Europe --- In or Out

[Asprilla 96]

3 minutes ago, Renton said:

 

You've actively damaged people's livelihoods and those of their children you fucking dick. And ypu fucking live in the EU. It's just politics you say, without realing politics affects people in real ways. Two real examples given to you on this very board.

 

I'm trying to recall you from when you posted ages ago. Were you always a cunt?

 

 

These insults are really lame at our age.

 

If I had voted the other way it wouldn’t have changed the result.

[Asprilla 96]

6 minutes ago, Alex said:

Here, man. Own your fucking shit 

I am literally here in this thread arguing my point, how much more accountable do you want.

 

I didn’t vote in the general election and I didn’t vote for the leader of the Tory party.

 

i voted on an in out referendum and I would vote the same way again today.

[Renton 21993]

16 minutes ago, Asprilla said:

I am literally here in this thread arguing my point, how much more accountable do you want.

 

I didn’t vote in the general election and I didn’t vote for the leader of the Tory party.

 

i voted on an in out referendum and I would vote the same way again today.

 

So you'd vote again to cause the very real problems people on this board have described to you. Maybe it's juvenile, but to come on here and say that really does make you a bit of a cunt imo. 

[Asprilla 96]

7 minutes ago, Renton said:

 

So you'd vote again to cause the very real problems people on this board have described to you. Maybe it's juvenile, but to come on here and say that really does make you a bit of a cunt imo. 

I couldn’t care less what you think

[Rayvin 5296]

---I tried to avoid writing an essay, I really did. Sorry.---

 

It is a fair point though. You must be able to see how by living in France, you are personally 'safe' from the consequences of this (which are very real btw, weekly foodshops alone have gone up considerably in price, and down considerably in options) and yet you're saying you'd vote to inflict these problems on the rest of us all over again if you could. That's before we get to people's livelihoods, relationships and ambitions being ruined.

 

I know that if none of these things have touched you, it'll be hard to think that we're anything other than a group of people who are politically motivated in our bitching - an extension of the Labour/Tory, Left/Right culture war shit. But honestly as far as Brexit goes, we've watched and suffered through all of this together and idk man.. it's real. The consequences of this are very real. They are being felt. Some people may deny that this is the case, but those people are frankly liars or too rich to notice. Or possibly, to be at my most charitable, actively trying to avoid paying attention.

 

So if you'd vote to do it again for some high concept political notion about sovereignty without being part of any rebuild, suffering or pain that the nation goes through, it is sort of difficult to read. I mean it almost seems like you just don't give a fuck about the rest of us and what we have to suffer as long as your political views win out. Are those views really so important to have been worth this? Does any of this improve your life at all?

 

What it looks like to me, and what it has always looked like - and I say this as compassionately as possible because I do understand your reasons, and I even understand where the more racist tones of this at least come from (not from you, from elsewhere) - is that this whole thing has really kind of blown up in the faces of the people who voted for it, but because it became such a toxic argument, because so much of everyone's "pride" was on the line, no one was prepared to back down - and that has continued to this day, although leavers seemed to think that once it was done, they'd won; except now I think they're beginning to realise that there was no victory, there is just perpetual war. Brexit split the country in two, and while the negative consequences of it continue to be felt (and they will), it just isn't going to go away. People are being fucked by Brexit. Every day. How could it possibly go away as a political issue? I even left the Labour party over their new and improved stance on it, which I consider to be an infantilising refusal to state the truth. That truth being, that it was a harmful decision carried out in an even more harmful way.

 

Maybe that's on remainers too, maybe if we'd gone at it less furiously, it would have allowed space for reconciliation - but there was never any indication from your side of the argument that this was going to be anything other than a smash and grab of the hardest Brexit possible - May announced as much almost on day fucking 1, and we resisted as intensely as we did because this is exactly where we knew we'd end up. A country run by a corrupt, incompetent party that does nothing other than enrich itself and its friends, whilst pulling the drawbridge up for the rest of us. They're cutting planned investments on infrastructure into the north, levelling up isn't happening, they don't give a fuck about the people who voted for this. Not a solitary fuck. And they are the ones we've just handed all of this power to, to cut new deals, to regenerate the economy, to paint a new vision for where this country goes. A vision with zero fucks given for ordinary people. And you can say "oh but we can vote them out again" except that 1 - the same lies that they spun to get Brexit to happen continue to work, and I'm quite certain that some people in this country could literally starve to death in the ballot station and their friends would step over their dead bodies and still vote Tory and 2 - it's still a 5 year prison sentence in people's lives, and our lives are not that fucking long.

