Brexit or no Brexit

Posted on BB.com and sounds about right.

Brexit is like when you & your mates are out on a Saturday night, and one guy says, "This place is shite. Let's all go someplace else." So you all leave, then realize that he has no idea where else to go, and the place you just were won't let you back in. The UK is standing in a kebab shop at 3 AM arguing over whose fault it is
 
Brexit is like waiting for Godot- the same play in each half except the HOC is a play in 47/56/93 parts.....
I predict parliament forcing the PM to bin the deal on Monday ( 1st April...no irony there) which will result in an application for a long extension. The PM will step down, new conservative leader, general election - party that campaigns on remain getting in, revoke Article 50
Last three years complete waste of time!
 
Brexit is like waiting for Godot- the same play in each half except the HOC is a play in 47/56/93 parts.....
I predict parliament forcing the PM to bin the deal on Monday ( 1st April...no irony there) which will result in an application for a long extension. The PM will step down, new conservative leader, general election - party that campaigns on remain getting in, revoke Article 50
Last three years complete waste of time!

Sweet!! At least you folks should be able to step back to where you were before. Sadly our
democracy is being dealt death blows by the orange one. Sadly reminiscent of Germany in
the '30's. The next election should decide if we have a civil war or not. Democratic Socialism
vs. Autocratic Fascism. The middle of the road has been kicked in the face by both sides.
 
Brexit is probably the cost of Thatcher ? In Australia, neoliberalism was introduced by the right wing of the Labor Party - Hawke and Keating. It involved removal of tariffs and subsidies, so our manufacturing jobs went off-shore. At the time, there was very little public debate, because we did not know the issues. For Australia, there is probably no way we could exit our free trade agreements without extreme pain. I think Trump and Brexit are both examples of populist politics. The people who are suffering are making themselves heard. In a democracy, they probably have the right to do that. However I think the exercise is pointless - there is no way back to the good old days. We did it to ourselves by the way we voted.
 
We did it to ourselves by the way we voted.

The sad thing is ..... we keep voting the same, most people too ignorant to connect the dots.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.
Albert Einstein
 
Brexit is probably the cost of Thatcher ?
Al,
Not just Thatcher but subsequent governments, including Labour, who focussed on service industries and banking at the expense of the manufacturing industries. People in these areas now feel let down and disenfranchised by politicians as job opportunities focus on London and the south East of the country. Some of these traditional labour voting areas were drawn to the false narrative of greater opportunities through Brexit - control of our money, borders, laws ...
The money being promised for new jobs and opportunities - turns out the politicians lied, who would have thought....
It is a complete mess and we are a laughing stock around the world.
John
 
We did it to ourselves by the way we voted.

The political party might change but the agenda of big business does not and they are always lurking in the politicians shadow.

The good old days were unsustainable, you can live on the pigs back but one day you have to pay the piper.
 
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Right back in the 1970s when the GATT meetings were being held, there was one in Brazil which was about preventing quality issues becoming barriers to trade. To my mind poor quality would justify making a product become classified as a prohibited import. Quality is the only basis upon which Australian manufacturing industry could ever compete internationally. The only way for us is to lift our game and act against any import which is found to be substandard - and there are plenty of them. In Australia, we now have that flammable building classing problem. Our railway wheels are wearing too fast. And some steel bridge fabrications have failed in service. The issue is public safety, but our old testing regimes have been dissembled. Right from the beginning when Menzies was elected in 1948, the Conservatives have worked to destroy our technology base. It is a class thing - better to import than pay local blue collar workers decent wages. Menzies had Australia's war industries, now we have nothing. In between most governments have been Conservative, so our whole industrial and social system has been adversarial.
 
Brexit or no Brexit


This is what is wrong/the problem in our system of electing politicians. The “first past the post system” allows the election of our politicians on a minority of the vote - in this case 40% with a really low turnout (about 37% of those eligible to vote) this means that the candidate got in with around 15% of the eligible vote.
This is not unusual in our elections and probably the reason why the majority of people do not feel they are represented by politicians, regardless of the colour of the ruling party (that’s red v blue...) people then feel they are being ignored/ left behind etc and leads to issues like Brexit.
Not sure if this is the same type of system over the pond or down under, but you guys also seem to be unhappy ...
John
 
In Australia, our unhappiness is caused by our own stupidity. We have preferential voting, but there are preference whisperers who manipulate the preferences so that we get utter idiots in our upper house of federal parliament - many have only received very few primary votes. Many of them are failed business people and celebrities who are seeking well-paid jobs.
 
Al,
This contributes to the problem here, exacerbating the feeling that parliament is full of privileged pricks...thankfully not too many celebs (yet)

82% of MPs were graduates and 24% have attended Oxford or Cambridge. 29% of MPs attended fee-paying schools. 87 MPs elected in 2017 had no previous Parliamentary experience (13%).
 
Al,
This contributes to the problem here, exacerbating the feeling that parliament is full of privileged pricks...thankfully not too many celebs (yet)

82% of MPs were graduates and 24% have attended Oxford or Cambridge. 29% of MPs attended fee-paying schools. 87 MPs elected in 2017 had no previous Parliamentary experience (13%).

Yup,
Sir Grabball D'Encloseland is alive and well in British politics.
I doubt it will ever change.
sam
 
Canada is first past post as well , lots of talk bout change in last election , sadly the winner once in office changed his views on that issue ..... no big Election Day turnout here either ....
 
America has Trump. The UK has Brexit. Australia has an election in a few week's time which will probably see a change in government. Probably all for a similar reason - disenchantment with the effects of neoliberalism. All neoliberal deregulation has done is make it easier for wealthy people to make money by playing one part of the globe against the other. Free trade has two aspects - cheap imported good reduce the cost of living - but at the cost of local jobs. If you have not got a job, you cannot buy much, so the reduction in the cost of living does not mean anything.
 
So . . . what just happened with Brexit? May was a remainer but she was the one w ho negotiated exit? And then, she got neither? Or, did the Euros in their generous Anglophilia “grant” some kind of extension?
 
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