine the prevailing narratives, there is obviously no motive to fake injuries.
2. The injuries appear entirely consistent with the narrative of how they occurred.
We see no evidence of them being inflicted in situ and you’d think they’d be able to catch one. “March of the mutilated” seems a very odd kind of phenomenon and I think all the injuries are perfectly consistent with moulage.
This is interesting. A gilet jaune is deliberately wearing a fake injury to illustrate the gravity of injuries in protest. OMG! It’s layer upon layer.
https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/news-photo/gilet-jaune-protester-wearing-fake-injuries-using-makeup-to-news-photo/1127344001
Can you point to an image on this page that you think favours “real” over “moulage”?
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/gilets-jaunes-macrons-state-sanctioned-violence-against-civilians-is-condemned-by-doctors-human-rights-groups/
Why does the camera not follow the grenade to the person it’s aimed at? Why the delay?
https://youtu.be/JbwVwddOx2o
https://youtu.be/jryQKjRbCDU
Give me a break. Seems to be carrying on perfectly fine, despite deep hole in cheek, no?
On the page above about one guy we’re told, “He suffered a fractured jaw, 3 upper teeth were torn out and his lower teeth were displaced.” The image doesn’t indicate that.
I’m so sick of fakery and even more sick of having to argue the case for it over and over and over again.
I’ve posted another response but it’s awaiting moderation. To add to that post:
The war journalist I refer to, Florent Marcie, reminds me of Antony Loyd. In their very early 20s, they went off to war zones as photographers, Marcie to Romania and Loyd to Bosnia (Loyd did the phony New Statesman Shamima Begum story where he allegedly spoke with her in northern Syria – https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2019/02/anthony-loyd-two-weeks-syria-trail-shamima-begum). Who supported them in all these warzone places? I’d say they were both employed by intelligence.
Hypothetically, if injuries are shown in such a way it’s impossible to tell one way or the other, the hypothesis of “real” has no more weight than “fake”. A priori, we know we are lied to constantly. You need evidence either way, you don’t take the media story as some kind of default. And if injuries are shown in such a way it’s impossible to tell I favour fake. If they’re real I’d think they’d show them properly.
To my mind, unless there is compelling evidence of injury, I don’t believe it. Do you think that’s unreasonable?
I watched some of the video posted by commenter, Sile, that I received in a notification email, however, I can’t find the comment here. Sile posted a documentary on the gilets jaunes and said “no make-up in any sense of the word”. In the bits I skipped through I saw no compelling evidence of injury. What I did notice was this. There is a blond woman interviewed right at 25 seconds in. She speaks for a few seconds and the video is cut. When we next see her after the cut there are tears on her face. I don’t believe those tears. Do you think that’s unreasonable? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MjuoDpKLfI
And the point is ?
If your question is to me, Gerry, I’m responding to mention of serious injuries to gilets jaunes in the article.
Perhaps they just imagined their missing eyes and limbs and broken bones. All a figment of their imagination.
Gaza? 😀
Where are the missing eyes, limbs and broken bones? Does an eye-patch to you mean missing eye? Is that all the purported evidence you require to believe in a missing eye? You don’t think that the media might fake a missing or damaged eye with an eye-patch?
Mark, on principle, I don’t believe what the media tell me unless they provide clear evidence, especially when the evidence they purport is questionable.
Do you have a problem with that principle? Do you yourself have any tool or principle in place that you use to judge what you are told by the media?
Why are people so slow to realise that the power elite target us according to WHERE OUR SYMPATHIES LIE. They PLAY TO IT. So they will infiltrate the gilets jaunes and CONTROL THEIR STORY, making us believe that the police are harming them – that isn’t to say the police don’t but they always like to control the story so when they don’t present what I consider to be evidence of harm I don’t believe it. Is that so difficult to comprehend?
Documentary on the Gilet Jaunes – No make-up in any sense of the word – thanks very much
Apols, here is the link…
Granted the EU is an imperfect organisation but does part of the remedy not lie in the people elected to the European Parliament?
As valid as your criticism of the current system may be, it is completely silent on what follows for England and Wales. Neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland want to leave. Are they to be forced out by the English and what does that say about democratic choice?
What are the post exit policies for England and Wales? The Bank of England predicts a 6-9 % drop in the British GDP. What are the plans to compensate the huge number of people that will be severely affected?