 

The EU was a fairly benign mess of an organisation which invested a lot in communities up and down the country, and which ensured prosperity for all those within it, to a reasonable degree. I do not on any level understand why anyone, ANYWHERE, can possibly think that Boris fucking Johnson or anyone presently within the front bench ranks of the Tory party is going to lead us to a more prosperous place than we already were. 10-15 years just to recover the damage, and then what, another 10-15 at best to see some sort of improvement? Almost an entire working lifetime. And Rees Mogg said it would be more like 50 years.

 

All for some nebulous, high concept political idea about sovereignty that won't matter a single iota in 10 years time, let alone 30 or 50. The world will be completely different by then anyway. So it 100% feels like pointless suffering to some of us.

 

I'm sorry mate, honestly, I don't at all think you're a bad guy but howay... is this really going to be worth all this misery?

[Rayvin 5296]

Christ... I really am sorry everyone, it looked shorter in the text box.

[Renton 21993]

29 minutes ago, Rayvin said:

Christ... I really am sorry everyone, it looked shorter in the text box.

Naah, good post, I assume not written on your phone!

Not sure about your assumption in the last sentence though. I'm still trying to remember who this guy was, was it Asprilla's foreskin at one time? Wasnt he a massive wum? I remember Dotbum ages ago who lived in France. He was dead canny and Irish though.

[Rayvin 5296]

Dotbum is Adios. I know him online elsewhere now and aye, he's a good fella.

[Asprilla 96]

4 hours ago, Rayvin said:

---I tried to avoid writing an essay, I really did. Sorry.---

 

It is a fair point though. You must be able to see how by living in France, you are personally 'safe' from the consequences of this (which are very real btw, weekly foodshops alone have gone up considerably in price, and down considerably in options) and yet you're saying you'd vote to inflict these problems on the rest of us all over again if you could. That's before we get to people's livelihoods, relationships and ambitions being ruined.

 

I know that if none of these things have touched you, it'll be hard to think that we're anything other than a group of people who are politically motivated in our bitching - an extension of the Labour/Tory, Left/Right culture war shit. But honestly as far as Brexit goes, we've watched and suffered through all of this together and idk man.. it's real. The consequences of this are very real. They are being felt. Some people may deny that this is the case, but those people are frankly liars or too rich to notice. Or possibly, to be at my most charitable, actively trying to avoid paying attention.

 

So if you'd vote to do it again for some high concept political notion about sovereignty without being part of any rebuild, suffering or pain that the nation goes through, it is sort of difficult to read. I mean it almost seems like you just don't give a fuck about the rest of us and what we have to suffer as long as your political views win out. Are those views really so important to have been worth this? Does any of this improve your life at all?

 

What it looks like to me, and what it has always looked like - and I say this as compassionately as possible because I do understand your reasons, and I even understand where the more racist tones of this at least come from (not from you, from elsewhere) - is that this whole thing has really kind of blown up in the faces of the people who voted for it, but because it became such a toxic argument, because so much of everyone's "pride" was on the line, no one was prepared to back down - and that has continued to this day, although leavers seemed to think that once it was done, they'd won; except now I think they're beginning to realise that there was no victory, there is just perpetual war. Brexit split the country in two, and while the negative consequences of it continue to be felt (and they will), it just isn't going to go away. People are being fucked by Brexit. Every day. How could it possibly go away as a political issue? I even left the Labour party over their new and improved stance on it, which I consider to be an infantilising refusal to state the truth. That truth being, that it was a harmful decision carried out in an even more harmful way.

