4 ms·

This presentation is biased. It doesn't take into account that the Northern Ireland is really a problem of the EU. There are soft borders in the EU for example

This presentation is biased. It doesn't take into account that the Northern Ireland is really a problem of the EU. There are soft borders in the EU for example Poland - Russia, where people can roam freely. EU is just not being flexible to make a "political point", which is pathetic. They shouldn't include a provision to leave the Union in the first place.

wlll 8y ago
> It doesn't take into account that the Northern Ireland is really a problem of the EU. As somoene who grew up in the UK with the IRA blowing up bits of the country, some rather close to me, I disagree. It's likely that the communities that would be split by a new border in Ireland would disagree too. The EU is negotiating in it's best interests, as is the UK. There aren't going to be any favours traded on either side.
- arountheworld 8y ago
  If the UK doesn't put up a border then it is the EU that is causing a problem. There doesn't have to be a hard border, but EU insists that there should be.
  - wlll 8y ago
    > If the UK doesn't put up a border then it is the EU that is causing a problem. The UK is leaving the EU, borders are implicit in that, and bi-directional. You don't get to leave the EU and not leave the EU. Can you cite the Poland/Russia thing? I searched but couldn't find anything. edit You referenced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border in another post. > Because Kaliningrad Oblast is small, homogeneous and an exclave within the European Union That's not the same as the NI situation. Regardless, the EU is negotiating in it's best interests, as anyone could predict it would. If I were French or German or whatever I'd want to get the best deal possible in the negotiations. No-one is going to give us any favours here, everything we want we've got to make happen ourselves. If the EU is using the Irish border as a bargaining position then that's what they should be doing, in the best interests of the citizens remaining in the EU.
  - cuboidGoat 8y ago
    I'd love to see that result, purely for the hilarity of watching the people I share a house with, who voted for Brexit, explode at the idea of the UK government not policing an external border. The only reason they voted for Brexit was because they think it means they can get rid of all the migrants, they tell me this quite regularly. One of them moved here from Bahrain, though apparently this means their family were ex-pats, not migrants. The other is from a long line of Christian overseas missionaries. If they thought for a second that Brexit would mean leaving the border with Northern Ireland wide open, they would be screaming blue murder.
- dingaling 8y ago
  > It's likely that the communities that would be split by a new border in Ireland would disagree too. It wouldn't really be a 'new' border though; NI and Eire had border controls from 1922 to 1998, so well into the EEC-EU era. I often had to show my passport on the coach from Belfast to Dublin. My grandparents remembered having to declare NI bacon on the train crossing at Carlingford. With over 200 border crossing points it wasn't 100% enforced, though.
  - wlll 8y ago
    > It wouldn't really be a 'new' border though No, I meant "new" as in, "it wasn't there last year" :) I'm old enough to remember the border, and "the troubles" too. I also believe the removal of the border was a large factor in the cessation of hostilities, and the reason it's such a hot topic now. > With over 200 border crossing points it wasn't 100% enforced, though. My uncle used to have a house (he described it as such, to call it a shack would have been generous) in the south of France close to the Spanish border. Before freedom of movement they used to just walk into Spain as and when they pleased.
markonen 8y ago
I'd like to hear more about this Polish–Russian soft border.
- arountheworld 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border Check the "Border area" section. I see no reason why something similar couldn't be implemented for Northern Ireland.
  - wlll 8y ago
    > Because Kaliningrad Oblast is small, homogeneous and an exclave within the European Union That's not the same situation as NI.
    - arountheworld 8y ago
      In such situations, people suddenly lose the ability to draw similarities... it is funny actually when someone makes up their mind and becomes immune to ideas that could break their fortress.
      - wlll 8y ago
        > Because Kaliningrad Oblast is small, homogeneous and an exclave within the European Union, in 2011 the whole Oblast was granted the status of border area eligible to local border traffic rules. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_border_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_border_traffic NI is not an exclave. There may at some point be a "local traffic" agreement with between NI and The Republic of Ireland, but that is something that needs to be negotiated. That this negotiation hasn't finished yet is because the relationship that the UK will have with the EU is still rather up in the air. The EU wants a border so it can maintain import duties with external countries, exclude dangerous items and people, and maintain compliance with things like food standards (think lowering of food standards to make a US trade deal possible). The UK wants a border so we (well, not me, the people who voted for this ill-conceived shitshow) can keep immigrants out, and also to collect customs tariffs, block etc. etc. etc. The requirements that each negotiating position has, as well as the general desire to not trigger a recurrence of "the troubles" are really hard to solve. There are literal opposing requirements that somehow need to work together. If you take that, and the fact that the UK needs the EU way more than the EU needs the UK (the "UK holds all the cards" blithering of the tea with vicar dancing round the maypole cricket on the green little englanders aside), then you realise that the EU doesn't really need to do anything. It's not going to "throw us a bone" on this, it's going to use it as a negotiating position, and the UK will eventually either give some ground on another issue (freedom of movement perhaps), or we won't and there will be a border. You have to remember that this is what people voted for. If they didn't vote for this then perhaps they should have listened to "experts" more, and maybe people should be questioning the ability of politicians to so clearly lie through their teeth to get the thing that they want (eg. Boris Johnson: a conservative party leadership bid, "350 million per week" etc.) The really really simple solution is for the UK to have full regulatory compliance with the EU, something like the Norway model, but all of the "models" have significant disadvantages, such as "pay with no say" as the Norway model is sometimes described. We could of course stay in the EU, that's actually been offered. We wouldn't have a border in NI, we would have access to relationships with other countries via the over 750 treaties that the EU has, but that it seems isn't something we want enough apparently. edit Just out of interest, what are your ideas as to how this should work?

