Tag Archives: Brexit Language.

THE BEADY EYE’S. OPEN LETTER TO MICHEL BARNIER.

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

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

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Dear Sir

22/01/2020.

I know that you have a lot on your plate, and probably will never read this blog.

So I keep it short. 

As you have said, “we are entering uncharted waters” with the British government still wracked by internal disagreement over what kind of deal they want.

This is the very reason that any forthcoming agreement cannot be fragmented into piecemeal negotiations.

Rather each and every area negotiated upon and agreed must become watertight. Non-renegotiable -and binding in an overall agreement.

If cherrypicking is to be avoided it must be the whole package or no package, otherwise, the agreement will be subject to legal confirmation for years to come.

If not we will witness the simultaneous unravelling of both the UK and the EU.

The EU cannot wait for a crisis to erupt in full force before we start looking for answers.

We had better understand our mindes before algorithms make our minds up for us.

Both the EU and any future Uk government must not have the right to scrap, tamper with the agreement without mutual agreement from all the EU members states.

Yours Truly

Robert de May Dillon

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SHOULD THE MONARCHY BE DISMANTLED IN LIGHT OF BREXIT.

13 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Brexit., Democracy

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(Ten-minute read)

 

The monarchy has been part of the British constitution for centuries and it symbolises the unity and traditional standards of the nation.An official photograph, released by Buckingham Palace to mark her 90th birthday, shows Queen Elizabeth II with her five great-grandchildren and her two youngest grandchildren at Windsor Castle

However, no matter how it is dressed up in order to marry into modern times it represents a feudal society of medieval England in a modern democratic state that has no written constitution.

This feudal system is now outdated and Britain needs a change in order to revolutionalise the country and live in a more modern and democratic society.

The monarchy’s existence is undemocratic it is unaccountable even if serves no political purpose other than just a figurehead for the country.

Living in modern democratic society and having a constitutional monarchy underlines a string of values which hinder the modernisation of the country.

Having a monarch creates social and class divisions.

The hereditary privilege which the royals are ultimately born in to is no guarantee that the person in the office is fit by birth to be head of state.

As we are witnessing with the ongoing chariot of Brexit the crown prerogative is exploited by ministers, and parliament cannot do anything to take away or reduce these powers as they have been derived from the royal prerogative.

It is said that the queen is powerless and pointless and all her powers are invested in the prime minister. However, officials hide the real nature of this truth by saying the queen “acts on the advice of the prime minister”, meaning she does what she is told.the

“Royal Prerogative” can be described more accurately as “prime ministerial powers” due to the huge amount of power the government exercises.

There are some powers which she can and has used, on occasions when there is a hung parliament. In an event of a hung parliament, the queen will have to choose who to appoint if the incumbent prime minister resigns straight away or is defeated in the commons.

In her position as head of the Church of England, she is in a direct conflict of interest with her role as head of the armed forces and the government. As head of the Armed forces, everyone swears allegiance to her, not the Government. 

At this point the question arises, should the queen consider dissolving parliament again?

It is for this reason some have called for a reform of the sovereign’s personal prerogative.

The call for this reform is one of the arguments for getting rid of the monarchy as many people do not agree with why an unelected and unaccountable monarch should have the right to play any part in the political process.

This brings us again to why the monarchy should be eradicated; she plays no political role for the UK and she gives the government enormous amount of political power which the government take full advantage of because they are not accountable to parliament. She is immune from prosecution?

The monarchy is actually paid for by the taxpayer’s money.

While the official figure is that the Royal family costs only about £40m per annum, this doesn’t take into account security costs, royal visits and others of less significance. The actual figure is estimated by some to be about £200m every year.

Other countries maintain their monarchies at a fraction of the cost of the British monarchy.

In fact, to take the monarchy out of the British constitution you would actually need a written constitution to do this, which currently does not exist. The royal family contributes a lot to the economy through tourism, but it is not sufficient reason to give the government powers.queen elizabeth ii birthday trooping the colour

She is still consulted weekly on government business by the prime minister in person.

Yes, the historic “prerogative powers” of the Sovereign have been devolved largely to government ministers. But this still means that when the British government declares war, or regulates the civil service, or signs a treaty, it is doing so only on her authority.

