Article 50 Discussion

[Jase1982]

I think that would be more accurately

The government is applying the minimum effort needed to ensure a no deal Brexit while doing even less to cater for it.

 

To be fair the government are working towards what the 52% supposedly voted for. I don't think anything but a hard brexit would give the UK what the majority of people voted for. I voted remain but I think what's been offered by either Theresa May or the EU isn't Brexit.

[Jase1982]

 

 

If you want a no deal Brexit - Vote Corbyns Labour.

 

 

No deal Brexit is Brexit though I would argue. We can't have half the things Brexiteers were promised if we tie ourselves in any way to the EU.

 

 

not just the brexit issue, but Corbyns entire approach and clear (IMO) dictatorial intent means I, despite being a life long Labour voter, have now solidly confirmed that I will never again vote Labour as long as Corbyn is leading it

 

 

That's often the struggle socialism goes through and why Socialist governments often sadly end in bloodshed of some sort. Too much opposition to what's right, and humans like conflict; so fairness, equality and working together. All the good things we could have are opposed.

 

Politically speaking though he's not stating anything other than facts, in saying that Article 50 has been triggered. And like any true socialist all we must do is look at the reasons why people voted one way or the other and work to bring everyone together. I can't see what's wrong with that assessment.

[Jase1982]

Who is stating Labour Party and conference policy – Corbyn or Starmer and Thornberry?

 

And when you realise it ISNT Corbyn, you also realise that his squarks about democratic vote and him being choice of the party was fine

 

…. until the party says something he doesn’t want – then its ‘to hell with that’

Corbyn hasn’t got a democratic bone in his body.

 

And when one of his cronies convinces him to shut up and pretend he’s on board with party policy ‘until he’s in power’ or at least got a general election

 

– why should anyone believe him?

 

The party has shifted hugely to the centre over the last 30 years, and what has been happening in the Labour party is re-aligning themselves with the left. It's a tough position to be in when confronted with so many attacks from within your own parts, but Jeremy has made a career of opposing the Labour party after the leadership aligned them with the Tories.

 

Anyway, dumping on Party policy and conference democratic decisions aside for the moment:

What is Corbyns plan re Brexit then?

He wants a general election,

 

so why the heck should people vote for just another politician who has demonstrated not one single answer?

 

All we’ve heard is just the same old soundbites that we heard from all the other Brexiters Johnson, Davies, Faux, Smug et all – we will get a deal that’s good for Britain and protect jobs, we will carry out the will of the people BLAH BLAH BLAH

 

At least May is going through the motions of pretending to find a solution.

 

 

There is not one whit of evidence or detail on whatever the heck Corbyn intends to do NOW IS THERE?

 

Of course he wants a general election. He wants to be Prime Minister, but he can't really say what their position is categorically because Brexit is very much all roads lead to nowhere. He can't vote with the Tories, he can't campaign against Brexit as half the country voted to leave. The liberal Democrats can easily set their policy around having a second referendum as they carry very little political weight these days. It's also worth remembering that politicians have very little power these days and when people talk about democracy it's very difficult to understand what version they're talking about.

 

I’m damned sure The people don’t just want more of the same BS.

 

That's what Brexit is though. Everyone involved is going round and round in circles trying to effect the "will of the people" with very little power to actually change anyone's lives for the better.

 

Renationalise water

yayyyyyy says everybody ….. until the detail of the billions of debt the water companies are in which has gone on dividends to ‘shareholders’ and massive payments to ‘bosses’ while leaving the infrastructure literally leaking like a sieve.

 

They haven't even got the credit rating to raise loans to upgrade their sewers.

 

 

Doughnut going to privatise the billions in debt and dump it on the taxpayer is he?

The companies if they weren't monopolies would be bankrupticon - as both Tory and Labour Governments have allowed over the years with the money going to holding companies and the interest payments on the loans for those dividends used to reduce tax payments.

 

Simple answer. I'd imagine he'd use a form of quantitative easing for public spending. He's mentioned using this for public services before. That's the state we're in ... it get's to a point where no one has any idea, and no one has any real power where the answer is to basically create money out of nothing.

