I'm still the Fintan O'Toole pusher, seeking to entrap the unwary with his honeyed (sugar free alternatives are available) words.
This is from yesterday's Irish Times, hidden behind the subscriber only paywall:
England turned the EU into a Monty Python sketch. Now it’s stuck in one
Brexit is the outcome of decades of spoofery by Britain’s media
In February 2016, just as the Brexit referendum debate was getting going, the Evening Standard columnist Anthony Hilton wrote that, “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’ ”
At the time Murdoch did not deny this but later that year, when his bid to take over all of Sky made his political power a sensitive subject, he insisted that: “I have never uttered those words. I have made it a principle all my life never to ask for anything from any prime minister.”
Hilton, in turn, stood by his story and said the remarks were made in the early 1980s, when Hilton was city editor of Murdoch’s Times.
Proof will never be available either way. But what is undoubtedly true is that, for the billionaire press barons used to wielding such immense influence in London, Brussels is infuriatingly impervious. The EU is largely indifferent to them.
That is one of the reasons they have promoted a relentless campaign of lies about it. The other reason is simpler: Brussels is boring. Most of what it does is pretty tedious – if you want to sell papers, making up luridly entertaining stories is much more effective than reporting the truth.
What we have to remember, though, is the astonishing reality that this lying is the bedrock of Brexit. Britain could not have been brought to its current state had a majority of its citizens not been convinced of one “truth”: that the EU has been interfering non-stop in every part of their daily lives, from the way they have sex to what they eat and drink, from what they wear to what happens to them when they die.
If the consequences were not so serious, there would be a pure fascination to this long-term propaganda campaign. It is made up, not of one big lie, but of an endless succession of little lies, each in itself so absurd as to seem harmless, yet cumulatively amounting to a profound distortion of public reality.
What was distorted was the English perception of influence. When Scots and Welsh people were asked in 2012 to identity which layer of government had most influence over their lives, just 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively cited the EU. This was very much typical of responses in regions throughout Europe from Bavaria to Brittany.
The great exception was England, where 31 per cent of people cited the EU as the most influential layer of government. Why? Because the English have been lied to by most of their press and made to believe that “Brussels” is a factory for mad schemes to meddle with their lives in ever more ludicrous ways.
Saucy sitcom What has made this lying so effective, though, is that, viewed piece by piece, it is comic, absurd and amusing, a saucy sitcom in which the implied soundtrack is a camp “ooh-er, Missus!” and a mockney “would you Adam-and-Eve it?”
It is competitively inventive: the journalists get great fun out of thinking up the next outrage. And at its most vivid, it conjures visual images that lodge in the brain.
For example, there is the Sun headline of October 19th, 1994: “EU to push for standard condom size”; “Brussels is set to produce a standard Euro condom, whilst refusing to implement the subsidiarity principle so that Member States can take into account the different national characteristics of the male organ. The resultant compromise is simply not large enough to house British assets.”
There’s the punning on “member states”, a boring Europhrase turned into a reference to the erect penis, and an assertion that our blokes have bigger mickeys than the Europeans. But there’s also an invitation to form in the mind a ridiculous image of the well-endowed Anglo-Saxon trying to fit himself into a tiny continental-size condom.
Or: “Circus performer must walk tightrope in hard hat, says Brussels” (the Times, July 23rd, 2003): “A tightrope-walker says that his career has been placed in jeopardy by legislation originating in Brussels which dictates that he must wear a hard hat to perform.”
Or: “EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain” (the Express, July 8th, 2010).
Or: “Shake ’n back – EU tells women to hand in worn-out sex toys” (the Sun, February 4th 2004); “Red-faced women will have to hand in their clapped-out sex toys under a new EU law. They must take back old vibrators for recycling before they can buy a new one.”
Or “Get netted: we won’t play Ena Sharples, fishermen storm at Europrats” (Daily Star, October, 1992), the claim being that the EU was forcing fishermen while working at sea to wear hairnets like that sported by the Coronation Street character.
Or: “Shellfish (especially mussels and oysters) must be given rest breaks and stress-relieving showers during journeys of over 50km” (the Times, January 29th, 1996). Memorable images
This is a distinctive genre of English fiction – one of the tragedies of Brexit is that it will become redundant. It covers a range of comic forms from seaside postcards (the condoms and sex toys) to Pythonesque gender confusions (the butch fishermen in their hairnets might as well be singing “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay”) to the deliciously grotesque (those liquefied corpses) to Dadaist surrealism (oysters being given rest breaks).
But each of these vignettes – and hundreds more over the years – has a common quality: memorability. It creates a visual image that lodges in the brain. And it is the accumulation of these images that expresses itself in every vox pop on Brexit from an English market town. These repeated pantomimes have congealed into a history play.
When English people say they are sick of Brussels interference, it is these crazy little yarns that are weighing on their minds.
It is hard to think of anything quite like this in history, where perniciously effective propaganda has come in the form of such extravagant daftness.
It used to be claimed that Britain’s destiny was shaped on the playing fields of Eton, but here we have a country in thrall to a different kind of sport, a game of knowingly outrageous mendacity, a decades-long spoofing contest in which journalists – to serve the interests of an elite of super-rich media owners – dared each other to come up with the most outlandishly ingenious fabrication.
And this is also why Brexit has proved so hard to give a rational shape to. If you turn political reality into a Monty Python sketch, it is very hard to take it seriously again, even when you really, really need to.
Sadly this is an attitude very apparent in a lot of Leave voters: it was never about improving their lot but fucking over their neighbours out of spite.
I'm still the Fintan O'Toole pusher, seek to entrap the unwary with his honeyed (sugar free alternatives are available) words.
This is from yesterday's Irish Times, hidden behind the subscriber only paywall:
England turned the EU into a Monty Python sketch. Now it’s stuck in one
Brexit is the outcome of decades of spoofery by Britain’s media
In February 2016, just as the Brexit referendum debate was getting going, the Evening Standard columnist Anthony Hilton wrote that, “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’ ”
At the time Murdoch did not deny this but later that year, when his bid to take over all of Sky made his political power a sensitive subject, he insisted that: “I have never uttered those words. I have made it a principle all my life never to ask for anything from any prime minister.”
Hilton, in turn, stood by his story and said the remarks were made in the early 1980s, when Hilton was city editor of Murdoch’s Times.
Proof will never be available either way. But what is undoubtedly true is that, for the billionaire press barons used to wielding such immense influence in London, Brussels is infuriatingly impervious. The EU is largely indifferent to them.
That is one of the reasons they have promoted a relentless campaign of lies about it. The other reason is simpler: Brussels is boring. Most of what it does is pretty tedious – if you want to sell papers, making up luridly entertaining stories is much more effective than reporting the truth.
