Category Archives: Brexit v EU – Negotiations.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE WILL NEVER KNOW THE TRUE COST OF BREXIT.

07 Friday Dec 2018

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( THREE MINUTE READ)

As Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union enter their crunch moment, let’s be clear on one thing:

The EU doesn’t need to punish Britain for leaving; the referendum did that just fine.

To have a meaningful Parliamentary vote on a withdrawal agreement Parliament and the taxpayer require an up-to-date estimate of the settlement’s costs, as well as better information on the wider potential costs of withdrawal.

Without this, MPs and the taxpayer won’t have complete information about the potential costs of the government’s deal with the EU.

The UK’s contribution to the EU’s outstanding commitments and liabilities after 2020 is unknown.

Any estimate excludes the costs that may arise from parts of the withdrawal agreement still to be negotiated. But there are other potentially significant ongoing costs likely to arise from post-Brexit restructuring—for example, new trade and customs arrangements, replacement institutions and the costs of participating in EU programmes as a non-member state.

FOR EXAMPLE, UK payments to cover pension and benefit costs could run for decades.

A Parliamentary vote on EU withdrawal will only be truly meaningful if this information is disclosed in a timely fashion.

Is it possible to take part in the economic advantages of the European project without having to bear the associated political costs of relinquishing sovereignty?

THERE IS ONE THING ABOUT BREXIT THAT IS TRUE AND THAT IS THE COST NOT IN FINANCIAL TERMS BUT IN WHAT IT HAS UNLEASHED POLITICALLY BOTH IN ENGLAND AND THE EU ITSELF. WEAKING BOTH.

Any dividend are still too remote even to assess.

The economic impact various degrees depending who you believe.

We don’t know the shape of the Brexit deal, including what arrangements will be put in place to keep trade flowing. And Brexiters complain such exercises tend to use assumptions that favour negative results.

However, you model how the U.K. economy it would have grown had the referendum gone the other way.

Leaving without a deal is now a high possibility and it stands to reason that in the short term it will lead to lower growth which means lost income for the government, meaning it has to borrow more to meet its spending goals.

If the U.K. remains in the customs union and achieves a trade deal with minimal barriers, tariffs or otherwise, the economy will recover lost ground in a shorter time.

On the leaver’s side, it seems that economic toll doesn’t matter. They voted for “control,” for sovereignty over laws and borders above all.

There must be a solution to the conflict that is better for everyone involved than a Brexit, which would burn all the bridges.

Here is my suggestion.

Hold a peoples assembly to decide on what question or questions should be on the ballot paper in a peoples referendum.

or

Call a halt to Article 50 provided it is agreed that the Uk net contributions to the EU’s limited to 0.03% of GDP.  The cost of such a compromise would have to be borne by the other member states provided the Uk takes an active and reformist leadership role in Europe – Good for All.

Article 50 is always open it can be used TO LEAVE whenever if there is no improvement.

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THE BEADY EYE’S OPEN LETTER : TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND: I can’t see a rationale of not staying in the EU beyond furthering the rich while making the lives of the poor more miserable.

07 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in Beady Eyes: Open Letters., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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Dear English friends.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of english people"

Don’t read this if you’re easily offended. It’s about Brexit the UK but I’m not

even sure what that means any more.

On 23rd June 2016, you were asked a ludicrously banal binary question.

To leave the EU or stay in it? Two boxes, one tick. There was no manifesto. The two scenarios were not fully explained.

You were told nothing about what would happen if you opted to leave. If you were told, I don’t believe people would have voted for it because without EU money huge parts of Britain are unsustainable sovereign or not.

Even with a majority vote on an advisory referendum peddled on lies, this does not represent democracy where 16 – 18-year-olds weren’t allowed to vote on the single biggest issue to affect their future.

And you tell me this was a democratic vote?

But people bought it. Because clowns were saying – like Trump – what people *really* wanted to say but were too bound up by social mores to do so.

As far as I can see Brexit has made it ok to be racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and has given many millions license to say appalling things to complete strangers on Twitter.

But this is making Britain Great Again, isn’t it??

Of course, not all people who voted to Leave are racist. That’s like saying everybody who voted to Remain is passionate, whole-heartedly in favour of every single thing the EU does. Brexit has given racists license to spread their hate.

After two years of table banging about Project Fear and how facts explaining the dire economic, social and legal consequences of leaving the EU were all a hoax, no one in the fifth-wealthiest country in the whole world of sane mind should be compleating that an act of colossal self-harm really is an appropriate reaction.

