Brexit Thread VIII: Taking a penalty kick-ing

[Kyriakos]

I think that, realistically, most people just stick to their own society more or less. Certainly it is easier to be outgoing with other cultures when you are young, but age and other issues (eg depression) generally diminish that for most.
Though I am not at all claiming that one's own "culture" means much regarding quality or any other positive. I am sure the majority of people in any country, and also in any particular part of that country, are rather crude and annoying.

Re England, I think that in the near past (20 years ago), racism was a bit more covert than now. This could be quite alarming.

 

[mitsho]

Says who? You? Some dude on TV?

If this really is the "main argument against Brexit," no wonder remainers lost. This is a very arrogant thing to claim.

It's a hyperbole, of course. So let me specify:

- The borders don't matter for the people living in border regions in Europe. We cross over back and forth and buy the gas for our cars where it is cheapest at that moment.
- The borders don't matter for the "rich" in Europe who can easily switch from the cities to the coastal towns in Summer.
- The borders don't matter for the academically educated: Bologna process and Erasmus have created such a trans-national group that mainly moves in between the university cities.
- The borders don't matter as well for the lower class service people that migrate from their southern or eastern nations to their jobs in the "North-Western" countries.
- The borders don't matter to all the businessmen and businesswomen who can set up their business over the whole continent or do their exports more easily.

But of course:

- The borders do matter a lot to all the asylum seekers that get shoved around by an unfair Dublin-treaty.
- The borders do matter to all the foreign tourists - though they have moved from within Europe towards outwards to Europe.
- The borders do matter to all the global Expats - high-skilled or not - that come to work for us in Europe.
- The borders do matter in criminal investigations, defense contracts and during a global pandemic.

It might help to give a bit of a personal context here: I live in a tri-state region that has always had close cross-border cooperation, until 1914. After 1945, it has been a tough work to recreate that liberty. Nowadays, I usually cross the border for most anything: to go biking along the river, to get new glasses, to go shopping, to go to a Christmas market, to go pick up a postal delivery that is cheaper when they deliver there, to get ice cream from that new hipster shop, just because it is the shortest way to get where I want to in my own country. Now, understand, I haven't left the vicinity of my city at all here. But it is easy to do longer trips as well - 1 to 4 hours by car or train and I am in totally different cities for a weekend trip or what not. I can fly as well but that has always been something different for me than driving. I have never noticed the borders that much during my lifetime, but I've been told of queues and having to show your passport and having to think what kind of money to take with you (and now I just pay by credit card or even by phone). That's what I mean: the borders don't matter to me personally.

And if they would, they wouldn't depict the situation accurately. It'd probably make more sense to have a border between Paris and the rest of France than to have one between Paris and Amsterdam. The real divide nowadays is urban-rural or 'border regions' - 'inside regions'. Borders connect, (but of course, there are borders which that isn't true, Greece-Turkey for example, but that is my point, I am not talking of them and I do hope that in 100 years these will have vanished as well).

It's coincidence that I write this in the Brexit thread, since the point doesn't have too much to do with Brexit - however way it will arrive finally...

PS: oh, and I would work at your reading comprehension skills. I went back and read my post once again: It was clearly stated as an opinion, a call-to-action and a belief. This is what I think is the right thing to do, whereas I leave the factual causalities for Historians to decipher and prove. It's a political thread, I am entitled to a political opinion.

 

[innonimatu]

They are an invention of only 200 years ago after all.

They are a reality of 800 years where I live. One that had to be defended numerous times against attempts a conquest and suppression of my country by the spanish, french etc. If you think the EU is the end of history and can endure peacefully, you are very wrong. It's just another attempt at european Empire. Here we had to tolerate 60 years of Hapsburg hegemony once. The Hapsburgs too had the favour of the local elites with ideas of profitable imperial collaborations. Then they got kicked out as their empire started failing: it turned out that there was no cohesion to hold it together when things started going wrong. The EU too will pass into the dustbin of imperial projects.

I don't connect the current neoliberalism with the European Union. Sure, it started that way, but there have been other facets introduced and who says, it has to stay like this? I would agree with you that that neoliberalism isn't healthy which is why it is always a bit strange to me that the left parties have been put into a place of having to defend the European Idea over and over again. But that just shows who's clever in Politics and who isn't. In short: You want to get rid of the Union because you think it's intrinsically linked to Neoliberalism, I don't. And I don't think you would be safer from that phantom in a completely lonely Portugal.