 

But, surely looking at the poor state the water companies are in is a good thing.

[Jase1982]

Out of interest I could swear that the EU said that once article 50 was invoked, we couldn't go back on it. Wouldn't surprise me that remain win following a people's vote (Only option I can see as May's deal won't get through parliament) and the EU allow us back on reduced terms. We must be the laughing stock of the world... no wonder we're trying to ally ourselves with Donald Trump.

[Jase1982]

In all honesty if our diplomats, or government had any real care or concern for the situation in Yemen, they'd halt the selling of weaponry to the Saudis.

[Jase1982]

I don't know why anyone even debates parliamentary antics, and what Corbyn is or isn't doing. Anything anyone says or does in Westminster to do with Brexit is currently just the epitomisation or hypernormalisation. All roads literally lead nowhere, and I don't quite understand the batty position of people that want to remain - Blaming Corbyn for not doing more. He literally can't do anything. None of the Tories know what to do, and have very little knowledge over what Brexit means. Corbyn as leader of the opposition has to be seen to be putting the Tories to task over something none of them are particularly knowledgeable about. Politicians are now blindly following the Brexit path as they're stuck in a loop of "enacting the will of the people".

[Jase1982]

A lot of people who voted leave also grossly overestimate the numbers where immigration is concerned, and they don't take into account the fact that free trade agreements generally result in freedom of movement of goods and services. Nor do they take into account the positive affect of immigration.

 

I often wonder if this is how Nazi Germany started, and I'm thankful we have much better ways of fact checking the information that is put out into the domain.

[Jase1982]

Don't forget the food riddled with Cockroaches that the US standards seem to find acceptable.

[Jase1982]

There are some seriously scummy people making a lot of money out of this mess. Just look at the kind of books Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad wrote about making money from desperate situations.

[Jase1982]

I see this morning they appear to have managed to get the Attorney General to change his legal position, and yet they seem to be proudly exclaiming that a breakthrough has been reached

[Jase1982]

On 14/03/2019 at 07:12, unclebulgaria67 said:

General election and/or referendum within the next 3 months.

 

 

I genuinely believed that watching the votes yesterday we would surely see movement towards a second referendum.  But at this stage I don't think a majority will vote for anything that veers too far to the left or right.

 

Teresa May's deal will get voted down a hundred times because forgetting the issue over the backstop - It is still a bad deal.  This is the point the seem to have escaped all the hard brexiters, unless they're either ignorant or being deliberately dishonest (maybe a bit of both).  Leaving the EU is absolutely worse than staying in the EU, so any "deal" we negotiate at this stage won't be any good for the UK.  They seem to be pretending that there is something better out there, maybe through fear of the public backlash.

 

When May says it's her way or no deal.  I absolutely believe her.  This is a legal process and the EU are trying to implement whatever the wishes of the UK were.  By default, our wishes appear to be to negotiate our position down and to give away what sovereignty we had because that is what leaving means.

 

Where we go from here, who knows.  The EU still has to agree to an extension of article 50 and they will want to know what the plan is - At present the plan seems to be to have Parliament vote on the same deal until it gets voted through, so a very long extension is looking likely!

[Jase1982]

2 minutes ago, honeybee13 said:

That isn't very logical, is it, London, as you say? Our soldiers were fighting alongside some Europeans, without wishing to state the obvious.

 

But apparently according to some of those facebook posts people keep sharing, we saved Europe in the war...  I am convinced a lot of these memes come from dodgy sources.  Similar to a lot of these posts you see about Labour and anti semitism.   Honestly, the powers that be must love social media.  It makes getting lies out so easy, and you can get them to so many people.

[Jase1982]

Can anything?  The only place on earth that has a higher GDP that the EU is the US.

[Jase1982]

It's interesting that today in the commons, May said the following - ""As prime minister I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than 30 June," she says."

 

You can read that statement a couple of different ways, but it could suggest she's willing to step aside if forced.  And she will need a longer delay because there's no majority for anything in the commons, and I can't see anything being passed to push parliament past this impasse.