wlll 8y ago

> It doesn't take into account that the Northern Ireland is really a problem of the EU. As somoene who grew up in the UK with the IRA blowing up bits of the country, some rather close to me, I disagree. It's likely that the communities that would be split by a new border in Ireland would disagree too. The EU is negotiating in it's best interests, as is the UK. There aren't going to be any favours traded on either side.

arountheworld 8y ago
If the UK doesn't put up a border then it is the EU that is causing a problem. There doesn't have to be a hard border, but EU insists that there should be.
- wlll 8y ago
  > If the UK doesn't put up a border then it is the EU that is causing a problem. The UK is leaving the EU, borders are implicit in that, and bi-directional. You don't get to leave the EU and not leave the EU. Can you cite the Poland/Russia thing? I searched but couldn't find anything. edit You referenced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border in another post. > Because Kaliningrad Oblast is small, homogeneous and an exclave within the European Union That's not the same as the NI situation. Regardless, the EU is negotiating in it's best interests, as anyone could predict it would. If I were French or German or whatever I'd want to get the best deal possible in the negotiations. No-one is going to give us any favours here, everything we want we've got to make happen ourselves. If the EU is using the Irish border as a bargaining position then that's what they should be doing, in the best interests of the citizens remaining in the EU.
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  I'd love to see that result, purely for the hilarity of watching the people I share a house with, who voted for Brexit, explode at the idea of the UK government not policing an external border. The only reason they voted for Brexit was because they think it means they can get rid of all the migrants, they tell me this quite regularly. One of them moved here from Bahrain, though apparently this means their family were ex-pats, not migrants. The other is from a long line of Christian overseas missionaries. If they thought for a second that Brexit would mean leaving the border with Northern Ireland wide open, they would be screaming blue murder.
dingaling 8y ago
> It's likely that the communities that would be split by a new border in Ireland would disagree too. It wouldn't really be a 'new' border though; NI and Eire had border controls from 1922 to 1998, so well into the EEC-EU era. I often had to show my passport on the coach from Belfast to Dublin. My grandparents remembered having to declare NI bacon on the train crossing at Carlingford. With over 200 border crossing points it wasn't 100% enforced, though.
- wlll 8y ago
  > It wouldn't really be a 'new' border though No, I meant "new" as in, "it wasn't there last year" :) I'm old enough to remember the border, and "the troubles" too. I also believe the removal of the border was a large factor in the cessation of hostilities, and the reason it's such a hot topic now. > With over 200 border crossing points it wasn't 100% enforced, though. My uncle used to have a house (he described it as such, to call it a shack would have been generous) in the south of France close to the Spanish border. Before freedom of movement they used to just walk into Spain as and when they pleased.

markonen 8y ago

I'd like to hear more about this Polish–Russian soft border.

arountheworld 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border Check the "Border area" section. I see no reason why something similar couldn't be implemented for Northern Ireland.
- wlll 8y ago
  > Because Kaliningrad Oblast is small, homogeneous and an exclave within the European Union That's not the same situation as NI.
  - arountheworld 8y ago
    In such situations, people suddenly lose the ability to draw similarities... it is funny actually when someone makes up their mind and becomes immune to ideas that could break their fortress.
    - wlll 8y ago
      > Because Kaliningrad Oblast is small, homogeneous and an exclave within the European Union, in 2011 the whole Oblast was granted the status of border area eligible to local border traffic rules. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Russia_border - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_border_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_border_traffic NI is not an exclave. There may at some point be a "local traffic" agreement with between NI and The Republic of Ireland, but that is something that needs to be negotiated. That this negotiation hasn't finished yet is because the relationship that the UK will have with the EU is still rather up in the air. The EU wants a border so it can maintain import duties with external countries, exclude dangerous items and people, and maintain compliance with things like food standards (think lowering of food standards to make a US trade deal possible). The UK wants a border so we (well, not me, the people who voted for this ill-conceived shitshow) can keep immigrants out, and also to collect customs tariffs, block etc. etc. etc. The requirements that each negotiating position has, as well as the general desire to not trigger a recurrence of "the troubles" are really hard to solve. There are literal opposing requirements that somehow need to work together. If you take that, and the fact that the UK needs the EU way more than the EU needs the UK (the "UK holds all the cards" blithering of the tea with vicar dancing round the maypole cricket on the green little englanders aside), then you realise that the EU doesn't really need to do anything. It's not going to "throw us a bone" on this, it's going to use it as a negotiating position, and the UK will eventually either give some ground on another issue (freedom of movement perhaps), or we won't and there will be a border. You have to remember that this is what people voted for. If they didn't vote for this then perhaps they should have listened to "experts" more, and maybe people should be questioning the ability of politicians to so clearly lie through their teeth to get the thing that they want (eg. Boris Johnson: a conservative party leadership bid, "350 million per week" etc.) The really really simple solution is for the UK to have full regulatory compliance with the EU, something like the Norway model, but all of the "models" have significant disadvantages, such as "pay with no say" as the Norway model is sometimes described. We could of course stay in the EU, that's actually been offered. We wouldn't have a border in NI, we would have access to relationships with other countries via the over 750 treaties that the EU has, but that it seems isn't something we want enough apparently. edit Just out of interest, what are your ideas as to how this should work?