That is indeed one of the main points in which we differ. And I may be wrong on that one, though I till thing the EU can only exist as neolibral. The other point, one intractable to any peace with the idea of an EU, is that I absolutely hate imperial projects. The EU is too large and too diverse to ever be democratic, as a state it can only be an empire. The EEC didn't have that problem, but since Maastricht the newly minted EU went the mega-state/imperial route.

Finally, the alternative to the EU is not lonely countries. Just as countries were not lonely before 1992, or indeed at any point i history. There have never been hermit kingdoms in Europe. This "EU or lonely" is a false dichotomy, a false argument.

 

[innonimatu]

- The borders don't matter for the people living in border regions in Europe. We cross over back and forth and buy the gas for our cars where it is cheapest at that moment.
- The borders don't matter for the "rich" in Europe who can easily switch from the cities to the coastal towns in Summer.
- The borders don't matter for the academically educated: Bologna process and Erasmus have created such a trans-national group that mainly moves in between the university cities.
- The borders don't matter as well for the lower class service people that migrate from their southern or eastern nations to their jobs in the "North-Western" countries.
- The borders don't matter to all the businessmen and businesswomen who can set up their business over the whole continent or do their exports more easily.

And you know what, this was true during the whole medieval period, up until the late 19th century or later. And there was no need of an EU for borders not to matter for all this. States and borders predate passports.
You no not need to have the trappings of a super-state to have inter-state agreements and achieve easy cross-border collaboration.

The EU was created driven by the traumas of deposed central european aristocrats nostalgic of the Hapsburg empire there, and who contrast it with the militarized successor states of the interwar period. Those where two extremes. A lot more is possibe and was indeed common in between.

 

[Gorbles]

Borders as a concept are reality. The currently-established borders are quite a different thing, innonimatu. I mean, I could be wrong, but you're kind proving mitsho's point about going on about the Hapsburgs. Borders are created, usually by political influence. They're not some kind of ley lines-like deal. They don't just exist. They're mostly a representation of political influence combined with the armed might to keep them in place (plus the few places where natural borders occur that make this easier).

 

[innonimatu]

Borders are politically decided, true. But the idea of a national community is not created from the top. And a national community needs rules that define what you must do to be in or out, borders or no borders. Usually border populations always have some ease in crossing borders. Hell, my country has had the same borders for some 800 years, but for some adjustments, and one of those adjustments was the definition of a border in an area that was shared between two countries. For 700 years that sharing happened without problems. Then the border was defined and people there kept crossing it, marrying or working across the border. It wasn't a problem. Perhaps with the modern legal-bureaucratic totalitarianism (as in, everything must be codified...) it might be a problem absent he EU. But that expansion of the codification over all aspects of live is one of the things that were required by an empire. It wasn't an accident that Kafka came up with his stories in the Autro-Hungarian Empire!

And I don't think it is just my nostalgia of the old. I do thing we, as in just about every country in Europe, has gone too far into regulating life, and that came about as a consequence of trying to manage this inter-state integration. More complexity caused by attempts at managing a continent-sized polity and dealing with global multinational corporations and intense global trade creates problems that are dealt with by ever-more codification. The flexibility of coming up with local rules is declared obsolete, but this happens because the simple alternative of just refusing this degree of transnational economic engagement is ruled out. A glaring example of that are states claiming that they "cannot" tax corporations, even as they tolerate these corporations shifting their profits to "tax heavens". They can do it because regulations explicitly allow it: absent those regulations they wouldn't be able to do it. In fact absent all the treaties, laws and regulations allowing for transfer of capital without controls they wouldn't even be able to operate except by incorporating a local subsidiary fully subject to national rules.

More transnational regulations, "more Europe", are not a solution to the ills that more regulations have already created. More of a bad thing is not going to become a good thing.

 

[Hrothbern]

And you know what, this was true during the whole medieval period, up until the late 19th century or later. And there was no need of an EU for borders not to matter for all this. States and borders predate passports.
You no not need to have the trappings of a super-state to have inter-state agreements and achieve easy cross-border collaboration.

The EU was created driven by the traumas of deposed central european aristocrats nostalgic of the Hapsburg empire there, and who contrast it with the militarized successor states of the interwar period. Those where two extremes. A lot more is possibe and was indeed common in between.

You can say even that nations in Europe were a failed experiment except for their ability to defend against the classic CENTRALIST empires like England and France and the Habsburgian family. Nation building went together with democracy and mass mobilisation for armies. A package and package deal.

