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1. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2017 09:24:44 EST Verius
   Ah brexit. While I applaud the fact that there is finally some progress it would be rather jolly for those of us left in the EU if the UK could make up its mind about what kind of future relation with the EU it wants (and no "the kind where we get a vastly better deal than any other country" is not appealing to us).
   1. mangeurdenuage (mangeurdenuage@loadaverage.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2017 09:31:31 EST mangeurdenuage

      in reply to
      Everyone wants the butter and the money of the butter.
      1. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2017 09:36:00 EST Verius

         in reply to
         @mangeurdenuage Well that and it seems the UK government contains a group that wants the butter and is willing to pay for it and a group that doesn't want to pay for it and it willing to not get the butter. So it seems the compromise position is wanting both the butter and not paying for it. Mind you, that won't work with eurocrats since those are very experienced in dealing with entities that can't make up their mind, that's the natural state of the EU after all.
         1. mangeurdenuage (mangeurdenuage@loadaverage.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2017 09:38:37 EST mangeurdenuage

            in reply to
            So the natural state of the EU is that each country doesn't want to cooperate but are forced to do so ?
            1. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2017 09:44:04 EST Verius

               in reply to
               @mangeurdenuage Not exactly. It's more that all countries want to cooperate as long as their favored policies are executed. Usually the result of that is a lot of negotiations behind the scenes to find a compromise. Sometimes countries simply stick up their middle finger, e.g. Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic didn't take in refugees even though that was agreed. Then countries get sued in EU courts and there's a big fuss.
   2. Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2017 09:40:42 EST Bob Mottram

      in reply to
      @verius In this context the UK means the Conservative party. For decades the Conservative party have had a split personality relationship with Europe. Since they are highly tied up in revolving door relationships with the financial industry they want to maintain trade and placate the interests of the rich, which is generally pro-Europe. But there's also a "euroskeptic" part of the party which wants to have nothing to do with the rest of Europe.
      
      You can see this conflictual tendency within Theresa May. She campaigned to stay in the EU and yet now she is in charge of exiting and is supposed to be the main brexit advocate. The Conservative party doesn't really know what it wants and whatever decisions are made about the EU will lead to prolonged internal wrangling.