What we have to remember, though, is the astonishing reality that this lying is the bedrock of Brexit. Britain could not have been brought to its current state had a majority of its citizens not been convinced of one “truth”: that the EU has been interfering non-stop in every part of their daily lives, from the way they have sex to what they eat and drink, from what they wear to what happens to them when they die.
If the consequences were not so serious, there would be a pure fascination to this long-term propaganda campaign. It is made up, not of one big lie, but of an endless succession of little lies, each in itself so absurd as to seem harmless, yet cumulatively amounting to a profound distortion of public reality.
What was distorted was the English perception of influence. When Scots and Welsh people were asked in 2012 to identity which layer of government had most influence over their lives, just 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively cited the EU. This was very much typical of responses in regions throughout Europe from Bavaria to Brittany.
The great exception was England, where 31 per cent of people cited the EU as the most influential layer of government. Why? Because the English have been lied to by most of their press and made to believe that “Brussels” is a factory for mad schemes to meddle with their lives in ever more ludicrous ways.
Saucy sitcom What has made this lying so effective, though, is that, viewed piece by piece, it is comic, absurd and amusing, a saucy sitcom in which the implied soundtrack is a camp “ooh-er, Missus!” and a mockney “would you Adam-and-Eve it?”
It is competitively inventive: the journalists get great fun out of thinking up the next outrage. And at its most vivid, it conjures visual images that lodge in the brain.
For example, there is the Sun headline of October 19th, 1994: “EU to push for standard condom size”; “Brussels is set to produce a standard Euro condom, whilst refusing to implement the subsidiarity principle so that Member States can take into account the different national characteristics of the male organ. The resultant compromise is simply not large enough to house British assets.”
There’s the punning on “member states”, a boring Europhrase turned into a reference to the erect penis, and an assertion that our blokes have bigger mickeys than the Europeans. But there’s also an invitation to form in the mind a ridiculous image of the well-endowed Anglo-Saxon trying to fit himself into a tiny continental-size condom.
Or: “Circus performer must walk tightrope in hard hat, says Brussels” (the Times, July 23rd, 2003): “A tightrope-walker says that his career has been placed in jeopardy by legislation originating in Brussels which dictates that he must wear a hard hat to perform.”
Or: “EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain” (the Express, July 8th, 2010).
Or: “Shake ’n back – EU tells women to hand in worn-out sex toys” (the Sun, February 4th 2004); “Red-faced women will have to hand in their clapped-out sex toys under a new EU law. They must take back old vibrators for recycling before they can buy a new one.”
Or “Get netted: we won’t play Ena Sharples, fishermen storm at Europrats” (Daily Star, October, 1992), the claim being that the EU was forcing fishermen while working at sea to wear hairnets like that sported by the Coronation Street character.
Or: “Shellfish (especially mussels and oysters) must be given rest breaks and stress-relieving showers during journeys of over 50km” (the Times, January 29th, 1996). Memorable images
This is a distinctive genre of English fiction – one of the tragedies of Brexit is that it will become redundant. It covers a range of comic forms from seaside postcards (the condoms and sex toys) to Pythonesque gender confusions (the butch fishermen in their hairnets might as well be singing “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay”) to the deliciously grotesque (those liquefied corpses) to Dadaist surrealism (oysters being given rest breaks).
But each of these vignettes – and hundreds more over the years – has a common quality: memorability. It creates a visual image that lodges in the brain. And it is the accumulation of these images that expresses itself in every vox pop on Brexit from an English market town. These repeated pantomimes have congealed into a history play.
When English people say they are sick of Brussels interference, it is these crazy little yarns that are weighing on their minds.
It is hard to think of anything quite like this in history, where perniciously effective propaganda has come in the form of such extravagant daftness.
It used to be claimed that Britain’s destiny was shaped on the playing fields of Eton, but here we have a country in thrall to a different kind of sport, a game of knowingly outrageous mendacity, a decades-long spoofing contest in which journalists – to serve the interests of an elite of super-rich media owners – dared each other to come up with the most outlandishly ingenious fabrication.
And this is also why Brexit has proved so hard to give a rational shape to. If you turn political reality into a Monty Python sketch, it is very hard to take it seriously again, even when you really, really need to.
That is so brilliantly written it should be up for a Man Booker; there's only one problem, unlike the shit in the English papers it's all true.
I'm still the Fintan O'Toole pusher, seeking to entrap the unwary with his honeyed (sugar free alternatives are available) words.
This is from yesterday's Irish Times, hidden behind the subscriber only paywall:
England turned the EU into a Monty Python sketch. Now it’s stuck in one
Brexit is the outcome of decades of spoofery by Britain’s media
In February 2016, just as the Brexit referendum debate was getting going, the Evening Standard columnist Anthony Hilton wrote that, “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’ ”
At the time Murdoch did not deny this but later that year, when his bid to take over all of Sky made his political power a sensitive subject, he insisted that: “I have never uttered those words. I have made it a principle all my life never to ask for anything from any prime minister.”
Hilton, in turn, stood by his story and said the remarks were made in the early 1980s, when Hilton was city editor of Murdoch’s Times.
Proof will never be available either way. But what is undoubtedly true is that, for the billionaire press barons used to wielding such immense influence in London, Brussels is infuriatingly impervious. The EU is largely indifferent to them.
That is one of the reasons they have promoted a relentless campaign of lies about it. The other reason is simpler: Brussels is boring. Most of what it does is pretty tedious – if you want to sell papers, making up luridly entertaining stories is much more effective than reporting the truth.
What we have to remember, though, is the astonishing reality that this lying is the bedrock of Brexit. Britain could not have been brought to its current state had a majority of its citizens not been convinced of one “truth”: that the EU has been interfering non-stop in every part of their daily lives, from the way they have sex to what they eat and drink, from what they wear to what happens to them when they die.
If the consequences were not so serious, there would be a pure fascination to this long-term propaganda campaign. It is made up, not of one big lie, but of an endless succession of little lies, each in itself so absurd as to seem harmless, yet cumulatively amounting to a profound distortion of public reality.
What was distorted was the English perception of influence. When Scots and Welsh people were asked in 2012 to identity which layer of government had most influence over their lives, just 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively cited the EU. This was very much typical of responses in regions throughout Europe from Bavaria to Brittany.
The great exception was England, where 31 per cent of people cited the EU as the most influential layer of government. Why? Because the English have been lied to by most of their press and made to believe that “Brussels” is a factory for mad schemes to meddle with their lives in ever more ludicrous ways.