The Queen’s consent is necessary to turn any bill into actual law.

However, Royal Assent is different than “Queen’s consent.”

Queen’s consent is exercised only on the advice of ministers, but its existence provides the government with a tool for blocking debate on certain subjects if bills are tabled by backbench rebels or the opposition.

There is one exception that allows her to wield power herself. Only “in a grave constitutional crisis,” the Sovereign can “act contrary to or without Ministerial advice.”

With no precedent in modern times, it’s not clear what would actually constitute this, but the possibility remains.

However, due to the Fixed Term Parliament Act, she can not dissolve Parliament, two-thirds vote in the commons is required. But she does play a part after an election when she calls on the MP able to form a government to do so.

All prosecutions are carried out in the name of the Sovereign, and she is both immune from prosecution and cannot be compelled to give evidence in court. But no immunity attaches to the name Elizabeth WINDSOR, which is her legal name as an individual.

God help the idiots that try.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S WHAT WOULD A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION FOR ENGLAND LOOK LIKE?

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Brexit Language., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Here is a country that now does not know its status in the world offering 3 million EU citizens settled status while its citizens (67 Million) are (under an unwritten constitutional monarchy) surfs to the crown.

If Brexit achieves anything worthwhile surely it must be a written constitution.

Presently the constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of rules that determine the political governance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The government of England, as part of the United Kingdom, is a constitutional monarchy. This type of governmental structure allows the monarchy to share power with an organized government.

The three different parts of a constitutional monarchy include the Crown, Parliament, and Government. The Crown, Parliament, and the Government are all different entities in the United Kingdom and they all completely different duties.

Parliament passes and debates policy, the Government oversees the daily operations of the policy and the Crown notifies Parliament of the Government’s idea on a new policy.

In this system, the monarch is the head of state, while the Prime Minister is head of Her Majesty’s Government, which wields executive power. The executive power technically rests with the monarch, but she only exercises this power through Her Majesty’s Government.

From 1688, monarchical absolutism, aristocratic privilege and capitalist energy combined into a new form of rule: cabinet government accountable to a parliament of Commons and Lords under the crown.

It created an engine of global conquest with built-in checks that protected the kingdom from would-be dictators and, especially, democracy.

Now that the Queen has agreed to suspend Parliament her position as the monarch is now called into a constitutional quagmire.

There is a host of other challenges surrounding Brexit, but none loom larger than the raw exercise of power, no matter what norms or unspoken rules of democratic society stands in the way.

Then there is the other matter that parties and politicians are infamous for failing to keep their promises made before the elections.

What we are witnessing is right-wing populism- the delegitimization of political opponents and uncooperative institutions

The great irony in all of this is that populism isn’t actually that popular and that only by exploiting the system’s weaknesses can they get anything done at all.

What defines both Donal Trump and Boris is neither of them actually have a popular mandate to govern.

Up to now, very few citizens of the UK appear to have any great interest in constitutional affairs.

Why?

Because there is no single document which explains how England is governed.

This means it requires a considerable amount of study and probably a degree in politics or law to fully understand how Britain is governed.

Politicians can hide behind the fact that since the current British Constitution is hidden from plain sight, they can get away with all sorts of things without anyone noticing.

You always have to rely on so-called experts to explain things to you.

That said, much of the British Constitution is based not on law but on an unenforceable convention.

The British Constitution is whatever the government can get away with and the outcome of the Brexit referendum is constitutional dynamite for Britain.

A new sovereign – “the people” – has now displaced the old.

In fact and in the spirit of the referendum its result drove a stake through its heart of British Politics.

Because England’s uncodified system cannot cope with pressures imposed either by In or Out vote for Brexit the terminating the 1972 European Communities Act, “parliamentary sovereignty” will be restored only as a technicality: 

Without urgent changes, a populist dictatorship of ‘the people’ looms.

Do individuals have the right to vote, to assemble, to free speech, to property, to equal treatment; and how are these rights protected? Can the executive imprison us or invade our liberty through surveillance without due cause? If not, how must it establish such a cause?

What is clear now is that England must bury its arbitrary, hyper-centralised empire-state. For even a newfangled supreme court cannot preserve the unwritten constitution that is being shredded by Brexit.

