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Brexit
Oct 3, 2018 14:28:27 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 3, 2018 14:28:27 GMT
I was never superstitious until a black cat fell on me when I was walking under a ladder which made me drop my mirror during a full moon on Friday the thirteenth. The surprise caused me to knock on my wooden horseshoe shaped salt cellar which fell off my left shoulder.
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Brexit
Oct 4, 2018 0:20:13 GMT
Post by questa on Oct 4, 2018 0:20:13 GMT
You should wear a garment (usually underwear) "widdershins" i.e. inside out. It will deflect all the bad luck away from you. widdershins = in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction : counterclockwise . My Scottish grandmother was full of superstition, almost to the point of OCD.
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Brexit
Oct 4, 2018 3:58:52 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 4, 2018 3:58:52 GMT
"Odd how there is no answer to logic." Unless you happen to be one of the billions upon billions who have faith in a deity, obviously. Total non-sequitur.
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Brexit
Oct 4, 2018 4:39:31 GMT
Post by questa on Oct 4, 2018 4:39:31 GMT
Thanks, Bixa. I couldn't make a connection myself so I put it down to my advancing dotage. I would have thought that the deity believers would eschew logic, wouldn't they?
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Brexit
Oct 4, 2018 4:43:29 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 4, 2018 4:43:29 GMT
Ha ha, Questa ~ you think I have no advancing dotage?!
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Brexit
Oct 4, 2018 5:30:32 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 4, 2018 5:30:32 GMT
And I couldn't get the connection between the comment and the video but I thought I'd contest it anyway as I enjoy doing so.
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Brexit
Oct 4, 2018 6:17:55 GMT
Post by questa on Oct 4, 2018 6:17:55 GMT
Yesterday I was dotaged out completely. I must refrain from posting until brain is engaged... I must refrain from posting until brain is engaged... I must refrain from posting until brain is engaged..
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 13:21:28 GMT
Post by whatagain on Oct 22, 2018 13:21:28 GMT
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:07:49 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 22, 2018 14:07:49 GMT
People power, always a good thing.
Hang on a minute though.
Didn't they get a chance to exert their power before, by voting? That's if they did vote. I wonder how many of the marchers didn't bother because they thought it was a foregone conclusion, or one of the hundreds of other reasons they came up with. Was it raining and they didn't want to get wet? Too busy on social media and taking selfies? Watching Strictly Come Dancing or the Great British Bake Off, or other daytime TV? Did actually getting up off their arses and making the effort interfere with their social life? Didn't think it was important enough before? Too dilatory? Battery not charged on their phone so had to stay in?
Yeah, lets have a vote, the date given in plenty of time, like months and months before, polling stations abounding in numbers, open all hours nearly, and yet those that didn't vote, didn't. Then you have those that did and don't like the result so want another go. It's not best of three you know.
I'm crying onto my avocado and chia seed toast for them. Life is unfair, booo hooo. They lost. I hate a poor loser. Move on for gods sake.
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:08:39 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 22, 2018 14:08:39 GMT
Did that sound too harsh?
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:16:45 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 14:16:45 GMT
No, not at all.
The referendum was perhaps the most outstanding example in recent history of how people can be manipulated with totally false claims and outright lies.
We will get another outstanding example in two weeks with the American elections when we find that people continue to support Trump.
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:18:29 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 22, 2018 14:18:29 GMT
Just a thought though, if someone knows about these sorts of things - if there is another vote, has it set a precedent? has it happened like this before? And if there is one, and we vote to stay, what happens if there is people power from the opposite camp that is the same or bigger. Would there have to be yet another one because of the precedent? Where would it end?
Best of three like I said before?
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:20:05 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 22, 2018 14:20:05 GMT
"The referendum was perhaps the most outstanding example in recent history of how people can be manipulated with totally false claims and outright lies."
Are you intimating only one side was guilty of that? Or that one side had the better liars and manipulators?
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:26:13 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 14:26:13 GMT
Just a thought though, if someone knows about these sorts of things - if there is another vote, has it set a precedent? has it happened like this before? And if there is one, and we vote to stay, what happens if there is people power from the opposite camp that is the same or bigger. Would there have to be yet another one because of the precedent? Where would it end? Best of three like I said before? There was an example of this in France and the Netherlands in 2005.
France and the Netherlands had referendums on the treaty of Lisbon and voted the wrong way. In 2007, the no votes were overturned by the legislatures of both countries.
