If the vote happens it will probably be far more vicious than the last since the Nationalists face the prospect of defeat for a generation. But that is no reason to shirk the challenge when polls consistently show that May is not handling this well... plus 55% want to Remain.
Well, I seem to recall that about a year ago, you were giving people who suggested a referendum on the terms of a deal a hard time on here. But the unfolding saga of this historic political disaster certainly throws up plenty of reasons for people to change their opinions, as they discover what the implications are.
I don't wish to score points however, because I am now not sure that demanding a second vote now is realistic. You talk about a "snap" People's Vote, however consider what needs to happen for this to be feasible:
- firstly the terms of any deal are nowhere in sight. Still. Will we have it by the end of November? How much support will it garner? No agreement, nothing to vote on. - That takes you into December. That interferes with the political classes skiing trips. I am serious here. Nothing big in British politics ever gets actioned in the three weeks around Christmas. - in January then, you need to see a significant number of Government ministers backing a vote. That is two months for them to decide to utter the words that none of them have so far. And they have to win the argument. - what an argument that will be, as this time it is really important to get the questions right. Think about the various players here and how they will twist and turn single words in a potential question - that takes you to February. Two months before Brexit. I have read that according to civil servants you need two months minimum to run a national election. so that takes you right to Brexit day. - it is assumed that if a referendum were called, the EU would gladly agree to pushing back Article 50 day. I think that's broadly true, but in the current environment of "the will of the people" being to be led by total twats, it's worth countering that a twat like Salvini might delay signing the necessary declaration as a bargaining chip to win his own dispute with the rest of the EU.
I thought this already before I became one of the 700,000 last week. Unfortunately the dramatic success of the march has not changed my mind because -probably due to having worked on projects with tight deadlines most of my working life,which has turned me into a neurotic about timelines - I can see the logistical pitfalls, per the above.
I'd be happy to be proved wrong. But every passing day makes that more unlikely.
'The dramatic success of the march' is what exactly? The sad reality is that those in power are just as likely to ignore the march as they are preparing to ignore the result of the Referendum. They like doing deals behind closed doors preferably without the little people being consulted at all. They lost one referendum, I cannot see them risking another one.
Anyone know if the EHIC will still be valid for travel to different EU countries for residents of other EU countries who are UK citizens? Or if UK nationals living in the EU will have to have travel insurance when returning to visit the UK, in the absence of the EHIC? Grateful for any suggestions - it's all such a mess.
I believe it is the "nationality" of the card you have that is the important thing when travelling from one EU country to another, not your own nationality.
So you need to know what colour passport your EHIC card has?
I have an Austrian EHIC card, so I'm covered by the Austrian equivalent of the NHS for any problems I might have in, say, Madrid. I asume CharltonMadrid has a Spanish card, so he would be covered by the Spanish equivalent in, say, Vienna.
Assuming we can travel after Brexit, and are not booted out of our respective countries, I don't think that the fact that we have British passports, whatever the colour, is relevant.
Quite. It was just a gentle observation that we apparently have to be aware of the nationality of our documentation as well as our own nationality.
Anyone know if the EHIC will still be valid for travel to different EU countries for residents of other EU countries who are UK citizens? Or if UK nationals living in the EU will have to have travel insurance when returning to visit the UK, in the absence of the EHIC? Grateful for any suggestions - it's all such a mess.
I believe it is the "nationality" of the card you have that is the important thing when travelling from one EU country to another, not your own nationality.
So you need to know what colour passport your EHIC card has?
I have an Austrian EHIC card, so I'm covered by the Austrian equivalent of the NHS for any problems I might have in, say, Madrid. I asume CharltonMadrid has a Spanish card, so he would be covered by the Spanish equivalent in, say, Vienna.
Assuming we can travel after Brexit, and are not booted out of our respective countries, I don't think that the fact that we have British passports, whatever the colour, is relevant.
Quite. It was just a gentle observation that we apparently have to be aware of the nationality of our documentation as well as our own nationality.
Indeed. Sitting out here with no real idea of what will happen to us after March 29 is tough. I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to stay here after Brexit, but my wife is not an EU national, so what her situation will be, nobody knows.
I might have to "bite the bullet" and apply for Austrian nationality. That would mean giving up British nationality as the Austrians only allow you to have two passports if, for example, they need you to play for their national football team, or you are a famous opera singer. I'm too old for football, and I can't sing.
At the moment, my wife's health insurance is covered by mine because I'm an EU national. Will that be the case after Brexit? Who knows? Will the UK's, so called, negotiating team even consider UK nationals living in the EU married to non-EU nationals? Call me cynical, but given their performance to date, I doubt it.
Same situation as me, Vienna - my wife's access to the health system here is dependent on me as an EU national as she is American, and it's the same for me with Spanish citizenship as they don't allow dual nationality. It's certainly a worrying time but there are lots of Brits in Spain so hoping some kind of deal is made. Guess there aren't too many Brits in Austria though? Best wishes for it all.
