The whole Brexit process has ultimately demonstrated how useless and untrustworthy our politicians are - hard to single anyone out.
They really are clueless.
Maybe it extends beyond politicians. The whole brexit process seems to demonstrate how useless the United Kingdom is, and I accept my share of responsibility for that.
The whole Brexit process has ultimately demonstrated how useless and untrustworthy our politicians are - hard to single anyone out.
They really are clueless.
Maybe it extends beyond politicians. The whole brexit process seems to demonstrate how useless the United Kingdom is, and I accept my share of responsibility for that.
I'm not sure I want to damn the whole nation, bet it certainly demonstrates that something is amiss. That we've got a free press who are free to tell lies with impunity, a large section of the population who feel so disenfranchised that they'd use a constitutional issue as a protest vehicle, a system where a PM can call a referendum to settle internal party matters, a system where politicians can personally benefit from fucking up the economy, a populace who trust them but not 'experts' certainly indicates that there's something rotten in the state of GB&NI.
The whole Brexit process has ultimately demonstrated how useless and untrustworthy our politicians are - hard to single anyone out.
They really are clueless.
Maybe it extends beyond politicians. The whole brexit process seems to demonstrate how useless the United Kingdom is, and I accept my share of responsibility for that.
I think you probably should take a large amount of the blame.
For me the most useless part of all this was the referendum itself. No thought was given to the possibility of a leave vote! A sub question that instructed politicians how to deliver the vote should have been added. It is criminal negligence and I think those responsible should face sanction for it. Along with Seth who is mostly to blame after all!
Although only a small chance, I could see a scenario where Johnson gets the vote of no confidence rolling tomorrow with his "alternative" vision. Storms into the EU, and says that Britain will actually Brexit, rather than "Brexit"
That would be terrifying.
I feel sorry for Theresa May, she has a job where no matter what she does, almost everyone will be disappointed.
I don't feel sorry for her.
No one forced her to be PM.
No one forced her to call a General Election with one purpose only, to try to strengthen her position in the Brexit negotiations, primarily against the Brextremists in her own party.
No one forced her to do a grubby deal with the DUP.
No one forced her to try to use the Royal Prerogative to trigger A50, bypassing the sovereignty of Parliament.
No one forced her to trigger A50 without a proper plan.
No one forced her to allow cabinet ministers licence to paddle their own Brexit canoes.
No one forced her to take personal control of the Brexit negotiations ignoring her own Secretary of State, as well as sideling her Foreign and Trade Secretaries.
No one forced her to create irreconcilable red lines that got us to this wholly shambolic place where her so called "deal" is dead in the water before she even presents it to the EU.
There are all monumental mistakes of her own making.
Although only a small chance, I could see a scenario where Johnson gets the vote of no confidence rolling tomorrow with his "alternative" vision. Storms into the EU, and says that Britain will actually Brexit, rather than "Brexit"
That would be terrifying.
I feel sorry for Theresa May, she has a job where no matter what she does, almost everyone will be disappointed.
I don't feel sorry for her.
No one forced her to be PM.
No one forced her to call a General Election with one purpose only, to try to strengthen her position in the Brexit negotiations, primarily against the Brextremists in her own party. No one forced her to do a grubby deal with the DUP.
No one forced her to try to use the Royal Prerogative to trigger A50, bypassing the sovereignty of Parliament.
No one forced her to trigger A50 without a proper plan.
No one forced her to allow cabinet ministers licence to paddle their own Brexit canoes.
No one forced her to take personal control of the Brexit negotiations ignoring her own Secretary of State, as well as sideling her Foreign and Trade Secretaries.
No one forced her to create irreconcilable red lines that got us to this wholly shambolic place where her so called "deal" is dead in the water before she even presents it to the EU.
There are all monumental mistakes of her own making.
Nobody has really known what they are doing since Cameron made the idiotic decision to call a referendum without planning for the possible outcomes. At least May hasn't bailed out like so many other politicians.
Although only a small chance, I could see a scenario where Johnson gets the vote of no confidence rolling tomorrow with his "alternative" vision. Storms into the EU, and says that Britain will actually Brexit, rather than "Brexit"
That would be terrifying.
I feel sorry for Theresa May, she has a job where no matter what she does, almost everyone will be disappointed.
I don't feel sorry for her.
No one forced her to be PM.
No one forced her to call a General Election with one purpose only, to try to strengthen her position in the Brexit negotiations, primarily against the Brextremists in her own party. No one forced her to do a grubby deal with the DUP.
No one forced her to try to use the Royal Prerogative to trigger A50, bypassing the sovereignty of Parliament.
