BMW follows Airbus over the top.
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Well, then we should just nationalise BMW.
This Bastani lark is a piece of piss.Comment
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Another good (and long) piece by Anthony Barnett. for me one of the best British commentators on Brexit.
In terms of what passes for the debate about Brexit, it is important to register that there has been no serious, counter-argument to detailed, reasoned case, based on realities of regulation. No one, therefore, can be in any doubt about the imperative need for a regulatory regime outside normal, parliamentary legislation and the impossible costs, practical and financial, of attempting to duplicate one. No one, that is, unless you are Boris Johnson oblivious to evidence. It is striking, watching Johnson in action, how he is unable to move on from the referendum campaign of 2016, that he led. You would expect after two years that his advocacy of Brexit would be more than hot air. Instead, it is as if he already knows that it was the high-point of his influence and he clings to its tropes and his now wearisome bonhomie. In a ridiculous, apparently alcohol enhanced diatribe to his fellow MPs, leaked to Buzzfeed, the man who is its Foreign Secretary attacked his own government’s negotiations in case they end up, as he knows they must, with the UK “locked in orbit around the EU…and not having freedom with our regulatory framework”. The casual suggestion that Britain can benefit from the “freedom” to regulate for itself shows Johnson’s lack of seriousness. There is not a scintilla of evidence that he has read the letter from the Chemical Industries Association or similar ones from every sector of industry, or from Japanese and European foreign investors, with respect to regulation, or even that he absorbed what the prime minister said in her Mansion House speech when he sat in front of her. Gove at least appears to have registered the evidence. Yet Brexit is personified by Johnson more than anyone.Last week I published an open letter to my fellow Remainers about how to win the civil war that has broken out over Brexit. When it comes to democracy Leave voters understandably repudiated rule by plutocrats enriched by austerity. Millions of UK voters said Basta – enough! – when asked whether they wanted it to continue. Alas they embraced oligarchs instead. To combat this we need a positive story about EU membership that engages with sovereignty and immigration. This posed a difficult problem for me. While very critical of the nature of the EU, I regard myself as an English European with a delight in Europe and a critical interest in how it is governed, not shared by the vast majority of my compatriots.
Why, then, do millions of my compatriots show stalwart, unwavering desire to repair the breach with the EU, while they remain indifferent to its institutions? Why do they regard Brexit as bonkers when they care little for Brussels and have no interest in how it works, apart from perhaps regarding it as tiresome and self-important? Something practical and not at all about the high institutions must be going on which has normalised living as part of the European Union. Something like the widely shared interview with a van driver rang James O’Brien’s call-in programme, who explained how Brexit would destroy his livelihood. Although no one uses such a mouthful, he was singing the praise of a shared regulatory space. Maybe, I thought to myself, I too have got caught up in traditional notions of high politics and sovereignty while the nature of government itself has moved on.
The defining ideologist of Brexit is the Daily Mail. It describes the main motive for leaving the EU as, “a deep-seated human yearning to recover our national identity and independence”? It says we are more free in a fundamental way as persons - as English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and British persons - outside the EU. Most of us in Europe say the opposite, that our liberty is enhanced within it, for all the dangers. You could answer that it is a false binary and we can enjoy both patriotism and partnership, national identity and international regulation. In fact, such an answer takes a side. The spirit of Brexit insists on a single priority. For the Daily Mail our national identity and independence are being lost and must be “recovered”. It sees mass migration and the European Court of Justice and as invaders that have penetrated our national space. It demands they be repelled to save our country and its great institutions.
If judges show themselves to be “enemies of the people” and peers of the realm have become “traitors in ermine” it only confirms how far subversion has reached. The Prime Minister embraced this view after the referendum in September 2016 in her first speech to a Conservative Party conference as its leader. She warned, “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”. This is the Brexit point of view. What is the alternative?Comment
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They voted to have fewer foreigners about. They voted for embraced maximum plutocracy and austerity in 2015.When it comes to democracy Leave voters understandably repudiated rule by plutocrats enriched by austerity.Comment
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Fuck patriotism, incidentally.Comment
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They voted for everything remaining the same minus paying their due to foreigners and shutting the door to them. Judging by the Mail cover, they expected the whole 'of you course you can stay here' to be just something you say to your dumped partner before changing the locks at the earliest opportunity.
