Brexit

[Mailo]

While I agree with Brexit on the principle (taking back sovereignty from EU clique).

Why stop there though? Scotland should do an Scotex and take back sovereignty from the UK clique.
Why stop there though? Edinburg should do an Edin-ex and take back sovereignty from the Scots clique.
Why stop there though? Forth should do an Forthex and take back sovereignty from the Edinburgh clique. (Forth is a district of Edinburgh. And yes, I had to look that up)
Why stop there though? Granton Road should do an Grantex and take back sovereignty from the Forth clique. (Google Maps ftw)
Why stop there though? The New Happy Palace should do an Happy-Ex? Happex? and take back sovereignty from those bastards in the Granton Road clique.
Why stop there though? The cook of the New Happy Palace should ... ok that joke probably went stale about three "Why stop there" ago.
And yes, I totally did that because "The Happy Palace" is a fantastic name for a chinese takeout. It opens up so many questions, like ... what happened to the old Happy Palace? Is it still Happy, just no longer a Palace? What makes the new one so happy? Drugs? Are there happy pills in the Spiced Salt & Chili Chicken Wings? And what on earth is a "Half aromatic crispy duck"? Did they run out of seasoning halfway through frying it?

The average patron of The Happy Palace has the same way of taking part in local, state, national and EU level politics ... vote for the party they wish to represent them. Actually, when Boris first came to power, less than 160000 people in the UK were eligible to vote. Yet that was the height of democracy, but the EU government, which is either directly elected by the citizens of the EU, or appointed by the governments of the countries comprising the EU, which again, are elected by the citizens of the EU, is a modern dictatorship or something akin to the UdSSR. Most if not all cases where people felt a "loss of sovereignty" was probably due to some UK, not EU law, which was just blamed on the EU, because then scrutiny would go away from British politicians. E.g. that stupid Kipper example.

[Mightysword]

The main thing I keep hearing is regulations and granted the EU has some odd ones, I wonder who thinks this will change? Globalisation made countries interdependent, that wont change by leaving the EU unless countries suddenly find ways to be self-sufficient (which they wont!).

From my (limited) understanding, they know that. But the leave basically just say "we want all the benefits, and none of obligations, and we can have just that by not being part of EU!"

Whether that belief has merit or not I'm not educated enough to make a sure claim.

Edit: a better question is does even the leadership of "Leave" even actually believe in that belief. Given the panic that came after, and some of them gtfo after the vote for leave actually passed, I find it doubtful. I feel that belief was simply manufactured to feed a disfranchise section of the populate. They do it not because they actually believe, but simply to keep having a job. Kinda like a tabloid writer doing sensational article which I doubt themselves actually believe in, but keep doing to get the click and revenue rolling. They probably didn't expect it got enough momentum to become a reality itself. At this point is more like you already get on the lion back, there is no option but to ride it out, because jumping off now would mean certain death.

[felter]

Personally I think Farage wanted out as he had been humiliated by his, at the time German wife, as she tossed him out and wanted nothing more to do with him. Either that or even also he just hates the UK and wanted to screw the country over as a pretty large part of the UK hates him unquestionably. After all I mean his full intention was to leave and move to America after it was all over, I think that idea got scuppered due to the pandemic as the idiot is still in the UK.

According to Johnson' family, he was actually against the idea but he had aspirations of becoming the Prime Minister, and saw that Brexit was a doorway to that dream and as we have seen, it has came true though at a personal price to him, as his family now want nothing more to do with him. To the rest of the country, he has also been shown to be an incompetent and terrible Prime Minister, especially in the current climate.

[Tamina]

Edit: a better question is does even the leadership of "Leave" even actually believe in that belief. Given the panic that came after, and some of them gtfo after the vote for leave actually passed, I find it doubtful. I feel that belief was simply manufactured to feed a disfranchise section of the populate. They do it not because they actually believe, but simply to keep having a job. Kinda like a tabloid writer doing sensational article which I doubt themselves actually believe in, but keep doing to get the click and revenue rolling. They probably didn't expect it got enough momentum to become a reality itself. At this point is more like you already get on the lion back, there is no option but to ride it out, because jumping off now would mean certain death.

I would be interested in that too. The last things I heard from UK's politics - and that is not much - was Boris Johnson and others acting similar like Donald Trump or Erdogan labeling everything as absolut fantastic and brilliant and the like. To me this looked like trying to hide the reality with "political marketing" /lying.
Then again I am not educated enough to make this a claim, just wondering.

[felter]

Also the latest news is that a lot of companies are destroying their goods as they can't get them into the country as they sit and wait for clearance it's becoming cheaper for them to do that. So there's another gap in the market, if they can't get the goods into the country to sell and they are destroying them instead, then eventually there will be no goods left to sell as stock starts to run out.

