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Will A No-Deal Brexit Void 340,000 British-Owned .EU Domains? (theguardian.com)
The Guardian reports on what may happen next to British businesses and individuals who own .EU domains:
There are about 340,000 registered British holders of these web addresses, and the government has urged them to make contingency plans as their web addresses will disappear if the UK does not agree on a deal with Brussels. The domains were introduced in 2006 as a rival to the likes of .com and .org but are available only to individuals or businesses based in the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA)...
Updated government guidance confirms that if the UK leaves without a deal at the end of March then domain owners based in the UK will have two months leeway to move their principal location to somewhere within the EU or EEA. "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by the EU's domain registrar. "This means you may not be able to access your .EU websites or email from 30 May 2019."
After a year, all the British-registered .EU domains will be made available for purchase by individuals and companies who continue to reside in the EU. This raises the possibility that on the anniversary of a no-deal Brexit, one lucky German or Spaniard could be able to mark the occasion by taking over the Leave.EU domain and using it for their own purposes.
Updated government guidance confirms that if the UK leaves without a deal at the end of March then domain owners based in the UK will have two months leeway to move their principal location to somewhere within the EU or EEA. "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by the EU's domain registrar. "This means you may not be able to access your .EU websites or email from 30 May 2019."
After a year, all the British-registered .EU domains will be made available for purchase by individuals and companies who continue to reside in the EU. This raises the possibility that on the anniversary of a no-deal Brexit, one lucky German or Spaniard could be able to mark the occasion by taking over the Leave.EU domain and using it for their own purposes.
Seems like a good opportunity for someone in the EU to start a business that will hold these domains for British companies and forward them to the appropriate .uk or .com for the people who don’t update to the new domains.
As far as issues surrounding Brexit go, this is pretty inconsequential.
TFS and TFA do not present this as the best argument for overturning the referendum. It's presented as a consequence and a notice.
Also, this is one in a long list of consequences of Leave.
You are being deliberately deceptive and divisive.
Please Leave.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You could void every single .eu domain in the world and I wouldn't even notice. The majority are probably owned by domain-squatters and front-running registrars.
It would seem like that move would be an unlawful taking of property. The domain owners were part of the EU when the sites were registered, and the only reason to take their domains away is spite.
There have been some grim reports about what could happen with Brexit, but this one takes it. Call it off. Full stop.
a few days before the UK has to decide if they stay or leave. The UK is quite likely to stay in EU (rather than face a hard brexit).
I want to believe that too, but they've come this far...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Judging from all the "If you DARE to leave the EU, the apocalypse will happen!" scare tactics that EU authoritarians are throwing out left-and-right, one has to wonder how the UK ever survived at all in the hundreds of years prior to joining the EU.
Remind me again, please. Prior to 1973, were Brits living in shacks and starving, without medicine, currency, or any technology? Because listening to these Chicken Littles, you would certainly suspect so.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's the weekend. Why don't you go outside for a walk? Give one of your loved ones a call, perhaps.
Maybe the UK could negotiate with Trump to replace the .eu addresses with an equally prestigious domain.
Like .biz
We would love to leave. Unfortunatly the corrupt unelected EU beaurocrats REALLY don't want us too, and our corrupt dumbass politicians are complicit.
Yep. Whilst we are at it why not throw democracy under a bus at the same time.
We voted for it, no matter how small the margin a decision was made and we are most certainly going to exit.
If people in the UK don't like the voting process, then they can petition their member of parliament to have it changed.
"Hard brexit" just means "no deal brexit" which is what the UK citizenry voted for in the referendum.
The EU beaurocrats don't want this, because they can't make an example out of us. Our politicians don't want this, because it unhooks them from the EU gravy tran for failed politicians. The media don't want this, because their billionaire owners stand to lose a bit of money. But the UK citizenry do want this. This was the explicit outcome we voted on in the referendum. Leaving the EU with no access to the customs union, no freedom of movement, no EU court of justice, etc. The conservatives put a pamphlet through every letterbox in the country to explain that this is what the referednum was about in an attempt to fearmonger the populace into voting the way they wanted. How very EU of them.
Of course it didn't work, but things not working out are pretty par for the course in the EU. I mean, look at the euro. At least we dodged the bullet on that one.
Not going to happen. The people have spoken! As far as you not agreeing with the will of the majority? Sorry, not sorry.
Rule, Britannia! rule the waves.
Britons never will be slaves.
Last I checked, you don't really have to live somewhere to own something. It would be a petty move to push that 'logic' now. Well, not as petty as Brexit itself, but almost as pointless and self-destructive for the sake of making a statement that means almost nothing.
There's something really odd about the human psychology - where the common welfare throughout history has always been cheaper to maintain than paying for the consequences of it breaking down - but folks seem to viscerally dislike any status improvement of their neighbors.
England specifically is rife with examples of this - the very fall of their empire is basically the story of a folks with a romantic love of Malthusian-like economic ideas inflicting abject cruelty in the name of the nobility of self-gain, and literally losing nation after nation after nation.
Ryan Fenton
Stop the hysteria, please, or you may hurt yourself. What will happen, without regard to the media frenzy to dig new scare every day, is that nobody will rush to "purge" anything, and people on both sides of la Manche will work hard and in good faith to figure out a solution.