Overall, the British Constitution is a conceptual mess, even if it somehow works to some limited extents.

Why?

Because Mr Johnson and Mr Cumming’s in the name of “the people”, are seeking to break any resistance to Brexit.

In so doing they have opened the final battle over the old order.

It may take a 20-year confrontation, but the framework of 1688 cannot determine the revolution unleashed by Brexit, not least because Northern Ireland and Scotland have already undergone a form of constitutional normalisation, which is why they felt safe enough to vote to stay in the EU.

The conflicts between Englands and its constituent parts are far from resolved.

When they are resolved at all, by conventions and by expedients and by trial-and-error there is no sensible order to any of it. And rest assured in Northern Ireland nothing is really ever regarded as “unconstitutional”. Aspiration need not be part of the main constitutional document.

A new and democratic constitution is now essential, one that rests on popular sovereignty but protects the rights of all.

Of course, it is not difficult to describe what one’s preferred constitution should be like:

A worthy compendium of the rights and duties for everyone concerned with the polity.

But a piece of paper is never enough, whatever is printed on it.type-government-england

It just shows people what their rights and freedoms are, in a way that no police officer, government official or politician can ever deny them.

The greatest thing is that should anyone try to deny the people their rights and freedoms, they can be protected by testing those rights and freedoms in court. Since such rights and freedoms are clearly written in a document that everyone can own, it will be much harder for anyone to deny the people those rights and freedoms.

That now is the most important reason why England needs a written constitution.

It would help keep Britain united.

A constitution is not there for when things going well, but to regulate the consequences of things going badly. And it should be expected that things will go badly.

A constitution will vary with society so why not create an online living document rather than a traditional written Constitution to evolve with society and current political values.

It would create clarity for the electorate and emphasises the use of accountability as every government will be made to answer the public’s questions.

The government need not be of a specific type, such as democratic, socialist, etc., but it does need to have parameters that are defined and relatively unchangeable.

A constitutional government is any government whose authority and construction are defined by a constitution.

The irony of Brexit is that by leaving the EU, the English now find themselves in even more need of grownup, European-style arrangements.

The outcome could be a federal UK if Scotland agrees.

That is for the future.

It is no longer possible to have an uncodified multinational entity inside a larger multinational one actively codifying its reach, the nature of British rule could not but be threatened.

Britians arcane hotch-pitch of freedoms and rights cannot be defended in the 21st century.

Once thought to be indestructible and now revealed to be as ephemeral as dust in the wind.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: HOW UGLY A NO DEAL BREXIT WILL BE FOR IRELAND.

27 Tuesday Aug 2019

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( A Fifteen-minute read)

There isn’t long to go until England’s scheduled departure from the EU when we will all see if there is any honesty in politics?

Are we going to witness “a side deal” between the EU and the UK re the backstop?

At the moment the Irish Government and EU leaders are sticking to the position there will be no discussions with the UK on how to manage a no-deal on the Border until after the UK has left the EU.

While the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, now claims the backstop is “dead” a kamikaze no-deal Brexit will change that.Some food businesses in North ‘could go out of businesses within three days’ under no-deal Brexit

When it comes to the backstop we are talking about Northern Ireland, not Ulster.

Maybe Ireland, as part of Europe, would be the saner option for nationalists; even some unionists. The reality is who would pay for it the EU, Ireland or England or a combination of all three.

When you include the British expats already living in the Republic, a united Ireland would contain about a million people who identify as British: that reality would have to be recognised and somehow accommodated. Britain’s desire to be more British would actually make Ireland more British and Britain less so: because it would have lost the North, and probably Scotland soon after. At least it would reveal that when Brexiteers say Britain, they really mean England. Sorry, Wales.

Of course, is the there is another hypertechnical position.

If the EU fails to support its member Ireland it could opt to join the United Kingdom.

Either options  would be fiendishly complex to organise and require money, imagination and empathy to put together.

There will be no free lunch. It’ll be like starting Ireland over from scratch.

Back to the present.

One way or another the UK now want part of a reality or all of an illusion?