[mr.WHO]

While I agree with Brexit on the principle (taking back sovereignty from EU clique).

Again another thing I keep struggling to understand. What loss of sovereignty are people talking about? The UK had own currency, control over own border even within the EU, many EU regulations were based on insistence of the UK.

The main thing I keep hearing is regulations and granted the EU has some odd ones, I wonder who thinks this will change? Globalisation made countries interdependent, that wont change by leaving the EU unless countries suddenly find ways to be self-sufficient (which they wont!).

MFG

Ketraar

To me it's because EU is simple facade of democracy.
EU parliment which is the only elected body doesn't have much power and usually only stamp decision of other EU bodies.
I wouldn't mind if the "president of EU" would also be an elected individual.

Don't get me wrong, I hope that EU still be salvaged and be more democratic with more power for EU parliment, but for now it's more or less a clique of unelected bureaucrats.

[Ketraar]

Don't get me wrong, I hope that EU still be salvaged and be more democratic with more power for EU parliament, but for now it's more or less a clique of unelected bureaucrats.

Not sure you understand how both democracy or the EU work. Most parliamentary system dont have direct elections. In my country, people vote for Parliament, they then nominate a PM who then nominates the ministers, but then we have direct elections for teh President, who has very limited powers, mostly oversight.

The EU's democracy is very well explained by Kurzgesagt so I'll link to that as they do a much better job than me.

MFG

Ketraar

[mr.WHO]

Don't get me wrong, I hope that EU still be salvaged and be more democratic with more power for EU parliament, but for now it's more or less a clique of unelected bureaucrats.

Not sure you understand how both democracy or the EU work. Most parliamentary system dont have direct elections. In my country, people vote for Parliament, they then nominate a PM who then nominates the ministers, but then we have direct elections for teh President, who has very limited powers, mostly oversight.

The EU's democracy is very well explained by Kurzgesagt so I'll link to that as they do a much better job than me.

MFG

Ketraar

True.
Additionally, I think that more democratic way would also marginalize smaller countries similary to smaller states in USA.
Seem like current crappy system is not without reason.
It would be a bit better, if not that msot countries send their second or third rate politicians to EU parliment.

[RegisterMe]

It would be a bit better, if not that msot countries send their second or third rate politicians to EU parliment.

Eh I guess not demonising the EU at every turn, not lying about it and misrepresenting things, and seeking to engage constructively with it might have helped.

No system of democracy is perfect, but just because a system or form of government is different does not necessarily make it "anti-democratic".

[mr.WHO]

No system of democracy is perfect, but just because a system or form of government is different does not necessarily make it "anti-democratic".

I might be biased, but after discovery of how Switzerland works, preatty much everything else is "anti-democratic" for me, USA, UK, EU included.
Albeit my subjective feeling is that Swiss on average are more intelligent society, so it might be that all other are simply too dumb yet to have real democracy.

[red assassin]

I might be biased, but after discovery of how Switzerland works, preatty much everything else is "anti-democratic" for me, USA, UK, EU included.
Albeit my subjective feeling is that Swiss on average are more intelligent society, so it might be that all other are simply too dumb yet to have real democracy.

Brexit is the very literal demonstration of the flaws in a direct democratic system - almost nobody is qualified to make an informed decision about complex subjects like, say, international trade agreements. The whole point of representative democracy is that you elect people to understand these things for you and make sensible choices. Indeed, one of the problems with UK politics post-Brexit is that relatively few members of the group of people who understand things like international trade agreements ever thought Brexit was a sane idea, and so the government is made up of whoever was left.

[Ketraar]

I might be biased, but after discovery of how Switzerland works, preatty much everything else is "anti-democratic" for me, USA, UK, EU included.
Albeit my subjective feeling is that Swiss on average are more intelligent society, so it might be that all other are simply too dumb yet to have real democracy.

As a Swiss grown person (without swiss voting rights) I can attest to the benefits of their version of "direct-democracy". The thing that is most important to mention though is that it would not work anywhere else. The reason it works in Switzerland is due to their rather unique cultural setting, how the country was formed and how deep their roots are tied to working class. There is not a big sense of elitism (even though they exist), thus unlike many other countries they are not waiting for a saviour figure and rather get all hands on solving their own stuff. The down side to that is, that it mate take a quarter of a century for people to agree to build 3km of road connection.

The EU has 27 very different cultures with various level of literacy wrt to what it means to be able to decide your own fate, some like mine still have deep scars of church and dictators defining what people should think, drink and eat for them to understand what democracy means, so I doubt that a direct democracy would be functional at all. I still think that eventually the EU should go all the way and get to Federation status, but that will require some politicians with inferiority complex to give up some of their imaginary power and their ability to appear important to satisfy their egos. Which ironically seems to be what motivated most UK politicians to do the whole Brexit thing in the first place, go figure.

