Bringing goods from the EU

[brocher]

As somebody said this morning:

Boris Johnson said he'd never agree an Irish Sea border, then agreed it, denied he'd agreed what he'd agreed, then implemented it...& now says there must not be an Irish Sea border.

This is Johnson lying through his teeth directly when questioned by Sophie Ridge on Channel 4! He is just a lying toad!!

 

[sploo]

You need to sort it then, I'd recommend ranting on a woodworking forum for 4 years. Usually best to repeat stuff over and over.

Ranting and repeating crazy stuff over and over for 4 years does seem to have worked well for Boris et al...

 

[Jake]

Bob's lot, [edit counting is difficult: 8] years ago, about when people started to believe.
Nigel Farage – 2013 Speech to UKIP Conference – UKPOL.CO.UK

 

[Rorschach]

Any of you thought of standing for parliament on an anti Brexit platform? Sounds easy from what I read here, the electorate would be clamouring to vote you once you point out those easy facts and how stupid they were to vote for Brexit. They'll be building statues of you in no time.

 

[sploo]

Any of you thought of standing for parliament on an anti Brexit platform? Sounds easy from what I read here, the electorate would be clamouring to vote you once you point out those easy facts and how stupid they were to vote for Brexit. They'll be building statues of you in no time.

I thought someone had already dealt with that whattabouterry several pages ago.

Better perhaps to stand for parliament on a platform of better education, and tighter controls on fact checking and honesty from politicians and the media. It'd be more attractive to the electorate, and would be more likely to counter future such deceptions of the public.

 

[Daniel2]

So, I took the plunge and placed an order with Workshop Heaven.
Mainly to see for myself how things are working out, regarding buying
in the DUK and being shipped to mainland Europe.
It really appears that they are bending themselves inside out to try and
accommodate the new system.
The ordering process was made painless to me, and DHL were charged
with billing the VAT & customs duties (which, at the point of despatch,
were still an unknown amount).
I have just recieved the bill from DHL. Of course there is the VAT; nothing
wrong with that. The duty to be paid on the items (€400 worth), is €20.
Okay, it's not a lot of money. But, still, it's €20 thrown into the ether because
of giving the public a say in something they were too dim to even
realise that they didn't understand what they were actually voting for.
The extra workload it has placed on the vendors and tranporters is terrible
and can only scrape more away from their margins, because the prices haven't
gone up.
Yet.
Just more non-productive paper chasing to generate "money".
Like the South Sea Bubble, this road we're on is unsustainable.

ATB,
Daniel

 

[sploo]

So, I took the plunge and placed an order with Workshop Heaven.
Mainly to see for myself how things are working out, regarding buying
in the DUK and being shipped to mainland Europe.
It really appears that they are bending themselves inside out to try and
accommodate the new system.
The ordering process was made painless to me, and DHL were charged
with billing the VAT & customs duties (which, at the point of despatch,
were still an unknown amount).
I have just recieved the bill from DHL. Of course there is the VAT; nothing
wrong with that. The duty to be paid on the items (€400 worth), is €20.
Okay, it's not a lot of money. But, still, it's €20 thrown into the ether because
of giving our half witted public a say in something they were too dim to even
realise that they didn't understand what they were actually voting for.
The extra workload it has placed on the vendors and tranporters is terrible
and can only scrape more away from their margins, because the prices haven't
gone up.
Yet.
Just more non-productive paper chasing to generate "money".
Like the South Sea Bubble, this road we're on is unsustainable.

ATB,
Daniel

As someone pointed out a some pages ago; Brexit has essentially removed bureaucracy and red tape from the top of the system... but simply moved it to the individual; so we're all now having to deal with the resulting extra procedures and costs.

 

[doctor Bob]

Probably the best thing to do, is to find a few like minded individuals on say a woodworking forum and back slap each other for 4 years.
Won't change anything.

 

[Rorschach]

Probably the best thing to do, is to find a few like minded individuals on say a woodworking forum and back slap each other for 4 years.
Won't change anything.

Or join the labour party, pretty much the same thing.

 

[sploo]

Probably the best thing to do, is to find a few like minded individuals on say a woodworking forum and back slap each other for 4 years.
Won't change anything.

Naaah. I'm planning on starting a campaign to have all prisoners released. I mean - by definition, the crimes they committed were in the past, so we should all just let it go and move on. No point in being miserable and dwelling on it; just let them out and move forward.

 

[Jacob]

Naaah. I'm planning on starting a campaign to have all prisoners released. I mean - by definition, the crimes they committed were in the past, so we should all just let it go and move on. No point in being miserable and dwelling on it; just let them out and move forward.

Recommended in the Bible and numerous other places. "Jubilee" year - every few years (50?, 7?) cancel the currency and all debts/credits, cancel all land property ownership and redistribute, free all slaves and prisoners, etc .
A big restart button for when things have gone to the dogs.
Features a lot in Verso - the most interesting and radical history book I've ever read! Out marxes Marx!

 

[Jelly]

Any of you thought of standing for parliament on an anti Brexit platform?

I thought someone had already dealt with that whattabouterry several pages ago.

Once again for emphasis:

[snip]
Your point is brought up frequently enough in political conversations to be a trope, and invariably it comes across as someone making a BS deflection by accusing their opponents of failing to take personal responsibility, to derail the thread of discussion and disguise that they're unable to come up with a valid counterargument.

