The Mace shenanigans?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Fuck no. Who has not picked up a mace......

Cancelling the vote that was guaranteed to lose.

We are shambolic

It's beyond trumpism in terms of embarassment

You can write him off as early onset or someone with a pathology from the DSM but we are just plainly fucking nuts

If there was no chance the Brexit deal was going to pass (I think that's what this was, right?) then why hold the vote? Just to confirm what everyone already knew?

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I have absolutely no idea

I can not think of a single reason the maybot thought the norden Irish were going to say yes

Read that the EU court issued a ruling that affirmed the UK could still call off Brexit and remain in the EU. What are the feelings about this on the streets? UK friends on the board please chime in.

On balance I think we should but I believe there are massive issues with the EU

On a personal level, it will make no difference until the EU falls apart, I'm dual nation and live in a third EU country

I've a good friend that has removed 1bn in manufacturing from UK since 2016

It will harm those that can least afford it but they voted for it in the greatest numbers so.......

Well the issue, I think, is that voting "no" isn't like picking some alternative path or plan. There is no other plan. And there is effectively no time to make another plan. And the EU has indicated it's not interested in starting over in the negotiations. It gave the UK years to develop its plan. And arriving at the exit date with no plan at all, by most accounts, is far from ideal. (using British understatement).

At least with a definitive "no," PM May could throw some papers up in the air, give a "peace out" hand signal and turn the government over to the most powerful "no" faction to try to do better in 3 months. That's what I'd do if I was her. I wouldn't want to be at the helm in March or whatever with no plan at all.

There seem to be a lot of countries becoming Banana Republics lately.

There is no consensus for any of the options on either side of the house

Too many factions. Too little time.

I said I wanted to SHOP AT a Banana Republic not LIVE IN one.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

As an American with 401k that needs feeding for soon retirement, call off Brexit and live with EU and all its problems.


On a side note, has their been any EU member state push to decentralize EU authorities so it is true member states rather than federal govt?

Not sure I understand the question

There are varying degrees of integration, but once in, you subjugate many things to the EU

At the least, you can not have seperate rules on immigration, goods, services and capital movements

Well, it's going much better today!

Much much better today. Strong and stable

Theresa May behind the scenes on Brexit.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sGH_v1mDEE

i think i follow UK politics pretty closely for someone who doesn't live there, but i have no idea what May really wants. Campaigned for Remain, but wanted the job of leading the country out. Talks about "leave meaning leave" but puts a lot of effort into selling a deal which is sort of leaving, but wanting to be an associate non-voting member. Does she either not know what she wants, knows what she wants and can't have it because of other agreements, or knows what she wants but lacks the political skill to get others on board?

I think she wanted to be Prime Minister and that was it, not thought beyond that. Because there was no good solution to Brexit. The leave group just promised out right lies, so no actual deal could meet what they promised. And the remainers did not want to leave. There is just no deal she could make that would be popular, so she is floundering to do the best she can.

This is often a bit more difficult for American's to get when we're almost more of a "monarchy parliament setup" than they are. I mean, multiparty here is pretty much impossible.

Over there, she does NOT serve a majority. It's a plurality made up of her party and another party.

In many ways, lots of former monarchys are now actually more "democratic" than we are.

May was literally last woman standing after everyone else had committed patricide and fratricide in the leadership election

The errors she made are legend

In short, to appease the Brexiteers she enacted article 50 with zero, read that Zero fucking idea of what she wanted

She then laid out her red lines; no free movement, no membership of single market and customs union and no subjugation to EUCJ and NO hard border on the island of ireland

Now, her appeasement of the Brexiteers was never going to work. Leaving boris aside who on this has been vacuous and only chose leave as a fast track to number 10. Nothing, no deal, no arrangements she could ever have with the EU would ever be acceptable to the hard right of her party. None. Never.

So, for two years she has attempted to appease them hoping to maintain their support but in the end they'd never back anything that would have kept a hard border out of Ireland because it requires EITHER the UK to maintain alignment with the EU OR Northern Ireland to maintain alignment and to have a border in the Irish sea

This is a complete cluster fuck.

