Re: Boris
 

You're making Boris Johnston look like a man with nuanced foreign diplomacy skills.

Re: Boris
 

So you agree they are white trash terrorist thugs? Or are you just defending their actions because it's "your side" so you're willing to look the other way?

Re: Boris
 

Ah yes, British exceptionalism at its finest.

Championing the WTO on one hand as a global free trade utopia giving the UK guaranteed access to the EU and other markets, while at the same time suggesting you just completely ignore the rules when it doesn't suit the UK and believing that the UK is big enough that nobody can do anything about it. Any other member can complain, and they most definitely will if the UK effectively prioritizes EU trade in the absence of any deal, but effectively not enforcing its border. Other WTO members can demand the same treatment of their own trade.

I suspect many more brexitter heads will have to come out of their backsides before reality dawns. The EU is half a billion people, and it apparently has to follow WTO rules. But the UK, a tenth of the size, will just do as it pleases, have their cake and eat it. Bless, exactly the same stupidity that was convinced the EU will have to give the UK the benefits of EU membership, with none of the costs or obligations. How did that work out?

The only thing you're slightly right about is that the US under Trump hates the WTO. Unfortunately for the UK, they hate it for precisely the reason that the UK brexitters love it - because it is a rules based organization that helps guarantee minimum access for smaller members and prevents big countries bullying smaller ones and arbitrarily blocking them to extract concessions. Not sure if you noticed, but the US, EU and China are 'big', and the UK really isn't, by comparison. If the WTO broke down, the UK would lose any access to the EU and to most other countries around the world. So the UK better hope that the US does not destroy the WTO, and it certainly better appear as a good law abiding member, because the last thing it wants to do after burning its access to the EU and 70+ other markets around the world that the EU has trade deals with is to have the minimum access of WTO rules lost too.

Re: Boris
 

I'm not defending any thugs, I'm picking up the point that you seem to believe that the only issue with a border is that 'white trash' are being unreasonable about putting up a few cameras.
I know you like to portray yourself as some kind of idiot-savant on here but this is really scraping the barrel of autistic black and white analysis

Re: Boris
 

It's the same mindset behind ISIS and the Taliban and just about every terrorist group in the world who think it's justifiable to resort to violence and destruction of lives and property. That's what I find fascinating about the IRA, as well as their apologists. After all, what is unreasonable about putting up a few cameras on a border between two countries? Can you tell me what is unreasonable about having a few security cameras or out of sight customs checks?

I'm aware of the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland and the troubles. It certainly is a passionate topic. But tiptoeing around a bunch of white trash, uneducated terrorists dwelling in a selfish, self-absorbed stone-age mentality of vengeance and violence rather than properly civilised human beings in a modern Western Europe is not something that particularly inspires me. Are we to live our lives under the blackmail of terrorist threat from the IRA? That, to me, is the idiot-savant mentality and autistic fear.

Re: Boris
 

Ah yes, the magic schrodinger's brexit where facts can be two completely different things at the same time, depending on what suits the point they're arguing.

Technology to police a land border with multiple crossing points with zero friction that will effectively stop smuggling of goods and people? Of course such technology can be devised! Apply same technology to Calais to stop brown people from Africa and Asia getting into the UK? Of course technology cannot do that, you need a big ***** off fence and men with guns plus 25 miles of water!

Border checks on goods and people crossing a land border between the divided halves of an island? It'll be as good as transparent, the micks won't even know it's there. Move this virtually invisible border to the middle of the Irish sea? It's suddenly a mile-high concrete wall of Trumpian dreams ripping the United Kingdom apart!

WTO rules? They're absolutely fine, we could switch from the best free trade deal possible to WTO rules for 50% of our trade, and we'll hardly notice! WTO rules for trade with America and India and China and the rest of the world? Absolutely appalling and intolerable, WTO rules are the minimum level possible, we could cut trade deals and massively increase trade.

etc. etc.

