For the Brits: When will BREXIT referendum happen ?

[Stavros]

Ha ha ha! Don't you just have to laugh your little cock off at this fucking lot! Even a billion pounds can't buy those corrupt cunts, the DUP! Now we've got a dozen or so MP's holding the country to ransom again! What next.....another fucking billion? It's only money eh!
& I bet my bollocks you thought it was a good idea at the time? Anything to keep Jeremy out of office eh Stavros!

I voted Remain, it was you and the DUP who voted to Leave, so you are the one with the responsibility for the farce we are currently witnessing. And you said before you only really voted to spite Cameron as if the EU was a separate issue even though it was the only question on the ballot paper. As for Corbyn who right now could be Prime Minister sometime before Easter, I have told you enough times it is a personal issue re him and Momentum, and thus I vote Green which is as good as it gets for me. I would prefer it if you made some attempt to follow up your decision to vote Leave to tell me why we should leave the EU where we have access to a free market of 500 million, only to re-negotiate entry on different terms. Where is the sense in that?
And then have a stab at the Irish border question, the details surrounding the status of EU/UK citizens after Brexit, who is going to work on our farms -where food has been rotting in the field with not enough migrants to pick it- and staff the NHS and our care homes. Tedious as they are, these are the day by day, bread and butter items that will be affected when we leave the EU. I never asked for any of this, you did. So its your call.

[peejaye]

Do you fucking sing as well? If I were a Mod you'd be having a couple of weeks in the stands for your OTT outbursts on this subject! I used my vote, I'm guilty of nothing so "Man-Up" & stop squealing like a wounded sow! It's pathetic! I'm not giving you the pleasure of consistently telling me I'm wrong whatever I say on this subject although I do have an insight into some of it! If you Anti Left wing brigade weren't starving the country with your Austerity, or difficult fucking decisions as you lot call them, this wouldn't of happened either?
As usual with your selfish lot; It's always some fucker else's fault!

[Stavros]

Do you fucking sing as well? If I were a Mod you'd be having a couple of weeks in the stands for your OTT outbursts on this subject! I used my vote, I'm guilty of nothing so "Man-Up" & stop squealing like a wounded sow! It's pathetic! I'm not giving you the pleasure of consistently telling me I'm wrong whatever I say on this subject although I do have an insight into some of it! If you Anti Left wing brigade weren't starving the country with your Austerity, or difficult fucking decisions as you lot call them, this wouldn't of happened either?
As usual with your selfish lot; It's always some fucker else's fault!

This is bizarre, but a fair reflection of how Brexit is dividing the UK. I do sing, because I used to be in a choir, though these days I sing alone, and not just in the bathroom, as my voice is not what it once was.
That said, I am opposed to austerity, I don't vote Tory and I never have. I was a member of the Labour Party in the anti-Thatcher drama and yet again I have personal reasons for no longer supporting the party, which began when they dropped Clause 4 and has since continued because of Momentum. I was also a Shop Steward in Bick's outfit so there ought to be some common ground between us. On a range of issues I may be more left than you, I just tend to take a more pragmatic line on things these days.
What I don't think I will ever understand is why someone with your experience voted to leave the EU.

We are at a critical point in this process, either the UK government is going to give the EU something they can mould into an agreement, or we crash out of the EU with chaos in Northern Ireland and Gibraltar and no friends to help us. And we are in this situation for the devastating reason that nobody ever expected Leave to win, not even the Leave brigade. None of them thought the process through to consider the practical issues around Ireland or Citizenship. It is as if someone said to the Generals, 'let's have a war' and the Generals found a cause, a battlefield, and then lost the plot when the war for 2 weeks lasted four years, decimating millions of lives, trashing the world economy and being remembered for one thing only: destruction. Here we are, 100 years later, as if mistakes never happen.
You voted for it, and now you want someone else to clean up the mess. But if you think this is a mess, wait for chapter two. You ain't seen nothing' yet.

[peejaye]

What I don't think I will ever understand is why someone with your experience voted to leave the EU.

& you will never understand because you don't listen to ordinary people, same as the Politicians! Do you think all the people who voted leave are racists & Sun readers? I'm neither I'm happy to say! My brother-in-law voted leave, he as a very successful business, one of his clients are Coca-Cola, the guy who owns my local home brew shop(of almost 30 years)voted leave, most of my family and friends voted leave. We are not stupid despite what YOU think. I actually saw this coming.
I don't think it's a mess, I think the cunts who are running the country & negotiating it all are a mess & anyone who can't see that must be blind!

