The news continues to focus on that egregious act of self harm brought about by 2016 advisory plebiscite (call that a 'referendum'?) that brought us Brexit. European Union leaders have rejected Theresa May’s plea to redefine the Border backstop, insisting the guarantee of no hard border in Ireland cannot be renegotiated.
Owen Reidy of ICTU spoke yesterday at a seminar in Dublin City University’s Brexit Institute, Backstop and the Island of Ireland. He expressed dismay at some trade unionists in Britain who argued for “a workers’ Brexit”: “There is no such thing for us as a good Brexit,” he said, “or a Brexit for working people.” In terms of setting out to achieve what it sought through negotiation, the UK government had broken every rule of the negotiator, he argued. It did not know what it wanted, didn’t have an achievable goal, had no strategy to achieve it and was unable to bring people with it.
While the most ardent Brexiteers in Theresa May's cabinet are better acquainted with the interior of a Rolls Royce than the vast majority of people who voted for it, there was some irony in the news that the company has confirmed it's moving part of its operation from Derby to Dahlewitz in Germany.
For your moment of Zen today, I'm going to attempt to unwind the frazzle of all this Brexit stuff for you.
Last month I had the very good fortune to see David Byrne live in Dublin (with thanks to my colleague Mr Harbor for making that possible). He opened with a song called "Here" which is a lovely meditation on what goes on in the human brain (as only Byrne can do).
It's a beautiful track. Here's the studio version, while the video below gives you some sense of how it looks on stage. Very hard to do it justice, but I hope you enjoy it.
Like