She is dead man walking. I'm still betting on extension or second referendum

What the hard Brexiteers have always failed to understand is that the majority do not support their vision of the uk

In fact, the truth is, most still do not really fully appreciate what will transpire over the next decade if we leave with no deal

I'm ambivalent, there is much I don't like about the EU. I think the euro is due for a massive kicking but I live on the continent. I'm dual national, my kids are, I will ensure they get French nationality and we will be fine but I know many people working in manufacturing in the UK that don't completely recognise what the consequence of voting to leave is going to do.

Weren't a lions (no pun intended) share of those wanting to leave the older generation wanting to essentially regain past glory but won't be around the deal with the actual ramifications? I thought I remember reading those that voted for the exit were predominantly 45 and above and those that wanted to stay were under 45.

Serious question too, based on my first question, but isn't this essentially remnants of a country that used to "rule the world" and now is lucky to rule their own island but they still think they can act like they are a world power?

Possibly to answer the first but its a bit more nuanced than just older people

Old manufacturing areas, ship building, poorer areas etc all voted to leave

Irrespective of views on Brexit, UK is 5th (?) biggest economy in the world, seats on security Council, NATO and one of the only eueropean countries pulling its weight militarily and security wise

Yes, the empire is long gone, but its not as if its some poxy banana Republic nation........... Oh hang on

HA!

My mum is from there and my family (uncle and and 4 cousins and their kids) were split right along age lines with the exception being my cousins being in their 50's and they said to stay. Oh, and they all live around Leeds and York.

Yeah, I get it is more nuanced. I remember also seeing the map and how it was split far south and north versus the middle (with Cornwall, Wales and Scotland wanting to stay in). Fortunate to have been there enough and have a better understanding of most of us Yanks what is happening there from afar. I wish I could say I was surprised by the vote but I wasn't. And yes, May is cocking it up big time but she is also in a bad spot!

The weird thing on May is she voted remain but is now super keen to show her leave credentials; as Andrew says, to placate the hard right. I sometimes think somehow you voted leave would actually be more flexible.....
The irony is that the hard right are infatuated with Britain's history - make Britain great again and give it to them foreigners. And our history is you cannot appease a certain type of person; they view appeasement as weakness as Chamberlain learnt with Hitler. So May is placating the right wing of the party and propped up in power by the DUP party, a tiny party of narrow minded bigots who should be a complete irrelevance in politics but instead cannot believe the hand they have been dealt. And they are milking it like no tomorrow....

So we have a situation where May consistently claims there will never be second referendum because 'the vote must be respected' - but this was a tight vote that ended 52-48%, where investigations are ongoing if the vote leave side was influenced by foreign (Russia) interference and whose uneducated voters were outright lied to. Classic one - vote leave painted a bus and toured the nation that said if we leave EU we will get an extra £350m to spend on our healthcare. Outright lie, and it was called out at that the time. As soon as they win the vote they immediately walk-back that pledge and say 'it wasn't actually a promise but instead an example of one of a series of possibilities that could happen'. You could not make this up; Products you and I buy have protection where you can return it if it does not meet advertised spec; the fate of a nation less so......
In a different thread someone asked if Brexit was so bad why did so many people vote for it - its classic status quo vs fairy tales; one side had a boring "its not great but its the best we can do" and the other side got to say " lets leave and then the world is ours, lower taxes, more money for Brits, less foreigners to take your jobs we are Britain, we won the war'.

And the icing on the shit cake; the question was spectacularly ill-thought out; a five year old could have written it; 'should we stay in the EU or leave'.....but the latter had no detail. Leave for what?
If a slimy realtor offered you a binary vote tomorrow to stay in your house or leave you would want to know what your alternatives where; leave and upgrade to a mansion in Maui sounds attractive. Leave your current house and move to an inner-city crack den less so. Clearly an exaggeration but the point is individually you would interrogate this question much more than collectively we seemed to do as a nation...historians will have a field day on this for decades to come....
And to bring it back full circle; people were offered to leave and promised that a mansion awaited them, they have now seen its a tent in a field and are unhappy that they were mis-led. And are being told 'unlucky' the people have spoken......

If we do actually leave with no agreements in place (which I dont think will happen) the country will properly kick-off and make the Yellow Jacket protests in France look like a summer fete

The funniest things of last four years; a comedian runs Italy, a rothschild banker runs France, 50k people who's jobs depending on open supply chains with Europe who provide Nissan with parts voted to leave and the US is run by someone who's been tango'd