As the sand runs out in the Brexit

[Suff]

Egg timer, the remain press are becoming more frantic to try and prostrate the UK before the EU. The Metro had a damning article about how the EU “officials” are giving a >50% chance of No deal and how we need to work frantically to get a deal at any cost. ¾ of the way down the article we find that the quoted body is a Remain Backing Pressure Group.

I think there is a need for some visual aid to the negotiations.

Let’s get a large box. Cover it in wrapping paper, with Promise and Good Deal written all over it and covered in ribbon and bows. The label reads “Agree to buy before opening” The price tag is inside the box and the payment schedule is also inside the box. The contents, inside the box, that we are buying, are not clear but will be clearly defined as soon as we commit to buy the box at the asking price; which is hidden inside the box.

That is the situation we are currently at. We have made an opening bid for the contents of the box and are now stuck with the EU trying to bid us up.

Whether you think the government could be doing a better job or not, ask yourself this. Would you buy the box if it were your own personal money?

The EU seems to have become very fond of UK idioms and sayings. So perhaps we’ll introduce some more idioms and sayings for them.

Fools go blithely on; where Angels fear to tread.
Cutting your nose off to spite your face.

As to who is going where Angels fear to tread, or trying to avoid doing that and who is cutting their nose off???? That, right now, is a matter of perception. In 20 years it will be a matter of historical debate.

Is it any wonder that the hard line Brexiters think the government is mad for even offering a penny for the pretty box without a price tag? As for the Remainers, the only thing they want is for the UK to stop this now so they can curl up under their warm comfy duvet and get another 100 years of solid sleep.

It is not a surprise that 2/3 of the people surveyed think that the Brexit negotiations are going badly. It is more of a surprise that 1/3 believe it is going well, so polarised is society. Something both sides of the press fail to mention.

[Workingman]

Here is the Metro article.

And here are the opening paragraphs.

The likelihood that there will be no Brexit deal is ‘over 50%’, according to EU officials.

Jonathan Lis, the deputy director at pressure group British Influence, said it meant officials were now ‘making detailed impact assessments’ about what this means for the EU.

He said officials told him: ‘Senior EU officials now putting chances of no-deal at over 50%, and making detailed impact assessments about what it means for EU.’

It would be shockingly surprising news to learn that EU Officials were not making plans for "No Deal". It would be equallly shocking if the UK was not doing the same given the way negotiations are reported to be going.

Mind you the problem for Brexiteers is that Brexit good news stories are as rare as hen's teeth.

Moive along now.

[Suff]

Actually the news on Brexit, for me, is mainly good. The worst of it, for me, is that May stood up and offered them something for the pretty box with no price or details as to what it contains. For me she should have told them that until they can actually quantify what it is, exactly, that we're paying for, then they can go whistle for a penny and also that if they could not get their acts together and work out what it is they are offering us then whistling is all they'll be getting post march 2019.

The news in this is that the EU has finally woken up and realised that the UK is no Greece, no Ireland and no Italy, that the UK is deadly serious and that the EU is not going to get it all their own way.

The news is that the EU never doubled for one second that the UK would fold to EU pressure and so they did not need to impact assess "no deal".

The fact that the EU are impact assessing "no deal" is extremely telling. Why? Because the ball is totally in their court. If they won't come back with a counter offer to May's Florence offer, if they realise that the UK is not moving one inch further until they do and that their response to that is to start impact assessing "no deal"; it means that the EU never, for one single second, ever contemplated negotiating with the UK over money, borders or NI.

Why would I say that? Because we've clearly stood up and told the EU we WANT a deal, we want to do business and we do not want to damage the situation of the ~5m UK and EU citizens spread across the EU. All the EU need to do, in order to meet this, is to start negotiating.

The EU response? Impact assess "no deal"

It's not hard to work out who they are or what we are leaving. All you have to do is look and listen to what they are doing, not what they are saying. This has always been the case with the EU. It is not the case with the UK.

So, come December, the EU will be faced with a harsh choice. Open up talks on what is in the pretty box or face the risk that they are the proud owner of one pretty box, filled with a price tag and lots of pretty words. Whilst the UK goes off and trades with the rest of the world..