Same situation as me, Vienna - my wife's access to the health system here is dependent on me as an EU national as she is American, and it's the same for me with Spanish citizenship as they don't allow dual nationality. It's certainly a worrying time but there are lots of Brits in Spain so hoping some kind of deal is made. Guess there aren't too many Brits in Austria though? Best wishes for it all.
Same to you. My wife is the optimist and is sure everything will turn out fine. I'm the one left to do the worrying. 😟
Anyone know if the EHIC will still be valid for travel to different EU countries for residents of other EU countries who are UK citizens? Or if UK nationals living in the EU will have to have travel insurance when returning to visit the UK, in the absence of the EHIC? Grateful for any suggestions - it's all such a mess.
I believe it is the "nationality" of the card you have that is the important thing when travelling from one EU country to another, not your own nationality.
So you need to know what colour passport your EHIC card has?
I have an Austrian EHIC card, so I'm covered by the Austrian equivalent of the NHS for any problems I might have in, say, Madrid. I asume CharltonMadrid has a Spanish card, so he would be covered by the Spanish equivalent in, say, Vienna.
Assuming we can travel after Brexit, and are not booted out of our respective countries, I don't think that the fact that we have British passports, whatever the colour, is relevant.
Yep, I have a Czech EHIC card. Keeps me covered while anywhere in the EU. But possibly no longer in the UK.
This is so ridiculous - I keep pinching myself to see if I have woken up yet!
Absolutely. We have a situation that only a minority want, where the promised benefits do not exist, where the best case (highly unlikely) scenario will be damaging and other alternatives are far worse, where we will have our rights diminished and our economic abilities curtailed, where only a handful of those that wanted this can still state why, where those in charge do not have the ability to get what was wanted or the nous to recognise that or the honesty to say so.
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
This is so ridiculous - I keep pinching myself to see if I have woken up yet!
Absolutely. We have a situation that only a minority want, where the promised benefits do not exist, where the best case (highly unlikely) scenario will be damaging and other alternatives are far worse, where we will have our rights diminished and our economic abilities curtailed, where only a handful of those that wanted this can still state why, where those in charge do not have the ability to get what was wanted or the nous to recognise that or the honesty to say so.
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
Yeah, but looks like there will be a 50p coin to commemorate leaving. Just about sums the whole thing up!
This is so ridiculous - I keep pinching myself to see if I have woken up yet!
Absolutely. We have a situation that only a minority want, where the promised benefits do not exist, where the best case (highly unlikely) scenario will be damaging and other alternatives are far worse, where we will have our rights diminished and our economic abilities curtailed, where only a handful of those that wanted this can still state why, where those in charge do not have the ability to get what was wanted or the nous to recognise that or the honesty to say so.
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
Leave won with 52%......that's a majority.
now if you mean it was a minority of people when compared to the whole country or even to those who were eligible to vote then you have no idea how they would have voted. They may have voted to leave, making Leave have a much bigger majority.
Golfie, is that it? Leave won. I teed you up with the perfect opportunity to extol the benefits of Brexit and all you could do was refer me to an out of date snapshot.
Of course the leave camp did win the referendum (the referendum with less checks and balances than would be required by law to change the constitution of a social club). But this is reality, we are harming ourselves, at the moment it's just a little light scratching, but there is real danger ahead if we don't stop. There are no winners.
Leave won. Something. Nobody knows what. It might be true to say that remain knows more about what leave won than leave does. Leave has nothing credibly positive to say about brexit, remain is able to point out specific credible detail after specific credible detail regarding the consequence of the result. Leave seems to be fixed in the warm fuzzy glow of victory which goes no further than the self satisfaction that they have hurt a lot of people. Leave voters seemingly love it, being on the side of those who want to cause harm. I read above about the complexities of UK citizens with lives abroad in places like Spain and Austria, and the harm brought on them by the gleeful leave voters who love it that they have had the power to ruin so many lives. If leave voters were able to point out any actual benefit from brexit it might not be so bad, but they can't point out any benefit that stands up to examination so we have to wait and see. Wait for the queues, restrictions, shortages, cultural damage, border problems and so on or maybe a brexit voter here can suggest a brexit dividend we can definitely look forward to.
This is so ridiculous - I keep pinching myself to see if I have woken up yet!
Absolutely. We have a situation that only a minority want, where the promised benefits do not exist, where the best case (highly unlikely) scenario will be damaging and other alternatives are far worse, where we will have our rights diminished and our economic abilities curtailed, where only a handful of those that wanted this can still state why, where those in charge do not have the ability to get what was wanted or the nous to recognise that or the honesty to say so.
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
I'd say that we are in a better place today than we were when Article 50 was triggered! At least the options are becoming more familiar to people, there is an outline deal (90-95% complete) and the distinct possibility that the 650 MPs in Parliament will take control of the decision whenever it comes to a vote. There is no Parliamentary majority for a "no deal" outcome so this will only transpire if interest groups fail to work together.
