Corruption is writ large over the EU. It is a gravy train of totally unnecessary politicians and their legions of pen pushers. I gave one example ...over 10,000 of the bastards earn more than the UK Prime Minister...if that doesn't alert you to its corrupt nature then nothing will. The love of money and power corrupts and the EU has been amassing that by the shovel fulls...now , starting with the UK, things are changing.

I don't think the EU has achieved anything of real value for the people of Europe...but it has wasted vast sums . It has also usurped power from the more accountable national governments (often with their assistance)...the people never asked for any of this shit ...the British people were clearly lied to, we were told this was purely an economic club when it clearly not.

So the EU is a gravy train, well you'd better hold on tight because we're in for Trumpian scale gravy now that people like you voted these clowns into government.

Are you still happy with the way that Johnson and Cummings are running things right now? ( oh yes we'll have a brilliant trade deal now by the end of the year (with all the self same benefits of course) because the Covid crisis is going to focus the minds of the EU leaders, which Gove intimated today).

I can't wait for the new cliff edge.

I don't think the EU has achieved anything of real value for the people of Europe. — Chester

(1) It facilitated freedom of movement agreements. You didn't need a Visa to go on holiday to France or visit relatives in Germany. You should probably like this if you like free trade, rather than borders. If you dislike what's going on at the Irish border and its impact on businesses due to major efficiency losses, you like free travel.

(2) EU convention on human rights (our government want to weaken this sneakily and has tried).

(3) Paris agreement on climate change. Better air quality, less pollution, some amount of work to mitigate the chances of the collapse of human civilsation itself.

(4) Mandatory paid holidays for workers (UK government resisted this)

(5) Capping the working week at 48 hours (UK government resisted this).

(6) Legislation to stop massive tax avoidance (UK government resisted this).

There are six things for you. Our government doesn't like the EU convention on human rights, it doesn't want tax transparency legislation, it didn't like mandatory paid holidays at the time, it didn't like limiting the amount of hours people are required to work.

These are tangible things the EU has done, much to the chagrin of the British government. You're imagining how much better things would be without it. We can imagine differently; no paid holidays, no Paris agreement, no capped work hour requirements, less tax transparency and less effective enforcement of it .

I'll take tangible results most people find favourable over your baseless speculations any time.

An interesting angle in regard to point 6 is the legislation which would limit the tax avoidance gravy train of the billionaire backers of the Tory party and owners of the rightwing populist rags.
Here is a summary of the legislation,
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/anti-tax-avoidance-package/?fbclid=IwAR2drGJ-E_lT16dgf0FcWS4bLPPNqyIOslxyXXCdK30o4a2iQdyLC3DQUzk

I'm quite convinced that the timing is not a coincidence. I wonder what populist right driven campaign was backed by those same populist right rags and donors at the time that would allow the UK to stop implementing the agreement. :chin:

The EU is very obviously a gravy train...10,000 people earning more than the UK PM...that's acceptable to you is it? Do you think their "jobs" are as difficult and stressful as the UK's PM?

I like the fact that Cummings and the PM get under the skin of the liberal left, I like that Johnson looks serious about Brexit. I would prefer a real Tory like Mogg in charge though...Johnson is too liberal for my taste...eg, I don't like the way he has joined the leftists into turning the NHS into some kind of religion that can't be criticised, or when he was Mayor he wanted to grant an amnesty to illegal immigrants.

I like Cummings because I believe he is highly intelligent and could potentially really change things for the better...but we will see...this virus has altered much.

I only want a trade deal with the EU if it does not bind us into any of their regulations/rules/laws. I'd be more than happy going to wto trade...as we already do with the US, our biggest single trade partner.

1) Freedom of movement involves the weakening of national borders (obviously), that is a direct "attack" on national independence so damn free movement. I don't mind a few checks next time I travel to Europe.

2) We lead Europe on human rights...now the EU rights are going too far, eg, giving the vote to prisoners.Only a moron could defend that.

3) The Paris agreement is a complete joke, none of its target will get reached...because China and India will carry on polluting.

