I took the weekend off. My sons tell me it is half term. It was warm, and good walking weather. It was time for tea, outside, in February, albeit with a good jumper in the mix. For a minute or two it was possible to imagine that everything was OK in the world.
We weren't after all, about to smash all our international relationships.
Or partition Ireland.
And threaten the Union.
Whilst voluntarily crashing thousands of companies that will fail as their business models are torn from under them.
Which will create significant unemployment.
In the short term it would be great to think we're not threatening food and medicine supplies.
And we're not doing all this because an illegally run, non-binding referendum provided an inconclusive result that supposedly required us to crash out of the EU when this was not an advertised option in advance.
Because the weather was warm, and the day seemed peaceful, all that could be forgotten for a minute and maybe, just for a moment, it was almost possible to think that ‘they' would sort that out, because that's what ‘they've' always done.
‘They' did that when the City almost collapsed a decade ago.
‘They' make things happen.
So ‘they' will do it again, you could almost believe.
And I strongly suspect that's what most people think will happen on Brexit. It's presumed that this is just another fine mess ‘they' can sort.
But for ‘them' to do that there has to be a functioning system. A known set of rules. A working IT system. An infrastructure that exists to be bent to cover the situation.
And that's the problem of No Deal. There will be no infrastructure. No rules. Nothing to make it work. Nothing to bend to make it function. Oh, and no properly functioning IT either.
The things that ‘they' need to make No Deal work don't exist. That's why it will be chaos.
But when the sun shines it was almost possible to forget that, for a moment.
And I strongly suspect that's the state most people are in. Which is why this might be so painful.
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“They” might want to look here: https://theferret.scot/brexit-poll-analysis-backs-remain/ …except “the people” have already expressed their “will”.
I came across this proposed dictionary definition the other day:
brexit n
The undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed.
Kind of says it all in 16 words.
🙂
Well, Richard, I can’t give you any reassurances that things will be okay – one of the main problems is that we just don’t know, Westminster is a mess and is spreading uncertainty. The ‘fear’ comes from having no control over the future and not being informed of what it might be. Whether the uk government is doing this on purpose or not, we can’t know, but the way the media whips up the uncertainty suggests it might be (inducing fear in the population is a method of control, to influence people to vote for the ‘status quo’, that’s why wars work so well for the Conservatives, for instance).
On one point, the non-binding referendum, I have just read a piece (actually on Sovereignty, but mentions this. I’ll put in the link below) : the referendum was advisory – so legally non-binding, but it was still constitutionally binding. There does appear to have been illegal actions in campaigning, and possibly counting (99% return -for turn out – on any postal vote area should be treated with suspicion), though – electoral commission needs more teeth?
Threaten the Union? Is this something to fear? Is it not the natural direction of travel for each nation to have their own fiscal and constitutional autonomy?
Anyway, we have to wait, and so to reduce fear is there any action you can do in the meantime? I noticed Caroline Lucas is on your Green New Deal team, can she put forward a motion/bill forward in the HoC for the GND while everyone is distracted?
Someone posted a link to a GND song (I repeat it below), I think you should post this regularly along with any GND articles, it is uplifting and catchy.
And to distract you, I was reading this:
Andrea Leadsom funding from 2015
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/05/25/mysterious-tory-donor-linked-energy-minister-andrea-leadsom-s-rise-power
And it really made me think about how much any tax transparency rules are just not going to change anything – the tangled complex tax dodging, dodgy money-making schemes that our MPs are ‘involved’ in suggests nothing will change. How on earth do you untangle such a mess?
Links:
Sovereignty of UK parliament, etc,
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09615768.2016.1250465
Green new deal song
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=adngTOz55SA
Thanks
The song’s been posted….
While not a big fan of John Oliver, who I find to be a touch cringe-worthy, he is clearly both popular and influential with a certain US audience (https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/14/18213228/last-week-tonight-john-oliver-hbo-season-six).
In this context, therefore, his yesterday’s Brexit diatribe will do nothing to enhance the reputation of the UK’s parliamentary system which once enjoyed a degree of international respect. It would appear that it’s increasingly viewed as a comedy show in its own right, which will likely diminish our soft-power, a hugely valuable intangible asset – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBQfSAVt0s.
Are there any up-sides to this unprecedented snafu?
Unfortunately the link does not work
And here is a Twitter thread of the Commons Committee report on fake news etc, suggesting tightening up electoral laws – I’ve only quickly scanned the extracts given here, and obviously we don’t know if any will be implemented, but the report looks like it may be fairly thorough:
https://mobile.twitter.com/StevePeers/status/1097286447395147778
Contrary is right to be concerned about whether (and what) action will result from the Commons Committee report. Back in 2014 Richard Mawrey QC, who tries cases of electoral fraud had this to say: “Postal voting is open to fraud on an “industrial scale” and is “unviable” in its current form”.
It seems to take the UK’s governance system forever to effect change, even in topics as unprotected and easy to exploit as postal vote fraud. Just think about the secret world of political funding and lobbying, and how opaque that is, so manipulation of policies and public perceptions go unchallenged for years. Postal votes as a percentage of total votes cast have increased steadily in recent years, so the danger and impact of manipulation is becoming ever greater.