As posted higher up by several (including myself) we now have the possibility of ratifying a deal, a People's vote OR a general election. All three of those require some part of our democracy to agree the direction. The irony is that a BINO, Norway + CU option is not on the table, except for the transition period. However one option after an election is to stretch the transition for much longer...
We need to leave... and we need to put the 2016 vote behind us, not by ignoring it but by moving forwards with nother election or referendum. And we need to recognise that the democratic process throughout the western world is evolving. That's why 700,000 on a march and one million on a petition is so important. People have a pop at Corbyn and Momentum / Unite but they have mobilised many, many voters and have stretched their fundraising above that of the Tories. If centrists want a third way option, then they too need to mobilise, find a credible leadership team and choose an appropriate time to launch.
My gut instinct is that as long as we stay in the CU and SM then we can ride this one out. And the impact of leaving the SM isn't altogether clear - certainly the country is split on that particular decision in the polls because membership of the SM requires adhering to the four freedoms, especially freedom of movement. What we have here is an entire country, or to be more precise, the less prosperous regions of a country being convinced that an extra couple of hundred thousand hard working EU immigrants of working age coming to the UK every year is problematic. Such a risk that every treaty and commercial arrangement agreed over the last 40-50 years needs to be binned.
And the only defence that the people who concocted this shit show can give is "we won" or "May is delivering the wrong kinda Brexit". What I'm trying to say here is that it's not what happened in 2016 that matters but how the nation responds. The next five months will determine part of that response.
A subscriber article from the Irish Times, occasionally tongue in cheek, but putting some of our politicians to shame (though I do worry that they think adults have nothing left to live for):
Schoolgirls on Brexit: ‘The adults are not thinking straight’
St Patrick’s pupils in Crossmaglen, on the Border, explain Brexit to The Irish Times
The six local schoolgirls all know it as “Cross”. Most others know this village in south Armagh, just 3km across the Border into Northern Ireland, as Crossmaglen.
The village was once famous for its nationalist defiance at British rule and the de facto capital of what became known to UK security forces as Bandit Country. It is now a quiet and bustling little town with narrow, traffic-congested streets and a busy village square with plenty of comings and goings.
At St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School on the edge of the village, principal Michael Madine points out the bricks on the wall of the school facing the British army barracks in the village that had to be replaced as a result of bullets striking the wall during gunfights between the IRA and the British soldiers. The school was right in the middle of the crossfire.
Now a tranquil village, Crossmaglen is a changed place 20 years after the Troubles ended. This could be any school, anywhere on the island. It has all the normality that comes from two decades of peace.
This morning, the school is abuzz with kid chatter and laughter as students, from aged four upwards make their way, mid-morning, around the corridors, high-fiving the older children as they pass.
The oldest of the children walking the corridors was born nine years after the Belfast Agreement that laid the groundwork for a peace process. They have no personal memory of the Troubles.
Crossmaglen finds itself back on a front line, this time with Brexit given the uncertainty around what will happen to the Border when Crossmaglen becomes one of the villages in Northern Ireland along the new frontier between the United Kingdom and European Union from March 29th, 2019.
Madine introduces six of his brightest students – Cara Crummie (11), Aimee-Lee Caraher (11), Caitlín Patton (10), Mary Gallagher (10), Ciara McBride (10) and Kayleigh Shields (10) – who have agreed, with the permission of their parents, to talk about Brexit.
They discuss what they know about the UK’s departure from the EU, what it might mean for them, their families and their friends, and what they know of the Troubles.
Four of the girls live in Northern Ireland. Ciara lives about 1.5km from the Border, but the frontier is so invisible to her she is not sure if her home is in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland.
Aimee-Lee’s home straddles the Border, one part of her house in the North and the other half in the South. She starts a 50-minute conversation with the six girls explaining what life might be like for her after Brexit Day when one part of her home will be in the UK and the other outside it, in the EU.
So how does it work living right on the Border?
Aimee-Lee: I sleep in Northern Ireland but my livingroom would be in the Republic of Ireland.
Where do you have your breakfast?
Aimee-Lee: In the South.
Do you ever eat your breakfast in the North?
Aimee-Lee: No.
What’s it like living on the Border?
Aimee-Lee: Up to now it’s been okay but if Brexit happens, if I look out my window, there’s going to be people there. Say if Dad gives me five pound [sterling] for my birthday, am I going to have to change it into euro before I put it into my money box? [Laughs]
How might Brexit affect your house?
Cara: It might split the house up.
Aimee-Lee: Every time you cross the Border I have to show my passport saying night-night to me mum. [Laughs again]
Are you worried that there might have to be a customs man in your house if you’re on the Border?
Aimee-Lee: I hope not. There is no room for him to sleep. [All six girls laugh]
Ciara: Aimee-Lee, what side will he sleep on, the north or the south?