Perhaps a useful time to remember that the US is larger than the entire EU, including the UK, as a market.
Time to remember that Australia is the largest producer of nuclear material in the world, for our power stations
Time to remember that Open Skies just makes running airlines across borders easier. Not impossible and that joining Open Skies is a matter of signing an agreement...

Time for the Remoaners to stop running the UK down and start facing up to reality. We are leaving and the EU is going to make that as difficult as possible. If we let them.

Time to remember that Germany exports 160bn Euro of goods to the UK every year... WE, the UK, export more to the US than we do to our close friend, ally and tariff free, country, Germany...

For me, the Brexit negotiations are doing exactly what I want. First to not bow down to EU intransigence. Second to present ourselves to the world as reasonable and willing to negotiate. Third to force the EU to start talking terms rather than making unsupported and spurious claims. So far we have legally shredded their money claims, agreed to NI soft border to support Good Friday and have agreed that EU citizens can stay for the rest of their lives.

What do we hear in return?

Gimme the munny!

[Workingman]

Spin it all you like, but both side would, or certainly should, have looked at all the feasible outcomes of Brexit.

If that meant that they looked at Soft, Hard, creamy, buttery, partly in, partly out.... or any other variation, then they should have.

If either side did not do that then they are failing in their responsibilities to the people.

If what is going on upsets Brexiteers that's tough.

Live with it, it is real life, you voted for it.

[Suff]

If either side did not do that then they are failing in their responsibilities to the people.

The EU spent 8 months in agreeing a pact which could not be changed and did not allow for anything other than absolute compliance with the line that the UK would do as it was told.

Nothing else was considered.

The UK? We considered all aspects, we just didn't show it to the public at large. As the documents, when finally released, will show.

If what is going on upsets Brexiteers that's tough.

Live with it, it is real life, you voted for it.

Actually, as far as I can tell, the Remoaner press is not paywalled and the Berxiteer press is paywalled. So the vast majority of the news out there on the net is Remoaner slanted. Virtually all Brexiteers I know are concerned that the government is going to give too much to the EU which will damage our situation from 2019 onwards. However the Remoaner press is presenting this discontent in the light that the people are unhappy that the government is not doing more to slow down or derail Brexit.

At the same time the Remoaner press is trying to bring down the government with manufactured scandal after scandal after scandal. Not that there aren't serious questions to be answered but the death in Wales this week was driven by political fear that contagion from the attempts to bring down the government would spread and that precipitate action was require to nip it in the bud.

Personally I'm in the 1/3 of people who are happy with how Brexit is going. Especially the pause since the Florence speech and the fact that the UK has made no further offers to the EU since then, regardless of how the EU is trying to stonewall.

I note that the Remoaner press has completely refused to present the picture that the UK government has not offered 1 cent more, yet the EU is talking about the chances of moving onto Trade talks in December as being good. That is a paradigm shift in the negotiations and is being totally ignored.

Is it any wonder people are not happy when they get bad reporting on the situation.

We are moving on. In the right direction. With the right team in place. Giving it to Noddy and his pals is what the Remoaners want. Because they know it will be royally screwed up.

The best way to be happy about Brexit negotiations? Ignore every single article which says it's going badly and things are going to hell. Ignore every Brexit supporting shout about how bad the EU is. Dig for the 1% of articles which actually discuss the UK's options and how they are doing. Every single one of those is positive.

Oh and completely ignore every single article that talks about the CBI statements. CBI takes money from the EU, maybe not a lot, but that doesn't matter, it takes money so it is not impartial.

[Workingman]

The EU spent 8 months in agreeing a pact which could not be changed and did not allow for anything other than absolute compliance with the line that the UK would do as it was told.

Nothing else was considered

I do not believe this for one second, and I would like to see evidence for it being the case. The bureaucrats and technocrats of the EU might be hated, but they are not daft. They know that they cannot force the UK to behave in any particular way, though they can hope, so they will have done their homework.

Actually, as far as I can tell, the Remoaner press is not paywalled and the Berxiteer press is paywalled.

