Thanks to Gerry for sending this France 24 report on how Brexit is seen in France. (NB there’s an English translation, so you don’t need to speak French to watch it.)
Thanks to Gerry for sending this France 24 report on how Brexit is seen in France. (NB there’s an English translation, so you don’t need to speak French to watch it.)
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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Thanks for that programme.
Most EU countries never mention Brexit at all – except for the most closely involved – Ireland because of Northern Ireland, Spain because of Gibraltar and maybe France and Netherlands because they are close, geographically speaking.
All experience greater Brexit fallout than, for example, Italy or Greece where the UK exit from the EU seems to have had no impact as such on the local populations
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It’s reasonable to assume that, generally speaking, the farther away you are, the less affected you would be.
I’d be interested to know how other Munguinites who live in Europe or have close ties to it, feel about that. BlP (France), DonDon (Germany), Terry (Switzerland), Kay (Bulgaria), Tatu (Spain), or Derek (who has ties to Finland) for example.
I know, of course that Der Spiegel had the impression of a banana kingdom.
But does anyone much care?
Or has Britain just become that strange little backwater place that used to consider itself important?
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My brain is reeling from the effort of tyong to understand two langiages at once, with the Frenc h(which seems more coherent) being drowned out by the english (very insistentbut not coherent).
I might try again when i have recovered a bit! Perhaps i can get it direct from France 24, Thanks anyway but not many people in the UK will botherabout what the French think.
Interesting developments in Gibralter though!
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I’m sure that the Brits won;t care what the French think, or indeed any other foreigners. They don’t care what the Scots think!!
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talking to ordinary people, not politicians or even politically active beyond voting, I get the impression they resent having been deceived by the UK’s well-marketed image of fair play, good manners, courteous speech etc.
They now realise that underneath the urbane mask lay the thug that many ex-colonies knew all too well but countries that were not ex-colonies did not.
Wealthier people who would have sent their children to UK universities now know their degree will not be valid in any EU country without probably having to repeat exams and re-graduate. They are now looking at alternatives like Ireland, Malta and Nordic countries.
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If Brits thought (as I think some did) that Europe would fold without Britain… they have been sadly mistaken.
For education, in Sweden, for example, you can do your degree in English.
My Hungarian friend came to Scotland to do his bachelor degree and learned English to do it (because the natural second language to study in Hungary was German, given their proximity to German speaking countries).
When he was investigating where to do his masters, he thought he might have to learn another language or buff up his schoolboy German, however, he went to Sweden and did it in English.
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I think the main effect on the rest of Europe has been the disappearance of the groups wanting to leave the EU. Even Le Pen in France is taking about EU reform, not about leaving.
From a Danish point of view, I think the UK is beginning to look like a “langbortistan” – a “far-away -stan” – where people do strange things that are of little interest to “us”. The current political interests here in Denmark are are the war in Ukraine and its consequent effect on energy prices, global warming and the usual rabble of internal political squabbles.
Denmark is nearly self-sufficient in wind-energy, so the price of electricity hasn’t risen all that much. Everybody keeps an eye on the hour to hour changes in price and does the things that are heavy users of electricity during the night – such as washing clothes. Folk like me who have solar panels use sunny days for that kind of thing, too.
Gas is currently subsidised, but that isn’t going to last past April, so folk are installing heat pumps. There are loads of adverts on the internet, in the papers and on TV
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Thanks, Jim. I didn’t realise (or perhaps had forgotten) that you lived in Denmark.
Interesting perspective and absolutely logical.
I read somewhere that in countries where there was an anti-EU faction, that had greatly diminished following Brexit.
Not that everyone would have made such a pig’s ear of leaving as the Tories.
But if you go for the other options… remaining in the single market (for all four sections), you haven’t taken back control of very much, and you have given up your entitlements to, for example Farming Subsidies, Science funding, social funding, construction and infrastructure grants, etc.
Thinking back, I seem to recall that countries with that kind of arrangement (Iceland Liechtenstein, Norway and possibly Switzerland) still pay in a lot of money to be in the single market.
And being in the single market for goods, finance, services and labour means they have to comply with single market rules, decided in Brussels, with very little input allowed from the associate countries.
In some cases, of course, that is what suits them.
I heard a Norwegian farmer talking about being in the EU. He was asked about the subsidies from the EU? Would he not like that sort of boost? He replied that Norway was a very rich country and the Norwegian government could and did provide subsidies that were every bit as good as those of Brussels or better. The other three countries are also very rich and doubtless provide these subsidies themselves.
Britain is not as rich as Norway, and it seems that the British government’s subsidies are only a fraction of those that used to come from Europe.
Scotland too is almost self sufficient in wind/water energy, but we are obliged to subsidise England’s lamentable progress on that.
I had my central heating serviced today to be told that after 2025 there will be no more gas boilers produced and everyone will have to move to hydrogen.
I look forward to the costs of that.
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Denmark and Norway have a deal regarding wind and hydro, don’t they? Denmark has the wind and Norway the hydro, and the excess goes to who needs it, I think.
