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Thread: Brexit - The End of the United Kingdom?

  1. #61
    Seasoned Pro backstothewall's Avatar
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    It can't be any other way. If 21,000 British soldiers and 13,000 RUC couldn't secure the border a couple of dozen customs officers armed with no more than clipboards and biros aren't going to be able to.
    Last edited by backstothewall; 05/04/2017 at 11:33 PM.
    Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.

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    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    'Ireland on course to issue one million passports in wake of Brexit': http://www.irishtimes.com/news/irela...exit-1.3050540

    Quote Originally Posted by Gordon Deegan
    ...

    This follows the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan confirming that 250,000 applications have been received for the first quarter of this year - a 26 per cent increase on the same period for last year.

    The number of Irish passport applications from those born in Great Britain between January and the end of March increased by 69 per cent to 23,181 on the corresponding period last year, almost half the 48,741 who applied for Irish passport for the entire of 2016.

    Similarly, applications for Irish passports from those born in Northern Ireland increased by 68 per cent going from 16,581 in the first quarter of last year to 27,898 in the same period of 2017.

  3. #63
    Seasoned Pro backstothewall's Avatar
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    It's a little known fact that Mrs Backstothewall is one of them'uns. Our kids have both British and Irish passports as a result. The British ones are due to be renewed but she's decided not to bother, and she's getting an Irish one before we go away next.
    Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.

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    May to put call for June 8 general election before Commons

    http://www.rte.ie/news/world/2017/04...7-uk-politics/

    Interesting times ahead ... can see this being played as Referendum #2 in Scotland and NI.
    Hello, hello? What's going on? What's all this shouting, we'll have no trouble here!
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  5. #65
    Director dahamsta's Avatar
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    I know Corbyn has agreed to support this, but the party members would be absolutely insane to.

  6. #66
    Coach BonnieShels's Avatar
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    Well they did.

    Labour have had so many opportunities to hurt the Tories with Brexit and they have failed miserably. I kinda want them to die at this stage. Useless cretins. Corbyn is a mug.
    DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?

  7. #67
    Seasoned Pro peadar1987's Avatar
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    I just want Scotland gone from this whole mess. Sure it abandons England to the right-wingers and racists, but England have had plenty of chances to fix things and just keep lurching further and further towards a permanent Thatcherian dystopia. Any progressive English people who want out of Toryland will be more than welcome north of the border.

  8. #68
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    A vivid piece, this, with insight into past, present and possible future Irish border-life.

    'Will Brexit reopen old wounds with a new hard border in Northern Ireland?': https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ounds-troubles

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean O'Hagan
    Depending on who you speak to, then, the ramifications of a hard Brexit for Northern Ireland seem at best deeply worrying and at worst cataclysmic. [Eamonn] McCann and [George] Knight [a Protestant historian from Clones], from their differing perspectives, both intimated that they believe Brexit will probably lead to the breakup of the UK. It is a view shared by the cautious, thoughtful [Fintan] O’Toole: “The United Kingdom has proved itself to be a very contingent construct, but I am not sure it will survive Brexit,” he says. He proposes a special bilateral deal that could be worked out for Northern Ireland, which echoes what he calls “the constructive ambiguities of the Belfast agreement concerning the uniqueness and complexity of the state”. It is difficult to see that kind of flexibility being formulated by what [Roy] Foster calls “the awful Daily Mail government at Westminster”.

    What future, then, for an island that, pending the June general election result, is currently united north and south in its opposition to Brexit? “What we may see,” says McCann, “is that the question of a unified Ireland is posed in an unprecedented context: not as republican versus unionist, but in terms of alignment with Europe.” It is one of the ironies of Brexit that the Irish border may yet be consigned to history by the very people who insist that Northern Ireland is as British as Finchley. Stranger things have happened of late.

