The problem, now, is there is no good way out. May's deal, no deal, or a second referendum are all divisive options and few want to put their head on the block by opting for one.  All are hoping that the final decision is made by others who will then reap the electoral damage.

I still think there is a small chance the European Council won't agree an A.50 extension if requested by the UK merely to extend the stalemate. Again, imagine the uproar if, say, Romania voted against extension effectively booting the UK out on March 29th.!

The Westminster debate is all about the UK and what various factions want. No one listens to the EU or Ireland and assumes that they will simply roll over and give the UK what it wants once they can agree on something.

Ridiculous proposals about a "managed Brexit" or the EU agreeing sectoral deals post Brexit are concocted out of thin air without any conception of how the EU actually works.

Apparently everyone has to change their laws and constitutions to accommodate the latest UK wheeze. Unreal...

Index of Frank's Diaries

EU27 already have indicated to comical effect willingness to overlook low-value "slippage" between UK("NI") and IE.

The dilemma for UK is how to export bulk quantities of raw and finished goods (high-value) from the Big Island to EU27 and ROW without detection.

This board has been given many indications over the prior 6 months as to how EU27 intends to modify procedures and personnel, regardless feigned "technical" helplessness from UK gov.

To catch a pirate, one must think like a pirate.

The more pertinent and vital question is: How might EU27 facilitate movement of people between UK("NI") and IE in the event UK gov goes "full" North Korea?


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

"Ireland can correct their mistake and join the Union." Or NI should choose to reunite w its neighbour.

Seems with the rise of nationalism old conflicts resurface and done over looking for a different result. See the White Supremacist of the Trumpistas ... Civil Rights and the Great Civil War and legacy of president Abraham Lincoln.

Key words | brothers | battle | bloodshed | society | revolution | blowblack | gdansk |

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

Unlike other red lines from the UK governments, the Good Friday Agreement is also an international treaty between the governments of United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, two sovereign countries. The treaty included many interesting things, like the removal of any territorial claims from the UK to the totality of Ireland and from the Republic to NI, the disarming of paramilitaries: essentially, the goal was to bring an end to the only remaining civil war within the EU.

The main effect of the GFA has been to remove pretty much all checks at the Irish border. A no-deal Brexit could change that however, but the Brexiters don't seem to have considered any effect on Ireland, North and South.

In reality, Leo Varadker, and the minority Fine Gael government he leads is the least nationalistic major party and government possible in Ireland. Fine Gael is descended from the faction which supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 and accepted the partition of Ireland and the creation of the border as a price they had no option but to pay as the cost of obtaining freedom for the south from the British Empire.

There has always been a lingering sense that the N. Ireland nationalist community were betrayed as the price for independence for the south. Leo Varadker can't afford to be seen as betraying them all over again, failing in his duty to act as joint guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, and indeed failing to give expression and support to the fact that a majority in N. Ireland voted against Brexit and voted to remain citizens of the EU.

Keeping the border open is therefore an existential issue for the government. Why should the DUP, which received only 28% of the vote in the last Assembly elections be allowed to hold the rest of the country to ransom? Supporting Brexit may have been a legitimate political choice before the referendum. Supporting it after it was decisively rejected by a majority in N. Ireland is a wanton act of political sectarianism calculated to undermine all the improvements in cross-community relations which have occurred since the GFA was ratified by referenda by majorities of 71% in the North and 94% in the south 1998.

Index of Frank's Diaries

The UK populace, and its political class, need to learn that decisions have consequences. That they might be unintended consequences doesn't get them off the hook. If they want to be able to strike new trade agreements -- a stupid idea, but that's their decision, it would seem - they need to do it in a manner that keeps the border open.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

"Peace and stability" is a platitude.
That condition can be satisfied by violent subjugation. (UK gov) Or by cooperation within the opposition to in order to obtain specific, vital resources: (1) negotiated settlement, (2) non-violent disobedience, desuetude, evasion, material safety (3) retreat (BATNA).

Absent re-incarnation by Sun Tzu, a reasonable observer could confidently state, negotiated settlement has failed. That outcome is not "shameful", IF one has learned from the experience how to act in order to foreclose future risks of failure.

Forget polling. Forget Foster. Foster is one. Foster is one of many lying SOSs who dominate UK gov and discourse on withdrawal in UK. Whatever UK gov says will not respect what they do. UK gov is regrouping in predictable impolitic fashion.

