Brexit discussion thread XIII (Please read OP before posting)

Imreoir2

Silent Running wrote: »

In a similar way that you see notices on our major infrastructure works that it it part funded by the EU. Funny, I've never seen that on major projects in the UK.

They might be tucked out of the way, but they are definatly there, you don't get EU funding without them. Fail to display them and you have to pay it back.

Silent Running

Imreoir2 wrote: »

They might be tucked out of the way, but they are definatly there, you don't get EU funding without them. Fail to display them and you have to pay it back.

LOL yeah, probably tacked onto the back of the works canteen. All I know is that they're there and plentiful in all other EU countries I've driven in, and I never saw one on a UK project, I did look for them.

tubercolossus

ilovesmybrick wrote: »

One woman, and a couple of others agreed with her, said she never travelled to the continent for holidays or otherwise if she could avoid it, and almost solely travelled to America, Australia, other English speaking countries, because it was too stressful for a holiday to be dealing with other languages.

That's the educated, middle-class version of your Daily Mail-reading Brit bemoaning that 'they all speak forrin innit' in Spain and complaining if they can't get a 'proper' British breakfast.

Silent Running

Silent Running wrote: »

In a similar way that you see notices on our major infrastructure works that it it part funded by the EU. Funny, I've never seen that on major projects in the UK.

Maybe that's because there weren't any
None listed for 2016-2020
https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/2014-2020/Major-projects-2014-2020-by-Country-planned-vs-sub/2d8d-dxxu?referrer=embed


They did support some projects between 2007 2013, but nothing like the volume of projects in other EU countries.

murphaph

Something odd there because even here in Germany you see that sign very often. And Germany pays the most in.

looksee

I suppose it would be conspiracy theory level to suggest that they did not apply for grants that would be conspicuously EU supported.

Strazdas

ilovesmybrick wrote: »

I do think we sometimes underestimate how little engagement with the continent portions of the UK have. It's possibly the reliance on purely anglophone media, which was apparent during the negotiations where there seemed to be a complete lack of awareness of how they were coming across on the continental broadsheets.

About a month after the referendum was announced I was at a training workshop in the University of Southampton, and the group would have all been educated to at a minimum masters level. I did ask about the referendum and if it passed what would happen if there was a restriction on travel to the rest of the EU. One woman, and a couple of others agreed with her, said she never travelled to the continent for holidays or otherwise if she could avoid it, and almost solely travelled to America, Australia, other English speaking countries, because it was too stressful for a holiday to be dealing with other languages.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and perhaps I'm biased since I live on the continent, but I think that's an attitude you would be hard pushed to find in almost any other European country.

The relationship with the white Anglosphere (never black English speaking countries obviously) is a bit peculiar. The reason they seem to love Can, Aus and NZ is because they are bigger than them and view themselves as the dominant partner in the relationship. The one notable exception is the much bigger US, but even then they go on about the non-existent "special relationship".

Nody

looksee wrote: »

I suppose it would be conspiracy theory level to suggest that they did not apply for grants that would be conspicuously EU supported.

I'd guess the answer is much simpler that they would a) have to spend government money on it (it's only partially funded by EU) and b) can't give the contracts to their donators as thank you (free competition bidding etc.).

yagan

ilovesmybrick wrote: »

I do think we sometimes underestimate how little engagement with the continent portions of the UK have. It's possibly the reliance on purely anglophone media, which was apparent during the negotiations where there seemed to be a complete lack of awareness of how they were coming across on the continental broadsheets.

About a month after the referendum was announced I was at a training workshop in the University of Southampton, and the group would have all been educated to at a minimum masters level. I did ask about the referendum and if it passed what would happen if there was a restriction on travel to the rest of the EU. One woman, and a couple of others agreed with her, said she never travelled to the continent for holidays or otherwise if she could avoid it, and almost solely travelled to America, Australia, other English speaking countries, because it was too stressful for a holiday to be dealing with other languages.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and perhaps I'm biased since I live on the continent, but I think that's an attitude you would be hard pushed to find in almost any other European country.

I remember reading a piece in the Australian media about a decade ago about perceptions of trade with the UK. Many retirees thought it around 30%, no one thought less than 10%, but the real number less that 3%. In 1950 37% of Australian exports went to Britain whereas today China has taken Britain's place.

Just as many older Australians vastly overestimated Australia's economic links with Britain I can imagine many Brexiters suffer a similar misconception about Britain's true economic importance in the world today.

Strazdas

yagan wrote: »

I remember reading a piece in the Australian media about a decade ago about perceptions of trade with the UK. Many retirees thought it around 30%, no one thought less than 10%, but the real number less that 3%. In 1950 37% of Australian exports went to Britain whereas today China has taken Britain's place.