Leaving the EU may be a fine gesture for England and Wales, but to a foreigner like myself it seems a half thought out option, if that. Millions will suffer and I have to read a single argument that is aimed at them.
Face reality. England is a fading entity trying to recapture past glories that were at the expense of others anyway. Boris has no real plan B and if he eventually gets his wish the day will surely come when the English regret their vain effort to recapture past glory.
”Granted the EU is an imperfect organisation …” Wow. That must be the political understatement of all time!
It’s the narrative of all self-declared left-leaning, liberal, green, Guardian reading middle-class remain voters who then present a tedious, list of the benefits of staying, an imagined list of the dangers of leaving and the psuedo-religious belief that “we can change it from within”.
So true and no man is an island. Not even Great or should I say Little Britain
“…… does part of the remedy not lie in the people elected to the European Parliament?”
One has to ask if you actually understand the role and powers of the European Parliament. You do realise that it has even less power than the House of Lords? That it can criticise and delay but is ultimately impotent as only the Commission actually decides?
Tell that to the elected governments of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
“England is a fading entity”
I think England faded decades ago and has been treading water in delusional sewage ever since.
Scotland and London voted Remain. Perhaps they could join together and form a new country and retain all the myriad blessings of rule from Brussels.
They could call it “Scotdon”, or “Lonland.”
A “6-9% drop in GDP” is pretty small beer by Project Fear standards. We were previously promised the End of Civilisation, 50 million unemployed, no food, water, medicine or football, plagues of locusts and all the rivers turning to blood.
Things are looking up.
This article will be deleted on the 31st October when UK will be on the road to freedom.
You sound like the Scottish undertaker in Dads Army. “We’re all doomed”.
There are two sides to this whole Brexit business. I voted LEAVE in 2016 for many of the reasons you outline, but if there were a vote tomorrow I would not be so short-sighted and dim.
First thought: CUI BONO. Look at the driving protagonists for LEAVE and follow the money which funded their campaigning. Nothing to do with anything except a couple of small specific communities in the dodgy banking business. Johnson is a great orator but says next to nothing. Yesterday in the Commons reminded me of Blair’s rhetoric to go to war in Iraq – but Johnson is not as smart as Blair.
Second thought: IRELAND. Anyone sane who had spent even a couple of days in N. Ireland during the troubles would want to destabilise the politics on the island of Ireland in such a crass naive fashion as Johnson.
Third thought: BUSINESS. If we are to reach a mutually workable business relationship with the EU post-Brexit, we will have to comply with the EU’s laid down practices – as we have to with the USA, China, and other nations. That will place us exactly where we started.
Fourth thought: PLANNING for Brexit. For all the bluster, HM Government is hopelessly unorganised for the impact of Brexit. Businesses who do regular trips to/from the EU are not prepared. A company like the one which employs me will have serious extra amounts of import/export paperwork and expense. We have not used ATA carnets for doing business in France and Germany for decades, and they will cost us hundreds of pounds for each two or three day job – this extra outgoing makes the work unprofitable.
Fifth thought: BORDERS. I came through Gatwick last weekend and the passport-checking dept was a farce of sloppiness. There was next to no-one around in Customs.
I beg to differ, your argument says otherwise.
Which just goes to show how little you know. You never see them coming until you get diverted into a little room by a scruffy old bloke with a briefcase….which is as it should be.
Re. Customs at UK airports. Sometimes it is incorrect to assume another person knows little.
I travel regularly with professional items of high value which are covered by ATA carnets when I am not travelling to a EU country. Finding someone to stamp the export form at, say, Stansted is quite a rigmarole especially out of weekday working hours. You normally have to find an internal phone before security to track someone down in Arrivals and you cannot go there because it is airside, so you wait, and wait.
Sometimes upon return to the UK out of normal office hours, you go through the RED channel and there is no-one there except a Border Authority official if you are lucky. But they don’t know what to do with a carnet. If you are less lucky you pick up a courtesy phone and speak to a lady in Birmingham.
The only major Customs activity tends to focus on tipoffs that HMRC hears about in respect of illegal imports such as drugs. As our crossborder communications with EU authorities become curtained by Brexit, these tipoffs will perforce diminish because of cessation of treaties and data protection laws.
My point is that HMRC as of today has a regime which is totally inadequate for the vastly increased volume of import/export paperwork from crossborder business post-Brexit. Similar deficiency for traders and truck-drivers many of whom have never seen a carnet.
