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Oh Britain, what have you done (part ∞+25)?

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Well a million starved to death and another million fleeing for their lives is rather unfortunate. Isn’t it?

Brexit should have the same impact on the UK. Evens up the ledger. Instead of hating perfidious Albion the world can hate the architects of Brexit, namely... ...hmmm...


How much sympathy do you get for suicide?
 
The 2008 crash was caused by irresponsible sub-prime lending in the USA. After that the EU has given refuge to a million refugees: also caused by the USA. Now we have USA/China trade war and, probably, a real (and totally unnecessary) war by USA on Iran.
In short the EU has been the only bright spot in a messed up world. Not the highest growth no, but overall the only bright spot.
And ROI is indisputably a richer, more assured, happier country inside the EU than previously.
 
No, they found us disagreeable. Refer to your point below.



Wasn't me that said it guv. It was tonerei.



Oh look, a pause to feign empathy.
The world has changed since Britain last downsized in the 1970s. The picanninies no longer seem willing to offer a watermelon smile. India is keen to trade but 100,000 residence visas is the starting point for talks. Ireland now has an economic superpower to watch its back when dealing with its old coloniser and I’m afraid the Special Relationship means a good reaming for the lesser partner these days. Expect a further correction.
 
The 2008 crash was caused by irresponsible sub-prime lending in the USA. After that the EU has given refuge to a million refugees: also caused by the USA. Now we have USA/China trade war and, probably, a real (and totally unnecessary) war by USA on Iran.
In short the EU has been the only bright spot in a messed up world. Not the highest growth no, but overall the only bright spot.
And ROI is indisputably a richer, more assured, happier country inside the EU than previously.
The EU supported the regime-change wars in Libya and Syria, which aside from the bloodshed opened up sub-saharan Africa to Europe via Libya, and caused millions to flee Syria to Europe.

It's now doing nothing bar paying lip service to the JCPOA which is causing huge desperation in Iran, increasing the chances of a US-led war against Iran which would set the whole Middle East on fire causing maybe tens of millions to flee.
 
The EU supported the regime-change wars in Libya and Syria, which aside from the bloodshed opened up sub-saharan Africa to Europe via Libya, and caused millions to flee Syria to Europe.

It's now doing nothing bar paying lip service to the JCPOA which is causing huge desperation in Iran, increasing the chances of a US-led war against Iran which would set the whole Middle East on fire causing maybe tens of millions to flee.

It is very difficult to take on the USA. Especially with a Trump POTUS. Especially in a military scenario where the USA spends more on destructive weaponry than the rest of the world combined.
 
The world has changed since Britain last downsized in the 1970s. The picanninies no longer seem willing to offer a watermelon smile. India is keen to trade but 100,000 residence visas is the starting point for talks. Ireland now has an economic superpower to watch its back when dealing with its old coloniser and I’m afraid the Special Relationship means a good teaming for the lesser partner these days. Expect a further correction.

Haha 100k+ permanent (will be UK Passport holders asap) residents instead of those strange Polish people who, mostly, go back home.
Ireland has the USA and the EU to support its interests: I'm sure the UK will be...
Yeah Brexit.
 
It is very difficult to take on the USA. Especially with a Trump POTUS. Especially in a military scenario where the USA spends more on destructive weaponry than the rest of the world combined.
The EU top brass have been interchangeable with top people from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase etc over the years.

They have not taken decisions re US-led regime-change wars that were in the best interests of the people of the EU.

As ever, money talks.
 
My work is done here you have bared your soul.

I still can't quite work out why you felt it such an important question to ask, but never mind. I note that once again you have attributed to me notions of utopia, which I've already rejected.

