"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

It's a shorthand - but then the roads aren't always shortcuts.

sometimes i feel that way calz and sometimes i swing towards the opposite, that it's a moronic project championed by the very worst elements, accomplishes nothing, billions flushed down the toilet, was based on xenophobia, lies and probably illegal behaviour and those things are true regardless of who supports a second referendum or whatever

xp I'm the opposite, don't really care how they stop Brexit, if it damages "democracy" I couldn't give a toss really, not like it's not already a sham. rather side with "centrists" than fascists, feudalists and disaster capitalists

damaging democracy is not just some nebulous term tho - if ‘stopping’ brexit is not done in a way which has majority consent it will flip our politics on its head for a generation

as it is it’s going to poison the discourse for years to come - and that’s with it being (presumably) enacted

I mean I know we’re a nation of supine cunts but that could change

I didn' t vote in last ref because I didn't care enough either way. I mean I would rather the UK leave I guess but suspected the hassle/ money and time spent doing it wouldn't be worth it. I'm neither a " oh the UK is so fucked now we're all going to starve" or a " Britain will be great again" type. It almost feels as if it has nothing to do with me in that I doubt my life will be better or worse in 20 years time whether UK is in or out of the EU.

our politics has been flipped on its head for a generation anyway tbf - maybe only a generation at best

They fixed the roads is important to Scotland, too (or parts of it). A lot of rural road improvements were funded by the ERDF (incl the 30+ miles single track road to get to my mum's village). ERDF also supported a lot of Scottish start-ups through co-investment, for example.

voted Remain, against 2nd Ref for all the reasons stated above including the vindictive class/tribal politics ones, have come to the conclusion that the UK's relationship to the EU has always been so dysfunctional and unwilling that it would've been better for both sides if some variant of a Norway-esque deal had always been in place

I may be a bit more twitchy about this than the average person re medicine shortages. but the majority of people in this country are cunts and they can all go fuck themselves imo

re: 2nd ref meta-reaction-

its not as if everything imperfect about each eventuality wont be labours fault anyway

why not try for the better actual outcome

i voted remain, no longer sure what I think, its too confusing. I read pieces articulating completely contradictory takes about how we will be affected and end up not really having a clue

my antipathy towards second referendum is a mixture of feeling the campaign was flying in the face of common sense (on eg parliamentary numbers) and the feeling it would just return another Leave vote, dashed with a mixture of fatalism, complete distrust of almost all media, and my own basic inability to grasp what its actually going to really mean

I can remember around the time of the '08 crash and the beginnings of the current austerity, when LAs were just starting to tighten their belts rather than the current "looking into the jaws of death" scenario. I worked on a multi-million pound contract on a huge stream of Sheffield social housing refurbishment, that was totally EU funded. Some of these properties had been left to rot since the late 60's. Seriously, I couldn't understand how they hadn't burnt to the ground. The cable inside some of them was so old and electrically unsafe, it was actually oxidising and turning green. Anyway, I'll give the EU that one!

That's part of the problem isn't it? UK government (including local government) taking credit for things that were EU-funded? So the EU gets a lot of the blame for things that go wrong and none of the credit for anything good?

My current state on this whole clusterfuck is that nearly everyone who opens their mouth is wrong in different ways except the people calling Cameron a fuckwit.

My not so controversial take is that Brexit is grave abuse and those responsible (Cameron and onwards) should be hanged prosecuted. Hijacking a nation's generation of discourse and politics with Brexit, taking all attention away from much more pressing issues like poverty and racism, is nothing short of criminal. Whatever the question was or is, leaving the EU is not the answer. The UK will be worse off after whatever leave from the EU, and said poverty and racism will have only increased.

The chant is "fuck Theresa May" https://t.co/GbJHzHV82h

— Great Editor (@simonchilds13) February 15, 2019

well at least there is some modicum of hope for the future :)

the neoliberal democrats close to launching new CDU. "corbyn defeated us", "centrist dads united", write in your own option here

Chris Leslie takes a step closer towards leaving Labour for the new 'CDU' centrist party that by all accounts is days away from being set up
"For me idea that the Labour party is not together and arguing against this disaster is for me entirely heartbreaking."