Brexit has been put together by dodgy bankers, dodgy politicians and media headline writers. Lots of rabble-rousing rhetoric but zero understanding of the implications for millions of people who go back and forth across the borders with the EU.
Every government since old Wilsons has done its utmost to outdo the last one in its service to business and you’re worried about carnets? You claim Brexit is a right-wing conspiracy yet worry about the gears of business. I’m sure they’ll splash a bit of oil where it’s needed.
ok. However, this is just one specific instance of the unhealthy combination of lobbying, rhetoric, media lobbying and unpreparedness. I don’t see Brexit as a right-wing conspiracy. Plenty of right-wingers as well as left-wingers are paralysed in disbelief at the crazy self-harming Brexit has reduced the UK to. Brexit is almost entirely being driven by right-wingers, but only a faction. Look at the ERG, then look at the Conservative Party and its history. The ERG only represents a small minority of the Tory Party, yet the traction they have lobbied together has been very effective.
We can live with carnets as we do when doing work in the USA, Canada, Norway, Japan, etc.. However it is a self-harming waste of time and money when we have enjoyed EU freedoms for decades.
While Brexit in/out arguments seem to fascinate the Brits, all the people (yes, all) with whom I have connections throughout the world whether in business, family or friendships believe we are a bunch of bloody fools to take Johnson, Gove, Bill Cash and Farage seriously. It is embarrassing.
Get it right. It’s “We’re all DOOOOOHMMMMED!”
And just for completeness, it was Private Frazer, played by the inimitable John Laurie.
Agree with much of what Kit says, but he fails to point out that BoJo set his ‘deal’ up to fail because it was even more neoliberal than May’s plans. My understanding: single market rules to stay in place (minimal industry policies, no nationalisation of entire industries); EU labour and environmental standards not guaranteed; the option for anti-immigrant policies to be beefed up.
Corbyn, as usual, faced a dilemma: remaining in the EU would effectively ban many of his stronger policies, and would betray large numbers of Labour voters. But B0Jo’s plan would preserve many of the Tories’ neoliberal objectives.
Relax Brits. The coming next election should throw up a more representative selection of MPs.
If the result is 50-50 for Brexit they can call a binding referendum where 51% decides.
All this can be done within 6 months.
Seriously………we can’t. If we want to mend fences we need to leave, anything else will fester on for decades.
I think that the majority of comments from people on this site would not be allowed on The Guardian website as they would have been either ignored or blacklisted, The official guardian
newspaper is very much pro EU and although you may hear the odd negative comment
the majority will always promote the values of the EU.
The ability of the off-guardian is to give a view point that is hardly seen in the MSM so I suggest that many of you who really want to make a difference put your viewpoints to the Guardian newspaper and see whether or not they get aired. I very much doubt it. At least with the off-guardian you actually get a broader persepctive of the players involved in the brexitt debacle.
I tried putting my viewpoint in the Guardian Dorothy and got banned, ostensibly for starting flamewars, in reality for arguing from a leave perspective against three people working together.
life is too short to answer posts and engage in “debate“ BTL in the graun. i figured that out after my first ban. drop and run. you can’t debate with 99% of graun readers. nobody taught them the value of a well-rounded conversation at school. in fact, since about 1985 nobody taught anyone anything useful at school. the graun is a comic unworthy of our time and effort.
funny that you think “putting our viewpoints to the guardian” will “make a difference”. how so, one might ask?
It’s going to fester on for decades in or out. The tories have managed to re-invigorate the spirit of Thatcher in splitting the country down the middle …this time it’s between people who are ardent remainers and ardent leavers who aren’t seeing eye to eye anytime soon. I’m definitely no expert, but I guarantee brexit is all about money and the making of it by an elite few. The country and the people in it don’t matter one jot to the folk pushing this on either side at a political level, the rest of us are being played like out of tune violins.
BoJo is taking BREXIT to election and will force the issue via referendum. The laggard remain cohort don’t realize the macro-financial mess that the UK is mired in vis-a-vis Debt-to-GDP if forced into Brussels bankrupted superstructure that Goldman Sachs built to imprison all in the financial union.
Brussels is a flawed governance & governing superstructure that is slated for bankruptcy Chapter 11 as soon a Deutsch Bank implodes.
Idiots carping on about remaining in the EU superstructure don’t seem to understand that Italy, Greece, & Spain will sink the UK financially until the Queen is sitting in the necropolis.