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Seems sensible. But they, they are.
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Derek
Denmark and Norway don’t have a bi-lateral agreement, but both are integrated into the european grid. I remember about 20 years ago there was a blackout here caused by an accident in Denmark at the same time as one of the big transformers in northern Germany was down for maintenance. The cascading blackouts went through Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and into France before they got them under control.
And Norway isn’t the guaranteed source of electricity it was a few years ago. Norway now has no many electric cars that its generating capacity can’t cope. I visit Norway regularly to walk on the mountains and see the all the hydro-power lochs well below there capacity. Ironically, there is still spare capacity in north Norway, but the high voltage link is insufficient to carry the extra demand.
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It’s strangely comforting to know that Norway doesn’t get EVERYTHING right. 🙂
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Brexit doesn’t feature much in Swiss news.
To be honest, the UK doesn’t feature much at all in Swiss news these days.
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Not even the fact that it is, at least in its own opinion, “world beating”? 🙂
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At least Brexit has exposed the historical lies and deceit at the heart of governance in England.
Brexit was all about England’s wealthy ruling class freeing themselves from restrictive European regulations so that they could become even richer.
EU laws protected “Hard Working Families”,an expression
frequently abused by the Tories in England,from excessive exploitation by the very same party.
They ken noo,at least all those except Daily Mail readers.
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I wonder if the ruling classes actually really believed that Englishmen were superior to mere foreigners, or if, perhaps it was some sort of thing they put about to keep the lower orders satisfied.
If you keep telling people that everything is better in Britain, people will be satisfied. And the average Brit on holiday in Benidorm which is a little England, won;t know the difference, because they don’t ever visit Berlin or Stockholm, Copenhagen or Geneva.
And now, as you say, the Mail, Express, Sun and Telegraph continue to feed them lies and why wold they not believe them?
We have blue passports, pint glasses with crowns, and happy fish. (Fish, it seems, like swimming in sewage, who knew?)
Still, at least there is no restrictive foreign law that tells us we can’t offshore and avoid tax, eh Mr Zahawi?
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“I wonder if the ruling classes actually really believed that Englishmen were superior “, answer Yes! and I should know. I went to Dulwich College (same school and similar year to Nigel Farage) and it is drilled into you how superior you are.
Being Scots, and proud of it, I was mercilessly bullied so all their conditioning did to me was make me join the SNP
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Wow. That’s interesting. They are actually taught that.
I just saw someone on Twitter saying that Englishmen were a superior race, because they had ruled half the world.
I really thought they were taking the mick.
I also though that Rees Mogg was taking the whatsit when he said that now that we were out of the EU, British fish were happy fish.
Maybe he actually believes that (despite the quality of the water/sewage they are swimming in.)
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Jeremy Hunt – “We want to be one of the most prosperous countries in Europe… & our plan for growth is necessitated, energised & made possible by brexit…” 👀
In other news, I see that ASDA is cutting 300 jobs and reducing the wages of thousands more.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FnbuP-8XEAg3Jul?format=jpg&name=small
High wage economy?
Let’s start with all these public services we need?
Does this muppet ever look at the speeches his spin doctors write for him and think…. oh, sh**?
Or is he in Animal Farm/1984 mode.
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“At least Brexit has exposed the historical lies and deceit at the heart of governance in England.”
I so wish that was true. It has to readers of this blog but I very much doubt negative trade flows or retained EU law are hot topics in the areas that most voted for Brexit.
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I wonder if, when any of these people go abroad, if they go abroad, what they think of the fact that they now have to have health insurance, and as the poem says:
Your faces are red,
Your passports are blue,
Now go and stand in that very long queue.
I imagine they just (wrongly) blame foreigners for being awkward over Brexit.
The British government has handily (although that’s rather inappropriate given the deaths), let’s say ‘handily for them’, got COVID to blame and then “Putin’s War”.
Undoubtedly, they both are playing a part in the mess that we’re in, but Brexit, according to the BoE is more responsible.
However, government ministers fail to even mention Brexit when discussing the economic mess.
It’s all Covid and Russia’s fault.
It Hunt says that and then their pet newspapers repeat it, then Monsieur Tout le Monde accepts it.
And people like Rees Mogg saying that the border checks are just “other countries being nasty to Britain”, repeated in the Mail, Sun and Express ingrain that.
How many people read the FT or listen to the details as the Bank of England chief economist gives evidence to the Commons?
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This, from the New York Times:
“But the descent of Britain is in many ways more dramatic. By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.”
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Aye, well done lads. But the average British family was never the worry here. They just had to be convinced that the Europeans were “over paid, over sexed and over here” taking their job, thier women/men and their NHS beds.
In the meantime, the rich, who won’t be poorer, will be able to continue to offshore and get even richer by avoiding tax.
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At some point in time, rejoining the EU will see the UK as a net recipient of EU grants.
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LOL. That’s true
That will make letting it join even more of a matter of possible dispute.
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