Repercussions/Fallout from EU Referendum (Echo Chamber)

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John McKenna

Re: Repercussions/Fallout from EU Referendum (Echo Chamber)

Post by John McKenna » Tue Jan 15, 2019 11:37 pm

Michael Farthing wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 8:30 pm
John McKenna wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:27 am

Ps I think one of the stars may be falling from your flag - despite desperate attempts to hold it in place.
Venus, the Morning Star, shines at magnitude greater than -4.0 and this sets the standard for the days ahead.
Things are brighter than any day since July 2016

Venus is also the Evening Star.

Things are looking darker, at least to me, since the vote in favour of leaving the EU.

Not only has the result of that referendum been, and continues to be, undermined also the very foundations of "representative democracy" are being shaken to their core...
The meaning-ful/less-ness of tonight's Commons' vote remains as clear as mud. (It has got Jeremy off his perch, today, for a day tomorrow.)

The UK's two-and-a-third party system has fragmented, irreparably like Humpty Dumpty, as have the EU twenty-seven but its Franco-German Axis remains unbroken for now, though under increasing strain.
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Michael Farthing
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Re: Repercussions/Fallout from EU Referendum (Echo Chamber)

Post by Michael Farthing » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:35 am

At the moment, Venus is the Morning Star though admittedly anyone looking East in the morning to see it is more likely to find it obscured by clouds.

Regarding the stars on the flag, forget not that there are 15 nations that I am sure would be happy to provide a replacement. The UK is not nearly as important to the EU as the UK would like to believe it is.

NickFaulks
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Re: Repercussions/Fallout from EU Referendum (Echo Chamber)

Post by NickFaulks » Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:13 am

Michael Farthing wrote:
Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:35 am
Regarding the stars on the flag, forget not that there are 15 nations that I am sure would be happy to provide a replacement. The UK is not nearly as important to the EU as the UK would like to believe it is.
I can agree with you that the UK's influence within the EU is nil, and always has been. We exist solely to be milked for financial contributions and as a tame export market, since their rules inhibit trade with our old friends. Do you seriously believe that your 15 replacement nations will step straight into those roles?
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a QR code stamped on a human face — forever.

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Michael Farthing
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Re: Repercussions/Fallout from EU Referendum (Echo Chamber)

Post by Michael Farthing » Wed Jan 16, 2019 11:37 am

NickFaulks wrote:
Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:13 am
Michael Farthing wrote:
Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:35 am
Regarding the stars on the flag, forget not that there are 15 nations that I am sure would be happy to provide a replacement. The UK is not nearly as important to the EU as the UK would like to believe it is.
I can agree with you that the UK's influence within the EU is nil, and always has been. We exist solely to be milked for financial contributions and as a tame export market, since their rules inhibit trade with our old friends.
Oh I don't know. We convinced the EU (apart from France) that seven months summer time instead of six was a good idea.

More seriously I think you suffer from the same problem here that besets our view of international chess:- "We do badly - We've not won an Olympiad for yonks". Well that's because there are 176 nations in the world so it's not really surprising if we don't come first. With 28 nations in the EU we shouldn't be surprised if our influence is only 1/28th - but actually I don't agree with your analysis and my view is that we have had significant input though inevitably tempered by the half-hearted support we have given back to the EU.

Do you seriously believe that your 15 replacement nations will step straight into those roles?
Oh I think they'll be quite happy to claim a star on the flag - And I certainly don't think the EU will change their flag to have a hole in the ring, which John's picture is suggesting!

John McKenna

Re: Repercussions/Fallout from EU Referendum (Echo Chamber)

Post by John McKenna » Wed Jan 16, 2019 3:30 pm

Hi Michael, good to see you, and Nick, engaging in civilised debate in this star chamber.

I can see both sides of the argument when it comes to the UK-EU relationship. But, as I've said before, as far as I was concerned, it had to be all-in or all-out.

The EU could not continue to allow the UK to keep its preferential half-in-half-out privileged status for too much longer and would have been driven to bring the UK more and more into line with its increasingly ever-closer-and-closer political and fiscal union.

The EU was becoming a black hole and if it reached critical mass could suck in every nation from Ireland to Israel, East to West, and Finland to Morroco, North to South.

Brexit and other 'populist' movements have put the brakes on the Euros' all-encompassing lust to expand, for now, but probably not for long.

Like the Roman Empire it will be led on by its brightest star - the unifying principle - until it can go no further externally, or falls apart internally.

By the way, the 15 stars on the EU flag are meant to represent the principles on which the EU is based, and they are not meant to represent any of the member states.

A fully-paid-up cadre/commissioner of the EU should know what those 15 principles are. I'm not sure which one is being chipped away at in Banksy's pic, but to me they've all been tarnished since the EU's post-crash treatment of Greece, which that country's elite richly deserved but which ended up being visited on the ordinary people.

(And, the same goes for the Irish Republic, but they took their EU medicine quietly at home, mainly. Notice, however, how many poor and suffering Euros, and others from further afield, beat a path to the the UK for a remedy to their EU, and other, ills.)

Anyway, we're not out of the Black Forest, yet, and are in danger of losing our way and being trapped into remaining for the foreseeable future.