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The Politics Thread 2019

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1 hour ago, David Guiza said:

I can't believe that the anti-democratic argument is still being raised when we're seemingly heading towards a no deal Brexit that is based on a 52% yes or no vote with no further details, and lead by a person voted for by less people than voted for Rylan to win X-Factor. I studied European Union Law for 2 years (and hated it) and without doubt the positives outweighted the negatives, and that's not to say there aren't/weren't negatives. As has been said, it's better to be inside trying to reform than storming out. I think Italy may well follow suit, but as much as I love the country I'm not sure I'd ever want to follow suit with their politics. 

 

I agree that we all want this sorry affair to be put to bed, but we still want it to be done properly and not a baby out of with the bath water situation. I'd rather it takes another year and is done succesfully, than it take a couple of months to appease a certain percentage of people. I do honestly wonder what the hardcore Brexiteers are going to do with themselves when it's over, the ones who eat, sleep, drink and inject Brexit. The ones who have Brexit as their display picture, username, wallpaper and a dog named after it. I guess it's going to be a little bit like when we lost to Hull on the opening day of 2016/17, only much worse.  Same goes for the hardcore remainers too, but the likelihood is of course that they will still have an argument to make. 

They'll just focus their efforts into blaming the usual suspects - the people who didn't vote for it and the EU itself - for the fact it hasn't, and never will, work out *exactly* the way they thought/were told it would play out. However we go out, there are going to be a huge proportion of people who voted Leave who will be disappointed with the outcome. It's now just a pointless exercise which will satisfy absolutely no-one.

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So. I didn't want to leave and I don't want to leave without a deal and I think Boris is a dangerous man who leans further to the right than most people are imagining.

 

The above said, if he has any chance of renegotiating a deal at all, he has to do what he's doing now, which is demonstrating unequivocally that his government is prepared to:

 

i) Leave without a deal

 

ii) Not pay the 39 billion

 

He has to do this to have a hope of any renegotiation because they are and always were our key bargaining chips because the EU don't want either of those outcomes. Mrs May gave up those chips straight off the bat.

 

 

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1 minute ago, leicsmac said:

There's something in the EU changing the angle somewhat, but quite honestly I'm not sure what they can offer the nationalists that would get them to stay anyway - it's gotten to the point where the existence of the EU itself from the legislative POV is anathema to most of the nationalist groups.

 

There doesn't seem to be any scope for negotiation, not when the lines are this starkly and ideologically drawn. And I fear where that might lead.

 

Calling the EU zealots in terms of ideology while reserving nothing for the groups Prussian mentioned here is rather hypocritical tbf.

I wasn't defending those movements mentioned, some are more populist than others and therefore will turn to wherever the wind blows. The EU appears to rigidly follow its one state goals despite the outcome, the Euro being the prime example. Hence I call them zealots.  

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Could you help shape the future of UK democracy?

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Image copyrightAFP/ GETTY IMAGES
Next year, you could receive a letter through the door inviting you to take part in an exercise aimed at healing the rift between citizens and their elected representatives.

A recent poll by the Hansard Society found that 63% of people feel the UK's system of government is rigged to the advantage of the rich and powerful.

And 47% of those questioned believed they had no influence at all over national decision-making.

In an attempt to remedy this, the Citizens' Convention on UK Democracy is preparing to launch a two-year nationwide exercise, asking the public to come up with ideas to change how UK politics works.

Members of the public will be invited to consider ideas such as how politics is financed, how we vote for our politicians, House of Lords reform and English devolution.

The project hopes that, at the end of the process, political parties will promise to take on the convention's recommendations.

 

More about it here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49130520

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1 minute ago, SMX11 said:

I wasn't defending those movements mentioned, some are more populist than others and therefore will turn to wherever the wind blows. The EU appears to rigidly follow its one state goals despite the outcome, the Euro being the prime example. Hence I call them zealots.  

Well, those movements seem pretty set in stone with respect to what exactly it is they want from over here...almost, you might say...zealously so.

 

Or have I got that one wrong?

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9 minutes ago, MC Prussian said:

"Anti-democratic" is harsh a term, and I wouldn't use it. It has an air of conspiracy theory. But you'd concur there's loads of room for improvement to make it more democratic and little done about it, as far as I can tell. The idea of a Superstate somewhat frightening, and I don't see the EU as overly open about their core interests with the expansion, appears to me to be self-absorption disguised as economic help (which actually enforces and/or worsens economic dependencies between many member states and the EU).