Now taking the other point:

Better perhaps to stand for parliament on a platform of better education, and tighter controls on fact checking and honesty from politicians and the media. It'd be more attractive to the electorate, and would be more likely to counter future such deceptions of the public

The cynic within me suspects that it would be extremely difficult, nigh impossible to build a campaign or party to do that, as long as we have:

• De-facto two party rule, and
• A politically influential Print Media which is highly polarised and would likely view the fact checking and media honesty angle as being an assault upon the power they have been able to concentrate.

If Labour becomes willing to concede that it has at least two distinct political philosophies with in their ranks (the Conservative party has at least 3, but I can't see them conceeding anything whilst they're in power) and that they can only satisfy both sides of that long term is by supporting a move to Proportional Representation or similar preference based voting systems; then there's a chance things would get better.

 

[Jacob]

.......

If Labour becomes willing to concede that it has at least two distinct political philosophies with in their ranks (the Conservative party has at least 3, but I can't see them conceeding anything whilst they're in power) and that they can only satisfy both sides of that long term is by supporting a move to Proportional Representation or similar preference based voting systems; then there's a chance things would get better.

Agree about PR etc.
Not sure what "political philosophies" there are in Labour other than the socialist mainstream as represented by Corbyn, Attlee, Bevan et al. The others more like power seeking factions.
Could anybody hazard a guess at Starmer's "philosophy" ?

 

[Jelly]

Agree about PR etc.
Not sure what "political philosophies" there are in Labour other than the socialist mainstream as represented by Corbyn, Attlee, Bevan et al. The others more like power seeking factions.
Could anybody hazard a guess at Starmer's "philosophy" ?

I don't think Starmer has built a cohesive platform, I'm not a huge fan of his having rather prefered Lisa Nandy for the leadership after Corbyn departed (although to my discredit, not enough to have joined the party in order to vote for her).

Anyway, on the distinct political philosphies going on within Labour:

I would consider the New Labour/Blairite faction to have a distinct political philosophy, which could be characterised (perhaps pejoratively, but not inaccurately) as "Thatcherism-Light with a side of Social Democracy"; very keen on using public-private partnership and PFI even in cases where there's an obvious natural monopoly where the government delivering the project/service directly would be a more efficient way to do things.​

​

There's then the standard socialist/social democrat philosophy you describe; but there's then a distinct split within that philosophy between:​

• People who have a more traditional british take on that which is based more around class which emphasises the economic (left-right) split and is agnostic to mildly conservative on social issues, and
• People who have a more internationalist, socially liberal view which tends towards intersectionality theory and pushes for the social issues of individual marginalised groups to be addressed, because that will in turn have knock-on effects which advance everyone's wellbeing and economic security.
  • Whilst it's not intentionally part of this sub-group's political philosophy, it wouldn't be unfair to generalise that "not being very good at explaining themselves in simple terms" is a defining element of the most vocal members within this group.

Consequently,

• The Blairites infight with the Traditionalists, over the validity (or lack thereof) of following keynesian or neo-liberal economic policies.
  • The result is that opposing parties (Lib Dems, SNP, and Conservatives alike) are able to use the frequent disagreement and movement in position by the party, to paint it as being economically unsound;
  • The emotiveness of that internal disquiet and frequent change means they can do this even though the hard evidence suggests Labour has performed about as well as if not slightly better than the Conservatives or Coalition have in recent history, whilst being much less harsh on the poorer elements of society).
• The Internationalists in-fight with both the Blairites and the British Tradition over different things (government intervention in markets and foreign policy with the Blairites, and Social Policy with the more conservative element of the British Tradition), which allows opposition to do two three things:
  • Firstly to paint that faction as being purely interested in "Identity Politics" and engaging in a "Culture War", whilst being uninterested in wellbeing of the man on the street.
  • Secondly, to use the memory of Militant and other entryist organisations to make people feel that the same thing is happening again with Momentum (which I'm sceptical of, but wouldn't consider to be anything like the genuine entryist movements in the 70's and 80's).
  • Thirdly, having created the false (or misleading) narrative, and the spectre of a shadowy group controlling the party from within, go on to then paint the entire labour party as being cohesively behind those things as a political project; thus turning off traditional labour voters.

FWIW I think all three of those philosophies have excellent contributions to make to the political life of the UK, and would subscribe to certain elements of all three, tending towards the two more traditionally left wing viewpoints.

My main issue is that by having an ongoing, frequently public and always rancorous battle for primacy within the party rather than co-operating, all three factions have contributed to undermining the electability of the Labour Party as a whole.

 

[Droogs]

then lets have true PR and have the parties split into their factional parts and have a consensus coalition government for once

 

[selectortone]

Expecting MPs from the two main parties to vote for PR is about as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas.

 

[Rorschach]

It doesn't help that we held a referendum on voting reform and it was thrown out.

 

[Jelly]

then lets have true PR and have the parties split into their factional parts and have a consensus coalition government for once

Exactly!

It would help to clarify the status of devolution too...

I know plenty of younger Scots people who recognize the issues with independence, but still vote SNP because they don't feel that Labour, LibDem, or Conservative would actually represent their interests in Westminster.

The converse applies in Wales where I know a number of people who naturally align with Plaid Cymru, but vote for a "Main Party" in Westminster elections because they don't think Plaid will get in (this said I did live in Gwynedd at the time which had a Plaid MP, so some of that nationalist spirit is bound to spill over into neighbouring constituencies).

I might actually consider voting for the Yorkshire Party myself if there was a genuine PR system in place, they have fairly sensible center-left policy positions and articulate a good argument for regional devolution.

 

[Ollie78]

Pretty sure Guy Fawkes had the right idea.

Ollie

 

[doctor Bob]

We could have a referendum on PR. Let’s hope it’s close so we can have a brief 5 year chat about it.