Brexit

[Oldschool]

Would you not all back Davis to be right given that he knows the impact papers like the back of his hand???

Interesting point!
How about "impact on him" personally?
Meanwhile Corbyn, quite accurately imho has been described as the"Scarlet Pimpernel" of Brexit.

[ribs]

Would you not all back Davis to be right given that he knows the impact papers like the back of his hand???

I’d say his hands are a big surprise to him every morning

[ronk]

A major difference between those decisions and Brexit is of course that Brexit was voted for popularly (even if many had no clue what Brexit might mean and probably still don't). Chamberlain and Eden acted either in their position as PM or with the backing of their Cabinets.

Appeasement was popular, much more so than the alternative.

Suez is more of a blind spot for me but my understanding is that it was popular until it went wrong.

Brexit was obviously going to cost Britain money, but the Olympics costs a fortune and cities still host the Games.

[The Doc]

A major difference between those decisions and Brexit is of course that Brexit was voted for popularly (even if many had no clue what Brexit might mean and probably still don't). Chamberlain and Eden acted either in their position as PM or with the backing of their Cabinets.

Appeasement was popular, much more so than the alternative.

Suez is more of a blind spot for me but my understanding is that it was popular until it went wrong.

Brexit was obviously going to cost Britain money, but the Olympics costs a fortune and cities still host the Games.

Appeasement was contested. The "popularity" was more a public memory of the first world war and hoping not to repeat it. But the chain of events hurt Britain significantly - going from a world power with 25% of the global population looking to London - to losing most of the Commonwealth and pretty much crippled in terms of a World power.

Suez wasn't popular - it was a complete misreading of the support from the US. The UK was warned by the US that it wouldn't support it but ploughed on ahead. Again it took the UK off the map in terms of Middle East politics after that.

[tomthefan]

The Polish foreign minister wants the backstop limited to at most 5 years.
Some time ago another Polish minister Konrad Szymanski said something similar and also added "Ireland is a small country. It's not worth it".
Where's the so-called soft power we're supposed to have in Poland, when we need it?

Enda had the right idea here:

[domhnallj]

The Polish foreign minister wants the backstop limited to at most 5 years.
Some time ago another Polish minister Konrad Szymanski said something similar and also added "Ireland is a small country. It's not worth it".
Where's the so-called soft power we're supposed to have in Poland, when we need it?

Enda had the right idea here:

This is not the official line of the Polish government. A couple of politicians playing to their base is being played up here to get clicks (who pays any attention to the Indo anymore?). The EU line is holding firm.

[fourthirtythree]

For context Ireland referred extraditions to Poland to the ECJ due to the lack of independence of their judiciary. The far right are on the rise in Poland (witness the murder of the mayor of Gdansk, not dissimilar to the murder of Jo Cox by a far right thug radicalised by extremist press and fascist parties operating in plain sight). Poland's "soft power" in the EU has some particular limits at the moment. The EU exists in order to try and stop the continent drifting in the direction England and Poland are right now.

England has had several constitutional crises since the badly thought out Brexit vote (there wasn't a legally enforceable proposal, rather there was a wishy washy idea) including attempts to sideline both the judiciary and the legislature by the executive. Both were rebuffed but there doesn't seem to be any great will to look at the larger problems they have.

[tomthefan]

For context Ireland referred extraditions to Poland to the ECJ due to the lack of independence of their judiciary.

So the remarks I quoted could be payback for this? That's possible I suppose.

[paddyor]

Appeasement was popular, much more so than the alternative.

Suez is more of a blind spot for me but my understanding is that it was popular until it went wrong.

Brexit was obviously going to cost Britain money, but the Olympics costs a fortune and cities still host the Games.

There's no timeline in which appeasement was the correct choice. The Nazi's seizing the weapons of Skoda and Krupps in the Czech Republic accelerated their war plans. The Wehrmacht had never fully adherred to the treaty of Versailles and thru the treaty of Rappelle with Russia had been testing and drilling it's revamped army for over a decade. It still lacked the quality and output capacity of those factories. If Britain sought terms with Hitler and either he or Stalin succeeded in establishing an autarkic land empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Caucasus Britain was doomed.The choice faced by Britain was essentially which end of the turd sandwich should take a bite out of so I suppose it's a good analogy for Brexit.