Why?

Because now if you plough on with Article 50 to its terrible, dystopian conclusion, you won’t be able to live, work, love or study in Europe in quite the same way ever again.

The referendum was won not by UKIP but by populist papers appealing to prejudices and rage. They exploited people living in communities who were suffering under Osborne’s austerity.

And now you are being told BY EXPERTS that these communities – the communities who voted most strongly to leave – will suffer the most after Brexit.

Cop on.

I believe that instead of leaving, you need to negotiate a new Treaty with the EU.

You don’t need a divorce from the EU. You need medication and a helluva lot of counselling. But leaving – like this – because of such lies, with no plan, not enough civil servants to cope with the workload and a dire lack of trained negotiators, will mean you are likely to be fucked for lack of a better word.

Today there is a monumental effort on the part of the press to convince people that triggering Article 50 is the point of no return. It isn’t. And here’s why.

There is a European election in May next year and both France and Germany are running scared of the far right not to mention member state both would benefit greatly as has been offered to withdraw and stay in and fight your quarter for reforms.

Thanks to the Good Law Project, there is a chance that a truly democratic vote *could* succeed. If you really care about democracy and everything that brings, now’s your chance to prove it.

Demand a peoples vote.

Up to now the political architecture of Britain insulates those imposing austerity from the wrath of those on the receiving end. A refashioned British society, making it less like the rest of Western Europe, is akin to setting your house on fire and then revelling in the community spirit as neighbours come running to help extinguish the blaze.

A perverse sense of community.

16 million British voters are being fucked over. Their views – in this amazingly democratic referendum – don’t matter. The views of the 48% have been fucked right off.

This will only be a “done deal” if people don’t put up a fight for something better.

It’s about politics abandoning vulnerable people.”

You want something more than just economics.

I only hope that, as Brexit goes tits up and when the current generation dies out, the young have a chance of salvaging a decent life from this appalling mess your political leaders are creating – a slow bleed, broken monument to another age.

Setting aside the lowlights of English history  — the slave trade, colonial barbarity the global economy is now in the throes of negotiating a wrenching transition to technological economies  — with no hours contracts jobs replacing full-time positions and robots substituting for human labour this is no time to be hight and mighty.

With virtually every public agency struggling to do more with less while attending to additional problems wealthy Britons remain among the world’s most comfortable people, enjoying lavish homes, private medical care, top-notch schools and restaurants run by chefs from Paris and Tokyo.

When one looks from the outside in here is a country with a vast deficit problem, with its debt growing, spending billions on worthless Aircraft Carriers, Trident missiles while many measures of social well-being — are being ignored

The poor, the elderly, the disabled and the jobless are increasingly prone to Kafka-esque tangles with the bureaucracy to keep public support.

It not just that your democracy will be bankrupted, you will see the rats of profit abandoning the sinking ship depressing growth for years to come.

Remember that London bankers concocted a financial crisis, multiplying their wealth through reckless gambling; then London politicians used budget deficits as an excuse to cut spending on the poor while handing tax cuts to corporations.

Perhaps this is the real reason you are now looking down the barrel of a social crisis called Brexit.

Finally:

Will a peoples vote solve the impasse?

Only if the question to decide is set by a Citizens assemble and not by any political party.  

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S ENGLAND IS NEGLECTING THE BIGGER PICTURE WHICH IS GOING TO BE AN MONUMENTAL MISTAKE FOR THE UK AS A WHOLE.

26 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., England., The Obvious.

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( A six-minute read)

Some time ago the Beady eye asks just who or what is the EU going to sign any deal with.

United Kingdom - British Flags

England is often (although incorrectly) used as a term to describe the whole of the UK.

Great Britain is not a country; it’s a landmass.

The name Britain derives from the Roman word Britannia.

The British Isles is the name of a group of islands situated off the northwestern corner of mainland Europe. It is made up of Great Britain, Ireland, The Isle of Man, The Isles of Scilly, The Channel Islands (including Guernsey, Jersey, Sark and Alderney), as well as over 6,000 other smaller islands.

The problem with “Brexit”, as shorthand for “British exit”, is that there is no such place as Britain.

This question above is being ignored but one thing is clear: The union state is not a unitary state, still less an English state. It would be outrageous to force Scotland and Northern Ireland to leave the EU in defiance of the wishes of their peoples.

What is sauce for the English and Welsh leavers is also sauce for the Scottish and Northern Irish remainders?

