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Friday 4 October 2019

The Democracy Deniers, puce-faced and spittle-flecked with rage

The anti-democrats in Brussels (including their dag in Dublin Castle) acted exactly as one expected yesterday. One of about fifty unelected EU 'vice presidents' had the front to appear on Iain Dale's show and condemn the plan as unworkable although it quickly became clear she hadn't seen the detailed plan and hadn't even read the seven page heads-of-terms released to the press and public. Verhofstadt had seen the precis document and waved it about on his mobile phone before ranting that the Empire would never let go of the United Kingdom. Varadkar was the comic turn, saving his petulant flouncing until mid-afternoon with a declaration that the people of the UK had changed their minds and Brexit should be cancelled (in fact polls give a solid 65% who think that whatever the rights or wrongs of Brexit, we should respect the vote and leave).

It was, in short, as dispiriting a display of jejune tantrums as one would expect from the crooked cabal in the Berlaymont. What it wasn't was any indication that any of them possess a scruple of statesmanship. They were like excited children. And so in the Commons.

Corbyn, now a very elderly man who with his equally elderly comrade McDonnell dreams of Marxist power before he dies, was provoked into a spittle-flecked fury of invective by the calm reasonableness of the Prime Minister's statement. I feared his heart was about to go at any second - an event that would provoke a high-fatality crush on the opposition front bench as half the Labour Party would lunge to take his place at the dispatch box, his twitching corpse kicked beneath the bench. He had earlier threatened the most severe measures against the score or more of Labour MPs who were favourably impressed by the Prime Minister's proposals enough to vote for them.

All in all, yesterday brought out into clear view the demented and almost incoherent anger of the democracy-deniers, the illiberals and the anti-democrats. Such people are not only enemies of Brexit but enemies of democracy - a threat to us all, leavers or remainers. If they cannot accept the most fundamental way in which democracy works, there is no place for any of them in public life.

24 comments:

Smoking Scot said...

What irks me is the trend, not just with comments in Britain but also within the rest of Europe, of regular people getting pissed off with other Europeans.

We're doing the staycations and nothing made in Germany, France or what have you. While some in Europe are boycotting our exports.

Some Brit favourites in Spain have this business of protesting tourism, while in Scotland they're seriously considering hotel room taxes.

It's the downside of politicians being let loose to play politics, then spinning it in their respective media. Hence my irk.

I have yet to see a genuinely amicable divorce - and this one is a doozy. There's spite, malice, two timing and beneath it all, that fury at rejection. It's all there and from watching it with others - real people, it'll be a running sore for decades.

So when I'm getting hassle from an airport official, I just say I'm Scottish. It works! She may be a pain in the scrotum, but Sturgeon appears to have done a good PR job as the underdog in all this.

JPM said...

Ah, you sound surprised, or disappointed again, Raedwald. At least you're not "dumbstruck" this time.

I'm impressed by the Leave fanatics' ability to deny the obvious staring them in the face on a daily basis, such as the facts, which inevitably led to the rejection of Al's silly proposal.

Take this idea that "when we leave the European Union, we can trade with the rest of the world".

Have these people never bought coffee or bananas, or seen a Hollywood film?

The UK already trades easily with the whole globe, mainly on agreements set up by and through the European Union. It's going to be a business replacing those.

Mark said...

"Its going to be a business replacing those"

Why?

Raedwald said...

"The anti-democrats in Brussels (including their dag in Dublin Castle) acted exactly as one expected yesterday."

"Ah, you sound surprised, or disappointed again, Raedwald."

Were you sick on the day they did English comprehension at your school?

DiscoveredJoys said...

"All in all, yesterday brought out into clear view the demented and almost incoherent anger of the democracy-deniers, the illiberals and the anti-democrats."

It's the fury of a closed shop realising that the game is up and their cosy life is to be disrupted by reality. They believe (on good day to day experience, to be fair) the the EU is run for their benefit. What a shame that the EU is supposedly run for the benefit of the general population of the member states - but has been corrupted by the bureaucrats own interests... Wikipedia: "Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating."

After Brexit our eyes will turn to other cozy cartels of self interests, the BBC and the NHS perhaps? Full of dedicated people, but not all dedicated to the original purpose of the organisation. I predict more howls of outrage from their closed shops, much of it confected and orchestrated.

JPM said...

Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing, Raedwald.

In your last piece you wrote "The EU's every petulant instinct must be to reject the UK's offer - but do they dare?"

Since they had repeatedly said, that on what they had learned they would, the answer is "yes", with no surprise at all to anyone even barely awake.

JPM said...

DJ.

Yes, regulatory capture is what was achieved by Boeing in the US with the help of politically doctrinaire outsourcing, of certification to Boeing's own people.

And look what happened.

The European Union has the advantage of its regulations being scrutinised by the authorities of not one, but of twenty-eight countries on the other hand, but there is no room for complacency.

Anonymous said...

"I feared his heart was about to go at any second - an event that would provoke a high-fatality crush on the opposition front bench as half the Labour Party would lunge to take his place at the dispatch box, his twitching corpse kicked beneath the bench."


Epic description of the stoats and weasels party: down to a T.

And see how their sistaz in Brussels play up too.

Verhoftwat missed his calling, dame deranged twanky: he's prefect for panto.

DeeDee99 said...

The Dale interview was hilarious. The democracy-denier (Finnish, I believe) who hadn't read Boris' proposals actually called the 2016 Referendum "a so-called Referendum" .... before demanding another one and petulantly whinged that Dale was "being challenging." You really couldn't satirise these people.