TFS and TFA do not present this as the best argument for overturning the referendum. It's presented as a consequence and a notice.
Also, this is one in a long list of consequences of Leave.
And... This is one of the consequences that is actually News for Nerds and relevant in this forum.
Got it. So, like many businesses who may have a presence in both the UK and the EU, businesses who only have a presence in the UK may need to open a location in the EU or risk permanently losing their domain name. Yes its a who cares if your domain was butt.eu but if it was even remotely serious or had visitors like a Facebook.eu then this matters a lot to some people.
GET THE FUCK OUT of Europe now, stupid British !
And in fact the headline is wrong. This will happen even if we leave with a deal, as negotiating continued use of the .eu TLD is unlikely to be a high priority.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"a few days before the UK has to decide if they stay or leave. The UK is quite likely to stay in EU (rather than face a hard brexit)."
How it will be (honest question: I'm not that versed on the petty details of this issue).
For all that I know, UK already "filled the paperwork", so to say, to leave the EU, so there's nothing else to be done: doing nothing means UK leaves the EU by the end of the month.
And I don't see UK doing anything, so that's what will happen. For all that I know, phoning Brussels a few minutes before midnight last day with an "Oh, it all was a joke!" won't serve any purpose either.
(All these previous months were to be expended not to see if UK left or not but to reach an agreement about UK "just leaving" -default position, or "leaving with some compromises" -and, to all practical effects, this chance has already been lost).
Yes the domain registrar should just ignore the laws of its host and do what it thinks it should. I mean there's no reason we should be stripped of the domains, it's not like we voted to make EU domains only four members of the EU oh wait yes we did that's exactly what we voted for.
I love how moron Brexiteers are pissed off that we're being held to laws that we ourselves voted to put in place. I guess the EU is too democratic while simultaneously not being democratic enough.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Even the official Vote Leave campaign wasn't dumb enough to try to leave the way Teresa May has. Their leaflet said that they would negotiate the withdrawal before triggering Article 50.
May's red lines fucked the UK. The EU's single market is nearly over 6x larger than the UK market, so clearly they were never going to do anything to damage it just for the sake of Britain. Her only plan seems to have been to negotiate a deal that she can claim delivers some perverse form of brexit, and then run down the clock until everyone panics and accepts it.
Fortunately Parliament is fighting hard to stop her, but all the while it's damaging the UK. Even if it cancels right now, a lot of harm has already been done.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
These Brixiteers really are ridiculous people.
The UK in particular has spent the last 20 years sending literally their shittiest asshole politicians who were either too incompetent or corrupt for meaningful work to the EU for representation.
They have, at every single turn, sought to disrupt the EU for doing much of anything.
They spent 20 years doing this shit.
Now, after all this time of trying to fuck everything up, they bitch that things are fucked up in the EU. Of course they are you idiots! You spent the least 20 years doing your best to fuck it up.
Then, the assholes vote to leave. On top of that, they cry like little bitches that the EU is not bending over backwards and giving them whatever they want.
The UK seems to believe they are still a global power. News flash. Your not.
Nearly all your exports are to the EU, as are much of your imports. You are completely fucked and you deserve to be fucked.
I hope it's a no deal and we get to watch you tear yourselves apart. But hey... don't worry, I am sure that "extremely fast deal with America" will be forthcoming.
Hey.. remember how you said you would spend all that EU money on health care, but actually you didnt spend any of it on health care? Because you are lying fucks who only want to break shit.
No deal Brexit means effectively shutting off the supply lines from continental Europe to Great Britian. It'll mean food shortages, medicine shortage, looting, riots and deaths. It will mean the return of terrorist warfare in Ireland. Lots of websites breaking will be a pain but not the biggest of problems.
Charlie Stross writes well
http://www.antipope.org/charli...
That the UK government has allowed us to get this close to it shows that they are not competent but also that game theory on a game of chicken is accurate when it says it can end up with the worst case scenario.
And how do you propose they detach themselves from a continental shelve, exactly?
Fighting hard? Well some of them are. Not many though.
The ERG are stupid or venal enough to want to leave with no deal. The larger majority of the conservative party seems terrified of them. Corbyn desperately wants to leave and most of the Labour party are either behind him or terrified of losing their seats or being deselected. The result is a whole pile of nothing from most of them and then just going back to blandly voting along party lines on anything that would matter.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
They should dig just a little bit harder. They can do it.
Would California be better off leaving the USA? Doubtful. Would Quebec be better off leaving Canada? Almost certainly not. Is the UK going to be better off without the EU. My money is on no.
Brexit was voted for primarily by old folks pining for the days when the British Empire was a significant player in the world. Those days are long gone and are not coming back. Sorry.
You were an important player on an important team. Soon you will be just another country of 65 million. Granted, you are twice the size of Canada, so I'm sure you will have relevance in the world commensurate with that going forward.
Enjoy.
Got it. So, like many businesses who may have a presence in both the UK and the EU, businesses who only have a presence in the UK may need to open a location in the EU or risk permanently losing their domain name. Yes its a who cares if your domain was butt.eu but if it was even remotely serious or had visitors like a Facebook.eu then this matters a lot to some people.