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 14:31:08 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Oct 22, 2018 14:31:08 GMT
The referendum was perhaps the most outstanding example in recent history of how people can be manipulated with totally false claims and outright lies. We will get another outstanding example in two weeks with the American elections when we find that people continue to support Trump. I hope you are wrong, K2. It appears the Democrats will likely take power in the House of Representatives, which should throw a (minor) stumbling block in front of Trump’s GOP. But unless the Senate turns blue, his reactionary judicial appointments will continue until either the 2020 election, or until he’s forced out by the Mueller investigation’s conclusions. And then Pence can continue appointing awful judges, unless he is also pulled into the Trump collapse.
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 15:01:46 GMT
Post by mossie on Oct 22, 2018 15:01:46 GMT
The so called 'peoples vote' is simply the EU method of getting the answer right. Just keep on voting until you do, or else! We should smartly walk away now and not pay a penny more into the Junkers slush fund.
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Brexit
Oct 22, 2018 15:54:43 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 15:54:43 GMT
Yes, but...
Let's not forget that all of the EU authorities were elected, directly or indirectly, by the citizens of all of these countries. There is a reason for sluggish decisions in most countries by such people -- they are not subject to wild populist mood swings.
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Brexit
Oct 23, 2018 15:04:49 GMT
Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 23, 2018 15:04:49 GMT
This is currently lurking on fb and made me laugh....
"LEAVER: I want an omelette.
REMAINER: Right. It’s just we haven’t got any eggs.
LEAVER: Yes, we have. There they are. [HE POINTS AT A CAKE]
REMAINER: They’re in the cake.
LEAVER: Yes, get them out of the cake, please.
REMAINER: But we voted in 1974 to put them into a cake.
LEAVER: Yes, but that cake has got icing on it. Nobody said there was going to be icing on it.
REMAINER: Icing is good.
LEAVER: And there are raisins in it. I don’t like raisins. Nobody mentioned raisins. I demand another vote.
DAVID CAMERON ENTERS.
DAVID CAMERON: OK.
DAVID CAMERON SCARPERS.
LEAVER: Right, where’s my omelette?
REMAINER: I told you, the eggs are in the cake.
LEAVER: Well, get them out.
EU: It’s our cake.
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, get them out now.
REMAINER: I have absolutely no idea how to get them out. Don’t you know how to get them out?
LEAVER: Yes! You just get them out and then you make an omelette.
REMAINER: But how?! Didn’t you give this any thought?
LEAVER: Saboteur! You’re talking eggs down. We could make omelettes before the eggs went into the cake, so there’s no reason why we can’t make them now.
THERESA MAY: It’s OK, I can do it.
REMAINER: How?
THERESA MAY: There was a vote to remove the eggs from the cake, and so the eggs will be removed from the cake.
REMAINER: Yeah, but…
LEAVER: Hang on, if we take the eggs out of the cake, does that mean we don’t have any cake? I didn’t say I didn’t want the cake, just the bits I don’t like.
EU: It’s our cake.
REMAINER: But you can’t take the eggs out of the cake and then still have a cake.
LEAVER: You can. I saw the latest Bake Off and you can definitely make cakes without eggs in them. It’s just that they’re horrible.
REMAINER: Fine. Take the eggs out. See what happens.
LEAVER: It’s not my responsibility to take the eggs out. Get on with it.
REMAINER: Why should I have to come up with some long-winded incredibly difficult chemical process to extract eggs that have bonded at the molecular level to the cake, while somehow still having the cake?
LEAVER: You lost, get over it.
THERESA MAY: By the way, I’ve started the clock on this.
REMAINER: So I assume you have a plan?
THERESA MAY: Actually, back in a bit. Just having another election.
REMAINER: Jeremy, are you going to sort this out?
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes. No. Maybe.
EU: It’s our cake.
LEAVER: Where’s my omelette? I voted for an omelette.
REMAINER: This is ridiculous. This is never going to work. We should have another vote, or at least stop what we’re doing until we know how to get the eggs out of the cake while keeping the bits of the cake that we all like.
LEAVER/MAY/CORBYN: WE HAD A VOTE. STOP SABOTAGING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE. EGGSIT MEANS EGGSIT.
REMAINER: Fine, I’m moving to France. The cakes are nicer there.
LEAVER: You can’t. We’ve taken your freedom of movement..."
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Brexit
Oct 23, 2018 15:33:08 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 23, 2018 15:33:08 GMT
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Brexit
Oct 23, 2018 20:14:22 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Oct 23, 2018 20:14:22 GMT
Bravo!