Mary: He would have to sleep on the stairs. The bottom step.
Aimee-Lee: Yeah, he could sleep on the stairs. That’s the Border.
Can you tell me what Brexit is?
Kayleigh: The UK is leaving the European Union.
Cara: I’ll help you. The European Union is 28 countries and Britain is one of those 28 countries so once it leaves there will only be 27 countries in the European Union.
Is Brexit a good or a bad thing?
Kayleigh: It is a bad thing. If we get a border, like police checks or whatever, then it could take an hour longer to get anywhere if you are trying to cross the Border.
Caitlín: I think it is a bad idea. Let’s say if you were selling like cows or sheep . . . and the man who wanted them in Cork was trying to get them, he would have to get extra money to take it across the Border. That would be bad for his business.
Ciara: I don’t think it is a good thing because it is just going to make it harder for everyone. So if you just wanted to go to Dundalk to just do a bit of shopping, you’d have to pay extra just to bring it back across the Border and there would be lines in the customs huts and you’re only allowed to take certain things across so you’d have to be checked.
Cara: Brexit makes me sad. My dad was telling me whenever it happened [referring to the last time there was a hard border] that him and my auntie would have to lie on the ground and bullets would come over them and bombs would come over them. I don’t want that to happen to me or if I have any children in the later years. The Troubles that were – I don’t want that here.
Do you think most people in Crossmaglen like the idea of Brexit?
Aimee-Lee: I don’t think they do because say if they were coming down to where I live, they would have to pass two checkpoints just to get to my house. Then I don’t think it would be a nice thing to have to show your passport just to go somewhere.
To people who don’t know, how would you describe a border?
Kayleigh: It is like a dividing line between two parts of a country and there could be an actual wall, police checks or CCTV cameras around.
Aimee-Lee: If Brexit happens, there is going to be guards or customs or police standing at my gate and they will be saying, “where are you going?” “can I have your passport?” or “what do you have?”
Can the politicians stop a hard border from happening?
Aimee-Lee: It is hard to know because they still can’t agree on whether it is happening or not.
Do you know what this “backstop” is that the politicians are trying to negotiate to stop it?
Cara: The backstop is where there still is a Border but there is not going to be any police there. There is not going to be anything, no queues, so all you have to do is just pass the Border. It’s like what it is now but if we don’t get that back thing – backstop – there will be police and massive queues.
Aimee-Lee: If the customs or the guards or police rule and man the borders, the Irish might protest against them and then the customs will like call to the British army and then it will just destroy our peaceful country we have had for the last 20 years.
What do your families remember of the Troubles?
Kayleigh: One time my mother said she was at the youth club with her sister, my auntie, and these bombs and bullets were coming and the roof fell in. One time she was at school and there were bullets coming and she had to hide under the tables.
Cara: Every time they left their house, there’d be bombs going off. There would be bullets going past them. Loads of people have died and I don’t want to die now. Then Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would be at peace no more.
Mary: See if Brexit happened now and the war started again, a bomb might go off and we might have to go under the table again.
Cara: In Belfast they have a wall between the Protestants and Catholics because they used to always fight. It just started off as barbed wire and then they had to build [it] into concrete because they were setting off guns and all through them.
Aimee-Lee: With the barbed wire, if that does happen, am I going to be separated from my friends?
Caitlín: Mum said when she and her cousin were walking home from school, they nearly got run over by one of them big army tanks and then they couldn’t get to sleep at night with all the bombs and the shooting.
[Aimee-Lee’s family come from a republican background and are strong supporters of Northern Ireland’s peace process. To show where she lives, Aimee-Lee has brought with her a Caraher family photograph taken during the 1980s of her grandfather and her father’s siblings standing in two separate groups on either side of the Border to show how it divides their land. Her home was built on this plot.]
Are you concerned that the Troubles could come back if the politicians can’t agree on Brexit?
Caitlín: That could happen again. That is what they did years ago. They thought it wouldn’t happen. Now they don’t think it is going to happen but it could happen again.
Do you think the grown-ups know what they are doing when it comes to Brexit?
Mary: No. They’re acting like children because they can’t agree if they are going to have a deal or no deal. I don’t like to see them fight.
Ciara: They just keep arguing, they can’t do this and they can’t do that. Theresa May wants the best of both worlds. She wants a good deal but she doesn’t want all the rules. She wants to have it all but she really can’t. She wants to have a deal like Canada but she wants to make it better than Canada and she’d call that Chequers but they did say that Chequers wouldn’t work.
Kayleigh: They know what they are talking about more than we know what they are talking about but we still know more what will happen.
Do you think people in London know what it’s like to live here next to the Border?
Cara: They don’t know how the Border works or they don’t know how it feels like to be with a Border because all their stuff is just one whole thing. But if they come and live here, they will see how different it is and if Theresa May comes here during Brexit, then she will know how we felt.
