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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

You think they'd hear, or care, about it, if the UK media didn't report on it?

Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Fair point, although I'm not sure the UK public would hear much about it even if the EU did speak up, given the state of UK media.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I think the point is that we, the UK, will have to finally settle some scores with other nations that we, foolishly, believed we'd already "won", by less than honorable and fair means. Somewhat akin to the high school bully 10 yrs later having to face their former victim as their boss at work.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

It'll be hard to argue, after the blackmail we engaged in against Spain during their accession, that Spain should be precluded from "returning the favor" in a future accession of the UK. It could be argued, fairly, that having set the precedent, we really can't complain when roles now are reversed.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I believe many WANYED to, but due to something of a palace coup in the Democratic party, he was removed from the ballot in the 13th hour and replaced by a candidate who had been thoroughly pummeled in the primaries and never could have made the ballot by any legitimate route. I call shenanigans!

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Isn't EU already doing this? - The UK keeps running into EU red lines it ought to have known about and getting its proposals rejected. - It's not like various proposals for deals w/ the UK are regularly discussed in the EU, or presented to London. At best, UK allowed to join existing EU programs.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I can point you to entire conventions full of people who'll swear up and down that the Earth is flat and the moon landings are fake - so what? What does it matter what "loads of people say", when the black and white of the law so clearly says otherwise? Serious question!

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Thing is, Farage generates clicks. And as noted, he's exceptionally thin-skinned, as well as vindictive. So any journalist that actually does their job WILL cause Farage embarrassment, which then causes them, and their org, to be barred from future interviews and events, losing those easy clicks...

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Ah, so just like his big idol, Trump, then, who can't bear the thought of him not being the smartest man in the room. Which also explains the absence of potted plants in candid photos of Trump in various conference room settings.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

That sounds like an absolutely fantastic idea, b/c English schools seem to have done an absolutely terrible job of teaching history, especially "our" history, to its students. I think that where the alarms go off is when you hear the Farageist take on what "our" history actually looks like.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Leveson 2 would only be the beginning of what's needed to to clean up UK media.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Wasn't it May who did that - b/c she knew an unrestricted investigation would have exposed BJ?

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

English here, too - did he really, though? As generalizations go, and I know you know how generalizations work despite your feigned ignorance, I'd say it was pretty spot-on.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

You and I at least had options - you could retire early, at some personal cost, and did. I could have let my parents fend for themselves their final years, but stayed and thus had to go the harder non-WA route to EU. For many, Brexit crushed their retirement plans completely, no recovery possible.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Exactly - you have to make choices, including compromises, and then accept accountability for the choices you made, including their consequences, under the conditions that existed, not the conditions you wish would have reigned.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

We could argue about the fairness of me having to <cue dramatic music> choose between my future in Europe or supporting my parents in their time of need. <end music> Ultimately, however, that was _my_ choice, and neither UKG or the EU owes me an uncomplicated life. So I had to take a harder route.🤷‍♂️

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I agree completely. I wanted to avail myself of the benefits of the WA once Brexit started to seem inevitable, I really did. I was, however, caring for my elderly parents with declining health at the time. The choice to provide them with the most dignified final years I could provide wasn't hard.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

A beautiful thought and a desirable utopia, for sure, but 100% unrealistic. If actually broadly attempted in reality, a surefire way to condemn yourself and those you care about to death, poverty, slavery, or worse. If implemented, it's not "the rich" you'd have to worry about, but your neighbors.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

It's a luxury stance that can only exist because it's only taken up by relatively few members of society, who will end up as freeriders on the back of the rest of society. It's only a marginal improvement on the elites who ensure that their kids never serve anywhere near an active front, if at all.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Sure, and I want a pony.🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ It was pretty clear, if you actually took what Keir & Co said at face value, what direction they'd be going in, and that it really couldn't work. In fairness, though, what did come as a genuine surprise was the sheer depth of their ineptitude and lack of good judgement.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

There will have to be a lot of large, and painful, changes all around the West, to adapt to new realities both of demographics and international trade. China is on the precipice of demographic and economic collapse, and even if they weren't, SE Asian shipping lanes are no longer reliable.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

They did - from the people who hadn't been paying attention. I mean, I guess I shouldn't blame anyone for nurturing just a smidgen of hope after seeing the Tories get the boot after trashing the country for 15 years straight, but Keir & Co were REALLY clear about who they were well before 2024 GE.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Aren't we already? The real novelty is that the US is breaking away from EU/Europe and painting it in more hostile colours, which means the UK can't continue trying to ride two horses. Will we stay w/ US? Fall off both and be scooped up by China/Russia? Break w/ US and finally chose Europe?

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

It's what's on the books, currently. 🤷‍♂️ Since I'm of the belief that a UK return is unlikely to be a quick affair, anyway you slice it, there's reason to believe the rules will have changed by the time the UKG is starting to get serious about returning, anyway. They'll have to, with or without UK.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

How anyone who has seen the Russians rampage through Ukraine can remain a pacifist is a complete mystery to me. They'll murder and/or rape and/or torture you if they come across you _even_ if you're one of their supporters. Have you no love or empathy, even for your own family?