No one forced her to trigger A50 without a proper plan.
No one forced her to allow cabinet ministers licence to paddle their own Brexit canoes.
No one forced her to take personal control of the Brexit negotiations ignoring her own Secretary of State, as well as sideling her Foreign and Trade Secretaries.
No one forced her to create irreconcilable red lines that got us to this wholly shambolic place where her so called "deal" is dead in the water before she even presents it to the EU.
There are all monumental mistakes of her own making.
Nobody has really known what they are doing since Cameron made the idiotic decision to call a referendum without planning for the possible outcomes. At least May hasn't bailed out like so many other politicians.
That's self-evidently the case. Its a bit like saying "At least, despite his decision to enter an iceberg zone at full tilt, then go for a sleep, the Captain of the Titanic stayed at his post as the ship went down".
Its not just her though is it, there has been miscalculation after miscalculation right across the political spectrum. The public have been duped. Experts have been ignored.
I continue to hear that experts predicted disaster would befall us if we didn't join the Euro and that turned out to be wrong. This has then been used to rubbish any expert going forward. It seems that virtually no Politician on either side of the debate were able to draw on expertise regarding Customs arrangements, and borders. No Politician as far I can recall during the campaign ever talked about the difference between a FTA and the frictionless trade we have by being in the SM.
We are where we are. There really is no easy way forward. Parliament like the country is hopelessly split. The last thing we really need is another decisive referendum but for some while now I have believed this was the only way out.
If we have one it really must be binding this time. I think we also need to have a proper framework for future referenda on the EU including how long before another one could be held. My feeling is 20 years unless there is a super majority of MPs who vote to trigger one (at least 2/3ds).
Although only a small chance, I could see a scenario where Johnson gets the vote of no confidence rolling tomorrow with his "alternative" vision. Storms into the EU, and says that Britain will actually Brexit, rather than "Brexit"
That would be terrifying.
I feel sorry for Theresa May, she has a job where no matter what she does, almost everyone will be disappointed.
I don't feel sorry for her.
No one forced her to be PM.
No one forced her to call a General Election with one purpose only, to try to strengthen her position in the Brexit negotiations, primarily against the Brextremists in her own party.
No one forced her to do a grubby deal with the DUP.
No one forced her to try to use the Royal Prerogative to trigger A50, bypassing the sovereignty of Parliament.
No one forced her to trigger A50 without a proper plan.
No one forced her to allow cabinet ministers licence to paddle their own Brexit canoes.
No one forced her to take personal control of the Brexit negotiations ignoring her own Secretary of State, as well as sideling her Foreign and Trade Secretaries.
No one forced her to create irreconcilable red lines that got us to this wholly shambolic place where her so called "deal" is dead in the water before she even presents it to the EU.
There are all monumental mistakes of her own making.
This is apparently a story behind the FT paywall, and it is similar to the story about stockpiling rations to prepare for the no deal brexit, which to me seems inevitable now. It turns out that Northern Ireland can't generate enough energy from it's own resources, and imports it from the south as part of some kind of whole land mass agreement. Anyway Dominic Rabb in preparing for the no deal brexit is going to have to get floating generators on ships obviously to park off the coast of NI in order to supply it's energy needs. This is the kind of practical detail I like to know about. When voting leave all those people (who knew what they were voting for how dare we suggest otherwise) were cool about a hard border, costs involving food storage and NI energy supply problems. It is no good telling me I am creating another version of operation fear, the actual brexiter UK government is having to face up to operation reality. Still if the lights suddenly go off when a midwife is helping with a tricky home birth in Bangor, blue passports eh....a price well worth paying for that.
I'll admit, I hadn't read Varoufakis "Adults in the Room" before I voted. The "reality" you refer to is to accept we are not negotiating with adults. No one foresaw the extent to which the EU has so much in common with Mr Trump's spoiled brat bullying approach.
Tell me in who's interests it is for an energy deal not to be agreed for Northern Ireland? No one's. Trump says he'll build a wall, the EU says we'll build a wall and turn off access to energy.
Remainers should apply the same objectivity to Trump's spoiled brat - "it's my ball" - approach as they do to the EU's. Instead, the UK is ridiculed for daring to believe the EU would behave like an adult.
Fat thumbs so forgive the bold and italics. Potentially a subject I can offer something factually substantive on. The CBI produced a report last year on productivity called from Ostrich to Magpie. The two main strands to the report were that Britain lagged behind the rest of Europe (generally speaking) in its productivity scores because of two things. 1, we’re too slow to adopt and implement emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning etc and 2, poor management and leadership practices.
