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  1. #21201
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    ^ Rather like nobody can be bothered with the Chico and his pathetic attempts to wind people up, the EU can no longer be bothered with the UK.

    If the UK are issuing fishing licences with the same apathy as they are providing visit permits then I can understand exactly why the French are getting hot under the collar.

  2. #21202
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    If the UK are issuing fishing licences with the same apathy
    They only have to demonstrate a history of fishing to qualify Troy. As well you know, the UK follows rules and did so to its detriment while a member of the EU, sadly the same cannot be said of many existing EU members.

  3. #21203
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    They only have to demonstrate a history of fishing to qualify Troy.
    The smaller fishing boats do not have the tracking devices installed and the UK have rejected their log books. The rules are designed to obstruct rather than follow the guidelines drawn up as part of Brexit.

    I have witnessed the same obstructive procedures to provide the promised free permits for family visits.

    The UK are being absolute c u n t s

  4. #21204
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    The rules are designed to obstruct rather than follow the guidelines drawn up
    Well, where have we seen that before. The schadenfreude of the Frenchies spitting their dummies over getting their own treatment back is too funny. I only hope they try pulling the plug and follow through on some of their other threats.

    Incidentally, I bear you no ill will Troy and I hope it all works out for you.

  5. #21205
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    ^ It may be funny, possibly even deserved, but it simply isn't British to go back on one's word.

    Not doing something you promised is a French trait. Adding bureaucratic hoops to continually obstruct is a German trait. Talking while doing nothing is typical Italian and Spanish.

    Anyone would think the UK was acing like a Johnny foreigner...

    No ill will from my side either.

  6. #21206
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    but it simply isn't British to go back on one's word.

    Not doing something you promised is a French trait. Adding bureaucratic hoops to continually obstruct is a German trait. Talking while doing nothing is typical Italian and Spanish.
    Agreed, but after nearly 4 decades of education inside the EU school it appears the only way to beat them is to join them.

    EDIT

    Say what you like about Frost but he's playing the EU at their own game and if anything being more obdurate and they don't like it.

  7. #21207
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chico View Post
    I'm OISC approved




    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    the EU has spent the last year or two threatening the UK over perceived slights and infringements against the almighty Blocks all pervasive rules.
    And yet again, nothing but 'the EU, the EU, the EU' . . . grow up. If your leadership doesn't understand contracts and agreements it's hardly a surprise when people like you don't - - despite your vast real estate holdings

    You and chico are prime examples of the Brexiteer. Well done.

  8. #21208
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    And yet again, nothing but 'the EU, the EU, the EU' . . . grow up. If your leadership doesn't understand contracts and agreements it's hardly a surprise when people like you don't - - despite your vast real estate holdings
    Well there are two sides to the agreement so how do you want me to word the posts wihtout mentioning the EU you silly little man. Secondly, a contract is set at a point in time, from there it is about performance and the EU with its interpretation and enforcement of its rules in NI have made the protocol all but unworkable, here we are talking about performance or am i not allowed to mention this also.

    Lastly, i have no idea why you are so fixated on me but its not healthy, i imagine Klondyke felt the same with your constant stalking. Take your own advice and give it a rest.

  9. #21209
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    ^ Yes, protection of the GFA pretty much screwed up Brexit from the start, as was explained many times. The FT had a good article about it when May was PM.

    The Brexit that Johnson has managed, threw NI under the bus and was always going to be problematic. It was signed withput any intention of adhering to it, which makes the UK look bad, not the EU.

    In many ways, the May Brexit was better, keeping the UK in the Customs Union but also keeping it united. There were lots of Brexit benefits in the May agreement without the disadvantages the harder Johnson Brexit has experienced.

    There are many things wrong with the ideals being projected by the EU but they ebb and flow with the times. Splitting off completely instead of helping to fix the problems is the weakest way out and will not fix the problems. It will make things worse for the EU and worse for the UK. One only hopes the latest German Government will reverse some of the decisions of the last one, certainly in working regulations, which will ruin a well oiled industry.

  10. #21210
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    Interesting read on The Guardian's website today written by Fintan O'Toole.