Just as many older Australians vastly overestimated Australia's economic links with Britain I can imagine many Brexiters suffer a similar misconception about Britain's true economic importance in the world today.

A similar misconception is Ireland-GB trade. During all the No Deal talk, numerous Brexiteers on social media were convinced that Ireland does about 70-80% of its trade with Britain......not realising that the real number is about 10%.

They seem completely stuck in a 1950s view of the world.

AutoTuning

Is there something seriously wrong with logistics? I know it’s only a day after New Years but this was bonkers. I just got a call from SuperValu about a home delivery and there was so much stuff out of stock it was actually worrying. Maybe about 30% of the products I ordered weren’t there. She was saying loads of items haven’t been delivered at all, most of them were fresh vegetables or U.K. produced items.

Perhaps it’s the level 5 lockdown / proximity to holidays but I’ve never had a call with so many out of stock items.

looksee

Familiar things have been disappearing off supermarket shelves since about November, just odd things here and there but noticeable. Just before Christmas I noticed in one supermarket (I think it was tesco) that veg was almost all bb next day, nothing with any shelf life, as though there had not been much delivery in the previous few days.

yagan

AutoTuning wrote: »

Is there something seriously wrong with logistics? I know it’s only a day after New Years but this was bonkers. I just got a call from SuperValu about a home delivery and there was so much stuff out of stock it was actually worrying. Maybe about 30% of the products I ordered weren’t there. She was saying loads of items haven’t been delivered at all, most of them were fresh vegetables or U.K. produced items.

Perhaps it’s the level 5 lockdown / proximity to holidays but I’ve never had a call with so many out of stock items.

I passed my local Supervalu yesterday and it had a long queue outside. As Lidl and Aldi were closed I guess lots were doing their panic lockdown shop where they could.

pixelburp

I'd have thought it being Christmas was as much a contributing factor at this moment in time; no doubt we will see products disappearing briefly while new sources are found, but I also presume emptier shelves is partly down to the season that's in it.

AutoTuning

This is what’s worrying me though. We’ve a potential double whammy of logistics disruptions with the pandemic spike occurring in sync with Brexit disruption. Whether or not Brexit impinges or not remains to be seen over these days ahead. It’s hard to know with the pandemic having bitten hard in Ireland and in the U.K. and Continental Europe.

Doing Brexit this month in my view is beyond irresponsible. I don’t think I will ever be able to get my head around the sheer stupidity of this tory government.

CelticRambler

Hard to be sure, but when the French locked down the Dover Straits, amongst the reassurances that the UK was well-stocked for Christmas was a warning that the standstill would have an effect on post-Christmas stock, particularly fresh veg. I would imagine that much of Ireland's veg is coming via the landbridge and would have had been wrapped up in that. Even if traffic is flowing relatively smoothly now, remember that those continental lorry drivers who were stuck in Kent last week still had to make it to Spain and other far-ish away places to collect the next load, and may not have been in any particular hurry to cross the Channel again so soon.

Fr Tod Umptious

All this talk about the British not being very european is a bit much coming from Irish people I think.

The British holiday in Europe just as much as we do and like Irish people who rarely leave the Irish pub the British do the same.

Equally we consume almost no European media, obviously there is the language barrier that makes US, Australia, Canadian media more accessible.

And when it comes to living and working abroad young Irish people clammer to get to the US or Canada or Australia or NZ while they ignore the huge opportunities in Europe that we have free access to.
Again it's a language thing.

So I don't think you can single out the British for being Anglo centric, we are equally Anglo centric ourselves.

yagan

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

The British holiday in Europe just as much as we do and like Irish people who rarely leave the Irish pub the British do the same.
.

Speak for yourself.

CelticRambler

A few days ago, I wondered aloud whether or not Irish customs officials would take steps to actively remind travellers on GB-Ireland flights that they were not entitled to use the Blue channel upon entering Ireland. I haven't heard or seen anything about this since (not that I've looked very hard) but yesterday's French news included a report that our Douanes are indeed conducting an "educational" exercise in Gare du Nord for travellers coming in on the Eurostar from London. As there was never any Red or Green channel, and no real means to create one seeing as the trains from Belgium come in to the same platforms, they've taken the attitude that everyone coming from London should be going through a notional Red channel and were doing lots of spot checks on incoming passengers (mostly French, by the sounds of it, but that might have just been an artefact of French journalism). The news did not indicate any particular problems, but the few interviewees given screen time said that they were left under no illusions that Britain is now a very foreign country.

