I thought this deserved a Hell thread all in it’s own.
Boorish has told us (unsurprisingly) to get ready for a no deal Brexit. It is what the floppy haired idiot has wanted all along. Can we have a grown up come and take charge? What an utter b*****d
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I might also name the Green Party's Dr Caroline Lucas, Scotland's FM Ms Nicola Sturgeon, Wales' FM Mark Drakeford, and I have no doubt there are more. Some of the elected city Mayors - Mr Khan, Mr Burnham, and others - would also be far, far better PMs than Bog Brush Boris.
Sadly, none of them are in a position to offer leadership to *England*. Instead, we have a Gang of Gobshites, seemingly intent only on making sure that they get a large share of whatever spoils are to be had. One can only hope that those spoils quickly turn to dust and ashes...
It really is going to be a winter, spring etc. etc. of discontent. Someone commenting on the Guardian website recently reckoned that 2021 would make a brain tumour seem like a birthday present...having had a brain tumour myself, I know whereof he speaks...
I have a layover in London Nov 1 to 2 on the way to Spain. I'm just hoping there won't be any shenanigans, but shenanigans seem to be SOP these days everywhere.
AFF
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Makes yer prahd, dunnit?
https://theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/09/finland-anoints-sanna-martin-34-as-worlds-youngest-serving-prime-minister
The article is over 10 months old.
And, what do we get from the oven? The same deal with our largest trading partner as we have with Sierra Leone.
And the NHS is still short of the promised £350m per week while the government have flushed enough cash on this vanity project to fund the entire NHS and care budget for a year.
I'm torn between hoping they (the EU) won't bend in the slightest making BJ look stupid and a liar and be another dent in his political carreer, and hoping they will bend slightly, just enough to allow 'our side' some tiny cover for giving in and allowing us some sort of bearable future.
ETA: Of course, I have to hope for the latter.
As he's said it's over the EU side should publicly express regret and then NOT attend further negotiations. Yes it's our loss much more than theirs but our moronic voters chose it.
No wonder we have so many Doctors from the UK enquiring about work in NZ. (I heard that as a news item this morning).
Mind you, even the sort of crappy free-trade deal envisaged was going to make it pretty crappy anyway. Anything less that Customs Union and Single Market membership was always going to give people one hell of a jolt, whether they realised it or not.
The thing is this - there are no corresponding compensations. Even if we get a deal with the US, it will open our markets to their vile "food" and allow them to get their dirty hands on our NHS.
I predict that the public will soon be very, very unhappy. And there will be consequences to that.
I agree. Leaving the EU was always more an emotional than logical choice. When they realise what it means the public will not be happy
But they’ll still think it’s all the EU’s fault!
A landslide victory for Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party (which possibly proves that there is a God...).
I know they have a lot of work to do, especially in respect of child poverty, but O what a contrast to the Gang of Gobshites we're stuck with here!
The EU consists of Bloody Foreigners Not Like Us, so how can it NOT be their fault?
https://twitter.com/19Conservatives/status/1205102696207962113?s=19
(Note the date)
Not one word of the Conservative 'manifesto' was true. Not. One. Word.
AFZ
How have the EU compromised ?
Besides which, this was entirely the UK's idea. We left them; they didn't leave us. If I choose to leave a club that club is under no obligation to try to make me a happy non-member.
I was going to say just the same thing.
I am amazed how negotiations have got this far. If I was on the EU team I would have left us out to dry now. Looks like it could all be a waste of time now.
The BBC is reporting that the sticking points are fishing rights and 'competition issues', which makes me think there is no actual point of principle at stake here and the impasse is indeed just posturing.
Fishing rights are just horse-trading. Competition is potentially a question of principle, but unless the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has become a partisan of the late Viscount Stansgate*, I imagine the EU and the UK government are on the same side of the question (i.e., competition = good, state aid = bad).
* Translation: Michael Gove and Tony Benn.
The issues with fishing are two fold. First, the UK fishing industry is dependent upon EU access - both as markets for what's caught, and access to territorial waters of other nations to catch those fish; added to which much of the fish we eat isn't caught by UK boats, and so is an import from the rest of the EU. The second issue is no one tells the fish who controls the water they swim in, and so fisheries policy needs to be a shared responsibility between all the nations controlling those waters - in practice that means that the UK and EU need to work together to set quotas and control who gets to fish where.