BoJo will ultimately succeed in forcing BREXIT.
MOU
Actually, a high flying f**k is given to all that have to work to make a living. Everywhere. This audacity to play out incompetence on the National ham theater stage speaks of total contempt on behalf of those who promised to prevent the further deterioration of living conditions for the masses.
Pure cynicism. With glee is precious time burned as if there is no tomorrow. Well, not in the sense that there is no tomorrow. What it means is, that those sitting at the rudder of a sinking ship are commanding its passengers to get from one side to the other in order to stabilize the listing wreck.
In a conversation with my Mom today – she is 87 – I realized that there were never any effective checks and balances when it came to the incompetency of those who proclaimed loudly to be skilled enough to lead an entire Nation in cahoots with a bunch of pretenders – never exceeding the common sense of the working man in the street. Worse. Pathetic men and women of many words, but no action whatsoever to elevate the standard of living for all humans on Earth – as that is what it takes to elevate the quality of life on this planet. Nobody can be left out. And without any consequences they are using the revolving doors between parliaments and corporate headquarters.
The heisters of the EU (and their brethren across the Atlantic ocean) are criminally insane. They are all above the law – their remaining national jurisdiction and certainly EU ‘justice’ – and the masses, the many are simply left to do or die. Better ‘die’, as there are too many useless eaters around in the forst place. Pesky, demanding of the lowest living standards hoodlums that keep whining about free stuff. Dastard communists and socialists, ungrateful scum. Protesting against important restructuring policies that serve the wellbeing of those who dish out austerity measures.
You just wait for the announcements to make the UK great again by increasing military spending and to keep the sinking ship safe from hostile takeovers, there will be tripling down on total surveillance that will only fail when Prince Andrew is shagging a twelve year old girl on a visit to a delapidated orphanage in East London.
Somebody else mentioned it somewhere else. What is needed are real Nürnberg trials, not the fake Kangaroo show after the artificially created WW II. No, this time there must be trials for crimes against humanity of which most EU leaders and the ruling twats in the UK are guilty. Throwing the people one has sworn to serve before the proverbial bus in order to enrich oneself with lucrative follow up engagements must end in life without parole.
And Corbyn. What a disgrace to social democracy. A Johnson is predictably a self absorbed upper class twat, but a ‘Labor’ party leader? Does it get any more Orwellian than that? Labor – like “Slavery is making Dreams come true” and Leader – like “I’ll lead you anywhere I am told to as long as I am not called anti-semitic”?
Extinction rebellion my behind. What is needed is a rebellion against patheticness married with corruption and nepotism. And by all means: include the lawfulness of planned obsolescence in the list of crimes against humanity. Without the sanctioning of the pathetic and corrupt political ‘leaders’, the planet would not be a giant landfill.
Lock ’em all up and install ‘Direct Democracy’. Saves the tax payers a shitload of money to not pay the wages for incompetent political and bureaucratic actors and actresses. And reduces the high likelihood of a nuclear conflagration, as it is never the people themselves that are eager to lose everything in a war.
real Nürnberg trials, not the fake Kangaroo show after the artificially created WW II
wow, that’s a can of worms that a lot of people, even (or especially?) on the supposed left, don’t want to open.
It will be necessary to open that can. Or box. It contains the reasons for our demise. As long as people live in denial as to the real causes of humanity’s failure to change course, it will do itself in. And any illusions about being able to adjust will burst like the soap bubbles they are.
Anybody aware of what happened in Fukushima during the last Typhoon Hagibis?
nottheonly1, +10. Best post of the day.
I do wish all the Brussels Groupies would try to look objectively at their beloved EU for once, and where it is going.
In the 1970s, the EEC made some kind of sense. 6 countries, Italy excepted, which were fairly civilised and well governed and had a great deal in common. Germany had some progressive legislation about power sharing, worker participation, and so on. You could even argue that a common currency had some merits.
Now it is a monstrosity of 28 (27?) (30?) countries, with third world mafia states like Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania up for membership shortly. Who next? Ukraine? Georgia? Turkey? All have been proposed for membership, the first 2 to further NATO objectives and annoy Russia. Cameron said he was going to “pave the way between Ankara and Brussels.” Maybe this isn’t on the cards now that Erdogan has been a bit impudent towards his US masters, but in a few years time? Why not? With an EU land border with Syria, Iraq, and Iran. What could possibly go wrong?
