Let there be no doubt, Bojo wants a trade war with the EU

there has been “due process” but I’m sure you know that…

Unlike you Random, I don’t fret about these (in my mind) marginal or even imaginary issues.

I do have faith in the system, sure it could be improved and I’m always in favour of reform but the unbelievable achievement of bringing together 450,000,000 people that only a few short decades ago were bashing seven bells out of one another outweighs any concerns I have. We need vigilance, we need checks and balances and we need controls but I do think they are in place. probably less so as one moves south on the continent, but our northern cousins supervision hopefully makes up for that.

I think it’s rather easy to become somewhat blasé and not recognise what we have and how easily we could loose it. We look back over the Channel and can watch in realtime how easy it is for unaccountable liars and charlatans without an iota of concern for those that voted for them to take power. We look at Poland and Hungary, not to mention Le Pen on our doorstep, and we see that the extreme rightwing is also an ever present danger.

I think we are lucky to live in a great Country on a great continent with with predominantly benevolent governments.

My SIL is half Belgian, lovely guy :slightly_smiling_face:

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Belgium is just a post 1830 invented country though which shoved lots of people together on essentially religious grounds and I don’t think you can blame the shambles it is in on the EU. Nice place though, I enjoyed living there :slightly_smiling_face: and had great fun learning another language.

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@randomadness
next…

My post was misunderstood, doubtless caused by too much grass cutting in this heat. I was comparing the EU system and how it works to Belgian politics and how it works.
And yes I too some very good times in Belgium.

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seems to be an increasingly common trend with your EU views :thinking:

And their favorite sport is tax evasion… so far as I can tell. Belgians seem to be very creative financially. (This may be unfair but I was taught finance by 2 Belgians in France who said this. :slight_smile: )

What my Belgian in laws got up to would make your teeth fall out!:cold_face:

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Try a Belgian visit:

My favourite buffer zone.

Lovey chocolate though.

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Well I’m not sure about personal taxation, but on corporate tax fiddles they are in the halfpenny place compared to the Dutch and Luxemburgers. Who of course are beginners compared to the Worldwide capital of tax avoidance and money laundering, the City. Kids die on slum estates and people like Wooster-Mogg profit.

I’m fascinated by this phenomenon. Just a year or two ago here on SurviveFrance good discussion (thought out and evidenced arguments, from different points of view) was welcome, I think by pretty much everybody. But more recently the very different approach articulated above has emerged: the wish for merely an echo-chamber for their own views; a wish, explicitly not to engage in discussion.

EDIT:
Amazing! Just also looked into the ‘Eurovision’ thread and found almost exactly the same thing:

I have to admit to on occasion not engaging with one individual, so guilty as charged. But sometimes there comes a point, with some people, where one realises one is flogging a dead horse. And being an animal lover, I have to desist :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

Oh absolutely John - there are lots of threads and posts I don’t read - that’s one of the strengths of the ‘threads’ structure of the site - you go straight to what interests you and ignore the rest.
But that’s rather different from not wanting to hear any opposing views.

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I am not British, but I can clearly see, that BOJO is not the most successful person in politics! He might have succeeded with Brexit, however the victory of Sin Fen in Northern Ireland is clearly showing that Northern Ireland sooner or later will reunite with the Republic of Ireland. Scotland would be interested in joining the EU for economical survival. So what will be left of the UK, if Scotland and Northern Ireland are leaving?

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That’s just the lies of that sly bastard, the unspeakable bastard, Farage. Nothing Farage says, or has ever said is true. It’s just sound bites for the terminally stupid. .

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Well Annie, the NIP and many other indicators show that Johnson has failed on Brexit. In fact Brexit was a loose loose. Johnson just lies, black is white, failure is successes, whatever you’re having yourself. Nothing he says is worth listening to, except as an indication of where his goldfish like attention span is pivoting to next.

Northern Ireland is a failed little statelet kept afloat by a £4/5B PA intervention from Westminster and EU funding, which has now gone away. Successful, outward looking Ireland doesn’t need NI and its two flavours of headbangers.

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…and the best chips with mayonnaise in the world

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But are there still significant numbers of ‘headbangers’ outside the extreme right unionists John?

This is an alternative view of the rise of Sinn Féin north and south of the border - and of the Alliance party in the north - attributing it precisely to the extent to which they have relegated sectarianism in favour of focusing on broadly socialist priorities - and criticisng UK media for its failure to understand NI politics in anything but Westminster’s terms (ie. as all about nationalism and brexit):