Tag Archives: Brexit v EU – Negotiations.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHICH ONE OF YOU IN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT WILL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FIRST DEATH IN NORTHERN IRELAND.

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

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(Five-minute read)

This is the real cost/consequences of ripping up the Good Friday agreement an international treaty not the 1 billion bribe to 10 DUP Unions.

We now have to watch with great concern as politicians in London consider policies that would upset the peaceful resolution reached by all sides two decades ago.

From the beginning, the EU has given virtually unqualified support to Ireland’s case that Brexit would bring about upheaval and disruption that threatened the Good Friday Agreement.

We now appear we have a situation that the UK wants a trading deal or no deal while inventing solutions “upstream.” 

That means having a negotiation with the UK which, under the terms of Article 50, is not allowed (because the negotiation is only about a Withdrawal deal).

This conveniently ignores the fact that the backstop was enshrined in a negotiated treaty.

It ignores the fact that the Irish protocol was not just about preserving cross-border trade and maintaining alignment on the likes of agrifood rules. It was about preserving the hearts-and-minds achievements of North-South cooperation, reconciliation and the maturing notion of an invisible, irrelevant border.

The Uk as a permanent member of the Security Council, says it abides by and respects the precepts of international law, so it is necessary that Ireland and the EU absolutely insist that the British government has these responsibilities, and these responsibilities do not evaporate in the event of no deal.

The United Kingdom is supposed to be a democratic state as such the Uk most acknowledge that if the UK wants to establish a trade relationship with the EU once the dust of no deal has settled, that the Irish border question will loom large, even as a precondition for talks.

While Brussels can anticipate – and talk about – the volumetrics of the Dover-Calais crossing and try to prepare accordingly on the EU side, the 500km Irish land border, with its 200 crossings, is an entirely different creature.

Take meat exports.

If the UK is a third country, under EU rules any consignments of beef, lamb or poultry would have to come with an EU certificate, from an EU-approved abbatoir, staffed by an EU-registered vet.

There is “no way” the EU can start insisting that Dublin close some of those crossings in the event of no deal. But how are you going to manage if you have a completely porous border with no infrastructure on it?

It’s a contradiction in terms.

We would end up in a situation where EU and Ireland and the UK would have to come together, and in order to honour the commitment to the people of Ireland that there be no hard border, the Uk would have to agree on full alignment on customs and regulations, so after a period of chaos we would perhaps end up where we are now, with a very similar deal.

If not the UK could be hobbled in its future trade deal ambitions if there remains an ambiguous situation in part of its territory. The same issue, it should be said, would be a problem for the EU as well if there was one part of its single market frontier was suspect.

The acrimony and recrimination from a no deal scenario blamed on the backstop will cast the Uk in such a poisonous light that it could take years for the issue to be revisited.

The EU, for now, remains fully supportive of Ireland’s position.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of no deal border ireland"

If not resolved there is nothing else for the EU to say other than goodbye.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: HERE WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO UNDER WTO AGREEMENTS.

26 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Democracy, England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Union., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, World Trade Organisation, WTO.

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( A Twenty-minute read)

The UK is now stepping up plans to trade with the EU under WTO terms in the

the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The Brexiteers can’t see the huge damage that trading on WTO terms would

inflict on the UK economy.  I don’t blame them.

Because we all have a superficial understanding of the rules of WTO.

Because the UK’s terms at the WTO are enshrined in its membership of the

EU.

Why?

Well, you only have to look at what is involved to realise why very few if any understand the operations of WTO.

10-year interim agreement doesn't make sense

One of the WTO’s key rules is that countries should treat their trading partners equally. In WTO jargon this is called most-favoured-nation treatment (MFN) — favour one; favour all.

So what is the WTO:

It’s a system of trade agreements, which discipline governments’ trade policies so that international trade is not a free-for-all — the rule of law rather than the law of the jungle.It’s 164 member governments (the present total).

Decisions among those 164 member governments are by consensus, if anyone among them, big or small, cannot accept a decision, there’s no deal.

In fact, each country may have more than one opinion on a particular issue, but let’s not get into that here.

Some people think the WTO Secretariat is the WTO, but strictly speaking, that’s not correct. The Secretariat is a bureaucracy set up to help member governments operate the trading system.

It’s true that the head of the Secretariat is called the Director-General of the WTO, because the WTO is also an international organisation, like the United Nations, UN Environment Programme or the World Bank.

But the WTO DGs are still the servants of the members, a cause of frustration for some of them.

When the negotiators get down to specific subjects such as agriculture or fishing subsidies, those sessions are chaired by ambassadors or other delegates.

It is sufficient to say that Brexiteers misunderstand Britain’s past when it comes to trading under WTO.

They believe that Britain has a “special relationship” to world trade, this narrative ignores the prologue to the story, in which the British empire first accumulated wealth through gunboat diplomacy and enforced markets over the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Britain only embraced unilateral zero tariffs once its geopolitical power had been built up, and it would quickly depart from free trade and move towards protectionism at the start of the 20th century through the policy of imperial preference, encouraging trade within the empire.

All of this has long passed, with the result that the Brexiters are now unable to fathom the damage that relying on WTO terms to govern trade with our largest trading partner will do to the economy.

While other countries struggle to understand why any nation would willingly leave the world’s largest trading bloc to trade on WTO terms, we must understand their attraction to the myth of how in centuries past, Britain became rich through “global free trade”.

Even if it is obvious to the rest of the world it is not possible to ring up the WTO and say, “Hey, WTO! We’re negotiating a free trade agreement. It may take 10 years. While we’re doing that, we might violate some of your non-discrimination rules.”

The UK is currently a WTO member in its own right.

The issue is it does not have an independent schedule of concessions for the WTO – that’s the menu upon which Britain trades with the rest of the world.

So any future agreement has to contain details, including a plan and timetable for concluding the final agreement. This means that any formal WTO agreement between the UK and EU would obviously mean that the EU would have to be on board too.