There don’t seem to be any limits to EU expansion. There have been proposals to bring in countries in North Africa, like Morocco and Tunisia. Given enough time, probably even Outer Mongolia isn’t off limits.
Internally and structurally, all the impetus is towards further centralisation and integration, centralised fiscal policies and taxation, an EU army and EU foreign policy. A real EU Superstate. Despite the very real democratic deficit that is becoming more and more pronounced with many countries (or large sections of their populations) in open revolt.
Greece is a bankrupt, failed state. With over 50% youth unemployment, a collapsed health service and society. Austerity and grinding poverty. Much the same could be said for Italy, Spain, Portugal. The Baltic states are deindustrialised, depopulated backwaters. Most of eastern Europe is little better. Romania and Bulgaria are IMF fiefdoms.
Brussels has appointed what are basically bureaucrat colonial governors to rule over Greece and Italy and impose vicious austerity policies. Brussels simply vetoed the Italian budget and Spanish cabinet appointments. It instructed Eire to privatise water, although there was zero support for privatisation.
The Italian and German banking systems are functionally bankrupt and on the verge of collapse.
The whole continent is increasingly turbulent and unstable. It is becoming ungovernable. Public support for the elites and the systems that sustain them is dwindling away rapidly. This applies equally to countries like France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Sweden. And this can only get worse.
The EU increasingly resembles the old USSR shortly before its collapse.
Even rats have the sense to leave sinking ships. Are we more stupid than the rodents?
That is about the most factually correct description of the EU which I have read among the mountains of remainer tripe. Well said sir.
Yes, but, but, but “WE CAN CHANGE IT FROM WITHIN” scream the mad Blairite liberals.
Emmanuel Macron admitted in an interview 18 months ago that the French would “probably” vote to leave the EU, were they granted a similar referendum. Naturally he won’t give them one.
Why not? He can just ignore it, like the last referendum in France which went against the EU.
It was needed to facilitate the Common Agricultural Policy. At least after the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement, and exchange rates began to float. It got too difficult to sort out the subsidies & prices in multiple floating currencies. Hence the various attempts at keeping currencies together before EMU (i.e. The Euro) was introduced. But in solving one problem, it caused others. Perhaps they should have gone back to the beginning and questioned whether the CAP was such a good idea. But it probably could have worked with just 6 fairly closely-knit countries (although maybe Italy was never a good fit). Expanding the Common Market wasn’t a good idea (De Gaulle was right). And expanding the EU was definitely a bad idea.
Better to have a looser interconnection (an internet, if you like) of separate groups of countries. We should have stayed in the original EFTA. The original Common Market (the “Inner Six”) should have stayed as it was, and when communism fell, the former communist states could have had their own grouping.
Bill Mitchell writes about the CAP and the origin of EMU in “Eurozone Dystopia”:
https://www.elgaronline.com/abstract/9781784716653.xml?rskey=lHJqkJ&result=1
Or to put it another way: “The Owl of Minerva takes flight just as the darkness closes in.”
This latest victory for the Hotel California management of the EU, the latest in a long line of refusals to accept the popular verdict in referenda, is meaningless.
The EU that is being defended no longer exists, once it had some shadowy, not quite material, form as an aspiration, a pleasant day dream in which not only would poverty be banished so too would the shame of exploiting others, a Third Way fantasy appealing to idiots. Now it means what it means. What you see in Greece is what you will get. And you won’t have to wait either.
And yet all is not, as Kit suggests, lost: there is no reason why the Labour Party membership and its vast constituency should roll over and wait for the return of New Labour. New Labour after all is the most discredited brand in politics, its leadership and its ideas generally reviled and widely detested.
The people of the North-and not just the North either, for poverty and marginalisation are endemic- who Kit seems to believe are ready to flock to Farage’s version of nastiness don’t have the luxury to be stupid. The only thing that the poor have is a vote. And numbers. Voices and brains. It was the poor who built the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, while Beatrice Webb was flirting with Herbert Spencer and the ‘educated classes’ believed in Bentham and earned their livings plundering India.
Like the EU the sort of Labour Party that Kit talks about is not an option. It is not an alternative. It is very close to sharing the fate that the Norwegian Blue Parrot suffered. One can almost see Mandelson, Polly Toynbee, Hillary Benn and their mate Margaret Hodge rushing down to the market to put in their order for another Blair or Kinnock. But the market is closed. That alternative no longer exists.