Saucy sitcom What has made this lying so effective, though, is that, viewed piece by piece, it is comic, absurd and amusing, a saucy sitcom in which the implied soundtrack is a camp “ooh-er, Missus!” and a mockney “would you Adam-and-Eve it?”
It is competitively inventive: the journalists get great fun out of thinking up the next outrage. And at its most vivid, it conjures visual images that lodge in the brain.
For example, there is the Sun headline of October 19th, 1994: “EU to push for standard condom size”; “Brussels is set to produce a standard Euro condom, whilst refusing to implement the subsidiarity principle so that Member States can take into account the different national characteristics of the male organ. The resultant compromise is simply not large enough to house British assets.”
There’s the punning on “member states”, a boring Europhrase turned into a reference to the erect penis, and an assertion that our blokes have bigger mickeys than the Europeans. But there’s also an invitation to form in the mind a ridiculous image of the well-endowed Anglo-Saxon trying to fit himself into a tiny continental-size condom.
Or: “Circus performer must walk tightrope in hard hat, says Brussels” (the Times, July 23rd, 2003): “A tightrope-walker says that his career has been placed in jeopardy by legislation originating in Brussels which dictates that he must wear a hard hat to perform.”
Or: “EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain” (the Express, July 8th, 2010).
Or: “Shake ’n back – EU tells women to hand in worn-out sex toys” (the Sun, February 4th 2004); “Red-faced women will have to hand in their clapped-out sex toys under a new EU law. They must take back old vibrators for recycling before they can buy a new one.”
Or “Get netted: we won’t play Ena Sharples, fishermen storm at Europrats” (Daily Star, October, 1992), the claim being that the EU was forcing fishermen while working at sea to wear hairnets like that sported by the Coronation Street character.
Or: “Shellfish (especially mussels and oysters) must be given rest breaks and stress-relieving showers during journeys of over 50km” (the Times, January 29th, 1996). Memorable images
This is a distinctive genre of English fiction – one of the tragedies of Brexit is that it will become redundant. It covers a range of comic forms from seaside postcards (the condoms and sex toys) to Pythonesque gender confusions (the butch fishermen in their hairnets might as well be singing “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay”) to the deliciously grotesque (those liquefied corpses) to Dadaist surrealism (oysters being given rest breaks).
But each of these vignettes – and hundreds more over the years – has a common quality: memorability. It creates a visual image that lodges in the brain. And it is the accumulation of these images that expresses itself in every vox pop on Brexit from an English market town. These repeated pantomimes have congealed into a history play.
When English people say they are sick of Brussels interference, it is these crazy little yarns that are weighing on their minds.
It is hard to think of anything quite like this in history, where perniciously effective propaganda has come in the form of such extravagant daftness.
It used to be claimed that Britain’s destiny was shaped on the playing fields of Eton, but here we have a country in thrall to a different kind of sport, a game of knowingly outrageous mendacity, a decades-long spoofing contest in which journalists – to serve the interests of an elite of super-rich media owners – dared each other to come up with the most outlandishly ingenious fabrication.
And this is also why Brexit has proved so hard to give a rational shape to. If you turn political reality into a Monty Python sketch, it is very hard to take it seriously again, even when you really, really need to.
Again - why I struggle so very hard not to call Brexiters stupid. I knew this, why didn't they?
I'm still the Fintan O'Toole pusher, seeking to entrap the unwary with his honeyed (sugar free alternatives are available) words.
This is from yesterday's Irish Times, hidden behind the subscriber only paywall:
England turned the EU into a Monty Python sketch. Now it’s stuck in one
Brexit is the outcome of decades of spoofery by Britain’s media
In February 2016, just as the Brexit referendum debate was getting going, the Evening Standard columnist Anthony Hilton wrote that, “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’ ”
At the time Murdoch did not deny this but later that year, when his bid to take over all of Sky made his political power a sensitive subject, he insisted that: “I have never uttered those words. I have made it a principle all my life never to ask for anything from any prime minister.”
Hilton, in turn, stood by his story and said the remarks were made in the early 1980s, when Hilton was city editor of Murdoch’s Times.
Proof will never be available either way. But what is undoubtedly true is that, for the billionaire press barons used to wielding such immense influence in London, Brussels is infuriatingly impervious. The EU is largely indifferent to them.
That is one of the reasons they have promoted a relentless campaign of lies about it. The other reason is simpler: Brussels is boring. Most of what it does is pretty tedious – if you want to sell papers, making up luridly entertaining stories is much more effective than reporting the truth.
What we have to remember, though, is the astonishing reality that this lying is the bedrock of Brexit. Britain could not have been brought to its current state had a majority of its citizens not been convinced of one “truth”: that the EU has been interfering non-stop in every part of their daily lives, from the way they have sex to what they eat and drink, from what they wear to what happens to them when they die.
If the consequences were not so serious, there would be a pure fascination to this long-term propaganda campaign. It is made up, not of one big lie, but of an endless succession of little lies, each in itself so absurd as to seem harmless, yet cumulatively amounting to a profound distortion of public reality.
What was distorted was the English perception of influence. When Scots and Welsh people were asked in 2012 to identity which layer of government had most influence over their lives, just 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively cited the EU. This was very much typical of responses in regions throughout Europe from Bavaria to Brittany.
The great exception was England, where 31 per cent of people cited the EU as the most influential layer of government. Why? Because the English have been lied to by most of their press and made to believe that “Brussels” is a factory for mad schemes to meddle with their lives in ever more ludicrous ways.
Saucy sitcom What has made this lying so effective, though, is that, viewed piece by piece, it is comic, absurd and amusing, a saucy sitcom in which the implied soundtrack is a camp “ooh-er, Missus!” and a mockney “would you Adam-and-Eve it?”
It is competitively inventive: the journalists get great fun out of thinking up the next outrage. And at its most vivid, it conjures visual images that lodge in the brain.
For example, there is the Sun headline of October 19th, 1994: “EU to push for standard condom size”; “Brussels is set to produce a standard Euro condom, whilst refusing to implement the subsidiarity principle so that Member States can take into account the different national characteristics of the male organ. The resultant compromise is simply not large enough to house British assets.”
There’s the punning on “member states”, a boring Europhrase turned into a reference to the erect penis, and an assertion that our blokes have bigger mickeys than the Europeans. But there’s also an invitation to form in the mind a ridiculous image of the well-endowed Anglo-Saxon trying to fit himself into a tiny continental-size condom.
Or: “Circus performer must walk tightrope in hard hat, says Brussels” (the Times, July 23rd, 2003): “A tightrope-walker says that his career has been placed in jeopardy by legislation originating in Brussels which dictates that he must wear a hard hat to perform.”
Or: “EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain” (the Express, July 8th, 2010).