— steve hawkes (@steve_hawkes) February 14, 2019

le sigh

best scenario
- long extension (ie kick into long grass extension and grind everyone down until we remain by default)

or... the backstop is plan A not B:
https://i.imgur.com/UwE8chS.jpg
it’s less worse (-2.8%) for the economy than the may deal (-3.9%)

also missed this. um why has he not been fired ?

China cancels trade talks with UK in protest over defense secretary's speech: The Sun https://t.co/rJOvhPVp70 pic.twitter.com/xQ7vdJNwrD

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) February 14, 2019

I can't believe the BBC missed that important story. £15 bn trade deal goes down the shitter because of idiotic bigmouth.

I thought hardmanning the PRC was government policy

it wasn't Gideon's policy, hence that useless nuclear power station that will cost 20 times more than gas storage and provide a fraction of the power. And McD chucking Mao's book at him during PMQ!

You're talking about the golden age, man. Let it go

Tory source says number of abstentions now gives No10 a useful list of the real hardcore Eurosceptics who will not blink. “It’s longer than we thought,” source says.

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) February 14, 2019

she's not going to be able to convert 60 labour MPs to her deal

Gonna need a longer knife.

I kind of agree with Cal re the awfulness of the people’s vote campaigners but I would never actually vote Leave; Blair, Adonis et al are only out there so much because of the original result. If the ref had gone Remain, who would Andrew Adonis be to most of us except the inspiration for Julius Nicholson?

I knew then that there would be tons of anti-Irish sentiment coming out in the press in addition to the overt racism and xenophobia already directed at non-EU immigrants and other Europeans. It was very difficult to go through the rest of the year knowing that people on the street could have voted so they wouldn’t have to see or look at anyone foreign - and regardless of what anyone well-meaning says, I am foreign. When people feign concern about too many immigrants to my face, I always ask them about this and they either say “oh you’re not foreign really!” or “oh I didn’t mean you!” But we’re all that immigrant stealing up jobs and resources to someone else in the country, aren’t we?

I am even more worried whenever I see about a racist incident or rhetoric in the mainstream because I want my other half to be safe, and I feel sick inside thinking that this is something that I even have to think about, that anyone should think about.

Tl;dr I would never vote leave again, because it has legitimised a lot of vile bigotry that should never have been allowed to fester, and the country is worse off for it.

I feel like - and this is not to belittle the horrible shit people are going thru, and I recognise I'll never be exposed to - that the initial ref and the last two years has thrown all that stuff (further than before) out of Pandora's Box and ref 2 will not put it back in again and may make it worse. With the obvious exception of people whose status in the UK may be directly affected by Leave/Remain, obv

That’s exactly how I feel. If this is what happens after a 52% Leave vote, what happens after 60%? 70%?

Or even a 48%!

(my own ideal plan would be a three-way vote, but it also requires voters seeing something non-FTFP and not screeching then throwing a chair through a window. I do accept that this is a little utopian)

FPTP!

or 48% leave 52% remain on a turnout of <60% (which is entirely feasible)... immediate calls for best two out of three neverendum territory

Yeah, that's what I mean.

"failure to follow procedures" is my preferred system

my feelings haven't really changed since I voted remain to help weaken the enervating, unrepresentative putrescence that is our parliament and the chauvinists that it serves

perhaps they shouldn't do any more referendi in the UK for now. At least not until we have liquidated our landed gentry/royal family/gutter press and lost the delusional empire complex/avalonian sceptred isle of whiteness fantasies.

the initial ref and the last two years has thrown all that stuff (further than before) out of Pandora's Box and ref 2 will not put it back in again and may make it worse

I do agree with this, but I don't see any other options that you can't say the same about

