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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View PostIf anyone were seriously trying to campaign to win a 2nd referendum (and the only people I can see with the energy and nous to do that are Momentum) this is much more the line that needs to be taken IMO
https://twitter.com/OFOCBrexit/status/964424090432946176
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The DUP aren't going to collapse this government, short of having the backstop foisted on them. They think that they're in the best position they've ever been in. They control direct rule, and a lot of them get paid to do nothing, and they look like they're going to destroy the Good Friday Agreement. They've literally never been in a better position to get what they want.
They don't realise that what they want is going to destroy them.
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostOf all the shit you've written about this subject, this is the most... recent.
May has her red line of NO FORRINS. Corbyn guaranteed the rights of EU citizens the day after the referendum. If you can't see the fundamental difference in this and what it would have meant in a hypothetical negotiation then there is no fucking hope.
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostOf all the shit you've written about this subject, this is the most... recent.
May has her red line of NO FORRINS. Corbyn guaranteed the rights of EU citizens the day after the referendum. If you can't see the fundamental difference in this and what it would have meant in a hypothetical negotiation then there is no fucking hope.
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Labour is also kowtowing to Leavers by seeking to end freedom of movement, so frankly there isn’t a lot of difference between the two parties that would change the WA. Maybe the social aspects would be stronger and the financial services aspects weaker. The agreement wouldn’t change much.
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Originally posted by Flynnie View PostLabour is also kowtowing to Leavers by seeking to end freedom of movement, so frankly there isn’t a lot of difference between the two parties that would change the WA. Maybe the social aspects would be stronger and the financial services aspects weaker. The agreement wouldn’t change much.
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostFor crying out loud, one person is guaranteeing their rights and welcome in this country, the other is actively seeking to find ways of kicking people who have lived here for over a decade out of the country. And you people are saying they are fundamentally the same.
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- Apr 2011
- 2053
- A bottom-bottom wata-wata in Lake Titicaca
- Atlético Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca Pan flutes FC
- Buñuelos Arequipeños
Darren from Bristol on 5Live nails it: Brits are the toughest, the best and the whole world is scared of the Brits.
At 39’08 on this podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0001k5f, but it you can’t be arsed to listen to this frother, here are the salient bits:
You’ve got to back May’s personal resilience, in true Great British spirit of not being not knocked down and keep coming back up… She should have called on captains of industry, your Alan Sugars, your Richard Bransons, your Mike Ashleys, your Charlie Mullins, these people are deal doers. Everybody hates Trump but he puts 2 fingers up to everybody and everybody comes round to him and wants to talk to him no matter who they are and how big they are. This country should be run like a business.
[…]
They [foreigners] all want to beat us, sport etc. they all want to beat us, they all want to beat Great Britain, do you know why? Because they obviously feel that we’re the best at everything. We are the only scalp they really want to take, in any sport, pick a sport, cricket football rugby, they only ever want to scalp us because we’re the best. […] Theresa May, for all her faults, she doesn’t know when she’s beaten because she is a true Brit etc. etc.
This Brexiters’ obsession with comparing the UK to the USA and “how trump is dead hard and conduct his business so ruthlessly and rightly so” is comical. The UK has been firmly embedded in a political and economic bloc for over 40 yrs, its economy is fully integrated into the EU’s etc. so it’s absolutely not comparable to the US situation (I’m not saying that the US exist in isolation but the comparison is absurd), the UK is a much smaller country with an economy 1/7th the size of the US one, and with probably most other things 10 or 20 times smaller (military, soft power etc.) vs the US who are lording it over a whole continent because they’re so massive and surrounded with much smaller countries, less need for compromise etc. (they operate within NAFTA anyway, which must make their life much easier).
It’s also worrying to find how so many Brits seem to be convinced that only Britain suffered in the past and was able to pick itself up purely thanks to its Britishness. Presumably they think that the rest of humanity, when shit befell them or when they were invaded (which happened in many countries more often and more devastatingly than in Britain in the last millennium), was incapable of mustering much resilience to rebuild their country & economy, and that if they got back on their feet and somehow recovered it was probably by miracle, not because of their hard graft, moral strength and ingenious character as their weak and backwards and mañana nature would kibosh that of course. Their recovery was just pure luck, unlike the Brits who are innately plucky, superior etc. and have unmatched organisational qualities. In difficult times, the Brits rely solely on being British, viz exceptionally resilient with unique fortitude, while Johnny Foreigners wait for their lucky star to shine, with the most fortunate among them, the Western Europeans, relying on the exceptional chance they have to be Britain’s neighbours.Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 16-12-2018, 23:19.
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostOf all the shit you've written about this subject, this is the most... recent.
May has her red line of NO FORRINS. Corbyn guaranteed the rights of EU citizens the day after the referendum. If you can't see the fundamental difference in this and what it would have meant in a hypothetical negotiation then there is no fucking hope.
The EU wouldn't care that corbyn was in charge, this bit is about nailing down permanent guarantees, and regardless of what corbyn would want to do, the EU knows that the Tories will at some stage be in power, so they would demand the same level of guarantees. it might have been easier to come to an agreement, but it would have been the exact same agreement.Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 16-12-2018, 23:21.
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It goes without saying, but Berba is correct on this.