Facebook addicts will have no problems getting to their fucking precious regardless of who moves their cheese, so let's stop worrying about those morons.
The official Leave campaign was stupid, and believed the EU would cave 100% and give the UK everything including a fake membership in the EU but still let the UK leave.
That is like a divorce attorny saying you get to keep the house, the kids, the cars, the vacation homes, and 100% of his income for all eternity and he has only random visitation rights.
Life doesn't work that way.
The whole leave Campaign was stupid Britian is going to be a shell of it's former self inside of 30 years. I say britian, as Scotland and Northern Ireland are gone within 20 years.
Both of them know where the future lies and it isn't with backward thinking close minded idiots that voted to leave the EU.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
this calls for divine intervention!
You are a deceptive lying scumbag. I never said that was the only consequence. I was in context of the article. Mod me down because truth hurts and better to hide it with bad moderation and lie about what I said than honestly debate.
Typical fascist book burning bullshit. Although the EU is clearly disfunctional, as all powerful-state government styles are, I do wish the EU takes a long time to slowly die and doesnt collapse over night like Venezuela so multiple generations of Euroweenie puppets and sheep can suffer and learn the lesson of their stupidity and never repeat it.
I am pro-freedom of the people. Real people. Average every day citizens who just want to be left alone by your oppressive control freakery to love their lives. The EU Brussels bureaucracy is the exact opposite. I am not European but I do feel badly for my fellows there who are trapped in the frog boiling pot of hell created by your masters. All people should be free.
Like everyone else is doing...
Sure, sure, stay and we will give you some cookies but keep taking away your rights, er uh privileges, until we have absolute control and then we take away your cookies, too.
Only a small child would fall for that. Oh wait, the Remainers fell for it.
Leaving may be the default position but there are two ways out. The EU issued a legal opinion that basically said that a country can revoke Article 50 at any time. So yes, they CAN say "Oh, it was all a joke!". Another way out is that they can request an extension and if all EU members agree it can be granted.
As far as I can tell, nobody has any idea what is going to happen at the end of March. A really weird way to run a country.
Just finished making a big deal about hiding the real names and information of site owners from Whois searches. So unless the EU is going to violate its own rules, how will they even know who owns what?
Have gnu, will travel.
First, the vote was never legally binding. It may have been "politically binding", but that isn't quite the same. But politics changes all the time, so what was once considered a good idea may not be later when the full implications of the decision are realised. At this point, the reasonably likely choices seem to be
1. Theresa May's deal, maybe with small modifications
2. No deal
3. Another referendum (not sure what choices will be on offer)
I think it is unlikely that #1 will pass. I don't think many people voting for Brexit believed that it would be no deal, so there is a good argument to be made that this isn't what was voted for. When #1 is rejected there will be just two choices left. Just about all economists believe no deal will be a disaster (I know, there are some people who believe otherwise). So in the end, I think it will be a new referendum. Politicians do not want to be responsible for a genuine disaster.
Do you honestly believe that given the three choices that the best outcome is "no deal"??
None of that will happen, what will happen is that the UK being free of stupid EU rules and regulations will become a vast economic powerhouse where people go for things the EU will not allow... a giant grey market wonderland of prosperity.
Stick that in your pipe of gloom and smoke it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who honestly would care if a .EU domain was lost?
In fact you could then derive some benefit by being able to write off the expense of the domain as a loss.
That's performing a lot better than the value of having a domain that ends with .eu, which not one person in the history of the internet has typed on purpose.
Find a single company who has a .EU domain not backed by other more common domains like .com. Just one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why was this truth nugget downvoted
Either the person who made the summary is trolling, or he has no clue about the EU. It's far more likely that a political group from Italy or France will try to get the domain "leave.eu".
Anyway, nationalism is on the rise everywhere in Europe, even in Germany, and unless something completely unexpected happens, the end of the EU is now just a matter of time.
Yup; I'm also expecting a last minute change-of-heart.
It's not just the economic openness.
There's also the entitlement to vote in the parliament.
No they didn't. They were told they could eat their cake and have it - get the benefits of membership without the costs and the obligations.
I lost count of how many times I heard "The Germans will still want to sell their cars, the French will still want to sell their wine" and shit like that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As I previously said, the British should revoke anything they like (or no longer like) in *.io.
You don't know much, then. It's a matter of record that Article 50 may be revoked unilaterally.
https://www.google.com/search?...
Isn't there a Trump rally you could be at?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Britain already is a shell of what it was 30 years ago (I was there), and that's even with keeping their own currency.
The EU hasn't done many nations beside Germany and the Netherlands any good. Exiting the EU has few disadvantages: trade will default to WTO rules, which are considered equitable for every other nation on the earth but lamented as the end of the world by Remain fear-mongers. On the other hand, Britain's independence will let it, with wise leadership that is not currently present, rebuild its manufacturing sector and its culture.
Alas, I fear that what will actually happen will be quite different. The British government will continue to be run by morons, and the Orwellian surveillance state and repression of liberties will soon surpass Chinese levels of repression.
I doubt they actually believed the bullshit they were saying, it was just to win the vote.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The EU wasn't going to negotiate at all until Article 50 was triggered.
