Leave or Remain?

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Widespread rumours now of preparations for another 'snap' election.

Possibly the only way forwards, or at least sideways....
 

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
Where have our Brexiteers gone?

What about all of you out there? Not 'Brexiteers' per se, but voted 'Leave' because...

Because..?

Because of the wonderful things it does?

Where are you all?

* speaks loudly as if speaking to Spanish waiter*

WHAT IS IT YOU ACTUALLY WANT?

ARE YOU GETTING WHAT YOU WANTED?

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH HOW THINGS ARE PROGRESSING?

* wonders if they can actually hear me but are choosing not to*
 

Mikinton

Well-Known Forumite
Where have our Brexiteers gone?

What about all of you out there? Not 'Brexiteers' per se, but voted 'Leave' because...

Because..?

Because of the wonderful things it does?

Where are you all?

* speaks loudly as if speaking to Spanish waiter*

WHAT IS IT YOU ACTUALLY WANT?

ARE YOU GETTING WHAT YOU WANTED?

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH HOW THINGS ARE PROGRESSING?

* wonders if they can actually hear me but are choosing not to*
Whilst not being a Brexiteer (I voted Remain, and was always going to), I'm now firmly in the "OK - Let's do it" camp. So no going back, no second referendum, we've made our bed ..... etc etc. I've a few Twitter friends in Europe (German and Dutch ladies) and both seem quite affronted that, despite all their bending-over-backwards e.g. Maggie's rebate, we should reject their little club. And I suspect their political leaders think similarly. When Cameron went there in February 2016 asking for something more he could have to sell to us Brits before the referendum, they told him to f-off, and I suspect they'd be just as generous were we to go along and say "Please Mr Juncker. We've made an awful mistake, and we should never have doubted you. Please can we stay."

As my old boss used to say "we are where we are".

ETA Sorry I've not answered your question.

I suspect in, say, 10 or 15 years time, the 3 main deliverables will have been delivered - the ability to control our own laws, our own borders and our own finances. The key word is control; we may still be paying £2bn each year for Farage's pension, but it will have been our choice.

We were in the EU etc for 40 years, and Brexit should be seen as a long term project. Sure it's going to rough the first 5 years, and the 5 or 10 after that are going to be difficult ..... but after that? Who knows?
 
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tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
Current estimate is we control every border as tight as possible apart from the NI one where people walk across at will?
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Current estimate is we control every border as tight as possible apart from the NI one where people walk across at will?
They did have quite a bit of difficulty controlling that one when they had half the Army there and spiked most of the roads.

One imagines that very few people would view NI as the final destination, so you do have the choke points of the ferry terminals and airports to the 'mainland', though there could be some lucrative unofficial routes via fishing boats, etc. This would leave you with a variation of the oddities that go on at the ferry ports to the Republic. A passport is not a legal requirement for travel between the UK and Ireland, for a citizen of either country, though it is for everyone else, even those who don't 'look different'. It can be interesting, particularly when travelling on foot, to see which passengers are judged to be possible "real foreigners". Quite how one establishes that one doesn't need a passport, without having a passport as evidence of your lack of need of one, has never really been very clear to me. It usually boils down to talking your way out...

It can all lead to some bizarre 'security' conversations, even down to being accused of lying when I said that I lived in this country whilst I was standing in Wales, having given a Stafford address.

Having said that, I haven't had to establish my identity in around the last sixty journeys, so ~120 crossings.

When driving a vehicle, I have never been stopped when travelling into the UK. I've been stopped three times driving out to the ferry in Holyhead, cursory boot glances - and I've had a couple of short chats in the car park in Dublin on the way back. I was sniffed by a spaniel on the boat once, and I suspect that the car deck has a quick run round before the ramps go up. The cops standing around at Holyhead seem to take no great interest in anything that drives past them, a stoppage is very rare. Foot passengers got a much higher level of, still cursory, scrutiny - but, I haven't travelled on foot for about ten years, since the trains this side became too difficult.