AutoTuning

There is a very significant difference. Ireland definitely doesn’t have the same level of anti European rhetoric and I think there’s a difference in how we see Europe and also multilateral and international organisations. It’s not a topic that I like dragging up, and I’m not religious at all myself and societies have become much more secular in both states, but it’s culturally significant that Ireland has historically looked towards a Rome based religion that’s highly international in outlook, while England has what is essentially the same religion but a state one headed by their own monarch that split off in the 1530s and looks very much inwards

I think whether we’re religious or not, that has actually played an enormous part in how we’ve historically and culturally seen the continent. To one side it’s been a threatening and foreign place full of old enemies that go back centuries. To the other we see elements of the familiar in places like France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Belgium and even Austria and much of Germany.

I think the same may apply in Northern Ireland and Scotland as the main Protestant cultures there aren’t actually baked into English culture or politics either, despite what some unionists may think they’ve a far more European outlook on religion than many Anglicans. Tracing to a European movement of reformation much more so than a political movement against France, Spain and Rome which is more what the Anglican history was.

Both aspects of religious culture in Ireland also have much more heavy modern links to North America than to England.

The modern Church of Ireland also tends to have tried to very definitely trace its Celtic church routes and isn’t really caught up in English politics at all anymore either. I’m not at all trying to other modern Irish Anglicans. They’re part of the Irish story too.

While we’re all much more secular, I wouldn’t underestimate the cultural influences of how we see the world in both cases. History tends to repeat and culture tends to be very baked in in terms of how we see ourselves.

All I’m saying is that there’s a huge part of our culture that’s very much outward looking and networked on the basis of being connected to European and international institutions and cultural movements.

We’ve also historically had to look to Europe as a place to support us against English aggressions and as a place to seek refuge and education at various times.

In modern times I think our relationship with the USA in particular also is very different to the British one and I think that applies to both communities in Northern Ireland too. They’ve both got deep connections into North American culture in a two way direction.

Basically, I just think that Ireland’s views (and there are many) of the world have been about network and plugging into things either through cultural ties or though emigration. England’s have been about empire based trade largely and they’re not always as warm as they imagine and a lot of their European relations are still based on prejudices from long long gone wars and conflicts, particularly with France both because of its secular anti monarchy and republicans views and before that religious, Catholic views.

Then the “we won the war” modern history adds a layer of hubris that the rest of Europe tends to not have. It’s more a case of “let’s never have a war ever, ever again” and the European institutions were built to effectively transform Europe into something far less war like and one that is locked into core values of human rights and freedoms. I don’t think the U.K. really ever saw itself as anything but an observer of that project, whereas the Republic of Ireland spun out of the U.K. in a relatively modern conflict, had a full blown civil war and both Irish jurisdictions know all too well the value of peace in modern times and why those EU structures made sense.

The jingoistic rhetoric coming from England referencing the war to me looks more like modern Russia’s view of Europe. It’s seeing it through the lens of dead empires and never really moved on.

Culturally speaking, the English and Irish visions of Europe aren’t as similar as they may superficial seem.

looksee

While I was not paying much attention at the time, I don't particularly recall Irish attitudes towards Europe being particularly close or familiar in the very early days of the EEC? Yes there was particular attention to Rome and pilgrimage sites in Europe, but they were almost regarded as familiar oases in furrin parts rather than associated with wider European culture. My impression is that the awareness of the EU really only began to be noticeable when the big blue signs became familiar on the new motorways.

AutoTuning

I’m not so sure about that. Have a look at Irish European (and not just EU) history.
There was a lot of connection quite early on, the state was very open to interaction with Continental Europe.

Even just look superficially on trade. We rapidly connected with European companies and even semi state companies for sourcing major infrastructure be it projects done by the ESB or telecoms projects in the 20s, 30s (skip wwii) 50s to now.

Some aspects of our parliamentary system, including tiles like Deputy were borrowed from pre war France. Many of the models we used for semi state companies like ESB, agencies like P&T, all the Bords, the dairy cooperatives etc look remarkably similar to France of that era. RTE looks a lot more like the old RTF, RTB, RTL, RAI etc than it looks like BBC for example.

I’ve read examples of exchanges of civil servants, particularly in areas like P&T between Ireland and France in the early 70s and even 60s.

Our universities embraced every cultural exchange programme going.

You’d be surprised at the levels of European focus Ireland had.

Have a read or something like Ireland Though European Eyes (Cork University Press) which looks at how Ireland was viewers by continental European governments over the period the European institutions began to form in the aftermath of WWII and into the 1970s

There’s a very different view to our usual Anglo Irish relations obsessed self analysis.