If Theresa May came to Crossmaglen, what would you say to her?
Cara: Brexit shouldn’t go through. You are not respecting our vote. It is not very nice.
[The girls referred during the conversation to a majority of people in Northern Ireland voting to remain in the EU in the June 2016 referendum when the UK as a whole voted to leave.]
Mary: I would say: try harder. Look at Aimee-Lee, she has to cross the Border twice, she has to get her education. She might have to miss two hours of school.
Do you think kids could negotiate a better deal?
All six: Yes!
Aimee-Lee: Kids have a better way of saying it to people, because we are not just arguing and being all argumentative. We are just saying, “right, I am not here to argue, I am just here to prove my point of view”. I live on the Border and I don’t want this big hullabaloo outside my gate. I just want a simple little Brexit. I just want to go on, drive through the Border, not have to be checked, not have to show my passport, not be asked: “Where are you going? What have you got in the back?”
Cara: I think we do understand more than them what it would feel like because they’re adults and they don’t have much left to live for but we have our whole lives ahead of us.
Kayleigh: They are not really thinking straight. They are just thinking about what they want.
When I posted the other day that "it's all about the Customs Union", that was shorthand for stating that one can only envisage no border checks if Northern Ireland remains in the same customs area as Ireland. Anything else means divergence and smugglers seeking to leverage the arbitrage between two customs regimes. That is why Norway has a full on border with Sweden.
Perhaps you might add what else might needs to be added to ensure an agreed Brexit deal vis a vis Ireland as this is perhaps a simplistic understanding as to why the backstop requirement equates to remaining in the CU. Add to this the desire to avoid vexatious questions around the UK and borders in the Irish Sea and it appears that Great Britain will also remain in the CU in perpetuity in order for May to cut a deal.
In other news the decline of the main centre parties across Europe continues as per the trend with both CDU and the SPD losing 10% each (again) in another set of German elections. The AfD and the Greens have repeated their recent performances by snaffling up that 10%. And the fall out in the CDU has led to Merkel calling it a day as their leader! Although she will remain Chancellor for the time being.
Described as "the beginning of the end of the 13 year Merkel era".
In other news the decline of the main centre parties across Europe continues as per the trend with both CDU and the SPD losing 10% each (again) in another set of German elections. The AfD and the Greens have repeated their recent performances by snaffling up that 10%. And the fall out in the CDU has led to Merkel calling it a day as their leader! Although she will remain Chancellor for the time being.
Described as "the beginning of the end of the 13 year Merkel era".
You see, hoofie, in order to prevent economic dominance in Europe, two super-blocs developed after Brexit, us on one side and the French and the Germans on the other side. The idea was to have two vast, opposing ecomomies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be an economic war.
But this is a sort of a economic war, isn't it, I hear you cry.
Yes, that's right. There was a tiny flaw in the plan. - What was that, you say? - It was bollocks.
In other news the decline of the main centre parties across Europe continues as per the trend with both CDU and the SPD losing 10% each (again) in another set of German elections. The AfD and the Greens have repeated their recent performances by snaffling up that 10%. And the fall out in the CDU has led to Merkel calling it a day as their leader! Although she will remain Chancellor for the time being.
Described as "the beginning of the end of the 13 year Merkel era".
And worth emphasising for our alt.right friends on here that the Greens did far better than the AfD, who polled 12%, (i.e 3 points less than UKIP in 2015).
Meanwhile Prague is now the first capital city to have a mayor from the Pirate party. What they stand for, nobody is quite sure,least of all them, but they are not alt.right anti-immigrants, that's for sure.
In other news the decline of the main centre parties across Europe continues as per the trend with both CDU and the SPD losing 10% each (again) in another set of German elections. The AfD and the Greens have repeated their recent performances by snaffling up that 10%. And the fall out in the CDU has led to Merkel calling it a day as their leader! Although she will remain Chancellor for the time being.
Described as "the beginning of the end of the 13 year Merkel era".
And worth emphasising for our alt.right friends on here that the Greens did far better than the AfD, who polled 12%, (i.e 3 points less than UKIP in 2015).
Meanwhile Prague is now the first capital city to have a mayor from the Pirate party. What they stand for, nobody is quite sure,least of all them, but they are not alt.right anti-immigrants, that's for sure.
Don't forget Boris' stint in the Dick Whittington role ;-)
In other news the decline of the main centre parties across Europe continues as per the trend with both CDU and the SPD losing 10% each (again) in another set of German elections. The AfD and the Greens have repeated their recent performances by snaffling up that 10%. And the fall out in the CDU has led to Merkel calling it a day as their leader! Although she will remain Chancellor for the time being.
Described as "the beginning of the end of the 13 year Merkel era".
And worth emphasising for our alt.right friends on here that the Greens did far better than the AfD, who polled 12%, (i.e 3 points less than UKIP in 2015).
