UK. EU. Yes? No? Referendum 23 June.

[yoshi 353]

I was half-tempted to make an attempt at explaining what went on in Westminster today...

...but I just think this video explains everything far better than I ever could. Listen to what Krishnan (the reporter) says & imagine that x~600, & that’s the level of mess we’re at 

 

(This is a more serious summary:

Brexit: No majority for any options after MPs' votes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47728333 )

[StefanMUC 703]

I wonder when finally the day will come that 17.4m people realise that they‘ve been lied to all along and that those claiming to fight for them are self-absorbed cowards detached from reality?

Probably never, looking at the still very narrow polls.

[arwebb 133]

I'm not one of the 17.4 million who voted Leave, but I feel a deep sense of anger tonight after the latest attempt to end the Brexit deadlock ended in failure. Whatever side of the divide I and my fellow citizens were on almost three years ago, none of us voted for this shambles. Perhaps, therefore, it was appropriate that the latest chapter in the saga should be written on April Fools' Day.

[yoshi 353]

Forgot to post this at the time but also yesterday (day before now, really) in Parliament:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/01/semi-naked-climate-protesters-disrupt-brexit-debate

It’s coming to something when a woman naked - save for an elephant trunk - supergluing herself to the glass of the public gallery is one of the more logical things to occur in the House this week  Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever watched BBC Parliament so much 

[yoshi 353]

Over the last two days, we have gone into full Armando Ianucci mode. 3 main things have occurred:

1 - The House of Commons had a vote on whether or not to have a vote...& it was a draw. Apparently the first proper tie since 1980. 

2 - Parliament is in the process of passing a bill to make no-deal illegal...despite it not really being our decision at this point because any country could veto the A50 extension at the EU summit on Wednesday. 

And 3...even the Palace of Westminster itself is getting fed up with the whole thing & sprung a leak in the Commons, forcing the adjournment of proceedings for the day, which in practice means until Monday: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/04/house-of-commons-suspended-water-pours-through-ceiling

Another normal few hours in Westminster 

[Rob. 2053]

Haha, incredible thread:

Quote

So I just re-watched the classic Simpsons episode ‘Bart Gets An Elephant’. It is 25 years old, but a parable for our times.

Bart wins a radio station phone-in and is given a binary choice: $10,000 in cash or a full grown African elephant.

Bart chooses the elephant.
The radio people are shocked. No one was supposed to pick the elephant. There is no elephant.

So they try to negotiate (‘We think we know how your mind works, Bart’) and offer other alternatives which are equally stupid, but less costly and destructive. These include paying the $10,000 dollars to Bart’s school principal, who agrees to pull his trousers down for a whole term, or using the money to surgically transform the principal into ‘some kind of lobster-like creature’.

But Bart refuses all compromise, and just keeps shouting ‘Where’s my elephant?’ His voice is so loud it can be heard over the top of the record played by the station to drown him out. The people listening to the radio in the old folks’ home are delighted with misplaced nostalgia: ‘Hey, they’re playing the elephant song!’ says one. ‘I love that one – reminds me of elephants’ says another.

Bart’s chant soon gets taken up by the media. “Isn’t that what we’re all asking in our own lives?” says TV anchorman Kent Brockman. “Where’s my elephant?”

Eventually, to keep their jobs, the radio people crumple and get Bart a fully grown African elephant.

Despite Bart’s continued enthusiasm, it is a disaster. It immediately smashes into the side of the Simpsons’ house, causing massive structural damage. It smells ‘worse than anything’. But the biggest problem is the elephant – now named Stampy – is economically unviable.

He costs $1,000 dollars a week to feed and maintain, and efforts to make him pay for himself raise only tiny sums.

“$58 and all of it profit!” declares a delighted Homer, “I’m the smartest businessman in the world!”

“Stampy’s food bill today was $300” replies Marge.

And so the Simpsons are forced to give up the elephant. Homer wants to sell him to an ivory dealer, Mr Blackheart. A former President of the Fox Network, he is the only character in the story who stands to make money. Bart runs away with Stampy, leaving a trail of destruction.

Eventually, Homer agrees to do the morally right thing and gives Stampy to an animal refuge.

So the Simpsons end up with no elephant, just bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars, having alienated their neighbours and trashed the entire neighbourhood.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116703454058119170.html

[The Tower Bridge Fox 48]

I still say the UK can not leave the EU!!!!!

and the people of London wont vote for Boris again as PM!!!!!

[JMarkSnow2012 387]

On 8/3/2019 at 11:56 PM, The Tower Bridge Fox said:

I still say the UK can not leave the EU!!!!!

and the people of London wont vote for Boris again as PM!!!!!

Unfortunately, we may have reached the stage where the EU is, on balance, happier without the UK.

[Roger87 201]

9 hours ago, JMarkSnow2012 said:

Unfortunately, we may have reached the stage where the EU is, on balance, happier without the UK.

True. Ironically, for once in years, all the EU members are united in something... Don't making Brexit easy for UK.

[Roger87 201]

On 8/3/2019 at 5:56 PM, The Tower Bridge Fox said:

I still say the UK can not leave the EU!!!!!

and the people of London wont vote for Boris again as PM!!!!!

Doesn't matter. Boris is currently a lame duck and will have the hot potato exploding on his face. 

[arwebb 133]

Johnson is not a lame duck. His strategy is clear - prepare the ground for a general election this autumn in which he will claim that a vote for him is a vote to uphold democracy (i.e. the 2016 referendum result) and to deliver the kind of Brexit he now appears to want. No-one can be certain what the outcome of that election will be. But it is clear that, barring either immoral or unlawful actions, going to the country is the only way he can get it through.