Your response to my question has picked up not on those basic principles of democracy as enshrined in the Irish Constitution and to which I expressed admiration, if that is the right word, but in the manner in which the Irish ran their affairs in the terms of de Valera's austere catholicism, and in the malign power of the Catholic church. However, it does perhaps go some way to explaining the rather myopic, unquestioning Europhilia which characterises your outlook, and more widely, that of the Irish press and political establishment. I recall travelling across Ireland in about 1974 to buy a horse in Galway, and at times it was like driving the through the set of Ryan's Daughter. It was certainly austere, and I have recollections of cold, damp hotels and boarding houses, as well as of alternately either very hostile or very friendly, welcoming towns, villages and communities. It might be borne in mind that at the time Ireland was already a member of the EEC.

Yes, much of the world is still riddled with poverty. Perhaps you think the rest of the world should join the EU.

The Celtic Tiger did indeed roar most loudly after the Euro came in. The unsuitably low interest rates, geared to the requirements not of Ireland but of Germany and France, 'made the boom boomier' (Ahern?), foreign money flooded into the banks who abandoned all of their former principles of fiscal discipline and lent recklessly into the overheating property market, the ECB turned a resolutely blind eye, and the boom turned to bust in 2008. The government had guaranteed the country's banks, which directly precipitated the EU troika bailout two years later, and the ensuing austerity regime imposed by Brussels and Berlin. In a post of a couple of weeks ago (and again here) you placed the blame entirely upon the banks (and I note now the UK for 'holding integration back'), and the government's failure to introduce sufficient regulation, when in fact the culpability for the depth and breadth of the crisis lies directly with the government's decision to join the Eurozone in 1999. Had a sovereign government retained control of interest rates, and the currency had been able to float on the world markets, the crisis could have been to some degree mitigated. Instead Ireland went from having full employment and a strong economy in 1999 to losing 10% of its GDP (14% of GNP), 200,000 people to emigration and aquiring what remains the highest debt per capita in the EU, and amongst the highest in the world. The Euro has been an unmitigated disaster for the country, and it will be again.

The figures don't support 'what joining the EU' has done for Ireland. Average annual growth of 4.4% in the 13 years prior to accession fell to 1.5% in the period 79-86. GNP figures actually show a retraction in that latter period. Sure, the country has been a beneficiary EU largesse in the form of German, French and British taxpayers cash which has undoubtedly softened the blow, but I would suggest that Ireland's more recent economic transformation and growth has been largely due to your 'cleverness' with corporation tax and what amounts to progressive supply-side reforms, not the EU. Indeed, tax Irish corporation tax policy contravenes the EU's policy and wishes, and is likely sooner or later to be challenged. I would suggest that when the forthcoming global economic train crash happens, it will be sooner.

Fishing - you may well have been confined to cod & chips, but Spaniards and Frenchmen weren't, which is why they have been so happy to hoover up your fish. Had you retained control of your fisheries, you could instead have sold the fish to them. Farming thrived...mmm, big farming did, for sure, as the CAP favours big farmers. A scheme to support dairy farmers that tapered off with size had to be abandoned when the country joined the EEC.

I find it very difficult to understand how you can assert that Ireland has shed its 'colonial baggage' when it has effectively rendered itself a colony of Brussels, where, dare I say, it has very substantially fewer voting rights than when it had representatives in the British parliament prior to 1922. I accept that history judges Britain's association with Ireland in the most malign terms, but I fail to see that your new colony status is as benign as your wishful thinking might render it. Two thirds of Ireland's trade in both goods and services is not with the rEU, but with the rest of the world, primarily the Anglosphere in the form of America, Canada and the UK, and as with us, the stasis-ridden EU is progressively decreasing as a proportion of that trade. Your economic cycle sits more closely with the US/Canada/UK, language and system of law derive historically from the UK. EU intransigence over Brexit, which has been very effectively whipped up by Mr Varadkar, is threatening to throw the UK out of Europe's orbit into that of the US, where is is likely to stay. You seem to be one of the already pretty diminutive and ever shrinking consituency that advocates full union of the EU countries. I may well be wrong, but I am far from convinced that that is the right thing to be wishing for, but you never know, with the UK no longer holding integration back...
 
meanwhile:

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...our-no-deal-brexit-mps-flirting-with-disaster

'Strike me down now, and I shall become - er, irrelevant, ah, oh dear'


Late to the Party; when given he's had an open-goal to kick at for years now - too little, too- utterly&uselessly -late.