Meanwhile Prague is now the first capital city to have a mayor from the Pirate party. What they stand for, nobody is quite sure,least of all them, but they are not alt.right anti-immigrants, that's for sure.
Perhaps you can take some comfort from what happened with H'angus the Monkey in Hartlepool....?:
Comments
They like doing deals behind closed doors preferably without the little people being consulted at all.
They lost one referendum, I cannot see them risking another one.
I might have to "bite the bullet" and apply for Austrian nationality. That would mean giving up British nationality as the Austrians only allow you to have two passports if, for example, they need you to play for their national football team, or you are a famous opera singer. I'm too old for football, and I can't sing.
At the moment, my wife's health insurance is covered by mine because I'm an EU national. Will that be the case after Brexit? Who knows? Will the UK's, so called, negotiating team even consider UK nationals living in the EU married to non-EU nationals? Call me cynical, but given their performance to date, I doubt it.
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
Yeah, but looks like there will be a 50p coin to commemorate leaving. Just about sums the whole thing up!
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
Leave won with 52%......that's a majority.
now if you mean it was a minority of people when compared to the whole country or even to those who were eligible to vote then you have no idea how they would have voted. They may have voted to leave, making Leave have a much bigger majority.
who knows
Of course the leave camp did win the referendum (the referendum with less checks and balances than would be required by law to change the constitution of a social club). But this is reality, we are harming ourselves, at the moment it's just a little light scratching, but there is real danger ahead if we don't stop. There are no winners.
Something.
Nobody knows what.
It might be true to say that remain knows more about what leave won than leave does.
Leave has nothing credibly positive to say about brexit, remain is able to point out specific credible detail after specific credible detail regarding the consequence of the result.
Leave seems to be fixed in the warm fuzzy glow of victory which goes no further than the self satisfaction that they have hurt a lot of people. Leave voters seemingly love it, being on the side of those who want to cause harm. I read above about the complexities of UK citizens with lives abroad in places like Spain and Austria, and the harm brought on them by the gleeful leave voters who love it that they have had the power to ruin so many lives.
If leave voters were able to point out any actual benefit from brexit it might not be so bad, but they can't point out any benefit that stands up to examination so we have to wait and see.
Wait for the queues, restrictions, shortages, cultural damage, border problems and so on or maybe a brexit voter here can suggest a brexit dividend we can definitely look forward to.
We are the national equivalent of a paranoid teenager inflicting self harm out of some deluded attempt to prove our existence. It is as pathetic as it is painfully sad. Someone please stop this madness!
I'd say that we are in a better place today than we were when Article 50 was triggered! At least the options are becoming more familiar to people, there is an outline deal (90-95% complete) and the distinct possibility that the 650 MPs in Parliament will take control of the decision whenever it comes to a vote. There is no Parliamentary majority for a "no deal" outcome so this will only transpire if interest groups fail to work together.
As posted higher up by several (including myself) we now have the possibility of ratifying a deal, a People's vote OR a general election. All three of those require some part of our democracy to agree the direction. The irony is that a BINO, Norway + CU option is not on the table, except for the transition period. However one option after an election is to stretch the transition for much longer...
We need to leave... and we need to put the 2016 vote behind us, not by ignoring it but by moving forwards with nother election or referendum. And we need to recognise that the democratic process throughout the western world is evolving. That's why 700,000 on a march and one million on a petition is so important. People have a pop at Corbyn and Momentum / Unite but they have mobilised many, many voters and have stretched their fundraising above that of the Tories. If centrists want a third way option, then they too need to mobilise, find a credible leadership team and choose an appropriate time to launch.
My gut instinct is that as long as we stay in the CU and SM then we can ride this one out. And the impact of leaving the SM isn't altogether clear - certainly the country is split on that particular decision in the polls because membership of the SM requires adhering to the four freedoms, especially freedom of movement. What we have here is an entire country, or to be more precise, the less prosperous regions of a country being convinced that an extra couple of hundred thousand hard working EU immigrants of working age coming to the UK every year is problematic. Such a risk that every treaty and commercial arrangement agreed over the last 40-50 years needs to be binned.
And the only defence that the people who concocted this shit show can give is "we won" or "May is delivering the wrong kinda Brexit". What I'm trying to say here is that it's not what happened in 2016 that matters but how the nation responds. The next five months will determine part of that response.
And here it is folks. Straight from the paper of the people
Schoolgirls on Brexit: ‘The adults are not thinking straight’
St Patrick’s pupils in Crossmaglen, on the Border, explain Brexit to The Irish Times
The six local schoolgirls all know it as “Cross”. Most others know this village in south Armagh, just 3km across the Border into Northern Ireland, as Crossmaglen.
The village was once famous for its nationalist defiance at British rule and the de facto capital of what became known to UK security forces as Bandit Country. It is now a quiet and bustling little town with narrow, traffic-congested streets and a busy village square with plenty of comings and goings.