It was no less than this country deserved because it is so blessed and so special...
Alas...Comment
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Continue to dismiss people's motive for voting Leave- I wasn't one- and you have no chance of winning the argument.Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View PostComment
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I think it's a mistake to use the Mail to try and Analyse the motives of Leave voters. I think the Mail are retrospectively trying to channel the justifiable anger about many things (which they have been told for decades was the faiult of the European Union into full on racist authoritarianism. They may succeed.
Anyway, read the article.Comment
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Hey, Berba, your pal Bastani's been on Twitter again.
https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1010156057732288512
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Did you see the word cloud put up the other day? Immigration was about ten times the size of anything else. I despair of the 52% in the referendum, just as despair of the approx 50% of Tory/UKIP/DUP voters in 2015. Many of them were protected reasonably well from austerity.Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
But yeah, persuasion is needed. I think Airbus and the car industry are promising in that respect. It's a job for somebody greater than me.Comment
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I have just been to the local off licence, run by Turkish lads (the type of shop where there is always football on, even at three in the afternoon on a Tuesday), and bought the following:-Originally posted by Duncan Gardner View Post
"Beer proudly brewed on Cyprus"
A beer "originating from a country bordering the Mediterranean"
Staropramen (brewed in "the EU")
Peroni (Italian)
Asahi (OK, that one's brewed in Kent)
A bottle of my favourite alcoholic drink in the world, Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label.
Take that, corporate sociopath hiding behind that faux matey jeans wearing mullet headed mask you wear!Comment
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Six years of needless austerity. A disastrous remain campaign from those who had shown no interest whatsoever in dealing with the bread and butter issues of jobs, wages, housing, education or in punishing the bankers whose criminal negligence almost broke the entire system.Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View PostComment
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Except that 5 years into the austerity, the public voted for far more of it, especially for benefits.Comment
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What precisely is the UK supposed to do with a newly nationalized company that makes wings for Airbus jets, when Airbus don't want to buy those wings?Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View PostComment
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Shove them on the side of a fucking bus. Then 52% will believe in flying buses.Comment
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They didn't vote for austerity. They voted for a fictitious future - but against those who had given them austerity.Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View PostComment
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I think the idea is they turn up to work and find they've been turned into a climate change consultancy.Comment
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In 2015, I mean. Not even PR can mitigate what a spectacularly appalling result that was. We'd have had Farage in the Cabinet.Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View PostComment
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Rod Liddle last week in the ST (continuing on his favourite theme of hating the French, the Romanians etc. because of course it's fine now to be rabidly xenophobic, it's open season on furiners, it's a badge of honour for some), in MY A-Z of the World Cup: "[…] In a poll at the time Schumacher was hated in France more than Hitler. (Because you can’t run away from Schumacher)".
John Cleese a few days ago:
https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1008481815168987137
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What a fatuous fucking prick. Never trust muscle boys in tight t-shirts. Fuck sake Scotland, if not now, when? All those cunts down there left and right are mental.Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View PostComment
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He followed that up with nationalizing BAE so that he could put them to work on better stuff. I think the staff would likely decamp to other defence jobs myself. Being actual defence specialists. He seems to think you can take people you call "engineers" and put them to work on something different.
In other news. Lucky the North West is such a post-industrial powerhouse.
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BTW, the figures for Airbus are astonishing. There's 15,000 people working in 25 sites, but there's 110,000 people working in the supply chain. So that's 1/8th of a million manufacturing jobs. Which all pay well over the average rate. A good rule of thumb is that a job in a factory supports four jobs in services off the back of it. Now the shutting of the Airbus Plant isn't going to kill all their suppliers, but it is going to severely fuck all of them up. But you're talking about a meaningfully large proportion of the UK work force. That's 2% of the work force. That's also a lot of tax income at risk.Comment
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Ian Birrell, who is a sane Tory Remainer, reckoned total tax from Airbus (I assume he factors in supply chains too) is £1.7bn. That's a good start on the EU dues we were paying, which we're now "saving".Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View PostComment
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