MFG

Ketraar

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I might be biased, but after discovery of how Switzerland works, preatty much everything else is "anti-democratic" for me, USA, UK, EU included.
Albeit my subjective feeling is that Swiss on average are more intelligent society, so it might be that all other are simply too dumb yet to have real democracy.

As a Swiss grown person (without swiss voting rights) I can attest to the benefits of their version of "direct-democracy". The thing that is most important to mention though is that it would not work anywhere else. The reason it works in Switzerland is due to their rather unique cultural setting, how the country was formed and how deep their roots are tied to working class. There is not a big sense of elitism (even though they exist), thus unlike many other countries they are not waiting for a saviour figure and rather get all hands on solving their own stuff. The down side to that is, that it mate take a quarter of a century for people to agree to build 3km of road connection.

The EU has 27 very different cultures with various level of literacy wrt to what it means to be able to decide your own fate, some like mine still have deep scars of church and dictators defining what people should think, drink and eat for them to understand what democracy means, so I doubt that a direct democracy would be functional at all. I still think that eventually the EU should go all the way and get to Federation status, but that will require some politicians with inferiority complex to give up some of their imaginary power and their ability to appear important to satisfy their egos. Which ironically seems to be what motivated most UK politicians to do the whole Brexit thing in the first place, go figure.

MFG

Ketraar

I agree with the Federation and why it's not happening in the near future.

[Mightysword]

Even a full federal system won't solve many issue. Just look at the US and see how currently divisive we are. And we're a Federal that use the same language and largely similar history, now imagine one that doesn't.

Ultimately no system can fully compensate for human. If you have people with unquestionable abilities and characters that are beyond reproach ... then you don't even need Democracy, those people will lead just fine even under a monarchy or dictatorship. A good system is simply one with enough fail-safe to compensate for human imperfection, but throw enough bad actors in it and it will sink, and no system is good enough to completely waterproof it.

The root issue I feel is more due to modern culture, and it just happens to include politic: there are more emphasis on "shown" over "substance".

[felter]

Ultimately no system can fully compensate for human.

That's the thing, everything would be so much better if it wasn't for those pesky humans, doesn't matter what it is they will always somehow mange to screw it up.

Turns out there are a lot of people moaning about the cost of getting things sent to and from the EU. The main one being, I thought we had a trade agreement so why are there all of these extra charges. It's all about tax, before we were members of the EU when you bought something from a fellow EU country you paid the tax and that was it covered. Now when you buy something you have the tax in that country you bought it from, but when you import it to the UK you then have the UK's 20% tax added on. So basically you now pay tax twice for goods from the EU it also works the other way around when someone from the EU buys from the UK. Not just that because of the extra paperwork and the extra shipping costs now involved you are also getting charged extra for that too. Welcome to Brexit.

It's kind of funny when you think on it. The pro Brexit crowed of Farage and Johnson went on about how the UK would save money by leaving the EU, now that we have left, the UK may or may not save money, but the people of the UK are having to pay extra at every turn.

[Mightysword]

Ultimately no system can fully compensate for human.

That's the thing, everything would be so much better if it wasn't for those pesky humans, doesn't matter what it is they will always somehow mange to screw it up.

To clarify a bit, I don't mean it in a cynical or sarcastic manner. If you have a reasonable good (not perfect) system, and reasonable good (not perfect) leadership, things can work just fine. Just want to say a lot of these problem is not the problem of the system.

[pjknibbs]

It's kind of funny when you think on it. The pro Brexit crowed of Farage and Johnson went on about how the UK would save money by leaving the EU, now that we have left, the UK may or may not save money, but the people of the UK are having to pay extra at every turn.

Ah, but there's a very good reason for that--it's because they lied. You could tell they were doing that because their lips were moving.

[Gavrushka]

It's kind of funny when you think on it. The pro Brexit crowed of Farage and Johnson went on about how the UK would save money by leaving the EU, now that we have left, the UK may or may not save money, but the people of the UK are having to pay extra at every turn.

Ah, but there's a very good reason for that--it's because they lied. You could tell they were doing that because their lips were moving.

And they'll never he held accountable. It's a 'crime' of almost incomprehensible magnitude in my eyes, with its repercussions lasting for generations. It'll affect us all other than those who helped guide the majority towards voting leave. It's what galls me most.

I will never forget that 'Kingmaker' exercise where Boris sat on the fence for some time over whether to side with leave or remain. - Does anyone really think he was considering what was good for the country? Surely it was just some backroom negotiations over which option would further his own political career the most.

Gah, it makes me want to vomit...