The contribution of fishing to GDP is very small, and likewise the number of people employed or directly impacted by this issue. So, it is to a large extent a political issue with both sides knowing that they need a good deal to satisfy a relatively small part of the electorate, but an electorate concentrated in a small number of constituencies and so key to future electoral success. To that extent it's posturing, but it's also an issue that will ultimately decide the long term viability of an industry as no agreement on this could result in incompatible management of a common stock and everyone losing out if this results in stocks plummeting and no one able to catch anything. The principal is that in issues of trans-national importance it is essential that nations work together rather than just declare "this is mine, I can do what I want with it".
The EU is founded on principles that are intended to level the playing field so that businesses within all nations within the EU can compete on an equal footing. This includes some controls over state funding of businesses (though, still allowing public ownership of public services such as rail or utilities). That includes a range of regulations regarding working conditions, environmental protection, animal welfare (in particular relating to agriculture), product standards etc. For one nation to reduce those standards to allow their businesses to produce goods at lower cost would be competitive but also contrary to the principal of the level playing field. The UK government has been pushing for cake all along - access to the EU markets as before, but gaining a competitive edge by operating to lower regulatory standards. That can never fly with the EU, and that has always been clear. The UK government has two options in this regard: 1. accept the EU regulations so that UK businesses can compete on the EUs level playing field, or 2. accept that the UKs interests are to lower regulatory standards which would then require UK businesses trading with the EU to demonstrate that their products and services meet EU standards, which would put them at a competitive disadvantage unless there are other factors in play (eg: a UK business with a patent on a process that significantly cuts costs and/or improves quality cf EU based competitors).
I think the other point to note is that fishing communities from the French coast have been fishing in British waters in good faith for generations. Under English common law long-standing use of a resource in good faith establishes a right to that resource. Or to put it another way, it's not fair to wreck the livelihood of communities, even in other countries, without giving them a say in the matter.
But that's actually not the main sticking point. The main sticking point is that Cummings wants to use UK taxpayer money to subsidise the UK technology industry in order to undercut EU industries, and the EU say that the UK can either do that or have tariff-free access to the EU but not both.
Article 50 says that the EU are obliged to negotiate future arrangements
Yes but they don’t need to take the rubbish we have thrown at them. I said left us out to set by now. That means some negotiations will have happened and some agreements made. If the UK government act like children then they could just leave it at what was negotiated.
I have to disagree with you. I was refering to the trade situation after the withdrawal.
The UK are concerned about fishing rights in their own waters and the ability to do their own thing within the UK.
The only ‘future arrangements’ Article 50 requires the EU to negotiate is a withdrawal agreement. They did that, and withdrawal took place on 31st January. After that, as far as Article 50 is concerned, no further negotiation is necessary.
Yes, but *doing our own thing* might include the use of lethal force against Johnny Foreigner and his wicked fishing-boats...
The patience of the EU negotiators is surely akin to that of Job. They must be longing for No Deal, just to get rid of Perfidious Albion.
That is a real non-sequitur. The question is how long has the owner of that boat been fishing in UK waters. Community only comes into it if the boats are owned by the community as a legal entity.
from Article 50
I assume this is why they have been talking all year
You assume wrong. The Article 50 process concluded with the withdrawal agreement and the UK leaving the EU. The accompanying political declaration included an intent to pursue a trade deal. The EU has been negotiating because it considers a trade deal to be economically advantageous; the UK has apparently been pretending to negotiate because it sees blaming the EU for the economic fallout of no deal to be politically advantageous.
The irony is all the greater in that back in the day, the UK joined the 'Common Market' because it believed it to be economically rather than politically advantageous (and, I believe, never grasped the political nature of the 'European Project', which I also believe is one of the underlying causes of Brexit).
Exactly - and because the UK thought it could dominate the EEC (as it was the called) just as it had the EFTA group. It did not then consider itself to be part of Europe, and the Brexit campaign in the referendum showed that was still the case 40 or so years later.
I have the sense that Leave saw the vision of Monet and Schuman, and didn't like it, whereas Remain tried to pretend everything was purely economic until it was too late.
I expect you're right - I was (sort of) expressing some sympathy for them, engaged in such an unenviable task as trying to talk sense to England...
The 3 points you make are all very true.
The principle of communal rights in a resource has been undermined over history, in particular by the various enclosure acts, but under common law theory I believe it is still valid.
(In any case, the community is comprised of the owners of the boats and their heirs and those industries and traders that resource them.)