Another myth or misunderstanding? Sky, Reuters and AP are pretty neutral, are not paywalled, and carry plenty of reports from both sides, it is just that the Brexit good news stories are few and far between. The Sun, Mail, Express and Telegraph all came out in favour of Brexit and none are paywalled. Their combined circulation dwarves any Remain press.

Personally I'm in the 1/3 of people who are happy with how Brexit is going.

So that's 2/3 of people who are not happy and many of those are Leavers. It also ties in well with a Survation poll for the Mail (a pro Brexit paper) saying that if the ref was held again it would go 54% Remain / 46% Leave. I know, if polls do not reflect our beliefs they are rubbish, but still it is out there.

If everything in the Brexit garden was rosy I would be a lot happier, but it isn't. Things are not going too well and that is down to both sides, both sides, not just the EU.

[Suff]

I do not believe this for one second, and I would like to see evidence for it being the case.

Actually I should put that another way. The only "no deal" planning the EU did was to bind the EU27 to a pact which would allow them to enact a "no deal" without interference. They have made no allowance for it otherwise. After all, what is it to the EU? They will continue to get their money from the states to the current budget levels. They will continue to run the EU, they cannot be removed or ousted by any means.

This is somewhat different from the UK idea of planning for "no deal".

Pity for the 7 or 8 countries who will be stuffed by it, but they signed the accord, they can live with the consequences. Of course the way they sold it was that the UK would _never_ go for "no deal" so Germany, France and all the others never planned for it.

That fact is becoming excruciatingly clear.

Another myth or misunderstanding? Sky, Reuters and AP are pretty neutral, are not paywalled, and carry plenty of reports from both sides, it is just that the Brexit good news stories are few and far between. The Sun, Mail, Express and Telegraph all came out in favour of Brexit and none are paywalled. Their combined circulation dwarves any Remain press.

Actually if you go to the news portals (forget physical circulation here we're talking total penetration), the news is all one way and it's all remoaner. There are excellent rebuttals from the Leave press but the vast majority of them are hidden behind paywalls. So we constantly see the straw man of another referendum or No Brexit floated online but we rarely see the opposite.

As for the DM, give me a break. They were not for Brexit, they are not for Anything. They are AGAINST anything which will up circulation. Not even worth reading.

So, online, where you get one extremely excellent article on Leave, you get 50 pieces of excrement, fearmongering and factless Remoaner press. Just check it out. I've stopped reading most of them, I can determine what it will say from the headline alone.

So that's 2/3 of people who are not happy and many of those are Leavers. It also ties in well with a Survation poll for the Mail (a pro Brexit paper) saying that if the ref was held again it would go 54% Remain / 46% Leave. I know, if polls do not reflect our beliefs they are rubbish, but still it is out there.

If everything in the Brexit garden was rosy I would be a lot happier, but it isn't. Things are not going too well and that is down to both sides, both sides, not just the EU.

That is conflating it totally. The 1/3 Leave voters who are not happy are almost, to a person, unhappy about how much we are giving up. If they voted again, they'd for damned sure, be voting Leave but if there were an election tomorrow they wouldn't be so stupid as to vote for Labour.

WM you an I both know that nothing in the Brexit garden was going to be rosy. Neither of us has blinkers about the EU either on the + side or the negative. We both know they were going to make it as damned difficult as possible for the UK to get out.

For me, the vast majority of what is going wrong with the country is the press and the CBI and all the rest who want to exchange an easy time for shafting the UK and are undermining the process so badly that we're in real danger of getting not just a bad deal but a really shitty deal.

I don't believe that bending to the EU, offering them more money or giving them more rights is the correct thing to do in this situation. The correct thing to do in this situation is to tell them to go away and discover what they are going to lose with "no deal" and come back when they have modified their attitude.

If they don't modify their attitude then I, along with 1.3m other UK citizens, will just have to make the best of it. But at least I'll have protected my Children and Grandchildren from those who believe a cheap holiday in boringdorm is worth selling your country down the river for.

[Suff]

Talking about No Deal preparations and Leave press...

Mr Munchau said: “Germany clearly wants to avoid a breakdown in the Brexit talks. A no-deal Brexit would cause an existential crisis in the EU since neither Germany nor France would be willing to plug the gap.”