From a US viewpoint, it sounds like the Leave campaign expected to be able to retain all the benefits of being in the EU, while only giving up the parts of membership that they didn't like. And they expected the EU to negotiate on their terms, and give them everything they wanted. And then after the referendum, they found out that's not how the real world works.
I've often felt that the Leave campaign never had any intention of succeeding. Their goals seemed so unrealistic that I assumed their intention was just to create conflict in politics. When they did win the vote, no one really knew how to proceed from there, so they mostly just choose a path of maximum conflict to avoid having to make the hard decisions.
signed: A Hogwarts Survivor.
They lied. Negotiations can only happen after Article 50 is triggered. It amazing all the people that fell for the lies and were too stupid to know any better. Just like the dimwits in America that voted for the blowhard Trump.
You can be free or have your domain name but also enslaved to faceless unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
Yup, completely unelected:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_the_European_Parliament
/s
Yes, the Leave campaign was and is delusional, but we already knew that. Even before the referendum, the EU has made it very clear that there were not going to be negotiations before article 50.was triggered. The UK has hardly negotiated realistically with the pressure of having invoked article 50. Can you imagine the absurdity of negotiating with a UK that can drag things out as long as they want? They would have tried to get everything the Leave campaign promised, with no chance of getting it, stalling the EU forever. There was and is absolutely no way the EU could let that happen.
Yes, the UK will die of starvation, just like the other 128 countries not in the EU, and also just like they died before joining the EU...
You fucking moron.
Their leaflet said that they would negotiate the withdrawal before triggering Article 50.
Their leaflets can say a lot of things, but you have to realise that the UK's bureaucracy is rivaled only by that of the EU, and negotiating prior to triggering Article 50 wasn't legally possible. May did try that in 2016, the EU said no and pointed to their regulations. Her failed attempts at getting the negotiation started dominated the news for weeks.
Here's a quote for you: “I cannot go an inch beyond the ‘no negotiations without notification’ principle,” - Margaritis Schinas, Chief spokesman for Junker
May's red lines fucked the UK.
I'm no fan of May, but I can't hold this against her. Other parties have been repeatedly invited to come up with alternatives to the red lines only to spew back garbage, wishfull thinking, and legal impossibilities.
Her only plan seems to have been to negotiate a deal that she can claim delivers some perverse form of brexit, and then run down the clock until everyone panics and accepts it.
Now you're being too kind, implying that she had / has a plan.
Fortunately Parliament is fighting hard to stop her, but all the while it's damaging the UK. Even if it cancels right now, a lot of harm has already been done.
Sigh. Yeah. I do remember being woken up by my wife with news of Brexit and even in my groggy half sleepy stupor I was sane enough to reply "This won't end well".
We can only hope.
"Hard brexit" just means "no deal brexit" which is what the UK citizenry voted for in the referendum.
The citizens voted for no single thing in the referendum other than change. It was a protest vote, and it was incredibly clear that no one had a fucking clue what Brexit would look like or what the implications were. They were literally voting for a great unknown.
The EU beaurocrats don't want this, because they can't make an example out of us.
What an utterly ignorant comment. The EU don't want this because it would cost the EU a shitton. Not nearly as much as the UK, but a shitton none the less. Hell if this did go through it would turn the UK into the very example you think the EU wants. The EU isn't making an example of anyone, but they aren't giving an inch either.
But the UK citizenry do want this. This was the explicit outcome we voted on in the referendum. Leaving the EU with no access to the customs union, no freedom of movement, no EU court of justice, etc.
No, you didn't. A very tiny minority in insane fuckwits trying to sink the country want this. The vast majority of Brexiteers want "cakeism", to not be a member but still invited to all the parties.
it's not like we voted to make EU domains only four members of the EU oh wait yes we did that's exactly what we voted for.
It doesn't matter too much what people historically voted for. The EU TLD is not the property of any country or government; although it was was designated for those associated some way with the EU. Technically, every ccTLD is the property of the internet community as a whole, and each ccTLD is delegated to a TLD manager, but that is just whoever happens to apply for it first, submit certain proof of their qualifications to run the TLD, and earn ICANN approval.
If ICANN wishes, they can revoke the EU TLD manager's approval based on their intention to cancel UK companies' domains, and award management of the ccTLD to a new administrator --- the TLD's policies then change to whatever the new administrator's policies are, and could include worldwide registration if the new manager wanted.
Even the official Vote Leave campaign wasn't dumb enough to try to leave the way Teresa May has. Their leaflet said that they would negotiate the withdrawal before triggering Article 50.
Negotiate what? I don't think the leave camp had any plan on winning nor any idea of what to do in case of victory (as hinted by the reaction of Nigel Farage the days after). Would have it been anyone else than May, how would the negotiation been better? The EU has to protect its members, it's its sole existence purpose. What is there to negotiate in that condition?
Maybe the Brexit will serve as a warning to other not to follow nationalist scammers that just want simpler and better tax avoidance schemes at the expanse of their fellow citizen.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
"You don't know much, then"
That's exactly what I said, didn't you notice?
Thank you for your links... while the first ones didn't offer light to the issue (back to 2018), this one is quite clear: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/d...