In other news ... actually, you can buy pitchforks on Amazon ...

I agree we should ask him where he has been for the last three years, but we need to get Samuel L Jackson to do it for emphasis, and to add in his favourite word as well...

(NSFW)

 
Are you sure that won’t affect my pension?

You won't need to worry about that. You'll be dead.
The Telegraph is on the case as we head to the cliff edge. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...-75-would-create-182bn-boost-british-economy/
Raising the pension age to 75 would boost the economy by £182 billion, a new report has claimed.

Britain's ageing population and increases in life expectancy have meant taxpayers face escalating cost unless people stay in work for longer, according to a paper by the Centre for Social Justice.

The pension age has remained unchanged for more than a century, when the average life expectancy was 50 years, meaning a growing portion of the population are reaching retirement.
 
And in another development, Dominic Grieve states that Bojo's rhetoric is leading to death threats for MPs. Quality guy. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/d...tly-to-blame-for-him-receiving-death-threats/
He said that after Mr Johnson calls others “collaborators” and “traitors,” MPs “immediately start to receive emails and communications from members of the public, and some of them contain death threats”.
“The rhetoric leads straightforwardly to the death threats which I receive,” Mr Grieve told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme.
“All of us who have been trying to stand up for our principles and for our country are recipients of this.
“It’s been going on for a long time but I would expect a Conservative prime minister to absolutely denounce this and also to make sure that in his own rhetoric and language he avoids anything which can encourage it.
“And it’s quite plain that he’s not doing so. I’m not surprised at that in view of my own assessment of him.”
 

My 'contract' with UK PLC when I begun paying my 'stamp' was a pension at 65. It's now 67. Mrs Seeker was told to expect a pension at 60 until she was about 58. Then she was told it was 62 and then, when she got to to 61, it was moved to 64.

Now they reckon it's OK to make my pension age 75. Thae authors of that report can **** right off. I'm 50 now and already getting to the point I'm too knackered to keep this up. They can work until they carry them out of the office in a box but that's not for me.
 
All the fuss this morning, quite rightly, over the governments own impact assessments that are gradually being leaked. Given the seriousness of those you might be forgiven for thinking that was it. Then you have people like ET who claims to be negatively affected by 'no-deal' but would be salved by all those warm fuzzy feelings of 'sovereignty' that we never lost.

Those consequences mention nothing about business closures. An estimated 240,000 firms employing an average of 15 people serve only the EU market. Their businesses will, at best, face increased paperwork and red tape (irony alert) but certainly tariffs and increased barriers - like being unable to supply directly from EU based producers without first importing it, or creating a trail that makes it look that way.

Many will leave, some already have and some will just pack up. The Japanese, very early on in a highly diplomatic but firm note pointed out that much of their business was brought here by promises of free access to the EU market.

Fishermen are often quoted as being angry but wait until they also face 45% tariffs and can no longer sell a large portion of their catch. Trump isn’t in the markey for squid. As for farmers, 40% tariffs - many will go broke or just stop too.

But wait, it will all be worth it as all these other nations rush to buy British. Except they are not. Spot the story of any nation sending delegations desperate to buy.......except Trump low balling and hoping to offload his tat and chlorinated chicken.
 
This is what they are expecting.

"LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will face shortages of fuel, food and medicine if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland, official government documents leaked to the Sunday Times show. … the forecasts compiled by the Cabinet Office set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than the worst case scenarios." https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-b...times-citing-official-documents-idUKKCN1V70M4

You can bet that the inevitable riots are expected too.
 
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