Brexit

The forum is throwing up an advertisement:

Brits Are Baffled
Pounds Plummeting to Zero

I thought it might be a comment on the effect of Brexit on the economy, but it turns out it looks like it's just a diet ad.

I'm not even sure there is a need to make Jeff Bezos even richer. Just look for 'rough service' lightbulbs in somewhere like a traditional hardware store.

It's not just climate change. With our increasing dependence on electronic gadgets we need more electricity than we did a couple of decades ago and there wouldn't have been the generating capacity to meet the demand if we'd kept using incandescent light bulbs. (I was surprised just how inefficient incandescent bulbs are. Lighting my living room with incandescent bulbs for six hours a day for a week would use the same amount of energy as putting more than 20 loads of washing through the washing machine.)

I can understand why some people didn't like compact fluorescents: as they aged they took an annoyingly long time to come up to full brightness, turning them on and off again quickly drastically shortened their life, and as I discovered in my own house a long run of wiring could couple across enough power to cause them to flash even when switched off. But modern LEDs are superior to incandescents in every way, unless you enjoy being plunged into darkness with a ping, standing on chairs and the experience of burnt fingertips.

The UK will not withstand the twin pressures of Brexit and Covid. I fully expect Scotland and Northern Ireland to cut ties within a decade, Wales following later. The best way to stop that would be a fully federal state but I think the will to campaign for that has taken a massive hit. I don’t think Northern Ireland would initially vote for a fully united Ireland, maybe some sort of partnership with currency, defence co-operation etc. 

You may know that I voted for Brexit and still support it. But I think we do need to get things sorted as a no deal isn't in any parties interests but with the pandemic things have been skewered sideays.

One wildcard might be if any country gets the vaccine then that country has huge negogiating power.

The narrative coming from the EU at the moment is that No Deal from their perspective is their preferred option and not a disaster as in the long term it may make the EU stronger, they only need to protect themselves from any negative spin and will therefore maintain openness whilst sticking to the level playing field stance.

Individually most EU Countries will at worst lose less than 3% of their Export GDP If they stop shipping to the U.K., COVID means that there is excess capacity in the EU at the moment and most things previously sourced in the UK will be easily sourced from an EU Country mitigating the cross EU nation GDP % losses.

To hamper U.K. free access will benefit the EU COVID recovery and the U.K. will need to capitulate as they did in the NI solution in the Withdrawal Agreement to continue tariff free EU access remembering that the Customs hurdles remain whatever happens with a Deal as remaining in the Customs Union impacts our Sovereignty the core remit of Brexit.


This is not a dogmatic Brexit Position but an economic analysis on the numbers alone, there is very little made in the U.K. that cannot be made in the EU.

Northern Ireland in all but name left the UK on the 31st Jan, in all but taxation and Governance Northern Ireland is an EU Nation.

There will be no major moment but Northern Ireland will sleepwalk to an united Ireland as their focus moves to closer trade with the EU which means closer ties with Dublin than London.

People say Nicola Sturgeon will bring in more right wing policies while distracting people about a Scottish referendum. E.g. "SNP is more right wing than Labour but I will vote for SNP because of their stance on Scottish independence even though I prefer Labour's policies"

It shouldn't, but it will, because there are too many people who grow up indoctrinated into the extremist ends of the political spectrum. You only have to walk down certain streets in the suburbs of Belfast (or anywhere else in the country) and see the amount of flags, divisive murals (not all murals, but some) and painted kerb stones to realise why some things in NI will sadly never change. The local news still regularly contains reports of paramilitary shootings and arson attacks, and there are sizeable sections of NI society that are still hugely narrow-minded and intolerant.

That is part of the reason I left.