The alternative that does exist is the alternative to capitalism and class rule. The alternative to barbarism. No parliamentary manouevring, no cheap theorising can change that. Nor can the despair of the rejected suitor or the cynicism of the dilettante.
I wish I could share your optimism. Farage has been riding high on millions of largely working class votes. He could do so again. The next election, which is imminent, is unlikely to go well for Labour. It will be followed by the delayed purge of Jezza and all his remaining supporters. He will be replaced by a “safe pair of hands”, some Blairite neoliberal pro austerity warmonger nonentity. God knows there are enough of them to choose from. Benn, Starmer, Watson, or maybe Thornberry or Phillips, as “it has to be a woman.” Either way, Labour is finished. It is a lost cause, a dead end, a waste of time, effort and energy. Sad, but true.
‘Labour is finished. It is a lost cause, a dead end, a waste of time, effort and energy. Sad, but true.’ – if we assume that is right, and it may well be, then all Brexit boils down to is an argument over which executioner you prefer (assuming being ‘in’ or ‘out’ of Europe is viewed from the perspective of a mean income family).
As much as anything Brexit was about the hopelessness induced by years of austerity.
The remainers tried to warn those in the former industrial heartlands that it will be shit if Britain comes out of EU to which impoverished families replied, what are you talking about, its already shit in case you hadn’t noticed, how can it get any worse?
Put another way Britain had become a country that was in deep denial about the consequences of poverty, and the extent to which millions of families could now barely keep theur head above water.
Philip Alston sets it all out although needless to say tory politicians tried to argue that growing resentment and anger had nothing to do with a culture of accelerated wealth extraction leaving millions on the breadline.
https://www.ohchr.org/documents/issues/poverty/eom_gb_16nov2018.pdf
So a corollary of the leave argument is that it only matters so long as domestic politicians are willing to enforce democratic arguments that for some drove the leave vote, but what we have instead is a political class (including at least half of the Labour party) and MSM that is if anything even is more neoliberal than the EU bureaucrats who are presently fucking over most of Europe in order to curry favour with the corporations and banks.
It pains me to say it but one person who speaks a lot of sense about this is the Guardians Larry Elliot.
Great talk from Larry. I wish he would put more stuff like that into his columns. I know that he is not entirely free to do so in the Pravda-like Grauniad.
”It was the poor who built the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, while Beatrice Webb was flirting with Herbert Spencer and the ‘educated classes’ believed in Bentham and earned their livings plundering India.”
Come on BigB credit where its due. The Labour party started out as the Labour Representative Committee and did not become the LP until 1906. It was essentially a coalition of the TUC, the ILP, and the Fabian Society. In short the LP was the political and organizational brain child of a class coalition. All genuine left-wing parties are such. The working class has the numbers and organization, the university trained middle class intelligentsia – like the people who post on Off-Guardian – provide the ideological underpinnings and brains of the movement. It has always been thus and continue to be so.
The problem we have at the present time is the wholesale desertion of what was called the progressive middle-class into the embrace of the haute bourgoeisie. This is evidenced in the apparently irresistible pole of attraction to the political, cultural and ideological institutions of business, academia and politics.
The working class thus becomes bereft of leadership and vulnerable to the siren songs of the far right.
Sorry Francis, but I disagree with your interpretation of history.
The Labour Party and the Unions have very deep roots, roots which were gnarled and tough 200 years ago at Peterloo.
I disagree too about the unimportance you attribute to the working class itself, always a source of its own leadership, both intellectual and practical. That many middle class people, recognising the historic justice of the popular cause, joined in and rose to some prominence in the Labour party is undeniable. But the notion that without the moral and intellectual guidance of the “educated” and “cultured” refugees from Capitalism’s staff officers, the people will lapse into fascism is not only to misread the history of the working class but to misunderstand the nature of fascism.
The reality is that if there is one good thing about what is happening now it is ” wholesale desertion of what was called the progressive middle-class into the embrace of the haute bourgoeisie. “
Part of this process has in the Netherlands been referred to as:
The betrayal by the generation of ’68.
The students that banded together in protest against the nation and
its power structure grew into positions of influence and power themselves,
all the while argueing with each other how theirs was the wider and more inclusive
vision, forcing the working class to be anything but itself, never good enough.
A sad and dysfunctional bunch of sociopaths that have consolidated
their disfunction and corruption with the aid and connivance of the old guard.