I am worried though at how much the goalposts have been moved already; Leave still has a v effective propaganda machine, and if at least a vocal minority of real people (and an internet army of maybe-real-people) are already convinced that No Deal is ~actually good and definitely what at least 96% of leavers knowingly voted for~ despite all the quotes and leaflets pre-ref mentioning easy deals and considerable upsides and single markets and continuous trade areas etc, that's not looking good for a sensible debate any time soon - plus politicians and the media emboldened by 3 years of absolutely 0 accountability for anything

guess you don't want to take back control then, cool cool

tory party as a whole has shifted horribly rightwards since 2016 leaving labour to occupy the sensible middle ground on many issues... but for some reason, you never hear this story in the press

Well I don't think it's cynical or depressive to say that the UK' politics - and fuck the UK, I get not-England wanting out - has a fair way to go in the direction of worse before even the conditions for getting better, ideologically, culturally, might arrive

Probably the person I've seen made the most profoundly, cavernously miserable by Brexit is my friend's uncle, who was born here and has lived here all his live and was the child of mid-20th century Polish immigrants. He definitely took the referendum result - and I can't blame him here - as a country telling people like him and his family to fuck off.

I know immigration wasn't the only driver of the Leave vote, but I think a lot of people who aren't immigrants or children of immigrants underestimate the extent to which, for a lot of people, the referendum result cuts right across their sense of selfhood. As a sign of country saying "inviting people like you in was a mistake, creating the conditions that allowed you to live here, or to be born the person you are in the first place, was a mistake". And while we tend to spend most of our time talking about the economic or political fallout (both of which will be dire), or mocking buffoons like Andrew Adonis, this is still a profoundly emotional issue for millions of people in this country who probably feel a little less at home here than they once did.

(And yeah obviously it goes without saying the EU has its own abysmal treatment of refugees to reckon with as well, it's not an innocent wronged party here)

Thanks for that, Matt DC.

My folks are non-British EU citizens who've lived in the UK 50 years+. And, yeah. I hadn't spoken with them much about it until the holidays just gone, although of course I knew they felt horribly disappointed and betrayed.

Not to mention the practical and legal issues EU27 nationals living in the UK have to negotiate.

I was of the view that you have to "respect the result" and a 2nd referendum isn't viable but the way I feel about that has definitely changed.

I'm in this camp and because of my nature I'm sort of studiously going around making sure we've lined up all our paperwork and that we have a path to citizenship etc. My wife on the other hand is like "if they want to kick us out, then fuck them". God knows what we'd actually do if it came to that though.

I saw that British drivers in the EU may have to exchange their UK drivers licences for licences in the EU country in which they live in order to drive in Europe after a no-deal Brexit, like starting the day after Brexit. I haven't seen whether that would apply to British drivers only in Europe on holiday, and how such people would be legally distinguished from British European residents. What a mess.

i enjoyed that post Matt.

im a negative bastard so i always felt keenly aware of people's xenophobia growing up (helps that I'm an pale, green eyed person with a scottish accent - so not who racist cabbies and such are expecting to be the issue of a brown skinned refuge - and have been treated to countless xenophobic, just between us whites, confidences over the years), so the result hasn't really changed my thoughts in that way. but as Noel mentions the stressful practical and legal complications for EU nationals is such a huge ramification. would personally prefer remain by hook or crook for the sake of those people.

I'm frankly kind of surprised you don't have to get a Spanish driver's license if you actually live in Spain?? I mean, EU schmee-u, they drive on entirely the other side of the road for one thing.

No if you're just visiting it's fine. Otherwise no one would be able to ever rent a car on holiday anywhere.

I dunno about Europeans. As an American I had one year from the start of our visa to exchange for a French license, which I wish I'd done but I didn't know then that we would be staying.

Matt articulated stuff that I'm admittedly eliding. I've said before that the main motivator for me voting Remain in the end was thinking about East European friends a d neighbours and not wanting to send the "fuck off" signal. The economics is largely arguable in my opinion.

I've been lolling at Brits resident in France complaining about the couple hundred euro cost of getting a carte de séjour post-brexit. like, for the rest of us it costs that much, why should you, after leaving the EU, have it any different? [hint: you won't]