Nice reply Croak. Will sleep on it if you don't mind. Octavious you are right, drunkenness doesn't suit. (But it's fun).

Europe is one of the most diverse and beautiful places in the world, and has been for a long time. I expect that to start to change as the Islamic takeover progresses, and it breaks my heart - but it's an inevitability at this point. I will convert once secular courts start getting phased out and replaced with the Sharia regime already present in our major cities.

It's

There is no islamic take over.

Tell that to your grandchildren.

Croak, nice post. Octavious, yes drunk is difficult. Ksako - grammar!

The trouble with European wealth creation is that for some time the existence of the Euro has heavily favoured Germany, and the Germans then have the cheek to complain of unfairness when they lend it to heavily disadvantaged nations like Greece. As for diversity, it wasn't really an issue. EU immigration tends to be considerably whiter than Commonwealth migration.

The EU just exists to spread and strengthen neoliberalism across the continent at this point.

And without UK Germany cannot finance all Europe so implodes and guess what....

Eventually, damo. But it's going to collapse a lot slower if they can convince the retards in the UK government to pay a divorce bill in the tens of billions.

I think that's a wildly optimistic suggestion. The better suggestion is that if, after Brexit is complete, the world *still* doesn't end in the UK (despite all the predictions that they're continually making and then pushing back the date of when it doesn't happen), then other countries with strong eurosceptic groups might start to go 'Well hang on a minute...'

France, the Netherlands, Czechia, Austria, Sweden, and Italy would be prime candidates there. Also Greece, but Grexit is a different kettle of fish entirely.

The description in Brussels is that losing Britain was like losing a leg. Painful, but you can go on. Whereas if they lose France then they're losing their head. Game over. And the French and German views on where the EU should be going having been wildly differing for a good decade now, with Germany winning on every front.

Yep and the suckers go for 50bill. Won't last 7 years. Mark my word.

I hope you don't have kids

The Divorce Bill is irrelevant. It's a combination of money we were already going to be paying into the pre-agreed EU budget, and the pensions of EU bureaucrats (including British ones) who we've already made us of. It's money we'd have been paying whether we left or not, and whilst the number is huge, it's not like it's going to be a lump sum. In the case of the pensions fund, it'll probably be spread over decades. The rest will be spread over a few years.

It will all end in tears

Who is going to fund the project?????

It's a runaway train heading for disaster

The next EU budget will be agreed in 2021 iirc. It's going to be an awfully different thing to agree on, what with Far Right eurosceptics in government in Poland, Slovakia, and Czechia, coalition in Austria, almost certainly in coalition in Italy (where Berlusconi is poised to win power back - Lol), and potentially in Denmark too.

With Angela Merkel on a knife edge on whether or not she'll survive the year as leader of Germany, after the failure of the coalition talks between the CDU, FDP, and Greens has left her desperate for another Grand Coalition with the SPD - something the SPD ruled themselves out of before and seem quite unlikely to change their minds on. If Merkel goes then the person who, for good or for worse, has decidedly led the direction Europe has gone in for the last decade will be removed. And who replaces them is very much for grabs. And if Merkel gets her GroKo and stays, then the Far-Right eurosceptic AfD will be the official Leaders of the Opposition in the Bundestag, with the likely surge in the polls that'll bring them next time.

It's going to be extremely difficult to agree an EU budget in that background, as even the remaining highly pro-Europe western countries are struggling. Belgium and Spain are paralysed by weak governing coalitions, Portugal and Greece are led by radical left parties/coalitions who want wildly different things from the EU than they're currently getting, and France is... Well. France.

The U K's net contribution was less than 10 billion per year. That is about 20 euros per remaining EU citizen. That is not going to break the EU. With the economic growth in the eastern european countries (they are catching up fast) there will be less need for regional projects.
The new budget will be a fight and it will be ugly. But not because of the UK leaving.

@hellenic_riot: whereas the UK government looks sooo strong and stable

Compared to Ireland, Germany, Italy etc etc it actually does. I'm curious, ksako, as to what it is that looks unstable about it to you? I'm not the biggest fan of the current leadership team, but it's not looking it's going anywhere any time soon.

Johnson vs Hammond for example. Ireland and Germany are much more stable.
Remember the last UK election? May wanted a stronger mandate, but she got a hung parliament.

What's your point, ksako? I abhor the Tory government, and you've just backed my point up. One useless government is struggling to negotiate anything. Now imagine 28 bickering struggling governments.

@Croak:

"the Sharia regime already present in our major cities"

In which cities? Provide evidence to support this wild claim.

@ ksako

Johnson vs Hammond as an example of what, exactly?

May wanted a stronger mandate, but ended up needing the support of another party to forum a government. This is similar to the German situation, except that Germany hasn't actually managed to get its Parties to agree. So you're going to have to explain to me how the German case is more stable.

Birmingham and London are the most often cited, but I can personally confirm they exist across the nation.

Ten seconds of googling has dredged up the following articles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36587665
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/mar/01/inside-britains-sharia-councils-hardline-and-anti-women-or-a-dignified-way-to-divorce
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rahila-gupta/one-woman-s-brush-with-sharia-courts-in-uk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3348606/Sharia-councils-Britain-lock-women-marital-captivity-not-officially-report-domestic-violence-says-academic.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sharia-in-the-uk-the-courts-in-the-shadow-of-british-law-offering-rough-justice-for-muslim-women-a6761221.html

If that's not a broad enough sample for you then i'm not sure what to tell you. I imagine half an hour's poking around would find even more and worse accounts.

@Croak: Brace yourself - I'm about to agree with you, at least to some extent.

Those articles are interesting - both from a general perspective, and to me personally as a legal scholar. Since you have got me thinking about this matter, I also came upon this article which you may find interesting:

http://www.concordatwatch.eu/topic-47562.843

Sharia "courts", like the Jewish religious "courts" which also exist in the UK, are of course not proper courts of law and it is important to understand that their rulings will generally not have legal force (nor should they - we are a secular country with a well-developed legal system).

However, it is a matter of concern, set out particularly clearly in the study by the Dutch academic quoted in the Independent article you linked, if people from the Muslim community here in the UK are being misled by these "courts" into believing that they have the ability to make binding judgements. There appears to be a particular concern that Muslim women are being told they need the approval of a Sharia "court" to get divorced - which of course is not actually the case. They should in fact bring divorce proceedings through the proper courts.

There seems to be a conflict here between having religious and cultural tolerance, on the one hand, and ensuring that the human rights of citizens, and more generally the rule of law, are upheld.

If it is the case that women from the Muslim community are being denied their human rights and, for example, being denied access to lawful divorce proceedings, then that would indeed be very worrying and something should be done about it.

It would appear that one British lawmaker, Baroness Cox, is attempting to do something about it. She has introduced a Bill called the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill. It appears the primary intention of this Bill is to ensure that religious courts (and other bodies) are prohibited from passing themselves off as legitimate providers of legal arbitration services when, in fact, they come nowhere near the standard required of such an arbitrator.

Information on the Bill is here:
http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/LIF-2017-0003

I am inclined to hope that Baroness Cox will be successful and this may become law in future.

She might be successful. Her bill may pass. I'm disinclined to believe that it will make any difference to the power of the Sharia courts.

British Police are already too afraid to interfere with the insular Islamic communities in major British cities. They are largely self-governing and self-policing. It is not generally the case of the people that make up these communities being "Misled" by the Sharia councils - they are subordinating themselves to the judgements of Islamic scholars because it's their view that Islamic law is higher than British law.

And when our police, politicians, lawmakers and judges have capitulated to them, I can't say I disagree with their assessment of the situation.