    The EU’s proposals on the Northern Ireland protocol offered what business leaders wanted, but the prime minister prefers failure and grievance

    Last week, Boris Johnson, with his paintbrush and easel at his holiday villa in Marbella, touched up his self-portrait as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill. Meanwhile, another bodysnatcher, Johnson’s Brexit tsar, David Frost, was also in sunny Iberia. In Lisbon on Tuesday evening, he channeled the intellectual father of modern conservatism, the 18th-century Irish writer and politician Edmund Burke.
    Frost demanded that the EU agree to rewrite completely the Northern Ireland protocol of the withdrawal treaty that Johnson hailed in October 2019 as a “fantastic deal for all of the UK”. His speech was entitled, in imitation of a famous Burke pamphlet, “Observations on the present state of the nation”.
    In case his audience somehow failed to make the connection between the former chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association and one of the greatest political thinkers these islands has produced, Frost reminded them – how could they have forgotten? – that he had previously given a speech entitled “Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe”. Geddit? ………

    Facing chaos and needing a scapegoat, the Tories seek an endless fight with Europe | Fintan O’Toole | The Guardian

  11. #21211
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    ^^ i agree with many of your points but i think the bureaucrats desire to centralise ever more power in Brussels is what sealed it, nations losing identity, autonomy and all the while the EU rule book grows. I am sure at some point downstream once all the current wrinkles are ironed out the relationship will reach a calmer footing,

  12. #21212
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    I don't think any nations have 'lost identity' at all.

    Have you ever travelled anywhere in the UK and thought 'Hey, just like Spain this!'

    If so, was it a bad thing?

  13. #21213
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    ^ spot on as usual, now where's that after sundown sundowner

  14. #21214
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    Quote Originally Posted by knob jockey View Post
    Have you ever travelled anywhere in the UK and thought 'Hey, just like Pakistan this!'
    Yes quiet often actually

  15. #21215
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    Quote Originally Posted by Joe 90 View Post
    Yes quiet often actually
    OK - so now you've got to it. One reason you wanted the UK to leave the EU was because you don't like Pakistanis.

    Of whom there will of course be many more than previously, as the UK will be admitting more people from the ex-colonies, particularly to do low-paid unskilled work.

    Thanks for clearing that up, and in such a witty way.

    It really does make perfect sense.


  16. #21216
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    Well there are two sides to the agreement
    WTF is wrong with you, why do you feel the need to overtake, or would that be undertake, chico in the 'thick' stakes???

    There are no "two sides" to an agreement. It is an agreement - seriously, no wonder you're fucked.



    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    Splitting off completely instead of helping to fix the problems is the weakest way out and will not fix the problems.
    Agreed. The UK had the loosest affiliation and more opt-outs than anyone else . . .


    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    nations losing identity, autonomy and all the while the EU rule book grows
    You lost your identuty, did you? What a whiny little bitch. Were you forced to learn Portuguese and listen to Wagner or Vivaldi? Had your passports confiscated and replaced with an Austrian one? Forced to drive on the right-hand side?
    Your foreign policy and police budget determined by *egads* Brussels? The local council taxes on your vast real etstae holdings determined by an EU-Beschluß?

    You -you and chico are the type happily believes any shit you're told. The sad thing is that there are so many of you that half your population is being dragged down by you unwillingly . . .

  17. #21217
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    This Looks Like An Absolute Disaster": UK Short-Term Yields Blow Up Most Since 2010 As Frantic Traders Front-Run BOE Rate Hikes

    by Tyler Durden

    Monday, Oct 18, 2021 - 08:45 AM
    Frantic rates traders pulled forward rate-hike bets after BoE governor Bailey said over the weekend that the central bank “will have to act” on inflation. The move manifested in a huge spike in 2Y gilts, which rose as much as 17bps to 0.75%...


    ... the biggest one-day move since 2010, before easing a bit. Even more striking, 3-month sterling LIBOR soared by 7.9bps, the biggest one day surge since Lehman.

  18. #21218
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    WTF is wrong with you, why do you feel the need to overtake, or would that be undertake, chico in the 'thick' stakes???

    There are no "two sides" to an agreement. It is an agreement - seriously, no wonder you're fucked.



    Agreed. The UK had the loosest affiliation and more opt-outs than anyone else . . .


    You lost your identuty, did you? What a whiny little bitch. Were you forced to learn Portuguese and listen to Wagner or Vivaldi? Had your passports confiscated and replaced with an Austrian one? Forced to drive on the right-hand side?
    Your foreign policy and police budget determined by *egads* Brussels? The local council taxes on your vast real etstae holdings determined by an EU-Beschluß?

