Clarity from the UK

[Suff]

Ah diddums, the UK is not giving enough "Clarity" on what it wants for Breixt.

And what does M. Barnier quantify as insufficient Clarity? Whilst speaking in Lisbon?

Addressing a gathering of jurists in Portugal on Saturday, Mr Barnier called for more clarity on the UK's position, saying an effective negotiation was dependent on knowing what the other side wanted.

Right and that means?

He said the EU would be ready to accept movement on Theresa May's "red lines" that insist Brexit must see the UK leave both the European single market and customs union.

Oh right, so "Effective Negotiation" actually means

We tell you what we intend to do. You say "No we don't want that", you tell us we have not given you "enough information", which is translated as doing what you want and then You will be happy

This is then reported in the UK press as the UK governement not having a plan and we turn full circle.

Well M. Barnier. We are not playing hide and seek. We HAVE told you what we want and just because we won't stop telling you what we want and decide to accept what YOU want, that is not playing hide and seek. That is called negotiating. Given that the only _negotiation_ you appear to understand; M. Barnier, is total capitulation; it is highly unsurprising that you feel you do not have "enough information".

Perhaps we can communicate this another way. "The UK is not Greece, or Portugal, or Ireland, or Italy or Spain. The UK has a stronger economy than all of them and didn't have to go to the ECB for a bail out". Or, in other words, Sod Off.

I think this explains the situation fully. Perhaps he would like this in greater detail? We, on the other hand, would prefer much less detail. F.Y.

Unless they come back with a different position than telling the UK what they will accept and going away and sulking, I would happily make that very balanced combination of two letters and two punctuation marks the status quo until something moves.

[Workingman]

We tell you what we intend to do. You say "No we don't want that", you tell us we have not given you "enough information", which is translated as doing what you want and then You will be happy

That is not a quote from the article. It is made up, a fantasy.

This is the real quote:

"It is the UK which is leaving the EU. It cannot, in the act of leaving, ask us to change what we are and how we function,"

I am left wondering which part of that Brexiteers are having trouble understanding as they attempt to deflect the Brexmess on to everyone but themselves.

[Suff]

Actually the UK CAN ask the EU to change how it is and how it functions. The carrot being the hundreds of billions of trade the UK does which the EU might actually want a part of.

As for the satellite system the UK has already paid 1bn into and has led in many areas, especially security in which we excel, the EU has a stark choice. Keep the UK as a member of the system or pay us back our €1bn we have already paid in and remove any UK IP which was used in the creation of the system. I note, quite starkly, that the EU has chosen, in the first instance, to steak our input and throw us out. The quintessential essence of a tantrum if ever there was one.

As for my statement above? Of course it doesn't exist in the article, it is the truth and the truth has no place in that article whatsoever.

[Workingman]

Ah the old "they need us more than wee need them" stuck record.

They do not seem to think so and as they are in the driving seat that is all that matters.

You Leavers voted for Project Fantasy and now blame us traitorous remoaners, the big bad EU, Uncle Tom et all for all your ills.

To paraphrase a favourite Leaver mantra oft aimed at those of us who lost: You won, get over it.

Time for you to take ownership of Brexmess.

[Suff]

Time for you to take ownership of Brexmess.

I would be quite happy with Hard Brexit and everyone takes the cost of that stupidity. Explicitly because of those who think that we can come out of this with no impact. BOTH on the EU side and the UK side.

The EU thinks that it has the whip hand on everything and will just make the UK do what it wants and there will be no impact and things will go on as before except that the UK will have no say in what happens in the EU. Their little wet dream.

Many in the UK (mainly remainers but some Leavers too), think we can leave the EU but if we just hang on to "enough" then it will all be "OK in the end".

I do not fall into either camp. Get out and Get Out Intact is my take. Yes I'm for a negotiation and I'm for listening. But if all we hear is "you will do as we say", then it's F.Y. and lets us really see just who feels the most pain of out the bad deal.

Unfortunately we are led by cowards who can't make a decision without worrying about the second guessing which will happen after.