At St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School on the edge of the village, principal Michael Madine points out the bricks on the wall of the school facing the British army barracks in the village that had to be replaced as a result of bullets striking the wall during gunfights between the IRA and the British soldiers. The school was right in the middle of the crossfire.
Now a tranquil village, Crossmaglen is a changed place 20 years after the Troubles ended. This could be any school, anywhere on the island. It has all the normality that comes from two decades of peace.
This morning, the school is abuzz with kid chatter and laughter as students, from aged four upwards make their way, mid-morning, around the corridors, high-fiving the older children as they pass.
The oldest of the children walking the corridors was born nine years after the Belfast Agreement that laid the groundwork for a peace process. They have no personal memory of the Troubles.
Crossmaglen finds itself back on a front line, this time with Brexit given the uncertainty around what will happen to the Border when Crossmaglen becomes one of the villages in Northern Ireland along the new frontier between the United Kingdom and European Union from March 29th, 2019.
Madine introduces six of his brightest students – Cara Crummie (11), Aimee-Lee Caraher (11), Caitlín Patton (10), Mary Gallagher (10), Ciara McBride (10) and Kayleigh Shields (10) – who have agreed, with the permission of their parents, to talk about Brexit.
They discuss what they know about the UK’s departure from the EU, what it might mean for them, their families and their friends, and what they know of the Troubles.
Four of the girls live in Northern Ireland. Ciara lives about 1.5km from the Border, but the frontier is so invisible to her she is not sure if her home is in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland.
Aimee-Lee’s home straddles the Border, one part of her house in the North and the other half in the South. She starts a 50-minute conversation with the six girls explaining what life might be like for her after Brexit Day when one part of her home will be in the UK and the other outside it, in the EU.
So how does it work living right on the Border?
Aimee-Lee: I sleep in Northern Ireland but my livingroom would be in the Republic of Ireland.
Where do you have your breakfast?
Aimee-Lee: In the South.
Do you ever eat your breakfast in the North?
Aimee-Lee: No.
What’s it like living on the Border?
Aimee-Lee: Up to now it’s been okay but if Brexit happens, if I look out my window, there’s going to be people there. Say if Dad gives me five pound [sterling] for my birthday, am I going to have to change it into euro before I put it into my money box? [Laughs]
How might Brexit affect your house?
Cara: It might split the house up.
Aimee-Lee: Every time you cross the Border I have to show my passport saying night-night to me mum. [Laughs again]
Are you worried that there might have to be a customs man in your house if you’re on the Border?
Aimee-Lee: I hope not. There is no room for him to sleep. [All six girls laugh]
Ciara: Aimee-Lee, what side will he sleep on, the north or the south?
Mary: He would have to sleep on the stairs. The bottom step.
Aimee-Lee: Yeah, he could sleep on the stairs. That’s the Border.
Can you tell me what Brexit is?
Kayleigh: The UK is leaving the European Union.
Cara: I’ll help you. The European Union is 28 countries and Britain is one of those 28 countries so once it leaves there will only be 27 countries in the European Union.
Is Brexit a good or a bad thing?
Kayleigh: It is a bad thing. If we get a border, like police checks or whatever, then it could take an hour longer to get anywhere if you are trying to cross the Border.
Caitlín: I think it is a bad idea. Let’s say if you were selling like cows or sheep . . . and the man who wanted them in Cork was trying to get them, he would have to get extra money to take it across the Border. That would be bad for his business.
Ciara: I don’t think it is a good thing because it is just going to make it harder for everyone. So if you just wanted to go to Dundalk to just do a bit of shopping, you’d have to pay extra just to bring it back across the Border and there would be lines in the customs huts and you’re only allowed to take certain things across so you’d have to be checked.
Cara: Brexit makes me sad. My dad was telling me whenever it happened [referring to the last time there was a hard border] that him and my auntie would have to lie on the ground and bullets would come over them and bombs would come over them. I don’t want that to happen to me or if I have any children in the later years. The Troubles that were – I don’t want that here.
Do you think most people in Crossmaglen like the idea of Brexit?
Aimee-Lee: I don’t think they do because say if they were coming down to where I live, they would have to pass two checkpoints just to get to my house. Then I don’t think it would be a nice thing to have to show your passport just to go somewhere.
To people who don’t know, how would you describe a border?
Kayleigh: It is like a dividing line between two parts of a country and there could be an actual wall, police checks or CCTV cameras around.
Aimee-Lee: If Brexit happens, there is going to be guards or customs or police standing at my gate and they will be saying, “where are you going?” “can I have your passport?” or “what do you have?”
Can the politicians stop a hard border from happening?
Aimee-Lee: It is hard to know because they still can’t agree on whether it is happening or not.
Contd.
Do you know what this “backstop” is that the politicians are trying to negotiate to stop it?
Cara: The backstop is where there still is a Border but there is not going to be any police there. There is not going to be anything, no queues, so all you have to do is just pass the Border. It’s like what it is now but if we don’t get that back thing – backstop – there will be police and massive queues.