Medieval Europe outside those centralist empires was more a matter of regions... and to the core... more a matter of towns as nuclei of development in an ocean of agricultural regions !
Those regions the formal structure (from) lower nobility only.
The towns with trade, industrious centres, markets, schools, court, etc locations were assets, human and physical, were safe behind walls from marauding bands and the ever pillaging nobility armies in their rivalry wars.
The so called HRE consisted out of hundreds and hundreds of regions with their own heads of state. Citizens moved from anywhere to everywhere.
(on average not that much bigger than the Swiss cantons now)

It was England who wanted to initiate a new Europe directly after WW2 fully in line with US foreign strategy.
It is France with De Gaulle, and then Mitterand demanding the Euro from Germany as price for the German unification, and now Macron who wants not "just an open market" but a "political union".

With England out of the "political" EU equation... if France would not be there... if Germany would be disbanded into its states... we are back in a Europe like in all the traditional fairy tales where princes had to travel past at least three "kingdoms or principalities" before they could rescue their princess. All the way up to the Ural mountains.
The centralist Madrid empire thinking should have been crushed anyway after "Spain" lost its colonies. But Spain is too weak now to influence the EU politics in the direction of a new empire, too divided. Just a usefull tool for France. And from there Madrid will not really like a new EU empire getting themselves in the same position as Portugal during those 60 Spanish Habsburgian years.

But Inno, it is not the EU that will die... it is the centralist empire thinking that will die.... too many smaller EU members now that have a history of the Towns in an ocean of rural. By their roots and nature sceptic towards far away centralism.

For the people not in their aware mind the fragmented character of the HRE, and Germany before the nation building in Germany with Bismarck:
This map around 1400 AD.

 

[Arakhor]

Don't forget that we already have a specific thread for non-British EU matters.

 

[Hrothbern]

Here some genuine Brexit post:

Downing Street fears that Michel Barnier has lost his grip on the fishing negotiations, throwing doubt over Boris Johnson’s hopes of a summer of swift and definitive progress towards a trade and security deal with the EU.
The bloc’s chief negotiator had been expected to present a compromise proposal on access to British waters during the talks last week but was blocked at the last minute by member states with large fishing communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ief-negotiator-has-lost-grip-on-fishing-talks

Ever experienced it ?
You need to learn for some big examenination and you postpone a bit too much and when you finally start full of adrenaline something unexpected comes in between and you are screwed.

The UK postponing and postponing for that "blink at the last moment" bonus and the EU, despite needing consensus of 27 governments, all the time again and again delivering positions in a blink of an eye the past years

but not this time... suddenly the EU has unexpected too big divisions between the major fishing members.

oops

(those EU internal issues not well covered BTW in that article and me to lazy to write it up... still a bit opaque as well... but I guess we will see more on that internal fishy division the coming time)

 

[EnglishEdward]

@ Hrothbern Not sure I really want to comment on jounalists interpretations
of the spin put about by David Frost and Michael Barnier, or on internal EU divisions.

There is a US expression:

fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Boris Johnson was foolish to promise an agreement when he campaigned to lead the conservative party.
He was foolish to negotiate in person and, with an 80 seat majority, foolish to corral Parliament into ratifying
the one sided (@really has identified the Brands aspect) Withdrawal Agreement that causes all sorts of problems.

I can only conclude that he did so in the hope that by being cooperative, the UK would get a FTA with the EU
that Remainer business keeps going on about. The thing is the commercial world does not do gratitude or
respect capitulative cooperation. Instead the EU negotiator side interprets that as weakness to be pressed home
in another one sided agreement that would amongst other things cede fish in the UK's EEZ to the EU de facto in perpetuity.

I understand (not reread it today) that there is a lot of talk about level playing field in the political declaration.
That is best left as verbage. My point here is that to develop it into something enforceable requires a common
set of rules and adjudicator. The EU is only ever going to accept its own sets of rules and itself as adjudicator, but
people voted to Leave the EU, a key reason was they didn't want to be governed by EU laws, regulations and courts.

If Boris rolls over and accepts these two demands, he will be seen as a big, if not bigger, mug than Theresa May was.

I said, in the other UK thread, that Boris' polls are plummeting. I guees that some of this is due to the variable policy on
Covid-19, and some due to disgruntled Remainers. However there are a lot of Voted Leavers, like me, and a fair
number of moderate Remainers, who are perceiving that Boris Johnson has not really got Brexit done properly.