All will be yoked forever to a Conservative-dominated England.

The UK – a sovereign state that includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It contains four nations, one far richer, more populous and more powerful than the other three – England. For much of the past two centuries, most of the inhabitants of the union state have taken it for granted; it has been in serious contention only in Ireland.

Now all is changed. The empire on which the sun never set has been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Northern Ireland is the legatee of a war of conquest between the English crown and the native Irish, which ebbed and flowed for centuries and ended with the island’s partition between the overwhelmingly Catholic south and west and the predominantly Protestant north-east.

Wales ( Welsh ) Flag Flags

Wales was conquered by the English crown in complex medieval struggles, in which Welsh warlords were as apt to fight one another as to fight the English; the title “Prince of Wales” is a reminder of the English victory, not an emblem of Welsh defiance.

Scotland - Scottish Flags

Scotland was never conquered, Scotland with the  Act of Union of 1707 was incorporated into England (an England that included Wales)

 

A few hundred years of history once bound the four nations of the UK. Now they’re pulling this very odd state apart.

There are now four capital cities, four administrations and four legislatures in the once monolithic union state. Each of the devolved administrations has its own political priorities and follows its own political trajectory.

Like a mortar bomb crashing into a building infested with dry rot, the EU referendum has torn great holes in the structure, the operational codes and the underlying assumptions of the increasingly rickety union state.

Down the centuries of English history, there are ample examples of divide and rule which to this day can be applied to England a country within the UK.

No government has ever existed which did not take advantage of social, religious political divisions to further its own interests.

Perhaps for the first time, we are witnessing the folly of not prioritizing the population before the economy with a no deal scenario. Tell them all others are out to finish you except me will only enrich the lawyers.

There comes a point in our lives when we have to accept our destiny is down to ourselves, and we have to abandon our adolescent tendencies to blame our parents for everything we dislike about our present lives.

The ongoing threat of Brexit is that is building roads to where the sun will not shine.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WILL ENGLAND FALL ON THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR.

25 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Gibraltar.

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(Five-minute read)

You can rest assured that majority voting in the referendum whether to remaining or not in the EU had little grasp of the consequences of an out vote.

Certainly, neither the Good Friday Agreement or the treaty of Utrecht had any bearing on the voting in the Referendum.

Now the Rock of Gib along with 10 DUP Unionists are showing the absurdity of Brexit.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the rock of gibraltar"

Brexit has put the Rock back in the news, with Spain being awarded a veto over future EU deals on Gibraltar – effectively giving the country its strongest hand in the territory for three centuries.

Gibraltar a peninsula on the south of Spain which was ceded by Spain under a peace treaty called Utrecht 1713 which brought an end the War of Spanish Succession between England and France

It voted 90% to stay in the EU.

Like Northern Ireland and Scotland how also voted to stay when the UK leaves, it must leave.

The Peace of Utrecht is a series of individual peace treaties that ended more than 13 years of war that had been fought in both the old and new worlds.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of Peace of Utrecht"

The first treaty signed at Utrecht was the truce between France and Portugal on 7 November, followed by the truce between France and Savoy on 14 March 1714. That same day, Spain, Great Britain, France and the Empire agreed to the evacuation of Catalonia and an armistice in Italy. The main treaties of peace followed on 11 April 1713.

Spain, which seized Gibraltar from the Moors as part of the 15th century “Reconquista”, ceded sovereignty over the Rock to the British crown “absolutely and forever without exception or impediment whatsoever”

Of course, as with all treaties, the devil is in the small print.

The treaty continued to haunt Europe.

Clause 10 of the 305-year-old treaty stipulates that the British crown was at the liberty to dispose of the rock as it pleased, but if it ever did so, preference shall always be given to the crown of Spain before any others. Madrid takes this to mean that Gibraltar would return to Spain if it were decolonised.

So it seems reasonable that if the people of Gibraltar voted 90% to stay in the EU this should be honoured in the forthcoming Brexit deal.

Of course, if this was to happen for all intended purposes the Rock of Gib would be decolonised, as will Northern Ireland be if the current deal holds.

Bombroof: The mile-long complex includes this large chamber. The tunnel is one of the largest man made underground spaces without roof supports and was capable of housing 16,000 soldiers for up to 16 months

In a nutshell, the reality of discussion in Gibraltar is exposed.

JUST WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT TO ENGLAND OR SPAIN THAT BOTH ARE WILLING TO ALLOW THE WHOLE BREXIT PROCESS TO COLLAPSE.