F.Y. will HURT, I'm not fantasising about that, I have a clear and hard head about it. However who it will hurt most? The EU has this fantasy, most recently verbalised by that idiot in Denmark, that the UK is some minor country who can't do anything and that the EU can just shrug us off and we'll come crawling back when their time is right.

Reality Check. The UK _needs_ to put security on the table. The UK _needs_ to stop taking the EU part with the US and start telling the EU that if they don't buck their ideas up the 75% of security information they do get from the UK and the US is going away. The UK _needs_ to tell the EU that if they throw us out of Open Skies, then they can't fly in UK space. That includes coming to the UK where 50% of the _entire_ EU aircraft maintenance is done.

It is about time we stopped going cap in hand to a bunch of rapacious zealots and told them where to shove it. Firmly!

[Workingman]

All very true, but the wider Remain or Leave communities can blather on about how things are going until the cows come home to roost and there is not a thing we can do to change matters. The only ones who can effect change are parliament, or rather the government or, more correctly, the Tories.

If you went with the wording of the ballot paper we would not be having any negotiations. A50 would have been triggered and we would have left the EU two years to that date. Some of the favourite sayings by Leavers are that: "Leave means leave", "We won", "No deal is better than a bad deal", "We should walk away", "WTO rules".

Given all that then negotiations are not necessary, so why are we negotiating? The answer is simple. Wiser heads than the average Leaver, in both the Remain and Leave camps, are trying to ameliorate the stinking mess we have put ourselves in. It is a bit rich now for Brexiteers to bitch and moan that those negotiations are not going their way.

I have little empathy and certainly no sympathy.

And, yes, I do know about mixed metaphors.

[Suff]

Personally it was my understanding that the people/press/media doing the majority of the "it's not going our way" dance, were the remainers.

By far the majority of the leavers are pretty OK with the broad brush of the current negotiations. Yes they have no tolerance for the blatant EU attempts to use NI to bind the UK into the single market, but that is something which will work itself out in time.

Contrast the real fantasists. The Italian "populist" parties who think they can stay in the Euro, overspend to their hearts content and negotiate for the dumping of the €250bn of Italian debt held by the ECB.

Now if there is a bigger bunch of star struck dreamers, I've yet to hear about them. Well apart from Syriza, but they are on the "reality" diet right now and I don't count them in the self deluded crowd.

[Workingman]

Sorry, but I am not buying in to that version. What I read on many sites is completely the opposite - Brexiters moaning that all is not well and we should walk away, go WTO, get rid of May, JR-M 4 PM, and so on.

Brexit is a disaster in the making and it is all down to: 1) UKIP. 2) Cameron's irrational fear of UKIP. 3) Rifts in the Tory party. 4) There being no plan for Brexit.

What you Brexiteers have to do is turn Project Fantasy into the dream you envisaged and not the nightmare many of us fear. Good luck with that. I am not convinced that it will be delivered.

BTW Italy and Greece have sod all to do with Brexit and how the UK is dealing, or not dealing, with it.

[Suff]

BTW Italy and Greece have sod all to do with Brexit and how the UK is dealing, or not dealing, with it.

Really? So you are saying that learning from someone else's experience is worthless?

Better shut down all the educational establishments right now.

I know that Politicians want to do the wrong thing, every time, with no regard to learning from prior wrong actions. But that does not mean that the rest of us have to condone it.

[Workingman]

Are you saying that Italy and Greece's experiences are the same as the UK's?

Are we going to get Italexit and Grexit because of the way our 'negotiations' are going? Oh wait, no, we are not getting either because they are not Brexit relevant.

It is us, the UK, who are leaving EU and we have made that choice. It is for us, and us alone, to make it work. All this Straw Man nonsense of bringing in other countries is a disatraction from the failure that is Brexit as it currently stands.

Stop blaming the EU, Remainers, the CBI and multi-national businesses for our woes.

You Brexiters brought this upon us. It is up to you to sort it.

Stop blaming everyone else for your failures You won, now make your victory work for all of us.