In my job I talk to a lot of board level HR folk, and regardless what you think of HR (I know it has a bad image for some), these are senior people who know there are 101 things we need to address to improve productivity, over leaving the EU.
Low productivity is a global trend which suggest there is a systemic problem. The reason we are slow in adopting new technologies i already suggested, is because it's less hassle to retain margins and dividends if you have a supply of cheap labour to reduce costs compared to diverting capital to investment. If cheap labour becomes in short supply you replace it with technology. Poor management is because we have a class of professional managers with no accountability apart from meeting targets set to ensure they get paid for failure and because decisions are made by committee to ensure no one is responsible. The most efficient companies are private ones those where managers are accountable to the business owner for results.
One event I attended recently was debating the potential impact of Artificial Intelligence and suggesting unlike every other "revolution" where, previously, industrialisation and technological advances created more demand for human brain power, Artificial Intelligence will reduce the demand for human brain power. We either plan for it, recognise the disruption it will create and take action to ensure a fair distribution of wealth that is less and less related to the jobs people do, or we have social carnage. Douchbag may be deluded, but a better way of sharing wealth will need to be found that's not related to your specific labour input.
The technical knowledge exists to replicate the wiring of the human brain. It's only the amount of computer power needed to perform the billions upon billions of network connections that makes it not possible. Even if AI fails to deliver a machine that effectively replaces the human brain, there are going to be big changes afoot as AI makes inroads into the unskilled labour market. Only the ill-informed equate productivity with how hard people work, the fact is that productivity is about replacing human resources with mechanical and robotic resources. When that starts to replace human thinking resources it is not a new industrial revolution, it's a complete sea change in the balance between work and leisure that is an opportunity for all to benefit.
I do not think the EU is relevant to helping the UK face the radical upheavals likely to arise in the next twenty years. The EU is about protecting and facilitating the trade between its members mainly in goods and products. Services do not benefit from a single EU market in the same way. The figures speak for themselves, the UK is less and less a producer of goods and more a producer of services and intellectual property resources. It is potentially better positioned to compete globally in services and IT but only with sufficient investment.
What is the EU doing? If the EU is what EU campaigners pretend it is, it would be the platform for Europe to use its combined resources to compete with the US and China. What initiatives has it taken? A talking shop and a "proposal" to have a £1.5bn research fund. China began investing in Artificial Intelligence relatively recently when a computer beat its military intelligence officers at the game used to train them.China - it is aiming to have a $150bn industry by 2013.
The EU wants to lead in ethics and data protection, a good thing, but what does it mean in reality - the rest of the World lead in commercial application while the EU becomes the leader in setting regulations.
Productivity is not related to how hard somebody works? If you have two people, a clock, and and two spades and ten holes for each person of the same size to dig. The person who finishes first is the most productive due to working hard. Am I missing something?
Productivity is not related to how hard somebody works? If you have two people, a clock, and and two spades and ten holes for each person of the same size to dig. The person who finishes first is the most productive due to working hard. Am I missing something?
Yes. It shouldn't matter what size the people are.
Productivity is not related to how hard somebody works? If you have two people, a clock, and and two spades and ten holes for each person of the same size to dig. The person who finishes first is the most productive due to working hard. Am I missing something?
It's not that simple. Two people could dig a hole, could get more people digging, could buy bigger spades or could get a giant digger to do it. Productivity is as much a measure of efficiency and innovation as how hard people work.
Productivity is not related to how hard somebody works? If you have two people, a clock, and and two spades and ten holes for each person of the same size to dig. The person who finishes first is the most productive due to working hard. Am I missing something?
It's not that simple. Two people could dig a hole, could get more people digging, could buy bigger spades or could get a giant digger to do it. Productivity is as much a measure of efficiency and innovation as how hard people work.
Yes, a different situation would get different results. I have simplified it to brass tacks in order to compare the productivity of two workers.
@Dippenhall And what you do not explain is how leaving the EU will assist the UK in becoming more productive. I don't know whether you read the FT article I posted but it disputes your sweeping description of why poor management is so prevalent in the UK. How does EU membership create and foster :
professional managers with no accountability apart from meeting targets set to ensure they get paid for failure and because decisions are made by committee to ensure no one is responsible
?