The economy of Gibraltar consists largely of the services sector. While being part of the European Union, the British overseas territory of Gibraltar has a separate legal jurisdiction from the United Kingdom and enjoys a different tax system.

The truth is it probably does not matter enormously to Spain to get Gibraltar back.

On the other hand, having a location at its southern tip deliberately run as a tax haven with the intention of undermining its tax revenues must be deeply aggravating, and that’s a precisely fair summary of what the UK is permitting. Of course Spain us rightly upset about that. And the EU is for this reason right to support Spain.

Ponder this though:

How many UK politicians would be brave enough to say this?

So the issue comes down to a straightforward question of why Spain or Ireland should be expected to live with a hostile tax haven seeking to undermine its laws and taxes as its immediate neighbour and the answer is, quite reasonably, that this should not be happening. In which case the solution is to take the tax haven out if Gibraltar and reunite Ireland.

At which point, I suggest, there won’t be much left to fight over. And at the same time, the issues will have been made explicit.

Is there any solution?

Shared sovereignty.

That would allow Gibraltarians and Northern Irelanders to stay in the EU and enjoy joint British and Spanish nationality- Irish British nationality.  They would both remain EU citizens, with all the rights that come from that, while keeping their current institutions and legislation. But Spain & Ireland would become a co-sovereign nation’s.

If not people living near borders between Britain and the EU are going to face a devasting future.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S THE QUESTION; WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE UK IF THERE IS A NO DEAL WITH THE EU.

22 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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(Five-minute read)

They say that if you sing country and western backwards everything comes back to you.

Of course, very few of us can sing backwards but if we were able to go forward in history you would wonder how a country that once was a small island ruled a vast empire that created unlimited wealth is now in the process of ending up as a broken small player on the world stage.

IS IT BECAUSE ITS WEALTH WAS USED INCORRECTLY. PROTECTING THE RICH WHILE THE WORKING CLASSES LIVED IN SQUALOR. England is now in the midst of a deep struggle over the future of the country.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of uk demonstrations to stay in the eu"Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of uk demonstrations"

It has all the ingredients in place to create civil unrest in particular in the event of a hard or no deal Brexit.

There is no way back to how the UK was governed before 2016.

Were Brexit to succeed, it will deliver not independence or an honest democracy but rule by oligarchs and their financial servants, such as the hard-right Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, under a mendacious exploitation of the rhetoric of sovereignty.

It seems unable to grasp that it was not wholly, or even principally, on economic grounds that the country voted to leave.

IT VOTED TO LEAVE BECAUSE OVER THE FORTY ODD YEARS IT WAS A MEMBER OF THE EU IT MADE LITTLE ATTEMPT POLITICALLY TO CONTRIBUTE OR TO REFORM THE EU WHICH IS STILL IN ITS INFANCY.

The source of the problem is in Britain itself and not the EU.

Now each side of the referendum vote is committed to a future unacceptable to the other.

ON ONE HAND, WE HAVE THE LEAVERS WHO ADVOCATE THAT THE LEAVE VOTE owed far more to a deep-seated human yearning to recover national identity and independence by taking back sovereign control of borders, laws, money and trade.

For this precious prize voters were prepared to risk taking a knock to their standard of living, at least in the short term and perhaps sacrifice the Union as a whole.

To put it in terms of opposing, negative caricatures:

A passionate rejection of losing independence to the EU is up against a stubborn refusal to embrace Great British isolationism. 

The referendum campaign was not a fight about which side had the best argument on the issues… Instead, the fight was about which of these issues the economic future or immigration was more important.

The EU, while not wholly innocent, is not primarily responsible for this dilemma.

The changes that are needed can’t be achieved by the existing arrangements nor can they be achieved by argued about terms of trade, business and how to organise economic growth.

Fear and precarity are generated by a culture of competition and a form of capitalism that feeds off anxiety, insecurity and debt were created by Mrs Thatcher how sold the family silver, crushed the trade unions, and turned the country into a free market economy of consumers. All leading to decades of social conditioning that has warped the British psyche into thinking that Britain was a place apart and superior to the European Union.

We are now looking at a country that had lost an empire and failed to find a role in the EU that will see mass demonstrations, leading to civil unrest, from the thousands of people who will lose their jobs resulted in a kleptocrat British Union with brainless, soulless political elites who know nothing of their own cultures.

