The Dictatorship of the Etonariat

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

...and Conchis wanting to nuke half the land!

Ah, but the Cossacks were sent in to deal with that post.

[Cockney Sparrow]

...and Conchis wanting to nuke half the land!

That puts a light hearted tone on a post which was anything but......

But as our Ferneyhgb says, it's a post that formerly existed.

[ahinton]

I'm not sure that we are most at threat from those who would seek a united Ireland or those who want to remain British ?
There is so much b*llshit around the way that politicians talk about not having different rules for NI anyway. I suggest they buy a car in NI and then try taxing it in England to dicover that NI isn't part of the UK for that ... and there are probably many many more examples.

The people of NI (and Scotland) who voted (and there again on R4 we had a government minister saying that "the majority of people in the UK voted to leave" without being taken to task or cut off for lying!) wanted to stay in the EU. I guess their views don't matter...

I don't think that anyone is necessarily "at threat" from either, actually and I suspect that at least some of those who would advocate NI remaining part of UK are prepared, for whatever reason or (more likely) none) to ignore the fact that a small majority of NI voters elected for UK to remain within EU, although their stance makes no difference to the statistics.

As to your car analogy, whilst it might be correct in practical application is, I fear, misleading to the extent of of its expression that those who might "buy a car in NI and then try taxing it in England to discover that NI isn't part of the UK for that" would discover no such thing because NI IS part of UK; indeed, the full name of UK is "The united kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", so I can only assume that, by "UK" here, you meant "Great Britain".

That said, the fact that NI and Scotland voted for UK to remain an EU member state has indeed largely been ignored by politicians for whom such truths are inconvenient; even more important - and perhaps embarrassing given the location of the seat of UK government - is the fact that London voted for UK to remain in EU almost as heavily as did Scotland, a fact that has prompted some Brexiteers to suggest that said seat of government ought to be relocated to Boston (Lincs., obviously!) and, when I questioned why there, I was advised that this is because it polled the highest percentage of voted in favour of UK leaving EU. It is true, as you say, that the wishes of the NI, Scottish and London electorate have been and continue to be ignored as though they "don't matter"...

[eighthobstruction]

That puts a light hearted tone on a post which was anything but......

But as our Ferneyhgb says, it's a post that formerly existed.

....it's the gebliebte bit holds him in good stead....I spoz....

[Serial_Apologist]

What you write in your second sentence is of course true but it is by no means the only reason why I supported Remain and would do so again were a second referendum to be held. That said, UK will have a capitalist government whether it remains within EU, leave EU with a deal or leave EU without a deal and EU itself is a group of 28 EU member states all of which have such governments, just as the wider Council of Europe is a group of 47 member states (including the 28 EU ones) all of which have such governments, but even states that ostensibly have non-capitalist governments are actually capitalist because they have trading arrangements with other states and do business deals with them; the only way that any state could operate a non-capitalist system would be to eschew all trade deals with other states and, even then business deals would still be done within them.

Er, not necessarily, I'd say. Suppose for the sake of over-egging the argument one such country nationalised the majority of its industry and banking, the saving in terms of efficient planning and non-wasteful multiplication of decision-making, ie overpaid boards of directors, could counteract the effects of losing multiple inputs, not to mention the legal outlays for bankruptcies - another wasteful constant characteristic of "our" way of doing things. The main practical difficulty in the sort term, while such a system was being set up, would be a run on the currency: hence the vital and urgent requirement for "opening the books", criminalisation of speculation, and a beady eye out for foreign currency touts: "Psst - you can have this loverly laptop if you pay me in $$$". Yes - the going value of the inherited currency would continue for some time (until indigenous production environmentally appropriate to reducing travel miles had been re-established) to be, literally, the price paid for necessary imports in countries subject to run down by capital export during the preceding neoliberal economic régime; but given that it would not be viewed as investment potential in exchanges abroad the problem would be lessened, since who would want to exchange devalued metaphorical suitcasefuls of £s for Euros or whatever? Grass-roots activists really need to think up ways to circumvent touch-of-keyboard currency switches - some kind of loud alarm buzzer going off to alert, maybe!

[DracoM]

[MrGongGong]

I bought a car that was from Enniskillen.
When I went to the post office to tax it I was told that I had to import it first as NI isn't part of the UK for car tax purposes.

IMV this makes a mockery of all those politicians banging on about how we can't have one rule for one place and another for another etc etc
as does the "democratic will " of the people of Diego Garcia

I could go on for hours about Boston and how it was completely run down and squalid before migrant workers decided to live there and open shops, cafes and businesses. Shame that people were duped into thinking that they will get a new hospital and more schools by voting to leave the EU.

[Serial_Apologist]

In case anyone's wondering, I just deleted the post I sent an hour ago, so as not to upset anyone.

[oddoneout]

I find possibly the most depressing aspect of the whole process to date has been the dumbfounded ignorance of most MPs about the legal basis of our membership of the EU and trading relationship with it. Nearly all of them have been learning piecemeal. Second only to the ignorance of the wider populace. But that’s how we’ve ended up where we are.