Theresa May seeks bilateral treaty with Ireland

The Sunday Times said aides to May believe a deal with Dublin would remove the huge opposition to the [UK] withdrawal agreement setting out its divorce from the European Union.

Typical "divide and conquer" rhetoric in motion on one flank; arming subversives in disputed territory on the other.

Ethics lesson: For each, given my knowledge and belief, how should I do? How will I act?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

That past, where symbols summon deadly emotions, has been revived by English nationalists in the Tory party who appear comfortably ignorant of the Troubles. Erasing the border in Ireland, once dotted with watchtowers and checkpoints, was necessary. But Brexit put the deadly issues of the Irish border and sovereignty back into mainstream debate. Dissident republicans have been blamed by the police for the van bomb attack on a Derry courthouse. Their ideological patrons have long recognised Brexit's potential to reignite the conflict, with one quoted in academic Marisa McGlinchey's new study Unfinished Business as saying it was "the best chance we've had since 1916".

Homes evacuated in Circular Rd area of Derry/Londonderry after vehicle hijacked around 11:30am; 3 masked men hijacked white Transit van, before abandoning it. Community centre in Central Dr open to those evacuated. Cordons in place.  We appreciate your patience. Updates to follow

— PSNI (@PoliceServiceNI) January 21, 2019

○ Derry on alert: Police respond to reports of abandoned vehicle, homes evacuated

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

Germany's BDI business group said Thursday it fears a "chaotic Brexit" is "dangerously close," and warned that such an outcome could dent German economic growth.

"A chaotic Brexit is now getting dangerously close to happening," BDI President Dieter Kempf said in Berlin. "Companies are looking into the abyss in these times."

and that the following also appeared in Politico - Merkel urges EU and UK to find Brexit compromise

"To the last day, I will work towards finding a treaty-based solution for a deal for the U.K.'s exit, and I will work towards having the best kind of relations afterward," she added.

"No Deal" is off the agenda on both sides of the channel, but not in Downing Street, nor in UK law as it currently stands?

Actually, they believed that already before the 2016 referendum, even Cameron, as argued here.

The main lesson is that they've been constantly misreading Germany, and still do: I saw a bit of BoJo on TV essentially promising that Germany would blink on the brink. Germany's message has always been consistent and is not going to change at the last minute.

German industry cannot save Britain from hard Brexit, warns Merkel  - Torygraph - October 2016

German car makers and other major industrial lobbies will not be able to insist that Britain gets an easy deal in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations, the German chancellor Angela Merkel has warned.

In a further hardening of the line against Britain, Mrs Merkel told the annual conference of German industrial federations, the BDI, that defending the principle of free movement and the internal cohesion of the European Union would come before defending German exports to the UK.

"If we don't say full access to the internal market is linked to full freedom of movement, then a movement will spread in Europe where everyone just does whatever they want," she told business leaders in Berlin.

Pull the other one, laddie!

< wipes tears >

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

This was almost exactly the same rural vote that gave Trump the Presidency, an entire segment of the elctorate who have been abandoned by most domestic politicians of all parties; Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and then Cameron had absolutely no concern for these people at all.

People who might, a generation or two ago, have had appreticeships and gained skills, peer respect and decent wages, who might have aspired to buy a house or at least a half decent council house, a car. But those jobs, those opportunities have gone, they resent having to compete for the shitty jobs, they resent that benefits that might once have enabled them to retain a certain status and dignity have been withdrawn, that they have to crawl and lick spit to get the right to queue up at the food bank.

And every (tabloid) newspaper they read tells them that it'sBrussels and the metropolitan elites who are to blame for it for brining in people who are stealing their jobs.

And then Cameron and Osborne, almost the poster boys for remote posh boys who laugh and scorn the precariat and working classes, give them a chance, in their arrogance, to kick back at the lot of them. And are then surprised when they take that chance to give it to them right in the nuts.

this wasn't people voting against their financial interests, this was people who didn't think they had anything to lose

keep to the Fen Causeway

EU published two [WTO 'reform'] proposals, one issued jointly with India, China,Canada, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, Iceland, Singapore and Mexico, Nov 2018
UK not

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

jobs saved and created!

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.