I say that staying in Europe is essential to repairing the damage.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of uk demonstrations"

I leave you with Maggie Thatcher observations

“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”

 

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THE BEADY EYE LOOK AT THE POSSIBILITY OF ENGLAND RE JOINING THE EU.

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

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(Three-minute read)

So while it is wrong to say “The UK can not rejoin the EU”, one might say that “The UK can not rejoin the EU and regain all the special privileges it had”.

There is no special procedure for readmission. There is no special route back into the EU for past members.

A key factor here is the nature of the membership that would be on offer.

It is almost inconceivable that newer member states who have assumed all the obligations of membership would be willing to see a larger and richer state being granted special treatment.

It is quite obvious that if England were to reapply it would be put on a fast track to membership. However, the EU members may not be willing to make concessions that would put the UK back in the position in which it left the EU. It would probably have to forget about their old opt-outs and have to accept everything the EU throws at them.

It’s one thing when a current and long-standing member of a club opts-out of changes to the club… It’s something completely different for a “new” member who wants to join – they pretty much must accept everything a membership entails.

This answer seems incomplete to me.

(1) While the UK could re-join the EU in theory, in practice this is about as unlikely as Turkey joining. Over recent decades, discontent in the EU with its uncooperative member has been almost as strong as discontent in the UK with the EU. It is extremely likely that someone will veto a new application even without the privileges.

When politicians say the UK could never rejoin the EU, they’re talking about the practical and political impediments, not any legal ones.

If the UK rejoined, they’d have to start completely from scratch.

All the exceptions and favours they’ve negotiated from the EU (such as using the pound instead of the Euro) would be gone. The actual process to rejoin is also as long and arduous as the daunting task the UK now faces in leaving the EU.

As I have said even if the UK’s political climate did a 180, admission to the EU can be vetoed by any one of its current members.

If, say, France decided they didn’t want the UK to rejoin, that’d be that. That isn’t some absurd hypothetical; the UK originally was blocked by France until 1973. Imagine what would happen the next time around, now that the UK has publicly thumbed its nose at the EU and weakened the entire enterprise.

So yes, the UK could reapply, but the concessions they’d have to make and the headache of applying makes it very unlikely.

A no-deal Brexit remains by far the greatest threat to the status of EU citizens in the UK and English people in the EU.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "funny pictures of brexit"

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICS IS OUTPACING THE ISSUES FACING THE EU AND WAS THE MAIN DRIVING FORCE BEHIND BREXIT.

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., European Commission., European Union., Politics., Populism., Social Media, The common good., The Obvious., The Refugees, Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

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(Seven-minute read)

After Brexit, the EU will remain a global player, with 440 million citizens, and one of the biggest world economies.

How Brexit will impact the political weight of and the dynamics between smaller member states has generated far less attention than it should.

Brexit means losing capacity because a large and influential country is leaving. But Brexit also means that the EU gain the capacity to act.

It will be a different union from now on.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the eu in the future"

The starting point in trying to answer the question of how the EU should be reformed is the observation that the European Union has a very negative image today.

Let’s be frank:

As the UK has decided to leave the Single Market, it can no longer be as close economically to the rest of the EU. The UK wants to leave the common regulatory area, where people, goods, services and capital move freely across national borders. These are the economic foundations on which the EU was built. And the European Council – the 27 Heads of State or government – as well as the European Parliament have often recalled that these economic foundations cannot be weakened.

It is fair to say, however, that Brexit has prompted a great deal of political movement. The direction of this movement is yet unknown, but it has instilled a new sense of unity among the EU’s twenty-seven remaining members.

Contrary to what some had predicted, Brexit has not led to enthusiasm for more EU departures. On the contrary, member states have so far demonstrated they want to explore new ways to stay together.

However, the biggest danger to the EU is not Brexit but its citizens becoming more and more inward-looking.

There is certainly a lack of democracy in the decision-making at the European level.

But is the democratic deficit at the EU level worse than at the national level?

Legislation in the European Union is made by the Council of Ministers
and the European Parliament. The ministers are sent by their national governments, which hold power as a result of democratic elections in each country. Members of the European Parliament are elected directly.

The Council of Ministers, which is perhaps not what we want.

The main problem with the CoM is that the individual ministers are accountable to national parliaments, but the whole body isn’t accountable to anyone.

Unless the CoM is reformed in some significant ways the decision-making bodies in the European Union will not have the same
democratic legitimacy as national governments and parliaments.

This could be solved by making the CoM more independent, where the whole body would, for example, be elected by national parliaments at fixed times (say every 2 years or so).

