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Brexit: give me a positive effect... XII

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As SteveG said above, my experience was most of my former colleagues in a highly Unionised industry wanted Brexit to reduce the number of brown people here. This was never promised by the likes of Farage yet was assumed by them to be an expected "benefit." The fact that it won't happen will just give the far right (most of Parliament and all the main media) an excuse to demonise and spread hate. I truly despair for this country.
 
Enfield boy said:
As SteveG said above, my experience was most of my former colleagues in a highly Unionised industry wanted Brexit to reduce the number of brown people here. This was never promised by the likes of Farage yet was assumed by them to be an expected "benefit." The fact that it won't happen will just give the far right (most of Parliament and all the main media) an excuse to demonise and spread hate. I truly despair for this country.
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It was obvious to anyone that the opposite would happen. And now it is happening.
 
Obvious only to those with functioning brain cells. Many of my former colleagues were in favour of turning deserts to glass (presumably by the heat of nuclear conflagration) in revenge for terrorism here that probably would never have happened if we weren't so keen on stirring the pot abroad.
 
eternumviti said:
That's a bit of a wet tirade, albeit wrapped up in your usual assertive aggression. I didn't even mention 'shared trading heritage', although there certainly is, or was, one. We blew it when we joined the EEC. I think in 1972 our trade with the commonwealth was something like 4 times that of the EEC. I wouldn't much blame them if they weren't in a rush to give it back.
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The government at the time knew Britain was in relative economic decline and that the Commonwealth could not compete with the 'European Project'. Britain has done very well out of the EEC/EU.
 
eternumviti said:
Neither the fact that we are an island, nor that we wish for independence, makes us 'insular'. The UK developed through global trade, and via a global outlook. Our close links to the countries of the commonwealth and anglosphere are bonded in family, shared history and culture, a system of law, and of course language. It is pure historical revisionism to claim that we are insular.

It is denialism too to suggest that the EU works towards 'the common good'. The EU ultimately works only towards the good of its own ruling oligarchy, and to the aquistion and retention of power within that narrow elite. It is an overtly mercantilist bloc replete with subsidies and protections designed, as we are seeing, to barricade those outside from the privileges afforded to those inside. It is entirely inward-looking except in in so far as it seeks to export its vast rafts of suppressive standards, controls and regulations in order to control and reduce those outside.

I repeat my assertion that 'the common good' is far better served, historically, actually and potentially, by the 193 member United Nations.
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Paragraph one is balderdash, the present tense doesn’t apply. The commonwealth isn’t a viable alternative to trade with Europe, it’s a vestigial cultural society with periodic meet ups and investitures from the Royal Family, most certainly not a trade block and what is there is dissolving. As for the Anglosphere- sorry but Australia and N.Z won’t cut it, nor will Canada and the last one- the US is going to prove very problematic because Good Friday Agreement. You’ve taken the same old knick knacks down off the shelf, dusted them and hoped no one would notice.


As to your fecundity of isms EV, I’m afraid denialism is at the heart of Brexit, though some are moving on to anger and bargaining. I’m guessing that’s where you are now?
 
Colin L said:
I have plenty to fill my time and don’t need to waste it on fanatics and zealots.
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In all fairness to him, I don't think that Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski is quite as much of a zealot as many of his predecessors. He has expressed deep concern about the loss of small scale family farms - nearly 200,000 in the last decade - and concedes that the CAP is the likely culprit. Whether that will lead to reform or not, who knows.
 
TheDecameron said:
Paragraph one is balderdash, the present tense doesn’t apply.
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That is your opinion, to which you are entitled. Needless to say, I vehemently disagree with it, whilst acknowledging the damage that we did to those relationships when we joined the EEC.

TheDecameron said:
The commonwealth isn’t a viable alternative to trade with Europe...
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At no point did I say it was, and neither did I claim it as a trade block.

TheDecameron said:
As for the Anglosphere- sorry but Australia and N.Z won’t cut it, nor will Canada and the last one- the US is going to prove very problematic because Good Friday Agreement.
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And neither did I claim they would. I merely pointed out that the UK is not historically inward looking, having been built on an earlier form of globalism, of which those countries that you mention are all successful manifestations. I think there has been an extended period of introspection following our 'reduction' post Empire and Suez, but even de Gaulle acknowledged, repeatedly, that we would be unsuited to the European project due to our Atlanticist and global outlook, rather than a more introspective European one.

I believe that your point of view is a typically left-wing, declinist one, undoubtedly informed by your view of Britain as the great oppressor (to which Scotland has evolved a spurious sense of victimhood), one which conveniently forgets that Europe also largely comprises a group of ex-empires, several of them considerably more oppressive than our own, particularly the most recent and short lived one. It is ironic that, given that chequered history, the EU itself is driven by aspirations of empire, and manifests as a mercantilist project not averse to its own streak of mindless ruthlessness.
 
