See below

Not sure I can vote for the EU bureaucrats though.

Not sure you can vote for Whitehall bureaucrats either.  Or council officers

But you can vote for MEPs just like MPs or councillors. Of course if one votes for UKIP layabouts who don’t bother to do their job as MEPs…

You struggle a bit with democracy Chewkw, don’t you.  Get yourself a good textbook.

This is a public service announcement in support of the killfile. Since installing it, my STW forum experience has improved by 98.7%.

Chewk, how many members of the WTO have been voted for?

None. Yet they will force my government to make me to put my prices up.

A sovereign nation bowing down to some unelected bankers in a foreign country.

That sounds like taking back control to me.

how many people on here understand how national and local government works? Who their representatives at each level are? What the responsibilities of the government and the individual are? How to voice displeasure at each level?

I am a political geek and have been for decades.  I do understand fairly well how the various systems in scotland work (4 different systems in use.)  However I cannot name all my representatives.  I have 1 mp, 1 msp directly and several others indirectly representing me( list and constituency). One MEP ( I think), 4 councillors.  Highly complex

Ben Shepard is my MP.  Deidre Brock ( a foul woman) my constituency MSP (but I cannot name the list ones)  Don’t know my MEP.  One of the councillors is a green but I cannot remember his name right now

Now if a political geek like me has di8fficulty with this then how is the non politically interested supposed to know?

PJM1974 wrote

This is a public service announcement in support of the killfile. Since installing it, my STW forum experience has improved by 98.7%.

Indeed. For any other numpties like me who struggled with this, download the .zip from here and then follow the instructions here

It acts as a moderator to those short sighted halfwits we have running this country.

This encapsulates perfectly why I’m as about as pro European as you can get.

I think, and I realise I’m probably in a minority here, that the loss of THM is actually a great loss to this thread.

I don’t think his often quite ridiculously gnomic offerings will be much missed, but I do think he has at the very least one point.

In one way it is very simple – a simple question, in? or out?

Obviously it was never that simple, but for many people perhaps it is only actually ‘obvious’, now that it is all falling apart, that it wasn’t ‘obvious’ at all.

Part of the problem for anybody  ‘making the case’  for the EU  was that they/we would always find them/ourselves fighting against 20 years of what had been essentially anti-EU propaganda in the mass media.

This has never been helped by the fact that England at least has never taken European elections seriously. One would suggest that few could name their MEP, and fewer could tell you from which Party they hail. Turnout for Euro elections has been notoriously poor for at least as long as i’ve been eligible to vote in them.

Consequently too many seats have been unfulfilled by the likes of UKIP MEPs, who have unserved us whilst guaranteeing that that’s what your vote will insecure.

We have watched by while this has happened – low turnout has all but guaranteed it.

THM is quite right to defend what is a potential ‘democratic deficit’ – all you have to do is walk in another man’s moccasins. Imagine if Remain had won the day with such a narrow margin, imagine if there had been a Leadership bid in the immediate aftermath and Johnson had won. Imagine he then said ‘ well the result was inconclusive, so I’ve decided to ‘trigger’ Article 50 anyway’?

You’d be losing your collective shit in a way that was large.

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:

One would suggest that few could name their MEP, and fewer could tell you from which Party they hail.

No one has 1 MEP, depending upon where you live you can a maximum of 10 (the South East) and a minimum of 3 (Northern Ireland).  It is a list system using D’Hondt, except in NI where it is STV.

If that was meant to disprove my original motion, one would have thought it only serves to hyper-prove it.

It is somewhat laughable, is it not, to decry accountability in a system to which so little is generally known?

Wow – Mefty, err… Mefty’d.

But guys, Chewkw’s point that you still don’t get to vote for your Whitehall bureaucrats is still valid and on his reasoning Westminster is an evil place that should be gotten rid of.

Likewise your local council and virtually every other form of government, club, association, company, organisation, etc.

The EU, if it really is undemocratic, is only that way because we voted for the ‘Kippers.

Don’t forget that our government (decide for yourself if there is a democratic deficit in how that is chosen) holds the real power in the EU. Sorry… I mean “did hold”. Most of the moaning about EU policy (eastward expansion etc) was UK government policy. It is the government that wields a veto. MEPs are a lessser part of how we play a democratic role in the EU… and it was UK government policy that it stayed that way… remember Thatcher’s, “no, no, no!”? National governments still have the power as regards what the EU does. Don’t like how we play our part in that? Look to our governments.

Interesting story kicking about regarding May’s new stance on Northern Ireland.

This stance?

Cherry picking, Euro stylee

Doesn’t matter what her stance is, brexit is still dead.

Have I heard/read correctly that she’s going to ask EU27 leaders how they’d feel if their countries were carved in two??? 😮

Mefty – are the euro elections D’Hondt ?  I thought that was the holyrood system of constituencies plus a list top up.  I thought the euro were simple regional list sytems?

No one is asking =that the UK be carved into two – just that May lives up to her promise of complete regulatory alignment on the island of ireland and that this must mean a solution to the issue of the open border on the island of ireland to stop smuggling and tax avoidence and adherence to standards.

Chequers cannot do this.  So May has to come u-p with another solution or accept the EUS solution or accept no deal.

Have I heard/read correctly that she’s going to ask EU27 leaders how they’d feel if their countries were carved in two???