Unless Europe becomes more than just a market that benefits not just its member states CORPORATIONS there is every likelihood that its days are numbered.

So instead of promoting economic and social welfare across Europe, the very thing that got the EU the Nobel prize for peace, the region should just not focus on trade relations but on engaging with its citizens at grass root level.

How can this be achieved?

By establishing legal immigration channels. Migration has completely upstaged all the good things that are being done all the time at the European level.

Why?

Because the EU has reduced the capacity of national governments to take on the role of protector, while nothing has been done to create such a mechanism at the EU level.

Because you cannot have a union with mass youth unemployment.

Because there is no direct way of its citizens to investing in the union as it develops other than harping back to the two world wars.

Because it is quite evident that Social media has the potential to connect far and wide but it also with its individual tailored algorithms is closing open-minded politics. Which means there is more information than ever about Europe, and it is sparking a debate which is unprecedented.

Because of a lack of interest.

Because over the past 5 to 7 years, there has been a very alarming and very dramatic loss of trust both in national governments and in the political institutions of the European Union.

Because there is practically no implementation of otherwise good initiatives from the top of EC or the governments at the lowest level of local communities. So, most citizens can’t really see any direct tangible interests for their benefit and are unsatisfied.

Because Politicians who are supposed to serve are focused mostly on infrastructure projects and big organizations on using these for their own benefit. The European officials spend far too much time on issues that everyday citizens are not, at least today, concerned about.

If we could get focus on say the five biggest issues affecting Europeans, one would expect to see reform in the number of people working with the institutions.

People in microlocal communities should be therefore more pro-active and self-organized to do the same not one by one but together in cooperation. However, rarely they are indeed doing it in this way.

I love Europe as a concept and the idea that we are part of a grouping where our everyday citizens can live, learn and love in any of 28 countries needs is a more positive participation of the citizens. Not an egocentric participation. More in the sense of “what can I do to improve citizenship and cooperation in Europe”. One where the everyday citizen is able to prioritize the big issues for Europe.

Securing the right outcome will be a tough balancing act: Image associée

It will take many guises: trends, signals, scenarios, visions, roadmaps and plans are all parts of the tool-box for looking to the future. In addition to these tools, using foresight requires an in-depth reflection on the policy implications and related scenarios.

In the end, it is the people that will make or break the EU so why not afford them an opportunity to contribute by issuing European green energy bonds that can be cashed in ten-twenty years.  Just think what it would do to the whole of the European Union if it became self-sufficient in energy.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: If — and it’s a big if — the UK wants to keep the Good Friday Agreement, the only satisfactory option is full [EU] membership.

21 Sunday Oct 2018

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(Four-minute read)

Despite the ambiguous constitutional status of referenda in the UK and the narrowness of the vote, the main political parties fall over each other to “respect the verdict of the people”

The people, however, had  (as it is now apparent) little concept of what an out vote involved:

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of brexit"

First, even if the country rapidly regrets its decision, there will be no going back to the deal the UK currently has. If Britain ever sought to rejoin the EU, it could not be on the terms of membership the country previously enjoyed. The UK’s budget rebate, exemption from Schengen and opt-outs from the euro and judicial cooperation will not be on the table again.

Second, returning to the EU on terms less palatable to UK voters will be hard to sell to them, rendering a future decision to rejoin politically implausible.

So the country now finds its self in a catch 22 scenario with the only feasible course of action is a lengthy transition period in which Britain could digest what it really means to be a member of the European Union and what it really means not to be a member.

One dimension of this scenario has received surprisingly little attention and that is at the end of this period England was to reapply.

First, the opt-out from the euro will no longer apply, with the best the UK can hope for is to emulate Sweden – legally “in derogation” of its obligation to accede, rather than having an opt-out as the UK and Denmark do – by making no effort to join.

In practice, this could be enough to enable the UK to retain the pound indefinitely, but if (and it is far from implausible) other countries accede to the euro following Brexit, leaving only one or two Member States outside, the position would be harder to sustain.

Let’s look at a transition period. What is it?

It is basically membership in all but name.

What problem is that for the EU27? Frankly speaking, none.

The alternative is to renounce the Good Friday Agreement, and then England can indeed leave the single market and customs union. Or England keeps the UK inside the European Union because democratically, that’s the only serious option.

That status comes with obligations. Applying and enforcing EU law, contributing to the EU budget, with no change in the freedom of circulation. Nothing changes, except that the Brits are not sitting at the table.