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Brexit
Oct 23, 2018 21:56:57 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 23, 2018 21:56:57 GMT
It's funny, but it's also 100% on the mark! Seems 700 000 Brits marched today in orxder to have another vote. Just a thought though, if someone knows about these sorts of things - if there is another vote, has it set a precedent? has it happened like this before? There was an example of this in France and the Netherlands in 2005. France and the Netherlands had referendums on the treaty of Lisbon and voted the wrong way. In 2007, the no votes were overturned by the legislatures of both countries.
I am quoting myself from May of this year because I think this is pertinent: Since I am going to assume, based on previous experience, that no one will actually look at that second link, here is a particularly pertinent part of it: "Referendums are not legally binding, so legally the Government can ignore the results; for example, even if the result of a pre-legislative referendum were a majority of "No" for a proposed law, Parliament could pass it anyway, because parliament is sovereign."Considering that Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain, that young people on the cusp of their 18th birthdays weren't able to vote on something that will affect the rest of their lives, and that people are taking to the streets in the hundreds of thousands against the result of the 2016 referendum, shouldn't there either be a second referendum or a simple coming to the senses where Great Britain decides not to step off a cliff?
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Brexit
Oct 25, 2018 12:00:59 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 25, 2018 12:00:59 GMT
"where Great Britain decides not to step off a cliff?"............ which may allow us to fly free rather than plummet to the floor in a squidgy mess, after being fettered and shackled to the earth. Who knows? We may dip down somewhat and then find our wings. However, like in cartoons when someone steps off a cliff, they pause in mid-air, then they look down and their fate is sealed. They fall. We must not look down. We must look ahead to the distant horizon and see the world open up before us.
I'm not bothered if the vote is binding or not. For me, that isn't the point. The point is obviously, we had a vote. Everyone had a chance. If the vote had gone the other way I'd have accepted whatever the result was. That is the principle of a vote. A way for the populace to have a say in an important matter. Not for them to keep trying until thy think they got the right result.
"...........young people on the cusp of their 18th birthdays weren't able to vote on something that will affect the rest of their lives" There has to be a cut off point regarding age. What if we vote again, what about those who are now on the cusp? It is endless. There has to be a line. As regards affecting the rest of their lives - who is to say it will? The next few years, certainly, but we joined in my lifetime and we voted to leave in my lifetime. The future is unclear and we may apply to join again. We may not. But affecting all their life span? I very much doubt it. Just my opinion, no more than that.
Some say, "Better the Devil you know........" or a "bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Some don't. I don't. I prefer to self-drive than be constrained on a train where I have no say in where it goes and when it gets there and it won't let me off without a fight. And that is the gravy train, for some, that is the EU.
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Brexit
Oct 25, 2018 17:07:54 GMT
Post by mickthecactus on Oct 25, 2018 17:07:54 GMT
Do you know it suddenly strikes me as something quite exciting. It's a big change and we have had big changes before and overcome them. That's what we do.
Sure it won't be easy to start with but I am totally confident we will overcome it and eventually prosper. Why not? We certainly have the ability.
I am a glass half full person and I think it will be the making of some people possibly unknown as yet.
Bring it on.
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Brexit
Oct 25, 2018 17:48:23 GMT
Post by onlyMark on Oct 25, 2018 17:48:23 GMT
As regards glasses, I just wonder which bugger drunk half of it when I wasn't looking.
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Brexit
Oct 27, 2018 17:07:38 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 27, 2018 17:07:38 GMT
It's time to have a T-shirt contest. "Keep calm and ......."
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Brexit
Oct 27, 2018 18:27:45 GMT
Post by questa on Oct 27, 2018 18:27:45 GMT
It's all right, Mark, that bugger left you half of what you were drinking. Cheers.
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Brexit
Oct 29, 2018 13:12:07 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Oct 29, 2018 13:12:07 GMT
From the Economist:
“Brexiteers are angry not just with Theresa May, but with reality
As their project goes off the rails, Brexiteers resort to rage
THE BREXITEERS have become the angry brigade of British politics. Boris Johnson has accused Theresa May of wrapping a suicide vest around Britain. Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused her of being “cowed” by the European Union. And several Tory MPs have used anonymous briefings to savage her in the press. “The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted,” declared one conspirator who is probably more familiar with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” than the complete works of Edmund Burke. “She’ll be dead soon.”