Bilderberg, Chatham House, Atlantic Brucke were there to lend a hand,
provide unquestioned experise. Their victory: destroying Europe for the sake of the EU.
Bevin,
For once I cannot share your opinion, and less than one hour ago voiced my own gripes on Skwawkbox, where the usual suspects are out in force pronouncing their love of the EU and detestation of democracy and the Working Class – we have tried, God we have tried in the four years Corbyn has been leader to change things at the grassroots level, only to be thwarted by a Party machinery that detests democracy, a machinery that makes its way all the way up to the NEC and Trades Union’s who sit on the NEC – the last straw for persons like me are the recent events in Joan Ryan’s Enfield Constituency, whereby the NEC has imposed a ‘list’ of careerists who have zero knowledge of Enfield, the Enfield CLP or the wishes of the CLP membership – no one said it would be easy, but after four years JC’s actual reforms have been lame when compared to either Miliband, or, horror of horrors, Tony Blair and his ragtag army of neoliberals and wanton warmongers.
I can’t disagree with most of what you say. And your knowledge of what is happening on the ground is much superior to mine.
There is no doubt that the key, for the Labour Party and for socialists, has to be an extension of democracy on the “thorough” principle. Nothing should be allowed to come between the members’ absolute right to nominate a fellow member as a candidate and the selection process. All the shortlist nonsense-BAME, All Female, Manual labour etc- should be ended. Democracy should be untrammeled. That is the best kind of political education.
So it is disappointing that, after more than three years and a stellar election campaign Corbyn is actually, thanks to the idiocy of indulging the zionists, further away from democratic reform than in 2015. And you are right: this is largely thanks to the bureaucratic/careerist apparatchiki.
We are agreed-and the agreement seems to be general judging by the lack of interest in this discussion- in our intellectual pessimism. That leaves the will, the ability of socialists to summon up the energy to sacrifice even more and fight even harder: the optimism of the will. And the basis of that optimism has to be that, for humanity as a whole, our backs are against the wall. If we cannot build socialism then we are doomed to a fate that will make extinction attractive.
Bevin,
Three years ago I shared much optimism with many others on the UK Left that we were in for change within the Labour Movement, we had beaten back the ChickenCoup plotters and the Party began to engage with the membership, unfortunately, such Consultation did not last long, as witnessed by the lack of any meaningful reforms following the Party Consultation process, which many peers actively participated in. We then witnessed a peak in membership below the 600K mark, whilst hoping it would reach 800K full members, and that’s before including affiliates. Since the June election of 2017 the Left have witnessed a series of defeats, that of Open Selection being the most egregious, followed by the utter capitulation to the Israel Lobby.
Indeed, we now have the spectacle whereby freedom of speech and expression are now curtailed more than they were under Tony Blair, consequently, the million strong Party we had hoped for is now struggling to maintain 500K full members, which is hardly surprising given the stitch-ups we’ve witnessed in CLPs across the Nation with regards members having any influence on who will actually represent them in Parliament – see Ed Poole on this one, never mind getting Motions organised for Conference. Indeed, our Metropolitan Elites seem incapable of upholding any democratic outcomes, as the machinations over Brexit in the past 10 days illustrate – effectively, the Left is deflated presently, and much of this can be blamed on totally undemocratic forces within our own Party machinery, notwithstanding the PLP itself.
I think all that happened is that after 2 failed assassination attempts against Jezza, the coup plotters changed tack and just invented the anti Semitism hoax, leading to a complete Zionist takeover.
Most of the few decent people in the PLP and in positions of power or influence have been whittled away one by one. Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson, to name but a few.
Jezza has been left isolated. The coming election is unlikely to go well for Labour. It will be followed by the removal of JC and the remaining decent people in the party, by McDonnell, Watson, Starmer, Benn, Bradshaw, Bryant, Thornberry. It will be the Ides of March all over again. The loathsome Phillips has even threatened to “stab him in the front.”
The Labour capable of social policies with Corbyn at the helm
has been snookered. I wont say MI5 and Mossad had a hand in that,
but I also wont deny it.
If by ragtag army you mean powerhouse machine in full control of the narrative
we are on the same page. Your young Tony did NOT come from nowhere
to take the UK as by surprise. His polished image and slick PR was the love-child
of statecraft wedded with marketing.
Well said Kit
Just had a horrible thought – It might be Jess “I am ambitious” Phillips.
Why not? She has all the qualifications. She’s a good Friend of Israel and feminazi.