 

Maybe that's on remainers too, maybe if we'd gone at it less furiously, it would have allowed space for reconciliation - but there was never any indication from your side of the argument that this was going to be anything other than a smash and grab of the hardest Brexit possible - May announced as much almost on day fucking 1, and we resisted as intensely as we did because this is exactly where we knew we'd end up. A country run by a corrupt, incompetent party that does nothing other than enrich itself and its friends, whilst pulling the drawbridge up for the rest of us. They're cutting planned investments on infrastructure into the north, levelling up isn't happening, they don't give a fuck about the people who voted for this. Not a solitary fuck. And they are the ones we've just handed all of this power to, to cut new deals, to regenerate the economy, to paint a new vision for where this country goes. A vision with zero fucks given for ordinary people. And you can say "oh but we can vote them out again" except that 1 - the same lies that they spun to get Brexit to happen continue to work, and I'm quite certain that some people in this country could literally starve to death in the ballot station and their friends would step over their dead bodies and still vote Tory and 2 - it's still a 5 year prison sentence in people's lives, and our lives are not that fucking long.

 

The EU was a fairly benign mess of an organisation which invested a lot in communities up and down the country, and which ensured prosperity for all those within it, to a reasonable degree. I do not on any level understand why anyone, ANYWHERE, can possibly think that Boris fucking Johnson or anyone presently within the front bench ranks of the Tory party is going to lead us to a more prosperous place than we already were. 10-15 years just to recover the damage, and then what, another 10-15 at best to see some sort of improvement? Almost an entire working lifetime. And Rees Mogg said it would be more like 50 years.

 

All for some nebulous, high concept political idea about sovereignty that won't matter a single iota in 10 years time, let alone 30 or 50. The world will be completely different by then anyway. So it 100% feels like pointless suffering to some of us.

 

I'm sorry mate, honestly, I don't at all think you're a bad guy but howay... is this really going to be worth all this misery?

I don't think you're a bad guy either, as far as I'm concerned we just disagree

 

It seems like there's a certain amount of rewriting of life in the EU happening. Poverty was rife throughout the UK prior to the referendum. And money that was distributed often went on fairly lofty projects that did little to help the poorest in society. It was also less than the money that the UK contributed to the EU.

 

It's also impossible to extract the misery of covid from the situation too. The world seems utterly miserable here as well. People aren't skipping around saying at least we're still in the EU.

 

We have no control model for what Europe would have been like if the Common Market had remained largely as it was. I would have voted for that and so would most people. To compare it to lockdowns, we are only counting Covid deaths "saved" by lockdowns and not counting lives lost and misery caused by the lockdowns themselves.

 

If I appear indifferent to people "back home" I'm not. But equally when remainers were virtue signalling about allowing EU citizens to remain regardless of what the EU decided to do with us UK nationals, they weren't bothered that it potentially weakened our position.

 

I'm not sure that anyone is happy with how things have turned out. It is too complex a situation to have a satisfactory answer but it's easy to turn things into soundbites.

 

I suspect the UK will rejoin in the next 10-15 years. Younger people are more into big government and I believe big government is the greatest threat to us all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Isegrim 9899]

7 hours ago, Asprilla said:

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vat-rates_en

That’s still just a framework. Even as a member of the EU the British government would have been able to alter its tax rate for VAT in a lot of ways.

But I doubt with being out of the EU that the tax rate will change to a level that wouldn’t have been possible before.

[ewerk 31199]

2 hours ago, Asprilla said:

It seems like there's a certain amount of rewriting of life in the EU happening. Poverty was rife throughout the UK prior to the referendum. And money that was distributed often went on fairly lofty projects that did little to help the poorest in society. It was also less than the money that the UK contributed to the EU.

And who had the primary responsibility for preventing poverty in the UK? I'll give you a clue, it wasn't the EU. Literally 1/4 of the money received from the EU went to helping disadvantaged areas.

[Howmanheyman 33837]

I reckon if the EU had got in before all this kicked in and stated 'We're thinking of offloading one of the bigger countrys' half the leave voters would've lost their shit and been up in arms saying 'We're Britain, you can't just offload us!' Wasn't there hell on and massive tension and remarks when De Gaulle refused us entry initially into the common market? 'How dare he AFTER THE WAR' etc?