4) We've had paid holidays in the UK for decades...nothing to do with EU membership.

5) Why should the working week be capped at 48 hours? That's only two days out of seven.

6) One tax we can avoid is paying those thousands of EU bureaucrats.

You are in a tiny minority, a hard Brexiter who is not wealthy, appears to be politically informed and place yourself where Rees Mogg is on the political spectrum. Really I should not even engage with you as you are in the realms of the looney right.

Do you accept that the referendum was won on the back, of lies, political manipulation, and whipped up fear and xenophobia?

Also, do you have an idea of what the UK economy will look like after a few years on WTO?

According to you 90% of people that work on building sites are lunatics...quite a sweeping statement. Normal , working class people measure life by more than materialist measures (unlike leftists who always seem obsessed with money) , they are more in tune with greater values...that's why working people tend to be more nationalist but also less willing to trust politicians (leftists love their politicians , the right not so much...unless they prove themselves) . Most working class people that voted Conservative didn't because they trusted them, they did it because they despise what the lib dems and Labour have become...parties absolutely willing to sell their nation, culture and society out. They might not express it like me , but trust me, they fucking hate these liberal, middle class ,know-nothings.

1) Freedom of movement involves the weakening of national borders (obviously), that is a direct "attack" on national independence so damn free movement. I don't mind a few checks next time I travel to Europe. — Chester

Are you imagining that people can come to the country and stay indefinitely without work in the current situation? If someone stays, they have a job or get deported (or other much more circumstantial stuff). If someone stays and works illegally; do you think that's the fault of the person coming to the country for a better life and being exploited by a business to undercut wages and worker's contract induced "monetary risks"? Or is it the fault of opportunistic businesses undercutting the fair price of labour? I'm gonna go with the latter. If businesses didn't stand to gain by illegal contractless hiring, they're not going to bloody do it are they.

Even within Schengen, if you lose your job and can't find another within a year (or other much more circumstantial stuff), countries will deport you. You will have a residence permit revoked.

Are you imagining that a defaulting to international laws on immigration and migrant work would curtail the amount of illegal immigration and illegal contractless jobs? All this would do is act as a disincentive for citizens of EU member states to come to Britan. It does absolutely nothing for the majority of the right's bugbear immigrant nations. Don't you dare tell me when you talk about cutting immigration you're imagining less Swedish people coming in...

We lead Europe on human rights — Chester

Evidence please.

We have mandatory unpaid labour under the name of "workfare" (if you've ever been in that position, it's quite possible to be perpetually working for free and then fired when the workfare period ends for that job). We have zero hours contracts.

The Paris agreement is a complete joke, none of its target will get reached...because China and India will carry on polluting. — Chester

You can add the US to that list, it shows no signs of stopping and resists any measures that would slow their emissions growth.

But, it's actually the majority of Paris agreement signatories that are failing to meet emission reduction targets, which they lowball compared to what is necessary anyway.

It's a largely symbolic gesture, insofar as there are not punitive measures on countries that fail to meet them. If you want to reduce global carbon emissions, it takes a sustained organised effort over the entire world, and everyone needs to do their share. The Paris agreement is a first step, though taken very late, in that direction. It requires much more global cooperation and the mandatory imposition of climate taxes over the majority of the world's major polluters (or something similar) to do the full job. That requires an even larger legislative body than the EU to generate such a binding agreement, and it would continue to be resisted by any and all corporations that benefit from unsustainable emissions growth.

We've had paid holidays in the UK for decades...nothing to do with EU membership. — Chester

Wrong. Making it a legal right to have at least 11 hours between shift end and shift start (with exceptions based on job nature), having a maximum working week of 48 hours (with exceptions based on job nature), and a minimum of 20 days paid annual leave per year were not enforceable claims in Britain before the EU working time directive in 2003. There's an opt out if you don't want it, those considerate commisars and their respect for individual autonomy!

There are no plans or promises to keep this. Even as it gets circumvented by endless zero hours contracts and revolving door temporary ones. I wonder what will happen?