Considerable doubts were raised about manipulation of postal votes in the 2014 Scottish Independence poll. Across the whole of Scotland postal votes accounted for 17.47% of all votes cast, with 32% of all the individual areas showing postal votes in excess of 20% of all votes cast. While postal votes are obviously a boon to scattered rural communities, some of the highest postal vote incidences occurred in densely populated city and suburban areas. It simply seems unsupportable that an “open goal” can be left unprotected so long.
The big thing for me about the Commons report on fake news is that as far as I am concerned it renders the BREXIT result null and void. It’s full of
Parliament has been given a get out clause. So has May.
To ignore the report is going to be an act of gross stupidity and wanton ignorance. Oh, and cowardice.
Thanks Ken, it was this report on the Argyll & Bute postal votes that influenced me – the figures they use seem reasonable and their logic sound, obviously there are many factors that need to be accounted for and we can’t know many of them (without an investigation), but I have decided any turn-out above 96% should be treated with the utmost suspicion. Here is a re-posted version of the report:
The analysis of the postal vote in the 2014 independence referendum
http://www.thescottishstandard.scot/scottish-politics/the-postal-ballot-at-the-scottish-independence-referendum-fraud#.XCz5weFIzBI.twitter
And this Twitter thread is where I saw the interesting figures on turn-outs for the EU-ref:
EU ref postal voting
https://mobile.twitter.com/StillDelvingH/status/1082430445281857536
Richard, can I also revisit your comment ‘threaten the union’ ? I will try and keep it short! This idea that the Union is somehow a good thing is really just state propaganda – I don’t think people in England are aware of how much people in Scotland, Ireland and Wales really do want to be a ‘family of nations’ – we all have a long history together, alongside England – and cooperation and the common travel area and all those things are very important to us all. The family of nations, though, should involve all the nations having autonomy over their own affairs; true cooperation comes when we work together as independent states, and can respect each other, not when one subjugates the rest.
It is not morally right to deny any nation the right to self-determination (and legally, through human rights laws I think), and I would have thought the benefits to all the nations of the UK would be enhanced by us all being allowed to develop our own cultures and economies independently – we can see this in Ireland – it did not become a ‘foreign’ nation, and the the UK has strong and deep ties with it. The union is a messy, constitutionally inconsistent beast that should be done away with. There is a better way, and that is with all of us working together as separate states.
If you actually try and delve into any of the constitutional articles of England and Scotland, even a shallow delve tells you how incompatible they are (most people don’t seem to be aware they are different, of course).
So, I believe that implying the union is a good thing is not thought out, it is just the ‘acceptable’ thing to think according to the state (for their own reasons), and that if the union was dissolved there would be much better things for all of us in the future. The objections (a proportion of the population of) Scotland has is very specifically to Westminster rule – nothing more, nothing less. Consider all the things that make you think life would be worse if there was no union – are they real?
I rather like the threat to the Union, actually
It’s overdue
It’s arriving for all the wrong reasons, I think
But, point taken
Re: link to John Oliver’s ‘Brexit’ segment. Interesting. I’ve just discovered that version isn’t available in the UK. Maybe because it shows a clip from Parliament that apparently is not permitted here. Censorship? This is the UK-specific link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdHmp5EX5bE.
Apparently there is a rule that states that footage from within the commons cannot be used
“in any light entertainment programme or in a programme of political satire”. This was agreed upon in 1989 to get cameras into the commons, the footage itself is not censored except in this specific situation. The particular footage omitted from last week tonight is just members of parliament jeering when the results of Theresa May’s historic brexit defeat was announced, so nothing you haven’t already seen on the news or current events program.
For the MP’s I suppose its a question of professional pride, a rejection of the idea that they need anyone’s help to look ignorant and foolish.
So whilst it cannot de denied censorship, it is neither overly sinister or connected to either this gov’t or brexit in this case.
Whoops…………….I was going to say (my coffee had just brewed)….
(The Commons) report is full of all sorts of potential links and avenues that more than suggest that there was (is?) something terribly wrong with the way in which the BREXIT referendum was handled.
Yes, Richard, a lot of people seem to be waiting for “them” to sort it out.
Friends look aghast when I say I have written to my MP (Marcus Fysh, just so you get the measure of the futility of it!)…that’s before I add “dozens of times”, they’re staggered that I have written to possible near on a hundred Lords, party leaders, Tusk, Verhofstadt, I think even Juncker (!!).
Yet everyone could do this, if they did MPs would be less able to claim that Brexit is the “will of the people”. And Remain MPs would feel supported and maybe emboldened.
If this disaster happens, it will be a collective responsibility. Of course we can all name the main guilty parties, but many ordinary MPs are culpable for lack of spine….and we are too, for not making our voices clearer and louder.
Thanks
I have not got the patience to write to my waste of space, I mean MP
Haha!
Mine is also a waste of space, a sort of wannabe JRM, but I do like to vent my frustration and anger on him every so often! It always makes me feel better, even if a complete waste of time practically.