The Brexit Thread

[Duncan Gardner]

Kate Hoey goes to Switzerland to have her picture taken in front of the customs infrastructure she thinks they don't have.

Was she multi-tasking while at the football?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Jesus Christ. I wonder if you got a hold of half of these brexiteers 30 years ago and were able to show them what their older selves would be doing, like the ghost of Christmas future, I wonder how many of them would recoil in disgust?

[E10 Rifle]

None of them would. Their beliefs haven't changed

[Tubby Isaacs]

Richard Leonard seems to be playing the same "Don't say "Brexit", Pike" panel game as Corbyn. He's talking about radical change. That's on the way, all right.

And here's Keir's latest.

Keir StarmerVerified account
@Keir_Starmer
Labour's clear & settled position on single market & customs union: in both for transitional period on same terms; retain benefits long term; new single market relationship & a customs union are viable long term options

Well done, Cicero.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think Leonard was better than Sarwar, and he'll do a decent job as an opposition leader. But, you know.

[Lang Spoon]

Leonard voted against the rest of SLab on Article 50 (so with the Holyrood Tories).

Would imagine him having fuck all to say directly on Brexit. He seems decent enough, but I hate the GMB so don’t really trust someone who spent most of their life working for those Arms Trade supporting wanks. But tons better than Sarwar and his sudden conversion away from New Labour bollocks. Let alone the corruption stories that haven’t been covered yet by the press (not necessarily his acts, but those perhaps of his father and family some may say).

[Nefertiti2]

May has ten days left

[Tubby Isaacs]

Old Boris will sort it out, it's just like that time he had to do an essay on Ovid's Fasti in 6 hours because he'd been pissed for a week in the Union.

[Lang Spoon]

Is Oxbridge so fucking amazing compared to Russell Group Unis? Cos folk not doing Medicine or tech/science/maths/engineering/architect /art school madness, it wasn’t that fucking amazing folk winging it for an essay after necking a ton of pills before getting a first late 90s. Classics students, shmudemts.

That’s no boasting, was bog standard 2:1 in Arts, one first out of 8 modules (the one I did a half hour study for compared to frenzied hours studying for the rest). But as an adult without a weekly interest in acid, and some kind of life experience, an llb evening course wasn’t much more than Arts with More Facts to cite. Post grad, that’s where lazy fannies like me and fucking bastard Johnson would be caught out. Wheat from chaff and all that, what?

[Nefertiti2]

Oxford is a Russell Group Uni.

What you get from Oxford are the connections. Johnson didn't get a first.

[Lang Spoon]

Ah right. Somehow thought Russell Group Unis were all those Ukanian “Ancient Scottish”, first wave English Red Brick/Victorian stonework joints with ideas above their station not called Oxford or Cambridge.

[Fussbudget]

Oxbridge, yesterday:

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The thing that immediately hits me about that picture is that in pretty much any picture of the UK the cars are always one class above what you would expect in the equivalent place in Ireland. And they're fucking gleaming.

[Nefertiti2]

your houses are bigger though. and you have really impressive garden walls

Anyway I have a message to you from The Telegraph Most of it's premium and I'm not paying good money for it, but the first paragraph is enough...

The border between the UK and Ireland is an entirely internal matter: the two countries enjoyed a free movement area before joining the Common Market. Yet the EU and Dublin seem determined to use the border as a stick to beat the Government with, as a demonstration of European solidarity and a crude negotiating tactic in the Brexit talks. That this performance is dressed up as some crusade to protect the peace process is particularly tasteless.

[Lang Spoon]

What about the customs posts that really really really did happen?

[Antepli Ejderha]

your houses are bigger though. and you have really impressive garden walls

Anyway I have a message to you from The Telegraph Most of it's premium and I'm not paying good money for it, but the first paragraph is enough...

I'm lost for words. Iirc it was only PIRA that had free movement between the two countries. This isn't an opinion piece it's a deliberate masking of the truth.

[Snake Plissken]

It's technically correct though as 1815 was before joining the Common Market.

[hobbes]

The thing that immediately hits me about that picture is that in pretty much any picture of the UK the cars are always one class above what you would expect in the equivalent place in Ireland. And they're fucking gleaming.

Car leasing not made it over there then? There are 2up 2down terraced houses round here with £70k range rovers parked outside. It seem my compatriots would rather blow their income on a flash motor than a housing upgrade.
The most common car I see apart from Qashqais is the Range Rover Evoque. Big hills round here, you see?
(Not that I can say much. We lease a new Tiguan because it worked out less cost and hassle than buying one when I accepted that I want getting an F-Pace.)