[tomthefan]

Appeasement was popular, much more so than the alternative.

Suez is more of a blind spot for me but my understanding is that it was popular until it went wrong.

Brexit was obviously going to cost Britain money, but the Olympics costs a fortune and cities still host the Games.

There's no timeline in which appeasement was the correct choice. The Nazi's seizing the weapons of Skoda and Krupps in the Czech Republic accelerated their war plans. The Wehrmacht had never fully adherred to the treaty of Versailles and thru the treaty of Rappelle with Russia had been testing and drilling it's revamped army for over a decade. It still lacked the quality and output capacity of those factories. If Britain sought terms with Hitler and either he or Stalin succeeded in establishing an autarkic land empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Caucasus Britain was doomed.The choice faced by Britain was essentially which end of the turd sandwich should take a bite out of so I suppose it's a good analogy for Brexit.

Never heard the word autarkic before, just expanded my vocabulary as a result, cool!

[rooster]

For any of you interested in why it is such a mess either read or lisn to this speech by Sir Ivan Rogers, he was the UK civil servant in Europe and he bailed out at the start as he knew the clusterfeck that was coming
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13 ... on-brexit/

[Laighin Break]

Apparently Frankie Sheahan is behing this [The Pendulum Summit] that paid €58K for Boris Johnson to talk for an hour

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/02 ... s-johnson/

[rooster]

Apparently Frankie Sheahan is behing this [The Pendulum Summit] that paid €58K for Boris Johnson to talk for an hour

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/02 ... s-johnson/

Fools are easy to get money from.

[brotheroffrank]

Here are five stupid ideas that were not “BREXIT”:-
1. Johann Ritter, a German physicist, made a self-experiment applying poles of a voltaic pile to his own hands, eyes, ears, nose, tongue…and penis. After realizing that it caused orgasms, he got addicted. This caused some health problems, which made Ritter self-medicate with opium. His health was so weak that he died of tuberculosis at 33 years old.
2. In 1973 engineer Henry Smolinski decided to design a flying car using the rear end of an airplane and a Ford Pinto. During a flight test, Smolinski died, when the wing strut detached from the car.
3. The doctor Stubbins Ffirth wanted to prove that the yellow fever wasn’t a contagious disease (it is). To prove his point, he exposed himself to the disease, drinking vomit, urine and blood from patients with yellow fever. Still healthy, Ffirth considered his theory proven. However the transmission of yellow fever is usually by a mosquito…so he drank all that pee, vomit and blood for nothing.
4. During the Cold War CIA agent Frank Wisner proposed that the US government would send, along with the baskets of humanitarian aid to impoverished communist countries, packets of extra-large condoms – but would label them as “small” or “medium”. The idea was to convince the communists that American men were well endowed.
5. In 2002 the Irish Government issued every house in the Country a packet of Iodine tablets to take in the event of a nuclear emergency (with a particular focus on potential terrorist attack at the Sellafield and Chapelcross reactors in the UK). The entire batch – 14.2million tablets at a cost of €630,000 – expired in 2005; they will not be getting replaced because apparently the threat of a nuclear meltdown/terrorist attack has receded and taking them wouldn’t do anything, anyway.

[rooster]

A few potential Darwin awards winners in that lot.
At least the iodine was cheaper than the batch of Tamiflu, and other drugs UK bought to cure us from avian or swine flu.

[Peg Leg]

Apparently Frankie Sheahan is behing this [The Pendulum Summit] that paid €58K for Boris Johnson to talk for an hour

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/02 ... s-johnson/

Fools are easy to get money from.

Yeah that thing is a Tony Robinson type event

[johng]

Hey. Leave Baldrick out of this!

Anyone watch "Brexit an uncivil war"?

[The Doc]

Hey. Leave Baldrick out of this!

Anyone watch "Brexit an uncivil war"?

Yup

[johng]

V good. Bendydick Cumbersnatch was entertaining in it. And the portrayal of Farage.

[The Doc]

V good. Bendydick Cumbersnatch was entertaining in it. And the portrayal of Farage.

Yeah. But a bit like the film about Facebook - those who have a real interest will get annoyed by the factual inaccuracies. But I guess it does capture the sense of the vote being won on a vague appeal to a nostalgic notion which actually had little grounding in reality