Now Brexit is done — the UK is it is no longer a member state — but it is still in the transition.

For Leavers, the conclusion is much simpler: however much they object to elements of the withdrawal deal or proposals for the future relationship, they will be worth swallowing for now because the bigger prize of leaving the EU will be all but irreversible.

The cannier pro-Brexit members of the Cabinet seem to have grasped this.

In a world of  Donald Trump’s, Putin’s, “What is the point of Brexit?”

Colloidal damage Ireland, its economy not to mention the decoupling of Northern Ireland and perhaps Scotland.

The terms of membership the UK currently has are very unlikely to be on offer in future.

The EU you may wish to rejoin will be different from the one you are leaving.

Stop being angry. Stop behaving as though you are still campaigning. And stop complaining that stupid voters chose to believe the lies of the Brexiters and not your own, more sophisticated lies.

Let’s SEE 7 MILLION MARCHING. There is just about enough time left to add “future deal” to the list. There has never been a better time to challenge conventional wisdom than after such a disaster.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just imagine that a new British government — because it does not feel bound by whatever the previous government did — says: ‘OK, we believe the decision to leave that way was the wrong decision and we want to reconsider.’

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE HISTORICAL DNA OF ENGLAND HISTORY IS REAPPEARING IN THE BREXIT NEGOTIATIONS.

20 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Fake News., History., Modern day life., Norther Ireland, Northern Ireland Border., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Social Media, The Irish/ Northern Ireland border., Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

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(Ten-minute read)

All of us are surrounded by history, whether we study it or not.

History lives in our social traditions, our holidays and ceremonies, our education, our religious beliefs and practices, our political and legal systems, even in our popular culture (movies and music frequently draw on historical events and people).

However now in the ever-changing technological world more than ever the passage of time usually shifts the answer to any historical questions.

It seems that everyone writes history, but it’s the winners who interpret it years later and mould a new retelling of what happened. However, I have always found that history in its written form never imparts a true picture of events other than confirming dates and places.

It is an incomplete picture you’ll always be reading something with some sort of bias.

This is never truer with the ongoing Brexit negotiations concerning the Irish border.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "the story of the british empire in pictures"

History is written according to the necessities and possibilities of current politics. But that does not mean that it is forever obscured or that any narrative is completely lost to history. Not at all.

History is in the eye of the beholder. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

Discussing the past and theorising about its meaning have never been confined or restricted to classrooms, lecture theatres or archive rooms. History is open to all who take an interest in it, regardless of their experience or credentials.

Everyone is free to consider the past and form their own conclusions. But it also has one significant disadvantage: ‘popular history’ and ‘good history’ are rarely the same things. There is a considerable gulf between historical understanding in the public domain and the history written by historians.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "the story of the british empire in pictures"

This is never truer when it comes to the history of the British Empire.

A Top-down history of the wealthy and powerful: kings, aristocrats, politicians, business moguls, innovators and influential thinkers.

A profitable balance of trade, it was believed, would provide the wealth necessary to maintain and expand the empire.

A worldwide system of dependencies—colonies, protectorates, and other territories—that over a span of some three centuries was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government.

In the early seventeenth century those colonies were expanded and the systematic colonization of Ulster in Ireland got underway. While Ireland won dominion status in 1921 after a brutal guerrilla war, achieved independence in 1949, although the northern province of Ulster remained (as it is today) a part of Great Britain.

In 1997 the last significant British colony, Hong Kong, was returned to Chinese sovereignty

Very few British people have a decent understanding of the British Empire, which leads to a significant contingent who pine for a return to those days. Given the number of atrocities committed by the British Empire, these people have to be either ignorant or evil, and it’s obviously the former. Typically they re-write their history for patriotic purposes or downplay its importance to try to forget past problems so when they are alerted to a predictable bad outcome from an action they become emotional and angry as they don’t have the knowledge to see the emerging patterns.

Little remains of British rule today across the globe, and it is mostly restricted to small island territories such as Bermuda and the Falkland Islands. However, a number of countries still have Queen Elizabeth as their head of state including New Zealand, Australia and Canada – a hangover of the Empire.

Apart from the second World War (which is shown on TV documentaries almost continuously), most of the present-day English know little of how England acquired its wealth.

It oversaw around 412 million inhabitants or around 23% of the world’s population at the time and its legacy can still be felt keenly today, for better or worse.