On those grounds, the Court (Full Court) hereby rules:
Article 50 TEU must be interpreted as meaning that, where a Member State has notified the European Council, in accordance with that article, of its intention to withdraw from the European Union, that article allows that Member State â" for as long as a withdrawal agreement concluded between that Member State and the European Union has not entered into force or, if no such agreement has been concluded, for as long as the two-year period laid down in Article 50(3) TEU, possibly extended in accordance with that paragraph, has not expired â" to revoke that notification unilaterally, in an unequivocal and unconditional manner, by a notice addressed to the European Council in writing, after the Member State concerned has taken the revocation decision in accordance with its constitutional requirements. The purpose of that revocation is to confirm the EU membership of the Member State concerned under terms that are unchanged as regards its status as a Member State, and that revocation brings the withdrawal procedure to an end.
The EU won't last to 2030. It is already coming apart at the seams.
Sure, sure, stay and we will give you some cookies but keep taking away your rights, er uh privileges, until we have absolute control and then we take away your cookies, too.
Only a small child would fall for that. Oh wait, the Remainers fell for it.
And the UK government will do the exact same thing to its citizens. Nothing will be different on that account.
And the leavers fell for it.
Indeed, I think Scotland and Northern Ireland should regain their freedom from the faceless bureaucrats in London so they can continue to enjoy all the benefits of being in the EU.
I have no problem letting England and Wales languish alone.
dom
Did you even read your own link? 751 EU reps. Between 6 and 96 per country. They meet a few days a month. Since you are a dumbass, I shall explain in terms you might understand.
Any faux elected body that carries so little representation per member and in this case per state leaves the value of an individual citizen vote at approximately zero. Their level of representation is so minimal as to be effectively zero. So, who actually writes all the laws, regulations, and policies?
Unelected bureaucrats. Exactly as I said.
Stupid children who post links after reading the first sentence and think they have made some clever and pithy point should neither post nor vote. You are wasting precious bits and adding CO2 to the air for no good purpose.
Unlike you, I actually read AND understood your link. It does not say what you feel it says. I am repeating that in very simple words so you might get it through repetition.
I say no. They call us nazis. They say we try to control them.
They never take responsibility for their own elected politicians.
GTFO of the EU already.
The EU was never going to negotiate in the way brexiteers thought they would.
The UK market is less than 1/6th the size of the rest of the EU's single market. So clearly it makes no sense for the EU to damage its biggest market for the UK's sake, and the UK is just a small player in comparison with a weak hand.
Also the EU has lots of deals with other countries that showed the kind of thing on offer. In fact brexiteers like Farage pointed to Norway as a model we could emulate.
So all this "cake and eat it" shit was never going to happen, the negotiation was always going to be what kind of inferior deal does the UK want to downgrade to.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, it's not that much freedom. The UK already had its own unique deal which means they neither have the Euro nor are in the Schengen Area. In fact in several degrees they retain more of their own sovereignty than Norway, a non-EU country, does.
This is also why the EU won't cut them the deal they wanted.
Check out the friction between Switzerland and the EU for example. Switzerland is not in the EU either but they still have to accept EU workers inside Switzerland.
The idiots simply asserted that they could negotiate some sort of sweatheart deal with the EU, when actually the EU needs to withhold any sort of special privileges at all, or else they'd see a whole raft of countries also wanting half-way-out.
That was never something Brussels would agree to. And yet, it is what was presented to the British people to vote on. Absurd.
This is the value of a written Constitution that is difficult to change; you don't have some 51% vote that changes the very legal basic of the country.
"Barnier's Staircase" was the obvious reality even before the Brexit vote; these are well-established diplomatic concepts in the EU already when dealing with potential new members.
It is all a giant sack of lies and false promises, and it always was. If you don't want a "hard" exit, then you can't reasonably exit; a soft exit has to be on the EU's terms, because they have to protect themselves from a mass-exit. The EU has to offer "soft" exit deals that protect themselves at the expense of the country leaving, otherwise they have to hold their ground and say, "Don't leave unless you mean it."
Here in the US, a State would have to win a war with the rest of the country to leave. In most cases, unless they were given an option historically. Hawaii and Texas, for example, entered on special terms. But anybody else, no, they can't just vote locally to leave, because it affects everybody in the country. Agreeing to not have totally open borders between different political areas is a really big step, it is like a national marriage; you're not supposed to divorce on a whim, and you have to expect it will be painful and expensive for everybody.
I'm no fan of May, but I can't hold this against her. Other parties have been repeatedly invited to come up with alternatives to the red lines only to spew back garbage, wishfull thinking, and legal impossibilities.
It isn't "wishful thinking" to point out that the alternatives to an impossible policy are actually all entirely different policies, which is what other parties have offered. It isn't up to the parties who disagree with the impossible plan to fix it; their duty is to promote better policies.
Both the manufacturing sector and the culture are completely orthogonal to the EU membership and so is your leadership. Leaving the EU won't do anything to solve these problems.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
1. The vote was always advertised as "non-binding", intended to get a sense of the British electorate only. The only vote that matters and is binding in the UK, and therefore that would be a problem for democracy if it were overturned, is the general election.
2. Almost all constitutional questions require a 2/3 majority for change to occur, for completely obvious reasons. The government organized opinion poll didn't show a 2/3 majority in fact leavers barely scraped a majority.
