Europe --- In or Out

[Alex 34839]

Can’t see me voting for anybody any time soon 

[Renton 21295]

44 minutes ago, Alex said:

Can’t see me voting for anybody any time soon 

Me neither. I hate the lot of the cunts. Democracy? Idiocracy more like. 

[Andrew 4718]

I think I might go for the greens next time out.

[RobinRobin 11122]

7 hours ago, Andrew said:

I think I might go for the greens next time out.

I'm glad I don't have to make that choice!

[Meenzer 15401]

There's so many quotes I could pull out of this, so it's probably easier just to link to the whole thing: http://crookedtimber.org/2019/01/31/leaving-do/

 

 

[Meenzer 15401]

In short, we've declared war on ourselves.

 

 

[ewerk 30262]

On 28/06/2018 at 15:49, Christmas Tree said:

 

Honestly, you are wrong on everything you say there. Nissan etc are interested in access to the SM and frictionless borders. That is what will be agreed and you will have wasted 2 years reading a lot of nonsense and taken a few years off your life.

 

As to your question, I’ve said several times on here that if Brexit lead to Nissan leaving it would not be worth it.

 

Hey @Christmas Tree , old buddy, old pal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-47102708

[Alex 34839]

The morons who work there and voted leave will find a way to tell themselves this isn’t their fault and that all the blame lies with the EU. 

[ewerk 30262]

On 30/07/2018 at 13:38, Christmas Tree said:

Fuck me

 

Project fear 2.0 up and running and sending @Renton to his bunker.

 

Civil unrest

Troops on the street

food shortages

Super gonorrhoea 

 

Have we had word yet that BMW’s, Audi’s and champagne will run out.

 

Have a fucking word with yourselves you big Jessie’. You’ve all got Stockholm syndrome

 

 

So basically we’re just waiting for super gonorrhoea for a full house on the ‘Things CT was wrong about’ bingo.

[PaddockLad 17079]

14 hours ago, ewerk said:

Hey @Christmas Tree , old buddy, old pal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-47102708

 

They give pigshit a bad name

 

 

[Renton 21295]

Mary Lou Macdonald on Marr saying now is the right time for a border poll. She's right, isn't she? It's going to happen sooner or later anyway. Makes perfect sense to happen now. Well done the DUP. 

[ewerk 30262]

There’s zero chance of a border poll while the Brexit process continues.

Would we be missed by anyone who isn’t an arsehole anyway?

[Renton 21295]

10 minutes ago, ewerk said:

There’s zero chance of a border poll while the Brexit process continues.

Would we be missed by anyone who isn’t an arsehole anyway?

Aren't the latest polls suppportive? It solves the backstop issue instantly. You're right, most the English wouldn't give a shit. I care, but believe ireland should be united anyway. I'm more worried about Scotland tbh. 

[ewerk 30262]

Nah, I don’t think the support is there yet. You also have the problems of the DUP propping up the Tories and the fact that while Brexit is going on then the government doesn’t have the required bandwidth for a border poll.

[ewerk 30262]

It’s a long shot but I think someone may finally have a workable solution to the Irish border problem.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/235821

[Alex 34839]

What did the late A.A. Gill think about Brexit? 

“It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”
When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’
You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.
No time for walls: the best of Europe, from its music and food to IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, depends on an easy collision of cultures

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.”

........................................

A.A Gill. The Times. 2016

[Meenzer 15401]

TAKE BACK CONTROL OF ARE BOARDERS

 

 

[Monkeys Fist 42060]

 

Fuck me gently. 

[Renton 21295]

33 minutes ago, Meenzer said:

TAKE BACK CONTROL OF ARE BOARDERS

 

 

 

This was predicted some time ago by the likes of Richard North. It means food will be available on the shelfs and medicines etc. Small problem though. First, we'd almost certainly lose a fortune in undeclared goods not being tariffed. But more importantly, this will definitely not be reciprocated. So there are two options. Either massive congestion happens anyway as lorries won't be unable to unload at Calais efficiently. Or we will have to a moratorium on exports from our end which obviously wlll be economically catastrophic. Whoops. 

[Renton 21295]

 

[PaddockLad 17079]

Fascinating Aida is, in a hugely competitive field, the most middle class thing ever posted on this esteemed forum  

[Renton 21295]

19 minutes ago, PaddockLad said:

Fascinating Aida is, in a hugely competitive field, the most middle class thing ever posted on this esteemed forum  

 

Glad to reaffirm my status from these upstarts like Dr Gloom. 

[PaddockLad 17079]

1 minute ago, Renton said:

 

Glad to reaffirm my status from these upstarts like Dr Gloom. 

 

Yeah that shows where him & Tom can shove their fuckin vegan sausages

[ewerk 30262]

Quote

Nissan was offered secret state aid to cope with Brexit, minister concedes

The business secretary has been forced to admit the existence of a previously secret package of state aid to Nissan that could have been worth up to £80m had the carmaker gone ahead with plans to manufacture a new model X-Trail in Sunderland after Brexit.

Greg Clark released a letter dated October 2016 in which he pledged tens of millions of taxpayer support and promised the Japanese company it would not be “adversely affected” after the UK left the EU.