    You -you and chico are the type happily believes any shit you're told. The sad thing is that there are so many of you that half your population is being dragged down by you unwillingly . . .
    Someone seems angry......again

  19. #21219
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    This Looks Like An Absolute Disaster
    Its called markets......they move with trades ...they are moving because of inflation...its coming back in case you haven't noticed. Should make your gold happy, probably won't solve your malaise tho. I bet you and the permanently angry Kraut would be a hoot in a broken elevator

  20. #21220
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    nations losing identity, autonomy and all the while the EU rule book grows.
    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    You lost your identuty, did you? What a whiny little bitch. Were you forced to learn Portuguese and listen to Wagner or Vivaldi? Had your passports confiscated and replaced with an Austrian one? Forced to drive on the right-hand side?
    Your foreign policy and police budget determined by *egads* Brussels? The local council taxes on your vast real etstae holdings determined by an EU-Beschluß?
    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    Someone seems angry......again
    What a brilliant retort . . . so, why don't you share with us how the nasty EU has affected you as you mentioned?

    Try not to deflect . . . or has the nasty Socialist Kolchoz of the EU destroyed your free thought?

  21. #21221
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    Brexiters, stupider than ever.

  22. #21222
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Saint Willy View Post
    Brexiters, stupider than ever.
    Another sizzling hot take

  23. #21223
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    Its called markets......they move with trades ...they are moving because of inflation...its coming back in case you haven't noticed. Should make your gold happy, probably won't solve your malaise tho. I bet you and the permanently angry Kraut would be a hoot in a broken elevator
    I agree with most of what you said. But gold ? Nah. I've basically given up on it. Not selling but still giving up. The financial powers that be will now allow gold to rise. They have it soft pegged at around $1700 USD. Anything else can rally. Bitcoin, NFT's, used cars, real estate, soft commodities, stocks, bonds , literally anything you can think of can rally. Except gold.

  24. #21224
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    I agree with most of what you said. But gold ? Nah. I've basically given up on it. Not selling but still giving up. The financial powers that be will now allow gold to rise. They have it soft pegged at around $1700 USD. Anything else can rally. Bitcoin, NFT's, used cars, real estate, soft commodities, stocks, bonds , literally anything you can think of can rally. Except gold.
    I agree. Its difficult to flex a mind so set in concrete.

  25. #21225
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    The EU is a failed empire that has condemned itself to irrelevance.



    Every day brings a fresh reminder that the UK was lucky to escape when it still had the opportunity

    SHERELLE JACOBS
    DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
    18 October 2021 • 9:30pm
    Sherelle Jacobs


    After a trip to America following the Second World War, the EU’s forgotten founding father, the legal scholar Walter Hallstein, decided that Europe’s destiny was to “mirror” the US superpower. He would be appointed president of its new political federation. A Commission, overseen by technocratic philosopher-kings, would replace national civil servants. Laissez-faire Britain would be excluded, and any attempt to reduce the project to a mere free trade body violently fought off.

    But there was a problem. European leaders thought Hallstein a delusional snob. The only thing that prevented Charles de Gaulle – who was particularly contemptuous of the vision – from squashing a project “devoid of reality” was the allure of containing Germany and agricultural subsidies. So the proto-EU was half-born a monster; Hallstein’s grand strategy almost immediately sank into a morass of budget rows and political paralysis. Still, he gloried in being first president of the commission of the EEC and the euro-federalist dream lived on.

    The result is that the European project was, and remains, an illusion: a 1950s Disney fairytale wrapped in Continental legalese. It is a failed federation not just riven by power struggles and vanity, but tormented by suspicion of “Anglo-Saxon” freedom.


    This has been more evident than usual lately, and every day seems to bring a fresh reminder to even the most disillusioned Brexiteers of exactly why we left. Emmanuel Macron continues to use the EU as an electoral weapon, petulantly agitating for a blockade against the UK, albeit with little success. Relations between Brussels and some East European states have reached new lows, amid accusations of backsliding on rights, and Poland's president has even said the EU will collapse if it blackmails his country. The bloc is an irrelevance on almost every major foreign policy issue, from the Iranian nuclear talks to the Western pivot towards Indo-China.