While new beginnings usually offer the chance of a fresh approach, the new Uk government’s approach to date suggests that we are more likely to witness further attempts to avoid the tough decisions and to offer little honesty on the very real trade-offs that Brexit will force on the British public.

Just like today in the Commons, the Irish parliament in Dublin back in 1921 was fiercely polarised between those who accepted the recent Anglo-Irish treaty and those who saw it as failing to offer the promised full Irish republic.

In 1921, the political division between the pro- and anti-treaty groups in Ireland was fuelled broadly by two radically opposing interpretations of the treaty. The pro-treaty faction claimed that the agreement creating the limited Free State was the best they could get and was a stepping stone to further independence. On the anti-treaty side, the same agreement was seen as a failure to achieve what was promised, a Republic, and those who signed it were traitors.

Mr Johnson with no meaning full mandate seems set to try to avoid the backstop through different means—either by trying to renegotiate the deal with the EU or by leaving the EU with no deal all ‘very gung-ho.’

As an Irishman, I am duty-bound to lend my offerings to this.

My first offering is with a no-deal the Northern Ireland border becomes an EU border. As such there will have to be border checks and tariffs.

There is an obligation on the EU and its member states to remain unity together if it wants to keep the main principle of the European Union – Peace. 

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was a key part of this peace process. One of the agreement’s three main points was creating the infrastructure for “North-South co-operation” between the Irish government and the newly-created Northern Irish Assembly.

Both the UK and EU agreed that, in negotiating a deal on the relationship after Brexit, keeping the border open and upholding the terms of the Good Friday Agreement was of critical importance even if future trade negotiations fail, there should be provisions in place to ensure that the border remains open, as it is today.

That principle is the Irish backstop. The day’s of an Englishman’s word has long gone. 

As part of Brexit, the UK intends to leave both the single market and customs union.

The terms of the Good Friday Agreement can not be upheld without the UK being part of these two things.  Customs and regulatory checks on goods will be necessary in some form (possibly away from the border). Were the UK to leave the EU with “no-deal” Northern Ireland (as part of the UK) would have different customs and regulatory standards to Ireland (as part of the EU).

This means there could and will be a need for customs checks on goods to be introduced at the border, which could create a “hard border” with physical infrastructure, like cameras or guard posts. All undermine the principle of North-South cooperation as set out in the Good Friday agreement.

In March, the UK government set out its plan for avoiding a hard border in Ireland in the case of no deal.

It says it would introduce no new tariffs on goods crossing the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland, and no new checks or controls at the border itself (although some new customs requirements would be placed on a small number of goods, these would happen away from the border. This is a unilateral measure set out by the UK government, meaning it only affects goods crossing from Ireland into Northern Ireland.

As for goods going the other way (from Northern Ireland into Ireland) the exact details of how this would be done remain unclear.

No matter how it is achieved it will lead to different regulations for Northern Ireland compared with the “rest of the UK”.

Whilst it is true that the 9 counties of Ulster do not form Northern Ireland (3 are in the republic), historically, Ulster was a province of Ireland and when Northern Ireland became a part of the UK in 1922, it was agreed that this province would be split as it is today; the 6 counties of Ulster that form Northern Ireland (Londonderry, Antrim, Down, Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh) and the 3 retained by the republic; Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal. On this basis, the protestant or unionist collective term Ulster is deliberately provocative to nationalists as the British ‘stole’ and retained part of their country.

Finally:

On a practical note can someone please tell me if I buy something online in the UK which is no longer a Member of the EU will I be relying on the terms and conditions associated with the purchase rather then-current statutory instruments.

The crying tragedy is when a world needs a coming together to tackle a very penurious future building a wall that will not keep anything out nor in capitalism in all its forms must go beyond just shareholder value.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. HAS THE LANGUAGE OF BRIXIT GOT US TO WHERE WE ARE TODAY?

24 Sunday Mar 2019

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

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( Five Minute read)

LANGUAGE IS the soundtracks of our lives.

Speaking only one language is still perceived as both the norm and the ideal for an allegedly well-functioning society.

Perhaps it is proving to be the opposite in the case of Brexit.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of brexit language"

Language is more than just code by which we communicate, it is related to social and political knowledge, and access to power structures.

