Be Excellent To Each Other

So you'd prefer some professional psychoanalysis

I'm just trying to make sense of things.

It's possible to disagree with someone without being condescending.

Chris is a law talking guy, of course it isn't.

Well, yes. (although not personally... then again... )

I'm not sure I've ever expressed an opinion as to the merits of psychiatry before; I think you're transposing my views of sociologists onto this Which is what my automatic and rather quick "no" was in response to, as that was the only discussion we've had on the merits or standards of any area of study. So my "no" was somewhat misplaced, as I was answering a different question. I was confused Anyway - I have no particular issue with psychiatry, and I don't know why you'd think I did.

Lewie - apologies, I wasn't intending to be condescending, and I apologise for that. All I was trying to say was that it is a bit rum to make rather specific claims about people's motivations based merely on the action that they took. It isn't overly helpful, and is very unlikely to be accurate anyway.

Surely politics is largely about doing exactly that and then campaigning to get what it is that you want by appealing to those motivations. The Leave campaign kept banging on about immigrants, their press friends running stories dehumanising them and then won. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to make assumptions about the motivations of many of the people who voted to leave.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 30851.html

Commons to debate triggering article 50

And as it turns out the answer is 'thats up to us'



Although she's not accepting that

So the SNP want another indyref because then they can stay in the EU, because becoming independent turned out to be A Bad Thing.

So they want to be independent from one thing so they don't have to be independent from another...

They want to retain their status as members of the EU.

I think it's entirely rational.

The previous indyref was a choice between "Independence & EU membership" and "Staying in the Union & EU membership".

Now it's a choice between "Independence & EU membership" and "Staying in the Union & leaving the EU".

It's a fundamentally different choice.

Don't believe that's the case though. It would be 'Independence and being able to rejoin the EU'. If we start the exit process before Scotland secedes from the Union, there's no framework in place for them to stop the exit and stay behind. If we don't exit, I don't believe they'd retain EU membership automatically as an ex-member of an EU state. They'd also never get membership without being made to take the Euro either, so they'd lose the ability to keep the pound which was a key prop of the indy campaign last time around.

Yeah, rationality and facts have nowt to do with it.

It's not even as good as that - the Prime Minister of Spain has said, repeatedly, that Spain would veto any application to join the EU by an independent Scotland (as, indeed, have France also).

Trust me though, you just can't tell these people, they just won't have it - it's like telling a 4 year old Santa doesn't exist. Apparently it's all OK because "SNPbaaaaaad!!!" and EU diplomats saying nice things to Nicola Sturgeon.

The whole thing is unprecedented. I can't blame Sturgeon at least trying to see if a deal can be made so they never leave, or indeed trying to find a way to throw a spanner in the works of Britain leaving in the first place. She has a clear democratic mandate to do that.

I agree it's unclear how exactly it might play out, but considering another independence referendum has to be on the cards.

The obvious model is Greenland. Still part of Denmark but not in the EU.

I'm not sure that's the case. Greenland is an Autonomous Territory of Denmark, and I don't believe that an Autonomous Territory is permitted to be an EU Member State - so if it were the other way around and Denmark had left with Greenland wishing to stay in, that would not have worked.

Oh, absolutely agree. I don't fancy her chances of anything other than UK leaves EU, Scotland leaves UK, Scotland joins EU however. Especially as guaranteed that Westminster wouldn't permit the secession of Scotland during Brexit negotiations, it would have to occur after.

I'm not an expert on Danish constitutional politics, but at the time Denmark joined it lacked that autonomy. It left in 1985 after a vote.

Wikitruth

Well yes, when it joined it was part of Denmark. If this were the other way around and Scotland wished to leave the EU and the UK stay, the Greenland model would work. But not this way around.

I could picture a scenario where we move to a very loose confederal system and England/Wales becomes the Greenland. Heck of a lot of constitutional engineering to get there.

What if Johnson is such a terrible person at the Foreign Office that Scotland stays in the UK just so they don't have to talk to him?

WHAT IF THAT'S THE PLAN?!

London hears this proposal and approves. As long as we're in Denmark too.

Mainly for the bacon.

We'd be Vikings!

Lego Vikings!

O/

\○

Mali, we need to talk

A little known fact about vikings is they only ate spam

What did they come in?

And the Viking women did all the fighting.

The Danish women.

Let the rest of us have some!

Hats!?!?!??!

Well he does look like Cras

Well, shit. This is a thing: the idea that US trade negotiators, as part of a new UK-US trade deal, will kowtow to Big Pharma and force changes to the NHS. Not an empty threat, it almost happened in Australia. That's scary as fuck.

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/statu ... 9979001861

The big Brexit prize: breaking the NHS by @alanbeattie (https://t.co/jL5bFrmYt0). pic.twitter.com/ONcXj3X5Kx

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) July 18, 2016

Struggling to imagine that Hunt et al would give a fuck. I honestly think that Tories don't really care if it gets replaced by something better just as long as the NHS is destroyed. It's the only way to explain their actions. It offends their fuck-headed ideology that much.

I mostly agree with markg. The direction of travel under thirty years of Thatcher/Major/Blair/Cameron has been monetarism and free markets: privatisation, deregulation, neoliberalism, and globalisation. Against that background, a single state-run healthcare system sticks out like a sore thumb. We know there's no shortage of appetite to get rid of it from some factions within the Conservative party. Let's hope they do not get empowered any further.

Indeed. Like the Pyramids, or the Great Wall of China.

That's absolutely terrifying. Contrary to what Leave were claiming, staying in the EU was by far the best option for preserving the NHS.

Jesus, of course this was going to happen. Anyone who thought otherwise is crazy. And big Pharma bosses love social care and best for patient practice, dr fidelity, etc. They also dislike hiring the cheapest option and rail roading dissenters.

*nods*

Ford will be putting car prices up due to the weak pound and is considering closing its last two UK factories:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 62561.html

All my suppliers (bicycles and parts) have put their prices up people having less money and prices going up can only mean bad stuff for my wee business. Only just got going too. Thanks brexit.

BBC 2's Brexit: the battle for Britain recaps the past couple of months with some interesting interviews with leading figures in both campaigns. Lord Mandelson blames Corbyn, Will Straw comes across as being annoyed by everyone, and the head of Leave guy is insufferably smug whenever he is criticised over the £350m lie. Still very much a first draft, but if you've got the time it's worth watching.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Cameron's 'renegotiation' was a distraction that prevented the IN side from building its campaign two or three years ago, and the lack of positive arguments to complement the economic stuff just turned floaters off.

The first parliamentary statement by the secretary of state and accompanying debate didn't really enlighten us much about progress (disappointingly, no MP asked him if we had left yet).

Good to know that one Tory cut through the crap and pressed Mr Davis on the most pressing issue he'll be facing:



And there's always this horrifying image:



The B Teams were discussing the petition about re-running the whole affair, but nothing really interesting was said, other than an SNP member getting angry because the chair wanted him to stick to the topic on the order paper.

I thought it was very informative about progress, there hasn't been any. They keep trying to imply that they are keeping their cards close to their chest for the upcoming negotatiations but it's clear that they are riven with internal conflict and still haven't got the first fucking clue what they're doing and still no answers whatsoever to all the most important questions. I'm sure it'll all work out just fine.

Looks like "We totally trying to get a good deal and we'll keep trying until we do but stay in the EU until then" as Cras said would happen