Britain outside the EU

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

I'd rather not fall out with the EU, but we can't put up with being pushed around either. We've been trying for some time to get an agreement to get the protocol working as it should and we've had nothing but obstruction. It is hurting the Northern Ireland economy, its businesses and even preventing Stormont from sitting.

We cannot go on like this, and in the absence of co-operation we have to do what is best for us. Our proposals do not affect the EU's ability to prevent the wrong goods getting in. They are simply being obstinate.

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I didn't say that.

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

What I am saying is that we should do what is best for Britain.

And while the NI economy may have improved, that is despite the EU intransigence and the unnecessary bureaucracy they have imposed. Without that, they would do even better.

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Yes, but what do you think we have been doing all this time? The EU just put up barriers and stick their fingers in their ears.

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Some people didn't realise how childish and awkward the EU would be because they were classed as our 'friends'.

Had both sides co-operated with each other, the DUP would not have got the hump, would they?

Good luck getting treated in A&E for the whiplash caused by that complete change of direction…

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Good luck getting treated in A&E for the whiplash caused by that complete change of direction…

I thought the addition of 10 years on the streaming thread was substantive but nothing compared to this handbrake U-turn!

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Originally Posted by Chris

I didn’t take you for an Irish nationalist Andrew.

Mainland GB may be beyond the usual election territory of the DUP but as I’m sure you’re very well aware, a referendum is not an election and the DUP does not consider Great Britain to be another country.

Were I an Irish nationalist, I would have advocated Brexit as the fastest route to achieving unification.

The purchase of the wrap-around by the DUP in GB where it does not field any candidates was very strange. As the article says

Geoghegan contends in Democracy for Sale that the money was channelled to the DUP through the official Vote Leave campaign because Vote Leave had almost used up its permitted spending of £7 million. Vote Leave and the DUP have denied the claim.

To prop up his Vote Leave-DUP connection conviction, Geoghegan writes, "Two months before the referendum, Matthew Elliott, Vote Leave's chief executive, wrote in an email to senior staff: 'The DUP also have a £700k spending limit, which can be spent nationwide!' "

“At that stage the DUP had yet to register as a referendum participant,” Geoghegan writes. “It only did so in late May. When the CRC started giving money to the DUP, Vote Leave had almost completely exhausted its spending allowance.”

Geoghegan writes how the DUP’s Brexit “spending spree began on June 9th, exactly two weeks before the vote, when the DUP bought £100,000 worth of placards, bags, window stickers, T-shirts and badges from a small branding agency called Soopa Doopa”.

This company was based in the Cambridgeshire cathedral town of Ely. The location and the company was a “surprising choice” for the DUP, thought Geoghegan. The fact that it published more than £800,000 of material for various Leave-supporting groups reinforced his belief that this was part of the alleged Vote Leave-DUP nexus.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/irel...aign-1.4320055

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Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Some people didn't realise how childish and awkward the EU would be because they were classed as our 'friends'.

Had both sides co-operated with each other, the DUP would not have got the hump, would they?

Johnson was just pandering to the right-wing of the Conservative Party instead of holding normal negotiations. No amount of throwing our toys out of the pram will alter our geography or the importance of the EU as a trading partner. In fact, recent figures show a decline in non-EU trade. Not saying the EU is perfect as it's not.

The DUP are just using this as an excuse in the same way that Johnson blamed cake for his transgressions. As Hugh says, the're behaving in an undemocratic manner and it's disappointing that you fail to condemn this.

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

The purchase of the wrap-around by the DUP in GB where it does not field any candidates was very strange.

Again … where it fields election candidates is irrelevant. This was not an election. It was a single question referendum with a single UK-wide outcome.

I did read the article but I didn’t see any evidence of lawbreaking. Quite possibly loophole-exploiting, but not lawbreaking.

This looks just like another load of remoaner wailing.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

Again … where it fields election candidates is irrelevant. This was not an election. It was a single question referendum with a single UK-wide outcome.

I did read the article but I didn’t see any evidence of lawbreaking. Quite possibly loophole-exploiting, but not lawbreaking.

This looks just like another load of remoaner wailing.

It's a bit of a stretch to pretend that advertising outside Northern Ireland is irrelevant for an NI-only political party. It's unprecedented, unusual and the source of the funding is opaque.

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

It's a bit of a stretch to pretend that advertising outside Northern Ireland is irrelevant for an NI-only political party. It's unprecedented, unusual and the source of the funding is opaque.

It’s no more relevant than Leanne Wood and Nicola Sturgeon appearing in UK-wide debates during the referendum campaign, which they both did, on the basis that a single decision taken by the entire UK would affect their own jurisdictions.

I totally understand where you’re coming from - you want to cry foul because the political funding rules seem to have allowed nationwide campaigning by an organisation regulated by a process that only anticipated them operating within a certain legal jurisdiction. That, however, is because those rules were designed on the assumption that they were regulating election spending. This was not an election.

If they found and exploited a weakness in the rules, then boo flipping hoo …

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Chris

Again … where it fields election candidates is irrelevant. This was not an election. It was a single question referendum with a single UK-wide outcome.

I did read the article but I didn’t see any evidence of lawbreaking. Quite possibly loophole-exploiting, but not lawbreaking.

This looks just like another load of remoaner wailing.

Still using the childish name calling? I thought we have moved on from this.

Originally Posted by ianch99

Still using the childish name calling? I thought we have moved on from this.

It’s pretty clear from the above that there are still those bent on delegitimising the referendum result. That is the very essence of remoaning (as opposed to simply having campaigned for remain, or believing the UK should rejoin, which is not remoaning). When they move on from that, there will no longer be a need for a handy shorthand name for it.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

It’s pretty clear from the above that there are still those bent on delegitimising the referendum result. That is the very essence of remoaning (as opposed to simply having campaigned for remain, or believing the UK should rejoin, which is not remoaning). When they move on from that, there will no longer be a need for a handy shorthand name for it.

Not in my case. Hugh pointed out how the DUP was behaving in an undemocratic nature. I pointed out how to my mind its unprecedented GB-only advertising with an unclear funding source was undemocratic too. That doesn't make other parties perfect.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by ianch99

Still using the childish name calling? I thought we have moved on from this.

There are Remoaners and there are Remainers.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

There are Remoaners and there are Remainers.

What are people who are critical of what has happened since?

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Damien

What are people who are critical of what has happened since?

Depends on how they come across.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

There are Remoaners and there are Remainers.

This has no meaning. We have left the EU so you need to move on.

[OLD BOY]

It has a meaning until people stop bleating on about the decision of the electorate.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

It has a meaning until people stop bleating on about the decision of the electorate.

Ah fascism. I’ll be honest I did have it on my political and economic decline of the UK bingo card.

I realise I was a little harsh on what we gave the world in another thread. Culturally, we have the literary greats of Orwell and Dickens. I doubt even they believed 1984 and Oliver Twist would be considered aspirational in 21st century Britain.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by jfman

Ah fascism. I’ll be honest I did have it on my political and economic decline of the UK bingo card.

Perhaps you shouldn’t post when you’ve been on the booze - or was it the opioids?