Or: “Shake ’n back – EU tells women to hand in worn-out sex toys” (the Sun, February 4th 2004); “Red-faced women will have to hand in their clapped-out sex toys under a new EU law. They must take back old vibrators for recycling before they can buy a new one.”
Or “Get netted: we won’t play Ena Sharples, fishermen storm at Europrats” (Daily Star, October, 1992), the claim being that the EU was forcing fishermen while working at sea to wear hairnets like that sported by the Coronation Street character.
Or: “Shellfish (especially mussels and oysters) must be given rest breaks and stress-relieving showers during journeys of over 50km” (the Times, January 29th, 1996). Memorable images
This is a distinctive genre of English fiction – one of the tragedies of Brexit is that it will become redundant. It covers a range of comic forms from seaside postcards (the condoms and sex toys) to Pythonesque gender confusions (the butch fishermen in their hairnets might as well be singing “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay”) to the deliciously grotesque (those liquefied corpses) to Dadaist surrealism (oysters being given rest breaks).
But each of these vignettes – and hundreds more over the years – has a common quality: memorability. It creates a visual image that lodges in the brain. And it is the accumulation of these images that expresses itself in every vox pop on Brexit from an English market town. These repeated pantomimes have congealed into a history play.
When English people say they are sick of Brussels interference, it is these crazy little yarns that are weighing on their minds.
It is hard to think of anything quite like this in history, where perniciously effective propaganda has come in the form of such extravagant daftness.
It used to be claimed that Britain’s destiny was shaped on the playing fields of Eton, but here we have a country in thrall to a different kind of sport, a game of knowingly outrageous mendacity, a decades-long spoofing contest in which journalists – to serve the interests of an elite of super-rich media owners – dared each other to come up with the most outlandishly ingenious fabrication.
And this is also why Brexit has proved so hard to give a rational shape to. If you turn political reality into a Monty Python sketch, it is very hard to take it seriously again, even when you really, really need to.
Again - why I struggle so very hard not to call Brexiters stupid. I knew this, why didn't they?
If they believe in unicorns then they'll believe anything, no matter how obviously false it is.
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
The end result is a political class made up of weak writhing supplicants, the only skill required of which is being in possession of some media savvy, and a woefully ill-informed electorate who have no real choice in meaningful representation.
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
Next generation won’t be reading newspapers. They will be available as free online blogs effectively. They will be competing with many more sources of news. I used to think it was a pity but I think the demise of the news barons is generally a good thing. There will always be good honest journalists getting their stuff out there but with the masses of information out there it’s going to take a while for the credible to find its way out of the pack.
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
Next generation won’t be reading newspapers. They will be available as free online blogs effectively. They will be competing with many more sources of news. I used to think it was a pity but I think the demise of the news barons is generally a good thing. There will always be good honest journalists getting their stuff out there but with the masses of information out there it’s going to take a while for the credible to find its way out of the pack.
The trouble is fake news seems even more prevalent on the internet and it seems likely that manipulating the electorate will become even easier. Nothing appears to be regulated and its a haven for conspiracy theories etc.
The information might be out there but very few are looking for it. If your only source of news is via your social media then where will this lead?
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
Next generation won’t be reading newspapers. They will be available as free online blogs effectively. They will be competing with many more sources of news. I used to think it was a pity but I think the demise of the news barons is generally a good thing. There will always be good honest journalists getting their stuff out there but with the masses of information out there it’s going to take a while for the credible to find its way out of the pack.
The encouraging thing is that younger people don't seem to read newspapers. Newspapers simply do not write for their audience and most people under 30 are totally turned off by crap headlines and the constant cycle of bilge about immigrants, Muslims, Princess Diana and of course the constant refrain from the Tory press that the economy is turning a corner (which given this generation are the first generation in modern history to be significantly poorer than their parents, it is obvious why such "news" turns off anyone who still isn't on the property ladder).
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
The end result is a political class made up of weak writhing supplicants, the only skill required of which is being in possession of some media savvy, and a woefully ill-informed electorate who have no real choice in meaningful representation.
I think the problem isn't so much people believing individual stories, but the constant drip-feed of lies and misinformation affecting their overall perception of the EU as an organisation. Some of those stories are so absolutely ridiculous that no one is going to believe them on a case by case basis. If you challenge people, they'll often tell you that they don't take them seriously. But they still read them and somehow they all add to the the public perception that the EU is nothing but a supranational organisation full of incompetent meddlers.
There has been a lot of talk of democracy since this referendum and everyone claims to believe in it. For me, democracy begins with having access to high quality information about the world we live in. This is precisely why why have a free press, so that people aren't dependent on state propaganda. The trouble is that our press is failing us miserably, the owners all have vested interests and very few seem to run shy of publishing any misinformation that will support what they want people to believe. That the British public accept this, is one of the saddest most pathetic things about our nation. There should be absolute outrage when people find out that their newspapers are lying to them, instead they never bat an eyelid. Sadly, a long time ago we accepted the descent of our newspapers into little more than comics. Now we could pay the ultimate price as our rights and freedoms are undemocratically snatched away from us as a result of their lies.
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
Whisper it quietly, while there may be differences in detail, I agree with you...
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
Next generation won’t be reading newspapers. They will be available as free online blogs effectively. They will be competing with many more sources of news. I used to think it was a pity but I think the demise of the news barons is generally a good thing. There will always be good honest journalists getting their stuff out there but with the masses of information out there it’s going to take a while for the credible to find its way out of the pack.
The encouraging thing is that younger people don't seem to read newspapers. Newspapers simply do not write for their audience and most people under 30 are totally turned off by crap headlines and the constant cycle of bilge about immigrants, Muslims, Princess Diana and of course the constant refrain from the Tory press that the economy is turning a corner (which given this generation are the first generation in modern history to be significantly poorer than their parents, it is obvious why such "news" turns off anyone who still isn't on the property ladder).
I'm not sure how this is encouraging exactly. We had serious newspapers if you could be bothered to read them but now this has been replaced by trite articles on websites and inane debate on Twitter. There seems to be an obssession with single issue politics.
A lot of the under 30s I've spoken to seem incredibly ill-informed and have little or no interest in current affairs. The naivety of some of the views I've heard from supposedly well educated people are pretty shocking.
It's much easier now to fuel conspiracy theories and for people not to engage with those who challenge their views.
If everything is viewed from a contemporary viewpoint with no reference to history it seems populism will become increasingly attractive.
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
Whisper it quietly, while there may be differences in detail, I agree with you...
Ssssshhh
Incidentally, makes it even more frustrating that our politicians were unable to get this far when even a non-expert like myself suggested this approach two years back.
The British press is pretty terrible but if people are daft enough to believe everything they're told then what can you do?