Best thing at all would be to abandon the negotiations entirely and prepare for trade on WTO terms.

As for the EU fishing fleets, I suppose they have a choice of options:

(a) Maintain trust in their national leaders and the EU negotiating team
(b) Try to blockade Calais as threatened
(c) Poach fish from UK waters
(d) Hire their boats and crews to a nominally UK fishing operator with a UK
quota and smuggle the then formally non EU compliant fish back into the EU.

@NostraEdwardius

They will probably do (c) on the grounds that the UK can not police its EEZ, and if the
UK does police the UK EEZ, summon up their national navies to intimidate the UK.

This will most likely result in the UK closing its markets to all EU non essential goods,
and even to prosperity in Northern Ireland as the place becomes a de facto giant freeport.

 

[FriendlyFire]

They will probably do (c) on the grounds that the UK can not police its EEZ, and if the
UK does police the UK EEZ, summon up their national navies to intimidate the UK.

I cannot possibily imagine where the EU would have gotten the idea to send Warships into another nations EEZ to intimate them from ...... OH WAIT !
Holy [censored] just buy back the UK qoutas that you sold to the French.

Many parts of the quota were sold by English fishermen in the 1990s when fishing rights were cut dramatically. Foreign companies then bought it up as a long-term investment, and experts say the quota market has been allowed to develop in an unregulated way ever since.

https://www.bbc.com/news/52420116

 

[EnglishEdward]

I cannot possibily imagine where the EU would have gotten the idea to send Warships into another nations EEZ to intimate them from ...... OH WAIT !
Holy [censored] just buy back the UK qoutas that you sold to the French.

I have not sold any quotas to the French. Have you?

I do not believe that the UK government received any significant amount of money when it granted those quotas in
the first place so it provided for no charge, their nominal value is zero and they can be cancelled for no charge.

Besides which I understand that the quotas expire automatically 31 December 2020 when the UK is no longer part of the EU fishing regime.

Any second hand purchaser of the allocation will then already have had
4 years 6 months and 1 week's enjoyment since the UK Referendum to benefit.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I have not sold any quotas to the French. Have you?

I do not believe that the UK government received any significant amount of money when it granted those quotas in
the first place so it provided for no charge, their nominal value is zero and they can be cancelled for no charge.

Besides which I understand that the quotas expire automatically 31 December 2020 when the UK is no longer part of the EU fishing regime.

Any second hand purchaser of the allocation will then already have had
4 years 6 months and 1 week's enjoyment since the UK Referendum to benefit.

Meanwhile in the real world, foreign owners are setting up UK shell companies
These are the unicorns of deregulations that you voted for.

Foreigners to net UK fish after Brexit
Overseas firms have already bought much of Britain’s quota and will keep it after we quit the EU

Foreign owners of the fishing rights have also set up UK businesses to hold the quota, making meaningful change unlikely after the country leaves the EU.
The revelation is in fishery statistics from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), run by Michael Gove. The environment secretary’s civil servants were compiling the data at the same time as he was claiming that leaving Europe would let Britain “take back control” of its seas.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/foreigners-to-net-uk-fish-after-brexit-hpf6njhvt

 

[Hrothbern]

Meanwhile in the real world, foreign owners are setting up UK shell companies
These are the unicorns of deregulations that you voted for.

From that Times article you linked:

We have a Dutch saying: "achter het net vissen" translated: "fishing behind the net [of someone else]"

Interesting enough, it is not only Boris Johnson fishing behind the net, but also Macron.
oh wait... that is one of the several issues of the current divide between the fishing Ministers of the EU

 

[innonimatu]

Meanwhile in the real world, foreign owners are setting up UK shell companies
These are the unicorns of deregulations that you voted for.

That's why leaving the EU is just half the job. The other half is electing a new governments that ends the national laws of the UK which enable this gaming of the system. And outside the EU the UK population can finally elect such a government in the next GE. Inside the EU that would be verboten, interfering with the holy free market.

 

[Senethro]

The UK comes with so many pre-prepared excuses for why Brexit was less than perfect, if only people had paid more attention to them a few years back.

 

[EnglishEdward]

From that Times article you linked:

Thank you for the diagram. I have never seen one of those quota licences or whatever, particularly
the bit that says that it is a negotional financial instrument (may be resold) and continues in perpetuity.
The latter rather contradicts my understanding that fishing quotas were reviewed and reset annually, taking into
account scientific advice on fish stocks remaining for particular fishes and what was a sustainable catch.

