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Oh Britain, what have you done (part XXIII)?

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Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I rather suspect Farage's points fail to hit their mark not so much due to arrogance, but because he's a one-trick pony, and those who might benefit from any home truths have zoned out the moment he stands to speak. If your only contribution is to carp, and you never say anything constructive or contribute to the debate with any good ideas, my hunch would be that you would just tend to get ignored after a while.
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Undoubtedly.
 
eternumviti said:
I've re-read my post. I said..



I'm afraid that I believe Farage scores some very important points in the EU Parliament, and he holds them to account for their manifold shortcomings, for their accountability, and for their unaccountability. Watch him, if you can bring yourself to do so, on the disgraceful EU response to the Catalan fiasco recently. He pulled them on it, and he was right. None of that makes me 'very much an admirer' of Farage the man.

Never mind Farage. There is a deep seated arrogance throughout the EU institutions. It does them no harm to have someone reminding them of that once in a while, though I grant you, it probably does no good either. Such is the nature of arrogance.
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He has never knowingly represented his country, as is quite obvious from his attendance/voting record or his showboating. His interests have only ever been his own and those of his powerful backers - all of whom wish to undermine the EU regulation of their activites. You may recall one of his more hubristic outbursts was to accuse an audience that included medical professionals, senior military officers, business owners, engineers, and formally elected national politicians that they had 'never had a proper job'.

This from the spiv...."He became a commodities trader in 1982 and was listed as company secretary for Farage Limited, a commodities broker, until 2011. It is currently in liquidation. The company wasn't big enough to list how many employees it had so we don't have a precise figure for the number of jobs he created."

He has also failed in every attempt to be a national politician. So an MEP who owes his place to people not being interested in his qualifications was lambasting folk who not only held 'proper' jobs but actually got elected to national positions prior to serving as MEPs. Jeeze.
 
eternumviti said:
Which is precisely the point that I was making.

There is blind, and there is wilfully blind. There are many charges that have been made against the EU on these pages that stick, and when they do they are met with complete silence. The conversation usually reconvenes in the echo chamber within a post or two.
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I can't remember one of them. Care to remind me?
 
eternumviti said:
Dijsselbloem may be sackable by the Dutch electorate (actually, I don't think he is any more), but the UK electorate can't touch him. Schauble can be sacked by the German electorate, but not by the UK electorate. Juncker is so far from being sackable by any electorate that if you can't see that, it isn't worth the energy to explain why. Verhofstadt can be sacked by Belgians, but not by English, Welsh, Scots or Ulster voters.

It has been explained 50 times by people who don't seem to have much of a grasp of the realities of the EU 'democratic' system, who put their hands over their ears and sing LA-LA-LA-LA I'm not listening!
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Juncker can be sacked by the European Parliament, as I stated. If you are so interested in 'democracy' why not start closer to home? In terms of electoral representation is fptp better than pr? As others have stated neither you nor I can sack e.g. May given that we don't live in the constituency of Maidenhead. Nor, for that matter, was she elected as PM by the UK electorate, she was voted leader of the Tories by the Tory MPs (it didn't even get as far as the Tory party membership once Leadsom dropped out) and in the GE failed to get a majority. But... still not sacked. How about sacking members of the HoL?
Why would you want / expect the UK electorate to be able to "sack" German, Dutch or Belgian MPs / MEPs? If that were possible would you be prepared to extend the right to "sack" UK MPs / MEPs to, for example, the French electorate in some sort of intra-EU reciprocity?
 
Still said:
The Rand Corporation (https://www.rand.org) is American in origin, and is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.
Of course the headline was written by the express, and dismissing Rand's report for the reasons you've given seems rather desperate.
(I presume you haven't informed yourself of their funding protocols in any depth)
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HairyHaggis said:
in the spirit of your hero, the mendacious davies, would you care to qualify and quantify that remark? i'm thinking specifically of this page here:

https://www.rand.org/about/clients_grantors.html

where the uk listings easily outweigh the eu listings. i'm hoping though that you can go further and provide the actual figures?
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Thanks for the links, just had a quick look and its received donations from almost every part of the EU and also UK government.

The worst it comes up with is a 140bn loss to GDP over 10 years in a scenario where we do no deals with any other country in that time. This is a bit more than our current contribution to the EU, which could be mitigated by free trade agreements elsewhere and general growth.

I also hear they've used old data and that newer data may have resulted in a lower impact.

It really is a lame report IMO and I can't get past the summary as its so boring.

I'm surprised how many donors around the world this RAND organization has...I reckon you could order a bespoke report on anything.

I've also heard most economic forecasts are wrong.
 
I bet the far-right gutter tabloids/Telegraph etc once again launch personal attacks on the MPs brave and decent enough to cross the house to do the right thing. IIRC Anna Soubry and others received death threats last time from morons high on tabloid-fascism hate.
 
A minority of the conservative party are pro-leave.
Some of these are doing it to protect their majority and may change if the public mood changes.
Most are a mix of anti-leave, meh and I suppose there was a referendum - but that doesn't mean we should shoot ourselves.

If a soft brexit with CU and SM a la Norway still gives the conservative party room to pass the laws that their donors want (additional trade deals illegal in EU - such as forcibly breaking up NHS, reduction in industry standards such as pharmacy and chemicals, press ownership restriction lifted) then suddenly all the TRAITORS! rhetoric from the press should stop. If not, expect it to continue.

I suspect it is a mixed bag. Dacre and Murdock can own all the press now (probably), but the trade stuff is likely to still be fairly restrictive. Depends on who the main paymasters are behind each Brexiteer. Farage certainly seems to be against soft brexit - despite...


Another example of a lot of lies. David Davis this week - more lies. Then an attempt to un-say what was said to gain agreement with the EU.

It shows a contempt for Parliament and the people of the UK. Profumo resigned because he lied to parliament. Nowadays it seems it is as acceptable as not walking when you know you've nicked it.

Why aren't we on the streets setting fire to things?
 
timola said:
The worst it comes up with is a 140bn loss to GDP over 10 years in a scenario where we do no deals with any other country in that time. This is a bit more than our current contribution to the EU, which could be mitigated by free trade agreements elsewhere and general growth.
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wow.

Perhaps Patrick Minford would be more to your taste?
 
Am I missing something, or is this still a case of Parliament getting a ‘meaningful’ vote where the choice is either accepting the deal the government gets with the EU (likely to be bad for us given the quality of our government) or crashing out of the EU on (even worse) WTO terms? I mean, it’s nice that the government got a bloody nose on this, but not much has changed, has it? I must be missing something.
 
Yes you are missing something. The agreement last week with the EU prohibits the crashing out of the EU without a deal. if there is no deal, the current rules continue to apply, i.e. SM and CU, so hard Brexit is off the table.

At least that's my understanding.
 
NeilR said:
Yes you are missing something. The agreement last week with the EU prohibits the crashing out of the EU without a deal. if there is no deal, the current rules continue to apply, i.e. SM and CU, so hard Brexit is off the table.

At least that's my understanding.
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Thanks for that. Hope you’re right.
 
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