Yet, at the time the commitments were first made, Downing Street had said “there was no special deal for Nissan” and Clark refused six times to answer a question about what was on offer when interviewed on the BBC. He even appeared to suggest no money was involved. Asked on BBC One’s Question Time about the deal, he said: “There’s no chequebook. I don’t have a chequebook.”

Clark and the government had repeatedly refused to release the 2016 letter until the promises turned out to be worthless, because Nissan had abandoned its future investment plan, partly because of uncertainty over Brexit.

The four-page document, sent by Clark to Nissan’s then chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, committed the government to “a package of support in areas such as skills, R&D and innovation” which “could amount to additional support of up to £80m”.

The state aid package ultimately turned out to be worth £61m when it was formally awarded to Nissan in June 2018, a fact only acknowledged by Clark in a second letter sent on Monday to the Labour MP Rachel Reeves, who chairs the business select committee.

The 2016 letter promised Ghosn it would “be a critical priority of our negotiation to support UK car manufacturers and ensure that their ability to export to and from the EU is not adversely affected by the UK’s future relationship with the EU”.

Clark’s Brexit promise, however, could not be met because no deal has been struck with the European Union with less than two months to the scheduled March 29 exit date, causing mounting concern that the UK could crash out without agreeing a deal.

Nicky Morgan, who chairs the Treasury select committee, complained that MPs had not been informed about the deal with Nissan before Monday. She asked why her predecessor, Andrew Tyrie, had not been told about the package when he had asked what assurances had been provided to Nissan in 2016.

“If the government provided financial assistance to Nissan to persuade it to stay in Sunderland, it should set out what this support was and why it did not disclose it to my predecessor,” Morgan said.

Clark told MPs Nissan would have to reapply to the government for the financial support, which was offered on the basis that the carmaker would produce its Qashqai and X-Trail models in Sunderland. The company had only received £2.6m so far, he said.

The minister, however, sought to deflect the criticism of his handling of the Nissan affair by warning that a no-deal Brexit “would be ruinous for our prospects” and arguing that MPs should heed the company’s decision and support Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

“No-deal is fully acknowledged, certainly by me and the industry, as being ruinous for our prospects,” Clark told MPs in an unambiguous warning to hard Brexiters in his party. “But in order to avoid no-deal, we need to come to an agreement in this house.”

Clark is one of the strongest voices in cabinet against a no-deal Brexit, alongside Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and David Gauke, the justice secretary. But May has refused to rule it out as a bargaining position, even though talks with the EU are at an impasse.

The Nissan car plant in Sunderland, the biggest of its kind in the UK, employs 7,000 people and is one of the UK’s industrial success stories. It operates on the outskirts of a city where 61% voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.

There have been concerns about Nissan’s long-term investment plans since the Brexit vote, concerns exacerbated by a slump in demand for diesel vehicles. Vehicles using the fuel are facing tighter regulations across the EU after an emissions-cheating scandal at Volkswagen prompted intense scrutiny of diesel’s environmental impact.

Over the weekend, Nissan said it would no longer manufacture the new model X-Trail SUV in Sunderland, stopping a planned expansion. The company said “the continued uncertainty” over Brexit was one of the factors behind its decision.

No jobs were lost as a result of Nissan’s decision, but the investment in the X-Trail had been intended to create 741 new jobs.

Clark’s 2016 letter did not make any specific assurances about the UK’s future Brexit policy, although it did seek to provide general comfort to Ghosn and acknowledged his concern about the impact of changes in the terms of trade.

“We will continue to do everything we can to make it as easy and rewarding as possible for Nissan to invest,” Clark wrote. “I understand, of course, your worries now about uncertainties as the UK prepares to leave the EU. In particular, your fear that potential future trade arrangements could affect the business case for your investments.”

Nissan said it planned to consolidate all production of the X-Trail in its plant in Kyushu, Japan. Cars manufactured there will benefit from the recently completed free-trade agreement between the EU and Japan, which will mean all tariffs on cars are reduced to zero within seven years.

The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, blamed the government’s handling of Brexit, arguing a tipping point had been reached. “Businesses are no longer speaking out simply to highlight the future dangers of a badly handled Brexit; they’re now losing confidence in the government and taking real action to protect their businesses,” Long-Bailey said.

Nissan has come under new leadership since Clark’s letter, after Ghosn was ousted following allegations brought by the company that he had under-reported income worth billions of yen. The Japanese businessman Hiroto Saikawa has taken over.

Nissan said the letter showed the company’s and the government’s “continued desire to support investment in the UK and maintain Sunderland as one of Nissan’s manufacturing hubs in Europe. The letter is no longer commercially sensitive as it contains nothing that hasn’t been disclosed publicly before, and the projects referenced in the letter have now changed.”

 

They've walked away from £61m of funding. That shows you just how Brexit is going to kill our car industry stone dead.

[Meenzer 15401]

Here we are, then, the start of the inevitable reframing so that none of the hedge fund managers, closet racists and war fetishist gammons have to take any of the blame.

 

 

For a party that trumpets individual responsibility, the Tories aren't half good at refusing to take any themselves.