When it comes to actually doing Brexit – as opposed to merely voting for it – there appear to be a myriad of options. I do not know precisely how many there are but when three years ago the Institute of Economic Affairs held a competition to find the best way they were not short of entries. Worse still there are many people in positions of power who would very much prefer it if the UK did not leave the EU. If they fail to achieve their aim I am sure that some will try to create a situation where the UK has the appearance of independence but none of the reality.
So, how will we know when we have truly left as opposed to merely having left on paper? Here are a few tests:
- Is it possible to buy good in pounds and ounces, feet and yards?
- Can train operators also manage track?
- Have those annoying cookie notices disappeared?
- Are Google search results once again uncensored?
- Are some residents of the European Union denied the right to live and work in the UK?
I should point out that I am not particularly keen on the last one but it is a good test. Free movement within the EU is, after all, one of its fundamental principles.
I am sure the commentariat can think of a few more.
6. Angela Merkel seen standing on a street corner with a plate trying to collect money to plug the black hole left by UK taking its marbles and going home
Good post Patrick – first rate.
7. Neil Kinnock’s EU pension stops being paid.
A deluge of Remainers’ tears.
John Galt
you don’t begrudge Glenys’ pin money then?
I can think of a few:
– Not a single penny goes into paying for EU/EEA membership fees, funding the EU, any quangos in the EU, any EU institutions or indeed any EU member states
– Every single law or other piece of legislature passed as a result of an EU directive/regulation gets repealed (and hopefully, never replaced, reintroduced or indeed brought back by some other sneaky means) from 1975 to the present day and beyond
– Every eurocent of EU public funding that goes towards academia, media or other similar institutions within the UK is rejected wholesale
Alas! The cookie notices will still be seen; I see them from IPs in Australia, the USA and Asia. Unless the EU goes away altogether (in which case, you would be certain that you have left it).
7. No more signs thanking the EU for paying for part of a new bridge with money we gave them in the first place?
“Is it possible to buy good in pounds and ounces, feet and yards?”
On this particular point. I’ve bought a shed in France was advertised & sold in “pieds”. I’ve bought loose wine at the market in pints.
Now I’m told there’s a law on the French books, Napoleon got through the French assembly, as a counter to the Revolution’s adoption of the metric system. Makes it impossible for the State to prosecute use of the old imperial measures. So presumably, this trumps EU regulation.
So if the French can do it, so could the UK. So there’s nothing whatsoever preventing a return to the imperial system anytime you like. Never was.
8. Are there French and Spanish trawlers just offshore hoovering up everything in the sea?
@bloke in spain: yes indeed. There are similar old measures in use in Italy, though just now I cannot remember their names (Anno Domini!)
Another: do we have to transfer persons to a EU state under the Arrest Warrant system? That seems to me to be pretty critical, although there are likely to be bilateral deals in time.
OT: Some interesting news from The Telegraph’s live feed of Cabinet appointments — could be good news, but only time will tell:
—————————————
Multiple sources have told me that the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Transport are set to be shut down. They could be replaced with two new departments – one for Infrastructure and one for Industry.
One minister told me: “This is not a reshuffle, this is a reconstruction. This is a new Government. It is complicated and it will take time.”
Already civil servants from other departments are at the Business department ahead of the carve up. Sources say university policy will go from BIS to the education department, while trade will move to Liam Fox’s international trade department.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change would see its briefs split between the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the new Infrastructure department.
—————————————
John,
Not sure that Neil Kinnock’s pension will stop since I don’t think a personal benefit is linked to national interests…
And also the EU probably wants to pay its advocates within the UK.
Fixed that for you Watchman.
I’m not sure about that, come the 1st January 2019 or whenever that BRExit is actually activated (fuck what Phillip Hammond thinks).
It has always been made plain by the European Union that those in receipt of European Union pensions are obliged to continue providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
Hence Nick Clegg and the Prince of Darkness continuing to shill for their former masters.
Personally I think it would serve the bastards right (especially Mr. and Mrs. Kinnock) if their European Union pensions were to be stopped after BRExit.
Huh, I thought you called them “biscuits” over there.
