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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 "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by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 "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by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.
Like:
"This guy *used* to work as a nurse but doesn't any more, so taking away his nurse card is just spite?"
1) The domains aren't your property. .uk and not the .eu.
2) The domains have conditions attached to their ownership, including that you have to be in the EU.
3) If you were a true EU entity (not just someone who only trades in the UK), you would be unaffected because you'd still have a European base somewhere. If not, you should have bought the
4) All you need do to maintain registration is have an EU address. So there will be a bunch of places offering proxy registration, I imagine, subject to the usual "until someone finds out" that all such proxy registrations have.
It's like saying that the US should be able to pull out of NATO but still say they are a NATO member and still maintain a US section on the NATO website.
(P.S. I'm English. I can't help but agreeing with them in this regard, as if it was the other way around, e.g. Germany leaving, we'd be saying EXACTLY the same.)
(P.P.S. I'm still hopeful that people realise Brexit was a ridiculously stupid idea that should never have been posited, much less put to a public vote. If we hadn't been given the opportunity to vote, basically nobody would have given a shit and life would have carried on with absolutely minimal protest. It's like asking people if they "want" to give millions in aid to African states. If you ask, the answer will definitely be no. You don't do things like that because they are popular, you do things like that because they make sense. It's like a state "voting itself" out of the US... you'd have to have a REALLY, REALLY good reason to do that, not just "we asked people and they said they wanted it". And you then wouldn't be eligible to register a .us domain in that state... see the pattern?)
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.
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
What "scare tactics" are you referring to? Be specific. The EU even refrained from participation in the referendum campaign so that it does not exert undue influence, and it has been as cooperative as possible with the British negotiators since then. All the sound and the fury is coming from London, and there is a good reason for that - the referendum was never a serious leave Brexit thing, the idiot Cameron was just planning to use it as a scare tactic against the EU.
Well, it kinda backfired, but how is this a fault of the EU?
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
We voted for the law that makes EU domains only for use by EU members, you raging fuckwit.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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.
giving millions in aid mostly just makes 3rd world more dependant on us, rather than actually helping them.
You should try trading the rules of the domain registry. Rules that the UK voted for. The TL;DR is that you do indeed have to be in the EU to own one.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Reminds me of all the outrage over how the EU is steering the Article 50 process. We fucking wrote it, we decided that would be how it works.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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!
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.
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.
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."
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."
No one's saying that Britain will turn into Rwanda within 50 years because it left the EU.
It's just a question of: better off in, or better off out?
In Britain's defence, at the time it was drafted they probably never thought it would apply to them. Nor indeed to anyone.
Sure, that's no excuse for public servants operating at such a high level of office ... but (shrugs).
You've never tried to register a com.au, have you? It's fairly territorial.
Well, in that case, I guess that makes you the raging fuckwits, huh?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
It was written for the UK in the first place. To whom else would it apply?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
This not an XOR - The evidence supports them being both.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
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".
and the only reason to take their domains away is spite.
Actually there's a very good reason to take their domains away, and one that the UK should be all too familiar with given how they are experts in the topic: Bureaucracy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unless they have some basic sense and latitude to act on that good sense in which case they won't allow you to cheat and work around it. Losing control of your country can happen many ways. And letting it be taken over economically by foreign interests, it's just plain stupid. You don't want money bleeding out of your national economy. And the only way to do that is to have a firm control and limit on foreign interests ability to operate and transact with your borders.
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.
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
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
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
you'd have to have a REALLY, REALLY good reason to do that, not just "we asked people and they said they wanted it"
Unfortunately, nobody wanted your opinion on whose opinions should be heard. You think you'll get somebody smart in charge, what you get is someone on top of "Mt.Stupid" because they're the most confident everybody else is wrong.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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
England will be modeled after Albania, and Scotland will Brexit and rejoin the EU.
Parliament is going to cancel Brexit next week, most likely.
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'?
What scare tactics? This is the equivalent of 'If you cancel your membership your not welcome in the club anymore". What could be wrong with that?
Why do conservatives always insist on getting free handouts?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Yes, and this is old news, this has been known for a year. So if they don't set up a holding company in the EU, British holders of .eu domains will not be able to extend them anymore.
Why is this so hard to understand? Are Leavers really all morons? </rhetorical>
"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.
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.
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."
No, what I said was incomplete. Which, given the context, is absolutely not the same as wrong. Leaving edge cases to settle the main argument first is perfectly legitimate.
Of course, that you descend to anonymous nitpicking just goes to show I'm right, and Leavers are morons.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?