Why should the working week be capped at 48 hours? That's only two days out of seven. — Chester

As said, you can (could) opt out if you like, or if your job nature requires it. It isn't so much that it's capped, it's that you're legally entitled not to work more than that if the job's very nature doesn't require it. Putting these things in the law, in an ideal world anyway, allows workers to use them.

I'm quite convinced that the timing is not a coincidence. I wonder what populist right driven campaign was backed by those same populist right rags and donors at the time that would allow the UK to stop implementing the agreement.

I don't think the whole Brexit thing was timed in this relation to the EU's actions, but rather the opportunity arose and the fanatical anti EU Tory grandees jumped at the chance. They had been gunning to leave the EU right from our joining in the 1970's. They couldn't believe their luck when Blair made the mistake of "unfettered access" for the new east European accession states in 2004. This was what the populist rags jumped on and the rest is history.

Interestingly in 2015 very few people in the UK were critical of the EU, had even thought of leaving, or thought it was a sensible thing to do. What changed during the following year? A populist campaign employing lies, political manipulation, xenophobia and fear of Turkey joining (our streets would be flooded with Turks). Pushed every day by the right wing rags and populists like Farage. And hey presto, all those people who weren't concerned about the EU, suddenly hated it and wanted to leave whatever the cost.

You've got a lot of that mixed up there.

. They might not express it like me , but trust me, they fucking hate these liberal, middle class ,know-nothings.

Careful you'll be spitting teeth next. You've got what you want, politically, we're set to leave the EU without a trade deal, Corbyn is a laughing stock. What have you got to be angry about?

What the right wing rags didn't allow for is what these people on "building sites" are going to be angry about next. Now that they have got what they were demanding, what will these angry people have left to be angry about. They have to keep them angry because they've invested a decade of hard graft grooming them to that state.

The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph were all lining up to start misrepresenting the EU and lumping hate on them during the negotiations this year. But something's gone wrong, now they are turning on Johnson, the golden boy is going to be fattened up for the slaughter. But wait a minute, they've just spent a year telling all these people that Boris is the very definition of Brexit, he is the golden boy who is going to make Britain great again. They see more capital now in lumping the blame for the high death count on Johnson, than to soil themselves by supporting an administration presiding over the highest death toll in Europe and one of the highest in the world.

Did you know that Cummings's plan is for most of the old people in care homes to die, freeing them of the imminent NHS and social care crisis, which was going to bankrupt Brexit Britain.

Interestingly in 2015 very few people in the UK were critical of the EU, had even thought of leaving, or thought it was a sensible thing to do. What changed during the following year? A populist campaign employing lies, political manipulation, xenophobia and fear of Turkey joining (our streets would be flooded with Turks). Pushed every day by the right wing rags and populists like Farage. And hey presto, all those people who weren't concerned about the EU, suddenly hated it and wanted to leave whatever the cost. — Punshhh

:up:

Pushed every day by the right wing rags and populists like Farage. And hey presto, all those people who weren't concerned about the EU, suddenly hated it and wanted to leave whatever the cost. — Punshhh

What was the goal of the populists? I thought originally it was just to take over, but they really wanted to leave the EU. Why?

A combination of a tribal fear of becoming a state in a united Europe and rightwing wealthy privelidged classes wanting to hold onto their wealth and move the country to the right, as opposed to the gradual move towards a more socially inclusive social democratic state which is the case in the larger EU countries.

So basically a tribal fear and the perpetuation of a rightwing capitalist agenda. Both of which were perceived to be threatened by the EU, or continued membership of the EU.

There is a kernel of truth in both fears, but the benefits of membership, provided we don't loose our autonomy far outweigh the risk engendered in these fears.

Interesting the use of social media grooming ( minute17) and the way he lays into criticism of the Tory party at the end. Exposing the disingenuous motives of the Tory grandees who commissioned the vote Leave campaign.

It's interesting to pay attention to exactly what he doesn't say, because it reflects badly on him.