  9. #69
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    All very amusing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39770328

    Quote Originally Posted by BBC
    According to an account in Frankfurter Allgemeine, Mr Juncker said: "I leave Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before." After the dinner, held last Wednesday, the UK government called it a "constructive, useful working dinner". But the German newspaper report suggests Mr Juncker said there would be no trade deal between the UK and the rest of the EU if the UK failed to pay the "divorce" bill which it is expected to be asked for.

    It was the day after the meeting that Mr Juncker reportedly told German chancellor Angela Merkel that Mrs May was "deluding herself" and "living in another galaxy" when it came to the issue of Brexit talks.
    Clearly, the Tories are desperately trying to paint for the British people a very different and misleading picture from what is really going on behind the scenes. I hope the British electorate can see through this and duly punish them in the upcoming election. It's hard to see anything other than a Tory victory at the minute, unfortunately, although Labour do appear to be closing the gap, according the latest polls: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7709961.html

    Quote Originally Posted by Rachael Revesz
    Labour has gained in at least three polls just weeks before the general election, slashing the Tories' lead by as much as 10 points. Jeremy Corbyn’s party is up by four points in the last week to 30 per cent support, found Opinium, while a separate YouGov poll between 27 and 28 April found that Labour was up two points to 31 per cent – both figures contributing to a smaller gap between the Tories and the Opposition. A third poll for the Sunday Times showed the Tories had a 13-point lead with 44 percent of the vote, yet a YouGov poll gave the Tories a 23-point lead last week, showing a dip of 10 points.
    Perhaps Corbyn has the momentum...

  10. #70
    International Prospect NeverFeltBetter's Avatar
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    I read some details of that dinner, May comes off looking comically ignorant of the EU's position. There's genuine shock that the EU isn't prepared to let Brexit be a success.
    Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).

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    Capped Player SkStu's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    It's hard to see anything other than a Tory victory at the minute, unfortunately, although Labour do appear to be closing the gap, according the latest polls:
    Are we still trusting pollsters given their track record through Likud victory, Scottish Independence, Brexit, many of the Sanders v Clinton primaries, Trump as nominee, and Trump v Clinton?



    2015 and 2016 were anni horribiles for the polling profession... You'd hope to see massive changes in their analytics and methodologies before putting any significant stock in what they are telling us.

    As you say Danny, I am finding it difficult to foresee anything other than a comfortable win for the Tories.

  12. #72
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NeverFeltBetter View Post
    I read some details of that dinner, May comes off looking comically ignorant of the EU's position. There's genuine shock that the EU isn't prepared to let Brexit be a success.
    Just seeing some further details of what was discussed at the dinner here: https://sluggerotoole.com/2017/05/01...-about-brexit/

    Quote Originally Posted by Jeremy Cliffe
    EU side felt May was seeing whole thing through rose-tinted-glasses. “Let us make Brexit a success” she told them. Juncker countered that Britain will now be a third state, not even (like Turkey) in the customs union: “Brexit cannot be a success”.

    May seemed surprised by this and seemed to the EU side not to have been fully briefed. She cited her own JHA opt-out negotiations as home sec as a model: a mutually useful agreement meaning lots on paper, little in reality. May’s reference to the JHA (justice and home affairs) opt-outs set off alarm signals for the EU side. This was what they had feared. I.e., as home sec May opted out of EU measures (playing to UK audience) then opted back in, and wrongly thinks she can do same with Brexit.
    May really does come out of it badly; amateurish, by the sounds of things.

  13. #73
    Seasoned Pro backstothewall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SkStu View Post
    Are we still trusting pollsters given their track record through Likud victory, Scottish Independence, Brexit, many of the Sanders v Clinton primaries, Trump as nominee, and Trump v Clinton?



    2015 and 2016 were anni horribiles for the polling profession... You'd hope to see massive changes in their analytics and methodologies before putting any significant stock in what they are telling us.

    As you say Danny, I am finding it difficult to foresee anything other than a comfortable win for the Tories.
    I'd disagree with that. The pollsters have delivered exactly what they said they were delivering.

    The polls in the run up to Brexit showed it being very tight. It ended up being very close.