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
This is a problem that until we solve it our democracy will remain totally broken.
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice - newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain - politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
Next generation won’t be reading newspapers. They will be available as free online blogs effectively. They will be competing with many more sources of news. I used to think it was a pity but I think the demise of the news barons is generally a good thing. There will always be good honest journalists getting their stuff out there but with the masses of information out there it’s going to take a while for the credible to find its way out of the pack.
The encouraging thing is that younger people don't seem to read newspapers. Newspapers simply do not write for their audience and most people under 30 are totally turned off by crap headlines and the constant cycle of bilge about immigrants, Muslims, Princess Diana and of course the constant refrain from the Tory press that the economy is turning a corner (which given this generation are the first generation in modern history to be significantly poorer than their parents, it is obvious why such "news" turns off anyone who still isn't on the property ladder).
I'm not sure how this is encouraging exactly. We had serious newspapers if you could be bothered to read them but now this has been replaced by trite articles on websites and inane debate on Twitter. There seems to be an obssession with single issue politics.
A lot of the under 30s I've spoken to seem incredibly ill-informed and have little or no interest in current affairs. The naivety of some of the views I've heard from supposedly well educated people are pretty shocking.
It's much easier now to fuel conspiracy theories and for people not to engage with those who challenge their views.
If everything is viewed from a contemporary viewpoint with no reference to history it seems populism will become increasingly attractive.
In fairness a lot of the over 30s I talk to seem equally ill-informed with regards to current affairs. The difference is that a lot of the over 30s I overhear seem to think all their problems are being caused by immigrants or the EU.
The diversification of news sources is as much as an opportunity as it is a problem. Power is flowing away from the largely right-wing, anti-EU press and media to a vast range of news and opinion sources, which is good. What is not good is the inability of people to discern between reliable news sources and poor news sources or even fake news, as well as the increasing polarisation of political views (a Leave voting relative recently moaned to me that a dinner party was spoiled because two of the guests opined what a disaster Brexit was proving to be).
Political discourse used to be considered a faux pas at dinner, but I think for a lot of people they get so agitated at talking politics with real people is because their long held convictions are being challenged but they don't actually have any logical case for those convictions, since it is a result of the drip-fed headlines and negative news/fear-mongering from tabloids over the course of decades being absorbed via osmosis.
Membership is expensive, but you don't pay to play.
If you leave you no longer pay for an expensive membership, but you have to pay each time you play and end up worse off and you don't get the extra benefits of membership.
For some reason I think you work in finance (a very generic description of course).
Would you like to explain how his actions in 1992 were uniquely evil, and have never been carried out by any other lovely hedge fund managers )other than the reason that they didn't have his financial clout)?
And would you like to explain why all the stuff he does now - the object of so much vitriolic criticism - is so bad? Should I pay back my €1500 in shame?
Anyone? What is so uniquely bad about George Soros? Let's be avin yer...
What are you on about?
He isn’t uniquely bad, or uniquely good. He is someone who is prepared to bankrupt entire countries if that serves his personal interest. That was my point and I am really not sure why you are getting so wound up about that comment. Read it again. Not unique to him, as I think I said.
Now he has made more money than he and his descendants can spend maybe he is trying to do some good, I have not been exposed to it but recognise you may have been an I have no issues with that at all.
I have read your original comment again. Maybe you have not been exposed to the full array of bile and hate spewing out against him on social media at this time, linking him to all kinds of events he has nothing to do with. It's only a matter of time before some clown finds a link between him and Roland.
You did say, perhaps because you had casually read about Black Wednesday but are too young to have really experienced it, that he both "bankrupts and develops entire countries". That is a ridiculous exaggeration, in both directions. However it is very common to read such shit now. Like you, I wasn't even aware that he isn't Jewish until recently. Probably when Orban started bullying him. What I am getting wound up about is this: Black Wednesday happened 26 years ago. He made one billion, and immediately started his philanthropic activities with the profits. Why then, is so much hate and bile directed at him in just the last 3 years, and why does so much of it inform people that he is Jewish?
In case anyone wonders, I have zero Jewish blood, and hardly any close friends who do. I just find bullying disgusting. I know what it leads to. It starts in the playground and it ends in gas chambers.
Fair enough. I’ll admit it was an exaggeration. I was 18 on Black Wednesday and all I really recall was that Soros took on my country and won a lot of money,
Having just looked him up he has invested a lot of his personal wealth in liberal causes and for that I applaud him.
Still no idea whether he is nor is not Jewish and I don’t care so there really is no need to llet me know.
Apologies for the misunderstanding though genuinely wasn’t aware Soros bashing is a thing
Good to read, thanks, Neil. Of course it wasn't you who blew that Soros dogwhistle on here anyway.
I would just like to add that I don't think Soros was taking on "our country". He was taking on possible the biggest clown Chancellor of my adult lifetime, Norman Lamont, as @sm wrote.
I'll tell you what that day was like. I was at home that afternoon as the recession was biting into my work at the ad agency. Many thought the UK had gone into the ERM at too high a conversion rate and Interest rates were already at 10% to cope with the pressure, so my 7 year old mortgage already looked worryingly steep. I listened aghast to the radio as Lamont raised interest rates first to 12, then 15% as Soros started selling.. At that point, I opened my front door, as if instinctively seeking confirmation that I was hearing right. A load of neighbours were doing the same thing, holding their hands out and gesturing "WTF?". I stood there wondering how exactly I was going to pay a mortgage which had just virtually doubled in one afternoon. Some two hours later, I watched as Lamont was forced to go in front of the cameras and execute a humiliating climbdown. My overall feeling was of relief. We were back to "only" 10%. The Wiki on Black Wednesday is here, for anyone interested. It reminds me that while I look on John Major quite fondly now (especially over his Brexit pronouncements), he shares responsibility with Lamont for Black Wednesday and the policy decision leading up to it. I think all Soros did was speed up into one day the destruction of an exchange rate policy that was doomed to failure anyway. With hindsight a lot of people thank him for that.
Membership is expensive, but you don't pay to play.
If you leave you no longer pay for an expensive membership, but you have to pay each time you play and end up worse off and you don't get the extra benefits of membership.
Perfect.
best way to explain it to the likes of farage etc.
"BUT WE CAN BUILD OUR OWN GOLF CLUB".
Which would cost millions more and a long time to put together.
OK. I get the reasoning. But what's really pissed me off, is this paragraph...
There is a 15-year time limit on British emigrants being able to register as overseas voters. The government has said it will support a private member’s bill introduced by the Conservative MP Glyn Davies that would do away with that time restriction in future. Labour has refused to back the bill, saying it would involve too much administration.