"We used Facebook's terrible user privacy standards to get people to fill out questionnaires that allow us access to their and all their friends' feeds and data, then we stored all that, used a bunch of machine learning algorithms to learn about them, we tested survey parameters to see if they were reposted (and other engagement metrics), then we maximised those for each demographic we could.

BTW, we leveraged all this research in the week before the vote to tailor personalised ads to prime voting our way"

combination of a tribal fear of becoming a state in a united Europe and rightwing wealthy privelidged classes wanting to hold onto their wealth and move the country to the right, as opposed to the gradual move towards a more socially inclusive social democratic state which is the case in the larger EU countries. — Punshhh

It still feels to me like there's something about Brexit that I'm not getting. Is there an underlying truth? Something more deeply seated? Or did the populists sort of randomly win?

Or did the populists sort of randomly win? — frank

The Cummings video I posted above is quite informative on how they got people to engage with the Brexit is good narrative, they cite a few catastrophes in framing public opinion; what happened to Greece during its economic crisis (which was partly forced on them by EU banking interest) and the Syria/refugee crisis, the 2008 recession and a resulting resentment towards a class of "political elites" that they capitalised on majorly (they got to frame it like the EU is full of political elites, and weaponise class identity in their favour, which is a strong force in the UK).

They happened upon a narrative which spans liberal left and liberal right reactions to the crisis, blamed the EU for the disintegration of faith in politics (and Brexit will RESTORE it apparently!), but also resonates with the far left's class thinking on the matter and the far right's "national sovereignty with less immigrants" narrative. They politicised a common kernel of truth (people being sold out and fucked by their governments since 2008) and spinned it in their favour.

It still feels to me like there's something about Brexit that I'm not getting. Is there an underlying truth? Something more deeply seated? Or did the populists sort of randomly win?

There is a deep seated fear, one which goes back in history to the time when foreign powers did come and conquer the country. Principally in 1066 when the French colonised Britain and handed out lordships amongst themselves covering the whole country, these overlords became the upper classes.
But these days this fear is residual rather like the fear of snakes, or spiders some people have. There has been a strong rivalry for the last few hundred years, including England ruling parts of France. Along with fears about the motives of the Germans following the war.

So there is a deep seated love hate relationship. But with the EU all this historic baggage was put behind us/them. Many people moved and worked freely around Europe including Britain, EU legislation has been very well thought out and is very progressive, but there are problems, as one would expect with a Union especially when they joined the Euro. But many British people were very happy with it and felt more European as a result. The sentiment to leave resided in a few minority groups, who gradually poisoned the discourse regarding the EU and our membership, boulstered by the immigration crisis during the Blair years, these forces grew and those who were content weren't aware of this, or didn't match it with pro EU sentiment, so were caught napping.

People didn't realise that the UK MEP's (UK EU representatives) had become populated by anti EU rebels, who insulted and criticised the EU continually for many years. Mystifying their EU counterparts.

Good point, Channel 4 did a good expose on all this manipulation, which essentially amounts to electoral fraud.

That video is fascinating. I'll need to watch it again. It's a new idea for me that exiting the EU may have taken the steam out of some toxic elements of UK politics.


Would you say that the UK and the EU have always been oil and water, and it took a set of crises, immigration, 2008, along with apathy on the part of the Conservative Party, to provide the impetus to shake them apart? But still, it was close?

I read recently (I was looking at COVID-19 info) that the NHS has been accused by multiple of women of being denied pain medication for childbirth. Apparently some women have considered abortion rather than face it again. The article said that at least part of the problem is staffing. I thought of that while watching fdrake's video: "Take back control." Maybe that resonates way beyond membership in the EU.

It's a new idea for me that exiting the EU may have taken the steam out of some toxic elements of UK politics. — frank

Eh, he frames it like the government being in a position to tighten borders and make immigration (only from the EU!) and migrant labour (only from the EU!) have more red tape is a favour to immigrants. The campaign also weaponised ideas of Britain protecting its sovereignty from Turkish and Greek "invaders". Vocal people on the right were quite happy thinking of asylum seekers as "parasites" during the campaign (a phrase featured in a major news outlet, despite asylum being a lot different from legal travel...) and the Turks and Kurds as "invaders", the EU countries were a "threat". It is no surprise that hate crimes soared afterwards, the far right and their racism-lite conservative allies like "I'm not racist I buy Chinese food sometimes" @Chester here were given so much breathing room by it, and energised to act upon it. He's a smart man, I think he knew what he was spinning.