That's why leaving the EU is just half the job. The other half is electing a new governments that ends the national laws of the UK which enable this gaming of the system. And outside the EU the UK population can finally elect such a government in the next GE. Inside the EU that would be verboten, interfering with the holy free market.

Thank you.

IIRC the reason many quotas were sold was because foreign fleets were exceeding their quota i.e. poaching anyway and
depleting stocks to the point that successive quotas were reduced to the point that many UK fishing operations lost money..

Unfortunately the UK conservatives are still heavily influenced by free market ideologues which is why they want a FTA.

One of the things I anticipate is that the Welsh, Northern Ireland and Scottish governments would put pressure on Westminster.
to ether to allocate them quotas within the UK EEZ to subdivide or guarrantee that the NI, Welsh and Scots have their fair share.
There may therefore be substantive regional pressure upon Westminster to allocate fishing quotas on a non transferable basis.

 

[really]

Westminster hasn't exactly been very considerate of UK regional sensibilities so far - why would they start now?

 

[Hrothbern]

Thank you for the diagram. I have never seen one of those quota licences or whatever, particularly
the bit that says that it is a negotional financial instrument (may be resold) and continues in perpetuity.
The latter rather contradicts my understanding that fishing quotas were reviewed and reset annually, taking into
account scientific advice on fish stocks remaining for particular fishes and what was a sustainable catch.

I did never see such a quota licence as well. What I do know that they were not based on yearly renewal and that is being asked now by the UK and refused by Barnier.

You know... I said a while back in a post: "the EU should ignore this whole fishing issue and simply zoom in on the level playing field. When there is no agreement possible there... so be it.
And only after that... and I would have no real issue if that would be after January 1, causing possibly a full disruption of fishing, legal or not.... make a practical deal on the fishing quotas.

Give the fish and environment a break !!!

This commercial fishing has reached meanwhile idiotic proportions:
* ruthless abuse of environment
* outdated fishing techs causing enormous high Carbon footprint per kilo (especially happening with too small fishing boats and catching fish living at the bottom of the sea)
* Voting blackmail by a handfull of fishing communities of much more important politics for the good of countries
* peanuts in GDP

I think we should have on the retail package of fish the amount of Diesel fuel per kilo.
Will your fish still taste that good when you see how much diesel you eat ?


How about one pint of diesel fuel in your beerglass on the table per 125 grams of flatfish next to your mashed potatoes on your dinner plate !!!
That is utter madness
And you can reduce that 4,5 liter per kilo fish to 1 liter per kilo with modern boats of the right scale size and reduce it with 50% when using puls fishing preventing the drag of your net on the sea bottom.
Only using the pulse net a reduction to 2,25 liter, and with both the pulse net and a modern boat a reduction to 0.5 liter per kilo fish.

Here such a modern boat with diesel-electric propulsion and the right hydrodynamics and scale size:

The MDV1, Masterplan Sustainable Fisheries, is a fishing cutter that must save Dutch fishermen 80 percent fuel. As a result, 80 percent less CO2 and NOx are also emitted. The newly developed fishing cutter is also referred to as the "Tesla of the sea". Per kilo of fish that will be caught with the new cutters, the use of gas oil will be reduced from 4.5 liters to 0.5 liters. This compares with the traditional ships from 2010. The first new fishing vessel has been tested for six months. The results show that the promise is kept. An average ship consumes 17,000 liters of gas oil per week, the MDV1 about 6,700 liters, says Auke Hoefnagel of the Sustainable Fisheries Master Plan to Omroep Flevoland. The fishing cutter has a purchase price of 4 million euros, this amount could be earned back between 8 and 10 years. The ship has a diesel-electric propulsion of 400 kilowatts, which gives it a high fuel efficiency. At the bottom of the ship is a special layer and a sharp bow that cuts through the water in a certain way, which greatly reduces the resistance. The MDV1 also uses a completely new catching technique called "twin rig pulses". Using this technique, plaice and sole are caught in a less harmful way than those of traditional ships.
https://thebluedeal.nl/duurzame-viskotter-verbruikt-fors-minder-brandstof-dan-normale-viskotter/

 

[Arakhor]

As can be readily seen by observing recent news, the Tories are already gearing up to make a slash-and-burn trade "deal" with the US, so you'd better learn how to spot chlorinated chicken in the supermarket aisles, Edward, before the government rolls back food regulations, regional labelling and the like to please the US corporations. Thinking that any power will deal "fairly" with the UK if the EU won't is a fool's errand.