[Duncan Gardner]

Spoony did you study at Pearse St Tech? When I was there every single entrant got a first in Classics one year...

"Threat to the Peace Process" just means 'anything in politics I disagree with' in Ireland.

[Nefertiti2]

Alex Massie seems to be the only moderately sane person left at the Spectator

One need only listen to what David Davis and Boris Johnson have said about the Irish Question to understand that the Irish have thought longer and harder about this than their British counterparts. Sometimes you get the impression the existence of an EU-frontier still surprises London. But then Northern Ireland is usually only – and at best – an afterthought. Of us, but not quite of us and certainly different enough for the difference to count.

Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail.

Throughout this process, British ministers have said they have no desire for a ‘hard border’. Nor, of course, do the Irish. But leaving the single market and customs union requires a pretty solid border and none of the blithe assurances to the contrary emanating from Whitehall do anything to change that. Blather about ‘technology’ churns no butter.


The Irish view, I’m afraid, is that they didn’t start this and the onus therefore falls on the British to sort it out. This does not seem an altogether unreasonable view for a mess that, regardless of how it is resolved, cannot avoid complicating life for the Irish.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Car leasing not made it over there then? There are 2up 2down terraced houses round here with £70k range rovers parked outside. It seem my compatriots would rather blow their income on a flash motor than a housing upgrade.
The most common car I see apart from Qashqais is the Range Rover Evoque. Big hills round here, you see?
(Not that I can say much. We lease a new Tiguan because it worked out less cost and hassle than buying one when I accepted that I want getting an F-Pace.)

It's hard to unpick really. Both countries have a thing for owning your own house, and owning a car. It's just that the slider in Ireland is much further over towards the house end. Cars are notably more expensive here as well. The entry level Tiguan in the UK is £23k in ireland it's €30k. At current exchange rates, it's 15% cheaper to buy one in the UK. The difference is basically the same for a Jaguar F-Pace.

I think the other thing is that the UK has had a car culture going back before the second world war. We couldn't afford such a thing until the 1990's, and even then we got more into houses than cars. The recent massive economic crash taught an awful lot of Irish people that a 10 year old japanese car, is still a very good car. 20 years ago, a 10 year old car would be held together with bailing twine and have you praying every time you went into a corner.

[Nefertiti2]

No Surrender!

DUP leader Arlene Foster has written to the leaders of all 27 EU countries, telling them that Northern Ireland will not tolerate any difference in status between itself and the rest of the United Kingdom, after the UK leaves the EU.

Earlier this week, it had been suggested that Northern Ireland might remain in the customs union after Brexit, to prevent a hard border between itself and the Irish Republic. But, speaking to the DUP annual conference in Belfast, Ms Foster made clear that Northern Ireland would leave the customs union.

She said: “We will not support any arrangements that create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom or any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations.

[Gerontophile]

The most common car I see apart from Qashqais is the Range Rover Evoque. Big hills round here, you see?

Which was designed by Victoria Beckham.

*But probably not the engine-y bits.

[anton pulisov]

It's hard to unpick really. Both countries have a thing for owning your own house, and owning a car. It's just that the slider in Ireland is much further over towards the house end. Cars are notably more expensive here as well. The entry level Tiguan in the UK is £23k in ireland it's €30k. At current exchange rates, it's 15% cheaper to buy one in the UK. The difference is basically the same for a Jaguar F-Pace.

I think the other thing is that the UK has had a car culture going back before the second world war. We couldn't afford such a thing until the 1990's, and even then we got more into houses than cars. The recent massive economic crash taught an awful lot of Irish people that a 10 year old japanese car, is still a very good car. 20 years ago, a 10 year old car would be held together with bailing twine and have you praying every time you went into a corner.

I have to say though, cars in Ireland are much more flash than continental Europe, with car ownership still very much seen as being a badge of success in Ireland.

If I were to say that 1 in 5 cars on Swedish country roads is a Volvo 940, I'd of course be exaggerating, but most Swedes would have to think by how much I was exaggerating, because it's not far from the truth.

[anton pulisov]

No Surrender!

Then they shouldn't have voted Brexit.

I don't understand the Unionists. NI is still in the UK and the Republic amended its constitution so tat it no longer claims NI as its territory. Essentially, the Unionists won the peace talks and got everything they wanted and more. (More being funding for a made up language.) The only tiny concession they had to make was being a member of the EU to make the whole thing work, and accepting all that dirty EU regional infrastructure funding that was thrown at them. But that was too much to ask of them, apparently.

Now they are upset that they are being ignored by the Irish government. Like a child that has thrown a million tantrums and always gotten what it wanted, but now suddenly can't. Unfortunately this particular child has paramilitary backing.