[Jase1982]

Does anyone else think that May actually doesn't want Brexit and is just pushing the self destruct button.  She's like a kidnap victim being put on camera crying for help without actually being able to scream help.  It's like the ERG have a gun pointed to her head, or are holding members of her family captive.

[Jase1982]

On 23/03/2019 at 18:41, buckthorn said:

Did you know that the authorities were last night

looking at the legitimacy of signatures on this petition?

 

It has emerged that people from Afghanistan,  Zimbabwe

and Russia have signed up, it was revealed yesterday that

more than 120,000 signatures on the petition had come from

outside the UK. Their were also signatures from China, Cuba,

 North Korea, and Zimbabwe.

 

Most of the international signatures from France, Germany

and the United States , were from expats.

 

There is no limit to the number of times anyone can sign up

 online, there is no limit to the international integrity of it -people

are signing up from all over the world.

This makes an absolute nonsense, of this Remainer exercise to ditch

a democratic vote.

 

 

The last paragraph would lead me to believe that this is fake news.  Someone can only sign up and register once; otherwise the system would recognise a duplicate signature had been made and send a polite e-mail advising them of that fact.

 

Are leavers so gullible to still believe anything they're fed?  As if we don't have the technology to protect the validity of electronic votes...

[Jase1982]

14 hours ago, fletch70 said:

Buckthorn

 

You really do not understand our democratic system do you. We live, like all all other democratic states I can think of, in a representative democracy.

 

I'd argue that we're not as representative as other democratic states, like maybe the EU ....  Our parliament is hugely unrepresentative and is less democratic than the EU because of our house of lords, and it's ability (as an unelected body) to veto any new legislation put forward by the government and passed by parliament.

[Jase1982]

1 hour ago, fletch70 said:

That is of course why the parliament Acts were brought in- to stop the Lords continually blocking legislation but it was not the level of representativeness I was talking about it was the style of democracy. It is a representative and not a direct democracy 

As for just how democratic it is, is a whole new debate 

 

But the Lords can still over turn a government ruling, or government legislation?

 

The EU have Proportional Representation as well, so not sure why anyone would think they are undemocratic.... those dodgy facebook memes have a lot to answer for!

 

[Jase1982]

17 minutes ago, fletch70 said:

The Lords can only block a bill for a limited amount of time. If there is the political will the legislation can be forced through. The Blair government did it I think.  Just how democratic our system is opens a whole new dabate. While pure PR may sound appealing, for a legislative body it is not very good as it just gives weak governments.Personally I like the system used in Scotland and Germany 

 

I don't see how you can have democracy with anything but full proportional representation.  You talk about weak governments but that is only relevant if you're talking in terms of one political party being right, and the other is wrong.  We should adopt the asian mentality of no one being right, in order to reach a common goal based on cooperation, trust, honesty and fairness etc.  Supposed weak governments don't get anything passed in the UK (Or other similar countries) because we have a party political system that sets people up as adversarial as possible.  Even the commons is set up like a boxing ring; we should have a circular commons area.  Look at the European Parliament - It's round.

[Jase1982]

19 hours ago, fletch70 said:

Well if you go that far, the only way to have a true democracy is to have direct rule i.e every question is put to the electorate (as in rule of the mob - a rough transition of democracy). As for PR , yes there are many countries that have systems of PR and some do form stable governments although I think Italy is a case where it really doesn't work. Also and I say this with some misgivings, having pure 100% PR does let some voices be heard that many would think shouldn't - how do you think Hitler became chancellor ? It also lets corrupt people become leaders (and I mean really corrupt mentioning no names Berlusconi). A system like Germany where each state or area elects 50% of the parliamentary members and the rest are elected via PR does seem to allow regional voices to be heard and provides stables governments. Of course the UK rejected a form of PR in 2011 although I don't think AV works. Any form of PR does mean coalitions are the order of the day but then look how disproportionally NI influence the Torys at the moment- equally with PR the SNP would become much smaller while the LibDems and god help us UKIP would become stronger 

 