I think Farage could well be right: Boris knows that the EU won't accept his offer so is making a big display of compromise and sweet reason. He has accepted that there will have to be a General Election before he delivers a form of Brexit which suits the CONs .... and he's determined to avoid blame for the extension.

Doonhamer said...

Re Playing the "No, I'm actually Scottish." card has worked for me for many years, many, many years before Wee Jimmy Krankie ever appeared.
A litre of Highland Park or any Islay was a deal sealer.

Mark said...

"Scrutinised by not one, but 28 countries"

It will be interesting to see who ends up paying more, Boeing or VW and it will be even more interesting to see what crawls out if the woodwork when the makers of the people car find themselves in court.

Your fundamental problem Cheerful - separate from your projection, obtuseness and deflection which are utterly wilful- is this reductio ad perfectum which you always imagine is the slam dunk.

It actually reductio ad absurdum but you're clearly too dense and uneducated to understand this.


Sackerson said...

Can I "indentify as" Scottish, pro tem, when passing through Euro immigration control?

John Brown said...

A very good example of “regulatory capture” was the massive German diesel engine emissions testing fraud. It was only uncovered by a non-EU country and because we were in the EU our consumers have not received any compensation.

Interestingly, in over 40 years of working with Swiss, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese suppliers the only one who cheated on the product specification was German.

Raedwald said...

JB - Corruption is utterly endemic throughout German business. A lengthy post with good comments from senior folk with first-hand experience at
http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-endemic-is-german-corruption.html

Anonymous said...

Who really cares about 25% on Scottish Whisky in the US - people buy it on the basis of quality, taste and the social cachet, so an increase in price will probably drive up sales. I'm sure that UK taxes make the price here more than Yanks would pay anyway.

As far as Boeing is concerned, they behave like socialists - blaming the opposition for what they do themselves. Remember that Bombardier thing? My response to that would have been to have refused overfly and landing rights to all Boeings, then called in the US Ambassador and Boeing's rep and told him that all government contracts with Boeing were cancelled with immediate effect - unless, of course, there was a reduction in price equivalent to the extra charges Boeing got the US to impose.

I had the misfortune this week to have 3 flights on 737-800 aircraft, which are pretty crappy, and are now being found to have structural problems. Perhaps we should ban them anyway.

Mark said...

Is the tariff as it arrives in the US port? Just wondering what difference it would actually make to the raffish roue parting with his hard embezzled dollars in his private club.

Dave_G said...


I recall, many years ago, traveling overseas with a colleague and having to complete a landing card prior to arrival. I put down 'English' as my nationality only to have it scratched out and corrected to 'British' by the indignant flight attendant. My colleague put 'Scottish' and it was left unchanged.

Elephant in the room time - what will 2020 and the Lisbon Agreement do to the UK in terms of 'individuality' if we are tied to the EU in any form whatsoever?

Smoking Scot said...

@ sackerson

Of course you can laddie, just mind and say "aye", roll your "r's" and kick in a few references to "loch's", not lock and you'll be fine.

I'll assume that like most of us lot you'll have an issue with opening your wallet, but we don't actually have padlocks on them. That's for sporrans - and at £280 and up for a kilt, few of us own one and those who do only wear them for very special occasions.

Anonymous said...

Self-awareness is crucial for me in a politician. Very few have it these days. If you take the Labour Party for instance virtually all of them are so trapped by their ideology it's like the Middle-Ages never ended and you're a heretic if you don't worship socialism. Mad people.

Johnson showed some self-awareness in his Manchester speech when, referring to the well known reality show I'm a celebrity get me out of here, he said the public would "vote us all (Parliament) out of office". I've never heard a Prime Minister say anything like that before.

Steve

John Brown said...

Raedwald,

Thanks for the link to your item on German corruption 14/04/2018.

I can also remember this German company regularly made corrupt payments for export orders and received illegal state aid in times when business was tough through the pretence of selling to their government technical and market research “reports.”

DiscoveredJoys said...

@ JPM

"Scrutinised by not one, but 28 countries" - but the scrutiny is carried out by branches of the head office closed shop, not the general population. Cheats checking each others homework, as it were.

And of course every time a referendum is held where the electorate get to scrutinise the regulations and reach an 'unsatisfactory' result they are asked to vote again or the regulations are brought in under another guise. Why do you think there is such an enormous pressure to have a second Brexit referendum? Not for democracy, but for the continuance of the closed shop.

Anonymous said...

anti-democrats?

Unlawful prorogation.

Tut tut!

JPM said...

So if the European Union can't do its own audits etc., then who should do the US's? Burkina Faso?

Mark said...

@Cheerful

Missing the point by a country mile as usual. "Regulatory creep" doesn"t just mean formal regulations. It means the whole framework of law and how it can be used and more importantly abused.

Boeing and VW. The greed and stupidity of those in charge could well threaten the long term viability of both.

Neither the US or German governments can stand by and see such important and iconic symbols go down. I said German government as the EU is utterly irrelevant but it will be particularly entertaining in this instance watching the boche put their usual two fingers up to it.

Boeing have been about a billion times more stupid. VW fiddled with emission control S/W. Boeing look to have deliberately introduced a single point failure into flight safety critical S/W. The former has bruised egos basically, the latter looks to have killed hundreds.

Four Euro legs good, two yankee legs bad!

But if you actually bring in something like "ecocide" as a crime, as recently suggested by a particularly costed bubble dweller then who is the worst?

Can you see the point?

There is no specific crime of ecocide-yet. But the guy next door had a VW and all this time it's been poisoning my young child. I can see that flying.

Something tells me VW is going to end up paying more.