“Are some residents of the European Union denied the right to live and work in the UK?”
“Free movement within the EU is, after all, one of its fundamental principles.”
I am only an inexpert Texan, but my guess is that there’s a pretty good chance (not 50%, but rather more than 10%) that by the time Britain formally exits, the absolute right of every single resident of the EU to live and work in every single country of the EU will be a clearly dead letter in multiple EU countries (possibly including Britain itself). Two years of formal countdown plus who knows how much footdragging before that makes for a long time, a long enough time that shiny formal guarantees might be significantly eroded by what seems likely to be a continued pattern of officials acting in arrogant bad faith and recent immigrants behaving aggressively badly.
Here in the US the great and the good delight in congratulating themselves on rooting out racism, and prohibition of state racism is one of our Constitutional principles, but all the same we are deep in (a second politically realigned post-Jim-Crow round of) dead-letter-ness on the issue. Especially the idea that East and South Asians might have a right not to be discriminated against seems to have been something of a dead letter in most things related to academic achievement by the late 1970s, and definitely is a dead letter today. Riots at the scale of Cologne, shooting up airports, and various other things seem like a rather more urgent political incentive to flout the written law than our resentment of immigrants rising in society. Whatever happens, I quite expect that the EU will still continue to congratulate itself loudly on its freedom of movement. (Or, possibly, on its “true freedom of movement”, unlike the old vulgar naive understanding of “freedom of movement”…) I am less confident that Joe Recent Immigrant will in fact be allowed across every border (or, perhaps, won’t immediately upon crossing certain borders be strong-armed into an isolated ghetto of immigrant “public housing”, or face some other gross violation of the basic principle, possibly with an idiot “our diversity is our greatest strength” sort of happy face unconvincingly taped on).
It’s not done as a jolly, it’s a fundamental part of the plan to create “A Country Called Europe” against the wishes of the citizens of nation states that are its members.
To go back on free movement would be to back-track on the Project itself, a sign of weakness where no weakness can ever be allowed. In times of crisis the move has always been forward towards ever greater union, to pause or god-forbid, go backwards would be to give cause and succour to those who are its enemies (primarily Euro sceptics within the remaining 27 member states of the EU).
So no, it can’t be allowed to happen.
A plan to leave the EU is here: http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/flexcit.pdf
I have not completed reading the entire document but so far it is packed with common sense.
A well thought out plan, probably the only one.
9) Can we start building Land Rover Defenders with a 200TDi engine again?
John,
I’m happy enough with the fix for Mr Kinnock’s description, although isn’t he a bit obvious to be an effective fifth columnist (not that that would stop the man thinking he could try)?
And as for free movement, I think that it is fair to say that national officials acting in bad faith (as regards treaty obligations – they may well be keeping faith with their countrymen) may well stop it for at least non-EU nationals. The EU does not yet have the ability to stop this being done, as shown by the suspension of the Schengen zone last year.
I hope that when I buy a chicken for my Sunday roast, I find the giblets inside…
You mean Brussels steals the giblets?
“It’s not done as a jolly”
Our Constitution in general and our Fourteenth Amendment weren’t done lightly either — that amendment was closely connected to what was at issue in a sizable internal war shortly before it was passed in the 19th century, and closely connected to an impressive series of political upheavals in the mid-20th century. It can still become a dead letter with sufficiently determined oathbreaking and doublethink. And there can be various reasons to preserve the form of an organization like the EU even as a significant part of its original justification is eroded away, e.g. fear of precipitating further disruption in a financial or security crisis, or just pressure from coalitions of interests benefiting from favors like price supports, trade restrictions, outright transfer payments, or outright monopoly privileges.
Also, if I’m correct that recent immigrants are the most likely targets of reinvented border controls (or workarounds like mandatory Immigrant Contentment Enrichment Facilities surrounded by barbed wire), I note that recent immigrants seem to have very little direct political power in the EU, and aren’t even an important source of tax revenue that needs to be preserved for practical reasons, so they largely rely on their status as symbolic mascots in a struggle between other blocs that actually do have power. The treatment that follows from that sort of mascot status can change rather dramatically as circumstances change. Politically they are not much like a significant bloc of voters or bureaucratic power players or even productive taxpayer milchcows, but more like migratory birds, where people totally horrified by birds being killed by Red Tribe energy facilities turn out to be totally insincere, so that oh hey, nobody cares about bird deaths any more when they are being killed en masse by Blue Tribe windmills.