So Brexit reinforced racism? It was seen as a stamp of approval on it? Hasn't the EU changed its rules about immigration since the UK decided to leave?

So Brexit reinforced racism? — frank

It promoted it, yes. It weaponised British identity stereotypes (white, working class) against the PEOPLE from some countries, and piggybacked off previous racist narratives that were prevalent; Syrians and nebulously defined middle-eastern threats, and the enduring narrative of the Polish, Pakistanis and Indians "coming here and taking our jobs".

Just a note: it doesn't have to hang together like a logical argument, it just has to resonate like a good story.

I see.

People group into larger organisation when they can derive some benefit from it. The benefit of cooperation must be greater than the benefit of defection.

There is no reason why people shouldn't be lone wolfs roaming the world on their own. They can organise into tribes, villages, cities, countries and federations.

It's also about power balance. During the second world war, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China were at war with each other. Then when the Japanese attacked, all of a sudden they united and cooperated under a single China. Then when the Japanese left, they went back to war.

You can bet that if aliens showed up tomorrow, then all of sudden a one world government would form for defense.

You can agree or disagree with the UK leaving the EU, but it's a bet they made and only the future will tell if it's the right one. Also, within every single country there's many people, and the policy is determined as an interplay of all the interests and agenda individual people have. So naturally, for every decision there are losers and winners.

Decisions are the outcome of local optima in a single group. The more small groups you have, the higher likelihood it is that they will reach a local optimum different from a global optimum. Even if the global optimum would result in higher utility overall than the sum of various local optima.

My bet is that the UK will become something like Singapore with Scotland and Ireland breaking off. They will thrive by subverting EU regulations, just like Singapore thrives by subverting Chinese regulations.

As to whether Brexit will remove some toxicity in UK politics is a very hard question to answer because there are so many different angles to this. It certainly will remove those angry Brexiters, but it will cause all kinds of other problems. One could view the EU as a moderating influence on UK politics, or the reverse depending on what you are commenting on, or what your view is. Also there is the difference between the idea of leaving, on the assumption that it will be carried out in a considerate amicable way resulting in a constructive partnership. As opposed to the up yours EU petulant destructive Leaving we are now facing. 90% of my criticism is of the way we are leaving and not necessarily to leaving in principle.

Punshhh and fdrake display a complete misconception of what motivated many people to decide that leaving the political institution was a good idea. They just regurgitate the same old racism crap...I'll give you a list that motivated me and probably many others...

1) Freedom of movement led to the mass importation of labour, predominately low skilled cheap labour which obviously puts downward pressure on wages and increased pressure on services (schooling ,housing, cultural differences etc etc). The numbers coming in were huge, far bigger than Tony Blair said. Middle class people quite liked it, their cleaners, plumbers, drivers and builders were cheaper.

2) The EU is very obviously corrupt, they haven't had their books signed off for years. As I have said , they pay each other very well too...lovely big fat expense accounts. Brexit MP's that were elected to go out there were amazed by the extravagant lifestyle.

3) The commissars are not elected by the people but they decide what the EU politicians get to vote on...does that sound like democracy to you ?

4) There was a very obvious lie (which we can see with the benefit of hindsight) told to the British people when we joined in '73 and had our first referendum in '75... we were told that this is just an economic club where as it's clearly empire building...they lied through their fucking teeth. Older people remember that.

5) Another concept that goes right over the head of middle class virtue signalling lefties is that your neighbour isn't necessarily your friend. The French sold weapon systems to the Argentines when we were at war with them in '82...can you imagine Canada selling weapons to Iraq during the gulf war? The Germans would be more than happy to take all our manufacturing capacity to their shores. Look how Italy was treated by the other member states during the height of this virus disaster in its time of dire need.