Hard Brexit or Hard Brexit

[Scot Dutchy]

An open border without a customs arrangement would be unacceptable to both the EU and the UK. It would effectively be a smuggler's paradise. A hard border would bring back the troubles. It's a dilemma that's hard to square either way - unless NI votes for reunification with the south, and the DUP wouldn't even let such a vote take place.

Well the DUP really has only power in Antrim and Down which both dont border on the Republic. So you could draw the border there and merge the other four into the Republic. They can keep their own capital.

Remember Ulster is 9 counties. Thatcher always referred to NI as Ulster just to annoy the Republic.

[Brian Peacock]

Leave.EU fined £70k over breaches of electoral law


Leave.EU has been fined £70,000 and its chief executive has been referred to the Metropolitan police after the Electoral Commission found it had breached multiple counts of electoral law during the referendum to leave the European Union.

The investigation found that Leave.EU, which was co-founded by Arron Banks, unlawfully exceeded its statutory spending limit by at least 10% and delivered incomplete and inaccurate spending and transaction returns.

The group campaign chief, Liz Bilney, one of Banks’s closest associates, faces a police investigation. The commission said it had reasonable grounds to suspect that she “knowingly or recklessly signed a false declaration accompanying the Leave.EU referendum spending return”.

...

Arron Banks attacked the decision and threatened to take legal action.

“The Electoral Commission is a ‘Blairite swamp creation’ packed full of establishment ‘remoaners’ that couldn’t quite make it to the House of Lords,” he said.

He added: “We view the Electoral Commission announcement as a politically motivated attack on Brexit and the 17.4 million people who defied the establishment to vote for an independent Britain...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard

The maximum fine for campaign overspending is £70k. If an organisation can show it overspent through incompetence rather than malignancy then no criminal charges will follow. Banks can pay the fine out of his back pocket.

[Scot Dutchy]

Cancel the referendum? Start again.

It had no worth now it has even less.

[Scot Dutchy]

The Italian government has never even been formed! Never got off the ground!

It was going to bring down the Euro.

It has failed. Welcome to reality.

Italy's PM-designate Giuseppe Conte fails to form populist government

Conte ‘gives back the mandate’ to form government, after president rejects his candidate to lead the economy ministry

The Italians are not stupid. There are sane people in Italy.

[mistermack]

It's starting to sound familiar.

We've had "no deal is better than a bad deal".

Now Italy has "no government is better than a bad government".

Maybe it is, in Italy. What happens, when Italy has no government?

[JimC]

It's starting to sound familiar.

We've had "no deal is better than a bad deal".

Now Italy has "no government is better than a bad government".

Maybe it is, in Italy. What happens, when Italy has no government?

The normal chaos continues...

[mistermack]

Italy has Brexit problems on steroids.
Huge numbers of Merkel's migrants, so youth unemployment is absolutely drastic.
With all the cheap labour the rich are getting richer, and the poor are in the shit.

One half of the coalition wants massive increases in public spending, and the other half wants tax cuts.

It's Corbynomics with bells on.
But being in the Euro means you can't do both. Don't they have limits on borrowing in the Euro?
Italy will end up like Greece.
Lucky old Britain. We should not be bailing the fuckers out.
Trouble is, when the migrants find they can't get jobs in Italy, where do they look to?
Germany should be taking the lot. They sent out the invites.

[Brian Peacock]

Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to quit the EU, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, documents seen by the Observer suggest.

Banks, who gave £12m of services to the campaign, becoming the biggest donor in UK history, has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign. The Observer has seen documents which a senior Tory MP says, if correct, raise urgent and troubling questions about his relationship with the Russian government.

The communications suggest:

Multiple, undisclosed meetings between the leaders of Leave.EU and high-ranking Russian officials, from November 2015 to 2017.

Two meetings in the week Leave.EU launched its official campaign.

An introduction to a Russian businessman, by the Russian ambassador, the day after Leave.EU launched its campaign, who reportedly offered Banks a multibillion dollar opportunity to buy Russian goldmines.

A trip to Moscow in February 2016 to meet key partners and financiers behind a gold project, including a Russian bank.

Continued extensive contact in the run-up to the US election when Banks, his business partner and Leave.EU spokesman Andy Wigmore, and Nigel Farage campaigned in the US to support Donald Trump’s candidacy....

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard

Anyone surprised?