Re: Boris
 

Re: Boris
 

Yeah. Build a wall around England and leave the rest of us alone !

Re: Boris
 

If we filled it with booze you'd come running.

Re: Boris
 

Your wilfully arrogant ignorance of the issues is not unfamiliar but still breathtaking. I will point out that you have been wrong in almost all of your prognostications about the course of Brexit over the past few years. Yet again, you resort to silly bombast (and a pretty obvious display of ethnic prejudice).

Removing the border removed the context for the violence and allowed people, critically, in NI to choose whichever identity they wanted as British, Irish or both and live whatever delusion they wished. It was a glorious and successful fudge (of the kind that the EU does so well). Reimposing the border (and "a few cameras" is a ridiculously inadequate description as the UK government's own assessment showed) destroys that. Furthermore it is being done against the will of the people on each side of the border in direct contravention to the GFA - so much for "democracy".

You have forgotten, it seems, that it was before the GFA that the UK was living in blackmail of the IRA terrorist threat with all of the cost and misery of the security apparatus that imposed. The GFA removed the basis for blackmail, just like, for example, the legalisation of homosexuality did for that. As ever, you claim to yearn for a past that never existed.

Re: Boris
 

It's an Irish / Northern Irish problem requiring a solution that works for both parts of the island.

Causing such chaos for 2.5% of the population is blowing my mind at the moment, swathes of who don't even want to be part of the UK. It's GVA is less than 9% of London's and less than half as valuable per capita. Not even Scotland is causing this level of grief. There simply MUST be an appropriate local solution so that these lives aren't ruined but for the sake of the rest of the UK progress can be made. Create a 'hard' border coming from NI to the UK? It's a far too complicated line to police so would require a Trumpy wall which is hateful. It's got to be maintaining the status quo?

Re: Boris
 

There is another solution that is so obvious that I'm staggered nobody seems to have suggested it.

The DUP are the ones (with some hard right Tory backers) holding the whole agreement up by insisting the backstop must go.

So to solve the impasse, why not agree the following:

The deal as agreed by Theresa May goes through as planned. But if there is no technological magic solution to the border (and let's be honest, Boris and co keep insisting such a solution is possible, but have invested zero in hiring engineers and trade experts to put an actual proposal together) then the backstop will come into play as agreed. There will be no time limit, it will be permanent. However, a referendum would be triggered for NI to allow the population there to choose between remaining in this backstop (customs union, single market) or leaving and effectively putting up a hard border (unless Boris's crack team of magicians has come up with a viable border technology plan). This could be done every 5 years, just so NI can change its mind if it decides to.

This solves the backstop issue. It's a NI issue, it's really the DUP who're blocking it. So let the people of NI themselves decide.

The DUP will hate this, because they know that the public in NI is 65% remain, and the business community that they draw most of their support from is even more remain. And so they know that the NI people will vote to remain in the single market and customs union.

But it would pull the rug from under the DUP position, because they'd have to effectively argue against letting the NI population decide an important issue in a referendum, and effectively argue that economic collapse should be imposed on them by the whole of the UK, even when their agreement would give power to the population in NI to make the decision.

Some Labour MPs who accept brexit, but oppose no-deal might back it, even Corbyn, who we know is really a brexitter but has made his opposition to no-deal would have the rug pulled from him.

Re: Boris
 

I like it, I'd say it's not that obvious when you get into the depths of it but the basic element of eliminating the DUP and having the back up is very straight forward.

Re: Boris
 

Re: Boris
 

Yes, the basic principle is that Boris et al object to the backstop because they say it is 'undemocratic', and there must be some exit mechanism to allow it to end.

This solves both issues. The backstop is a measure that only affects Northern Ireland. Therefore you basically let the people of Northern Ireland decide where they want the border - across Ireland, with all the issues it causes, or in the middle of the Irish sea. The backstop cannot possibly be undemocratic if it's there by popular choice in a referendum.