Let's see all the brexit wankers now that Macron is telling May that Norway is the best you can hope for.

Goodbye Euro clearing and the trading and whatever tax take that resulted in, including the income tax, vat and all that stuff tied up in servicing those jobs.

I only just found put today that we pay less than Norway per capita for our current EU membership. So our best hope now looks like paying more, for less input, but we've got to abide by all the rules the brexit muppets voted against like freedom of movement.

In other news Boris Johnson threw his dead cat on the table so none of this gets any real media attention.

So I popped to my nearest Argos today to pick up Monster Hunter World. You could probably get it cheaper elsewhere, but I had thirty quid of vouchers, so Argos was particularly bargainous.

On the way back I stopped off at a cafe to get my daily dose of caffeine. There was no wi-fi, so I couldn’t do my usual trick of link-hopping on Wikipedia while I slurped. A copy of the Torygraph was on the next table, so I picked that up, thinking “What’s the worst that could happen?”. Turns out, plenty. My blood pressure has shot through the roof.

WARNING: Incoming opinions. They may differ to your own. Proceed at your own risk. You have been warned.

So one geezer was saying it was a good thing we’re leaving the EU, because the EU is kinda like a federal state, and is hence non-democratic. He cited China and Russia as examples. One, China isn’t a federal state, it’s unitary. Secondly, Russia is federal on paper only – the reality is closer to Putin’s personal fiefdom. He conveniently ignored Canada, the USA, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Brazil, India, etc., etc., etc. (Aside: talking of federal states and link hopping on Wikipedia, I recently found out Belgium is technically a federal state. One for QI.) Whilst bemoaning the non-democratic nature of the EU, he also mentions that some of the members of his anti-EU (“eurosceptic”) thinktank are MEPs. You know, MEPs that were elected. In an election. By people. Who voted. Democratically.

Second geezer was claiming Brexit was a good thing, because it means we’ll be better able to deal with the economic madness unleashed by Trump. (For the record, he was pro Trumps changes, as they’ll be good for big business. Terrible for everyone else, but big business, eh? Don’t you just love ‘em? “Too big to fail”, my arse.) Never mind that the referendum happened before Trump was installed in the White House. This is like being happy that you’ve moved from a mansion to a hovel because your new neighbour at your old place is an arsonist.

Another article was bemoaning the current trend in the Tory party towards a softer style of economic and political suicide Brexit, as a soft exit would leave us a “vassal state”, having to take EU rules without having a seat at the conference table. That’s why you should have voted remain, you cockweasel. Soft or hard, we’ll still have to deal with Europe – you can’t ignore an entire continent on your doorstep. No matter how “free” we are of the Union, we’ll still have to deal with the decisions they make – all we’ve given up is our chance to influence these decisions. In other news, fellow “vassal” Norway hasn’t done too badly outside-of-but-interacting-with the EU. Almost as if the EU isn’t a giant evil empire! WHODATHUNKIT.

Finally, this is off topic, but final cracker-ass white guy was saying that a reduction in random stop-and-searches on the street is a bad thing, because it reality they were biased towards white people. He doesn’t seem to understand that fewer searches were conducted on black people in total because the white population of Britain is much bigger than the black. As a ratio (Basic Statistics for Dummies, page 1), black people were something like seven times more likely to be stopped by a predominantly white police force. He finished off by saying that a reduction in public invasions of your privacy random stop-and-searches was the direct cause of an increase in knife crime. This is a man who needs to be smacked round the back of the head with a bat engraved with the words “correlation does not equal causation”.

This all comes from the same people who piss and moan about democracy when it suits them, but resist any changes in the electoral system to make it fairer than the current First Past the Post “system”. The same people who turn a blind eye to the fact that Trump lost by two million votes. The same people who say that we should leave the EU to preserve our independence, but call anyone who says the constituent countries of the UK should have greater independence 'traitors'. (The UK has greater control over Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland than the EU ever had, or ever would have had, over the UK. And unlike the EU, which was voluntary, the UK was achieved by force of arms.)

Fuck the Torygraph, fuck Brexit. Remoaner for life.




/rant

I liked the rant too.

I do have some leanings towards the view that if we leave the EU, we might as well leave the EU, and do it fully and properly, albeit sensibly and well thought out. Leaving the EU and still being bound to their rules with no voice is in fact a stupid outcome.

Edit-unless you think that there's a decent chance we will rejoin in the next decade of course.

There was that brief few weeks before the election where May was swanning around countries trying to get a feeler for trade deals.
Pretty much everyone went "Yeah alright, we can deal, for visas"

WorKid wrote:

I liked the rant too. I do have some leanings towards the view that if we leave the EU, we might as well leave the EU, and do it fully and properly, albeit sensibly and well thought out. Leaving the EU and still being bound to their rules with no voice is in fact a stupid outcome. Edit-unless you think that there's a decent chance we will rejoin in the next decade of course.

Or you think leaving the EU is insanely damaging and want to limit the damage as much as possible.

Roujin wrote:

WorKid wrote:

Leaving the EU and still being bound to their rules with no voice is in fact a stupid outcome.

This is a common opinion but then I look at Norway.

Me too. It's not a brilliant model.

WorKid wrote:

Roujin wrote:

WorKid wrote:

Leaving the EU and still being bound to their rules with no voice is in fact a stupid outcome.

This is a common opinion but then I look at Norway.

Me too. It's not a brilliant model.

Yeah but hilariously Norway actually seem to make it work. Id love to see some key stats for things like taxation rates, life expectancy, literacy, average happiness of citizens, gdp, cost of living, etc. and then compare that shit to what ours is like right now.

People saying Norway is a shit idea surely mean that Norway is shit compared to our current deal, which it is. However that still doesn't explain why Norway appears to be able to be a prosperous nation despite all the OH SO TERRIBLE RULES they have to blindly follow from the EU.

Or we cancel it because it’s an unnecessary, self-defeating clusterfuck of nonsense.

Roujin wrote:

WorKid wrote:

Roujin wrote:

WorKid wrote:

Leaving the EU and still being bound to their rules with no voice is in fact a stupid outcome.

This is a common opinion but then I look at Norway.

Me too. It's not a brilliant model.

Yeah but hilariously Norway actually seem to make it work. Id love to see some key stats for things like taxation rates, life expectancy, literacy, average happiness of citizens, gdp, cost of living, etc. and then compare that shit to what ours is like right now.

People saying Norway is a shit idea surely mean that Norway is shit compared to our current deal, which it is. However that still doesn't explain why Norway appears to be able to be a prosperous nation despite all the OH SO TERRIBLE RULES they have to blindly follow from the EU.

I think Norway is rated as the happiest country in the world.

Norway being a great country - which it is - and the EEA being a bad fudge for them, (and the UK) are not mutually exclusive.

Because otherwise you can just point at Greece and say they were fucked because they were in the EU.

Blue Swirl wrote:

...maybe the Tories aren't as smart as they think they are...

It’s like a motto for life.

Plorntit

In this corner I still hear about ‘racialism’ on the regular. 50.1 sounds about right.

England, France, Italy, America, Australia... Spain?

The Nordic countries are the major sensibles, but it's too cold there.

Escape wrote:

England, France, Italy, America, Australia... Spain? The Nordic countries are the major sensibles, but it's too cold there.

New Zealand has its head screwed on properly.