In fact, there is no WTO definition of an interim agreement.  No country wants to go through all the above unnecessarily, which is why interim agreements are never notified to the WTO.

In theory, the transition customs union and the Protocol on Northern Ireland / Ireland (the “Backstop”) in the Withdrawal Agreement could qualify as an interim agreement.

The attached non-binding political declaration on the future relationship would not, since it’s not an agreement.

On the face of it, this is about protectionism versus access to markets (or to imports)

So what the problem?

The EU has around 100 tariff quotas:

Tariff quotas have emerged as part of the UK’s need to re-establish itself as a WTO member independent of the EU. In particular, the UK has to separate its own tariff quotas from those of the EU’s, and even if the UK wanted to take this complicated route, there’s little chance the EU would agree.

Under the WTO agreements, countries cannot normally discriminate between their trading partners.

Grant someone special favour (such as a lower customs duty rate for one of their products) and you have to do the same for all other WTO members.

Britain says it will stick to the EU’s tariff commitments, which are currently its own too, as an EU member.Seattle protests 1999 Seattle Municipal Archives, (CC BY 2.0)

Britain referendum on the left side was sold on many lies with one stating that the EU is non-democratic.

Is the WTO Democratic?

This is a difficult one:  The short answer is yes and no like the EU.

With the WTO if a country is a dictatorship, then I’m afraid the representative is probably not elected (allowing for multiple shades of grey over what those words actually mean)

In the WTO world no wants to interfere in that, so it just accepts whatever each country’s domestic system produces.

The WTO is definitely democratic among its governments.

The consensus rule means all members have equal say. Voting is available as a fallback, but so far members have rejected that option.

But does it represent the people?

At least as much as any other international organisation. Some governments are democratic; some are not.

One of the problems is that in the Brexit debate people are comparing the WTO with the European Union, which has an elected parliament as well as a council of member states meeting regularly at ministerial or head-of-government level.

The comparison is false.

The EU has a bureaucracy with executive power and a legislature which handles laws.

The WTO’s bureaucracy — the Secretariat — has no executive power.

The closest equivalent to legislation in the WTO is its trade agreements and they are negotiated by all the governments together.

Is it a good idea for the WTO to be run by directly elected representatives?

Only if you believe that directly elected politicians are better at negotiating some pretty technical and complicated trade agreements than our trade ministers and their officials. Or if you believe in world government.

Then we come to the question of Tariffs:

Tariffs remain a feature of trading under WTO rules and the EU charges a range of tariffs depending on the product or service.

For example, the tariff on food products and beverages imported into the EU is 21% of the value of a shipment. The UK’s fishing exports to the EU would be subject to a 9.6% tariff under WTO-only rules. Clothes manufactured in the UK and exported to the EU would be subject to an 11% tariff.

WTO rules on non-tariff barriers (things like regulations on product safety, rules of origin and quotas) are very limited and not recognised universally.

For example, they do not prevent the EU requiring certification for a whole host of goods and services that originate from outside the EU.

Things such as medicines, product and food safety standards in the UK are currently recognised as EU ones. But when the UK leaves the EU, UK manufacturers may need conformity assessments from the EU recognised body, which is a legal responsibility of an EU importer.

This would mean that UK exports would take longer to reach the EU markets and the UK products would be more expensive in the EU.

Under WTO-only rules, the UK will not be able to have a frictionless border with the EU.

Exporters would have to prove they meet all of the EU’s product standards and regulations, which will be costly and slow down business.

One suggestion has been that the UK scrap all tariffs and regulations for EU imports and continue to accept all products from the EU without checks. But, according to the WTO rules, the UK should extend this approach to products from all other WTO members (it has to treat everyone equally).

WTO rules barely cover trade in services, including financial services and transportation.

So, trading on only the WTO terms would mean no deal on air transport. Access to the EU single aviation market requires airline companies to have their headquarters and majority shareholdings in the EU so airlines would have to relocate.

There is also nothing in WTO rules that would allow UK-based banks to keep trading across the EU. This is why the government has said banks could set up subsidiaries in the EU.

Under WTO terms, the EU should treat the UK like any other country without providing any preferences and applying WTO tariffs – a big change from the zero tariffs that the UK has now.

FINALLY:  Where are we now.

The EU is the UK’s biggest trading partner.

In 2017, 44% of UK exports went to the EU and 53% of all UK imports came from the EU.

Both the UK and the EU filed documents in Geneva outlining the terms they will use to trade with the rest of the world after Brexit – and the two submissions are fundamentally different.

A major sticking point for them is the fact that the EU and the UK share a quota system that limits imports of sensitive goods like beef, lamb and sugar.

The UK cannot simply replicate these quotas and has proposed to split them with the EU based on historical trade flows.

All of this means that if and when any country object and ask for a better deal, Britain will be simultaneously be negotiating a trade deal with the EU and the WTO.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: HOW LOW WILL ENGLAND STOOP- PAY TO STAY.

21 Monday Jan 2019

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

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(Four-minute read)

You need to note this moment in your history.

This moment when your gov’t asked EU families to pay £65 for those over 16 and £32.50 for those under 16 to stay in the UK.

“Brexitland”, is becoming really a place that I could indeed picture as a country in between Wonderland and Neverland for the absence of grown-ups.

At some point, they could live in an independent Scotland or in two Irelands reunited, both being full members of the European Union. But unfortunately, these potential solutions do not appear feasible or realistic in the short term.

Meanwhile, Brexitland and its blue-passport Brexiters will be the shame of Europe, of humanism, of its values, of its project, of its spirit, of its dream and of its fulfilments.

One more lie of the Leave campaign, which had promised that “There will we no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.”