The European Parliament does not possess legislative initiative. It cannot propose laws, which means it cannot control policy. It is at best a rubber stamp for the Commission, at worst nothing but a ceremonial debating club.
Which referendum?
1975: 67% to 32%
2016: 48% to 52%
2019:....................
The WTO serves primary to the United States Interests. The United States controlling elite classess greed knows no bounds. join the WTO and it's only a matter of time for another US puppet Nation, that will get burned as soon as convenient. Better the EU then the US.
This does amuse me - Nicola Sturgeon is outraged that the UK as a whole is exiting the EU when Scotland voted to remain BUT she would have no problem taking a 51/49 split in favour of Scottish independence and dragging the 49% out of the UK.
It's almost as if she's a politician with the ability to ignore things she doesn't like!
You Brexiteers are fucking idiots.
The EU parliament votes on all of the laws it passes. Yes, they only meet a few days a month. They meet to vote. The rest of the time is spent reviewing the legislation they will vote on.
True, this results in less up front debate in the house prior to voting, but when you think about it such debate is typically a huge waste of everyone's time since most members will not be swayed by it.
So really, EU I'd a democracy, it has elected members who voted on legislation, and the main bit it lacks is the dog and pony show of parliamentary debate.
In my opinion the EU parliament is a fine organisation and I think most EU legislation is excellent, well thought out, and protects individuals very well.
Prior to the Brexit vote I asked many leave voters a simple question: name one EU law that you want to change post-Brexit.
I didn't get a single response.
>> a few days before the UK has to decide if they stay or leave.
hmm. no.
This was decided 2 years ago.
Too late, guys.
One of the main reasons why the Scottish independence referendum failed was that people wanted to remain in the EU, something that wouldn't happen if they left the UK. She's outraged because only a couple years after the Sottish referendum the UK has a non-binding referendum with such a small margin of victory that is going to take Scotland out of the EU.
Seconded. I see no problem with a hard Scottish border.
The English are mostly insufferable cunts anyway, so the EU isn't really losing anything. I've been asking a lot of my English colleagues how they feel about Brexit leading to the breakup of the UK. I typically get a stony blank look followed by a lot of spluttering dismissal. Certainly nothing intelligent comes back.
There were many reasons the last Scottish referendum failed, including membership of the EU (Sturgeon and Salmond insisted they would gain independent membership due to continuation policy, the EU said no), a monetary union in the Pound with the UK including policy decisions, which the UK said no to, and a reliance on North Sea oil and gas revenues, which was to form the backbone of an independent Scottish budget, but dropped through the floor barely a year later.
The last campaign for Scottish independence was astoundingly similar to the Leave EU campaign - a lot of bullshit and hand waving that was never going to happen.
And none of this changes the fact that Sturgeon would definitely and readily accept a 51/49 split in favour of independence, dragging the 49% out of the UK, without a hint of the irony about the Brexit vote.
Do you really think that the MPs sitting in London are writing the laws that they vote for? Or the members of the Senate or the Congress in Washington?
There are bureaucracies behind every level of elected office from the city up to the EU. Part of that is lawyers who specialize in writing up the laws. Less so for cities or for less important laws such as changing the national anthem. There is a special language that needs to be used and if you don't get the grammar correct there may be serious implications.
> Round three of UK vs Continental Europe.
>
> First it was Napolean, then the Nazis. Now it's Merkel and the Eurocrats. Good luck, Britain. It may be tougher this time, as a socialist country full of foreign welfare clingers.
More like round 30. "First" is was the Romans but even before that was hundreds of thousands of years of unrecorded history involving migrations in and out of the British Isles. "Second" was a period of rule by French (Richard Coeur de Lion) and more recently the Germans (House of Hanover). At some point around 2016, we got taken over by Pure-bred Englishmen,
The best argument for aborting this madness is democracy.
The first referendum was flawed. It betrayed the recent Scottish referendum which was won on the promise of continued EU membership for a start. The campaigns were awful, the amount of misinformation and cheating was unprecedented, even before looking at the foreign interference.
What has been done since then does not resemble any of the promises or proposals that were made. In fact it is the exact opposite of many of them.
And now it's all deadlocked anyway. The best, the only democratic way to resolve this is another referendum. Present concrete options that will result in well defined, clearly spelt out actions.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The notion that you represent real people while your opponents do not is an absolute hallmark of fascist thinking. It's both pompous and dangerous. Stop it.
or else they'd see a whole raft of countries also wanting half-way-out.
It's more like they would see a raft of countries also wanting half-way in. Everyone wants access to the EU single market because it's so lucrative, but it's only so lucrative because of it's integrity. The moment that gets compromised it's ruined.
That's why they EU won't do anything about the backstop. If the UK can unilaterally exit the backstop then it fucks the single market, which is over 6x bigger than the UK one so obviously they are going to prioritize it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Rebuild its manufacturing sector?!" Go say that to a Honda worker in Swindon, I dare you. If you do it face to face, make sure to stay out of swinging range of a wrench to the nuts.
Incidentally, Britain has a massive manufacturing sector relative to its size -- the ninth largest in the world. It only looked small because our services sector is even bigger. But you lot (a) were ignorant of this and (b) have fucked it over royally. You dumb shits.