And to think all those people said she was devoid of humour…

Imagine, DD, if someone carved sat Germany into two bits.

They would never stand for it. Hmmm

Actually it looks like NI is going to effectively be part of the customs union and/or single market (details vague at present).

And given the Irish passport rules (which may have changed slightly based around 2005), NI may not really be leaving the EU.

Germany…how about Ireland?

Not to mention all the others…roughly half of the EU I believe. Not all entirely due to the brits though.

Surely the DUP Will never accept it.

Thats Mays issue.  The DUP will not accept NI being treated any differently to the rest of the UK but May has already agreed ” full regulatory alignment on the island of ireland”

Her only options are shafdt the DUP and possibly loose a confidence vote, accept that the UK is going to have to remain in the single market fully or accept no deal.  there are no other options.

The thing is, the EU is offering NI the best deal imaginable, for the sake of the whole of Ireland… no payments, but staying in the Single Market, and presumably low friction access to RoW markets as well, and so many mainland based politicians will want to block it even more than the DUP will… they don’t want NI to get a carve out that the rUK population can compare with what they end up being stuck with. To a certain degree, this will happen no matter what, due to NI people being able to remain EU passport holders, when most of the rest of us lose our right to ours.

Also if NI gets a special deal Scotland wants the same .

for me the most likely end result is the UK fractures.  England goes off and plays by itself, NI, Scotland and Wales leave the UK to remain in the EU

Next most likely is that there is a huge fudge and it become brexit in name only. next is that we have a second referendum and stay in the EU

there is zero chance of scotland going along with England in a hard brexit and zero chance of NI doing the same.  Polls are showing huge support for a unite ireland if the UK leaves the EU on a cvliff edge adn the same for scotland – UK leaves the eu on a cliff edge big majorty for independence.

Chequers cannot do this.  So May has to come u-p with another solution or accept the EUS solution or accept no deal.

Between now and March, as the EU resolutely refuses to blink, every single one of Mays precious red lines will be dropped. No doubt to the anguished howls of the headbangers, but there really is no alternative

I suspect May has known this all along, and it’s playing out exactly as she knew it would. She was just trying to shut the ****ers up for as long as possible until the true reality of things, as opposed to their ridiculous fantasies, becomes apparent

I

If a hundred of us chipped in and bought a hovel and split the bills would we all be Northern Irish?

Also if NI gets a special deal Scotland wants the same .

for me the most likely end result is the UK fractures. England goes off and plays by itself, NI, Scotland and Wales leave the UK to remain in the EU

Next most likely is that there is a huge fudge and it become brexit in name only. next is that we have a second referendum and stay in the EU

there is zero chance of scotland going along with England in a hard brexit and zero chance of NI doing the same. Polls are showing huge support for a unite ireland if the UK leaves the EU on a cvliff edge adn the same for scotland – UK leaves the eu on a cliff edge big majorty for independence.

Plot twist, Activate the Queen!

The Queen doesn’t like the idea of the nation being torn up and annexed so refuses to give Royal Assent.

Have I heard/read correctly that she’s going to ask EU27 leaders how they’d feel if their countries were carved in two

Well considering it is the union that might be carved into in order to maintain security for a country that was carved in two i would very much hope she would not go down this route

the break up of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and a number of European countries has all happened in the recent history…

its not like she is archduke franz Ferdinand  in the firing line and the break up of the Union will collapse Europe…

I suspect May has known this all along, and it’s playing out exactly as she knew it would. She was just trying to shut the ****ers up for as long as possible until the true reality of things, as opposed to their ridiculous fantasies, becomes apparent

Agree and an approach I would have used.  We need to remember she is a remainer and this was her best chance of remaining while pretending to leave

Agree and an approach I would have used.

I am not sure her history really supports that level of political cunning. Also her beliefs arent really that clear. She does have a real hatred of the ECHR which is difficult to disentangle from everything else.

She also plays on the “servant of the people” schtick, though perhaps that’s her way of avoiding responsibility for her decisions.

In other news, Chequers is still dead. Can it be called news when it’s not new?

The EU 27 have offcially rejected Chequers, so NO deal ?

I don’t thik that is how May thinks at all.  I do not believe she has the subtlety.  I think she is genuinely attempting to find a way to keep bth sides of her party on side.

The Queen doesn’t like the idea of the nation being torn up and annexed so refuses to give Royal Assent.

Ah wouldn’t be amusing if the monarch kept us in the EU?

Mefty – are the euro elections D’Hondt ?  I thought that was the holyrood system of constituencies plus a list top up.  I thought the euro were simple regional list sytems?

D’Hondt is an allocation methodology which works and is used for both.

It is somewhat laughable, is it not, to decry accountability in a system to which so little is generally known?

Arguably the reverse applies too, the lack of accountability argument tends to ignore the Parliament as it has such limited powers.  One thing it does illustrate well is that people don’t understand PR systems.

Ta Mefty – its about how the preferences are distributed not the list plus top up then yes?

Shows how tricky this is when a political geek can’t get it right

However the interesting thing is that people seem to understand how to use their votes in the 4 different systems we have.

Tusk says the EU27 agreed there would be no Brexit agreement without a workable solution to the Irish border problem.

They agreed there should be “as much clarity as possible” on the future trade relationship. He says the single market must be protected and that the Chequers plans for economic cooperation will no work because they would undermine it.