Not content with depriving their own British citizens of their rights as European citizens, not content with ignoring the vote of two nations (Northern Ireland and Scotland), not content with their incapacity of providing the EU citizens living in the UK with anything but uncertainty and fear about their own future, the British government has reached a new stage in indecency.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of eu citizens in the uk"

If you ever wanted to influence people and make friends this is the way to go about it. 

Around 3 million EU citizens currently living legally in the UK why not force them to pay to stay. 

To continue living in a country which has become their home. In which you contributed so much to over decades.

They “elegantly” called it the “EU Settlement Scheme”.

Tell me who would want to trade with a country that charges £32.50 for kids that are born in it to stay, based purely on the ethnicity of the parents.

The word apartheid means “apartness”

After The “Boer War leaders Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and J.B.M. Hertzog introduced Apartheid to South Africa.

In the system, the people of South Africa were divided by their race and the races were forced to live apart from each other.

Across the world, racism is influenced by the idea that one race must be superior to another.

Numerous laws were passed in the creation of the apartheid state.

Here are a few of the pillars on which it rested:

Population Registration Act, 1950.

This Act demanded that people be registered according to their racial group.

This meant that the Department of Home affairs would have a record of people according to whether they were white, coloured, black, Indian or Asian. People would then be treated differently according to their population group, and so this law formed the basis of apartheid.

Resistance to apartheid came from all circles, and not only, as is often presumed, from those who suffered the negative effects of discrimination.

EU nationals will have until 30 June 2021 to confirm their status.

I personally have had enough of their idiocy, bad faith, cowardice, and even xenophobia and racism.

Giving up any attempt to stop Brexit (or at least to avoid a no-deal) to let them keep running straight into the wall they’ve built themselves would be tempting, if it had no consequences on EU citizens and British Remainers.

The past two years and a half have been disheartening, but I still hope that Europe will build enough bridges to counter this wall. And I hope that the calls that EU citizens living in the UK will remain protected and welcome will eventually come to be.

But for such a referendum to happen, the British government should be brave, clever and lucid enough to hold it.

We were wrong to hope that EU citizens’ established rights would eventually be protected.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "who introduced apartheid system in south africa"

Shame on you for any status. Nelson Mandela will be moaning in his grave.

My advice to fellow EU citizens living in England is to offer themselves for arrest, to have your rights back and to be treated decently.

Applications will cost £65 and be half that cost for children under 16. EU citizens and their family members to obtain UK immigration status.

Update:

Just announced. You can stay for free.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : IS BREXIT SHOWING UP A DECREPIT POLITICAL SYSTEM IN ENGLAND.

20 Sunday Jan 2019

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(Twenty-minute read)

Without a written constitution Britain can only understand itself through the prism of the royal family and this will become more and more apparent if there is a no deal Brexit.

For better or worse I am sure long after Brexit there will be many a written appraisals both false and otherwise as to why it happened in the first place.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture voting poll"

The whole process is now boiling down to what value or power does a vote have in a country with a constitutional monarchy and a parliament in a system of first past the post which suppresses the true majority vote.   

Therefore the term “the government” can be used to refer to all politicians who have been appointed by the monarch. 

That means it is a country governed by a king or a queen who accepts the advice of a parliamentary and democracy which has been elected by the people.

All members of the government belong to the same political party. They are  collective responsibility. (That is, every member of the government, however junior, shares the responsibility for every policy made by the government.)

The Queen appears to have a great deal of power, in reality, she has very little.

The Prime Minister, on the other hand, appears not to have much power but in reality has a very great deal indeed.

But this is not quite true. 

The position of a British Prime Minister (PM) is in direct contrast to that of the monarch.

For the evidence of written law only, the Queen has almost absolute power, and it all seems very undemocratic.

Every autumn, at the state opening of Parliament, Elizabeth II, who became Queen in 1952, makes a speech. In it, she says what “my government” intends to do in the coming year. And indeed, it is her government – not the people’s. 

As far as the law is concerned, she can choose anybody she likes to run the government for her. 

If she gets fed up with her ministers, she can just dismiss them they are all “servants of the Crown”.

Furthermore, nothing the parliament has decided can become law until she has agreed to it.

The Queen also has a special relationship with the Prime Minister, retaining the right to appoint and also meeting with him or her on a regular basis.

There are often mentioned three roles of the monarch.

First, the monarch is the personal embodiment of the government of the country. This means that people can be as critical as they like about the real government, and can argue that it should be thrown out, without being accused of being unpatriotic.

Second, it is argued that the monarch could act as a final check on a government that was becoming dictatorial.

Third, the monarch has to play a very practical role as being a figurehead and representing the country.

The Prime Minister will talk about “requesting” a dissolution of Parliament when he or she wants to hold an election, but it would be normally impossible for the monarch to refuse this “request”.

So, in reality, the Queen cannot actually stop the government from going ahead with any of its politics.

The sovereign reigns but does not rule. 

Britain is almost alone among modern states in that it does not have ‘a written constitution’.

There are rules, regulations, principles and procedures for the running of the country – but there is no formal document that could be called the Constitution of the United Kingdom or which can be appealed to as the highest law of the land.

However, because Social media power is moving more and more to the people these rules are now changing. 

Keeping the above in mind a popular claim by many supporters of the Leave campaign is that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’.

Part of the misunderstanding about the power of the Commission perhaps stems from a comparison with the British system of government.

How much truth is there behind that claim?

This claim mainly refers to the EU Commission: the EU’s executive body.

It is true that the Commission President and the individual Commissioners are not directly elected by the peoples of Europe. So, in that sense, we cannot “throw the scoundrels out”.

It is also true that under the provisions of the EU treaty, the Commission has the sole right to propose EU legislation, which, if passed, is then binding on all the EU member states and the citizens of these member states.

The truth is that the Commission can only propose EU laws in areas where the UK government and the House of Commons have allowed it to do so.

Unlike the British government, which commands a majority in the House of Commons, the Commission does not command an in-built majority in the EU Council or the European Parliament, and so has to build a coalition issue-by-issue. This puts the Commission in a much weaker position in the EU system than the British government in the UK system.