There are no good options at this stage. We face trouble ahead. Overturning a referendum result is not good, but it's better than committing economic suicide.
And the people's will isn't the sole determinant of morality. That's why Hitler and the Nazis were bad despite being popular with Germans. I wish people would remember some basic fucking facts about the world.
there is very little relevant content hosted on ".eu" domains. Actually, ".eu" domains seem to have been so cheap to obtain that they have become used largely for weird search-engine-optimization pseudo web-presences.
.eu domains registered from UK will be missed by anyone.
I doubt any of the many
We saw the writing on the wall, and left the UK in1970, as did most people with a decent iq, all that’s left is a third world shithole.
When they did win the vote, no one really knew how to proceed from there, so they mostly just choose a path of maximum conflict to avoid having to make the hard decisions.
OT, but I think this is the story of Trump's presidency as well.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Is allegedy registered to a UK company. Whois.net ain’t sayin, though.
The goal is that the individual countries shall become the equivalent of US states. So, for instance, any citizen of the US can move wherever he wants to. Anyone can go live in California any time they choose. Anyone can invest anyplace they want and sell their goods anywhere, as long as they meet Federal standards.
In the same way, the EU target is that anyone in the EU should be able to move to Germany or the UK any time they choose. Same with investment. Same with sales of goods, which of course requires one set of standards, which in turn requires a court to enforce the rules.
The model the EU has chosen, in implementing this, is based on the Continental European models. Naturally enough, since that is who the founders were. So we find a mixture of the French and Prussian approaches to government and democracy. You have a technocratic civil service, with entry by competitive examination, government mainly by appointed officials, extensive powers for the executive to rule by decree. As with the Zollverein of the 19c, this has produced a large internal market with a tariff wall, a system whose essential goal is to make enough concessions to big agriculture and big business to keep both on board, and has also resulted in extensive regulation with the aim of managing tradeoffs among large corporate or national interests.
The classic example of this is the CAP, whose sole aim is to protect the EU (originally French) farm industry, in exchange for tariff barriers for other imported goods and services.
The UK electorate, when invited by its leaders to join the EU, was assured that this was purely a trading arrangement of sovereign countries, and that all talk of a federal European state was scare mongering. For many decades the EU and the UK told these two different stories about the enterprise. Finally however there came earthquakes which laid bare the contradiction. One was the financial crash and the crisis over Greek debt. This is continuing with the much bigger problem of Italian debt. The other was the migration crisis.
What this showed was a combination of dysfunctionality and unaccountability. If you take the second first, it turned out that Greece was powerless. There was no democratic influence on policy. There was also no democratic influence on the subsequent money printing by the EU central bank. Because those in charge were not elected on a European basis.
Americans will find this hard to visualize. You have to imagine America without any Presidential elections, without a Senate, and with a Congress which cannot initiate legislation and which commutes between Washington and some little city in California every few weeks. An arrangement which is widely ridiculed, but which it is powerless to change. Meanwhile, government is done by a civil service whose head is appointed by agreement of the Governors of the States, and this body has extensive rights to pass decrees which the States are then obliged to implement in state law.
So, there's a lack of accountability, but more than that, you can see that half the institutions which make Federal Government work in the US are missing. And that is why the migrant crisis was such an eye opener: there were no internal borders, but there was also no border force.
In the buildup to the UK Referendum all this became increasingly apparent and on TV every night (and all day, since the BBC has a 24 hour news channel). At the same time, there was the increasing consensus in Brussels, Paris and Germany that the answer to the financial and immigration issues was more Europe.
Much of the UK outside London had also over the years come to understand what the 'free movement of people', one of the famous Four Freedoms of the EU, really meant. It meant the freedom for everyone in a low wage
Thanks for the input Ivan.
Great. So votes can be over turned any time the people in power call it "economic suicide" to follow them. Guess Labour willnever be allowed in parliament again?
> Indeed, I think Scotland and Northern Ireland should regain their freedom from the faceless bureaucrats in London
So do I, and I'm from NI and live in London. Just fuck off.
The EU parliament doesn't write legislation, and it is emasculated in its makeup. That is by design, it is not democratic.
If you want an example of something to repeal - look at the railways directives, which has replaced a natural monopoly with a complex and non-performing system of raping commuters.
Now you have had a response.
And you are backing the replacement of very personal relationships with the sovereign which rules you with one in which we had no say, and which mandarins in the EU states and UK have been pushing for since 1950 without dislosing too much.
That was never going to end well.
This is the value of a written Constitution that is difficult to change; you don't have some 51% vote that changes the very legal basic of the country.
With respect to referendums the UK constitution is clear - it takes a 2/3 majority for it to be legally binding. This was an advisory one only.
It does have legislative initiative. Moron.
Pray tell us how many of the promises in 'The Vow' were actually realised by Westminster.
Untill then, you can piss off.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Typical fucking Scottish nationalist.
"We must be independent from England but we must give up our independence to the EU"
Face it, you're just a bunch of racist cunts that betray everything positive about my country.