    Anti-Brexiteers nonetheless remain entranced by the EU’s mythology. How they gush at its iron integrity and cheered on every supposed “blinder” pulled off by chess grandmaster Michel Barnier in the Brexit talks. But they make the rookie error of mistaking dogmatism for ideological strength.

    Brussels’s doubling down on cosmetic “technical solutions” to the impasse over the Northern Ireland Protocol is a case in point. For all the lofty claims of protecting the single market (which Brussels knows could be pragmatically safeguarded by mutual enforcement), it is the free-trading UK’s divergence from its regulatory orbit that fills it with terror.

    Brussels will do everything it can to prevent this from happening. Not only to deter other member states from following the UK out of the door. In its legalistic obsessions and refusal to bend to reality, it is trying to protect itself from a devastating truth: the Eurocrats called it wrong when they bought into dreams of a superpower, super-bureaucracy 60 years ago. And now an existential crisis, potentially even greater than 2009, is coming, as its misreading of the modern era catches up with it on three fronts.


    First is economic. The EU’s low-growth, dirigiste model has long condemned the bloc to relative decline. But it has also squandered the chance to fix the fault-lines that caused the last Eurozone crisis and it remains trapped in the delusion that the single currency could survive another one. Ten years on from the Greek bailout catastrophe, Germany has arguably already decided the fate of the disastrous bid to chain Europe together in fiscal union. It has refused to back the centralising reforms that would fully safeguard the currency from future shocks, and the country’s prospective new finance minister, Christian Lindner, appears unlikely to change course. He once called for Greece to be kicked temporarily out of the Eurozone.

    Second, there is its claim to global relevance. With the rise of China, the era of American supremacy is over. In recent years, the EU has been able to operate as an “empire within an empire”, relying on America’s military prowess while turning itself into a regulatory superpower in its own right. Today, though, it is estranged from its trans-Atlantic partner, having spent recent years dismissing American suspicions of Beijing. The compromised WTO may soon be unable to shield it from China’s worst anti-trade practices.

    Worse, the AI arms race started by Beijing threatens its only true source of power, the “Brussels Effect”. Since the 1990s, this phenomenon has seen global firms, particularly in traditional industries like cars and chemicals, accept EU regulations as the price for entering its vast market, and then effectively export EU law by rolling their regulations across their global operations.

    In the growth area of technology, however, the EU is struggling to repeat the trick. It seems to realise that the key to hegemony in the digital era is to be light-touch, rather than to stifle every innovation in regulation. It has, for example, flirted, but done nothing with, inspired calls from some quarters for a single market data pool, open to all firms. This would address the single biggest obstacle to tech innovation in the West which is data hoarding by tech giants. Unable to reinvent itself, however, the EU staggers towards fresh catastrophe, with GDPR set to eclipse even the euro as a historic disaster.

    Finally, in the Covid years, national protectionism is set to challenge the EU's claim as guardian of the rules-based trading order. It has already extensively trashed its own credibility on this front, shutting down its borders just when Europe become the Covid epicentre and blocking vaccine exports. Now new talk of “national strategic resilience” undermines whatever reputation the EU might have had to be a neutral custodian of trade. A savvier version of the EU would, like Britain, be striking trade agreements like no tomorrow to counter the de-globalisation narrative. It looks more likely that Brussels will never agree a new deal ever again, thanks to political division and pushback from environmental and labour lobbyists.

    The worst mistakes are the easiest to make. Through luck and the strength of its idealism, the EU has managed to endure. Through decades of turbulence it has never retreated from its founding vision of bureaucratic technocracy. Now, though, as the world transforms, the EU’s aura of invincible purpose is fading away. The end will not be implosion but obsolescence. And it is surely not a matter of “if” but “when”.





    The EU is a failed empire that has condemned itself to irrelevance


    the uk may indeed undergo a temporary period of suffering as it readjusts to the new normal, but our pain will be nothing compared to that of the eu as it struggles to deal with the harsh realities of the future and attempts to loosen the combined nooses of bureaucracy, stubbornness and pride that are slowly choking it to a slow death in the fetid miasma of its own making.

    the uk has for a thousand years been a beacon of innovation, democracy and freedom whilst the european states have bickered, bitched and besieged themselves with petty squabbles and violent wars brought on by jealousy and greed. the next thousand years will be no different.

    it is a long game and one only needs to study history to foresee the outcomes.
    Last edited by taxexile; 19-10-2021 at 02:28 PM.

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