Finally, once invested, the Commission as a whole can be removed by a two-thirds ‘censure vote’ in the European Parliament.

Also, ‘proposing’ is not the same as ‘deciding’.

A Commission proposal only becomes law if it is approved by both a qualified majority in the EU Council (unanimity in many sensitive areas) and a simple majority in the European Parliament.

The problem in Britain is that the Commission President does not feel very democratic. But in many ways, the way the Commission is now chosen is similar to the way the UK government is formed.

Neither the British Prime Minister nor the British cabinet is ‘directly elected’.

Formally, in House of Commons elections, they do not vote on the choice for the Prime Minister, but rather vote for individual MPs from different parties.

Then, by convention, the Queen chooses the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons to form a government.

This is rather like the European Council choosing the candidate of the political group with the most seats in the European Parliament to become the Commission President.

Then, after the Prime Minister is chosen, he or she is free to choose his or her cabinet ministers. There are no hearings of individual ministerial nominees before committees of the House of Commons, and there is no formal investiture vote in the government as a whole. From this perspective, the Commissioners and the Commission are more scrutinised and more accountable than British cabinet ministers.

None of the main British parties are in the EPP (the Conservatives left the EPP in 2009), and so British voters were not able to vote for Juncker (although they could vote against him).  But, we can hardly blame the EU for the Conservatives leaving the EPP or for our media failing to cover the Commission President election campaign!

There was also very little media coverage in the UK of the campaigns between the various candidates for the Commission President, so few British people understand how the process worked (unlike in some other member states).

So, it is easy to claim that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’, but the reality is quite a long way from that. Although, having said that, I would be one of the first to acknowledge that the EU does not feel as democratic as it could or should be.

This is perhaps more to do with the stage of development of the EU than because of the procedures that are now in place for choosing and removing the Commission, which are far more ‘democratic’ than they were 5 or 10 years ago.

So at the risk of repeating the previous post on the subject of Brexit here is in my view the main contributions.

Most if not all reasons for Brexit can be put down to social changes over the past 50 years.

The loss of empire and of world power status, a weaker sense of collective British identity (devolution as both cause and consequence), an increase in immigration, first from the newer Commonwealth countries and now from new EU states, and the growth of multiculturalism and changes in the balance of the population ( the decline of manual work, the increase in the number of women in the workforce and rising numbers of the elderly) and the Forth Industrial technological revolution exposing the have and have nots.

Resulting in Society becoming more individualistic split between the south-east versus the rest divide in terms of economic wealth and opportunity.

London has gained greatly from the globalising economy, while the north remains heavily dependent on public spending on jobs and economic activity.

Can the mess be resolved without Constitutional changes, without a Backstop, without the Union breaking up, without a general election, without a peoples vote?

It would be foolish for the government to marginalise groups and to pursue a top-down style of policy-making when faced with the truly huge task of deciding what to do about the massive amount of EU legislation that will remain in place on day one of Brexit, albeit as British law.

Interest groups, above all, know best which EU laws are working well, which are not, and which are no longer needed.

Thus, Brexit should usher in a return to governance, a return to the European Union to engage in reforms that are needed.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture voting poll"

To honour the Good Friday agreement an international treaty. 

There are no large trading blocks lining up to do trade deals. 

There is no such thing as a Sovereign nation in the Forth industrial revolution.  

Just think of what else you could have done with all that time and money, including the £4bn you are spending to guard against the entirely avoidable and self-inflicted calamity of a no-deal crash-out from the EU.

Surely you can already see that Brexit is doing the opposite from being Great Britain, to turning your gaze ever more inward, shrinking your horizons – and yourselves.

It remains disturbing to see the media held captive by Brexit.

If news bulletins, front pages and social media feeds were your guides, you’d think climate change had gone away, quietly resolved while we were obsessing over the Northern Ireland backstop. Not so. It barely made a ripple, but last week came word that the oceans are warming at a rate some 40% faster than previously understood.

How many episodes of this show are there going to be before you realize the capabilities of your decrepit political system?

In reality, it is of course very different. if no action is taken to change the timing of withdrawal under Article 50, Britain will go its Brexit way with no deal.

God save the Queen.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHO CAUSED BREXIT?

17 Thursday Jan 2019

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

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(Four-minute read)

NO MATTER WHAT THE END RESULT IS OF ALL THE VERBAL IN ENGLAND SURROUNDING THE RESULT OF THE IN OUR OUT REFERENDUM. THE EUROPEAN UNION CANNOT BE BLAMED FOR WHAT IS TO ARRIVE.

BACKSTOP OR NOT ENGLAND IS IN AN UNPRECEDENTED CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES WHOSE ROOTS  CAN BE FIRMLY PLACED ON THREE LADIES AND ONE WANKER.

Most people’s decision on how they would vote was made up years before the referendum was even called.

Mrs M Thatcher set the background:

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "mrs mary thatcher"

The weighing of her legacy divided the country deeply.

“I have only one thing to say: you turn if you want to; the Lady’s not for turning.

She destroyed Britain’s manufacturing industry and her policies led to mass unemployment.

The destruction of community and way of life was total. – and still does.

Mrs T May the foreground:

British Prime Minister Theresa May at Downing Street on January 16th.

Even with bribing the Unionist her extreme political weakness is underlined over the last two days.

Mrs A Foster: the playground:

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "mrs foster dup"Strangely, at about £15 a person across the UK the ten Unionists Northern Ireland, rebelled the previous day by voting against the Brexit agreement.

They have returned to the ranks, which make up the majority but at what cost?

Then Mr Farage:  Résultat de recherche d'images pour "Mr ukip"Résultat de recherche d'images pour "Mr ukip"

Love him or loathe him he fronted a racist Party financed by Mr Banks.