Edited January 5, 2022 by Howmanheyman

[Renton 21993]

23 minutes ago, Howmanheyman said:

I reckon if the EU had got in before all this kicked in and stated 'We're thinking of offloading one of the bigger countrys' have the leave voters would've lost their shit and been up in arms saying 'We're Britain, you can't just offload us!' Wasn't there hell on and massive tension and remarks when De Gaulle refused us entry initially into the common market? 'How dare he AFTER THE WAR' etc?

 

Good point.  What this has shown is that people can be manipulated easily in this country against foreign bogey men. So far Asprillas objection to the EU consists of vague complaints about treaties (we had a veto), big government (debatable the EU is a government, maybe one with very limited competencies), VAT (show me one country in the world that doesnt have a version of sales tax). And yet he's happy with a single market and even FOM. Its an emotional responae rather than a rational one. Witness Edwina Curries bizarre benefit recently.

 

Having said this, Up Yours, Delores!

[Asprilla 96]

59 minutes ago, ewerk said:

And who had the primary responsibility for preventing poverty in the UK? I'll give you a clue, it wasn't the EU. Literally 1/4 of the money received from the EU went to helping disadvantaged areas.

The primary responsibility is with the citizens themselves.
 

but besides that, your own stat admits that the vast majority wasn’t allocated to the poor anyway.

[Asprilla 96]

5 minutes ago, Renton said:

 

Good point.  What this has shown is that people can be manipulated easily in this country against foreign bogey men. So far Asprillas objection to the EU consists of vague complaints about treaties (we had a veto), big government (debatable the EU is a government, maybe one with very limited competencies), VAT (show me one country in the world that doesnt have a version of sales tax). And yet he's happy with a single market and even FOM. Its an emotional responae rather than a rational one. Witness Edwina Curries bizarre benefit recently.

 

Having said this, Up Yours, Delores!

So worried about foreigners that I live among them

[Asprilla 96]

43 minutes ago, Howmanheyman said:

I reckon if the EU had got in before all this kicked in and stated 'We're thinking of offloading one of the bigger countrys' have the leave voters would've lost their shit and been up in arms saying 'We're Britain, you can't just offload us!' Wasn't there hell on and massive tension and remarks when De Gaulle refused us entry initially into the common market? 'How dare he AFTER THE WAR' etc?

I actually agree with you a bit here. To be fair I think the 48% would then be saying how privileged it was to expect to be part of it all anyway.

[Renton 21993]

1 minute ago, Asprilla said:

So worried about foreigners that I live among them

 

I never said in your case you were worried about foreigners. I personally don't think you've articulated what your problem is. 

[ewerk 31199]

7 minutes ago, Asprilla said:

The primary responsibility is with the citizens themselves.
 

but besides that, your own stat admits that the vast majority wasn’t allocated to the poor anyway.

Careful lads, we have a Thatcherite here.

And the vast majority went to farmers and fishermen. Who have since been sold down the river by this government.

[Asprilla 96]

23 minutes ago, ewerk said:

Careful lads, we have a Thatcherite here.

And the vast majority went to farmers and fishermen. Who have since been sold down the river by this government.

 

 

Without self reliance society breaks down. If you asked your grandparents about this, or anyone who preceded them they’d say the same thing.

 

 

[ewerk 31199]

Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

[Asprilla 96]

6 minutes ago, ewerk said:

Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

She was right

[ewerk 31199]

Cunt.

[Asprilla 96]

2 minutes ago, ewerk said:

Cunt.

Wow

 

You can only help others if you are ok yourself first.

 

Like when they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first on an aeroplane.
 

I believe in citizens helping each other rather than governments wasting money creating more dependency.

 

Healthcare and basic welfare I agree with.

 

Expecting the state to pay for everything I don’t.

[Alex 35573]

“We must not play into their hands...(we) must try to find ways to starve... (them) of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.”

[Sonatine 11542]