Up to now the myth of one nation, one national language, one national culture – which was at the heart of the ideal of the nation-state in the 19th and 20th centuries – perpetuates the master narrative of national homogeneity.

These attitudes silence the contributions that new multilingual citizens make to economic growth, social cohesion or artistic production.

A different approach is urgently needed, one that moves away from multilingualism as deficit and towards a recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity as a creative engine of civic participation and social well-being.

In an age where politicians and pressure groups alike act on the advice of communications consultants, it seems that a new term is introduced into the debate every few weeks and repeated ad infinitum, if not ad nauseam.

“People’s vote”, “leave means to leave”, “cliff-edge Brexit”, “managed no deal” “backstop” – shout the phrase of the day loud enough and often enough and voters might just remember it at the ballot box.

Rarely is there any space or inclination to look at what these slogans actually entail.

Like all these phrases, “a managed no deal” is not just meaningless spin. It may be a contradiction in terms, but it still has specific functions in the public discourse on Brexit. It serves to allay fears, allows for a positive variation on the journey metaphor and introduces a new option into the debate. Whether that option is realistic, however, is another question.

Linguistic relativity is the idea that language, which most people agree originates in and expresses human thought, can feedback to thinking, influencing thought in return.

The language that you hear gives you a vocabulary for discussing the world, and that vocabulary, by producing simulations, gives you habits of mind.

Encountering language about other groups of people can lead to a skewed view of reality. It may well be that having different words means having differently structured minds. But then, given that every mind on earth is unique and distinct, this is not really a game changer.

Language diversity has played a key role in shaping the interactions of human groups and the history of our species, and yet we know surprisingly little about the factors shaping this diversity.

“Hard Brexit”, “soft Brexit”, “Norway plus”, “Canada plus” These metaphor have shaped much of the discussion on Brexit.

You could be forgiven for being confused about the options available for Britain as it leaves the EU. One phrase in particular, though, is worth investigating further: “a managed no-deal Brexit”.

On the face of it, it seems a contradiction in terms. After all, isn’t no deal about the UK crashing out of the EU or going over a cliff edge? How could such a sudden and disastrous event be managed?

There is more to the phrase “managed no deal” though.

If we look back at the Leave and Remain campaigns, both consistently sought to evoke the emotions of voters. Leave aimed to trigger both negative and positive feelings – frustration with being restricted by the EU, fear of uncontrolled immigration, and pride in a “Global Britain”. The Remain campaign appealed overwhelmingly to fears about the UK’s economic future outside of the EU.

Two-and-a-half years on, it is no deal that is being presented as a frightening prospect. And the way to overcome the fear of what could happen is to control or manage future events.

The notion of control was central to the Leave campaign.

After triggering fears about the perceived threat posed by immigrants, and frustration about a seeming lack of power as an EU member state, the same campaign provided the solution to such negative feelings: take back control of British laws, borders and money by leaving the EU.

The idea of managing a no-deal scenario follows a similar pattern, except that the fears that need to be quelled in this case have been evoked by those rejecting a no-deal scenario.

Today our species collectively speak over 7,000 distinct languages. 2,464 of these are endangered. Just 23 languages dominate among these 7,097 and are spoken by over half of the world’s population, one is related to the backstop Irish.

Undoubtedly, a wide variety of social and environmental factors and processes have contributed to the patterns in language diversity we see across the globe.

The degree to which different environmental, social and geographic variables correlate to language is evident to all with Brexit.

Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet?Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of brexit language"

The European Union is proud of its linguistic diversity, making translation a right. It is the largest translation organisation in the world. EU staff use English for most scientific publications, business channels and international relations. However, this is where the problem starts.

It would be quite ironic that the unofficial international language of business would not be official in the EU because of a lack of English-speaking volunteer countries. And there are only two: The Republic of Ireland and Malta. Ireland has already named Irish as its national language. What a turn of history it would be for the Irish to rescue the English language.

Brexit with have an undeniable effect on Europe as we know it. The social, financial and cultural impact it will have is hard to predict.

One thing we do know is, based on both speculation by EU officials and the regulations of the EU itself, is that the English language will be effect by Article 50. Unless a vote is carried out by the members of the European Union this could be the very end of the English language.

I leave you with- BEIDH TU ANN.

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