“We’ve not just changed British history. I’m sure that the EU project itself will now come tumbling down.  I would like to think and hope that right across the globe what we’ve done is to prove that people power can beat the establishment.

Then Fake News:

The right to quality information which is a cornerstone of our democracies.

We need to find a balanced approach between the freedom of expression, media pluralism and a citizens’ right to access diverse and reliable information. All the relevant players like online platforms or news media should play a part in the solution.

So should the people vote again.?

Could the EU survive another member leaving after Brexit?

The Eu needs to change its shift dramatically.

I don’t want to live in a corporate trade deal dominated Europe, I want an EU that respects and supports the differences between us and within our societies.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT EFFECTS IF ANY SHOULD BREXIT HAVE ON THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS IN MARCH.

13 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Union., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The Euro, Transition period or Implication period., Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

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( Twelve-minute read)

The Brexit referendum has and is demonstrating that the EU is not an irrevocable project.

It is now an internal power struggle while the EU _was_ an attempt to ensure peace and prosperity over the west part of the continent instead of the “costly” wars and colonial economics.

However, as the days go bye it is becoming more and more apparent that the EU is not for the people of Europe as a whole.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of european union elections"

Brexit for all its reasons is an example that is now shining a light on the forthcoming European Elections. Especially on the pros and cons of is there a future as separated national states or the Union.

Why?

Because Brexit’s main players have failed to comprehend the true significance of the European Union, bringer of peace.

Probably they intentionally refused to understand it in order to carry forth their destructive policies without qualms, hoping to reap the fruits in national elections.

But what is actually happening is that it is bringing England and their voters into a state of isolation, coupled with political and economic problems that are currently afflicting the United Kingdom it might be no longer a Union.

There is no doubting that Brexit will negatively affect the European Union, and its Member States, and its citizens, but the EU will be compensated by having gotten rid of a reluctant member that constantly hindered every effort aimed at the necessary, logical development of the integration process.

This is no fault of the in or out voters, rather it is playing out the falsehoods spread by Social media that appeal to nationalism rules & will, which in the current set up of the European Union will trump the forced solidarity of Brussels. 

No one can “force solidarity” upon you. Nor can a currency forge deeper integration. 

Only collective suicide can do so.

So are the up and coming elections going to deeper disunity than unity?

The results of the European elections will constitute the grounds for the renewal of EU institutions and of its leadership. It then remains to be seen to what extent Europeans would have a political interest in mitigating the psychological impact of this Brexit chaos on European citizens.

At the end of all this madness, what is the EU going to look like?

On May 23 to 26 the citizens of 27 Member States will be called to renew the European Parliament. Then it is the turn of the formation of the new EU Commission. A busy timetable marked by growing anti-European movements and by the possibility of citizens’ mobilization.

If England requests an extension of article 50 it will extend into the period of Europes own elections thus linking the absurd ongoing spectacle in the British Parliament- which will lead to all of us witnessing the consequences of anti-European, nationalistic propaganda based on lies and slander against the European project.

So Europe will be in a quandary.

It cannot be seen unwilling to offer an extension, nor can it risk a Brexit bush fire by an extension of  Article 50 over four months. 

The current crisis that Europeans are both observing and undergoing is nothing but the readjustment of a project that no longer serves the needs of the day properly, and therefore needs renovation.

The last thing it needs is squabbling noncooperative English second peoples referendum or general election influencing its own elections which will have more than ample pitfalls of their own. 

The Union is a rule-based union > if it is perceived to modify its rules without open democratic transparency it can only blame itself for its disintegration.

The Union might be only sixty odd years old but its history of breaking rules.

A confederation is based on trickle-down authority. The ultimate power lies in the individual states. It has no effective powers to prevent its own member states from violating its core values of respect for democracy, fundamental rights, and the rule of law.

Take Hungary, for example. Here is a member state casually flouting basic democratic norms and human rights, swiftly evolving into an authoritarian nightmare, with absolutely no meaningful consequences. The country’s parliament has not just passed a law making claims for asylum almost impossible:

Take Poland, for example. Authoritarian Poland is making an utter mockery of the EU’s stated commitment to democracy and human rights.

Defining appropriate institutions to regulate and mediate between economic and social forces is a global and not just European challenge, but its achievement may appear too far out of reach.

The EU is buffeted by multiple crises, from Brexit to the assumption of power of a Eurosceptic Italian government.

But its acceptance of its own member states succumbing to authoritarianism may prove its greatest existential threat of all.

One of the biggest problems with the EU is not how the politicians are “elected”, but how can you get rid of them when they fail to perform.

For many reasons, (addressed in previous posts) I think the EU project is fundamentally flawed.  That those who “run” the EU are not subjected to a democratic election is scandalous.

Integration is what has given Europe its strength in economic globalization, and this integration will play a huge part in Europe’s survival in the age of political globalization. They cannot be tarnished by concession to England just for the sake of the Market.

Closer integration will have to include services but also the huge market for training and skills. It will comprise an energy union, just as it will have to comprise a proper “market” for people. This market will include not just the now-endangered EU principle of free movement in the EU. It will also include its flip side, a properly regulated shared “market” for immigrants.

What seems impossible today will have to come, no matter how much nationalist sentiments stand against it.

The EU serves a purpose, and its workings and its setup will have to be adapted as this purpose changes. Again and again.

How can this be achieved?

Fundamentally, the EU either serves the needs of the day or it gets into a crisis.

A more open decision-making process might have a positive effect on public interest in democracy at the EU level but it will not unity because it is becoming more and more evident that the single market with all its rules is more important than the citizens.

The dominant dividing line of the new parliament will become a contest between politicians who want to find common EU-level solutions to current challenges and those who favour safeguarding and reaffirming national sovereignty.

So I predict a Europe in which values will be handled closer to the lowest common denominator than to the great ideals that Europe wants to stand for.