TheDecameron said:
As to your fecundity of isms EV, I’m afraid denialism is at the heart of Brexit, though some are moving on to anger and bargaining. I’m guessing that’s where you are now?
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eternumviti said:
And neither did I claim they would. I merely pointed out that the UK is not historically inward looking, having been built on an earlier form of globalism, of which those countries that you mention are all successful manifestations. I think there has been an extended period of introspection following our 'reduction' post Empire and Suez, but even de Gaulle acknowledged, repeatedly, that we would be unsuited to the European project due to our Atlanticist and global outlook, rather than a more introspective European one.

I believe that your point of view is a typically left-wing, declinist one, undoubtedly informed by your view of Britain as the great oppressor (to which Scotland has evolved a spurious sense of victimhood), one which conveniently forgets that Europe also largely comprises a group of ex-empires, several of them considerably more oppressive than our own, particularly the most recent and short lived one. It is ironic that, given that chequered history, the EU itself is driven by aspirations of empire, and manifests as a mercantilist project not averse to its own streak of mindless ruthlessness.
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Globalism - closely followed by Atlanticism, declinism and mercantilism ??


You's just 'avin a larf wiv'em now EV.. :)
 
Kirk said:
The government at the time knew Britain was in relative economic decline and that the Commonwealth could not compete with the 'European Project'. Britain has done very well out of the EEC/EU.
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Britain's relative decline in the 1960 was just that, relative. Its postwar recovery had been massively hampered by the necessarily slow withdrawal from the empire, the expensive requirement to garrison Germany, and a postwar government that engaged in social transfer rather than investment. Germany and Italy had been divulged of their residual colonial interests, and had no responsibilities beyond that of rebuilding themselves, which in the former example took place remarkably quickly, and via the imaginative recycling of Marshall Aid funds in a loop of semi-perpetual investment and reinvestment. France had its own problems with withdrawal from empire, but America paid the bill, and at home an imaginative government undertook rapid supply side reforms, which involved a massive shift of labour from the regions and into the industrial cities. The net result for those countries was a period of rapid 'catch-up',in which their growth hurdled Britain.

The UK's growth rate in the late 50s and 60s, hampered though it was by often appalling industrial management and relations, would actually make a modern Chancellor weep with envy. But relative to the EC countries, and to the US, it was poor. However, the UK's eventual admission into the EEC also saw the European cycle of catch up falter. The 70s were marred by the oil crisis and continuing industrial strife, but supply side reform came belatedly to the UK under Thatcher, and the shift away from the old heavy industries and into services saw a period of rapid growth here, while the European countries floundered. At one point even Germany took on the mantle of sick man of Europe.

It is reasonable to argue that the UK's growth through the 90s and noughties came as a result of government policy rather than explicitly the EU, with the EU progressively declining as a destination of goods and services proportionately in favour of the rapidly growing countries of the Americas and the Far East.

Has Britain 'done very well out of the EU'?

Given the overwhelming deficit in goods, and the fiscal contribution that the UK has made on the profits of its services industry to the EU, I think it could reasonably be argued that the EU has certainly done very well out of the UK.

It's also worth reflecting on the fact that were it not not obsessively intent upon destroying the UK, it could have continued to have done so. An €80bn per year trade surplus, thrown to the dogs out of pure spite. The definition, surely, of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
 
eternumviti said:
That is your opinion, to which you are entitled. Needless to say, I vehemently disagree with it, whilst acknowledging the damage that we did to those relationships when we joined the EEC.



At no point did I say it was, and neither did I claim it as a trade block.



And neither did I claim they would. I merely pointed out that the UK is not historically inward looking, having been built on an earlier form of globalism, of which those countries that you mention are all successful manifestations. I think there has been an extended period of introspection following our 'reduction' post Empire and Suez, but even de Gaulle acknowledged, repeatedly, that we would be unsuited to the European project due to our Atlanticist and global outlook, rather than a more introspective European one.

I believe that your point of view is a typically left-wing, declinist one, undoubtedly informed by your view of Britain as the great oppressor (to which Scotland has evolved a spurious sense of victimhood), one which conveniently forgets that Europe also largely comprises a group of ex-empires, several of them considerably more oppressive than our own, particularly the most recent and short lived one. It is ironic that, given that chequered history, the EU itself is driven by aspirations of empire, and manifests as a mercantilist project not averse to its own streak of mindless ruthlessness.
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If you want to call the slave trade and dominionism ‘previous globalism’, I’m ok with that.
 
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