 

Blame partial political apathy. It's just the rule of the (political) game that the outcries following an election usually outweigh the enthusiasm from before. Loads of food for constant bickering and seemingly endless lament.

 

I suppose it's tougher to learn your lesson and implement that knowledge before the shit hits the fan, but alas...

Absolutley there is room for improvement in making it more democratic and better functioning. That being said, we need to look a little closer to home when it comes to transparency and democracy, like the Lords and three of the last four PMs being 'elected' without national vote (May of course later did so).

 

I would still maintain however that reforming from the inside is a far better option than leaving completley in the most harsh way possible. One of the fundamental reasons I voted to remain was that, and without meaning to sound like John Lennon, I want to break barriers not build more. The vote leave has turned from leaving an organisation that was deemed to be somewhat unfit for purpose to cutting as many relations as possible and putting two fingers up to the rest of the world and Rule Britania. I agree that the notion of a Superstate is a worry, but so is blind nationalism in the face of adversity. 

 

Nobody is going to win from all of this. Not the EU, not remaining nations and certainly not GB. The blame can be shared when the brown stuff hits the fan, but I don't think that's going to be of any great comfort. 

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6 minutes ago, davieG said:

Could you help shape the future of UK democracy?

Share this with Facebook Share this with Messenger Share this with Twitter Share this with Email Share
Image copyrightAFP/ GETTY IMAGES
Next year, you could receive a letter through the door inviting you to take part in an exercise aimed at healing the rift between citizens and their elected representatives.

A recent poll by the Hansard Society found that 63% of people feel the UK's system of government is rigged to the advantage of the rich and powerful.

And 47% of those questioned believed they had no influence at all over national decision-making.

In an attempt to remedy this, the Citizens' Convention on UK Democracy is preparing to launch a two-year nationwide exercise, asking the public to come up with ideas to change how UK politics works.

Members of the public will be invited to consider ideas such as how politics is financed, how we vote for our politicians, House of Lords reform and English devolution.

The project hopes that, at the end of the process, political parties will promise to take on the convention's recommendations.

 

More about it here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49130520

 

That's not going to happen - political parties willingly giving up power is about as likely as winning the lottery without buying a ticket.

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2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Threatening economic suicide isn't a negotiating position.

 

And why anyone thinks the EU - or anyone else - will want to negotiate a trade deal with a nation that doesn't pay its debts, is beyond me.

 

I'm in no way advocating what he's doing but the economic fall out from a no deal impacts the EU hugely as well - it's a two way street.

 

The debts point I get but it's not realistic - business is business and the legal wrangle will just roll on for years which is certainly not in the Eu's interest - they want and need that cash...

 

I agree it's a King Herod moment and the axe is raised and the baby is about to get cut in two but if you want to win a negotiation you have to start knowing what the worst outcome is for your opposition and not blink when you tell them thats what will happen if you don't get what you want. I'm not saying there's anything thats not morally bankrupt in doing this but it's how you win. You don't win by taking your two largest bargaining chips off the table then expecting anything else other than being bent over the negotiating table and then buttfvcked.

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24 minutes ago, Swan Lesta said:

 

I'm in no way advocating what he's doing but the economic fall out from a no deal impacts the EU hugely as well - it's a two way street.

 

The debts point I get but it's not realistic - business is business and the legal wrangle will just roll on for years which is certainly not in the Eu's interest - they want and need that cash...

 

I agree it's a King Herod moment and the axe is raised and the baby is about to get cut in two but if you want to win a negotiation you have to start knowing what the worst outcome is for your opposition and not blink when you tell them thats what will happen if you don't get what you want. I'm not saying there's anything thats not morally bankrupt in doing this but it's how you win. You don't win by taking your two largest bargaining chips off the table then expecting anything else other than being bent over the negotiating table and then buttfvcked.

 

And in business, reputation is everything - from the lowliest ebayer to the largest multi-national.

 

If you don't understand that, you don't understand business.

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40 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Well, those movements seem pretty set in stone with respect to what exactly it is they want from over here...almost, you might say...zealously so.

 

Or have I got that one wrong?

They want to leave the EU, but what they want afterwards is certainly not agreed upon. The same argument could be made for those who want remain but I won't go there lol

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1 minute ago, Buce said:

 

And in business, reputation is everything - from the lowliest ebayer to the largest multi-national.

 

If you don't understand that, you don't understand business.

 

:nigel:

 

lol I don't know why you've got a tone on with me Buce!

 

It's a nice cliche reply but it's not really applicable here - y'know the idea that nobody will ever do business with a nation... And I'm not advocating that for the umpteenth time! My point is solely about getting a deal through demonstrating the preparedness to go for broke...