Huh, I thought you called them “biscuits” over there.
From a technical standpoint, the term derives from the concept of a “fortune cookie” (something with a hidden message), so no.
Being able to buy a quick boiling kettle? Actually, If this particular silly rule had come in, I imagine that in the internet age it would have been pretty easy to get around it. I would have been inclined to buy the most powerful kettle available.
Reintroducing the death penalty?
Runs for cover!
Bananas return to a more natural varied shape.
If that comes under anything it will come under the European Convention on Human Rights which is not directly related to the European Union.
Bloke in Spain. Wow! So the French can sell to each other in pounds but we cannot? It’s almost as if there is a double standard or something. As I understand it the argument used when traditional units were banned was that they gave a competitive advantage to UK firms.
Tut tut! It will be easy to spot when the UK is free of the EU.
Hell will freeze over and Satan will buy a toboggan.
Can I get back a proper, navy blue, hard backed passport back?
The Rt. Hon. David Davis, SoS for Exiting the EU, has indicated that Article 50 should be triggered by the start of next year.
Why not do it on the same day that Soviet Union formally collapsed, on the Feast of Stephen? Then we can have a Brexit Pizza, Deep-pan, crisp and even. And it will be a holiday.
The biggest problem the Brits had with the EU was one of their own making: they were the only country (well, aside from the Germans probably) who employed armies of petty bureaucrats to ensure every last letter of the EU regulations were being adhered to with no room for discretion. Had they looked across the channel into France, they’d have seen that exactly the same regulations apply there only nobody is going to be the one who dons the hi-viz vest and clipboard and starts snitching on market-stall holders. French bureaucrats are a lazy, callous, uncaring bunch but you don’t see the same undisguised glee in their faces at their having power over somebody that you do when a fifth-rate Brit gets given some minuscule authority over his fellow citizen. Look at the number of reality TV shows in the UK featuring police or immigration officers who are delighted to be hammering somebody for some minor transgression or other. I think if they had a show like that about the gendarmerie, they’d find nobody would serve them in a restaurant.
I did not notice the word “resident” in the OP before reading the above; but now i wonder: is there really a right of every EU resident (as opposed to EU citizen) to live and work in every EU country?
As a matter of fact, there is not even an unrestricted right for EU citizens — except in the UK, maybe: in 3 other countries, i had to get a residence permit and register my place of residence at the City Hall. The residence permit is temporary, at least for the first 5 years or so. The police is not going to hunt EU citizens who overstay their residence permit, but any health insurance that comes with it (in Denmark, for instance) is not valid beyond the expiration date; not to mention that you cannot get a job, except in the black market, maybe.
A Manxman who is a British citizen may live and work in the UK, but not in the EU (as the law now is) without first taking up residence in the UK for 5 years. It is EU citizenship that confers the right of free movement (with accession states getting rights gradually).
Is it possible to buy good in pounds and ounces, feet and yards?
In the U.S., fresh meat and produce are now sold in decimal pounds. Ounces are used only with pre-packaged goods. Motor fuel is sold in decimal gallons.
Patrick – the European Convention (and its courts) did not use to be “directly related to the European Union”, but they were written into E.U. law years ago.
One can not be a member of the E.U. (today) without accepting the European Convention on Human Rights.
The United states Constitution – the problem is not the 14th Amendment (about which so much ink is used), the problem is the words “general welfare” and “regulate interstate commerce”.
Yes these words have been ripped from their context – but such vague words should never have been in a legal document in the first place.
As for the Civil War – the roots of that are also to be found in the Constitution itself.
Specifically the words……
“No person held to service or labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due”.
Article IV – Section 2.