Aimee-Lee: If the customs or the guards or police rule and man the borders, the Irish might protest against them and then the customs will like call to the British army and then it will just destroy our peaceful country we have had for the last 20 years.
What do your families remember of the Troubles?
Kayleigh: One time my mother said she was at the youth club with her sister, my auntie, and these bombs and bullets were coming and the roof fell in. One time she was at school and there were bullets coming and she had to hide under the tables.
Cara: Every time they left their house, there’d be bombs going off. There would be bullets going past them. Loads of people have died and I don’t want to die now. Then Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would be at peace no more.
Mary: See if Brexit happened now and the war started again, a bomb might go off and we might have to go under the table again.
Cara: In Belfast they have a wall between the Protestants and Catholics because they used to always fight. It just started off as barbed wire and then they had to build [it] into concrete because they were setting off guns and all through them.
Aimee-Lee: With the barbed wire, if that does happen, am I going to be separated from my friends?
Caitlín: Mum said when she and her cousin were walking home from school, they nearly got run over by one of them big army tanks and then they couldn’t get to sleep at night with all the bombs and the shooting.
[Aimee-Lee’s family come from a republican background and are strong supporters of Northern Ireland’s peace process. To show where she lives, Aimee-Lee has brought with her a Caraher family photograph taken during the 1980s of her grandfather and her father’s siblings standing in two separate groups on either side of the Border to show how it divides their land. Her home was built on this plot.]
Are you concerned that the Troubles could come back if the politicians can’t agree on Brexit?
Caitlín: That could happen again. That is what they did years ago. They thought it wouldn’t happen. Now they don’t think it is going to happen but it could happen again.
Do you think the grown-ups know what they are doing when it comes to Brexit?
Mary: No. They’re acting like children because they can’t agree if they are going to have a deal or no deal. I don’t like to see them fight.
Ciara: They just keep arguing, they can’t do this and they can’t do that. Theresa May wants the best of both worlds. She wants a good deal but she doesn’t want all the rules. She wants to have it all but she really can’t. She wants to have a deal like Canada but she wants to make it better than Canada and she’d call that Chequers but they did say that Chequers wouldn’t work.
Kayleigh: They know what they are talking about more than we know what they are talking about but we still know more what will happen.
Do you think people in London know what it’s like to live here next to the Border?
Cara: They don’t know how the Border works or they don’t know how it feels like to be with a Border because all their stuff is just one whole thing. But if they come and live here, they will see how different it is and if Theresa May comes here during Brexit, then she will know how we felt.
If Theresa May came to Crossmaglen, what would you say to her?
Cara: Brexit shouldn’t go through. You are not respecting our vote. It is not very nice.
[The girls referred during the conversation to a majority of people in Northern Ireland voting to remain in the EU in the June 2016 referendum when the UK as a whole voted to leave.]
Mary: I would say: try harder. Look at Aimee-Lee, she has to cross the Border twice, she has to get her education. She might have to miss two hours of school.
Do you think kids could negotiate a better deal?
All six: Yes!
Aimee-Lee: Kids have a better way of saying it to people, because we are not just arguing and being all argumentative. We are just saying, “right, I am not here to argue, I am just here to prove my point of view”. I live on the Border and I don’t want this big hullabaloo outside my gate. I just want a simple little Brexit. I just want to go on, drive through the Border, not have to be checked, not have to show my passport, not be asked: “Where are you going? What have you got in the back?”
Cara: I think we do understand more than them what it would feel like because they’re adults and they don’t have much left to live for but we have our whole lives ahead of us.
Kayleigh: They are not really thinking straight. They are just thinking about what they want.
Get over it and stop moaning
Get behind the Brexit plan
#sorted
When I posted the other day that "it's all about the Customs Union", that was shorthand for stating that one can only envisage no border checks if Northern Ireland remains in the same customs area as Ireland. Anything else means divergence and smugglers seeking to leverage the arbitrage between two customs regimes. That is why Norway has a full on border with Sweden.
Perhaps you might add what else might needs to be added to ensure an agreed Brexit deal vis a vis Ireland as this is perhaps a simplistic understanding as to why the backstop requirement equates to remaining in the CU. Add to this the desire to avoid vexatious questions around the UK and borders in the Irish Sea and it appears that Great Britain will also remain in the CU in perpetuity in order for May to cut a deal.
Leave won
Get over it
#wewon
Described as "the beginning of the end of the 13 year Merkel era".
But this is a sort of a economic war, isn't it, I hear you cry.
Yes, that's right. There was a tiny flaw in the plan. - What was that, you say? - It was bollocks.
So the ostrich died for nothing!
Meanwhile Prague is now the first capital city to have a mayor from the Pirate party. What they stand for, nobody is quite sure,least of all them, but they are not alt.right anti-immigrants, that's for sure.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/in-praise-of-hangus-the-monkey-editorial