[Stavros]

I am not sure if you really think I am not an 'ordinary' person, and I hope we can debate this without rancour.
I did - and I do- talk to people about it, 'ordinary' ones as far as I know, but the problem was always in the reasons they gave for Leaving that we could not agree on. I do understand those reasons, whether it is immigration, 'ever closer union', or so-called sovereignty' but I don't agree that immigration is a threat -badly handled perhaps but that is not the same thing-, I don't have a problem with 'ever closer union', and also believe sovereignty is a slippery concept that means different things depending on the context in which it is being used.

A big difference is that when I point out the benefits of being in a single market of 500 million, Leavers just shrug their shoulders and pretend we can still have access to it when we leave, which may be true, but can only be true with a diminished presence that will impact the economy in a negative way. Leavers then say the difference will be made up with new trade deals with non-EU countries but cannot guarantee a single deal or that any deal will be better than what we have now. For all I know, your relatives in business will be better off, but when? Five years, ten years after we leave the EU? Are you willing to tell a 20 year old they are about to lose ten of the best years of their life on a bet little different from putting the house on Bugger Off in the 3.30 at Ascot?

Worse, I don't want to make a claim about you that is not true, but I sometimes feel you voted Leave out of resentment, without thinking if leaving was good or bad for the economy over the short or long term. Resentment with Cameron, Blair or whoever you blame for the difficulties we have got into that were exposed by the crash in 2008. I have always been aware the UK was not there at the beginning and thus never really felt part of the EU project as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman envisioned it, yet the UK has had a profound effect on the development of the EU since 1973 but few UK politicians who trade on a strong or weakly stated 'Eurosceptic' line have been willing to admit this.

So we are leaving something we know, for something we do not, the opposite of Conservatism, which is maybe why the party is divided, incompetent and facing the prospect of losing power soon. You may indeed rail against the politicians you despise, but how different from the Conservative Party's position on Brexit is the Labour party position?

There was always more than one side to the argument- suppose Remain were right? Have you even considered that?

[Stavros]

The current state of negotiations in a single image, courtesy of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.

[Ts RedVeX]

Oh yeah.. The EU has definitely had influence on development in Europe - it totally stopped it to say the least.

I cannot see any reasons why there should be any trade deal between two countries at all. If government allowed people of its country to do their international business freely, then everything would be working much better.

[Stavros]

Oh yeah.. The EU has definitely had influence on development in Europe - it totally stopped it to say the least.
I cannot see any reasons why there should be any trade deal between two countries at all. If government allowed people of its country to do their international business freely, then everything would be working much better.

a) this thread is about Brexit, to be specific, the process whereby the UK exits the European Union.

b) Compare the situation of Spain in 1957 when the Treaty of Rome was signed, with Spain in 2017, and you may be able to comprehend the meaning of the word 'development'. Compare the situation of Poland in 1957 when the Treaty of Rome was signed, with Poland in 2017 and you may be able to comprehend the meaning of the word 'underdevelopment'.

c) how many entrepreneurs in Poland signed lucrative trade deals outside the country between 1988 and 2004, when Poland became a member of the EU?

d) What happened in the UK as a consequence of Poland joining the EU and the Single Market? -
last year [in the UK] Poles formed more business entities—14,475—than any other migrant group, ahead of the Irish, Chinese and Indians. According to the Centre for Entrepreneurs, a lobby group, by 2014 Poles had founded nearly 22,000 limited companies, the third-biggest number among EU citizens after Germans and Irish. This is remarkable given that most Poles arrived only after 2004, when Poland joined the EU.
https://www.economist.com/news/brita...rs-staying-put

e) How does this compare to the anti-EU, Nationalist govt of Poland in power today?
Now the Polish government is working diligently to secure power for the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość party, an increasingly nationalist and religiously-minded political group that appeals to the Poles born during Communism and who remember the “good old days” of food shortages, rationing, and martial law. This party is anathema to the entrepreneurial class.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/23/th...s-almost-over/

Ts RedVex -The EU has definitely had influence on development in Europe - it totally stopped it to say the least
-to say the least, verifiable rubbish.

[filghy2]

I am not sure if you really think I am not an 'ordinary' person, and I hope we can debate this without rancour.

You know it is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results to be different?

[Stavros]

You know it is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results to be different?

Let us just hope that if there is a second referendum the result will not be a repeat of the first one!