Without this obscenity (which turned Common Law judgements on escaped slaves on their head) slavery would have died out, gradually, in the United States – as slaves, over time, escaped to Free States.
With this obscenity Civil War was, eventually, going to happen – it was only a matter of timing.
“But Paul, Murray Rothbard said that the Civil Was was about resisting Big Government”.
And Rothbard got that nonsense from Woodrow Wilson and Charles Beard.
If your sources on history are rubbish (Woodrow Wilson, Charles Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, Gabriel Kolko) what you yourself write about history will also be rubbish.
The same can be said about the First World War.
Soldiers and Generals in the Civil War were not fighting over international trade policy – nor were they being manipulated by people who were.
And no honest person (who actually spoke to soldiers who fought) can seriously believe that the tactical decisions of the “Educated Solider” Douglas Haig were good – even the title “educated solider” is a lie, as Haig either failed to take his examinations (his degree at Oxford), failed to pass them (his army mathematics exam – not to mention the later test on basic military theory for which he was given low marks by Plumer), or had someone else (James Edmonds – later the 2nd official historian of the Western Front) do most of his work for him.
the problem is the words “general welfare” and “regulate interstate commerce”.
Paul, you cannot reasonably fault the Framers for not anticipating that words commonly understood in the 18th century would be utterly perverted by shifts in meaning centuries later. Do you criticize Dwight Taylor for calling his book “The Gay Divorcee” because the meaning of that word would become thoroughly corrupted 80 years later? The fault lies not with the Framers, but rather with those who (in many cases willingly and knowingly) distorted the original meaning to suit their ends.
As to Article IV, Section 2 (and, for that matter, the other slavery-related provisions, such as the infamous “three-fifths of a person” rule and the twenty-year prohibition of any limitation on the importation of slaves), you know as well as I do that the Constitution would not have been ratified without them. Slavery was a highly contentious issue even then, and in the interest of creating a functioning nation the Framers kicked that can down the road for their descendants to deal with. I can’t really fault them for that, and in fact I think they were right to do so; some issues are simply insoluble and need time to work themselves out. And, as things turned out, it required a war to cleave that Gordian knot. Had they forced the issue in 1789 it would have been the end of the country.
Laird,
If you build a ship, the general rule is to make it watertight or near as, and to have bilge pumps for disasters/maintenance. Lawyers should take the same approach to drafting anything.
Laird, very very very well said indeed. And about as clear and concise as you can get in, I think, any human tongue. (Unfortunately my authority on Doggish has moved on….)
.
Mr Ed, that’s a great analogy and I love it and I certainly agree, layman though I am.
(One place where the lead was was built into the compartment was indeed the 14th A., probably because the drafters were so fixated on destroying any possibility of denying Negroes their citizenship rights. A great mistake, but understandable. Of course, we now know what I think the Framers knew perfectly well: Any statute can be made to cover any situation that some Authority wants it to. Look at the vile uses to which RICO is put! Including attempts to get Exxon indicted for allegedly lying to the public about the dangers of Gorble Worming 20 years ago (which allegation is itself a lie). Although I believe most of the A.G.’s have now backed off from RICO and think they have some other peg on which to hang the case.)
Laird! You disappoint me strangely. Where is your turban?
Of course, Mr Ed, but using a word like “regulate”, which had a clearly understood meaning in the 18th century, could not conceivably been considered a “leak” at the time. The Framers had their faults, but that was not one of them.
And any experienced lawyer knows that you can’t draft against every conceivable contingency; it would be cost-prohibitive, and it’s always the one you don’t foresee which bites you in the butt anyway. So you make reasoned decisions on just how far to push your drafting. I think that’s especially important in a foundational document such as a constitution, which needs to be universal in application and generally to eschew minutae. (Do you really think the Treaty of Lisbon, with all its gory detail, is superior to the US Constitution?)
Along these lines, I highly commend to you a short and highly readable essay from about 35 years ago by Bayless Manning (then Dean of the Yale Law School) called “Hyperlexis and the Law of Conservation of Ambiguity.” As far as I know it’s not available online, so the link I provided is to a copy in my Dropbox file which I saved years ago. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Julie, I change my gravatar occasionally. (Prior to the turban it was a stylized Guy Fawkes.) Do you like the new one?
