Tuesday 20 September 2016

SOME SILLY SNAPS




32 comments:

  1. Interesting, I just blogged about pro-EU peeps should react to Brexit. We seem caught up on the same issue Tris.

    What I would say is this: we need to fight to make brexit work, not die on the fruitless hill of trying to block it entirely.

    A soft brexit is infinitely preferable to a hard brexit.

    We need passporting rights, we need access to the single market. These are pressing priorities. We can't fight to ensure their retention during brexit negotiations if we spend our time being shrill in the wilderness.

    We lost, and some brexiteers ran a thoroughly dishonest campaign. But what is done is done. And it is certainly not helpful for the SNP and wider YES movement to seek to use brexit as a tool to further divide Scotland & England apart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Here..you dropped your rose-coloured glasses!

      Man, and WE are the fantasists...

      Delete
    2. Dean... I started to write a reply, but it got so long that i was forced to abandon it. I'm going to make a post out of it, so don't think I've dodged answering...

      I'm on it.

      Delete
    3. Ha ha Mogabee.

      I don't think either side is fantasist. Although some of the politicians certainly are...

      Post on this coming up... probably tonight.

      Delete
    4. Scotland's political landscape is far removed from England's, the SNP aren't creating devision, the Tories are.

      Delete
    5. Being "shrill in the wilderness" is never a good idea. Having said that, it is a great tagline for my own blog. Thanks!

      This is an either/or for me: a least-worst outcome with UK-EU negotiations (whenever they might happen) or full membership of the EU as a continuing member after a 2nd indyref. Given a) the emboldened state of Fox/Johnson et al b)the woeful disarray of the opposition c) the unbelievable complexity of exit negotiations and d) their inherent secrecy, does anyone think it is likely that UK-EU negotiations can be influenced in any meaningful way at all? I imagine that the government's initial negotiating position will be the result of a cabinet power struggle, while the settled outcome will be something very different indeed.

      Delete
    6. 64% of all Scots exports go to England. Leaving the UK to retain(regain?) EU membership would mean a 'hard border' with England, and greater barriers to our trade. I'm not sure voting to leave the UK - under any near future scenario - would be good for the economic well-being of Scotland.

      Delete
    7. LOL Terry. I'd not really describe your writing style as shrill...

      Good points. May clearly doesn;t agree with Davis and Fox, and the three of them are falling out over who does what and what it all means. How they are ever going to make an argument that will satisfy the Tories never mind all of England, and certainly not the rest of us, is not readily obvious to me.

      Delete
    8. Well, we don't know if it would mean a hard border, Dean.

      Mr Fox (I think it was, but maybe it was Mr Davis) said there would be no hard border with Ireland. That doesn't just mean the north and south land border. I imagine it means the air borders between Dublin and Edinburgh, London and Cardiff. Just as they're has never been a hard border with Jersey, Guernsey and the IoM, when we were in the EU and they were not.

      How we would do trade with the UK would be a matter for negotiation. Clearly some accommodation must have been reached for the Crown Territories.

      Delete
    9. There is definitely no need for a passport border. Is that what people mean by a hard border? The Common Travel Agreement could easily be amended to include an independent Scotland. A customs border, on the other hand, will be hard to rule out. This could be a very real problem for the Irish border post-Brexit and a customs border might be an issue for an independent Scotland post-Brexit. In both cases, it would depend on the relationship rUK negotiates with the EU. Will rUK be like Norway (no customs border needed) or more like Switzerland (soft customs border needed) or more like Kenya (no EU relationship so absolutely everything needs checked and stamped). If I may blatantly plug my blog here: http://terryentoure.blogspot.ch/2016/07/another-chat-about-borders.html.

      Delete
    10. Yes, I believe a hard border is a border where you queue up and show passports. On busy routes of course it is an absolute nightmare.

      ven though Norway is not in teh EU and Sweden is, I believe that you simply drive over. Likewise if you fly to the RoI from Scotland there's no need for a passport, as long as you have photocard identity. I seem to recall that although the IoM isn't in the EU when I flew there we didn't need passports.

      I think they make too much of this thing, just to scare us.

      You may always plug your most excellent blog here!

      Delete
    11. Some more hot air about passport/hard borders in the Herald here:

      http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14754500.UK_s_no_Brexit_border_promise_in_Ireland_may_not_apply_to_independent_Scotland__experts_claim/?ref=mrb&lp=27

      Everyone seems to forget that the border isn't just down to the UK. The EU has a 50% role in the border, too. If there is to be no customs border at all it requires both sides to harmonise their economies, sort of like belonging to an economic union. That could never happen, could it?

      Delete
    12. LOL yes, typically British, they tend to forget that all these things are two way traffic.

      Delete
  2. That all said, this is a funny and insightful blog post Tris.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah, well, I dunno about insightful, matey.

      I usually go for amusing... and leave the insightful to the more intellectually and journalisticly (is that even a word) able among the bloggers. OK: Munguin offers a prize if someone can tell me what the correct adverb should be!

      But I thank you kindly for the compliment! :)

      Delete
    2. The correct word is journalistically (can I claim my prize? lol). Great post, I think you have listed all the reasos for independence in one article.

      Delete
    3. Thank you your provestness.

      The prize Munguin has selected for you is a romantic dinner for two with Jackie Baillie.