And that link leads me to the existence of yet another Labour shadow Minister who has crawled out of the woodwork. Cat Smith, who knew she existed? She looks like a 25 year old Momentum activist. "Too much admin?" What a load of old bollocks. In my case all that needed to happen was to continue with the postal vote I was already using. Affected Brits simply apply to register like anyone else, with proof of citizenship like any other voter, fill in the postal address, and off you go.
We have a problem in this country with democratic disengagement in elections. And this is the response? The Electoral Commission complains of strains on the system? Well then resource it properly, and while we are at, make sure the Commission is staffed by competent and tough people too, since they've been showing signs of strain too over Cambridge Analytica/Facebook.
And as for Cat Smith. How can anyone really imagine a 33 year old, who has only been an MP for 3 years, can be a Minister? What's that? "Smith was one of the 36 Labour MPs to nominate Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015 and one of the 14 to support him" Oh...
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
Whisper it quietly, while there may be differences in detail, I agree with you...
I suspect there is a lot of difference in reality on points 1 and 2. On 1, I don't see too much appetite at present for a two speed Europe within the EU and on 2. I would see the reference to a level playing field as running counter to the idea of having "freedom to deal with other countries as appropriate". The other thing that needs to be appreciated is that future trade relationships after we withdraw, rather than the withdrawal agreement itself, are not subject to qualified majority voting but can be vetoed by each individual EU member. The Brexiteer clowns Johnson, Fox and Davis, ably abetted by a Prime Minister who has put her own Party before the Country, have in effect wasted the past three years because they had no coherent or consistent vision of where we wanted to go after withdrawal. The Political Declaration is just aspirational tosh and its sole purpose was just to kick the can a further two years down the road, while in the meantime investment in the economy and ordinary peoples livelihoods suffer. We need to stop this madness and have a People's Vote.
OK. I get the reasoning. But what's really pissed me off, is this paragraph...
There is a 15-year time limit on British emigrants being able to register as overseas voters. The government has said it will support a private member’s bill introduced by the Conservative MP Glyn Davies that would do away with that time restriction in future. Labour has refused to back the bill, saying it would involve too much administration.
And that link leads me to the existence of yet another Labour shadow Minister who has crawled out of the woodwork. Cat Smith, who knew she existed? She looks like a 25 year old Momentum activist. "Too much admin?" What a load of old bollocks. In my case all that needed to happen was to continue with the postal vote I was already using. Affected Brits simply apply to register like anyone else, with proof of citizenship like any other voter, fill in the postal address, and off you go.
We have a problem in this country with democratic disengagement in elections. And this is the response? The Electoral Commission complains of strains on the system? Well then resource it properly, and while we are at, make sure the Commission is staffed by competent and tough people too, since they've been showing signs of strain too over Cambridge Analytica/Facebook.
And as for Cat Smith. How can anyone really imagine a 33 year old, who has only been an MP for 3 years, can be a Minister? What's that? "Smith was one of the 36 Labour MPs to nominate Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015 and one of the 14 to support him" Oh...
Just written to my (soon to be former) MP to ask what the huge administrative burden she anticipates, actually is...
OK. I get the reasoning. But what's really pissed me off, is this paragraph...
There is a 15-year time limit on British emigrants being able to register as overseas voters. The government has said it will support a private member’s bill introduced by the Conservative MP Glyn Davies that would do away with that time restriction in future. Labour has refused to back the bill, saying it would involve too much administration.
And that link leads me to the existence of yet another Labour shadow Minister who has crawled out of the woodwork. Cat Smith, who knew she existed? She looks like a 25 year old Momentum activist. "Too much admin?" What a load of old bollocks. In my case all that needed to happen was to continue with the postal vote I was already using. Affected Brits simply apply to register like anyone else, with proof of citizenship like any other voter, fill in the postal address, and off you go.
We have a problem in this country with democratic disengagement in elections. And this is the response? The Electoral Commission complains of strains on the system? Well then resource it properly, and while we are at, make sure the Commission is staffed by competent and tough people too, since they've been showing signs of strain too over Cambridge Analytica/Facebook.
And as for Cat Smith. How can anyone really imagine a 33 year old, who has only been an MP for 3 years, can be a Minister? What's that? "Smith was one of the 36 Labour MPs to nominate Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015 and one of the 14 to support him" Oh...
Just written to my (soon to be former) MP to ask what the huge administrative burden she anticipates, actually is...
Good man. I will try to address Ms Smith directly, and start by asking her what she understands to be the meaning of the word "cítízen".
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
Whisper it quietly, while there may be differences in detail, I agree with you...
I suspect there is a lot of difference in reality on points 1 and 2. On 1, I don't see too much appetite at present for a two speed Europe within the EU and on 2. I would see the reference to a level playing field as running counter to the idea of having "freedom to deal with other countries as appropriate". The other thing that needs to be appreciated is that future trade relationships after we withdraw, rather than the withdrawal agreement itself, are not subject to qualified majority voting but can be vetoed by each individual EU member. The Brexiteer clowns Johnson, Fox and Davis, ably abetted by a Prime Minister who has put her own Party before the Country, have in effect wasted the past three years because they had no coherent or consistent vision of where we wanted to go after withdrawal. The Political Declaration is just aspirational tosh and its sole purpose was just to kick the can a further two years down the road, while in the meantime investment in the economy and ordinary peoples livelihoods suffer. We need to stop this madness and have a People's Vote.
I'm not for one instant suggesting that any negotiations would be anything other than mind-numbingly complex (and, for me, all of the options, other than continuing full EU membership, are less beneficial to the UK and its citizens), but I do believe that a different approach from HMG could have created different mood music for both the Withdrawal Agreement/Political Declaration and the future negotiations. And the UK desperately needs different mood music.
Sadly, as @stonemuse has made clear, where we are today could have been arrived at in or around the time of the election (and, again IMHO, would have made the gamble of the election unthinkable for the PM).
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
Whisper it quietly, while there may be differences in detail, I agree with you...
Ssssshhh
Incidentally, makes it even more frustrating that our politicians were unable to get this far when even a non-expert like myself suggested this approach two years back.
If you were in complete charge of the negotiations (or the acknowledged best negotiators in the world were in charge) from the day after the vote, do you think a better deal was possible?
Provided someone had kept Theresa May from tying their hands behind their backs, with her red lines, a better deal was always possible.
But, what has been agreed now is not the deal, but the deal to create the negotiating environment in which to achieve the deal.
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas). PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation. The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs. PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs). PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade. PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
Whisper it quietly, while there may be differences in detail, I agree with you...
Ssssshhh
Incidentally, makes it even more frustrating that our politicians were unable to get this far when even a non-expert like myself suggested this approach two years back.