There is a Vehicle Check Site on the A55, a few miles out of Holyhead, but I have never seen it in use.

I haven't flown to/from Ireland since the early 80s and I don't know what entry hoops you might encounter by that means today, but airlines do tend to require photo ID, either passport or photo driving licence for citizens of these islands flying 'internally', although, again, how you can prove, on the spot, that you don't actually need a valid passport without having one is a bit of an issue. When all this started, there were (essentially) no foreigners in Ireland and it barely mattered, but times have changed a bit lately.
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
They did have quite a bit of difficulty controlling that one when they had half the Army there and spiked most of the roads. ...

Weren't there some lucrative free trading enterprises in the days of the hard border. I seem to remember something about getting subsidies for raising pigs on one side of the border, smuggling them across the border and getting another subsidy for raising them there then getting another subsidy for exporting them back home? Also butter? Something about cyclists smuggling it across the border in plastic tubes stuffed in the frames of their bikes?
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Leave And Remain, is probably a more accurate description......
Hannah Gordon and John Alderton to beef up David Davis's negotiating team...

81WZd11Iv-L._SL1500_.jpg
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
I dunno. All businesses that want to remain just get a NI warehouse, you are now in the EU and the UK at the same time, sorted!
 

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
Whilst not being a Brexiteer (I voted Remain, and was always going to), I'm now firmly in the "OK - Let's do it" camp.
I am too. but for slightly different reasons
ETA Sorry I've not answered your question.
No, but you couldn't, not being one of them ...
I suspect in, say, 10 or 15 years time, the 3 main deliverables will have been delivered - the ability to control our own laws, our own borders and our own finances.
One of the things that exercises me is that within even a 5 year time-frame, the demographics suggest a disengagement from the very process of disengaging - how will that be managed within the context of a politically engaged, and potentially 'noisome', newly enfranchised cohort?
The key word is control; we may still be paying £2bn each year for Farage's pension, but it will have been our choice.
If we again look at this from the perspective of the as-yet-to-be enfranchised voting public, bearing in mind that this is a cohort that has been educated in to the belief in the EU project, 'with mother's milk' sort of thing, the key words that worked for an entirely different tranche of voters becomes almost entirely obsolete.

We were in the EU etc for 40 years, and Brexit should be seen as a long term project. Sure it's going to rough the first 5 years, and the 5 or 10 after that are going to be difficult ..... but after that? Who knows?
The entire absurdity of the situation is summed up exactly there -

I don't think the Average Man in the Street has quite grasped that in many ways the entire JIT functionality of the EU, that was indeed its core raison d'être, means that we are, 40 years on, already so indelibly enmeshed, and so inextricably linked, that extrication can only be seen as such a long term project, with unknowable outcomes, that it would always be something of a 'punt'.

It 'remains' a not entirely insignificant question to ask that, if 'the 5 or 10' years from now are to be as difficult as is predicted, with not much more than a 'who knows?' as to whether it will be any better thereafter as an answer, then would it not be better to just cancel the question?

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for the Brexiteers.
 

hardwood

Well-Known Forumite
I am too. but for slightly different reasons.

I was against it from the outset but if we are going to do it then we need to go full Singapore. The first phase would be to eliminate the welfare state and privatise the NHS. Phase 2 would be to scrap the minimum wage, living wage and employment rights such as the sick pay. Given these conditions a few will prosper and the national GDP may well be significantly higher, the GDP per head which is more meaningful measure of who benefits would through the floor, but who cares.
 

proactive

Enjoying a drop of red.
I was against it from the outset but if we are going to do it then we need to go full Singapore. The first phase would be to eliminate the welfare state and privatise the NHS. Phase 2 would be to scrap the minimum wage, living wage and employment rights such as the sick pay. Given these conditions a few will prosper and the national GDP may well be significantly higher, the GDP per head which is more meaningful measure of who benefits would through the floor, but who cares.
I vision of Eutopia, no doubt.
 
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