Hardly the stuff of the EU riding off into the sunset leaving the UK in the dust.

Then the next step in the negotiating game.

BRITAIN will take the crucial first legislative steps preparing for a No Deal Brexit - by publishing a new Trade Bill.

The new law will give the Government the power to strike independent trade deals for the first time in more than 40 years.

Essentially when that bill passes parliament, any thoughts of backing out of Brexit are lying in the dust. Any thoughts of remaining in the single market are lying in the dust and any thoughts that the UK will bow down to the EU are lying in the dust. The fact that the government are doing this now means the UK is driving the agenda for talks on trade through setting the guidelines as to what the EU can ask for and what the UK will accept.

The press, of course, are largely ignoring this...

Today we get news that GDP is growing fast and is driven by manufacturing (yep that making and selling stuff we keep talking about), with 3% growth in car manufacturing. Conspicuous by their absence are the Guardian in reporting this. Given they have spent the last two weeks telling us we're falling to pieces and growth is going backwards and tax receipts are going to suffer.....

I did wonder why the £ bobbed back up again.

[Workingman]

WM you an I both know that nothing in the Brexit garden was going to be rosy. Neither of us has blinkers about the EU either on the + side or the negative.

That we do. Where we differ is the process.

I, and many others, do not see why the EU has to bend to be nice to us. We are the ones leaving the club, and in the process causing the club difficulties, it is their duty to their other members to make things as painless as possible, for them. We would do the same.

On our side the duty of our negotiators is to make leaving as painless as possible, or it should be. Unfortunately, and I say this with sadness, our side, the government, is in a mess. The Tories are in disarray. They gave us an advisory referendum when DC came back from the EU with nothing. Then May called an opportunist and totally unnecessary general election. Now they now rely on the DUP to keep them in power.

When it comes to the media our personal views are irrelevant. We share the same opinion of the DM, but millions of others do not. They buy it and read it and many of them take it in; as do Sun, Telegraph and Express readers. The only alternative view they get, if it is alternative, comes from half listened to radio news or half watched TV, and let us not forget unsocial media. You and I are the odd balls who go looking...

A good example is the news story here on the BBC. It was the headline story on Friday. Many people say that the BBC is pro Brexit yet this article shows what many people see as the intransigence of the EU. Take a look at the comments to see how it has stirred up Brexiteers. News is news and should be reported. If good Brexit news is not being reported by the pro Brexit media (the media the majority see) it is either that there is not much to report or they are choosing to ignore it.

The blame for the way Brexit is being reported cannot be laid wholly at the door of the Remoaner media, there are plenty of Brexiteer outlets with a wide reach out there.

[Suff]

The blame for the way Brexit is being reported cannot be laid wholly at the door of the Remoaner media, there are plenty of Brexiteer outlets with a wide reach out there.

True, but remember that FB and Twit ter are also repeating a lot of the remoaner stuff.

I get what you are saying but, also, you do contradict yourself just a bit. You say that the EU should not bend to us, but then you say that we must get the best deal possible.

If the EU won't bend, then we get the worst deal they want to give us. There is no other option. Beating the government and the negotiating team up for not succeeding and then claiming the EU is right not to negotiate is simply not sensible.

If the EU cannot be made to negotiate then we won't get a good deal.

In that case everyone needs to understand that we exit without a deal and make the best of it. The remoaner press needs to shut up about how disorganised the UK negotiating team is (it is not, it is highly organised) and needs to start getting behind the negotiating team by pointing out that the EU will _never_ get the deal they want if they don't start negotiating.

THAT should be the message from every media outlet in the UK, regardless of what they think. Because anything other than that is doing the UK down.

The problem with the remoaner press is that they think that if they just keep on long enough they are going to bring the government down. In reality they are going to convince the EU that if they just hang on long enough the UK will cave.

What everyone needs to understand is that 16% of the voters will punish any government who caves to the EU. Both sides of the UK political parties know this and both sides are scared of it.

The problem appears to be that the EU do not either know or understand this. Probably because they don't understand the UK voting system.

So, yes, I get really annoyed with the remoaner media/press. Because I see them as political idealists who don't care who gets hurt so long as they get the result they want and, yes, I'm rather vocal about it.