The sudden successful eruption of Brexit has been like a ferret dropped down the trouser-front of the UK. Nobody was expecting it, they wouldn’t have taken it out of its cage if they’d thought that it’d end up where it has, and everybody’s yelling that this is a crisis, would yis do something!
Leading the no-problem-we’re-in-control brigade is, of course, Theresa May. Dear Theresa, a few short months ago, was a Remainer and went around explaining how very bad it would be if a Brexit ferret was dropped down the UK’s trouser-front Now she’s busy saying that the presence of this ferret is actually good, it’ll makes it possible for the UK to do things it’s never done before. You’re right there, Theresa. Like rolling around on the ground shrieking”Save me,save me!”
The DUP voted for Brexit, confident that it’d make them look super-Brits with no consequences, because the Brexit-ferret would be returned to its cage after the referendum. If you caught the look on Arlene Foster’s face just before she appeared in front of the cameras for the first time post-Brexit, you’d know she wasn’t a bit keen on ferrets being in places they shouldn’t be. But she couldn’t say so, so instead she’s explaining that this ferret is an opportunity for the UK to show what it is made of.
All the authorities you care to name – the EU, the US, the Bank of England – everyone said the ferret should be kept in its cage, if it once got out there’d be hell to pay. They were right, but the Brexiteers can’t admit that. Instead they claim, somewhat unconvincingly, that at last they are free to have their ferrets wherever they choose, without EU interference.
And as if coping with a hungry rodent wasn’t enough, there is the complicating factor that a majority in our little north-eastern corner voted that the ferret should be kept locked in his cage. Now, because we’re part of the UK, they’re going to have to share in the ferret experience. Confusing. Disorienting. Even worse: the Good Friday Agreement said there’ d be no change in the constitutional position of the north except the majority here wanted it. But how about if the majority here didn’t want something but had it foisted on them? And what if the majority in the north looked south and began to envy their ferret-free terrain? The old certainties have gone.
Most realists here know that things are bad and are going to get worse. OK, the referendum wasn’t about staying in or leaving the UK. But nobody said it’d take us to a future filled with writhing, leaping, insatiable ferrets. And the south, on which the north used to so enjoy looking down, is now looking at us and feeling sympathy for us!
“We’ve had enough of experts” was Michael Gove’s famous pre-ferret statement, and the great British public looked at him and said “What a wise man!” and followed his advice. With Boris and Michael on your side, what could go wrong?
Theresa and the Tories are trying to comfort the population with the claim that the EU will be suffering a severe loss, now that the UK is gone and that, like Donald Trump with America, they can make Britain great again. It doesn’t sound convincing when Trump says it and it doesn’t sound convincing coming from Theresa. Make no mistake: this is a ferret that plans to chew clean through to the bone.
This way for your Irish passports.
Both brexit and the election of Trump are clear signs of anti globalisation, and it is spreading. Other countries will follow suit.
Both the UK and US have plans to lower corporation tax.
These are anti globalisation measures to encourage internal investment and less import, add to this tariffs and you can clearly see that the world is indeed in for another crash coming down the road.
It is interesting to see people who do not benefit from globalisation, like it or not, it is what has caused the financial crisis through artificial and unrealistic inflation and borrowing which is core to the whole ethos of the EU and its puppet masters.
It is what is destroying the health service, and the knock on impact of borrowing and investment limits on public services within the EU is what has caused the homeless crisis and is going to destroy many economies within the EU.
It will take years for the UK to develop new trade relations like they are developing with India which will soon be going through a similar growth period as that experienced by China before its people started demanding better pay and working conditions. The UK will get a better deal than will the EU.
The changes that Trump will manage to get through in the US, and he wont get any through that will hurt America, will also help working people there, but will cause another global financial crisis.
So what makes more sense. To go back to the way things were and watch things stagnating until the people somewhere else elect to stop it in its tracks, or to cut your losses and do things differently?
The EU is going to crash and burn, the UK has already a head start in building a new post globalisation economy and the US is following suit and its trade deal with the EU is already in the trash can.
These on-going changes are not going to stop and both these economies along with India, Canada and other nations that are embracing the new trade and managed immigration rules that both the UK and US WILL be enforcing will flourish.
Italy will be first to crack within the EU and once this happens, Netherlands and any other net contributor thinking of cut and running will lead to a crisis in Germany and France and the EU will crumble into economic chaos.
Ireland will hurt in 2017, its biggest trade export partner is the US and it will be facing extra tariffs for US trade as penalties for unfair tax breaks like those given to Apple. That is factually going to happen and will do more damage to the Irish economy than the business lost over business tax rate reduction in the US will.
Add to this the tariffs imposed by the EU on trade with the UK, another and possibly the most important trade to Ireland.
Then add to this the EU imposed border restrictions which they will expect Ireland to enforce to maintain EU membership. There will be no British soldiers on the land border this time, it will be guards and Irish army who will be placing the targets on their backs to enforce a hard border within Ireland, the two nation state the republic has already accepted and encouraged divisions within.