This will be a source of never-ending tension, but it will prove less costly than becoming divided over maximalist morals only to lose out in the harsh world of political globalization.

The peoples of Europe will no longer integrate because they feel love for the idea of an integrated Europe—if ever they did. Integration will come only when the pain is really massive. And it is massive only in some policy fields, not in all. And it will remain so until the European Union affords a direct opportunity to its citizens to invest in EU that brings a reward with that investment. ( See the previous Post)

The politics of fear by building electoral platforms based on liberal principles, pointing out the big challenges surrounding technology and climate change, and showing that migration is just one issue among many.

There is no real hope for EU federalists because the Union relies on a global order that the Europeans are unable to guarantee. The direction of integration is more diffuse now than in the past.

However, the quest for political order on a planet that has outgrown its merely regional structure might have the chance to make a difference.

So with the European elections this time it’s not enough to hope for a better future: this time each and every one of us must take responsibility for it too.

Artificial intelligence has been confined to the lab for so long that it is hard sometimes to recognise that it is now an actual technology that we use without thinking. The EU is right to try to harness it.

Voting, on the other hand, has not been around for a long time, it now needs more thinking than ever.

After a woeful five years, this is perhaps last chance for the EU to prove it can regain the initiative. The stakes have never been higher, and the EU needs someone who is confident, can communicate and represents the people.

The EU needs a serious person at the helm, and it cannot afford to leave the choice to an obscure process that has so far failed to find the best person for the job.

The ‘technocratic’ rhetoric of economists and central bankers convinced most people that there is no feasible alternative to (financial) market logic, to fiscal austerity, low wages, flexible labour markets and independent central banks.

This way, establishment economics has constrained (and continues to constrain) political choices, stripping electorates of their autonomy in political and moral judgement.

This is a dangerous game since the only way disenfranchised electorates can express their anger, anxiety and powerlessness is by choosing self-defined. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of european fascism"

The tragedy of Brexit powered by Farage & all doesn’t have any real solutions.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S ITS TIME TO TELL THE TRUTH AS TO WHY ENGLAND IS LEAVING THE EU.

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Norther Ireland, Northern Ireland Border., Our Common Values., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The Obvious., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH

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(Twelve-minute read)

This truth has been with us from the dawn of humanity.

The inability to share leads to most world problems.

Inequality.

With the ability to share truth and untruths through social media right now, it’s difficult to know what to trust or who to trust.

Are we seeing a return to protectionism or the redefining of capitalism, to sustainability before profit?

There is one certainty Social media is having an effect on where power and how power is used giving rise to Popolusim contra Eliatilism.

So I think it is time to be a bit more honest and plain-speaking about the circumstances that have led to Brexit.

Politics and the media are being pushed to the limit by advancements in technology and uncertainty about the future.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the truth in the future"

Misinformation is spreading.

When it comes to Brexit, we have reached the point where, to an extraordinary extent, the implementation of the 2016 referendum result trumps all else. But as we approach the departure date all statements about British politics should be assumed to include to the word “probably”

If it will happen when it will happen.

For the most part, the debate about Brexit since the 2016 referendum has been framed primarily in economic terms but it is my contention that Brexit, whether it happens or not, is now showing that the EU never was the problem. 

The problem is fixing Britain’s relationship with itself.

The irony is that the country that was least affected by the migration crisis is the one where we are now seeing the most consequential political backlash.

Those who promise that leaving the EU will deliver “control” are really promising something quite specific: a social and cultural reboot.

Of course, this is a complete impossibility. We live in a world defined by the economic, social and cultural interdependence of nation states.

Take back control” was indeed the slogan of the Leave campaign, but it was “control” with one purpose, above all others, the relationship between taxation and public spending and immigration.

A wealthy nation is essential both to the aspirations of individual households and the funding of public services. Unfortunately, England is now reaping the rewards of putting the economy before its people.

Of selling most of its assets, of investing in a world image of power when in fact its people were on the streets due to lack of social housing, were lying in hospital corridors due to lack of funding, were relying on food banks due to lack of decent wages, were running up personal debts, were educated for the market place.

These are now the gravitational centre of the whole debate:

Britain’s act of masochism in leaving the EU will create a country that is unpopular, self-hating and insecure about its identity.

There will be no game-changing trade deals.

It is better that they draw this conclusion today rather than in 2040 after a period of harsh isolation in the middle of the North Sea.

The British people (and particularly the English), who have been in search of their identity since 1945, might finally recognize that it lies not in the distant past (Empire/Commonwealth), nor in the recent past (“special relationship” with the US) but in the future.

The only sensible course, therefore, is to suspend Article 50 and request a return to the status quo ante.

This could be done following a proper constitutional process, meaning a parliamentary vote. Britain can unilaterally revoke Article 50 and therefore freeze the process of leaving the EU.

Britain can write a letter to the EU and state that it wants to freeze its withdrawal process, and that’s what it takes to get yourself off the default path towards crashing out.

However, this process cannot be used just to pause the process and regroup.

In order to pause the process and regroup, the U.K. would need to have the consent of all the other EU members.

If it were just a request to say, oh, we’ve really lost our mind, we don’t quite know what to do, it’s very unlikely that the other 27 members would say, oh, yeah, sure, fine, let’s do that.

Then we come to the Backstop re Northern Ireland;

Northern Ireland wants some legally binding assurances that the U.K. will be able to get out of it unilaterally.

The probability of EU leaders conceding this is zero. And it’s zero today. And it’s zero down the road.

The EU’s position has been very much: This is—this is not negotiable. And, frankly, they all know that you know, a number of EU members are unhappy with the terms of the withdrawal agreement. And if it were to be reopened, it would be a whole can of worms with a lot of, you know, different asks being put on the table.

So this is just not going to happen without the backstop becoming the front stop.

The priority list in continental Europe, with coming elections you know, Brexit isn’t the first thing, or the second thing, or the third thing; it’s somewhere after that.

