Quote:
Originally Posted by ianch99
I really don't think Andrew is trying to convince you of anything, I suspect that he knows it's a lost cause  Your use of the extravagant vocabulary ("supra-national body", " far-flung corners of Europe") is just distraction. The essential takeaway is that before 2016 we were legally required to maintain EU water quality standards and now with our new found "democratic freedoms", we are not longer made to enforce standards and so we don't.
The ultra-sovereign dogma trotted out when anyone raises the damage leaving the EU is amusing. Before 2016, no one cared about leaving the EU:
Only 1% of Brits cared much about the EU before the 2016 Brexit vote
The con job sold to the British public was off the chart, remarkable in how so many were persuaded to vote against their best interests. Of course, we always get: "yes but ... sovereignty" wheeled out but you can't eat sovereignty or go swimming in it |
But you can use it to hold politicians accountable. Whether we do so or not is up to all of us. There’s nothing distracting about the phrase ‘supra-national’ - it is the very heart of the principle. The proposition was that Brexit is to blame for pollution incidents in the UK but that is obvious nonsense. As we are outside the EU it is our regulatory regime that is the sole factor at play. If our regulations are inadequate, the solution is to pester our politicians to fix it, not to abnegate responsibility in favour of a foreign bureaucracy with the power to extract money from the British economy in order to spend it on projects in Eastern Europe (or Ursula Von Der Lying’s private jet, take your pick).
Everything in the Lib Dem press release lurking behind the report in today’s ’I’ can ultimately be solved by British politicians enacting regulations with teeth, or if they won’t do so, by replacing them with ones that will. Bleating on about the ability of a foreign organisation’s willingness to swoop in and do it for us is a waste of time.