If you were in complete charge of the negotiations (or the acknowledged best negotiators in the world were in charge) from the day after the vote, do you think a better deal was possible?
Comments
This is from yesterday's Irish Times, hidden behind the subscriber only paywall:
England turned the EU into a Monty Python sketch. Now it’s stuck in one
Brexit is the outcome of decades of spoofery by Britain’s media
In February 2016, just as the Brexit referendum debate was getting going, the Evening Standard columnist Anthony Hilton wrote that, “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union.
‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’ ”
At the time Murdoch did not deny this but later that year, when his bid to take over all of Sky made his political power a sensitive subject, he insisted that: “I have never uttered those words. I have made it a principle all my life never to ask for anything from any prime minister.”
Hilton, in turn, stood by his story and said the remarks were made in the early 1980s, when Hilton was city editor of Murdoch’s Times.
Proof will never be available either way. But what is undoubtedly true is that, for the billionaire press barons used to wielding such immense influence in London, Brussels is infuriatingly impervious. The EU is largely indifferent to them.
That is one of the reasons they have promoted a relentless campaign of lies about it. The other reason is simpler: Brussels is boring. Most of what it does is pretty tedious – if you want to sell papers, making up luridly entertaining stories is much more effective than reporting the truth.
What we have to remember, though, is the astonishing reality that this lying is the bedrock of Brexit. Britain could not have been brought to its current state had a majority of its citizens not been convinced of one “truth”: that the EU has been interfering non-stop in every part of their daily lives, from the way they have sex to what they eat and drink, from what they wear to what happens to them when they die.
If the consequences were not so serious, there would be a pure fascination to this long-term propaganda campaign. It is made up, not of one big lie, but of an endless succession of little lies, each in itself so absurd as to seem harmless, yet cumulatively amounting to a profound distortion of public reality.
What was distorted was the English perception of influence. When Scots and Welsh people were asked in 2012 to identity which layer of government had most influence over their lives, just 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively cited the EU. This was very much typical of responses in regions throughout Europe from Bavaria to Brittany.
The great exception was England, where 31 per cent of people cited the EU as the most influential layer of government. Why? Because the English have been lied to by most of their press and made to believe that “Brussels” is a factory for mad schemes to meddle with their lives in ever more ludicrous ways.
Saucy sitcom
What has made this lying so effective, though, is that, viewed piece by piece, it is comic, absurd and amusing, a saucy sitcom in which the implied soundtrack is a camp “ooh-er, Missus!” and a mockney “would you Adam-and-Eve it?”
It is competitively inventive: the journalists get great fun out of thinking up the next outrage. And at its most vivid, it conjures visual images that lodge in the brain.
For example, there is the Sun headline of October 19th, 1994: “EU to push for standard condom size”; “Brussels is set to produce a standard Euro condom, whilst refusing to implement the subsidiarity principle so that Member States can take into account the different national characteristics of the male organ. The resultant compromise is simply not large enough to house British assets.”
There’s the punning on “member states”, a boring Europhrase turned into a reference to the erect penis, and an assertion that our blokes have bigger mickeys than the Europeans. But there’s also an invitation to form in the mind a ridiculous image of the well-endowed Anglo-Saxon trying to fit himself into a tiny continental-size condom.
Or: “Circus performer must walk tightrope in hard hat, says Brussels” (the Times, July 23rd, 2003): “A tightrope-walker says that his career has been placed in jeopardy by legislation originating in Brussels which dictates that he must wear a hard hat to perform.”
Or: “EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain” (the Express, July 8th, 2010).
Or: “Shake ’n back – EU tells women to hand in worn-out sex toys” (the Sun, February 4th 2004); “Red-faced women will have to hand in their clapped-out sex toys under a new EU law. They must take back old vibrators for recycling before they can buy a new one.”
Or “Get netted: we won’t play Ena Sharples, fishermen storm at Europrats” (Daily Star, October, 1992), the claim being that the EU was forcing fishermen while working at sea to wear hairnets like that sported by the Coronation Street character.
Or: “Shellfish (especially mussels and oysters) must be given rest breaks and stress-relieving showers during journeys of over 50km” (the Times, January 29th, 1996).
Memorable images
This is a distinctive genre of English fiction – one of the tragedies of Brexit is that it will become redundant. It covers a range of comic forms from seaside postcards (the condoms and sex toys) to Pythonesque gender confusions (the butch fishermen in their hairnets might as well be singing “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay”) to the deliciously grotesque (those liquefied corpses) to Dadaist surrealism (oysters being given rest breaks).
But each of these vignettes – and hundreds more over the years – has a common quality: memorability. It creates a visual image that lodges in the brain. And it is the accumulation of these images that expresses itself in every vox pop on Brexit from an English market town. These repeated pantomimes have congealed into a history play.
When English people say they are sick of Brussels interference, it is these crazy little yarns that are weighing on their minds.
It is hard to think of anything quite like this in history, where perniciously effective propaganda has come in the form of such extravagant daftness.
It used to be claimed that Britain’s destiny was shaped on the playing fields of Eton, but here we have a country in thrall to a different kind of sport, a game of knowingly outrageous mendacity, a decades-long spoofing contest in which journalists – to serve the interests of an elite of super-rich media owners – dared each other to come up with the most outlandishly ingenious fabrication.
And this is also why Brexit has proved so hard to give a rational shape to. If you turn political reality into a Monty Python sketch, it is very hard to take it seriously again, even when you really, really need to.
Sadly this is an attitude very apparent in a lot of Leave voters: it was never about improving their lot but fucking over their neighbours out of spite.
What a piece of work that is. Chapeau.
The main thing the whole Brexit process has proved is how utterly inept and cowardly our current set of politicians are.The 29th March is really not very far away....
- a huge proportion of voters will unwaveringly believe anything written in their tabloid of choice
- newspaper owners know this and exploit their power for personal gain
- politicians, knowing the press are the real kingmakers and not the voters, kowtow to the media magnates instead of representing the electorate
The end result is a political class made up of weak writhing supplicants, the only skill required of which is being in possession of some media savvy, and a woefully ill-informed electorate who have no real choice in meaningful representation.
The information might be out there but very few are looking for it. If your only source of news is via your social media then where will this lead?
I agree that the 'agreed' version would have been after invoking Article 50, but an enormous amount of negotiations could have gone on before, unlike the farcical 'talks' that have proceeded so far with our 'politicians' not having a clue what the word 'negotiation' means.
It's an interesting exercise for me to go through the 'Political Declaration' (PD) and compare the content with my vision as I had posted in the past.