The obvious reason for this is that Brexiteers think that Mrs May is wrecking a project that has consumed much of their lives. They are furious that she botched the election of 2017 with a wooden campaign and a shoddy manifesto. This has weakened the government’s hand in dealing not only with recalcitrant Remainers but also with cunning Europeans who are determined to exploit any sign of British weakness. They are equally cross that she is betraying what they consider to be the glorious principles of Lancaster House, the speech in which she laid down various “red lines” about leaving the European Union.
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There is a lively debate about why Mrs May has done this. Was she always going to betray them? (She voted to remain before briefly becoming the Boudica of Brexit.) Or was she corrupted by establishment types such as Olly Robbins, the civil servant in charge of the negotiations? Or was she simply ground down by European bureaucrats? That she is a traitor is now taken as a given.
There is also a deeper reason why Brexiteers are so angry. Mrs May represents the reality principle in a political world dominated by fantasy and wish-fulfilment. She didn’t fluff last year’s election only because of a wooden campaign and a botched manifesto. She also fluffed it because a more or less equally divided nation was not willing to give her carte blanche to pursue a hard Brexit. She didn’t blur the red lines of Lancaster House just because she was manipulated and deceived. She blurred them because she is trying to avoid terrible hazards such as a breakdown of trade with the EU or the imposition of a hard border in Ireland. Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, described his tribe as liberals who have been mugged by reality. Brexiteers are Tories who are furious that reality has proved to be more stubborn than they imagined.
They believed that leaving the European Union would be a cake walk. Liam Fox pronounced that “the free-trade agreement that we will have to do with the EU should be one of the easiest in human history.” John Redwood averred that “getting out of the EU can be quick and easy—the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation.” In fact, leaving the EU is likely to be one of the hardest bureaucratic exercises in post-war history. That is not just because the EU is determined to make it difficult (though it is), but because unravelling 45 years’ worth of trading regulations is inevitably complicated and time-consuming.
The Brexiteers believed that Britain would be able to have all the benefits of the single market while also striking trade deals with the rest of the world—that “there will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside,” as David Davis said, or that Britain would be able to have its cake and eat it, as Mr Johnson pronounced in a phrase that should be carved on his tombstone. But leaving the EU inevitably involves difficult trade-offs. Britain has to choose between maintaining open access to the EU’s single market (which means complying with its rules) or freeing itself to make independent trade deals with the rest of the world (which means losing automatic access to the EU’s market). It may yet have to make an even harder trade-off within its own borders: treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK, which would eventually tie the province more closely to the Republic of Ireland, or accepting a soft Brexit.
The Brexiteers further believed that the EU would prove to be a pushover. During the referendum campaign, Michael Gove promised that “the day after we vote to leave we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.” In fact, the EU not only has a lot more cards in its pack than Britain—27 member states, including aces such as France and Germany. It also has more experience, as a regulatory superpower that is used to dealing with other superpowers such as China and America. Some Brexiteers also thought that Britain would be the praetorian guard of a revolution against an ossified global order, represented by Brussels. In fact, the EU has arguably been strengthened rather than weakened by Britain’s imminent departure, while pro-Europeanism has gone from being an exotic taste in Britain to a real force. And Britain’s fellow rebels against the old world order consist of such dubious figures as Matteo Salvini and Donald Trump.
The new moaners
There is an element of vanity in this. Many Brexiteers spent decades in the wilderness, being dismissed as “swivel-eyed loons” by senior Tories. They thought that the referendum result would finally turn them into prophets and heroes. But it is increasingly looking as if the establishment types got it right. Preparations for a no-deal Brexit are becoming increasingly ominous, as the government prepares to charter container ships to import food and drugs, and turn a Kent motorway into a giant lorry park.
There are two very different ways that you can react to reality when it turns out to be harsher than you expected. You can recognise reality for what it is, and try to render it a bit more palatable by hard work and careful thought. Or you can rage against it—and bolster your rage with talk about ideals betrayed and simple solutions denied. Mrs May is no one’s model of a perfect prime minister. But it is to her credit that she has tried hard to grapple with a fiendishly difficult problem. And it is to the discredit of Brexiteers that, rather than helping Mrs May to do her duty, they have decided to rage against her.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Mugged by reality"
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Brexit
Oct 29, 2018 13:50:50 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 29, 2018 13:50:50 GMT
I didn't know that The Economist had been taken over by leftist revolutionaries.
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Brexit
Oct 30, 2018 0:00:52 GMT
Post by questa on Oct 30, 2018 0:00:52 GMT
"Keep calm and .... get screwed anyway"
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Brexit
Nov 15, 2018 13:22:19 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Nov 15, 2018 13:22:19 GMT
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