If Theresa May has a ferret in her knickers over brexit, the policies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail over the last decade have unleashed a deadly cobra and Enda may bring more than St Patrick back from the US next March to chase it off this time.
The recent trade mission by the UK to India was underwhelming to say the least (disaster),the Brits have little to offer,never did have.
What are you a sing that on gerry?
England raped irelands resources and even today Ireland is dependant in England for many import goods including building materials
The point is, they have trade deficits with India and many EU nations.
Both the UK and USA will be reducing those deficits and replacing existing trade deals with nations under new immigration and tax policy arrangements
The point is, these changes are not going to be reversed
Make your own mind up who will come out of it better in the long term
Gerry.
If the ” never did have”refers to the immediate time before the Indian trip I would agree.
However in the past Britain was a wealthy nation.
They really messed themselves up and are now a post industrial Nation.
Existing on Foreign car companies and a few large foreign and domestic banks.
In fact, this is one reason that I think nationalists should exploit this British failure for all it’s worth.
To bring home the fact that Britain is in terminal decline.
At present .>
There are more people over 85 years old; than under 16 y.o in UK
There is now a worker pension ration of 3.2:1
This will become 2:1 real soon…by 2030.
This is unaffordable.
The NHS has a black hole of £20+ billion.
With the aging population and obesity /Diabetes epidemic it is on the verge of collapse.
The National debt is over 90% of GDP and rising.
Ireland’s is falling..and pretty fast..too!!!!
And people think that this Country is in any fit state to tackle Brexit?
Unionists should take off their Orange glasses.
The Uk is doomed,.
P>S.. Norman Lamont a former Tory Chancellor.
said that over 50% of Scottish Oil revenue in the 1980’s was used to pay for the dole of people thrown on the scrap heap of a lifetimes unemployment.
And these People are masters of the universe???
From the above..It is quite clear that at some point in the not too distant future the British will expect the 6 Counties to pay for itself.
Has Arlene got a Plan?
D-o-o-m-e-d
Oz, I have to admit it would be very tempting to want to believe the British economy was going down the tubes and that Ireland should help it on its way.
But I live in the real world and I just don’t see that happening.
Northern Ireland does pay for itself and it has nothing to do with Arlene or any politician on this island that is does. It is thanks to small businesses and our people who work our asses off to earn a living and do what we can in a small island with divided people and disparate economies with duplicated administrative overheads not to mention having had abysmally poor governance for generations.
If the british economy goes down the tubes, the reality will be that Irelands will go down with it.
It is in our own best interests that Britain gets good trade deals both in the EU and globally.
The truth is, the republic of Ireland must either follow the EU or the UK economies and tt would be simply madness to follow the EU and abandon our most important trade partner.
Ignoring the republic who has had no interest in the north, northern Ireland will also suffer if the british economy goes down the tubes and that is not what the majority of people here want.
I would like Ireland to use the opportunity over the next few years before Britain gets back on its feet, to do what is in the best interests of all Irish people, and remove partition, use the EU veto they will have on any deal Britain need with the EU to get a peace settlement, much like the road map to a united Ireland i wrote on this blog some time ago. Ireland can hold Britain to ransom over these EU trade negotiations
Unite this island with britains backing and to hell with unionism and their backward mentalities.
Ireland has so much potential but so much to lose if we screw things up. We are naïve in world affairs and there is no backbone in Dublin to lead Ireland out of the EU and into a strong global economy which we do have the potential to be. I fear likewise, the UK will walk all over the Irish delegation and we will get nothing but scraps
It is time like this, we need another Charlie Haughey but alas, modern Ireland is but a shadow of its former self
Hi Jessica.
I agree that Ireland would be better off if the UK economy grows.
However I believe the problems facing the UK are just too big.
Also, A lot f trade between the 2 Countries is just the UK is used as a trampoline between Ireland and europe.
so, it’s not the Billion a week that economists remark upon.
The only hope is to pull Ireland away from the Uk economically and have a UI with everybody pulling in one direction.
The billion a week is both ways and is actually a trade deficit to england.
I would like to see a better and closer relationship between Ireland and Britain.
Imagine Gerry Adams as Taoiseach and Jeremy Corbyn as PM.
How hard would be be for Ireland to be united with the support from England to build a new relationship that will help both islands economies and to build new trade relationships with the world based on immigration policies acceptable to the UK, Ireland and the US? Similar to those in Australia incidentally.
Dodgy tax deals and corruption could be exchanged for inward investment and giving our own people a better future.
It will take a Taoiseach with backbone and who will put Ireland and all of the Irish people first, and what do we have, the unionist apologist Enda Kenny who is happier laying wreaths in Enniskillen than he was when he could barely hold is head up at the 2016 centenary commemorations.
ferrets running about will be preferable to herds of goats and camels grazing along irish roadside verges.if enda doesnt bail out of the eu now and pull the drawbridge up who will repair the damage when the eu folds in a few yrs time.sympathy will be the other way about with the north looking at the south saying.you were warned.