1. As proposed by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel in August 2016 a ‘continental partnership’ – a new form of ‘outer circle’ for a post-Brexit UK (and other non-EU countries) that want to belong to the Single Market and have some say over its rules but don’t want to play a part in the political institutions of the EU. (Also supported in a European Commission paper in March 2017 proposing sub-groups of member states pursuing their own integration agendas).
PD - The Union and United Kingdom are determined to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests. In that spirit, this declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation.
The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each Party. This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union’s decision making and be consistent with the Union’s principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms. It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom.
2. Work with the EU, not as part of it, but as a partner with it in a free-trade zone, whilst not restricting ourselves in our dealings with other parts of the world, having the freedom to deal with other countries as we see appropriate, not bound by EU rules and trade tariffs.
PD - The Parties agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation where it is in the mutual interest of both Parties. It will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition. It should facilitate trade and investment between the Parties to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Union's Single Market and the Customs Union as well as the United Kingdom's internal market, and recognising the development of an independent trade policy by the United Kingdom beyond this economic partnership. The Parties envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition.
3. Reconcile with the aims of global free trade as upheld by the WTO (in particular, implementing legally binding commitments not to raise tariffs).
PD - The Parties should conclude ambitious, comprehensive and balanced arrangements on trade in services and investment in services and non-services sectors, respecting each Party's right to regulate. The Parties should aim to deliver a level of liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties’ World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
4. Support digitalisation of Trade.
PD - In the context of the increasing digitalisation of trade covering both services and goods, the Parties should establish provisions to facilitate electronic commerce, address unjustified barriers to trade by electronic means, and ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment for businesses and consumers, such as on electronic trust and authentication services or on not requiring prior authorisation solely on the grounds that the service is provided by electronic means.
Definitely an approach that I could have supported ... and benefited both sides. .
There has been a lot of talk of democracy since this referendum and everyone claims to believe in it. For me, democracy begins with having access to high quality information about the world we live in. This is precisely why why have a free press, so that people aren't dependent on state propaganda. The trouble is that our press is failing us miserably, the owners all have vested interests and very few seem to run shy of publishing any misinformation that will support what they want people to believe. That the British public accept this, is one of the saddest most pathetic things about our nation. There should be absolute outrage when people find out that their newspapers are lying to them, instead they never bat an eyelid. Sadly, a long time ago we accepted the descent of our newspapers into little more than comics. Now we could pay the ultimate price as our rights and freedoms are undemocratically snatched away from us as a result of their lies.
A lot of the under 30s I've spoken to seem incredibly ill-informed and have little or no interest in current affairs. The naivety of some of the views I've heard from supposedly well educated people are pretty shocking.
It's much easier now to fuel conspiracy theories and for people not to engage with those who challenge their views.
If everything is viewed from a contemporary viewpoint with no reference to history it seems populism will become increasingly attractive.
Incidentally, makes it even more frustrating that our politicians were unable to get this far when even a non-expert like myself suggested this approach two years back.
The diversification of news sources is as much as an opportunity as it is a problem. Power is flowing away from the largely right-wing, anti-EU press and media to a vast range of news and opinion sources, which is good. What is not good is the inability of people to discern between reliable news sources and poor news sources or even fake news, as well as the increasing polarisation of political views (a Leave voting relative recently moaned to me that a dinner party was spoiled because two of the guests opined what a disaster Brexit was proving to be).
Political discourse used to be considered a faux pas at dinner, but I think for a lot of people they get so agitated at talking politics with real people is because their long held convictions are being challenged but they don't actually have any logical case for those convictions, since it is a result of the drip-fed headlines and negative news/fear-mongering from tabloids over the course of decades being absorbed via osmosis.
Membership is expensive, but you don't pay to play.
If you leave you no longer pay for an expensive membership, but you have to pay each time you play and end up worse off and you don't get the extra benefits of membership.
Perfect.
I would just like to add that I don't think Soros was taking on "our country". He was taking on possible the biggest clown Chancellor of my adult lifetime, Norman Lamont, as @sm wrote.
I'll tell you what that day was like. I was at home that afternoon as the recession was biting into my work at the ad agency. Many thought the UK had gone into the ERM at too high a conversion rate and Interest rates were already at 10% to cope with the pressure, so my 7 year old mortgage already looked worryingly steep. I listened aghast to the radio as Lamont raised interest rates first to 12, then 15% as Soros started selling.. At that point, I opened my front door, as if instinctively seeking confirmation that I was hearing right. A load of neighbours were doing the same thing, holding their hands out and gesturing "WTF?". I stood there wondering how exactly I was going to pay a mortgage which had just virtually doubled in one afternoon. Some two hours later, I watched as Lamont was forced to go in front of the cameras and execute a humiliating climbdown. My overall feeling was of relief. We were back to "only" 10%.
The Wiki on Black Wednesday is here, for anyone interested. It reminds me that while I look on John Major quite fondly now (especially over his Brexit pronouncements), he shares responsibility with Lamont for Black Wednesday and the policy decision leading up to it. I think all Soros did was speed up into one day the destruction of an exchange rate policy that was doomed to failure anyway. With hindsight a lot of people thank him for that.
"BUT WE CAN BUILD OUR OWN GOLF CLUB".
Which would cost millions more and a long time to put together.
Brexit: European court rejects British expats' referendum challenge
OK. I get the reasoning. But what's really pissed me off, is this paragraph...
There is a 15-year time limit on British emigrants being able to register as overseas voters. The government has said it will support a private member’s bill introduced by the Conservative MP Glyn Davies that would do away with that time restriction in future. Labour has refused to back the bill, saying it would involve too much administration.
And that link leads me to the existence of yet another Labour shadow Minister who has crawled out of the woodwork. Cat Smith, who knew she existed? She looks like a 25 year old Momentum activist. "Too much admin?" What a load of old bollocks. In my case all that needed to happen was to continue with the postal vote I was already using. Affected Brits simply apply to register like anyone else, with proof of citizenship like any other voter, fill in the postal address, and off you go.
We have a problem in this country with democratic disengagement in elections. And this is the response? The Electoral Commission complains of strains on the system? Well then resource it properly, and while we are at, make sure the Commission is staffed by competent and tough people too, since they've been showing signs of strain too over Cambridge Analytica/Facebook.
And as for Cat Smith. How can anyone really imagine a 33 year old, who has only been an MP for 3 years, can be a Minister? What's that? "Smith was one of the 36 Labour MPs to nominate Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015 and one of the 14 to support him" Oh...
Sadly, as @stonemuse has made clear, where we are today could have been arrived at in or around the time of the election (and, again IMHO, would have made the gamble of the election unthinkable for the PM).
But, what has been agreed now is not the deal, but the deal to create the negotiating environment in which to achieve the deal.