At least a Mad Max world would have better weather.
Brexit Thread III - How to instantly polarise your country without even trying
- Status
Oerdin
Deity
Thank you for proving, once again, that you know nothing. There is absolutely no legal obligation to pay anything. The EU is jusy money grabbing as usual because Germany and France don't want to pay more while tge rest of the EU doesn't want big budget cuts. So they have done a song and dance in an attempt to fool the ignorant and the gullible.
The reality is they have never signed any treaty obligating thrm to pay anything in order to leave. None. If the EU wants the money, and we know they desperatrly do, then they will sign the deal the UK wants and if they don't then they get nothing. It really is as simple as that and everything else is nothing but meaningless posturing.
Verbose
Deity
1) the UK has accepted that these costs are outstanding liabilities due to prior agreements the UK has also entered into, and 2) the UK has accepted in principle that it has obligations here, and 3) that the UK has even accepted a figure for it.
The problems stem not from some Higher Authority able to enforce anything, but from whether the British government is good for its word.
There's an old saying: those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,068
The figure thing is a negotiation. But going back to 1), liabilities for what exactly?
When you pay something as part of a deal, it is in return for something else. What exactly would the UK be receiving in return from the EU if it just left with no deal?
The payment is in return for some kind of deal for the future, that much has always been obvious. If pensions were problem the solution is quite straightforward: the UK takes over those obligations towards british citizens, no transfers necessary.
The correct way to see this is that the UK has been contributing to the budget of the EU and is a co-owner of its institutions. If anything it should be the EU "buying out" the UK's interest in the assets of the EU: buildings, funds, institutional knowledge, trade deals, etc. But because the UK is leaving on its own and no treaty clause provides for such payment, it can't demand that. However, the opposite is also most definitely true: the EU has no right to demand anything from any member state that chooses to leave. And this is an issue far greater than brexit, and one that I worry about what kind of precedent is being set here. What is actually happening is that the EU, because it is "larger", is shaking up the UK for whatever it can get.
Moreover, I must say that I find it disgusting that many self-styled leftists who claim to be "anti-imperialists" or whatever keep cheering for the empire in this one, just because they dislike the current government of the smaller state being squeezed, and unmindful of the kind of precedent being set. Coherence be damned.
This is the same kind of crap that colonial powers did to their colonies negotiating for independence. The EU was supposed to be better, huh?
Last edited:
The UK voted these budgets, and voted their participation in those budgets. If they choose to keep ties with the EU they will have to pay for what they agreed to pay. The only other option, unless the UK starts negotiating that issue (which it has shown no intention of doing so far), is that the UK makes literally no deal with the EU and falls back to international standards for everything EU related.
If they wanted to keep the benefits from what they're going to pay they could have delayed article 50 until 2 years before their deadline.
If they wanted to keep the benefits from what they're going to pay they could have delayed article 50 until 2 years before their deadline.
Relative to Britain? No our experience of 'negotiating' independence was paramilitary organisations being deployed, houses being burned - that sort of stuff. Not exit articles being written for us and votes being recognised.
Britain agreed to create institutions and to spend money - none of that goes away because they decide to leave.
That Britain is garbage in such things (it is, afterall, one of the most colonialist countries of all times, and one which still has lands and military bases all over former colonial possessions) doesn't mean the Eu isn't garbage in its stance too.
It does mean, though, that i personally don't sympathize with this Britain either.
Tbh the only good thing for current Britain would be elections, a Corbyn gov, some kind of Norway-deal or a bit less than that, or even with no deal they'd get the sympathy of other euro populations instead of what is going on now when pretty much no one likes the british gov cause they are clowns.
Silurian
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2010
- Messages
- 7,567
Well we all know how better chicken deals go.
From The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-england-kentucky-fried-chicken-a8215781.html
For starters, Really mentioned it and i was replying to him.
Moreover, it isn't a 'past'; Britain still has lands on many former colonies/vassals, including Ireland and Cyprus, both Eu countries. (and Spain
)This may come as a shock to you, Kyriakos, but the people of Northern Ireland and Gibraltar actually want to remain British, presumably in the same way that some people on Cyprus identify as Greek or Turkish.
And it was all achieved peacefully as well, right Arakh?
Anyway, i didn't mean to rile you, but don't you think you sort of were too quick to jump on this? Fwiw i wasn't of the view i posted something strange or some new discovery. As noted, i mentioned it since Really's post mentioned it and i replied to him. Furthermore, it does show some english exceptionalism too. (not that it is unique; see Spain or France)
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,068
You know what I meant. The process is more civil in this case because the EU has no army to use against the UK. Yet.
What I meant was that even after independence was won by rebels, forced, the colonial powers still demanded "indemnities". France got Haiti to keep paying for more than a century because of... participation? Or because Haiti under the threat of a naval blockade risked suffering a lot of damage if it refused to pay?
What I meant was that even after independence was won by rebels, forced, the colonial powers still demanded "indemnities". France got Haiti to keep paying for more than a century because of... participation? Or because Haiti under the threat of a naval blockade risked suffering a lot of damage if it refused to pay?
I'd be the first person to rag on our Sceptred Isle mentality getting in the way of common sense, but bringing up Gibraltar is a particularly silly idea, given that they voted almost unanimously (90%+!!) to stay in the EU. I'm not sure that people in British Overseas Territories other than Gibraltar even got a vote either.
Some Brexiteers would love the image of the UK railing against oppressive forces in Europe, as it allows them to reel out the same 70-year-old memes from WW2. The difference here of course is that the Government is spending more time playing to the Tory back-benches than they are actually negotiating an exit agreement.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I think the situation in the Six Counties is a little more complicated than that.
stinkubus
Emperor
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2016
- Messages
- 1,845
The people of Northern Ireland favor unity over Brexit.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...c-eu-hard-brexit-poll-lucidtalk-a8098531.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...c-eu-hard-brexit-poll-lucidtalk-a8098531.html
Indeed it is, but before Brexit, that was the prevailing view (more or less).
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
There's a difference between a compromise and an identity. Remaining within the Union was a condition of the Peace Process, and one that is ultimately up for renegotiation; it does not, in itself, imply the general adoption of a British identity.
British identity may even be on the decline; speaking anecdotally, most young Northern Irish regard themselves as just that, Northern Irish, and favour remaining within the Union for practical rather than ideological reasons. Like Scottish Unionism, Ulster Unionism is facing a noisy but inevitably death, because with Protestantism no longer such a central pillar of identity, the Union appears far less a guarantor than a threat to the national distinctiveness that Ulstermen, no less than Scots, prize very dearly.
Last edited:
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