Ignorance of the EU fullstop, particularly for the last 20/25 years. It's my view that it became convenient for UK government to let 'Brussels' deal with boring regulatory stuff, freeing up time for personal interests and, of course, much activity on the jobsworth work creation front making directives into regulations and then hiding behind 'it's the EU, not us'. For the sake of form, occasional token protests might be made about 'interference'.
The exposure of the extent to which it was the UK government not 'the EU' which created unsatisfactory situations has come too late for the millions who've taken what they were told by authority and the press at face value, compounded by now having a generation of MPs who've never had to do their job without that convenient scapegoat/safety blanket.

[vinteuil]

.

In case anyone's wondering, I just deleted the post I sent an hour ago, so as not to upset anyone.

.

... I'm upset, now - bicoz I don't know what your post said.

.

[Pulcinella]

Ignorance of the EU fullstop, particularly for the last 20/25 years. It's my view that it became convenient for UK government to let 'Brussels' deal with boring regulatory stuff, freeing up time for personal interests and, of course, much activity on the jobsworth work creation front making directives into regulations and then hiding behind 'it's the EU, not us'. For the sake of form, occasional token protests might be made about 'interference'.
The exposure of the extent to which it was the UK government not 'the EU' which created unsatisfactory situations has come too late for the millions who've taken what they were told by authority and the press at face value, compounded by now having a generation of MPs who've never had to do their job without that convenient scapegoat/safety blanket.

Sadly, all too true.
Did anyone not know that we could have had blue passports all along?

[Serial_Apologist]

.



.

... I'm upset, now - bicoz I don't know what your post said.

.

Well OK I was raising the contentious issue of religion: if, as ahinton and indeed many commentators have for a long time argued, "class" can no longer be designated a clear category, and therefore cited as a (indeed the) major source of humanity's problems, where does this leave religion and nationhood? But, besides realising this to be off-topic here, it is a thorny issue - especially given that I was raising it in the context of Northern Ireland, where both opposing sides on the national question held very similar views, but where, in any case (I have to admit) once dogmatically held views have been relaxed to some extent in very recent years, post the Ian Paisley and Pope Paul eras.

The subject of religion as one barrier to change among many arguably belongs elsewhere than here, though one of the bugbears I have is that the left in general have been found on the hop in ceding to the so-called Alt Right's diisingenuously laying claim to the Renaissance to justify their Islamophobia, when their predecessors in fellow thinking, being the equivalents of Flat Earthers, hated the Renaissance.

[oddoneout]

Sadly, all too true.
Did anyone not know that we could have had blue passports all along?

Well, all the Sun readers 'knew' that we were 'forced' to have maroon EU passports...
As far as I could make out the only reason any change was required in the first place was because the words 'European Union' needed to be on the cover - nothing about colour of said cover- and if I remember correctly the nudge came several years after the change should have been done.
My passport expired several years ago; when all the referendum fallout started to kick in I did consider renewing it simply to be able to have an EU one(token protest), but now apparently it's a lottery as to what colour you get.Since the new version 'blue' one isn't the same as the old, pre maroon, one and neither colour will have European Union on there doesn't seem much point in shelling out the money. Perhaps I'll be able to get a Scottish passport instead(grandparent rights) if I wait a while!

[Beresford]

My guess that BJ's plan is:

1. Find a way round the Backstop that satisfies Dublin.
2. Take it to the EU summit (bypassing the Commission). Sell it to them as a "Backstop Future Agreement", making everyone happy, and if they don't agree, it would be they who are hurting Ireland and stopping any chance of the withdrawl agreement getting through parliament.
3. Convince almost everybody that No Deal is likely, otherwise the EU Commission will just stonewall on the Backstop.
3. Come back to parliament in late October with This Deal or No Deal. Everything else is swept off the table, including a second referendum..
Make it a Free Vote, preserving democracy for MP's, making them individually responsible if they vote for a No-Deal.
Most Conservative MP's and 80% of Brexit party supporters would probably accept the deal.
Mr. Corbyn would probably accept a free vote on this, as it would not require his party to have any particular policy.
So it may get passed, with BJ as hero of the day, turbocharged ready for the election.
4 The ERG (arch Brexiteers) would not like it, but now lots of them are in government, would they give up their new jobs (or visits to Balmoral) for something that would probably not happen? Carrot and Stick.
5 Farage would not like it. But so what? And if he loses 80% of his supporters, BJ can go into the election (with a manifesto produced in the next month) confident about beating the Brexit party.

If this is the plan, the fuss about closing parliament is a Red Herring, a carefully planned diversion of attention from the Theresa May red lines (no Customs Union) in the agreement that BJ will take to Brussels.

[DracoM]

Right,. well that's your careful take on it al, but now tell me what Dominic Cummings is going to do? He's in essence the PM.
Apart from bullying and hectoring and being an invisible Rasputin?