In terms of Italy I think they have only been a democracy for 70 odd years, and only really went through major political changes as short a time ago as the 90s due to extreme corruption.  So I think they're an extreme example because they have always had an element of corruption.  In terms of extreme voices being heard I would argue that in a truly representative democracy all voices should be heard no matter how unpleasant - The trick is in education; if you educate people well enough and it's easier to fact check you shouldn't in theory see situations that arose in Germany (If Nigel Farage had been born much earlier he'd have easily convinced more voters to join his movement).  They talk about a rise in the far right but I still believe they're on the fringes, and it's much easier to fact check / educate people today than it has been in any point in history (The real challenge is fighting back against fake news).  Just look at the difference in rallies between the peoples vote and brexit - Nigel Farage gets 86 people and Tommy Robinson had a few thousand.  The peoples march had hundreds of thousands.  A lot of people are genuinely not motivated by the far right and can still be convinced to take another path.  People in this country just need greater access to further education and a true representative democracy will follow.

[Jase1982]

Apparently Parliament have set the 1st of April to debate the revoke article 50 petition.  Although I received an E-mail stating the government are committed to enacting the will of the people and delivering on the referendum result etc etc... I am concerned as to why May and the government seem so intent on pushing ahead with Brexit to the detriment of Westminster, the union, and the close partnerships we held within Europe.

[Jase1982]

Still the Maybot is plowing ahead with her "we must deliver the brexit people voted for" default setting.  I'd say that clearly the biggest gains yesterday were the Lib Dems, and they are a party of remain.  It would be interesting to see how many people went in and deliberately spoiled their ballet papers; if they publish the figures.

 

More evidence that Brexit is being pushed forward by controlling forces none of us have any contact with.

[Jase1982]

2 hours ago, tobyjugg2 said:

 

 

It a real shame that the lib dems and greens aren't campaigning together. They will impact each others votes despite having many very similar policies.

 

eg Green vote for lib dems as largest, yet lose a green seat and gain only one extra lib dem seat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Totally agree.  If elected, they join a European political party anyway.   I just wish we were more progressive and forward thinking in this country.

 

Having thought about this I'm now of the opinion that this is exactly what Nigel Farage wants because the european elections will more than likely be a complete wipe out for the two main parties, and with what remains of the left still dithering over this or that; in one foul swoop he could cement his position within Europe and obtain more power unifying his new party with similar right wing parties.  Isn't this how the Nazi's obtained power?  He's spent years convincing people that someone is to blame for everything that's wrong in their lives, and now he's going to easily win these elections if latest figures are to be believed.

[Jase1982]

I worry about what comes after her if I'm honest.  The pool of candidates doesn't fill me with optimism, and they will still more than likely resist a general election.

[Jase1982]

6 hours ago, honeybee13 said:

And to get an extension, the EU have to agree, as you say. You just have to hope that if they're dealing with Boris, who they hate, they will be so worried about the effect of no deal  on their own economies that they'll agree to an extension.

 

Personally I think the effect of Brexit on the EU (from their perspective) has been made out to be more convoluted than it is in reality.  People keep saying that they'll still buy and sell from us regardless.  And whilst I disagree with the blaise way in which people dismiss any negativity, the statement is true.  The EU will continue to trade with us, but the terms under which they trade will suffer - So as I see it, international firms will have a choice.  To keep investing in the UK and to keep paying more for products we export, or to go elsewhere.  To my mind it's a simple business choice.  If in fact we do make things more expensive to buy in, and harder to obtain through lack of any trade agreement or customs agreement then businesses would be stupid to purchase from us.  I think a lot of people are blind to the fact that whilst we have a manufacturing sector, we don't manufacture complete products here, and we don't have a lot of the raw materials within the UK.  Having no trade deals would just make it more expensive to import the goods we need to maintain our supply chain, whilst making it more expensive to export.

 

Quote

If 'project fear' becomes reality after a no deal there are so many questions.. but there is a massive risk of a general election if things go wrong, and it won't end well for the Tories.  I would think that Boris wouldn't want to go down in the history books as the shortest serving Prime Minister ever.

 

A general election won't happen.  The numbers don't exist within parliament to make it happen.  We would need the new PM To call one, and that would be suicide.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Jase1982