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1 minute ago, Swan Lesta said:

 

:nigel:

 

lol I don't know why you've got a tone on with me Buce!

 

It's a nice cliche reply but it's not really applicable here - y'know the idea that nobody will ever do business with a nation... And I'm not advocating that for the umpteenth time! My point is solely about getting a deal through demonstrating the preparedness to go for broke...

 

I haven't, mate. :)

 

Sorry, nuance is lost on the internet.

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31 minutes ago, David Guiza said:

Absolutley there is room for improvement in making it more democratic and better functioning. That being said, we need to look a little closer to home when it comes to transparency and democracy, like the Lords and three of the last four PMs being 'elected' without national vote (May of course later did so).

 

I would still maintain however that reforming from the inside is a far better option than leaving completley in the most harsh way possible. One of the fundamental reasons I voted to remain was that, and without meaning to sound like John Lennon, I want to break barriers not build more. The vote leave has turned from leaving an organisation that was deemed to be somewhat unfit for purpose to cutting as many relations as possible and putting two fingers up to the rest of the world and Rule Britania. I agree that the notion of a Superstate is a worry, but so is blind nationalism in the face of adversity. 

 

Nobody is going to win from all of this. Not the EU, not remaining nations and certainly not GB. The blame can be shared when the brown stuff hits the fan, but I don't think that's going to be of any great comfort. 

 

Idk whether your support for reform is more akin to a UK idea of reform or a Macron idea of reform but reforming from the inside is just the other side of the pie-in-the-sky coin and I find you get much the same answer when I ask for detail from reformers as I do when I ask no dealers. Rarely is there an answer for what needs reforming and how to go about that.

 

We have Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, and Josep Borrell in three of the top 4 political jobs so any reform is in the direction of 'more Europe' and the ECJ obviously still continues with its integrationist MO so it seems difficult to believe that any possible reform would be palatable for the UK. 

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6 minutes ago, SMX11 said:

They want to leave the EU, but what they want afterwards is certainly not agreed upon. The same argument could be made for those who want remain but I won't go there lol

Oh yeah, without a shadow of a doubt (though I think ethnostates enforced by authoritarianism have something of a large part across the board).

 

It's just worth pointing out that the ideological zealotry is not really limited to one side of this particular shitshow, and I reckon you're of the same mind if this reply is anything to go by.

 

I'll be the first to admit I've got my own biases on the topic which play into the whole national v global government thing - while too much centralised power almost always ends badly and so decision-making should be spread out as much as possible, there are some areas that affect everyone and where nation-states simply think too insular and too short-term and therefore against their own long-term interest.

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1 hour ago, Swan Lesta said:

So. I didn't want to leave and I don't want to leave without a deal and I think Boris is a dangerous man who leans further to the right than most people are imagining.

 

The above said, if he has any chance of renegotiating a deal at all, he has to do what he's doing now, which is demonstrating unequivocally that his government is prepared to:

 

i) Leave without a deal

 

ii) Not pay the 39 billion

 

He has to do this to have a hope of any renegotiation because they are and always were our key bargaining chips because the EU don't want either of those outcomes. Mrs May gave up those chips straight off the bat.

 

 

Boris is a nob, and easily so. He's not the right person for THE job but he is (or was) the right man for this job. We started in the shit house with a remain PM. Compounded by her being a dreadful campaigner and spaffing away her majority. Let's be honest, Boris would have sucked up all the UKIP voters and smashed Labour to pieces. Taking a hefty majority into parliament *could* have provided a  different result. 

 

With 90 odd days to go. Wtf chance do we have really. 

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16 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Boris is a nob, and easily so. He's not the right person for THE job but he is (or was) the right man for this job. We started in the shit house with a remain PM. Compounded by her being a dreadful campaigner and spaffing away her majority. Let's be honest, Boris would have sucked up all the UKIP voters and smashed Labour to pieces. Taking a hefty majority into parliament *could* have provided a  different result. 

 

With 90 odd days to go. Wtf chance do we have really. 

 

Parliament won’t allow us to leave without a deal, and Bozo knows it, which is why he is manoeuvring for an election.

 

What happens after that is anybody’s guess.  

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1 hour ago, Kopfkino said:

 

Idk whether your support for reform is more akin to a UK idea of reform or a Macron idea of reform but reforming from the inside is just the other side of the pie-in-the-sky coin and I find you get much the same answer when I ask for detail from reformers as I do when I ask no dealers. Rarely is there an answer for what needs reforming and how to go about that.

