The Barker Report

Here is my guide for any country willing to get out of the EU:

1. Vote to leave
2. Leave

It shouldn’t be harder than that.

Of course, there are many things that need to be addresses, but they can be addressed at a later stage. Remember that every single country in the world except those in the EU aren’t in the EU, and they seem to get on very well. Countries as small and far away as Singapore manage to trade with the rest of the world and don’t go around whining because they are not in the EU (or the large trade block du-jour).

The truth is the politicians in the UK don’t want to leave the EU (regardless of what was decided in the referendum) and the politicians, bureaucrats and technocrats of the EU don’t want the UK to leave, so they set out a 2 year negotiation period, now they are thinking of a further few years of transition, and keep making it more complicated than it needs to be. Continue reading →

If you read last week’s post: Brexicon, you’d notice I dropped a lot of definitions. Well, today I’d like to elaborate on that of the Divorce deal/settlement. Why divorce? I mean David Cameron wasn’t married to Angela Merkel, they are not deciding how to share custody of their 26 children.  The term divorce implies that there was some kind of marriage of equals, and that it was the UK, and not the remaining 27 that has the largest income and therefore needs to support the party with the lesser income.  That is true neither on an individual, nor on a group level.

The reality is that far away from being a marriage, the true relationship between the UK and the EU is that of a members club.  When you leave a club, you stop paying your dues as of the day in which you leave, and you stop enjoying the benefits of the club. Continue reading →

It’s been a while since my Brexit-Schmexit series in 2016.  Back then, the concept of the UK leaving the EU was as remote as that of President Trump.  Fast forward a couple of years, and we are a bit over 13 months away from Brexit actually happening.

I’d like to revisit some of the current developments; however, I thought I’d devote this post to getting everybody up-to-speed with the new words and phrases coined around Brexit.  Considering that my audience is growing largely outside the UK, I figured a quick refresher won’t do anybody any harm.  So, let’s get to it.

I once read that writers are allowed certain latitude for creating their own words.  Well, here goes mine: Brexicon

Brexicon: /ˈbrɛksɪk(ə)n/

noun: brexicon

1. The vocabulary of a British member of parliament, member of the public or member of the British or European bureaucracy in regards of the impending British exit from the European Union.
2. A dictionary of terms regarding directly with Brexit.

I figured, since the Brexit vote in 2016, there have been many Brexit specific words and phrases coined around it, but very few people have stopped and thought about what they really mean, and why where they said in the first place.  Let’s look into some of the most frequently used: Continue reading →