If it’s only one ferret down a trouser leg is all youse up there in the Wee 6 have to worry about Brexit-wise, going forward, Esteemed Blogmeister, tis well for ye.
For down here we’re in double trouble: in the Twee 26 we have a ferret for each trouser leg.
Ferret number one concerns the 2×6 % corporate tax rate which is the lowest of the low tax rates in Corporate World the, erm, world over. No wonder it’s known from Wall Street to Falls Road and other centres of high finance as the Low Down and Dirty Dozen Corporate Tax Rate.
So low indeed did we go during the rude Celtic Tiger interlude that the Jacks and other Fat Cats of Dublin Finance Land became more and more to resemble one heck of a Chubby Checker commune:
-Jack be Limbo, Jack be quick
Jack go under de Limbo stick
All around de Limbo clock
Hey, let’s do de Limbo rock !
Having been in Limbo Land for so long and so low there is no other way to go, but up: not least with the Election of the Orange Rug. Our gombeen green rug is about to be the pulled from under our fiscal, if not, erm, fiduciary feet.
The Orange Rug is about to be sent over the broad Atlantic Ocean to the Emerald Oil of Oily Oligarchs to whisk back all those Apple Core taxes where they belong in the first place, going backwards.
Ferret number two concerns the mantra which is heard from Santry to Bantry and all places in between where bread is stored in pantries:
-We are the only English-speaking country in the EU !
Actually, that ought to read:
-We are the English-only speaking country in the EU!
Now, sadly, this may well be about to change, change utterly, a bootyful terrapin is about to be given birth to ,not.
The following teanga clanger was dropped recently on the Dame Dosh Finucane Show on RTE by PJohn FitzGerald, Professor of the Dismal Science in the University of Life and son of a former Prime Minister of the Free Southern Stateen:
-The EU, who have a habit of taking member states at their word, have looked at the Irish Constitution, seen that our First National Language is actually Irish and may well decide that this how we will be so designated.
One could hear a pineapple drop in the studio after this b-shell observation: a pineapple grenade. Till the same Prof offered this toffee-nosed suggestion, through a glass darkly.:
-It may be necessary for us to look at that article in our Constitution again.
Hmmmmm.
The father of the Prof would not have been entirely out of goose-step with this particular opinion of the son: Ferret GitsFeral (for it was he !) was in no two minds about the uselessness of the Leprehcaun. Which is odd, rather, taking his (gasp) backstory into context.
Considering that the same former Prime Minister of the Free Southern Stateen was never done windbagging about how doubly privileged he was to have had a foot in both camps; his daddy before him was a Southern Catholic, his mammy was a Northern Presbyterian.
What he tended not to emphasise however was how his mother became a fluent speaker of Leprechaun (having felt an inner compulsion to do so). She also served as private secretary to not one but two literary Georges, though not simultaneously: George Bernard Shaw and George Moore.
Sadly, very, very sadly, her son Ferret developed a great head (and a great head of hair he had too) for figures, and became the Time-Tabler Extraordinaire for Aer Lingus: his name is still whispered in awesome tones in, erm, Collinstown.
In fact, his favourite bed-time reading became the (gulp) Time Tables of every airline from KLM to TWA and Alitalia, trying to sift through the lies, damn lies and statistics. Perhaps, he ought have become the Prime Minsiser of the Free Southern Stat? He would surely have been less of a (gulp) KLMity in that role.
He was also given to dropping the odd braggadocious remark about the familial connection with the great Robert Lynd. He, of course, was the superb essayist and Belfast born Presbyterian who also found no contradiction in learning to speak Leprechaun fluently. He had no problem signing himself Roibeárd O Floinn and would see no point in putting his shoulder to the whale to warble the dreadful ‘Ireland’s Call’.
The author of thirty collections of essays he is more or less The Day Before Yesterday’s Man today , now that the Dismal Science Fictionalist Ferrets hold the stage on the Island of Irony.
Fágaimis an focal deireanach le Roibeárd Iontach O Floinn/ Robert Lynd the Great :
-Why is it that Orangemen are less national today that they were a hundred years ago? I can see no reason for it except that they are less consciously Irish than they used to be. And this, I believe, is largely owing to the influence of the Reverend Dr. Cooke. The people of Belfast put up a statue to Dr. Cooke. But Dr. Cooke, as far as I can see, did as much to de-Irishize the Protestant North of Ireland as Daniel O’Connell did to de-Irishize the Catholic South.
Down her in the Sesame Street of the South the Cookie Monster holds sway:
-Me eat Cookie ! Me want Cookie !
And to emphasise its mastery of its English only spiel:
-Om, nom, nom, nom.