 

We have Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, and Josep Borrell in three of the top 4 political jobs so any reform is in the direction of 'more Europe' and the ECJ obviously still continues with its integrationist MO so it seems difficult to believe that any possible reform would be palatable for the UK. 

Oh yeah, I agree. It's not exactly a walk in the park and, in reality, unlikely to ever happen in great detail, at least in the manner that the UK would wish to see. Much like the proposals to reform the House of Lords that have been put forwards over and over again, there isn't a solution that satisfies everyone/enough of a majority. 

 

My main issue, personally, is accountability and keeping in line of the rule of law, I know this has been spoken about in the past in respect of reform, together with Macron's proposals and other items like foreign influence on elections. Ultimatley it is somewhat a turkeys voting for Christmas situation, but I still view staying in the EU on the current terms with a small hope of reform as a far great prospect than no deal. 

 

The prospect of Le Pen, Farage, Boris, Salvini and co being at the forefront of European politics terrifies me and I think being in, or as close to, the EU an entity is a stronger force against their 'Europe of Nations'. 

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For anybody who's watched Blazing Saddles (and who hasn't?) Britain threatening 'No Deal' is like when the black sherrif puts a gun to his own head and says, "nobody move, or the nigga gets it".

 

Sure, the EU will see some harm from No Deal, but they are not nearly as dependent on us for trade, as we are on them. If we leave without a deal on October 31st, we are committing economic suicide and we'll be back begging for talks within days. And the first thing they will say is 'give us what you owe us first'.

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15 hours ago, lifted*fox said:

 

BUT CORBYN IS GOING TO STEAL OUR LAWNZ

That's his policy, gardens for the many not the few. Why should the elite have gardens the EVIL RICH...……...it not like people work hard for their houses or anything.  We could build 25 free apartments there for the many instead of some evil rich man sitting in the sun!

 

https://fullfact.org/economy/labours-land-value-tax-will-you-have-sell-your-garden/

 

Also Corbyn said he was going to implement Brexit in his last manifesto, a Brexit very much similar to the hated Mays Deal except it was a Socialist Labour Brexit for the many not the few....if you look at the details is very similar except it ties us to a pathetic customs union which he expects us to have some say in, of course they EU would not likely agree to this. He now 'claims' he is a remainer! The man is an absolute lying charlatan! I find it amusing that there are 20-25% of 'people' that would still vote for that man

 

 

 

 

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35 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

For anybody who's watched Blazing Saddles (and who hasn't?) Britain threatening 'No Deal' is like when the black sherrif puts a gun to his own head and says, "nobody move, or the nigga gets it".

 

Sure, the EU will see some harm from No Deal, but they are not nearly as dependent on us for trade, as we are on them. If we leave without a deal on October 31st, we are committing economic suicide and we'll be back begging for talks within days. And the first thing they will say is 'give us what you owe us first'.

We import and export the most from the following countries:

 

Germany

US

China

Netherlands

France

 

We have a trade deficit with the EU. Germany is the biggest exporter and importer of UK goods. I would expect them to push quite strongly for a change in  the deal. Especially given Germany is in a technical recession due to reduced exports to our stagnated economy.  

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The UK has a massive trade deficit with the EU amounting to over 80B a year. The biggest deficit being with EU powerhouse Germany of over 40B. In fact we have a trade deficit with every major European country including France, Spain, Belgium etc. Does anyone honestly think these countries which run the EU will jeopardise 318B worth of exports annually (the amount the EU exports to us). Trade is a 2way street and we give far more then we receive, it is paramount for the EU to make a deal with us either face to face or via the WTO.

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6 minutes ago, Foxin_Mad said:

Likewise though who the hell do you vote for? Surely not Commie Corbyn?!

 

Jezza is an absolute communist cretin, not only is his Brexit stance unclear (To say the least), his domestic policy would utterly destroy the economy, cause a mass exodus of all business, particularly US owned ones and cause many millions of jobless. If you think the £ is low now, you aint seen nothing yet.

 

It's all a complete unknown, tbh - there are plenty of potential Tory voters who are against No Deal that may well drift to the Lib Dems. Then there is the unknown effect of Farage's mob on the Tory vote, and it's still possible Labour may yet come out for another referendum - if Corbyn doesn't start listening to the Party, his days are numbered, I suspect. But it's laughable that you are concerned at what Corbyn's policies would do to the economy but give No Deal the benefit of the doubt, when every indication suggests it will be economic suicide. It's like @David Guiza said the other day, you are obsessed beyond reason with Corbyn.

 

Best guess is no one having a working majority.

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