[Rum]

Not remotely. Russia is committed openly to 'disrupting' the normal workings of its rivals and seems at least for now, to think this is a worthwhile strategy. It only took a 2% swing to get the UK on this calamitous course. What part of that percentage was Russian influenced we will probably never know but it adds to the sense that the 'leave' campaign was essentially a destructive one.

Me, I'm a remainiac.

[Scot Dutchy]

No normal democratic country would rely on a simple majority for such a constitutional change which was all part of the game. It is all about the 1% money. The year new tax reforms will come into operation in the EU. Banning all tax havens and taxing monies kept there by EU citizens. This will cost the Brexiteers millions.

[Rum]

No normal democratic country would rely on a simple majority for such a constitutional change which was all part of the game. It is all about the 1% money. The year new tax reforms will come into operation in the EU. Banning all tax havens and taxing monies kept there by EU citizens. This will cost the Brexiteers millions.

What do you mean 'normal democratic country' - and in any case big decisions are frequently made with referendums. There are some countries which repeat them until the elites get the answer they want! Your attitude to the UK as ever just reflects what appears rto be your hatred of the place. It drips from nearly all of your posts which relate to Britain.

They politicians here were committed to acting on the outcome. I don't agree with the outcome personally but not to carry it out would be pretty unthinkable.

[Scot Dutchy]

UK is not a democratic country. Referendums are not democratic which is why the law has been withdrawn here. You elect the members of your government to carry out running the country. Here it is a democratic process but in the UK it is not. To change our constitution as in many countries with a written constitution ( the UK does not have one as it suits the ruling classes) we need a two thirds majority in both houses. The question of EU membership is a constitutional question.

The referendum in the UK was also interfered by the Russians who seem to be determined to meddle in Western politics.
If you believe that the referendum was a honest event well you are disillusioned. It was a corrupt affair which the smell of which is still hanging around.

[Scot Dutchy]

Leave.EU 'downplayed Russian links'

The founder of Leave.EU, Arron Banks, has confirmed he will appear before MPs this week to answer new allegations about his links with Russia.

It has been reported that Mr Banks, who bankrolled the unofficial leave campaign, had more contact with Russian officials than he previously admitted.

The allegations come as MPs investigate accusations Russia attempted to influence the EU referendum.

Mr Banks has suggested he is the victim of "a political witch-hunt".

[Brian Peacock]

No normal democratic country would rely on a simple majority for such a constitutional change which was all part of the game. It is all about the 1% money. The year new tax reforms will come into operation in the EU. Banning all tax havens and taxing monies kept there by EU citizens. This will cost the Brexiteers millions.

What do you mean 'normal democratic country' - and in any case big decisions are frequently made with referendums. There are some countries which repeat them until the elites get the answer they want! Your attitude to the UK as ever just reflects what appears rto be your hatred of the place. It drips from nearly all of your posts which relate to Britain.

They politicians here were committed to acting on the outcome. I don't agree with the outcome personally but not to carry it out would be pretty unthinkable.

That was my attitude to the result - I didn't like it, but the people had spoken, as it were, I thought we should make it the best Brexit possible. What I didn't account for was the fact that May's government were so fundamentally and ideological ruptured that it is incapable of acting in the national interest.

Nobody campaigned on the basis of the type of Brexit we should have, just on whether we should Leave or Remain. The so-called soft Norway option is just as Brexity as the fuck-the-lotta-ya-we're-off option, and yet the toff Brexiteers in government and in the press have wilfully conflated the referendum result to Leave the EU with their desired preference for the establishment of a new kind of anarcho-aristocratic fiefdom on the Russian model.

We all know that enormous environmental and economic challenges are upon us, and are only going to deepen, and it seems to me that the Brexiteers plan is to secure their self-declared authority and to use our money to fortify their castles. In a way they're behaving like the World War 1 officers who threatened to execute soldiers who refused to go back to killing the enemy after the 1914 Christams truce. In their eyes we're nothing but political and economic cannon-fodder.

[Rum]

That is all in the past sadly. Cameron made the biggest blunder any PM has made in the last century as far as I am concerned, not just calling for a referendum to keep people in his party quiet, but by giving the matter so little apparent thought - particularly about what leaving would actually MEAN!

However we are, as they say, where we are. And they are not going to do a U turn, so we will have to live with the consequences of the bastard brexit..