>enslaved to faceless unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
heh, that's not how it actually works. they all have faces, you're not a slave and leaving the EU means you now have no say. All of the agreements about fishing and all the rest will now have to be renegotiated and the uk is in a weaker position than it was before the referendum.
the UK is in Europe, pretending otherwise is proving to be somewhat messy.
brexit stops freedom of movement for all British citizens. brexit is like running an illegally funded advisory referendum paid for by putin to stop us citizens from travelling from one state to another and then claiming it is the will of the people if 35% of the population of mostly racist retirees wants this.
the eu is for freedom of citizens, brexit is for the tory party and its state apparatus.
Why would you think the EU would want to help you leave? They want a European Union. Their opinion is irrelevant to you. Additionally, why would you care (enough to post here) that people would lose their .eu domains? Obviously, stuff like this would be expected if leaving the EU.
At this point in the game, there is no EU in your world. Any problems the UK has is one that can be blamed squarely on your politicians.
Don't give the BS and dummed down "...are complicit" excuse. Your politicians are inept at executing their directive of leaving. That's all there is to it.
It is them who have delayed leaving till now. If the UK doesn't leave, there is NO ONE to blame but your fellow countrymen and your politicians. Leave the EU out of your country's internal issues!
The bigger risk was that it would allow ALL members to do the same. They would basically debate a "We will leave when a non-member deal is better than a member deal."
Which if it happened, would dissolve the EU, if it didn't, would have stalled progressive negotiations. A lose lose situation.
As much as everyone makes fun of May, she is the ONLY one with any balls in UK politics. What she went after is pretty much the only middle ground that was available. It's a pitty the rest can't lean in from their side of the road to see that. It's far easier for them to do the buracratic blame game and just waste time hoping whatever happens gets blamed on the other guy.
Umm WHAT? What was the alternative? Seriously, what was a viable option? Saying "we will go outside the policy because we don't like the policy" doesn't work in a negotiation where all don't agree. And the EU certainly won't agree against a policy they were founded on. It's absolutely stupidity to assume otherwise and a disservice to the UK citizens to plan as such.
What was the UK going to do? Have one sided talks that will never lead to negotiations? Negotiate with each EU member individually? Come up with a "take it or leave it" plan and threaten the EU that the UK won't leave if not signed?
None of those options are viable. The EU members are not allowed to negotiate such deals outside the EU whole; especially ones that would be determental to the whole.
#1 is their only choice. No modifications as there is no time. They already chose #2 years ago.
#2 is just days away, and won't give enough time for #3. #1 actually gives time to choose between #2, #3 or a #4.
People don't like it because it doesn't give them what they want. But really people shouldn't like it because it just adds further delay on the status quo. But if everyone agrees #2 is worst, what choice do the UK citizens have without any adults in the Parliament.
The best argument for aborting this madness is democracy.
>appeals to democracy
The first referendum was flawed.
>follows immediately with complaining about the result of a DEMOCRATIC vote
Hilarious
Maybe the first referendum was flawed, but it's not invalid. You not liking the results is not the same as the results not being the democratically valid one.
If you've got evidence that the results aren't valid (read: that some people ought to be persecuted), please provide it. And provide to the authorities too.
It betrayed the recent Scottish referendum which was won on the promise of continued EU membership for a start.
Citation needed. Nothing I found online says such a promise was made. It's also stupid to assume a promise could be made, since it's one that cannot be kept.
One year before the referendum Cameron made it official that there was going to be a Brexit vote. People know the UK might leave. Unless whoever is making that promise can magically override the democratic will of all of the UK, their promise is empty and they're just selling you a lie.
But really, Brexit really doesn't matter for Scotland, as Scotland was going to apply for EU membership if it went independent.
The campaigns were awful, the amount of misinformation and cheating was unprecedented, even before looking at the foreign interference.
Again, you can call the campaigns names, but that doesn't make them invalid. Unless you have evidence there's foul play that could land people in jail.
Until you can actually demonstrate the first result was invalid, calling for a second vote is not in support of democracy, but an affront to it.
I often have my cake and eat it. After that there is no more cake, though.
There is no cake. The cake is a lie.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The EU wasn't going to negotiate at all until Article 50 was triggered.
From a US viewpoint, it sounds like the Leave campaign expected to be able to retain all the benefits of being in the EU, while only giving up the parts of membership that they didn't like. And they expected the EU to negotiate on their terms, and give them everything they wanted. And then after the referendum, they found out that's not how the real world works.
That is dead on.
They wanted to have their cake and thought they'd be able to eat it as well.
And as a result we're being held hostage by a small number who have got what they want and are willing to drag the whole country into hell with them to keep it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No they didn't. They were told they could eat their cake and have it - get the benefits of membership without the costs and the obligations.
I lost count of how many times I heard "The Germans will still want to sell their cars, the French will still want to sell their wine" and shit like that.
And the riposte to that is "The French and Germans know we won't be able to afford it after Brexit anyway".
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Rubbish. The US market is lucrative despite differences in regulations and taxation between states. Integrity is a lesser factor.
The EU however was pretending to be about a common market when really its about forcing Europe into a single superstate whilst lying to the population about the intent.
Well that rather depends on what type of Brexit happens. If it's a soft Brexit, i.e. staying in the customs union, then things probably won't change economy-wise that much.
A quarter of the globe, pink it was. And you could still buy potatoes by the pound. None of these so-called "kilograms".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."