Phase One: What are the departure conditions.
Phase Two: What is the future relationship
Phase One is the one that's been "resolved" (depending on the January vote), and that always required a guarantee that the Irish Border is not fucked up, a guarantee that the UK actually pays its debts, and a guarantee that EU citizens rights aren't trampled.
The EU refuses to negotiate Phase Two until Phase One is resolved. It's only in phase two where any red lines are meaningful. Red lines applied to phase one are redundant, because those three things were always required by the EU before Phase Two of negotiations could start.
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- Apr 2011
- 2053
- A bottom-bottom wata-wata in Lake Titicaca
- Atlético Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca Pan flutes FC
- Buñuelos Arequipeños
And the bit about sport, WTF. British people seem to have forgotten that in 1996 the UK came back from the Atlanta Olympics with ONE gold medal and only 15 in total). (if we take this Olympics metric as I imagine that’s what would stick in people’s minds the most, things like the Euro or World Championships are non existent on most people's radars).
I remember the utter shock in the country post Atlanta, that solitary gold medal and the fact that the UK had been beaten by the likes of Ireland, that joke of a country Belgium, and even by Ethiopia who only a decade before had been blighted by famines. The UK felt so humiliated that they set about implementing programmes that focused on bumping the gold medal tally in Olympic sports, a strategy that paid off (12 yrs later the UK in Peking the UK was 4rd in the table medals with 19 golds - 51 medals in total -, 3rd in 2012 and 2nd in 2016). But the UK medals’ haul at the Olympics is now superior to comparable countries is obviously because they’ve got their Olympics‘ tactics right, not because of the intrinsic superiority of the Brits in most sports.
I’ve heard a few gung-ho rants like that in my British family since Brexit. Before Brexit, you occasionally heard them but it was subdued, the “we’re Great Britain therefore superior” kind of speeches were more defeatist, it was more “this country used to be great but we’re not very good anymore, we’re a bit useless really”, we've gone from one extreme to another.
Sounds a bit far-fetched maybe but I wonder if the outrageous success that the UK has had in the last 2 olympics hasn’t contributed to drive Brexit, in shaping this overblown self-belief (with the tabloids whipping things up, natch), in making people subconsciously equate success in the Olympics to being inherently superior, and thus elevating the UK’s real place in the world (mid-ranking) right up there with the US and China. Many of these people, like Darren in that 5Live phone-in, have clearly deluded themselves that the UK is back on top and great again in sport (it was never that great before in the Olympics but never mind) and will do very well because “running a country is like a business” as Darren says, therefore being on the rostrum at the Olympics, an individual achievement for a country, isn’t that detached from the rest therefore by extrapolation you can thrive on your own outside of the EU or any other bloc. I’ve heard ardent Brexiters conflate so many disparate elements together and get it so wrong that I think it has played an indirect part in Brexit, we know how potent sport can be in galvanising nationalism. I think that there may be some good psychoanalysis Brexit-specific stuff to do with linking the two here.
My conclusion to all of that is obvious: ban cycling and people in lycra, Brexit is all their fault, too many cycling medals on offer at the Olympics. Too many people in the UK are insanely fit and cycle too fast in town and round those stupid tracks.
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- Apr 2011
- 2053
- A bottom-bottom wata-wata in Lake Titicaca
- Atlético Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca Pan flutes FC
- Buñuelos Arequipeños
Darren is right though about everybody wanting to pick England in football, but not because "we’re the best", more like because drawing England in your Euro or WC qualifying group usually ensures a smooth passage to the next phase. I know very little about rugby and even less about cricket but I don't get the impression that England are world-beaters in the sports he mentions. Anyway, how many countries are good at these sports? 10, 15 tops?
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hahaha.
I remember the utter shock in the country post Atlanta, that solitary gold medal and the fact that the UK had been beaten by the likes of Ireland, that joke of a country Belgium, and even by Ethiopia who only a decade before had been blighted by famines.
In all fairness there was a bit of an asterisk beside ours.
Darren is right though about everybody wanting to pick England in football, but not because "we’re the best", more like because drawing England in your Euro or WC qualifying group usually ensures a smooth passage to the next phase. I know very little about rugby and even less about cricket but I don't get the impression that England are world-beaters in the sports he mentions. Anyway, how many countries are good at these sports? 10, 15 tops?
It's because Beating england is enormous fun. It's just good clean old fashioned fun like a pompous fat man in a suit slipping on a banana skin sort of fun. Beating England in Euro 88 drove the entire country mad, and the rise in popularity in rugby owes a lot to beating England in seven out of 8 six nations matches from 2004 on.Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 16-12-2018, 23:54.
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- Jan 2012
- 3296
- Worthing
- The Hammers, until Mark Noble goes.(he's still there, sort of)
- Garibaldi, dipped in tea.
Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostAnd I reiterate - Corbyn's coming under attack because he's the non-Tory with by far the greatest capacity to change the narrative on Brexit, and he seems to either be unwilling or unable to try and do that.
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Originally posted by johnr View PostIIf this deal is the only deal, and Labour's would be the same, and as A50 can be delayed, then there is no reason to get on with it (for the moment, disrearding the conference motion - which is, you know, important) whilst leaving the tories in power. They can use it to get them out.
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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
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