The disasters to befall the EU27 won’t have befallen them. They will, instead, have continued to evolve their community, grow their economy, taken heed of lessons played out across the Channel, made things better.

Does any of this matter?

Because London is fine, Westminster and the BBC will say Britain is fine. This is no longer so, there is a much uglier reality and one that has little to do with GDP.

If London loses its financial clout there will be a fundamental change to the British economy that Britain now needs to cycle through before it can clarify where it wants to end up with in this Brexit process.

Brexit is both symptom and cause of a breakdown in this consensus.

This needs to be understood outside the day-to-day disasters of the Brexit process itself.

The NHS won’t have fixed itself. Nor will social care. Nor pension problem. Nor it’s out of date infrastructure.

So low and behold we now see department ministers promising funds to fix the NHS etc. However, Brexit will be a suffocating error when it comes to finding these funds. A poorer U.K. outside the EU will be less useful both as a military ally and as a diplomatic partner or as a trading partner.

There could be one unanticipated positive outcome.

The conventional politics of “left versus right” no longer apply:

The political party that can transcend party lines and speak to people across the ideological spectrum will be the rising voice in the next 10 years.

It is unlikely that either of the main political parties in England will survive in their current forms, given the pressures their internal coalitions are already under.

It does not take a nitwit that global we are witnessed the highest number of global battle deaths for 25 years, persistently high levels of terrorism, and the highest number of refugees and displaced people since World War II.

If this is not observable we are left with “the essence of bullshit: a complete lack of concern with truth” and “an indifference to how things really are.”

All one has to do is turn on your TV.  Who can tell what infringements to our civil liberties will have been introduced in the name of keeping us safe? What new walls will be built?

The important thing is not that what he says is true, but that it persuades. and by then none of us will have recourse to Europe to stave them off, either?

Luckily there is no such thing as an average human being.

Nonetheless, that fictional construct is precisely what businesses use to explain human behaviour, reducing us to mere consumers.

There are however those who navigate the currents of uncertainty and change without the need for any particular dogma or orthodoxy to guide them. These are the innovators, thinkers, misfits, activists, artists, and creators who can be found on the fringes of any walk of life, nipping at the hem of hegemonic power, disrupting the status quo, and bravely embracing the unknown.

The future belongs to these voices, not to a world where the truth has become so malleable and subjective as to be almost meaningless as a concept. 

It also belongs to those brave enough to stand up to bullshit in some of its most vaunted forms. There is some hope for this.  

The fine line between the present and the future never looked so blurry.

However, the truth has to persist unaffected, in the past, in the present and in the future.

The next victims of social media will be based on media trends.

What is left when you take away all the ads and the packaging of Brexit is the truth of the product –

Wake up England and stop being the sulking wanting to leave the room when you still have the chance to influence the creation of a Europe, whole, free and at peace.

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The UK National Debt is estimated to be £1.84 trillion.

Uk Defence spending is budgeted to be £48.3 billion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick examination of the numbers reveals that the world continues to spend vastly disproportionate resources on creating and containing violence compared to what it spends on peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

how you design the ballot would have a material impact on how it turned out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS ENGLAND NOW ENTERTAINING DOOMSDAY, WHEN MEN FACE THE RECORD FROM WHICH THERE IS NO APPEAL.

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in Articular 50., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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(Three-minute read)

Watching Britain trying to find a way out of its current constitutional crisis this week devolution to England is firmly back on the political agenda.Search results for "pictures of devolution"

History tells us that political leaders are often taken over by events.

With growing disquiet about the way the current set-up works, among both the public and MPs themselves Brexit, is turning into a Constitutional

The politics of English administration is becoming sharply polarised between the traditionalist instincts of the Conservative Party and the devolutionary demands of the Labour heartlands not mention Scotland and Northern Ireland or Wales all three facing funding implications.

The social and political turmoil of the 1980s saw the invention of a new and unofficial English boundary – the North-South divide which is now manifesting itself in Brexit.

What is revealed in all of this is an important facet of the English personality.

After 2,000 years of administrators trying to bully the population into neatly defined blocks, England has developed a natural distrust of straight lines on a map. They prefer the quirkiness of a complicated back-story, they like things to be irregular and idiosyncratic, revel in the fact that Americans cannot pronounce, never mind spell, Worcestershire.

In 1970 the Tories introduced the Local Government Bill. It was debated for months with MPs arguing over boundaries, place names, geography and history. The result was an act of parliament that, in attempting to satisfy everyone, infuriated millions.

WITHOUT PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION NITHER A PEOPLES VOTE NOR A  GENERAL ELECTION WILL PRODUCE A SOLUTION THAT WILL BE UNIFYING.

The big question is what would be on the ballot paper: it could be a three-way referendum, with voters choosing between May’s deal, a harder Brexit/no deal, or Remain.

Northern England is increasingly resentful at the London-based government.

Scotland is on the verge of another referendum for independence.

Northern Ireland Assembly is disassembling.

Wales is ignored.

WHILE IRELAND THE CLOSEST NEIGHBOUR IS STARING DOWN OF BARREL OF ECONOMIC DISASTER THROUGH NO FAULT OF ITS OWN if Theresa May goes for a no deal to save her own premiership.

All of the above could be avoided, of course, if England stayed in the EU.

Instead, we are in a stalemate. The EU is unlikely to want to reopen talks until the vote has actually taken place on the withdrawal agreement which has a legal Backstop re the Irish border.

If there is no backstop, there will be no divorce deal and no transition period. In other words, there would be a disorderly Brexit and the UK would crash out of the EU in March 2019.

Brexit IS NOW a topic so complex and confused that I sensed every twinge of political pain in the reforms.

A mock customs post set up by anti-Brexit campaigners at Ravensdale, Co Louth, in April. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Perhaps, with the forthcoming European Elections with England still in the EU, a European vote on whether England should stay or leave might resolve the question that England can not.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT IS A MEANINGFUL VOTE.