Managers who report directly to the business owners...ah yes the myriad German Mitteltreuhand companies, small companies who have been around ages, stay in the same town and punch above their global weight? Sennheiser, Faber-Castell, and Jever brewery are three I can think of, 2 of them with their products in my house right now. EU membership didn't hold them back, did it? and there are thousands like them. I think in the UK you are pointing the finger at privatised utilities, right? Thames Water, Govia Thameslink, Centrica for example? Pseudo private companies getting fat in pseudo markets? Indeed, and did the EU tell us to privatise our utilities in this way? Nope, on the contrary we did it ourselves, and at the beginning of the 90s harangued our fellow EEC members and a bewildered Commission into adopting similar privatisations. As a result I face constantly rising water bills in my Prague house from a French owned monopoly supplier of water. And having foisted this nonsense on the rest of Europe, you now want to scuttle off. Terrific. No wonder a lot of Euro politicians privately mutter "good riddance".
Even you, blaming the EU for a whole dump of shit that is entirely ours, and entirely within our gift to fix. One by one, even the most intelligent of Brexiteers are running out of arguments.
@Dippenhall And what you do not explain is how leaving the EU will assist the UK in becoming more productive. I don't know whether you read the FT article I posted but it disputes your sweeping description of why poor management is so prevalent in the UK. How does EU membership create and foster :
professional managers with no accountability apart from meeting targets set to ensure they get paid for failure and because decisions are made by committee to ensure no one is responsible
?
Managers who report directly to the business owners...ah yes the myriad German Mitteltreuhand companies, small companies who have been around ages, stay in the same town and punch above their global weight? Sennheiser, Faber-Castell, and Jever brewery are three I can think of, 2 of them with their products in my house right now. EU membership didn't hold them back, did it? and there are thousands like them. I think in the UK you are pointing the finger at privatised utilities, right? Thames Water, Govia Thameslink, Centrica for example? Pseudo private companies getting fat in pseudo markets? Indeed, and did the EU tell us to privatise our utilities in this way? Nope, on the contrary we did it ourselves, and at the beginning of the 90s harangued our fellow EEC members and a bewildered Commission into adopting similar privatisations. As a result I face constantly rising water bills in my Prague house from a French owned monopoly supplier of water. And having foisted this nonsense on the rest of Europe, you now want to scuttle off. Terrific. No wonder a lot of Euro politicians privately mutter "good riddance".
Even you, blaming the EU for a whole dump of shit that is entirely ours, and entirely within our gift to fix. One by one, even the most intelligent of Brexiteers are running out of arguments.
All the UK utility companies have been fantastically successful in a very competitive market - no problems with our infrastructure!
Between that and the money for the NHS bus it is clear now that the Leave campaign was founded on deception. Now people know that and are more informed about the EU and the impact of leaving it only seems fair that there should be another vote. Surely the Leave side still feel confident enough about convincing people again without resorting to lying?
Otherwise history will say that the UK left the EU because of slick but dishonest advertising on the part of the Leave campaign.
Between that and the money for the NHS bus it is clear now that the Leave campaign was founded on deception. Now people know that and are more informed about the EU and the impact of leaving it only seems fair that there should be another vote. Surely the Leave side still feel confident enough about convincing people again without resorting to lying?
Otherwise history will say that the UK left the EU because of slick but dishonest advertising on the part of the Leave campaign.
Seriously, stop assuming reason and logic will have any bearing on this, it clearly won’t.
@Dippenhall And what you do not explain is how leaving the EU will assist the UK in becoming more productive. I don't know whether you read the FT article I posted but it disputes your sweeping description of why poor management is so prevalent in the UK. How does EU membership create and foster :
professional managers with no accountability apart from meeting targets set to ensure they get paid for failure and because decisions are made by committee to ensure no one is responsible
?
Managers who report directly to the business owners...ah yes the myriad German Mitteltreuhand companies, small companies who have been around ages, stay in the same town and punch above their global weight? Sennheiser, Faber-Castell, and Jever brewery are three I can think of, 2 of them with their products in my house right now. EU membership didn't hold them back, did it? and there are thousands like them. I think in the UK you are pointing the finger at privatised utilities, right? Thames Water, Govia Thameslink, Centrica for example? Pseudo private companies getting fat in pseudo markets? Indeed, and did the EU tell us to privatise our utilities in this way? Nope, on the contrary we did it ourselves, and at the beginning of the 90s harangued our fellow EEC members and a bewildered Commission into adopting similar privatisations. As a result I face constantly rising water bills in my Prague house from a French owned monopoly supplier of water. And having foisted this nonsense on the rest of Europe, you now want to scuttle off. Terrific. No wonder a lot of Euro politicians privately mutter "good riddance".
Even you, blaming the EU for a whole dump of shit that is entirely ours, and entirely within our gift to fix. One by one, even the most intelligent of Brexiteers are running out of arguments.
It will help us get our Empire back - an old lady on Question Time told me!