We also tend to paint Ireland as very closed to trade. It really wasn’t. Far from it in fact. What often happens is we compare 1950s or 1930s Ireland to modern Ireland rather than with its contemporaries as they operated at that time and we were most definitely trying to engage with anyone who would trade. Structures of global trade were yet to form, protectionism was normal and often extreme and what we were finding really was that we were on the outside of the British Empire, yet still had post independence trade with the U.K. itself. You’re really looking at after WWII when Ireland began to be able to connect to non empire legacy trade systems, almost all of which arose as a response to the aftermath of the war.

In terms of trade and diplomacy, Ireland slotted right in along side a lot of other small independent European countries as those institutions began to form. Our history isn’t unlike a large number of EU or EEA members in many ways. Plenty have relatively modern experiences of dealing with independence from or complex and often deep conflicts with larger neighbours.

I think those parallels were understood very profoundly in Brexit. That’s why the EU members held the line. Our relationship with Britain isn’t one that’s unfamiliar to most.

looksee

I would not argue with that, because tbh I don't know. I was thinking more of the awareness of Europe by the average Joe. Or Mary. In much the same way as the lack of attention by the average English person led to enthusiasm for Brexit, except that as time went on the media here were not pushing the anti EU stories and awareness developed in a different way.

Hermy

Silent Running wrote: »

In a similar way that you see notices on our major infrastructure works that it is part funded by the EU. Funny, I've never seen that on major projects in the UK.

I seem to recall a recent Tory party conference was held in a building with one of those signs outside it indicating that it was part funded by EU money.

yagan

Hermy wrote: »

I seem to recall a recent Tory party conference was held in a building with one of those signs outside it indicating that it was part funded by EU money.

I think that's the convention centre in Manchester.

However a friend in north Wales was telling me the locals had to deal with English retirees ripping EU funding plaques.

Strazdas

looksee wrote: »

I would not argue with that, because tbh I don't know. I was thinking more of the awareness of Europe by the average Joe. Or Mary. In much the same way as the lack of attention by the average English person led to enthusiasm for Brexit, except that as time went on the media here were not pushing the anti EU stories and awareness developed in a different way.

I suspect many Irish people would have made the connection between the 'Celtic Tiger' and Single Market membership.

Perhaps the fact that the UK had no comparable Celtic Tiger event made it easier for the anti-EU propagandists there to spin the line that the UK didn't actually benefit from the SM.

This is one of the most extraordinary aspects of Brexit ; how they managed to convince a gullible public that GB didn't benefit economically from being in the EU and didn't need it.

breezy1985

Strazdas wrote: »

I suspect many Irish people would have made the connection between the 'Celtic Tiger' and Single Market membership.

Perhaps the fact that the UK had no comparable Celtic Tiger event made it easier for the anti-EU propagandists there to spin the line that the UK didn't actually benefit from the SM.

This is one of the most extraordinary aspects of Brexit ; how they managed to convince a gullible public that GB didn't benefit economically from being in the EU and didn't need it.

One big difference I noticed between living in Ireland and the UK is how many infrastructure and works projects are stamped with EU flags in Ireland where as you never hear about tangible benefits of membership

AutoTuning

Sinn Fein really has done quite a 180° shift in their attitudes toward the EU in the last 20 years and I think that’s probably as much about SF coming in out of the cold as anything else.

Without getting into party politics, they’ve made a dramatic move to the mainstream, and relatively quickly over 20 years and I suppose in reality because of the peace process.

I think a lot of SF realise the EU has been a huge part of the framework behind it. It’s been a big part of levelling the playing field in Northern Ireland.

Roanmore

Steve Baker claiming they got rid of the Tampon Tax now that they are out of the EU.
Lot of people pointing out to him that he opposed this very move in 2015.

Tell me how

AutoTuning wrote: »

Sinn Fein really has done quite a 180° shift in their attitudes toward the EU in the last 20 years and I think that’s probably as much about SF coming in out of the cold as anything else.

Without getting into party politics, they’ve made a dramatic move to the mainstream, and relatively quickly over 20 years and I suppose in reality because of the peace process.

I think a lot of SF realise the EU has been a huge part of the framework behind it. It’s been a big part of levelling the playing field in Northern Ireland.

Think they probably always recognized that but couldn't actively call for the UK out of Northern Ireland while simultaneously accepting EU involvement in the South.

I can distinctly remember Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness clarifying any dislike towards Europe with 'We've always said no outsiders should be able to influence the way a country governs itself'. They started to move from that from when the Good Friday Agreement was formed, if not completely in one go but gradually moving from it as you said.