      Let me know....

      Delete
    4. He'd be wise to take a sandwich. He'll no be eating much at that dinner....

      S.A.

      Delete
    5. Or, well, any of it really....

      Delete
    6. I'm sure if we avoided politics she would be great company (I might let her get a wee bit of SNPbad in). Perhaps afterwards we could join Baron Foulkes for drinks?

      I must admit I was hoping that I would get a tour round the (Great British) coast with Neil Oliver.

      Delete
    7. Neil told Munguin to bugger off becasue he was a vile cybernat animal.

      If you join the Red Baron, please don't dance with any elderly ladies.

      Delete
  3. When Dean comes down of his Mushroom salad, what will he do when he realises that he wont get anything he wants?
    You can be a Tory, but not a Euro Tory in the UK.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's certainly looking black. Europe is rather obviously looking after itself. Other countries are looking to host all the EU offices that were/are in London. Almost undoubtedly, unless there is free movement of people, there won't be free movement of goods, services or anything else. And the hard right won't have foreigners at any cost.

      Ho hum. We shall see. But even WTO stuff may not quite work out, and the UK could be left with nothing for years. Mindful of the fact that we don;t have any trained people, and Fox and Davies aren't on the same page as the PM, and Boris isn't on any page at all, we may find that whomever we do business with may stitch us up good and proper.

      Delete
    2. In a timely paper for the Centre for European Reform, Simon Tilford argues a hard Brexit is now on the cards, saying the lack of an instant post-referendum economic armageddon makes it all the more more likely:

      Recent data suggests that the Brexit vote will not cause a recession. This, coupled with the fact that British voters rejected two important principles of the EU, makes a single market exit all but certain.

      Delete
    3. If that's the case the UK economy will tank, faster than Ruth.

      Delete
    4. Is the lack of recession just because nothing has happened yet? I don't understand economics at all but I would assume the gloomy forecasts took into account the UK actually doing something to leave the EU. It all feels like a waiting game right now.

      Delete
    5. I speak to quite a lot of people over the weeks. The stats may be lagging the real economy. Business is not buoyant at all. There have been a lot of price hikes of 7 to 9 % blamed on the Euro. The Bank of England dropped interest rates and pumped 40 billion (I think it was ) QE into the system. Those are props.

      As the uncertainty of what we are getting begins to bite you will begin to see the rise in unemployment.

      I do not think there's huge optimism in the people I encounter.

      S.A.

      Delete
    6. This, I think, in the calm before the storm.

      It's like panic for the first few days... pound tanked... confidence melted and then... hey it was ok again.

      When the real stuff starts, I think that the bottom may fall out of the whole thing.

      Hell mend them.

      Delete
  4. Tris

    I think we are looking at a hard Brexit. May can't accept free movement of people or she is finished and the EU can't concede free movement of people because it would open the flood gates to other EU member states wanting the same, esp Hungary. The best that May can hope for is that any deal has to go before parliament and she gives a free vote to try and save some face, the deal is rejected, we are still in. The EU would be pissed off but they made up the rules, it holds off Scotland from another referendum for the time being, and gives May time to work on her party or figure out a way to sort out the mess. It's unreal they had done no prep in the event of a leave vote, what a bunch of useless prats. Either way it is a mess and won't be sorted out anytime soon.

    Bruce

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I suspect that the Daily Mail, Express, Sun, Star, Telegraph, etc readers would take to the streets with vengeance, if they were denied their immigrant free Britain, Bruce.

      I think maybe that is why she is so determined to deny parliament the right to discuss it.

      They stirred up racial hatred before the referendum. The racists got their way. Now I doubt they will be thwarted.

      Delete
    2. You forgot Article 50. The EU will not negotiate in depth until it has been triggered and once it does, there's a two year clock until David Davis' WTO scenario comes true by default.

      So Parliament would be forced to choose between that outcome and whatever deal was on the table at that point.

      The only thing Parliament could do to avert Brexit is preemptively torpedo Article 50 by voting against it, whether or not the Government puts it to the House. A private motion to disregard the result of the referendum(which after all was consultative), for example.

      If they do pass that, they have declared war on the two forces in the UK which both alone arguably supersedes parliamentary supremacy - the democratic will of the electorate and what remains of royal prerogative. Together...

      It would almost certainly trigger a general election. Would a majority of pro-EU MPs then be returned? Or would enough UKIP MPs to force a coalition with the Tories show up?

      In any case, I don't think Parliament has the will to do that. SNP MPs will not support setting the precedent of legally ignoring a referendum's result. The rest of them - turkeys eager to avoid voting for christmas sooner rather than later.

      Delete
    3. It's complex, but given that there is no constitution, or that they make it up as they go along, anything in possible.

      In the official government leaflet sent to every household (at enormous cost) the UK government said that they would enact whatever the people decided.

      I wonder how binding that promise is. And of course as discussed on another threat, would the Scottish parliament be able to block it as the will of the Scottish people is sovereign in our country? Or would they find a way round that law, and allow it to happen anyway.

      Of course you make a very good point about referendum results and the SNP, but seriously I doubt anyone would dare to overturn the will of the people as expressed in a referendum, even a really narrow win.

      The question, as I said, remains that the will of the Scottish people is sovereign in Scotland.

      Delete