So it sounds like May’s “Chequers compromise” which would almost certainly be rejected by Brussels now won’t even make it that far after she has caved it to Brexiteers and has agreed to amendments to the Customs Bill - some of which seem to directly contradict the plan she came up with a couple of weeks ago.
Comments
They really are clueless.
The whole brexit process seems to demonstrate how useless the United Kingdom is, and I accept my share of responsibility for that.
For me the most useless part of all this was the referendum itself. No thought was given to the possibility of a leave vote! A sub question that instructed politicians how to deliver the vote should have been added. It is criminal negligence and I think those responsible should face sanction for it. Along with Seth who is mostly to blame after all!
No one forced her to be PM.
No one forced her to call a General Election with one purpose only, to try to strengthen her position in the Brexit negotiations, primarily against the Brextremists in her own party.
No one forced her to do a grubby deal with the DUP.
No one forced her to try to use the Royal Prerogative to trigger A50, bypassing the sovereignty of Parliament.
No one forced her to trigger A50 without a proper plan.
No one forced her to allow cabinet ministers licence to paddle their own Brexit canoes.
No one forced her to take personal control of the Brexit negotiations ignoring her own Secretary of State, as well as sideling her Foreign and Trade Secretaries.
No one forced her to create irreconcilable red lines that got us to this wholly shambolic place where her so called "deal" is dead in the water before she even presents it to the EU.
There are all monumental mistakes of her own making.
Its not just her though is it, there has been miscalculation after miscalculation right across the political spectrum. The public have been duped. Experts have been ignored.
I continue to hear that experts predicted disaster would befall us if we didn't join the Euro and that turned out to be wrong. This has then been used to rubbish any expert going forward. It seems that virtually no Politician on either side of the debate were able to draw on expertise regarding Customs arrangements, and borders. No Politician as far I can recall during the campaign ever talked about the difference between a FTA and the frictionless trade we have by being in the SM.
We are where we are. There really is no easy way forward. Parliament like the country is hopelessly split. The last thing we really need is another decisive referendum but for some while now I have believed this was the only way out.
If we have one it really must be binding this time. I think we also need to have a proper framework for future referenda on the EU including how long before another one could be held. My feeling is 20 years unless there is a super majority of MPs who vote to trigger one (at least 2/3ds).
But apart from that ?
If you have two people, a clock, and and two spades and ten holes for each person of the same size to dig.
The person who finishes first is the most productive due to working hard.
Am I missing something?
I have simplified it to brass tacks in order to compare the productivity of two workers.
Says it all, really...
:-)
And what you do not explain is how leaving the EU will assist the UK in becoming more productive. I don't know whether you read the FT article I posted but it disputes your sweeping description of why poor management is so prevalent in the UK. How does EU membership create and foster :
professional managers with no accountability apart from meeting targets set to ensure they get paid for failure and because decisions are made by committee to ensure no one is responsible
?
Managers who report directly to the business owners...ah yes the myriad German Mitteltreuhand companies, small companies who have been around ages, stay in the same town and punch above their global weight? Sennheiser, Faber-Castell, and Jever brewery are three I can think of, 2 of them with their products in my house right now. EU membership didn't hold them back, did it? and there are thousands like them. I think in the UK you are pointing the finger at privatised utilities, right? Thames Water, Govia Thameslink, Centrica for example? Pseudo private companies getting fat in pseudo markets? Indeed, and did the EU tell us to privatise our utilities in this way? Nope, on the contrary we did it ourselves, and at the beginning of the 90s harangued our fellow EEC members and a bewildered Commission into adopting similar privatisations. As a result I face constantly rising water bills in my Prague house from a French owned monopoly supplier of water. And having foisted this nonsense on the rest of Europe, you now want to scuttle off. Terrific. No wonder a lot of Euro politicians privately mutter "good riddance".
Even you, blaming the EU for a whole dump of shit that is entirely ours, and entirely within our gift to fix. One by one, even the most intelligent of Brexiteers are running out of arguments.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/16/michael-gove-admits-leave-was-wrong-to-fuel-immigration-fears
Between that and the money for the NHS bus it is clear now that the Leave campaign was founded on deception. Now people know that and are more informed about the EU and the impact of leaving it only seems fair that there should be another vote. Surely the Leave side still feel confident enough about convincing people again without resorting to lying?
Otherwise history will say that the UK left the EU because of slick but dishonest advertising on the part of the Leave campaign.
Absolute shambles.
There's no way round upsetting half the country. That is Brexit "best case" scenario in my opinion.
Although it looks like she might be having a go at upsetting the entire country instead by letting absolutely everyone down.
(a). Make sure we leave without a deal.
(b). Make sure we never leave at all.