The empire was not acquired by sports like cricket, tennis, croaky, football, polo, billiards, bare-knuckle boxing, followed by pink gins, or Pims with strawberries, it was acquired by wars, robbery, piracy, drugs, slavery, tea, cotton, sugar, and mercantile trading companies such as the East India Company, a London based trade business.

When our attitude to the past becomes locked into one way of thinking we only deal with the thing that seems most true for now, having abandoned the idea of Truth.

After all, who could support the invention of concentration camps, leading the slave trade, mass starvation of the Indians and Irish, Celtic ethnocide, or institutionalised rape of Native Americans?

Knowing what you’ve done, as a nation, in the past couple of thousand years, why you’ve done it and what the result was is extremely valuable. WHEN IT COMES NOT TO JUST THE IRISH BORDER BUT TO ANY FUTURE DEALS it’s not how the empire shaded into an unquestioning belief that Britain could – and should – rule the world.

We should approach the past with an open mind about different groups and classes, and let the evidence convince us. We should strive to keep history and remembrance as separate as possible.

The issue nowadays is to some extent the need for good filters, pushing away information after centuries of seeking it.

The dream of the West has been that we will live together in knowledge, but with the advent of seemingly leaderless, non-hierarchical movements Artifical intelligence would probably steward the change better than government, which has fixed commitments.

Why?Résultat de recherche d'images pour "the story of the british empire in pictures"

Because we live in a world of continual change and situational thinking every understanding is open to change, a kind of a point of view that can be undermined by a non-expert with a persuasive argument.

It seems that does not matter if the discovery precedes its invention.

The end of hierarchy and a quest for ultimate understanding seems a long way off.

After hundreds of years of British occupation, it is certain that no Irish government will ever again as it did in 1800, surrender the rights of the Irish people as a separate nation. Like Hong Kong, Northern Ireland should be repatriated.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOK’S AT WHAT ENGLAND WILL LOOK LIKE IN A YEAR.

30 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., England., European Union., Norther Ireland, Northern Ireland Border., Populism., Post - truth politics., The Obvious., Unanswered Questions.

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(Two-minute read)

THIS IS WHAT ENGLAND WILL BE LIKE WHETHER IT LEAVES THE EU OR NOT.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of england in the future"

After an entirely voluntary act of self-harm England will have lost its European identity with no obvious solutions. No longer a global economy it will struggle to be heard in the United Nations World, not to mention in the USA.

Struggling to make ends meet we will see a country that is not only insecure about its place in the world but struggling with its internal identity not to mention it’s past.

There will be no game-changing world trade deals to deal with its loss of revenue to allow a proper restructuring of funding of its infrastructure. 

London as Corporate England (which sets its own rules) will carry on, powered as ever by its own brand equity with sterling strengthen due to the race to the bottom of corporate and other taxes.

With a deepening sense of nationalism or isolationism, English politics will feed on the helplessness of the old parties, driving the youth of the country to become activism, leading to civil unrest.

All of which will strengthen the perception of a liquid world with populist solutions.

The conservative party will split with a new populist political party promoting coexistence, appreciation of diversity, liberal pluralistic democracy freedom of speech, and internationalism.

As with the Eu if opportunity and wealth are not seen to be distributed evenly populist will sweep everything in its path, becoming more anxiety driven, angrier.

( BOTH ENGLAND AND THE EU NEED TO PURSUE AN ECONOMIC POLICY THAT DEFENDS CAPITALISM AND FREE TRADE BUT ENSURES THAT THE BENEFITS OF THIS SYSTEM REACH THE MAJORITY OF THE THE POPULATION.

THEY BOTH NEED TO DEFEND A SOCIETY THAT IS BOTH FAIR AND MULTI-ETHNIC WHICH MEANS DOMESTICATING NATIONALISM BY BROADENING THE BONDS AND SOLIDARITY BEYOND THE PERSON THE FAMILY OR ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS TIES.)

Populism will make decisions on reform that the euro area needs to ensure sustainability almost impossible to achieve.

Relationship with Ireland will start to show signs of strain over the border and fishing.

Northern Ireland will be in turmoil with a pending vote on Unity with Southern Ireland.

Wales and Scotland will still be shackled as whimpering serfs to the throne.

The cost of living will increase. The huge cost of maintaining naval and military power will come under severe criticism against the cost of the NHS and social care.

The EU will stay an integrated economic area even it fails to survive in its present form.

BOTH ECONOMIES EU AND UK WILL NOT HAVE CHANGED MUCH except for the pace of growth.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.