    The polling on the run up to the US election showed Clinton ahead nationally by between 1%-4%. She won the popular vote by 2.1%.

    The problem wasn't in the polling. It was in how it was reported
    Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.

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    Capped Player SkStu's Avatar
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    That is one take alright. However, I would dispute many facets of it.

    Almost all of the swing state polls were predicting Clinton victories of varying degrees to the extent that outlets such as CNN proclaimed that Trump had no path to victory. That is why Trumps victory shocked everyone. That is why Sanders victories in the primaries in States where polls were predicting comfortable Clinton wins shocked everyone. The media reported what the pollsters were saying.

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/econo...ist-explains-3
    But at the state level, the errors were extreme. The polling average in Wisconsin gave her a lead of more than five points; she is expected to lose it by two and a half. It gave Mr Trump a relatively narrow two-point edge in Ohio; he ran away with the state by more than eight. He trailed in Michigan and Pennsylvania by four, and looks likely to take both by about a point.
    With respect to Brexit, the pollsters again got it wrong. True, they predicted a close call but most were predicting in and around a 4 point swing in favour of Stay. To the extent that Farage and other members of the Leave campaign conceded defeat on the day of the referendum.

    http://uk.businessinsider.com/pollst...-brexit-2016-7

    The companies that do this work do need to adjust how they are approaching these issues and ensuring that their bias and other factors are accounted for appropriately. As Jon Cohen, Chief Research Officer for SurveyMonkey said at the time of the Brexit result:

    "We have to learn from missteps that we've seen and Brexit is just the latest spur to get it right," he said. "But we just have to get it right, it's too important not to."
    Anyway, I don't want to drag this thread too much further off topic. Apologies. Might be worth its own thread?

  15. #75
    Seasoned Pro backstothewall's Avatar
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    There was very little state level polling done by crebible polling companies in the US election though. With the national polls the way they were the focus was on places like Arizona and Georgia. Hard to say who to blame for that. The polling companies weren't polling them but they poll the places the media pay them to poll.

    I was speaking to Bill White recently who runs lucidtalk polling in Belfast (he's had some excellent results).

    He was saying that when Hillary was in Arizona the week before the election that Bill Clinton was going crackers behind the scene saying she needed to be in the rust belt.
    Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.

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  17. #77
    Banned KrisLetang's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by backstothewall View Post

    He was saying that when Hillary was in Arizona the week before the election that Bill Clinton was going crackers behind the scene saying she needed to be in the rust belt.
    My friend Joe Weisenthal from Bloomberg tweeted: In hell you are seated across from 2 people. One keeps saying Clinton lost because of Comey. The other keeps saying she didn't visit Wisconsin.

  18. #78
    Seasoned Pro backstothewall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KrisLetang View Post
    My friend Joe Weisenthal from Bloomberg tweeted: In hell you are seated across from 2 people. One keeps saying Clinton lost because of Comey. The other keeps saying she didn't visit Wisconsin.
    Surely there should be a guy saying Bernie would have beat him
    Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.

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    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    An astonishing list of Theresa May's gaffes and (what should be) campaigning embarrassments so far here, yet "[a] recent general election poll found that an astounding 41% of respondents concluded that Theresa May is running a good campaign compared to 22% who thought it was going badly": http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.ie...ally-like.html

    Quote Originally Posted by Another Angry Voice
    There is a significant demographic who like their politics slick, stage-managed and essentially meaningless, and they like their politicians spoting glib endlessly repeated platitudes rather than giving honest answers or detailed policy proposals.If this demographic didn't exist, ans wasn't pretty damned big, then the politicians obviously wouldn't do it would they?

    There exists a very significant cohort of people who find actual political policy talk crushingly boring, but who can be easily won over by the endless repetition of familiar sounds.

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    Banned KrisLetang's Avatar
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    Obama endorses that French Macaroons guy in stupid ad on French TV. What could possibly go wrong? And why are Macaroons so expensive? They're like 5 bucks each in some places. I like the pink ones.

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