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Really? My moving van left the UK several months _before_ the election, because I knew that they would be trash. I realized this based on behavior from, and positions they took, and made core to their plans, well before the beginning of 2023. You only had to pay attention to know what was coming.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

And by that I mean that if the UK joining the € is at all possible, without doing fatal damage either to UK or EU, then it should be doable in the time it will take UK to resolve all the _other_ issues, like public debt, it needs to address to become eligible to join. Join in <25 yrs is unlikely.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

What the other parts of the treaties and the requirements for joining say means that any way you slice it, the UK joining will be a process that will take a lot of time and span several parliaments, even without considering the £ ➡️ € issue. So a req to switch on day 1 could likely be accommodated.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

The question is if a "rushed" accession really would cause more damage than remaining outside the EU and Euro already have, and will continue to cause? I'd been away from England just a year and a half (early 2024 to autumn 2025), and the even the visible signs of decline in between were tangible.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Really? That might have worked, temporarily, the first time around, but once you've been around that carousel once, none of the views will surprise you again. Being tiresome is not going to either fool anyone, nor make them change their views.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Instead, many businesses have left and few dare/want to make investments inside the UK. No surprise, when there's more buck to be had for the bang when doing the banging inside the EU, with its lower interest rates, less wobbly currency & economy, and better prospects of finding suitable employees.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

If Labour had taken a pro-EU stance, ditched the red lines of previous UKGs, and rather than "Make Brexit Work", openly advocated for a return to EU membership, and then executed on it once in power, they'd have opened the UK to new investments and seen businesses hold out in the UK, not move to EU.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I, for one, have always considered the Norwegians a fishy bunch: Didn't want to join EU, didn't sell out their oil riches to multinational oil giants, suspicious preference for cold sandwiches as lunch, and handed Peace Nobel to Obama on, false as it turned out, hope/assumption he'd promote peace.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

You're not wrong, I'm afraid. BloJo and his band of merry men, and occasional woman, really went to town on trashing UK's reputation and standing in Europe. Now imagine if they'd gone through with his proposed Dutch vaccine raid... Sounds like a joke, but other joke-sounding schemes went ahead.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

We'll likely level out even if we remain death-hugging Brexit, there isn't infinite room to fall through, eventually we hit an equilibrium. Hopefully we can find it before reverting to a Hunter-Gatherer society, though "The North Sentinel Island of Europe" has a nice ring to it.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

We'll have the aftermath of the Trump presidency to consider and compare to, by then. To just try to normalize trade relations and regain some modicum of trust and respect in international relations, will take decades and billions of $$$ for the US. A Nigel/Reform cleanup won't come cheap, either.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Well, yes, there isn't any way of reversing Brexit, the best we can hope for is stemming the damage and opening up the possibility of rebuilding, by joining the EU again. If and when we'd be allowed to, is a separate matter. It will no doubt take time, effort, and resources to try to accomplish.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Very much the case, yes. The current version of the Labour party is one that couldn't ever have won a GE on their own merits, and the only way they get re-elected is as the less bad of two really bad options. They NEED to run against a plausible Farage/Reform challenge in '29. This explains a lot!

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Reposted by Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥

Cassandra 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺🌐 @troybairn.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

By definition, English exceptionalists think that England is exceptional. They are wrong. England is just another medium-sized country coming to terms with the harsh reality of post-colonial decline. Once you stop thieving resources from the colonies, you have to start actually earning a living.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

The problem is that it's already too late. Sure, getting closer to EU would still ameliorate the situation, but UK is already lost, both the one we knew and the one that actually existed. Now it's just a question of how deep we sink before we level out, and how we deal with how unnecessary it was.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

The press, absolutely, but the education system (for the masses) is also setup to prime and support the efforts of the press, and other media - BBC included. I really think you need to exit this environment for an extended period to really appreciate what it's doing to you and your peers.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Precisely - just because it was possible for Brits to (mostly) successfully skirt the rules while EU members in no way obligate the EU to enable them to continuing doing so as 3rd country citizens. If you had previously followed the rules, you were protected - up to some reasonable point.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Lax enforcement of these rules may have allowed some individuals to "fly under the radar", but make no mistake, doing so made them illegal immigrants, not "part-time residents". The only "part-time residents" were people who registered, followed rules, then left and registered residency elsewhere.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

This means "part time residents" is a misnomer: They were either just regular short-term visitors/tourists, registered residents, or people illegally residing in the country. Registered residents had the option to continue residing under WA rules. Illegals and tourists, naturally, didn't.

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

If resident for >182 days, they now have to declare world-wide income to tax authorities and be taxed on them. There exists no way to go from being a visitor to a resident w/o registering, and then following the laws pertaining to residents. Nor to legally remain >90 days w/o registering. (3/x)

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

If they came as visitors, remained for >90 days, and registered as residents, they became legal residents under FoM and local rules, which confers certain rights and responsibilities. Like transferring registration of their car, exchanging their driver's license for a local, etc. (2/x)

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Brain Burning 🔥🧠🔥 @brainburnnow.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Were they, though? If they just went to and "resided" in Spain without any other arrangement, whether in their own house or a hotel, they were visitors (tourists). If they arrived as visitors and remained for more than 90 days without doing anything else, they were residing there illegally. (1/x)

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