Well, Laird, of course by any other face you are as sweet, but frankly I thought that was one classy bomby turban. 😉
Ah yes, Hyperlexis. It becomes a fault of people who are trying to leave no tiny chink through the vole of flawfulness might slip.
I thought I had read that. And lo! here it is, on mine very own AirBook, marked “from Laird at Samiz.”
As I recall it was very good. I’ll have to re-read it.
By the way, how do you like my new word? 🙂
Hyperlexis: good paper.
Julie, your new word – flawfulness – sounds excellent but surely you must write a 110 page definition of it, leaving no stone unturned under which ambiguity may lurk. 🙂
Or, as the mandarin Shan Tien put it, “Let it be signed, sealed and thumb-pressed at every available point of ambiguity.” (from “Kai lung’s Golden Hours” by Ernest Bramah).
🙂
Niall,
I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to find someone who Understands. *Deep sigh of unplumbably deep happiness….*
Now, I see I must also either thank you or curse you, depending, for bringing this Kai Lung wheeze to my attention. As it happens Lin Carter caused me to succumb to an insatiable craving for every fantasy novel I could get my hands on, including the Ballantine ones, which ended up costing me a bit of dough even though I stuck to the used-book stores; but I missed Kai Lung just the same.
And now, onaccounta YOU, I will have to see about curing yet another hole in one of my several collections. And I’m not even that great a Fantasy fan — more the SF type actually, although I loved the Greek and Roman myths in my youth. 🙁 🙂
UPDATE. The noted volume has been resurrected from the Gutenbergian innards, and is now resting comfortably in a similar position within the AirBook. :>)
When I visited Hong Kong in 1990, I found myself occasionally wondering whether “Kai Lung” was truly fantasy or simply a skilled exposition of authentic Chinese culture. That statement is partly a joke – but only partly; occasionally the parallels startled.
Julie, you will have to read almost all the way through “Kai Lung’s Golden Hours to reach the mandarin’s quote. If you like it, the sequel “Kai Lung unrolls his mat” is well worth reading. The “Wallet of Kai Lung” should be read third if at all (it’s very readable, but is weakened by lacking a plot on which the stories are hung) and I was less taken with the long-out-of-print shorts that are now available on kindle. But I think someone with your taste for language will find sentences to enjoy.
“Flawfulnes” is indeed a fine neologism, Julie, but is it really transmitted via vole?
I’m not surprised that you have a copy of “Hyperlexis” from me, although truthfully I don’t remember having posted it here before. But it’s so good, and so obscure (hands up: how many people here have ever read an issue of The Tax Lawyer*?) and difficult to find (it took me ages to locate that pdf copy), that I share it with some regularity. Mostly with lawyers, though. Count yourself blessed.
* That’s where my one published “scholarly” article is located.
I’m glad you approve, Laird. I do point out that the vole in question is not the vector of flawfulness but rather its symbol in a metaphor. So it stands for said flawfulness, rather than merely letting it hitch a ride. :>))
It seems to me it was sometime last year when I saw your link to “Hyperlexis.” In any case, I am glad you made it available to us. :>))
If you are going about writing learned articles for such eminent journals as The Tax Lawyer (never heard of it *g*), perhaps I should retain you to work on my own problem of how to divest myself of my former home without bringing the IRS down on my head. (Fixing it up enough to tear it down, followed by the tearing down, is going to require a trip to the IRA. Been there, done that, still recovering from what happens when you take lettuce from your IRA to fund a Roth. If such a sequence of shocks were to occur near the San Andreas Fault, California really would fall into the Pacific.)
. . .
Niall, I expect to enjoy it thoroughly, when I can leave off verbosifying myself long enough to acquaint myself with Mr. Bramah’s contributions.
And, thank you for the additional literary tourist stops in the Bramahan territory. Wish I could read his work on his experiences farming. The Foot of All Knowledge makes it sound inviting. Sort of like The Egg and I. :>))
Ah, now I see. Should have been, ” … when I can leave off my own verbosifying ….