10 Monday Dec 2018

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

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(Five-minute read)

As the Brexit ‘meaningful vote’ in Parliament is delayed what, exactly, will

MPs vote on? and what will be left of a burning Britain?

Under the Bill of Rights of 1689, it is for parliament and parliament alone to

govern its own proceedings, which includes interpreting the consequences of

it’s motions.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures a meaningful vote"

So it follows that in order to have a meaning or purposes with an assigned function the people’s meaningfully vote must be a General Election.

Why?

Because without a written constitution the Crown has the final say, not forgetting that it is the EU that has the right to withhold its consent on the final deal.

God only knows these days what is meaningful.

Think about things that are meaningful to you, words of wisdom, people that inspire you, or even a piece of art that speaks to you!

We had meaningful dialogue with Donald Trump.

When it comes Brexit there is no doubting that lies made a meaningful contribution to the referendum prior to people voting out.

In a mechanical sense, Brexit would now be disturbing the workings and the structure of the European Union more but for the spirit and future perspective and meaningfulness of the European Union.

By meaningfulness, one has to ask which has the quality of having great value or significance, England or the Europen Union.

We are left with pondering just what is a stake.

Is Brexit communicating something that is not directly possible to expressed like big, consequential, earth-shattering, earthshaking, eventful, historic, important, major, material, momentous, monumental, much, significant, substantial, tectonic, weighty?

Or is it just a storm in a teacup.

As in many Brexit end-game scenarios, however, there could still be a mismatch between British and European law:

The UK parliament can do nothing to bind the rest of the EU into continuing to treat the UK as a member state.

Unless something changes, however, the UK’s membership really will—under international law, and more specifically the Article 50 procedure of the Treaty of Lisbon—simply cease on 29th March at 11pm GMT, potentially with no deal.

There is no automatic way for England to force Brussels to pay attention and interrupt the Article 50 process:

In other words, if parliament wants to stop Brexit or give time to adjust the approach, it must either use brute political pressure to change the government’s mind or otherwise change the government.

“Press Pause”

The most fundamental ground rule of the British constitution remains the same as it ever has been: The crown in parliament is law. When the crown, which in effect means the government of the day, forgets about the parliament bit, its power will not long endure.

The “traditional” means of forcing a government out—through an election after a no-confidence vote—has certainly become harder to accomplish under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act;

THEN YOU HAVE FIRST PAST THE POST VOTING SYSTEM. AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM THAT IS WIDE OPEN TO MANIPULATION THAT IS NO LONGER DEMOCRACY.

BECAUSE:

Ignoring the point that votes are supposed to have equal value, wherever you live.

Come election time, most constituencies have no prospect of changing hands. This means that the few marginal seats and the small number of swing voters, who live in them decide the government.

Now, in the new world of online campaigning, and with the ability of companies such as Facebook to produce detailed profiles of its users, first past the post is more vulnerable than ever.

When the world’s most primitive voting system is targeted by the world’s most sophisticated data outfits, democracy doesn’t stand a chance.

IF ENGLAND IS TO HAVE ANOTHER REFERENDUM ITS TIME TO INTRODUCE PR.

With proportional representation, the share of seats each party wins reflects the share of the vote they receive. There are tried-and-tested systems of PR in use across the world – and in the UK’s devolved assemblies – that keep a local constituency link and give voters far more power to decide who will represent them.

Every vote counts with PR, not just the marginal ones, so it takes millions of votes to change the final result.

PR would make elections far more resilient to the rapid evolution of big data and micro-targeting; it would free political parties from a joyless arms race in marginal constituencies, and it would make everyone’s vote matter.

Around 85% of developed countries already use some form of PR.

There you have it, not the I’s to the right nor the I’s to the left but a meaningful vote.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHY SHOULD WE IN THE EU BE PAYING THE PENSION OF A MAN WHO IS OBVIOUSLY ANTI THE EU AND ALL IT STANDS FOR.

10 Monday Dec 2018

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

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(Two-minute read)

WE ALL KNOW THAT THE EU IS IN NEED OF REFORM.

Such as THE OBSERTITY OF PAYING £150m a year in regard to moving the European Parliament once a month from Brussels to Strasbourg.

But why should the citizens of the EU continue to pay a man who has caused immeasurable harm to the institution itself?

A man who has consistently defied his oath upon becoming an MEP?

MEPs earn €101,808 a year before tax and receive thousands more in expenses for staff, travel and office costs. Farage’s pension is understood to be worth £73,000 a year and he will also be entitled to a transitional allowance worth £117,000 when he steps down as an MEP in 2019, as the UK leaves the EU.

Farage is one of eight Ukip MEPs who was investigated in 2017 for misuse of EU funds.

Farage, who has been an MEP for 18 years, has one of the worst attendance records at the parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. He is ranked 748 out of 751 MEPs and has taken part in only 37% of votes in the current parliamentary session, according to VoteWatch Europe.

IF THERE IS a DEAL OR  NO DEAL AND THE UK RENEGES ON ITS LEGAL FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS TO THE EU –  Nigel Farage along with former British MEP’S and EU officials should be stripped of their EU Golden Parachute payment and EU Pension.

With their combined pot worth an estimated £10 million a saving of an estimated £500,00 a year in pensions.

Some time ago he was docked half his monthly MEP salary.

The EU European Council are indicating the Brexit bill will include UK budgetary rights and obligations. This will include MEPs pensions. If the UK agree to the EU’s proposals, then Nigel Farage will receive an EU pension.

ITS NO WONDER GENUINE YELLOW JACKETS ARE MAKING THEMSELVES VISIBLE.

As for keeping the symbolism of where the EU was started alive if France wants to move the parliament monthly from Brussels to Strasbourg for this purpose let France pay. French police detain a protester during clashes in Paris

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